Saudis Protest Female Death While Paramedics Barred from Campus
One Lonely Little Snowflake Not Shown on Russian TV
Journalists are tough, and snarky. All the photos and stories coming out of Sochi about the orangey brown water coming out of the taps, doors kicked down so new TVs can be installed (better late than never) etc. These are things we take for granted when we go to other countries, especially when they are undergoing rapid construction. There are times when deadlines are not met and things do not go smoothly. (I will never forget the look on the face of our building care-taker, who had sworn to me, over and over, he had no key to my apartment, but who walked in one day when my car was at the dealership for repairs, and he thought I was gone, too.) Things happen.
But one journalist on NPR (National Public Radio) cracked me up totally talking about the opening ceremony, and how beautiful it was until the climax, and the five snowflakes morphed into five Olympic rings – or at least that was the plan. “Four rings – and one lonely little snowflake! This is the memory of the Sochi games!” he chortled, and I found myself laughing, too, at that one lonely little snowflake.
I would hate to be the person responsible for that snowflake, or any of the hotel problems. It may be modern day Russia, but heads can still roll 😦
As it turns out, the Russians never saw that. They saw a doctored tape from the rehearsal, when all went as scored:
Report from Huffpost via AOL:
SOCHI, Russia (AP) — Smoke and mirrors? Russian state television aired footage Friday of five floating snowflakes turning into the Olympic rings and bursting into pyrotechnics at the Sochi Games opening ceremony. Problem is, that didn’t happen.
The opening ceremony at the Winter Games hit a bump when only four of the five rings materialized in a wintry opening scene. The five were supposed to join together and erupt in fireworks. But one snowflake never expanded, and the pyrotechnics never went off.
But everything worked fine for viewers of the Rossiya 1, the Russian host broadcaster.
As the fifth ring got stuck, Rossiya cut away to rehearsal footage. All five rings came together, and the fireworks exploded on cue.
“It didn’t show on television, thank God,” Jean Claude-Killy, the French ski great who heads the IOC coordination commission for the Sochi Games, told The Associated Press.
Producers confirmed the switch, saying it was important to preserve the imagery of the Olympic symbols.
The unveiling of the rings is always one of the most iconic moments of an opening ceremony, and President Vladimir Putin has been determined to use the ceremony as an introduction of the new Russia to the world.
Konstantin Ernst, executive creative director of the opening ceremony, told reporters at a news conference that he called down to master control to tell them to go the practice footage when he realized what happened.
“This is an open secret,” he said, referring to the use of the pre-recorded footage. The show’s artistic director George Tsypin said the malfunction was caused by a bad command from a stage manager.
Ernst defended his decision, saying that the most important part was preserving the images and the Olympic tradition: “This is certainly bad, but it does not humiliate us.”
NBC was to air the ceremony in the U.S. on tape delay later Friday.
Glitches are not uncommon at Olympic opening ceremonies.
There was a minor controversy over trickery involving the fireworks at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, after it was revealed that some of the display featured prerecorded footage.
Fireworks bursting into the shape of gigantic footprints were shown trudging above the Beijing skyline to the National Stadium near the start of the ceremony. Officials confirmed that some of the footage shown to TV viewers around the world and on giant screens inside the stadium featured a computer-generated, three-dimensional image.
In addition, a tiny, pigtailed 9-year-old girl in a red dress who sang “Ode to the Motherland” was lip-synching. The real voice belonged to a 7-year-old girl who was replaced because she was deemed not cute enough by a member of China’s Politburo.
At the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Luciano Pavarotti’s performance was prerecorded. The maestro who conducted the aria, Leone Magiera, said the bitter cold made a live performance impossible.
___
Associated Press writers Stephen Wilson and Oskar Garcia contributed to this report.
Taxes and Credit Cards
I am not superstitious, yet I felt a little shudder when my Lucky Bamboo suddenly just died, and then on Chinese New Year’s, I shuddered again when I saw that my cookie, still in its little plastic shroud, was smooshed, not just broken a little, but broken a lot. (It turned out to be a good fortune.)
Things happen; as I said I am not superstitious. I’m a believer; I believe these things are in God’s hands.
So this week we were playing catch-up, and AdventureMan gathered all the materials for our taxes. He had a few extra minutes before our tax appointment, and made a phone call trying to straighten out a charge we had that was supposed to be removed, and we did not see that it had. While the customer service agent (who was really very good) was running through the list of charges, and I was saying “Yes.” “Yes” “Yes” she started running through a list of credits and I was saying “No, there is only a credit for X” and she is reading off a list that . . . is growing.
And then she says “I need to talk to a supervisor; I will be right back” and comes back very shortly and says there is some suspicious activity on my card and the bank will be sending us new cards immediately.
Just in time, because we have to go to the tax meeting. That meeting went well, except that there were a couple pieces of information our tax person needed and I knew I could get for her, so I would call her before the end of the day.
When I got home, I went to the file where I found two of the missing pieces of information, but not the third. I knew I could find it in my August credit card statement, but it was the only one I couldn’t locate.
Went online so I could download and print, but . . . there were only four months there. Call to the credit card company again, transfer to IT who says that once that card is cancelled, they can no longer “see” the information online, but that they can send me a copy. Yes, yes, good for documentation, but that doesn’t help me with the exact amount I need to provide to my tax lady. Aargh.
It wasn’t a big deal. AdventureMan tracks things through the year and the pieces of information are long-run things, not immediate tax things, but . . . all this happening on the same day.
“It’s a good thing I have my back-up card,” I say to AdventureMan, reminding him of a card I got for just these circumstances (yes, I charged ONE item during the period from Thanksgiving to Christmas at Target, ONE item) so I always have back-up, as well as in case a hurricane hits our house and we have to live in a hotel while our home is rebuilt, yes, I am a planner . . .
And AdventureMan turns white. “Oh no,” he said, ruminatively, “I couldn’t figure out why we had that one, so I cancelled it yesterday . . . ” and then he got on the phone to straighten it out. LOL, a lot of small stuff, all of which ended well, but I couldn’t help thinking maybe I need to get better at growing Lucky Bamboo . . . all these dribbles had to do with money.
My Chinese friend just laughed when we talked today; I had told her I didn’t notify my bank about the Target charge because I figured with 12.5 million people affected, I was just a drop in the bucket. I’ve had this happen now four times, and I was tired of re-doing my automatic charges.
“Oh!” she laughed, “You think it’s like the lottery, that you only had one chance in 12.5 million,” and she is laughing like a crazy woman – at me. Yeh. She’s right. Sometimes,it’s better to bite that bullet right at the beginning, before things get worse.
Most Criminals are Dimwits: Attempted Kidnapping
Today in Pensacola, from the Pensacola News Journal What I wonder – did the guy selling the ring get to keep the full $4,500 that his attempted abductors were buying from him?:
Two people have been arrested in connection with a kidnapping and shooting of a man after a botched robbery attempt in a Wal-Mart parking lot, an Escambia County Sheriff’s Office arrest report said.
Darius Beasley, 21, and Jamichael Tucker, 19, were arrested Tuesday afternoon after deputies responded to reports of shots fired near the intersection of Pensacola Boulevard and Hood Drive, according to the report.
A victim at the scene said that he had met Beasley in the parking lot after arranging to sell him a $4,500 wedding ring on Craigslist, the report said. The victim allowed Beasley into his vehicle, where they exchanged the ring and an envelope containing cash.
The victim said that immediately afterward, Tucker approached the driver’s side of the vehicle and pointed a gun inside. Tucker then allegedly opened the door of the vehicle and attempted to put duct tape around the victim’s wrists.
The victim was able to get out of the vehicle and run away, and the two suspects returned to their car and drove off, the report said. The victim began to chase the pair in his truck, and Tucker reportedly leaned out of his car window and began shooting at the victim.
The chase ended when a deputy arrived on the scene and advised the suspects to pull over. Tucker and Beasley were taken into custody without incident, and no one was injured in the event.
Both men are facing an array of charges including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, robbery and attempted kidnapping.
Tucker is being held on $125,500 bond, and Beasley is being held on $103,000.
A Stalwart Falls
“Are you catching colds?” our friend asked as the funeral ended.
“No, no, I said, funerals just find us very vulnerable, and we have to deal with losses, past, present . . . and future. We have an ongoing fight over who is going to bury whom.”
We did not know the man well who had died, but we knew him as a stalwart. He was a greeter and usher at our service, and he was only rarely ever not there. He served the church. He was always there. I had asked his wife to help me with tickets, and she had laughed and said “of course, I’ll be there because my husband will be there, and if you need me just holler.”
They weren’t there. It made me uneasy, it nagged at me. I didn’t need her, but I missed her, and as I said – they are ALWAYS there. Sometimes it’s what is missing that catches your attention. It caught mine.
When I learned her husband had died, suddenly and unexpectedly, just as the Antique Fair was starting, it came almost as a physical blow. It’s not that I knew him that well. It’s that his presence at the church was something we took for granted, he was stalwart. You could count on him. We attended out of respect, respect for him, support for his wife.
And I know that the two of them spend (spent) as much time together as AdventureMan and I do. I don’t like to think that it could happen to me, that I could be suddenly left. AdventureMan was a military man, he would often leave, all these years, and he might tell me where he was going but I never knew for sure where he was going. We had a code to use if he was lying, but although he never used the code, I know there are times he lied, all for that bitch, national security. Yes, yes, I know, strong language from Intlxpatr, but strong times call for strong language. We both knew that there were times when there was a risk he wouldn’t come back.
We didn’t have to deal with death a lot in our life abroad. Of course, in the military, everyone is young. In all the countries where we worked in the Gulf, there were upper age limits – people retired and people left; you can’t live out your years in Qatar or Kuwait, there are laws against it. You can’t even be buried there without special permission. We learned to deal with the losses of people coming into our lives and leaving, but we didn’t have to deal with the great finality of death. We’re learning.
AdventureMan insists he is going to go first. I am tough in a lot of ways, but I don’t know that I am tough enough to go through his funeral. The very thought of it makes me sick to my stomach.
He tells me not to worry. He wants a Viking funeral; he wants to be sent out in a kerosene soaked ship and for archers to set it on fire as it sails off, disintegrating in flames. Isn’t going to happen, AdventureMan, but if it did, I might give some thought to pitching myself on the ship as it departs . . . otherwise, I’m afraid I might live the rest of my life as the one of the walking wounded.
Love At First Sight: Gumbo Spoons
Vanity, vanity. When I was in university, along with our studies, we all picked out our china patterns and silver flatware. We were preparing for the rest of our lives, which meant getting married. My parents gave me six place settings when I graduated university and through the years, AdventureMan and I added settings. We used the sterling all the time, military people entertained more formally. We haunted French and German antique markets and flea markets, seeking obscure pieces we didn’t have, it was fun.
These days, not so much. I haven’t bought any silver for years. We do very little formal entertaining. My sister and her daughters have taken to using their good silver for every day. I haven’t reached that point – yet – but I am thinking about it.
In spite of the fact that we are not often using our silver flatware, at the recent Christ Church Antique Fair, a woman celebrated having found gumbo spoons.
Gumbo spoons? I have a lot of pieces, mostly French and German. I have asparagus servers, yes, really! I have pieces for all kinds of exotic foods, but no. No, I did not have gumbo spoons. I had never even heard of gumbo spoons.
Gumbo spoons are a little larger than soup spoons, wider, rounder, a little deeper.
As it turns out, they don’t even make gumbo spoons in my sterling, but they had some beautiful ones that will go with my everyday flatware; these had shells on the base of the handles. They are beautiful, and I can hardly wait to eat gumbo in such grand style. These will be well loved – and well used!
Energy Use and My Friend Who Kept the Cats Warm
“I was scratching their heads and ears and noticed that they were nice and warm! I wondered how they were managing to keep so warm in the awful cold, but I was glad they found a nice warm place,” my friend said, when I asked her how her outdoor cats had fared in the bone-chilling cold we experienced in Pensacola last week.
“Then I got my Gulf Power bill, and Intlxpatr, it was over a thousand dollars!” she exclaimed, her eyes huge.
Her normal bill is probably around what I pay. Not nearly a thousand dollars, not even on the hottest month of summer when I have to keep the air on full blast 24/7 on just to survive.
“So I called the heating people,’ she continued, and they had to crawl under the house, imagine, in this weather. . . ”
I imagined.
“. . . And they discovered the cats had clawed a hole in one of my air ducts and had luxuriated, down there under the house, while my heater tried to heat up half of Pensacola!”
We laughed, but a thousand dollars . . . that knocks a hole in anyone’s budget. It was one of those laughing-because-if-you-don’t-laugh-you-will-cry kinds of laughs.
I am an energy nerd. It comes from growing up in Alaska, I am convinced, where I had neighbors who fished in the summers and had to get by all year on that income, plus what they might come by with odd jobs the rest of the year. My friends had a huge garden in their back yard, and a root cellar where things were stored. In the root cellar, they had a chalkboard, where every potato, every carrot, everything they had stored was listed, and numbers subtracted as they were used. They had to keep track, to be sure they would make it through the winter.
In Pensacola, Gulf Power has a really cool feature on their website. You set up an online account, and you can check on your daily energy usage. LOL, this is mine for January. It has huge ups and downs – mostly we don’t need to have the heat on, but when the temperatures go down and stay down – it shows. There are also a couple days when we used our oven, and that shows up, too, but not badly.
I remember living in Germany, where I didn’t have a dryer (or any space for one) and my landlady brought me my energy bill. We lived in a very small farming village, where they were also all very frugal, but she couldn’t believe my bill was so small. I just smiled; I could hear her dryer going every day, and dryers are also a huge source of energy usage. Anything that heats up – or cools down – is an energy eater.
On the website, you can also compare this year against previous years – and my bill this year is nearly a third higher than last year, but last year we did not have a three-day arctic freeze!
191 Nepali Laborers Died in Qatar in 2013
From Agence France, a report that 191 Nepali laborers died in Qatar in ONE year:
Nearly 200 Nepali migrant workers died in Qatar last year, many of them from heart failure, officials said Monday, figures that highlight the grim plight of labourers in the Gulf nation.
Tens of thousands of impoverished Nepalis head every year to Qatar, where a construction boom is gathering pace as it prepares to host the 2022 football World Cup.
The Nepal embassy in Doha said it registered 191 deaths last year compared with 169 the year before, with a foreign ministry official describing many of the deaths as “unnatural”.
“In the year 2013, a total of 191 Nepali migrant workers died in Qatar,” Harikanta Paudel, a senior embassy official, told AFP by telephone.
“The highest number of deaths occurred in July when 32 workers died,” Paudel said.
Qatar is under mounting pressure over poor conditions for migrant labourers, particularly during the blisteringly hot summer, in the gas-rich nation’s booming construction industry.
A Kathmandu-based foreign ministry official told AFP that a third of the deaths recorded were due to “unnatural” heart failure.
“Young and healthy men in their twenties and thirties have died… it is unnatural,” said official Subhanga Parajuli.
“Cardiac arrest is followed by traffic accidents as another main cause of death. The third cause of death is injuries during work,” Parajuli said.
An Amnesty International report released last November said migrant workers in Qatar endured a series of abuses including “non-payment of wages, harsh and dangerous working conditions, and shocking standards of accommodation”.
The rights group said its researchers overheard one construction firm manager use the term “animals” to describe migrant workers, while a labourer told the watchdog that “Nepalis are treated like cattle”.
Qatari authorities last October said allegations of abuse of labourers working on World Cup facilities were exaggerated but insisted they took such claims seriously.
More than one million Nepali migrant workers toil in the Gulf region and Southeast Asia. Qatar alone hosts around 400,000 Nepalis as part of its two-million strong migrant workforce.
God Bless Gulf Power Emergency Crews!
“You guys OK?” our son queried.
“Have power? Have internet?” he followed up.
Yes. Yes, thanks be to God and by the grace of the Gulf Power Emergency Crews who must have cleared that broken branch of the line, or restrung the line that fell from the weight of the ice – or whatever caused the outage.
Can’t binge watch True Detective with no cable 😦 We lost electricity around 10:30 last night. It fluttered, it re-gridded, fluttered, re-gridded, they have all these work-arounds now so that it’s been a couple years since we actually lost power, but when it went down, it took everything, even the street lights. It was DARK. We got out our little hand-cranked radio/lights from LLBean that we use for hurricane emergencies, to take a look outside.
It looked like snow, but it was frozen ice. The road was a sheet of ice. No cars; for the most part there are a few people out there, but most of Pensacola is wisely staying inside. This is NOT driving weather.
It is supposed to warm later today; it has been 23°F for about 4 hours now. Our son’s internet is still down.
Last night AdventureMan made the best seafood soup EVER. It was from the January Southern Living, Gulf Seafood Stew, served with Johnny cakes and a dipping sauce – it was THE BEST.
We haven’t suffered. When the lights went out, when the heat went off, we went to bed. I didn’t even hear the electricity come back on, very early this morning, but AdventureMan did, and together we blessed those brave, hard workers who have to go out into this blistering cold and fix the lines so that the rest of us can be safe and warm in our homes.
Pensacola Ice Storm
Timing is everything. I had wait to get these photos until enough ice had formed to make it interesting, but before I lost what little light we had with the clouds, rain, sleet and now freezing rain.
If you are the praying kind, I ask your prayers for the homeless, those without heat, those who still have to make it home (so far the roads are OK but the bridges may start icing soon) and for these poor helpless birds seeking shelter on a night which will show them no pity.
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