Lachrymose

Filipina with stroke victim it appeared. (The day following Manager Billy discovered car accident, fellow on bicycle. Length of hospitalization not revealed.) Maid had enabled Madame to skip out to the library to pick up some reading. Hardbacks…Fred Forsyth and Cath Cookson GROAN among the rest when she returned. Smoke haze returned, hopefully to put an end to this show in short-order once and for all, blanket the malls, bring the MBS monstrosity crashing to the ground and return the forest and jungle. Indon VP Joe Kalla had a point the other day telling them here they ought to be grateful for 9-10 months of good air from their neighbour’s tree-cover. Met with predictable outrage. Point occurring at some juncture earlier catching the bus: the ecological devastation from these seasonal burn-offs is as nothing compared to what has taken place on this island in particular. Far too much of a challenge for all the boosters: this place was simply never ever meant to be. Ecologically a five or six mil. city on the equator was preposterous, completely counter to the natural order. Couldn’t be simpler. Colossal error as it turned out. Aircon may have seemed the greatest human ingenuity 45-50 years ago, as bruited by the local founding father gone to his grave earlier in the year. Good complacent bullishness on the matter much harder to sustain presently. The corporate capture of a number of rich old cultures here—Chins, Indians and Malays—a lamentable, lachrymose matter, painful and gruesome to behold. This poor man had a few deals left in him yet in fact, gathered three other chaps to the table. He and maid had been awaiting their arrival. Prior to the first entering girl had helped her sir to his feet, big chap185cm/95kg. Helped him rise, straightened shirt cuffs and put a few stray hairs back in place. Ready. Ready, but not moving. Two-three minutes standing in place. (Wife not returned at that point.) They were slowly, slowly about to make off it seemed. A wheelchair stood folded beside the door, but no move in that direction. Chauffeur OTW, he would help? No. No. The key man must have called telling he was just about there. Readying for the greeting then. Fitting and necessary reception. No. 1 man slow to arrive turns up with a thin dolphin snout, steel-rims, unassuming like. Probably sizeable investor in the palm oil plantations in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Cowboy capitalism take-no-prisoners. Wife sat off to the side for the duration. Had she been included in the handshake after she arrived? Entirely ignored thereafter. Leg-jigging White last to land a fatty who couldn’t settle. Big dollars involved plain to see, fat contract. Jitterbug all he was worth the Whitey. Dolphin opposite made him nervous. Chief among the wifely duties was to keep herself trim-slim; late forties, a little handsome. Fragile, but an adornment. Forsyth and Cookson. Could the maid last out? An easier position than Erny the Timorese in the Sims Avenue block recently loaded with a ahma early onset dementia. This guy was still sharp upstairs, astute with his investments. Wife could not possibly have coped, and the kids…Poor bastard. Why did he feel the need to receive Dolphin on his feet like that, really? Why?… Over 300 PSI readings a couple of days now, schools closed. In Sumatra itself over 1000 and yesterday in Kalimantan it reached 1800. The entire town of Pekanbaru reported evacuated.