Greetings from Limp Ninja and Lemon

Note to non-demosceners: You probably won't get this.

Facet is in the country for a couple of days to seal some business deals here. It's been a while since the lovable Amiga graphician made me feel like I'm the least funny person on the planet. Moreover, it's good to see a familiar face. Who knows, I might catch him so piss-drunk that he can be persuaded to pixel a naked woman on a serpent. With a volcano in the background.

Sunday was pretty much uneventful

I spent most of the day preparing food, doing laundry and idly checking the last bits of the trainees' last assignment... I had some rice and beans from the fridge, played a bit of the regular HL2 (since yes, the rest is now updating like no tomorrow).

The weather was decidedly random. This is killing my intentions to tan up a bit more :(

The hardest thing about the course

"There is no such thing as just one solution."

It was like telling Apple salespeople I wanted the US International layout. The trainees were beyond batshit insane when it came to the very idea that they might just do things wrong -as if it wouldn't fit the pattern of the trainer.

The dismay in V's eyes when I confessed I never had expected anybody to come up with a solution like hers was tangible enough to tether wile horses with. I had to explain that the approach was unconventional, but a great way to resolve the problem. It was also one hell of a time to get through to R that this solution was sound in theory, but that Internet Explorer demands certain stupidity only reserved for the experienced.

I hope that all of the trainees will come out of this ordeal with the ingrained reflex to question the norm and try to improve on the challenges at hand. They certainly know that they need to ask "why?!" but they fail to open their mouths far too often.

Work slow, food great, music too. Must sleep.

Slow day at work. I was supposed to be discussing the results from yesterday's assignment, but one of the absentees from yesterday (medical reasons) was doing the same material and it felt wrong to discuss thethingl while she was slaving over it.

Instead, the others also got the table-less "revenge of the coloured boxes" practice to deal with and I got delightful results -one of the wallflowers in CSS did an awesome job using only negative margins to get everything to fit into place. She only asked help when IE6 was being an utter retard, and she fixed that on her own after being told where to look. People more busy with floating tripped over what I'd hoped for -the retared IE float bugs. I had to intervene with one of the great ones from the training, and he diligently started thrawling the Web for more scenarios concerning hasLayout and IE being nothing short of a bad joke.

It doesn't go without saying that the straggler was not just late with a lame excuse, but also needed help to finish the practice. Where help means copying things verbatim from one of the newcomers how to solve the puzzle. One of the people who is technically supposed to be at least 4 weeks behind straggler's experience. You know where I'm going with this. Straggler will utterly fail the test at this rate.

VK opted out of the fire-and-brimstone speech about the trainees getting very lax with attendance, bandwidth discipline, phone calls and what not. Next week, maybe. I did feel somewhat left in the snow when I was vehemently trying to bansish the students' youtube usage (we're using a shitty 256k line with a 1/20 upsell ratio for 18 people) whe the next thing I get is a mesage from VK with an amusing youtube video.

Sent to all.

Extended stay

Yes.

Today I got the word from AJ that she could postpone my stay until the 29th, which is awesome. I need to check out my possibilities to travel inlands and get eaten by some underwhelming-looking predator or catch malaria. I'm pretty pleased with this development, since it means I get to witness Independence Day here in Paramaribo too boot.

Today I gave the trainees the whole day to do an assignment, though I warned them I'd expect them to finish sooner. Four out of fourteen pulled it off after six hours. Unfortunately I had to become a serious hard-ass with one of the less-motivated trainees and I am not exactly expecting a lot from this one. It's especially troubling because the potential is definitely there, but a lack of discipline, concentration and maybe even interest make it impossible to focus on the project at hand.

On one hand it is extremely frustrating to see someone fall behind like that. On the other hand it's been made perfectly clear that you can't keep dragging people over the finish line just because they won't run for themselves. It's a pretty unpleasant realization, but we have to remember that only half the crew will pass the whole ordeal…

Probation!

The Eldar of project management gave the green light -I can stay to spend some leisure time in Surinam after my time slot in the training ends. Good times. I've come to appreciate the country, it's people and the things I can do here.

Now to see what my plane ticket might afford in terms of flexibility.

Why yes, there are cats here.

Surinam is a veritable desert when it comes to cats. Dogs, in all degrees of manginess , are all over the place but cats are nowhwere to be seen. As one cabby said "Us surinams don't take well to cats".

Granted, dogs are a practical asset here. They bark at interlopers, eat leftovers and are principally just left around the courtyard. The idea to pet a dog is a bit akward here.

However, here is irrefutable proof:



They're extremely shy and run off the moment they see you, but they're there. This one only came out to the stairs in order to hide from the rain, so consider this a rare shot.

Saint Laurent and Galibi

…I just noticed I failed to complete last weekend's report.

Saint Laurent

Saint Laurent is a bordertown of French Guyana, marketed as "the Paris of South America". Lies. There are signs here and there that the place used to be pretty, but this place has been peeling and wearing away for a while. It did have a certain charm to it that you could buy a baguette at the bakery around the corner though. The famous saturday market was nice, but not impressive. There were a lot of kids trying to pawn off cigarettes or god-knows-what (my French is terrible). It was pretty clear that whatever wellfare attributed to this city in the guidebooks, it had left here in a hurry. Ferrymen would run to meet you half a mile away in order to offer their services for the St. Laurent -> Albina trip, and those that waited, offered it while you passed.

On the other side of the water, the trip to Galibi was planned. This village is not reachable by road, by water only. The guide occasionally stopped the boat to explain some plant life or type of bird, and we arrived about one and a half hours later on a small inlet with a view of the Atlantic Ocean. Galibi is an ideal outreach for the beaches where Turtles lay their eggs, but I arrived out of season, so the place was understandably deserted. The place was pretty clean for Surinam's standards, though litter on the beach was aplenty. We took up for the night in a resort, and slung hammocks up for the night. Food was arranged for us (brown beans, rice and chicken, a staple dish here) and I hit the sack pretty early.

I got woken up by a stray dog who decided to sniff my face. Good times were had, mostly me screaming himself awake. The dog took this in good stride, decided I was awesome and curled up for a nap under my hammock.

I left in the morning, arrived in Albina around 11:30 and had a quick trip back to Paramaribo with a cousin of my previous taxi driver. When I return to this country, Galibi is definitely on my list of places to stay longer -preferably in the season of Turtle activity.

Day 12: Where did the last week go?

Right, enough lallywagging. I've spent a week under what can be considered interesting circumstances. Right now, I'm at the apartment, making up for some lost time.

Sunday evening ended in a surprise. I was enjoying the mild weather in dry clothes (my clothes never really got to dry out properly during the cookout) on the porch when all of a sudden the gate opened. The three guys from last friday entered and proceeded towards my table for a chat. I asked if they had rented a place here, they confirmed. They then switched the subject over to the location of my laptop. Oooo-kay. I told them it was over at the office and excused myself for a night's rest. Feeling pretty weirded out by their presence. It later turned out that they had not rented a place at all. How they got in was anybody's guess. As a precaution, the owner replaced the locks on monday. Apparently they were spotted at the gate the next day by my neighbours, who had trouble getting convinced to let them in. That very same day, they passed the offices where I work. Whatever all of these chance meetings are for, it sure felt pretty unsettling.

Then, on wednesday the unbelievable happened: I came home around 17:00, went to the laundry room to wash the pile of clothes I collected and came into a bare, squeaky clean room. Turns out that both washing machines were stolen. During the daytime. In plain sight.

I mean, damn. The police came over to file a report, drove off and I spent most of the evening with the doors barred and locked. I did not feel particularily safe.

The next day was my big x20 day (birthdays, another thing I rarely keep track of) and talked this through with VK, since the safety of that place was really beginning to look incredible. In the meantime, the internet connection also had given up the ghost, so the place felt more and more like a crappy prison where people had a hard time keeping unsavory people out.

It was decided that unless something positive would happen about the situation, we'd switch places. Since VK would have a hell of a time to find a suitable alternative (something long-term and roomy where people could stay overlapping segments of time), he suggest I'd stay somewhere temporarily. I chose to to take a kind offer of one of interns working on the grounds, E. She offered a spare room in the house she and three other internes were staying. The place was in a safe neighbourhood, there were people around the place pretty much most of the time and it was actually a place where I could sleep like a log. I didn't miss the airconditioning for a second. The interns were friendly but so preoccupied in their schedules that we never really talked much.

At the time of writing this, I'm at the original apartment. The owner has been busy boosting security a bit, and it looks like the weird times here have subsided a bit. I've never seen this much of the owner as the two times I've been back for things, and it looks like my long-term neighbour of apt. #1 will be coming back tomorrow. That's pretty reassuring to hear, building on the stories of Wouter. Looks like I'm good to go and stop being the weird guy in the spare room over at my benevolent saviors' dorm.

More later, as I've actually done things outside being a paranoid recluse.