Latitude Gratitude and other assorted nuggets

• Latitude Gratitude: when one feels extraordinarily grateful to be not in the northern USA but instead sufficiently warm with easily accessible tropical fruit.
  
• I bought a cold bottle of Leo Beer yesterday, because it had a tiger on it and astrologically I am a Leo. I opened it with my pocket knife and padded through the evening alleys back to my guest house. It felt a little like New Orleans, being able to wander around outside enjoying an open beer if you like. It was in your honor Uncle Greg.
  
• The only time I've seen people rushed and flustered so far in this city was getting on and off the water taxi. Yes, there is a boat here that plies the river (morbidly disgusting water) and carries people faster than through the traffic-y streets. The long thin diesel-coughing boat sloshes towards the pier where passengers wait. The boat lurches forward and back to get in stepping-on distance and you have a hurried moment to tip on board before it plows away again. A youth with a piercing whistle communicates with the captain, messages I'm assuming to be "slow", "forward", "backward", using numbers of whistle-chirps. The view was fascinating from the river: birds balancing on plant material and piles of trash, tremendous monumental hotels (I've been living in the backpackers ghetto, essentially, where you can stay for $8 a night, so these seemed like a different world), rusted corrugated metal dwellings on stilts in the water. Then our boat clunks to another pier-bashing stop and we sway off. Sure beats the car traffic. Plus boats are in my blood.
  
• Buddy Lissy brought our laundry to be washed yesterday ($1 per kilo) to one of the hundreds of little houses that have washing machines displayed on the sidewalk--the equivalent of laundromats here. Later I was walking along an alley and, laughing surprised, "hey! that's my shirt!" hanging on a rack to dry on the sidewalk. Hello too, undies. :)