Moral support

Yesterday morning I was in a meeting at the office when A. called: she had just heard five shots being fired. We thought it was a student demonstration, and that police had fired in the air. The office meeting wasn't even interrupted. But this morning it turned out that they were high school students, and that about a dozen of them had been wounded by live ammunition. A small miracle nobody got killed, yet. It was about money, as usual: almost two years arrears in scholarships and teacher bonuses. Yet another piece of evidence for the link between good financial governance and political stability, if further evidence was ever needed (auto-peptalk: I just paid the first outrageously high fees for my distance learning course).

At work things are getting slightly more relaxed. We'll be able to get the report out before the end of the week, and I will have time tonight to go for a beer and a meal with a friend whose wife has just gone home to the Philippines. Among theclose community of expats here there is a rather nice habit of taking care of anybody whose partner has left on vacation etc. 'On va s'occuper de toi', which often means dragging the guy (sometimes the woman), now called a 'célibataire géographique' from one night club to the other (and back, as there are only two here worthy of the name), or in the more moderate version inviting him or her to dinner all the time. Friends already noticed my upcoming status as a 'geographical bachelor' for most of the second half of the year and have announced solid moral support...