Sabah al-kheyr!

Good morning!

Another gleaming sun sweeps away the fog hanging between the guava grove's rows, as it rises steadily. Today I'm not working in the office. Mr. Muhandes, who normally takes me from the farm where I'm living to the office 40mins away, got a call from... well, 'the doctor' as everyone calls him here, just as we'd reached the main road. I only heard his reproachful voice emanating from the cell phone and felt the anger rising inside Mr. Muhandes as he made every effort to stay calm. "I'm going back to the farm. The doctor doesn't want me in the office today." he said with a grim and stern expression as he pulled the car over to make a U-turn. I remembered the first time I drove to the office with him at the beginning of January - we were running late and he got a telling off over the phone (that time from Yvonne) and was in a similar rage... back then he told me of the heart-attack he had had the year before... "so I mustn't think too much about it, not to get so upset again."

I don't mind too much. For only the second time in my life I suddenly find myself in a 9-5 job and came to the sudden realisation - who would have thought?!! - that it doesn't leave an awful lot of time for other things. And if you on top of that live in a community full of wonderful people who you want to share your life with and who you want to learn from and about, that leaves almost no time - except if you say "I won't be in the office today, I'm working from home..."

Apart from giving me a few minutes to write this, it also gave me a chance to have a glance at the news again... delightful news of a magnificent new invention reached me through the megaphone that is the BBC - one that will be of immense use for the world and its future generations... alas, poor us:


The US military has given a first public demonstration what it says is a revolutionary heat-ray weapon to repel enemies or disperse hostile crowds.

The gun - called Silent Guardian - projects an invisible high energy beam that produces a sudden burning feeling, but is actually harmless.

The beam can be fired as far as 500m (500 yards), much further than existing non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets. [...] The waves can penetrate clothes but not walls, suddenly heating up the skin of anyone in its path to 50C.

Journalists who volunteered to be zapped during the demonstration on an air base in the US state of Georgia described the sensation as similar to a blast from a very hot oven - too painful to bear and forcing them to dive for cover. Military officials say the so-called "active denial system" is harmless, but could prove invaluable in the increasingly complex situations they face.
The marine colonel in charge said it was an alternative to going straight from shouting to shooting and could save lives.