What I learned last week

1) My house is haunted.  Wednesday was Cinco de Mayo, and our regular date night.  This made for the perfect opportunity (excuse?) to visit Hacienda.  Our nanny, as usual, stayed at the house and put the kids to bed.  When we returned, our nanny very excitedly told us of the strange happenings after we left.  She put our son to bed at his normal 7 PM bedtime.  At 8:30, he woke up screaming.  Not a casual wake up, but an abrupt screaming like something bit him or he was scared.  Our nanny informed us it must be a ghost.  Some of the maintenance crew had told her they see ghosts in the trees at night and she was convinced a ghost had scared our son.

The next night, I happened to give my son his bottle before putting him down for bed.  He didn't finish it.  When he woke at 8:00 PM screaming, I gave him the rest and he went back to sleep.  The haunted house sure sounds more fun though, huh?

2) Cat's don't use chopsticks.  A few weeks ago, I came back from the gym and walked into our dark garage and nearly fell down with fright.  Something rather large in the garage moved.  And it moved quickly and loudly.  I quickly turned on the light just in time to see a feral cat scoot out the open door.

On Saturday, when we all went for a walk, we noticed that the trash in the garage was knocked over again and there was a few pieces of meat from the prior night's dinner on the garage floor along with some  used chopsticks.  My wife announced the cat appears to have been eating from the trash again.  To this our daughter exclaimed:

"But cats don't use chopsticks".

3) The more I learn, the less I know.  A few weeks ago, after receiving my new car that comes with a DVD system, I started watching the Simpsons to and from work.  I've now completed watching the first six seasons - the only seasons I own.  So, I have returned to reading to and from work, as well as at lunch.  The more I read, the more I learn about psychology, mathematics, economics, the more I realize how narrow and shallow is my knowledge.

I truly understand how blissful ignorance can be.

(ADDED 11 May)
4) "Indonesian hand made" is redundant.  Some friends of ours wanted a small set of gymnastic bars in their backyard to use for exercise.  They created a design that allowed adjusting the height of the bar for the type of exercise they wanted to do, or whom would be exercising.  To visualize (since I did not think to take a picture), the design called for 4, 6"x6"x8' poles to be cemented to the ground, standing on end, forming three points of a square (two of the poles would form the only corner).  Every 8 inches or so, there would be a hole large enough to slip through a 3" metal pipe that would act as the chin-up or high bar for exercise.

They found someone who could achieve the design at a reasonable price.  Now, I know what you are thinking.  Dig four holes in the ground, measure and drill holes in the lumber, stand them up, pour cement, done in a few hours.  Had I done it myself, it probably would have taken a half day.  Well, in Indonesia, this was a 3-day effort.  Three, 12 hour days.  Why?  No power tools.  Each of the holes on the four 6"x6"x8' poles were chiseled.  First from one side, then from the other.  It took three full days of work to chisel all the holes.

The end result?  Looks pretty good.  The only problem - the holes are not aligned.  Not just from one pole to the next, but on a single pole, too, because the laborer chiselled from one side, then approximated where to start on the other side, and chiseled through hoping they would connect.  Of the 15 or so holes in each pole, they can only use about 3.