Goings on...

So the former Wadena high school vice-principal faction has been heard from, to the tune of a couple hundred golf tees. Thanks Mr. Adams. I'll use a few this weekend when I go across the river to Thailand to try out a new course.

There's a group of consultants in Laos doing a review/needs assessment for the Lao UXO sector (unexploded ordinance, left over from the war) for the State Department for possible future funding programs. Anyway, I went out for a couple beers with them. Nothing like hanging out with a few mine action experts to let you know that you really haven't been anywhere. Their work (removing mines/UXO) means that their conversations are peppered with "I think I met him in Eritrea, or was it Angola. Then we met up again in Chechnya before I went to Afghanistan, but after I was in Abkhazia. He had just come from Sri Lanka, and was on his way to Baghdad, with a stopover in Sarajevo." Very interesting stories.

It reminds me of when I was studying in Russia, and spent a few days in Moscow staying with a woman who was the former Russian bureau chief of AP Russia. Dinner with her and her friends, journalists all, was an education in the previous 15 years of world events, from a grounds-eye view.

Time for dinner. There's a delicious-looking red curry waiting for me in the fridge.