Boeing knows where it is!

Yesterday, in preparation for the impending land fall of Cyclone Lusi, I went to the local grocery store for a few staples and some H2O.  At checkout the cashier, a mainland Chinese woman, eyed my Fred Meyer cloth wine bag and was commenting to an adjacent checker about it in Mandarin.  I assumed she was chatting about these clever US products when I asked if they were speaking Mandarin.  She smiled and said, “Yes, we are speaking Mandarin although she is Malay.” Then she continued the conversation saying, “She is so sad about the Malaysian Airlines plane that has gone missing.  The United States knows where it is, but just won’t tell us.  But they know.” To this I said, “No one knows really where it is, but maybe the Chinese, do you think?” “Oh no, this is a Boeing 7-7-7 and Boeing has little machines in all the airplanes to tell them where it is.  They KNOW. And all those people are all missing, even the two little babies. She is so sad about it.”  “Well” I replied, “we can only hope for the best.”  We departed from each other having shared a few shreds of our two cultures each having learned a little more.  I do love rubbing up against people I would never normally interact with and leave feeling with a sense of well being that we could be friends. 

The storm was exciting in the night with sustained winds of about 40 MPH and a few gusts for good measure.  It is still storming today and I now have a greater trust in this old house.  More than 100 years old and funky with only one bathroom, it is still very comfortable.

The much needed rain is splattering against the windows while the palms are dancing about on the wind.  The waves are brown with up heaved sand and topped by white foam.  It’s wonderful to feel the moist air working its way through the slightly open windows, cooling my well swathed body.  (Means I have a wooly bathrobe on and need to change to something lighter.) But being a tropical storm the air is not particularly chilled.

Happy here, J