Author: Eugene Glover

This morning, I pulled into the Quiktrip (my favorite convenience store) and as I park, I see the manger come out the front door with a slack-jawed gaping look on his face, staring across the parking lot.

Curious fool that I am, I follow his gaze until I spy a 50-60 year old woman walking across the lot, away from the store.

She was wearing what I can only describe as a Shirley Temple dress – sort of a frilly child’s dress with puffly sleeves and rows of overlapping cloth forming the skirt portion. The first problem with this picture was that the dress was too short, and only reached to just slightly below her waistline.

It was so short that her underwear would have been completely uncovered – had she been wearing any!

Instead, she was wearing a diaper – not a modern diaper, either. This was an old-style cloth diaperwrapped around and pinned up.

It was not the best sight I could have started my morning with.

As can happen this time of year, tonight we had a terrific downpour in the evening.

We went out to run an errand and have dinner. After running the errand, it was apparent that the freeway underpasses were flooded, so we changed our dinner plans and went to Mimi’s instead.

I suppose it was somehow appropriate that it was flooding outside and we were in a New Orleans’ themed restaurant. I think our waitress’ name was Katrina, too.

Anyway, their French Onion Soup was really good.

In about a month, we’re going to take James to Taiwan to meet the rest of the family.

As I’ve done in the past, I plan to post a regular journal of what happens on the way. In a way, it’s quite funny, I was doing the complicated, pain-in-the-rear daily post thing before they came up with the whole blogging software thing. I can’t say it has done great things for the authoritative content on the net, but it sure makes writing up a travelogue easier.

This time I’m going for the whole multimedia thing. I’ll be posting videos, stories, pictures and even producing a couple episodes of Ninja Team Video Project while I’m there. All because I bought this new iBook for the trip. I’ll post more details as the trip begins and progresses.

In the meantime, Irene has been planning our exciting sightseeing excursions. So far, in addition to a return trip to Alishan (my insistence) we’ll also be going to see a sheep farm and a cow farm – apparently major tourist attractions in the land of Taiwan. At least the sheep farm is 10 minutes walking distance from a 7-11.

Got my new iBook yesterday! Yippee.

OK, I didn’t have anything to say about it, I just felt the occasion shouldn’t go unmentioned.

I love Singapore. I don’t care what anyone says about their “nanny state’ mentality, it keeps their public restrooms clean. (And I think the trains run on time, too, but let’s not jump to any conclusions.)

Travel Channel: News: Article:

August 31, 2005

 
Singapore to Host First Toilet College
AFP

Aug. 30, 2005— The world’s first toilet college is to open in Singapore to teach cleaners how to improve their lavatory washing skills, according to local broadcaster Channel NewsAsia.

The first batch of 30 students from a local cleaning company will start their training at the Toilet College in October, it said on its Web site.

The college is being set up by the Singapore-based World Toilet Organization.

‘We are going to train the toilet cleaners to upgrade himself or herself to a level where he or she can take care of the entire toilet, including changing bulbs, repairing leaky taps … technical cleaning, taking away urine salt inside the toilet,’ said Jack Sim, president of the World Toilet Organization.

The college plans to offer courses on toilet design and architecture next year.

The World Toilet Organization is a… (Read Full Article)“