Sorry this is a whiney post. You have been warned. It’s official – I am completely sick of rice. Only took me a month of eating it twice a day, but there it is. Or maybe it’s just the choices that go on top of the rice that I am sick of. I basically have 4 choices – “soup” (oil, water, chili peppers, onions, garlic, water, fish, tomato paste); saki (cassava leaf), peanut butter soup, and jola (sweet potato leaf). I had the cook make a black eyed peas sauce that made me ecstatic yesterday. I’m really sick of fish too. Well, sick of the tiny little bones that prick my gums and sick of chomping down on eyeballs and rocks and even sick of people pushing all the fish to my side of the communal plate (no, really, I’m fine without eating fish for every meal! Really!). I can’t even mix it up with some chicken right now because all the chickens died of some disease (Newcastle’s maybe? Not bird flu though! It apparently happens every year around this time). Strange thing is I love baked beans more and more every time I eat them, and I used to hate them.  

I have downgraded the research station from a 3 star location to a 2 star location. Still definitely wonderful to have a place to base everything out of. However, I was really spoiled last year having a fridge, running water, and electricity. Now the fridge has been busted a year, the water pipes are rusted and blocked, and the electricity only works in this location where I am charging my laptop (possible the connection to the other buildings was severed). So I am making do with bathing in the river (nice and peaceful but not feasible for long with the river getting more crazy by the day) or using rain water for my washing needs. Oh and I have no chairs. I sent my men to steal a couple chairs from visitor’s center so I could have a place to sit! I’ve been using my own boxes/luggage for chairs and tables. The ironic part is that the trainees who are doing arts and crafts are also making furniture, but all of it seems to be going to the visitor’s center where tourists stay. So all this lovely stuff they are making in front of me that I drool over…none of it for me. Sniff.

See? Whiney! I just had to get all that out though. OK, back to reading about binomial probability and maximum likelihood estimators.