The Way it is

 "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." "I was never aware of any other opinion but to question everything." Noam Chomsky.  "Agreeing with a fool is like giving a drunkard keys to the distillery." Ubuntu African Proverb. "Rats will never mourn the death of a cat."  Chewa Proverb.                                                                             My "woman - power" feral daughter,  Fleur, returned. She found that none of those handsome admirers courting her, could offer her a house like the one she already got and besides, there is nothing like "hotel vice-mummy." Guess I better try to stay fit and healthy so I can provide a good service to my spoiled kids. Minusa's ancestors lived in a palace and only the royal family was allowed to keep this beautiful Siamese cat with those unusual brilliant blue eyes. She is a bit of a princess, not always easy going but after all she comes from a high class family, neither we nor any of our neighbors had forefathers living in a palace! Unfortunately exotic cats and dogs are in fashion, breeding for this special demand led to "a flooding" of e. g. Siames cats and they loosing value. Sadly several even end up as "strays", unable to sell because of not perfect markings, kicked out for convienence, to save money necessary for medical treatments, or when their owners got tired of "their feral toys". I joke:  If you are not high class, at least your cat should be........   - Tunisia takes third place in the Arabic world reference food wasting (after Egypt and Morocco). Much is due to subsidized bred which is only nice while still very fresh and in addition there is an insufficient preserving tradition. My mother taught her children that wasting food is a sin. In many countries recipes exist for surplus bred (scroll down on my blog and you can find several). We use a toaster to refresh bred, this is though, unfortunately not available to all. We prefer bred from the bakery, more expensive but worth it if you can afford other bread than the in ex- French colonial countries so common white flour baguettes (or Arabic bred). If it didn't rain last night in parts of Sousse than it must be 'water - wasting - day' today. Bad habits die hard. The water monopoly belongs to Sonnet. In order to save money they employ students to read the external water meter. There is a saying that if you want to pay peanuts you end up with employing monkeys. Anyhow, in our experience these students are not exactly dedicated but interested in getting the job done as quickly as possible. For the second time we ended up with much too figures. My husband was advised to pay nevertheless the stated amount or the water will be cut off. It will take time to check the correct consumption, even though we presented our present reading for comparison. The gentleman in the office kindly offered that  should the issued bill turn out to be too high, then the difference will be deducted from future charges. Hopefully folks with very low income don't have simular experiences. - One of our local "stand - man - motorcycle boys" (riding his motorbike with one wheel in the air and in wavy lines like a drunkard) is only approx 14 years old and now occasionally lets a 4 year old kid sit behind him. A  woman remarked that it is dangerous here, the parents should stop this. After all we have a few elderly folks and lots and lots of children in the neighborhood. I replied their parents don't seem to be able to cope. One father said he would take away the motorcycle and sell it. Sounds like a solution, but actually nothing happened. A minor accident happened the other day, a boy on a motor scooter hit a motorcycle with 2 men on it. These were not amused, one of the 2 guys got so angry he wanted to beat the boy even though nobody got injured and there was almost no damage. Luckily the other man held him back. The boy looked shocked. Close to the end of Ramadan and a long break, up to 6 days including weekend, thus reduced income for shope keepers etc. Usually children get new clothes for Aid El Fitr, fairly expensive, even more so for large families. I would personally go to the flea market. Before the revolution the quality of clothes sold there was very low. Nowadays one can find also new items from expensive shops in Europe. Occasionally I even discovered some with a price tag still attached. The advantage of the other second hand clothes is that  hazardous substances often used by the producers (in the colour, to preserve) are already washed out. 

Myriam, once living on a Mosque compound, had a car accident, the vet discovered a broken jaw and the poor girl also lost an eye. For several years now she belongs to my big family.