Hotpants & sugarcane

Two weeks ago, the hot season started abruptly. Its arrival was announced not just by heat and dust and crabbiness in certain expat households, but by the roadside proliferation of sugarcane juice and hotpants for sale.

Hotpants are self-explanatory, or should be. As for the sugarcane, stalks are hauled in from the countryside and delivered to neighborhood micro-businesses and the kind of open-air mom-and-pops that sell sticky rice cakes, candy, and cigarettes. The stalks get stripped of their hard outer layer and pushed repeatedly through slow-moving metal rollers; the greenish juice collects in a pitcher and is served over ice in a plastic bag. Some days I really wish I could be the kind of girl that zips around on a motorbike hung with plastic bags of sugarcane juice and fried noodles and grilled chicken, but it’s just not me. One bag was enough to satisfy my curiosity.

While the soaring temperatures would also seem to promise an end to domestic harmony, such as it is, the heat might actually resolve a long-running dispute concerning our wall decorations. Our Bluetak is melting, and taking our two sets of educational propaganda—twenty-four panels in all—with it.

Isaac quite likes the series that insinuates if you don’t brush your teeth, they will creep out of your mouth, frolic in the sink, and then start their own revolutionary tooth republic. But he is vehemently opposed to the artwork in the piece warning children not to throw their empty cans and plastic bags into the water, lest a cute little fish get stuck and need to be rescued by even cuter little crabs. He’s been campaigning, unsuccessfully, to get someone else to share his antipathy, but he may prevail yet: I’m afraid our fish have only a few weeks left before I tire of readjusting the grid.