Big Rain

Every morning we eat breakfast on the patio. This morning, we almost finished before the rain started. It looked like another pitter patter which would peter out quickly, but it's turned into a good soak. Bali needs the rain; they are short of water. People who live in remote areas are having to carry water jugs into towns to fill up and carry them back home, sometimes for miles.

The rain cools everything off which is just fine with us. We see Balinese riding by on motorcycles wearing ski jackets in the evenings, when the temperature is still over 80. They must feel freezing today.

We are just comfortable.

The AirAsia flight disappearance is a very sad event. Tourism is already down here; no doubt the accident will scare off some more business. The price of everything has increased dramatically because the price of gas has gone up. Yes, up! ....while the rest of the world is enjoying lower prices. The government has been subsidizing gas for decades and they finally decided to remove the price subsidy. It's affected everything. 

Today I start reading our book club's selection for the month, "Butterflies in November". The story is set in Iceland which should prove doubly interesting when read in the tropics. Maybe I'll read about snow and ice and freezing cold in the pool after the rain stops.

I grew up in an area rife with Icelandic people. I love Icelandic names - always found them lovely on the ear. To refresh my memory about the naming system I checked out Wiki and learned that in Iceland there are to this day laws governing how one can name a person or what names can be adopted. The customary names in Iceland are patrilineal ie. John's daughter would be known as Johnsdottir; John's son would be known as Johnson. The author of our book is clearly Olaf's daughter. 

From Wikipedia: First names not previously used in Iceland must be approved by the Icelandic Naming Committee (Icelandic:Mannanafnanefnd) before being used.^[3] The criterion for acceptance of names is whether or not they can be easily incorporated into the Icelandic language. They must contain only letters found in the Icelandic alphabet (with some exceptions, such as Cýrus), where the most unusual are þ and ð, and they must be able to be declined according to the language’s grammatical case system, which in practice means that they must be able to take a genitive form in accordance with Icelandic rules. Gender-inappropriate names are normally not allowed; however, in January 2013, a 15-year-old girl named Blær (a masculine noun in Icelandic) was allowed to keep this name in a court decision that overruled an initial rejection by the naming committee.^[4]

Photos are before and during the rain.