mmm... malaria

as of 19 august, i've been outta the country 180 days. i'm not sure if that is the most i've been out in a year, but i tihnk it would have to be. not too bad. i can handle this and this is one shite assignment in one shite country. if i could do that on a tour through europe on a maintenance circuit, that would be the bomb. either way, every day is one day closer to getting my hard-earned cash back from the grubby fingers of uncle sam. it will be a glorious day.

the customer's controls guy has been out of commission the past couple days and information passes back to us today that he is the first comfirmed case of malaria at vemagiri power generation limited (the site i'm on). frickin' great. **fumbles through bag to restart malaria pills**. i did some quick research and found out that there are 4 types of malaria, and only one of them is something to be more-than-moderately concerned about. so IF i have malaria, i have a 75% chance of getting along fine, but considering the 80 mosquito bites i have (generous use of the "random 8's" theory), i probably have all 4 kinds of malaria. wonder how that works, maybe they cancel each other out. wouldn't like be great if it were more algebraic. HIV- people could be making some mad cash boinking the HIV+ people, it would lead i think to a more sharing society as, if there was a monogamous HIV-/HIV- couple, when they'd have sex, they'd turn HIV+/HIV+, so then they'd have to find another HIV- friend or two to have sex with as well to balance things, snapshot of socitey would be like a machine code, 1's flashing into 0's and vice-versa. being that there are three scenario's, HIV-/HIV- = HIV+ ; HIV+/HIV+ = HIV+; and HIV-/HIV+ = HIV-, there is a 67% chance of ending up HIV positive, but then the government could subsidize and train perpetual HIV- people to balance out the numbers in case a free love movement ran amock. converting from HIV- to HIV+ and so forth would play havoc on insurance policies etc., but still. since there is a 67/33 chance you'd end up HIV+, odds are we'd fall into a heap of HIV+ people and be done with it. we aren't all that smart, we humans.

man, was that a tangent or what? i was meaning just to get to the fact that emma is out today not feeling very well. i don't think it is malaria, i think it some bad samosas we had the other day at the park. for some reason, one of the local guys said you shouldn't get samosas during the rainy season. now i don't know if this is like "you shouldn't wear white shoes after labor day" but wtf? what does the season have to do with a vegetable turnover? either way, hope she is feeling better. i left her with some DVDs to recover with.

#&%$#@(! i just got a text from the electrical TA. they are doing a 2-hour motor test with 1 hour left in the day, so i have to stay late. see, i don't have a problem with overtime, i have a problem with me getting excited because i have one more hour to deal with these people and then they change the rules right at the lsat minute. i won't generalize indians, but this customer ABSOLUTELY CANNOT do anything productive before 3pm. all of our major lifts have been started at dusk which is a definite NO-NO, and these all turned out to be 6/8/10 hour lifts. safety is of no concern to these people. it's all about getting a milestone so they can issue an invoice, despite safety to people, equipment, etc. i'm done, i'm really done. i gotta go before i stroke out.