Old Waves

It has been one of those bits and pieces days, when lots of small tasks have to be dealt with and I never feel as though I've accomplished anything.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon must be feeling that way right now. After not doing what he was told by the UN when he visited Burma recently, there has now been a declaration by the government that over two thousand political prisoners will be released from gaol so that they can take part in next year's elections. Well, apart from the one political prisoner who was elected as Prime Minister in 1990, but who has never been able to take up office, because she has been in prison ever since, Aung San Suu Kyi. I was amused by the idea that the honorific title 'Daw' meaning Auntie, or a revered older woman, is thought of as having higher status than her title 'Doctor'.

I was awoken at just after 2 this morning, by a multi-coloured lightshow playing on the curtains. I got up and peeped through the blinds, hoping it was a space ship, but in fact, it was just the Polizei doing....something. That is to say there was a police car skewed across the road with its lights doing a rumba. I could see no sign of any police-related activity, so perhaps they were just practising handbrake turns or some such.
Perhaps I dreamt it.

Myself and four other members of our church, those of us who are signing officers, had to go into a new bank to open an account. The importance of this had been explained to me and then filtered out.
The whole thing took an hour and a quarter, not really my own definition of 'just popping in to the bank', but oh well. At the end of all things, the assistant asked us,
'Are you going to promote any drugs, liquor, gambling or firearms?'
'Did we mention we are a church?' I asked her,
'I just had to say that,' she said in the 'calming the difficult but idiot child' voice,
'So did I, sometimes I can't fight back the wave of sarcasm, but I try.'