Mango Count for Today

As of 9am this morning there are 35 mangoes (all of which fell from the tree).

Here's a picture of the ant's nest I mentioned in yesterday's blog. (photo courtesy of friend, Simon). Each tree has three or four of these natural disaster areas in them.


If you ever wondered what ants sound like I can tell you. Like rice bubbles. That "snap, crackle, pop!" sound of breakfast cereal fame. It's weird walking past a tree and hearing that sound.

Mangoing Around

It's hot season. Let me repeat. It's HOT season here in Cambodia. There is little to do other than mope around feeling hot, sweaty and itchy as the heat rash works it's way into every sweaty little crevice - elbows and backs of knees usually!

The benefit of hot season in Cambodia is, of course, MANGOES! I've lived in Cambodia a little over 6 years and we've only recently moved to a place where we have a real mango tree - five of them. And every day I pick up somewhere between 10 and 20 mangoes. It's getting a little overwhelming.

The first week we kept up - cutting, peeling, eating those freshly ripe mangoes. Then it got to be a little too much. Not to mention the mango allergy rash from the sap. Very itchy (adds to the heat rash). The other thing you have to watch out for is the nasty red ants that make their home in our mango trees. They pull several leaves together, stitch them up with what looks like spider's web, and make a nest. Bump one of those babies and you'll find thousands of angry acid biting ants crawling down the back of your shirt. Ouch!

So today I decided on a slightly different course. I had been cutting out the pulp, using the blender and freezing it - making really great mango ice-cream, which then goes into mango smoothies very well. Today it was time to take it to a new level - mango jam!

Not just mango jam, but spiced mango jam. I hit a winner on this.

I found a simple an interesting recipe on the web from eCurry (http://www.ecurry.com/blog/condiments-and-sauces/mango-jam/). And a few hours later, voila!, mango jam. I even was able to can them in old jam jars, which amazingly sealed! Awesome. 7 jars of spiced mango jam ... thats a lot of jam. What will I do with tomorrow's mango's?


Re: Recipe
> There are no lemons in Kampot, so I omitted the lemon juice.
> I had WAY more mangoes than three - I didn't count them, but 20 is a conservative estimate. It came to 10 cups of mango pulp.
> I estimated one mango equaled one cup of pulp and added one cup of sugar for every 3 cups of pulp
> I also included star anise to the spices

Re: Canning
> I washed old jam jars then heated them in the oven for a few minutes
> then I followed the instructions from the Wycliffe recipe book for sterilising the jam jars, which also seals them. I wasn't sure this would work (this being my first jam-making attempt) but 6 of 7 jars sealed. Cool.

Converting a paper book into an ebook using Ubuntu

My task today, as the title says, is to convert a paper book into a text-searchable ebook on Ubuntu (a Linux-based OS).

I'm using an HP G60 Intel Core2Duo using Ubuntu Jaunty 64-bit.

My plan is to:

1. scan the book (about 100 pages) using Xsane scanner with my Epson Stylus CX3100 (old machine that she is) into TIFF files at 300 dpi
2. crop pages so only one page is showing (rather than two pages side by side) so that I can use tesseract for OCR. I'm hoping to use a batch processing plugin on the GIMP for that.
3. I will need to remove any blemishes from each page, such as shadows and scribbles in the margins from previous readers. Also hoping a batch process will do the lion's share of this.
4. living in Cambodia, this is a copy of an original book, so the 'original' is not that great. I'm expecting some OCR errors because of that.
5. Then I will need to collate the OCR text into a text file, can I batch this somehow? Manual copy-and-paste will be really tedious.
6. Using the text file will import to Calibre to create an ebook of any file I want (pdb, prc, mobi, lib, you name it!)
7. save to SD card for reading (I currently use a Palm TX)

Let's see how I go and I'll let you know any further steps I needed to use.

Exercise Postponed

Sadly I was taken ill Thursday night and spent all of Saturday in a horizontal posture. Exercise will have to wait until I recover sufficient energy to attempt the ride to Kep.

Excerise

One of my (ongoing) goals is fitness. But is like so many goals that
gets pushed to the end of the list, and simply missed in the craziness
of life. Well, the move to Kampot is facilitating excercise - somewhat.

leadership

Two and a half years ago I was asked to take on leadership for InnerChange's Cambodia team. I don't think anyone can be offered such a thing and not feel a measure of pride. I certainly experienced that. But simultaneously I felt fear of such a task. At the time we numbered around 14 team (plus kids). From my perspective at the time there were a lot of challenges for team leadership.

What am I reading?

Power-Under by Steve Wineman

Steve Wineman looks at the political implications of trauma in nonviolent resistance, suggesting that trauma has it's effects on both the politics of the left and the right. The left projects trauma onto systems and structures and push for social change using rage. The right projects trauma onto individuals and groups from minorities, thereby scapegoating them.

My friend the enemy...

Dear friends,

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU.com) released their findings that includes rating Cambodia with a very high risk of social instability (fourth out of 165 countries) due to economic challenges, underpinned by other social factors such as unemployment, inequality, lack of trust in institutions, etc. Also predicting social unrest (not addressed in the report) are factors like the presence of a large number of youth compared to the population overall, low levels of education, and the presence of lucrative natural resources like oil and minerals, trees, arable land, gems and precious metals. Rising nationalism is also of great concern to Cambodia.

I can poop!

It's half past one in the afternoon. Both boys are down for a nap. For Patrick this is somewhat of a relief as he often forgoes the afternoon nap. But he's been sick the last week with an eye infection.

This morning Samantha and I woke to Patrick declaring, "Isaac pooped!". But no matter how much Sam asked, "where?" he wouldn't tell us. Eventually Isaac pipped up for himself and said, "I did poop!", in his shrill 2 year old voice. He was obviously very proud.

I finally made it up out of bed and discovered that Isaac hadn't simply pooped in one place, but several. Ah, the blessings of wooden floors! ___________________________________________________
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Lent - a reflection from Cambodia

Lent always seems to come around too fast. Each passing Easter I say to myself, "I'm going to prepare myself for Easter better next year", and next year comes and it's the same old scramble. It's not just a calendaring thing, but a head and heart thing. This year, at least, I've been jolted into a somewhat earlier preparation as CRM, my parent organisation, is sending out a devotional guide for each day of Lent. Just having these, often unread, emails filling my inbox is enough to initiate some introspection.