dominant species

Today I was studying language in a coffee shop (it seriously may be the best idea I've ever had), and I looked out the window and saw these two monkeys. One of them grabbed what looked like some sort of plastic container of orange jello, and stuck the whole thing in his mouth, plastic and all. He sat for awhile and chewed and chewed, probably wondering why it was taking so long to swallow. But instead of spitting it out, he just kept chewing. And it made me think, some people actually think we evolved from them? I mean, my dog (ahem, I mean my parents' dog) at home wouldn't even do that. Granted, he went through his scared-of-ice phase, but everybody has irrational fears. And if evolution turned monkeys into humans, why are those annoying creatures still around?

There are no mailboxes here, so you have to go to the post office to mail anything. We went for the first time last week, and it was an experience. Since there are so many people here, everyone gets assigned pretty much only one task at their work, and so we went through a few people at the post office. Just to mail 3 letters, we had to go through paying for postage, pasting on the stamp (literally...the guy pulled out old timey paste and wiped it thoroughly on each stamp), then I had to watch the guy put the letters in a box, and then someone else gave me a receipt. They would not let us leave until we had that receipt. Each letter cost 15, which is the equivalent of about 33 cents. Nice! I went back today on my own with 2 more letters, went through the same process, except this time, no receipt. I wonder why it wasn't important this time. Also, the price went up from 15 to 24. I asked why it increased, and she told me because they both weighed more than 20 grams or something like that. I was about to argue when I realized that I was going to complain about mailing something air mail overseas for 50 cents. A regular stamp in the US almost costs that much. An example of something that's just not worth fighting over.

Priya is so close to coming to know the truth. Please remember to send her money. She is to the point where she realizes how empty her life is, which is when I came to personally know the boss, and I'm hoping she will meet him soon as well.