The Dragonflies'Lair~Thread XXXI

Talented poets and friends of The Dragonflies' Lair | October 5, 2006 | bentfeather/Poets of the Lair

[Soaring Feather]

My Dragon Fly and Me

If I could be a Dragon Fly
and wing my way through the sky
I would never be shy
just me and my Dragon Fly!

By moonlight we ride the wind
chase the comets tail for fun
by day we would hide from the sun
our fragile wings would come undone

On darkest nights we would use
fireflies as our guide
we would dip and we would glide
through the heavens open wide
and scatter diamonds in the night sky
my Dragon Fly and me...

And we would wing past our lovers
silent in the night...
to kiss their face in our flight
much to their surprise and delight
my Dragon Fly and me in sight...

Such a view do we share
away up here in the air
of breezes soft through our hair
my Dragon Fly and me a pair...

bentfeather©
2002

[Soaring Feather]

[Lady Jag]

HAPPY TUESDAY!!

[Kathy in Alaska]

[Soaring Feather]

Queen Elizabeth I said, "I have the heart of a man,
not a woman, and I am not afraid of anything."

---

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 10, the 283rd day of 2006 with 82 to
follow. The moon is waning. The morning stars are Venus and
Saturn. The evening stars are Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus,
Neptune, Mars and Pluto.

[Soaring Feather]

On this date in history:


In 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy was formally opened at Fort
Severn, Annapolis, Md., with 50 midshipmen in the first class.

In 1886, Griswold Lorillard of Tuxedo Park, N.Y., fashioned
the first tuxedo for men.

In 1963, a dam burst in northern Italy, drowning an
estimated 3,000 people.

In 1973, less than a year before Richard Nixon's resignation
as president, Spiro Agnew became the first U.S. vice president
to resign in disgrace after pleading no contest to income tax
evasion.

In 1985, movie legend Orson Welles, whose remarkably innovative
"Citizen Kane" of 1941 was named the best American-made picture
of all time in a 1998 American Film Institute poll, died of
a heart attack at the age of 70.

In 1991, the United States cut all aid to Haiti.

In 1993, Greek voters returned former Prime Minister Andreas
Papandreou and his Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement to power.

In 1994, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, commander in chief of the
Haitian armed forces, resigned to make way for the return of
exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

In 1995, Israel freed some 900 Palestinian prisoners and
pulled its troops out of four towns as the second phase of
the peace plan was implemented on the West Bank.

In 1997, the major tobacco companies agreed to a settlement
in the class-action suit brought against them by 60,000
present and former flight attendants, who claimed second-hand
smoke in airplanes had caused them to get cancer and other
diseases.

Also in 1997, it was announced that the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize
would be awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines
and its coordinator, Jody Williams of Putney, Vt.

In 2001, representatives of 56 Islamic nations, in an emergency
meeting on Qatar, condemned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on
the United States.

In 2002, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter won the Nobel
Peace Prize. He was cited for his efforts to bring peace to
the Middle East and his commitment to human rights and
democratic values around the world.

In 2003, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Iranian
lawyer Shurin Ebadi for her work in promoting democracy and
human rights in Iran and beyond. She was the first Muslim woman
to win the award and third Muslim.

Also in 2003, Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio talk show
host, admitted addiction to prescription painkillers and said
he would enter a rehabilitation facility.

In 2004, a videotape of the beheading of British hostage Kenneth
Bigley in Iraq was shown on an Islamic Web site.

Also in 2004, more than 100 people died in flash floods in northeastern India.

In 2005, Angela Merkel became the first woman chancellor of Germany after her Christian Democrats won the parliamentary
election. The incumbent, Gerhard Schroeder, said he would play no role in the new governing coalition.

[Lady Jag]

[SoldierDad]

Gorgeous scene. Thank you.

[Soaring Feather]

[Soaring Feather]

[Soaring Feather]

Good night everyone.

[starbase]

What a long post I've written! I certainly have become verbose lately. But I will probably be offline altogether for the next couple weeks as I settle in back in good old Taiwan, so I'll make up for lost time now! Cheers, talk to you all in a while!


Well, I'm all set to get back to Taipei tomorrow morning. I was expecting to be in Thailand until April! Isn't it interesting how life is unpredictable?

My new employers are meeting me at the airport! They said they'll have one of those big signs you signal passengers with! Hopefully it will be a pleasant experience this year!

What a change from that referral service. They say they'll set up several interviews, then they get you there and start giving you directions for going by bus and train all over Taiwan (at your expense) and set the interviews up one by one, making you wait for a response plus pressuring you to take it at any one which says yes. I guess that's to maximize their "successful placements", or maybe Chinese aren't used to the applicant having the right to make a selection. The last job I had I went to two interviews, they both offered me the job, but when I called one back and said I'd accepted a different offer they were incensed! A lot of what I saw said to me that Chinese are way behind us in the ideas that anyone in society should be equally important.

For that matter, I went into a pharmacy (and they are not run by the well educated professionals you'd expect in our country. they're not stupid either, but generally anyone can buy over the counter drugs and sell them, and that kind of shows). The woman in the pharmacy was being polite, but when I said I didn't want anything she sneered angrily, then immediately covered it up, like this was something she hadn't seen before, and was polite again. So there's a definite "EFFE YOU TOO!" reflex if they sometimes don't get what they want.

Anyway, this job I found myself. You might wonder why I would even want to work with the referral service again. Well they know many small places, and I told them specifically I wanted a job just in the capital city. However this creepy guy there, who I've never liked, immediately tried to play games with me. Like I told him I was going to get a hotel in the capital city, so that he would know I don't need to take his crap, and hopefully he would just make the placement and get his little fee. But instead he asked me how much the hotels were. Well, you see, he works in that city and everyone goes past the train station where the hotels are, and all hotels in Taiwan paint their prices on the front window in big huge letters. So he already knows the price himself, he was either asking to see if he could snow me in some way, or just to feel like the big boss, which is something many Chinese can never get enough of. Even standing up, sitting down, picking which plates to eat off of, I've seen them show attraction to being bossy in things we would not even care about!

I would guess it's, again, that big group culture, your always supported, and always competing, against a group of people, so whoever gets to say what dishes we'll be eating off of, gets to be boss for five seconds. It's understandable given how they live.

But then he also suggested a job that's, again, outside the capital city. I went to their website and found lots of jobs posted, some closer to the city, and many which paid more, so I used the website email to embarrass him, sending "contact us" messages saying "Hey, Lin, how about this one? Pays more", or "This message is for Lin, please send it to him, Lin, this one is closer".

It was pretty funny if you understand how prissy they are about being bossy. Anyway he responded with an ice cold "Hello starbase(used my real name of course), I am sending your resume to this job. I will let you know what I hear."

Hah! See they have this control thing, make me tell him hotel prices he already knows, select jobs that are precisely NOT what I said, fail to respond to my questions and "give me the marching orders". Pretty pathetic, and he's 10 years younger than me too, which I've come to learn is electrifyingly exciting to younger Asians, because their societies really keep them as "too young" to do things well into their thirties, things we do for ourselves when we're 16.

So I realized I couldn't work with him and just sent out two of my own resumes, slam bam, a week later I have a job offer. I think that adds yet more appeal to his behavior, that he knows his services are not really valuable anyway, so messing with me (and I'm sure others) to the point we quit using him is just more fun, because it was never worth anything anyway. I ,of course, would make the calculation that if something I'm doing isn't worth that much, I'll do a perfect job of it and hope my customers send more to me, but that's just me.

Whew! I think I'll use this post as a chapter in some future book, I'm glad I documented it here!

Well goodbye everyone, see you again soon (I'm only flying 3 hours tomorrow! It's so close).

Cheers, and take care,

starbase

[tomkow6]

Good morning,

Ms Feather!

[Soaring Feather]

Good morning, Tomkow, oh you done good with your crayons today, do you know which one of you did the work?

[Soaring Feather]

Good luck to you starbase, we will be looking forward to your return.

Be careful, (old mother hen thing.;)

[Soaring Feather]

Good morning everyone.

[WayzataJOHNN]

WHERE DID YOU GET THAT PICTURE OF MY FIRST MOTHER-IN-LAW?????

(that thing is scary, right down to the glasses!)

[WayzataJOHNN]

Season of Change

It’s a dreary grey clouded morning
with a bit of chill wind off the lake
chill enough now to warrant a coat
and keeps me from my lovely old boat
so I’m dressing up for late fall’s sake
this day recalls that winter is a warning

[WayzataJOHNN]

Good luck on the job search, and looking forward to your posts!

[WayzataJOHNN]

Hi from Minnesota!!!!!!!

Nancy says 'HI' too, and wonders if you still have moose wandering in your driveway!

[Soaring Feather]

Season of Change



I am lazy today and not to proud
that I have wasted a day for
washing windows, or moving dust
(well I did some dust moving)
but instead I watched the wind blowing
down golden rain and it graces the lawn
with specks of red, yellow and brown
with little tufts of green in between.

It's blowing in a rain for night skies
that arrive way to early these days
nights are not so velvet now, but more
like ragged wool that has seen too, many winters.

I suppose the street grit on the windows makes
it worse than it is, and it's a challenge to clean
them it's really a lot of work. Removing the storms
by bringing them in to shine and polish them
then hustle and tussle them back in.
These windows are huge and so tall just right
for an old mansion after all.


I can't climb the ladder so well anymore
so it's frustrating to peer through those windows
all grimy with soot, but should I put my foot on a ladder
for me it would be one day on a ladder and three days in recovery.


bentfeather