Thursday, February 22
Feb. 22nd, 2024 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Nice temperatures again, and the longer days are appreciated.
A very quiet day at home, no need to go anywhere today.
I spent some extra time with Wonder, combing out her very abundant mane and tail. She's a lovely horse.
I let the ponies and goats out into their larger pasture, and Dandy especially had lots of fun running around.
Roxy got lots of time to just snoodle around, sniffing things and rolling in things and being a dog. She still favors her injured leg, but seems to get around okay on it. I probably do need to do some kind of follow up with a vet to see how we're doing, but another part of me really dreads doing this because it could easily become the next ordeal.
I did finally talk with Sister E today at leisure, and that was nice. We didn't really talk about anything in particular, but she did talk a bit more about her career as an EKG tech, which she doesn't really talk about that often. I didn't realize that she was often in the ER, though that makes sense. She probably saw some horrendous things.
My Sweetie came home pretty much straight from work today, and went directly to work a bit on the cupboards in the mud room. He assembled a cupboard that fits directly under the drain board of the steel sink. It makes better use of the space than just enclosing it.
We re-watched a movie called "Uncharted", that was kind of a fun "action adventure" along the lines of Tomb Raider. It shouldn't have been boring, but it was kind of predictable.
I'm having a hard time finding "special identifiers" about Laos, because there is so much similarity to Vietnam and Cambodia.
Laos is similar in landscape and ecosystem, with mountainous areas as well as low lying plains with river deltas and seasonal monsoons.
It also was a French protectorate from 1893 to 1953, and was part of French Indochina. During World War II in Laos, Vichy France, Thailand, Imperial Japan and Free France occupied Laos, and after lots more fighting and interim leaders, was declared a Constitutional Monarchy in 1953.
Between 1979 and 1989, it was known as The People's Republic of Kampuchea.
Laos was involved in the Vietnam War, mainly as North Vietnam occupied it, and had supply routes, which led to being bombed by the U.S.
Then the native Hmong people were recruited by South Vietnam and the U.S. to wage guerrilla warfare against the North Vietnamese army.
To this day there is ongoing fighting between the Hmong people and the current government of Laos.
Of course, unexploded ordinance is a huge issue here as well as in Vietnam and Cambodia: Some 80 million bombs failed to explode and remain scattered throughout the country, rendering vast swaths of land impossible to cultivate. Currently unexploded ordnance (UXO), including cluster munitions and mines, kill or maim approximately 50 Laotians every year.[50] Due to the particularly heavy impact of cluster bombs during this war, Laos was a strong advocate of the Convention on Cluster Munitions to ban the weapons and was host to the First Meeting of States Parties to the convention in November 2010.[51
Of note, part of Laos falls within the "golden triangle" region that produces opium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Triangle_(Southeast_Asia)
The government is Socialist, but endorses Communism. There is a President as well as a Prime Minister.
The government SAYS its working on human rights, but nothing that is happening in real life supports this. So, pretty crappy place to live, people being arrested and dissappeared, no freedom of speech or of the press, etc.
The economy leans pretty heavily on trade with neighboring countries, and subsistence agriculture is still the main occupation of the population. There is the possibility of mining lifting the country out of fairly desperate poverty: Laos is rich in mineral resources and imports petroleum and gas. Metallurgy is an important industry, and the government hopes to attract foreign investment to develop the substantial deposits of coal, gold, bauxite, tin, copper, and other valuable metals.
The country still struggles with basic things like safe water and sanitation, life expectancy is low.
Religion is mainly Buddhist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laos
A quick burst of mostly political history, tons and tons of war and conflict here.
https://youtu.be/uw8hjVqxMXw?si=8yOx33FvoxrpLHtB
Nice temperatures again, and the longer days are appreciated.
A very quiet day at home, no need to go anywhere today.
I spent some extra time with Wonder, combing out her very abundant mane and tail. She's a lovely horse.
I let the ponies and goats out into their larger pasture, and Dandy especially had lots of fun running around.
Roxy got lots of time to just snoodle around, sniffing things and rolling in things and being a dog. She still favors her injured leg, but seems to get around okay on it. I probably do need to do some kind of follow up with a vet to see how we're doing, but another part of me really dreads doing this because it could easily become the next ordeal.
I did finally talk with Sister E today at leisure, and that was nice. We didn't really talk about anything in particular, but she did talk a bit more about her career as an EKG tech, which she doesn't really talk about that often. I didn't realize that she was often in the ER, though that makes sense. She probably saw some horrendous things.
My Sweetie came home pretty much straight from work today, and went directly to work a bit on the cupboards in the mud room. He assembled a cupboard that fits directly under the drain board of the steel sink. It makes better use of the space than just enclosing it.
We re-watched a movie called "Uncharted", that was kind of a fun "action adventure" along the lines of Tomb Raider. It shouldn't have been boring, but it was kind of predictable.
I'm having a hard time finding "special identifiers" about Laos, because there is so much similarity to Vietnam and Cambodia.
Laos is similar in landscape and ecosystem, with mountainous areas as well as low lying plains with river deltas and seasonal monsoons.
It also was a French protectorate from 1893 to 1953, and was part of French Indochina. During World War II in Laos, Vichy France, Thailand, Imperial Japan and Free France occupied Laos, and after lots more fighting and interim leaders, was declared a Constitutional Monarchy in 1953.
Between 1979 and 1989, it was known as The People's Republic of Kampuchea.
Laos was involved in the Vietnam War, mainly as North Vietnam occupied it, and had supply routes, which led to being bombed by the U.S.
Then the native Hmong people were recruited by South Vietnam and the U.S. to wage guerrilla warfare against the North Vietnamese army.
To this day there is ongoing fighting between the Hmong people and the current government of Laos.
Of course, unexploded ordinance is a huge issue here as well as in Vietnam and Cambodia: Some 80 million bombs failed to explode and remain scattered throughout the country, rendering vast swaths of land impossible to cultivate. Currently unexploded ordnance (UXO), including cluster munitions and mines, kill or maim approximately 50 Laotians every year.[50] Due to the particularly heavy impact of cluster bombs during this war, Laos was a strong advocate of the Convention on Cluster Munitions to ban the weapons and was host to the First Meeting of States Parties to the convention in November 2010.[51
Of note, part of Laos falls within the "golden triangle" region that produces opium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Triangle_(Southeast_Asia)
The government is Socialist, but endorses Communism. There is a President as well as a Prime Minister.
The government SAYS its working on human rights, but nothing that is happening in real life supports this. So, pretty crappy place to live, people being arrested and dissappeared, no freedom of speech or of the press, etc.
The economy leans pretty heavily on trade with neighboring countries, and subsistence agriculture is still the main occupation of the population. There is the possibility of mining lifting the country out of fairly desperate poverty: Laos is rich in mineral resources and imports petroleum and gas. Metallurgy is an important industry, and the government hopes to attract foreign investment to develop the substantial deposits of coal, gold, bauxite, tin, copper, and other valuable metals.
The country still struggles with basic things like safe water and sanitation, life expectancy is low.
Religion is mainly Buddhist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laos
A quick burst of mostly political history, tons and tons of war and conflict here.
https://youtu.be/uw8hjVqxMXw?si=8yOx33FvoxrpLHtB
