Public Hanging

I am tired of waiting at the bus stop. And now the weather has suddenly become a lot friendlier, soaring to the dizzy heights of 10 degrees most days. The road at the front of our apartments (where I usually wait for the bus) is not a very nice place to wait, even worse to walk - what with the "splooshie pavers" (see previous post 10/10/05), and the narrow sidewalk being full of workmen cutting, welding and spray-painting metal frames, not to mention the ladies in the red-light "hairdressers" shops calling out.

The road at the back gate of the apartments has been recently re-surfaced, and there are proper bus-stops with shelters, and railing between the traffic-lanes and bike-lane, and garden beds and trees with marble seats around them ... it's quite a pleasant place really. It's a good place to catch a bus, they are very frequent - unlike the ones I have to wait for on the other road - but they don't go close to our office.

So I have taken to walking to work along the back road quite a lot lately.

Hmm. Just when I thought it was safe to walk on the pavement. Apparently they haven't quite finished putting in all of the fully-grown trees.

Its rather interesting to watch. And it's not like they don't let you get up as close as you want to have a good look. A new truckload of trees had just arrived, and the crane was to lifting them over the barrier between the car section of the road and the bike section, and dropping them near the prapared holes in the side-walk.

There was an army of little men waiting to bind up the trunks with rope - it seems to be a special rope of something like plaited grass. Then then popped them in the ground with fertilizers and irrigation tubes, and propped them up with four poles. Another worker came along and fitted marble edging around each bed and voila! Instant old trees.

I suppose the odd thing is the way no one except us weird foreigners seemed to pay much attention.

You'd think even from the point of view of personal safety people would be a little more interested. Have they really seen it that many times before?

Or are they just being inscrutable?