Seems like this week is shaping up to be a bad one. First, I get called a liar when I told the truth. Then I get told that if it is the truth, we should hide it because we don’t want anyone to know as it might make us look bad.
And now we have been robbed. Again.
I have lost count of the number of robberies and thefts we have suffered. It seems that one can no longer leave a car parked around our area without running the risk of the window being broken and anything valuable inside stolen.
Last time the robbery cost me a lot, because the fellow stole my prescription sunglasses. Not that there were any use to him, of course – and the frames were ten years old. The glass was new, but made for my ageing eyesight and totally useless to anyone else. And I don’t wear dark glasses to look cool; I wear them because I have to. So we had to pay up to get a new window for the car, and a new pair of prescription sun glasses.
This time at least there was nothing in the car to take…but we still have to replace the glass. Tough to have to keep spending to clean up the damage left by lazy b*s whose life style is to steal what others work to earn. (As we have very little material things worth stealing, the damage done in the break-in to the house costs more than the stolen goods!)
My poor husband has been working over 5 months without pay, (and there won’t be any back pay, so he really is donating his services for free). Why? Because he believes in service. He believes his lifetime of knowledge should not be wasted when he can help the youth of this country and the university he helped to found.
Of course, it would be easy enough, one would think, to actually pay him. The University wants to do so, in fact. Is trying to do so. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, employing anyone over 65 is a terrible risk – why, think of all the truly awful things that can happen – and so there are some forms to fill in, and permission to be sought from government bureaucracy. Five plus months later, we are still waiting. (Though, doubtless the bureaucrats collect their salaries every month while they debate his qualifications.)
In the past year, my husband has written and had published half a dozen or more scientific papers. He has spoken at international meetings. He has guided students on expeditions. He has been asked by people abroad to stand for a major UN post. And meantime, the bureaucrats here asked for his university scrolls, just to make sure he is qualified for employment. Er, did they really think the university once employed someone without a decent degree as their Deputy Vice Chancellor??
Of course, they don’t put the politicians through these hoops before they pay them, even when they are over 65*. I wonder why not?
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*The present PM is 69, older than my husband.
The last PM was 78 or so when he retired.
Jim Hines‘ The Stepsister Scheme is a story in which three very determined princesses (basically Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty) get together. Jim says:
