Posted by: Tom Peifer in Tropics, oil, local materials on
Aug 20, 2009
The past is still here; it's just not widely distributed
As someone who has spent the past quarter of his life in the lower latitudes, the fancy footwork and the tropical rhythms still present a bit of a challenge on the dance floor.
When something can go wrong, it will.
Murphy's Law
Now I know how investors feel. You watch it going down, down, down. A feeling of complete impotency. You're suddenly at the mercy of forces beyond your control. It all happens so fast. Later comes the comprehension, the "what if we had only..." Then you pick up the pieces and move on. Fortunately no one was hurt.
For me, it was not the stock market that went into free fall today. It was the 500 lb. concrete culvert pipe that we were gently lowering into a newly dug well. The end of the dry season is the traditional time to dig-or deepen-wells in Guanacaste. The ground water is at its lowest point in the year. Rain doesn't mess up the edges of the hole. The ropes don't get all wet and slippery. You're not flailing around in the mud. And the bonus for the guy in the hole is the refreshing coolness of artesian groundwater springs after a week of sweating through layers of increasingly rocky subsoil. When he hit water, "Papi" came up caked in mud, but elated.
