A day late

(I wrote it at the weekend as promised, but I didn't have a flash drive to take it to the office. I'd have gone home at Monday lunch to pick it up, but our chapas pulled a perfectly timed strike. The well-known issue continues to simmer. I'd also hoped to have a few more photographs, but this computer is too tired to recognise my camera.)

Mookxie's comment last week reminded me it's high time for an update on progress on those 101 tasks I set myself back in January, as people keep swinging by here from the link on the 101 things site. I won't mention every task which is in progress, but a few of them deserve comment.

1. Finish drafting and revising City In Spate and start sending it to publishers or agents.
74,000 words, at the moment. Far from finished.

6. Read the Bible, other than 1 Chronicles and Psalms.
So far I've read Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, Hosea, Jonah, Nahum, Habukkuk and Zechariah.

I used to spend the chapa ride each morning reading work-related material, but last year, having no reports to hand, I grabbed instead the copy of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius which was lying on the dining table at the time. Commuting amid blaring gangsta rap with strangers' crotches pressed (in all innocence) against my shoulder, I read: "Art thou angry with him whose arm-pits stink? Art thou angry with him whose mouth smells foul? What good will this anger do thee?" And so forth: a great deal about how to endure provocations with equanimity.

It struck me then that the chapa ride to work was the correct place to read devotional literature. Anyone can love one's fellow humans and feel close to the divine in the privacy of one's room. The difficult task is to do it in the thick of worldly annoyances and blandishments. So it's become my practice to read spiritual texts on the morning chapa. This is fine for, say, the Dhammapada, which teaches the transcending of worldly experience - "exercising the utmost restraint, possessing inner delight, composed, solitary, and content". But I swear I'll never read the Old Testament on the chapa. All that smiting and destruction and dashing the little ones against the stones – I'd do murder every morning under that influence.

Having said that, all that Old Testament violence and hatred makes me appreciate what a revolution Jesus must have been. Probably most of us are so familiar with the injunction to love our enemies that it's lost a lot of its power. It must have been flabbergasting to the first-century Jews when they first heard it from that young teacher in the synagogue, after all that smiting they'd previously been taught.

18. Buy one of those gorgeous glass pendants from Ngwenya glass in Swaziland for my mother.
Done, but photographic evidence won't be posted until my mother has seen it.

The other purchase of interest in Swaziland was a bundle of candles from the wonderful Swazi Candles. For item 11, I hope to be in India during Deepavali, which means giving gifts of lights.

37. Go to the Museu da História Natural.
Done. See last week's post for photographic evidence.

45. Find my super payout from DSS.
46. Take care of that other super.
I occasionally need to email a Mozambican government agency – most often the notorious Telecomunições de Moçambique, the carrier that can't explain why it frequently drops our lines for ten minutes at random intervals, and whose técnicos were last year completely unaware that the satellite link between Maputo and Quelimane had been replaced by a fibre optic cable until two months after the event. I don't have a very high opinion of their competence, but they do at least reply to emails – which more than Ausfund or the Australian Department of Human Services have done. Follow-up emails were sent last week.

47. Keep my living expenses to less than 60% of my take-home salary.
Done. Shortly after posting these goals, I did a personal budget for the first time in my life and was pleasantly surprised to discover I was within an ace of this anyway. I trimmed back sufficiently by preparing my own lunches instead of buying a prego no pão (steak sandwich) or frango grelhado (grilled chicken) every day – there isn't much else available, unless you don't mind dobrada (tripe) with your feijão (bean stew). That was before a recent modest pay rise. Some of that rise will go to Dona Luisa the empregada and Sr Micas the guard, and I have to mind the value of the American dollar because I have the infernal inconvenience of paying my rent in dollars even though my salary is in meticais. But I think I'm okay, budget-wise, for the foreseeable future - pela graça do Deus.

50. Clear my wardrobe of clothes I don't wear anymore.
Done. Had Dona Luisa not been defeated by the chapa strike, she would have found a good-sized backpack stuffed with clothes sitting next to the kitchen garbage on Monday morning. She is always far more stylishly dressed than I am so I doubt she'll be adopting any of my cast-offs in a hurry, but most of them are good enough to sell to a second-hand vendor for a bit of extra cash.

52. Get rid of all old papers I don't need anymore.
Done. It's a shame I didn't think of taking a "before" photo, or better still a "during" photo, when paid water bills and boarding passes dating back to 2005 had been sorted into heaps all over the living room floor. It could have been an inspiration to all.

67. Give away all the books on my shelves which annoy me.
There's a new café in town – or, it was new to me; every other foreign female with pretensions to knowing her macchiato from her mocha seems surprised I didn't know – which not only packages its own fair-trade coffee, but which maintains a book exchange. It was entirely English-language when I checked a couple of weeks ago, as I dropped off a couple of unwanted gifts. It will take a few more trips to unclog my shelves completely, but this should be done in a month or two.

The other point I like about this café is that it stands on Rua Beijo da Mulata, a mulata being a woman of mixed race and an a beijo being a kiss. It wouldn't be allowed in Australia.

76. Get involved in the Maputo Professional Women's Network.
I mind the database for this group, but I'll mark this as done after I've participated in (and posted more details about) our first event, which is set for 12 March.

101. Be able to find and name 100 stars.
I'm typing this at 20.00 in my living room on a Sunday night. I was hoping to go out onto my balcony and check that I can remember what I've learned, but the night's come over cloudy, so I'll have to do this from my imagination.

Standing on my living room balcony – facing west by north-west - on a clear night I can look up and see Orion. The red star in the lower right corner is Betelgeuse. Clockwise from there, the other points of the rectangle are Bellatrix, Rigel and Saiph. The leftmost star in Orion's belt is Mintaka. Between Orion and the horizon, the bright reddish star is El Nath, and the sparkler off to its left is Aldebaran, both in Taurus. To the right of El Nath is Castor and Pollux in Gemini. The brightest star in the sky is Sirius, to the right of Orion. Sirius and Betelgeuse make an equilateral triangle with Procyon. Canopus is somewhere above my roof, but I can't check it from here.

From my kitchen balcony I can see the Southern Cross, which is easy, because the three brightest stars are called Acrux (the lowest star on the Australian flag), Becrux (the left arm) and Gacrux (the uppermost star on the flag) – but if you are a poetical snob like me, you can call Becrux Mimosa. Everyone should know Alpha and Beta Centauri if they don't – at least those who reside in the southern hemisphere. More or less on the opposite side of the celestial south pole to Crux, the big sparkler is Achernar.

At this hour of the evening I can't recognise a single star from the balcony of the spare bedroom – facing north by north-east - but when I struggle out of bed at 4.30 in the morning I can see the constellation Scorpio. The red star on the scorpion's back is Antares, the brighter of the two stars in the sting is Shaula, and the fainter of the two is Lesath.

I just checked the above in my star charts. Twenty stars, until I can be sure of Canopus.

The names of stars and constellations are poetry to me, but I'm aware that to many the preceding paragraphs must be the most boring in this post. To them I say: be grateful I'm not giving you a similar account of what I'm learning from item 8, reading Economic Literacy.