Still alive.

I'm no longer blind with rage. Boy, was I feeling irritable yesterday. The unbearable heat, the super-shitty hardware, the snail's-pace connection, the sight of my extended family fattening and aging, the third-world surroundings, the depressing relationships between the fiftysomethings and the seventysomethings that they are nursing... everything added up all of a sudden. My mom told me to shove her into a nursing home the moment she became as impossibly stubborn and depressed as her stepmom.

Now I'm typing this offline on a fairly new laptop (with a non-suckass keyboard) in an air-conditioned room in a brief and precious quiet, private moment.

Today I went skin diving, and I saw a wonderful improvement in the condition of a local coral reef. The fish are bigger, brighter, more numerous, and more varied. There are living corals, sea anemones, brittle stars, hermit crabs, and coralline algae everywhere. The number of sea urchins has decreased drastically, which seems to hint at a better ecological balance. Tangs browsed macroalgae in tight schools. Half a dozen species of damselfish darted through the rocks. A foot-long barracuda eyed me suspiciously. No octopus this time, but still the best dive I can remember in that spot. It cheered me tremendously to see the reef in such good health.

There was almost no refuse on the reef. In fact, people seem to have become neater here in general. The piles of shit along the roadside -- burnt-out cars, old furniture, assorted garbage -- have all but disappeared. The streets have been re-paved, landscaping is nicer just about everywhere... something's really happened over the past two years. Traffic has improved, and with it have the driving habits of the local populace. I can't believe the difference a few re-positioned tolls and an extra exit here and there have made.

This is not to say I would pick this place over Hell for a permanent residence. It's an improvement, but there could hardly have been a worsening. And it's still about 93 degrees and 100% humidity outside the door behind me.

Oh, and I saw puppies today. Puppies rule. They kept running around in that we-just-learned-how-to-run bouncing gallop.

The best part of all, though, is that I leave tomorrow.