Tag Archives: Waiting

Amusing, Belize, Our Products, Soap

Soap-making, Selling, Doctoring and Waiting!

Munchkin.WailingToday we did a combination of things; the first thing was making soap which actually spans through the entire day.  We begin by mixing and pouring the soap into molds.  Later in the day, once the soap has hardened and done its magic, Gnome cuts it one by one with a wire implement; this is actually the longest part of the procedure and can take him about 2 to 3 hours to cut a whole batch of soap.  The soaps that we made today are Chocolate Vanilla which involved the addition of essential oils.  At first, you will see that the oils actually cause a lack of uniformity of colour:

Freshly Made Soaps with Essential Oil.
Freshly Made Soaps with Essential Oil.

As the soap ages, the blotchy appearance does fade and it takes on a smooth finish as you can see from the next picture:

Cured Soap.
Cured Soap.

This soap is a custom order and will be hand-stamped one by one over the next few days.  Phew..making soap actually requires time and dedication!

I had to put on my “selling hat” today and show samples of our products to hotel management.  Honestly…I don’t like this part because I feel like I am going through a script and I feel so automatic and robotic.  You can see that I have not been to marketing school and what I would like to say is, “buy my stuff, it’s good ****!”

In between all of that, we saw some patients and did some doctoring.

Also, I had to queue up in a bank and a post office and it was painfully slow!  This was actually the worst part of the day. Remember that every person in front of you is an additional 15 minute wait.  Aaarrghh!!

Lastly, we saw a Fridge on a Pick-up, which is worth a 1000 points!!  Donum Bonum!

Amusing, Belize

Waiting in Belize.

Upsidedown

Belize can really put the breaks on you if you live here.  Today was a “waiting day” as are most days!  I am not sure if it is something about Belize, or just something about life.  Here in this teeny weeny town of Punta Gorda, people can have the habit of  just stopping in the middle of a road to jump into a shop to buy something oblivious of the car that they are blocking behind.   I was behind such a car today…and, I just had to wait!

You see this mostly at the market in Punta Gorda where there is a procession of cars and somebody just stops to buy a pound of onions or a papaya.  If you are the unfortunate person caught behind that car, you have no choice but to wait.  And you have to be patient whilst the person is haggling for the best price with the market lady!

Whenever you queue up to pay a bill, the rule of thumb is to count to number of people in front of you and multiply this by 15 minutes and this will give you the average waiting time.  So, if there are 4 people in front of you, expect to wait one hour.  That’s just the way it is here.  I was in a couple of these queues today with eight people in front of me!  It can be a whole social event in a queue when you start talking to Mrs. W. in front of you complaining about the waiting time and you then turn to talk to the lady behind to talk about the weather.  Everybody else seems to have a jolly good time!

Punta Gorda makes you wait for everything.  Belize makes you wait!Sometimes it gets to me.  But, then I have to remind myself that I came here to Belize so that I didn’t need to rush head-long through life in a mad panic.