Birthdays and things

Saturday Dec 5, 2009 was the 5th birthday of Ziggy and Zoe! They spent the day relaxing around the house while Jim and Janet went to a Christmas bazaar - we went to one last year too- there should be an entry about that- and then we struggled at the framing shop to get decisions made on some framing projects.
On Sunday We were relaxing some in the morning and were surprised to see a guy outside our balcony in a tall tree hacking branches off! We had told the landlord that the monkeys were climbing onto the roof of the building from the trees and also on to the balcony, but we did not expect to see a guy climb 30 feet off the ground to cut the branches. They are not very subtle about how they do these jobs. The guy is obviously in good shape to be able to do this so fearlessly. Later, Jim walked to an art exhibit late in the morning and then we met some friends for brunch at a good place. Later in the afternoon we took Ziggy and Zoe outside to look around in the areas around the building. They enjoy being out there, but we worry about pesticides that might be in use. The dogs and monkeys could be a danger to them as well. The building has a security wall around it so dogs are not really a problem, but monkeys can be. Of course, rats can be a problem, but we have not seen any.
Earlier in the week was Janet's birthday and we went out for a good dinner with some friends for that. we did not get home until very late that night, but it seemed worth it.
Janet was on the verge of firing the cleaning woman the other day. She made a list of all the things the girl had done wrong or might have done wrong after the most recent discovery that a glass vase was broken, but on further consideration, it seems that some of the things may not have been things she did wrong (though she has broken a few things through thoughtless action). Overall she is still pretty good- honest and reasonably hard working, but she does not ask when she does not understand and her English is not so good, so it is difficult to tell when she does understand and when she does not.
Meanwhile, we are more certain that Joseph, our driver takes a commission or cut whenever he arranges for workers to do things for us- whether it is photograph printing, carpenters working carpet cleaning or other things. We have had strong suspicions of this for a long time but have not made an issue of it yet because it is not a huge amount of money and we do appreciate the efforts to find good people to do these tasks. We hope to figure out a way to have him change his ways and we would reward him some ourselves directly rather than indirectly. Of course, we do not have very good ideas how much WE would pay of we tried to arrange some of the workmen ourselves- we would certainly pay more than most Indians pay.