Monday, June 12, 2006

Porky goodness 2

So the pork has spent 4 days in the fridge with salt and palm sugar on it, and I think that is probably long enough. I was worried that it would smell bad, but actually it smells fine. I gave it a wash (in rainwater, given the absence of town water at the moment), and I’ll let it dry for a while as recommended. Meanwhile I’ll venture out into the rain to find the coconut shells and clove wood for smoking.
This will give me a break from preparing recordings for transcription and analysis which is starting to get little dull. I have video of quite a long and interesting discussion about wedding customs, but unfortunately the radio lapel mic feeding to the video camera wasn’t working, so I have had to use my backup recording for the audio. This was recorded with a little t-mic sitting on a table, and features a lot of chicken noise.
Also unfortunately whenever the subject matter got particularly interesting, Bert (the main speaker) would turn completely away from the mic and speak really quietly to Tartius (who was doing the interviewing), while Sepus (Bert’s brother) would decide to explain things to me in Manado Malay at the same time. The result being that there are long sections where the explanation in Toratán can hardly be heard, with a parallel explanation in Manado Malay drowning it out.
Still, at least I had a backup recording, or I wouldn’t have anything useable at all.

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