 said I just needed to adjust the gas tank. Either way, I’m afraid I will blow myself up before I eat an egg safely.
Red red
9/25. We all had non-instant coffee, a rare treat, and my friend Emily and I agree that is was the best and worst part of our day. It actually felt like a drug, rejuvenating me with every delicious sip, but hours later the two of us were seriously over-caffeinated just from the one cup and our arms and legs felt weak and twitchy the whole rest of the day.
9/29. First, they took us to my colleague Robert’s wife’s shop in a rather faraway location, and I had my measurements taken and handed over my beautiful fabric to have a dress made. I felt oddly sad giving it away, knowing it would not return to me in its perfect, unaltered state. Then Mary wanted to also stop at her friend’s shop, so we made another out-of-the-way stop, and I was lucky I had brought another fabric with me. This tailor measured me (in a much more intense, full-body way, including a nipple-to-nipple measurement that was in no way necessary for a skirt), and I handed over the other precious two yards I had unfolded, held up to my body, and refolded innumerable times. I exchanged phone numbers with both tailors and then texted them pictures of ladies I found on Google images whose clothing I wanted to imitate.
9/29. We stopped beforehand at Woodin so Emily could grab some last minute gifts, and the Osu location has way more fabrics, and I felt super addicted and emotionally unstable in response to this addiction that resulted in oohing and aweing and pining over fabrics that I can’t justify buying.
10/2. I got my dress back!! Robert delivered it to me by way of his wife, and as I held it up to myself, he expressed doubt that it would fit right. He was right. It was huge in the chest and totally gaping, but I still felt I had to model it for everyone, so I got to experience the joy of a group of colleagues tugging at the fabric over my chest, commenting on the flatness of my chest, and Robert taking up-close pictures of my chest to send to his wife so she could redo it. At one point, Robert was intently assessing the fit, and Mary slapped his hand away from me. He wasn’t making me uncomfortable, but it was cute to watch her stick up for me. I was sad to see the dress leave my possession again, but it came back, along with my skirt from the other tailor, and now they both fit, and I’m all set for African dress Fridays!
10/4. This weekend, I went to the obruni (white person) market (that’s what my friends call this market which draws mostly expats) on my own and bought some gifts and used the tailor I had met my first week, Eleanor, for my final fabric to be made into a shirt. The crafts are good there, but I find the obrunis consistently annoying, paler than ever, and loud. They fiend after the one and only bagel stand in Accra, and they shout at each other in jarring accents (I can’t even identify where such a voice would come from), which forces me to cringe politely into their round, burnt faces.
10/5. Since there is nothing else going on in my life this week, I will discuss the common expression used when you are eating and someone else enters the room – “You are invited.” This confused the heck out of me when I first got here. I would walk into the kitchen for a glass of water, and Mary would be eating unidentified meats for breakfast and she would say, “You are invited.” Huh? I smiled and nodded but then just walked away thinking I had probably done the rudest thing ever. Then, the next few times, I would walk in on someone eating, and they would say it without even raising their head or looking at me. Today, John was starting a late lunch as we joined a conference call together, and he said as we received the Skype call, “You are invited to my lunch.” Eventually, I realized (and got confirmation) that it’s just something people say out of courtesy but it doesn’t mean you have to join them, or watch them eat, or help them eat their unidentified meats.
10/9. Jack, one of the roommates and band members, arranged for a spit pig to be served through his local coworker’s family member, and we savagely sliced this pig apart for dinner, which we ate outside in the pouring rain.
10/17. When I got back, Donald and Samuel, who work at my apartment, were eating dinner in the bar and invited me to join. They were eating big hunks of pork, and I was full from dinner, but I tried to identify a small bite to be polite when they offered me some. Once I popped it in my mouth, I realized it was not going to be pretty. It was so tough, and they were asking me questions and I could not respond because my mouth was having to work hard on this very intense-tasting fresh pig with so much un-chewable fat. I told them, “Gimme five minutes,” which they thought was funny, but then five minutes later, when I was still “hiding” the huge un-chewable fat chunk in my cheek, I had to come clean and tell them I didn’t know what to do about it. Donald rolled his eyes and said to Samuel, “Get her a napkin,” and I tried to own the spitting out motion like I wasn’t the total obruni I am.
10/18. I started my day by picking up my shirt from Eleanor. She sells her stuff at the expat market each month, but otherwise you just go to her house. She is really successful – not just doing business in her neighborhood but totally catering to the expat community, too, and even starting to show her clothes internationally within West Africa. So I headed off on my own to meet this lady, and she lived in a little neighborhood so close to the beach you could smell and feel the water. She met me outside close to noon looking sleepy and of course wearing some African print shorts. When I walked into her house, fabric was draped over everything. It reminded me of what it would be like to go into an artist’s home and to find paintings and paint everywhere. She showed me to the showroom, and while she adjusted the shirt she had made for me, I shopped around. I don’t know why I’m such a fiend for these clothes – I literally ripped my own off in this stranger’s house and put as many dresses as I could find on myself.
***
I can now happily say I’m going African print strong, with five bright pieces of clothing lining my makeshift closet and two more fabrics lying dormant in my arsenal, awaiting their beautiful, affordable final form. While I may have beat indecision when it comes to fabric shopping and tailoring, I am still learning how to integrate fashion with food; understanding how to enjoy the dense, fried, caloric, starchy foods and still fitting comfortably into my never-even-slightly-stretchy prints has been a challenge I’ve yet to overcome. I still have a long way to go when it comes to adjusting to my life with one foot out the door, but I’m lucky I have a pretty solid role model who reminds me why I’m doing it.To fly the tricolour from Srinagar has been an article of faith for all parties which have asserted the Hindu identity since Independence. Jana Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjee actually died in the midst of a protest against the special status given to Jammu and Kashmir (he said then leader of the valley Sheikh Abdullah was following the “three-nation theory”). Mookerjee went on a hunger strike to protest the law that prohibited Indian citizens from settling down in the state. Visiting Kashmir illegally in 1953, he was arrested while crossing the border on May 11 because he did not have the permit everyone was required to carry at the time. He passed away as a detenu at the age of 51, a death which the RSS-Jana Sangh-Hindu Mahasabha went on to...
Q: ggplot2: Splitting facet/strip text into two lines Consider the following ggplot2 graph with long facet/strip text
broken in two lines. 
The text goes outside the area devoted to facet titles.
library(ggplot2)
x <- c(1:3, 1:3)
y <- c(3:1, 1:3)
grp <- c(0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1)
p <- qplot(x=x, y=y) + geom_line() + facet_wrap(~ grp)
grob <- ggplotGrob(p)
strip.elem.y <- grid.ls(getGrob(grob, "strip.text.x", 
                grep=TRUE, global=TRUE))$name
grob <- geditGrob(grob, strip.elem.y[1], 
        label="First line and\n second line" )
grid.draw(grob)

Is there a way to increase the height of the strip text area?

A: I tried this a variety of ways but was frustrated getting