Revision as of 07:33, 21 May 2006

Clorlimoa

Flag of Clorlimoa
Motto: We are different
Region	The South Pacific
Capital	none
Official Language(s)	Clorlimoan
Leader	Governor N/A
Population	<50 million
Currency	Flower
NS Sunset XML

Clorlimoa is a non-partisan non-parliamentary constitutional elective monarchy. It is located at approximately 29°S, 12°W, on a volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ridge. With 15,594 km² (6023 sq mi), the island has approximately the size of East Timor, Connecticut or Schleswig-Holstein.

The name "Clorlimoa" is an English transcription of Klor Limoo or Klor Limou, which means "fire island" in the Clorlimoan language, referring to the volcanoes and geysers on the island. The Clorlimoan people call themselves Paabi Kriisaak or Paibi Kreisaik (depending on the dialect), meaning "trinity people." That comes from their belief in three gods: the god of the sky, the god of the ocean and the god of earth and fire.

Geography

Climate

Clorlimoa has an oceanic subtropical climate, similar to the one found on the Canary Islands. Due to the north-east trade wind, the south-west of the island is drier and warmer than the north-east. Temperatures vary between 20°C and 30°C year-round.

Culture

Roles in Society

Children get lessons from all villagers until they are initiated to adulthood and decide for a profession they will most likely pursuit for the rest of their lives.

Family

Clorlimoans know no marriage. Children are usually brought up by nannies. They are educated to consider the whole village their "family."

Names

A Clorlimoan has three names: The characteristic name describes a person's character. It is given when the person becomes an adult. Children have their mother's characteristic name. The spiritual name is given by the priest responsible for them. More about that in the section below. The third name is the origin name, which is simply the name of the village where the person grew up.

Religion

Clorlimoans believe in Kriisaak, the trinity of the three gods Aarkleh (god of the sky), Mluulfaarg (god of the ocean) and Iilvev (god of the earth and fire). Every village has one priest for each god.

Every day is dedicated to one of the three gods. If you are born on Mluulfaarg's day, your spiritual name is related to the ocean, and the ocean god priest is the one you turn to.

Clothing

Traditionally, men and women wear robes that cover shoulders, chest, stomach, back and bottom (but not the genitals). The robe is fixed with a belt.

Modern women's robes cover the vulva. This is done by a piece of cloth that is fixed in the belt on both sides (stomach and back).

Women wearing red robes are often considered whores. White robes are reserved for important festivities.

The belt indicates a person's wealth and status in society, as well as the person's home village.

Time

Clorlimoans have two ways of telling the time. The traditional "day periods" depend on the position of the sun. The modern "beats" provide a way to measure time objectively.

The Clorlimoan calendar system combines observations of moon and sun.

Day Periods

Clorlimoans distinguish 9 day periods:

• "Beginning of the morning" = just after sunrise
• "Mid-morning" = halfway between sunrise and noon
• "End of the morning" = just before noon
• "Beginning of the evening" = just after noon
• "Mid-evening" = halfway between noon and sunset
• "End of the evening" = just before sunset
• "Early night" = just after sunset
• "Midnight" = around midnight
• "Late night" = just before sunrise

Actually evening is a bad translation. But I if used afternoon, people might think the Clorminoan word is a compound of after+noon, which is not true.

The following table shows how different the nine day periods can be, depending on the season. Imagine the sun is up between 4:00 (4 am) and 20:00 (8 pm) in summer, between 8:00 (8 am) and 16:00 (4 pm) in winter, and of course between 6:00 (6 am) and 18:00 (6 pm) at the time of the equinox.

The periods only indicate an approximate time of the day. Due to the seasons, their lengths vary a lot. That's why the official beat system was introduced.

Beats

A day is divided into 8³ = 512 (big) beats, which are in turn divided into 8³ = 512 (small) beats. Thus a big beat is almost 3 minutes, and a small beat is a third of a second.

To indicate a time of the day, you say "It is 142 beats." That's approximately 10:40 (am), because beat 0 is the time of sunrise on summer solstice at the center of the country. To the west and east of the center, sunrise on summer solstice day is a little before or after 0 beats. On all other days of the year, 0 beats is during the period called "late night," sometimes hours before sunrise.

Calendar

Clorlimoans divide a year into a "rising" and a "falling" half. The rising half starts at winter solstice (21 June), the falling half starts at summer solstice (21/22 December). Each half consists of 6 months as well as additional days at the beginning and end of the half. So the year consists of 6 phases:

1. Beginning of the rising year: from winter solstice to the first new moon
2. 6 months of the rising year: 28+27+27+28+27+27 = 164 days
3. End of the rising year: from the 7th new moon to summer solstice
4. Beginning of the falling year: from summer solstice to the first full moon
5. 6 months of the falling year: 28+27+27+28+27+27 = 164 days
6. End of the falling year: from the 7th full moon to winter solstice

On average, each of the four transition periods has 9.3 days.

Full moon, new moon and half moon are always holidays. They correspond to the Sundays of christian societies.

The days of the months are counted, but these numbers are not used to celebrate anniversaries. Birthdays are not remembered as specific dates (like "26 January"), but only as moon phases (like "shortly before new moon in the 2nd month of the rising year").

Semesters are counted with ordinal numbers from 1 to 8 for one election period (see section "Elections"). So, instead of talking about "(the first half of) the year 42," you say "the 5th semester of the 11th election period." Counting begins with the first democratic election period in Clorlimoa.

Politics

Terminology

On the village level, the village council (which comprises all adult villagers) discusses current affairs, and the chief makes decisions based on the discussions.
On the city level, the city council (comprising all village chiefs) discusses, the city chief decides.
On the region level, the council of chiefs (comprising the chiefs of cities and free villages) discusses, the regional representative decides. The regions have little political power, though.
On the national level, the council of regions (comprising the regional representatives) discusses, the governor decides.

Elections

Decision-making posts are elected every 4 years (8 semesters, 1 political period).

The village council elects a chief, the city councils a city chief, the council of chiefs a regional representative, and the council of regions elects a governor.

Once every semester, the chiefs of all villages in a region come together to get to know each other, talk about political issues and make decisions. The meeting is held from the last half moon of the second month to the end of that month (7 days).
In an election year, the meeting lasts for the whole second half of the second month (13 or 14 days). Then the chiefs vote for one of them to become the regional representative.

In the first half of the first month of every falling year, there is a meeting of all regional representatives. This meeting, too, lasts either 7 or 13/14 days, depending on whether a governor is elected, which happens every 4 years.

Deputy chiefs, city chiefs, regional representatives and governor are appointed by the elected chiefs, city chiefs, regional representatives or governor, respectively.

Separation of powers

There is no distinction between judiciary, legislature and executive.

Chiefs, city chiefs, regional representatives and governors are bound to the laws of the entity they govern. Every council member has the right to propose a motion of no confidence. Then the person must explain why s/he thinks the leader broke a law, and the council must discuss the issue. At the end, the council votes whether or not to remove the leader from office. If the majority in the council is in favor, a new leader must be elected within 512 beats.

Federalism

On the national level, there is a tax authority that collects taxes and distributes them among the regions. A fourth of the tax money is reserved for the national level, a fourth for the regions, a fourth for the cities, a fourth for the individual villages. The distribution is always proportional to the population figures of the most recent census.
The police and army are also national matters.

The regions are responsible for most of the education matters, though some curriculum standards are defined on the national level, and the villages or cities have the final responsibilities for what is taught in their schools. Besides, every region issues its own currency.

The village level (Note that a "village" can be a part of a city) is responsible for social benefits, hospitals.

Matters of infrastructure are in the hands of the appropriate entity. That means interregional telephone lines are maintained by the nation, village streets by the villages etc.

Economy

Currency

Every region of Clorlimoa has its own currency. The currencies are named after rare flowers of the regions, as these were the means of payment before printed banknotes were invented.

The Flower is a pure unit of account (similar to the ECU of 20th century RL-Europe). The exchange rates between the Flower and the regional currencies are fixed once a semester, based on economic data from the regions.

Privatization

Most of the infrastructure is privatized. The rest - all cases where no private company wants to invest - is owned by state-run companies.

Language

see Clorlimoan language

Numbers

Clorlimoan uses an octal system. They have names for the numbers 1-8. The word for 5 is similar to the word for 1, the word for 6 is similar to the word for 2 and so on. For numbers between 9 and 16, they say something like "8 and 1/2/3", for higher numbers you say something like "3 times 8 and 2" (26). There are separate words for 9*8 and powers of it, but they are often confused in everyday life, as people are not used to playing with big numbers. These high numbers are 72 / 5184 / 26,873,856. Some scientists even have words for 722,204,136,308,736 (722 trillion) and 521,578,814,501,447,328,359,509,917,696 (521 octillions).

Finger Counting

The numbers from 1 to 8 are counted with the fingers of one hand:

1. - only the little finger
2. - index and ring finger
3. - index, ring and middle finger
4. - all four fingers
5. - little finger and thumb
6. - index finger, ring finger, thumb
7. - all but the index finger
8. - the whole hand