i'm gonna be strong, i'm gonna be fine, don't worry about this heart of mine

I have Ace of Base's 'Don't Turn Around' stuck in my head. How sad is that? The only way to exorcise it, of course, is to listen to it on constant repeat until I go to bed; by the time I wake up tomorrow morning, I will be ready to go back to my usual options of techno or Counting Crows.

Ace of Base inevitably reminds me of Ukraine, as does Billy Joel and the Beatles--the only tapes I listened to in Ukraine were Billy Joel tapes and the Beatles' Greatest Hits tapes, and I believe Darryl Hall and John Oates, and so whenever we heard Ace of Base blasting in the market, it was always enjoyable. Luckily for us, it was blasting all the time, which no doubt had just as much of an ill effect on my adolescent development as the rampant radioactive contamination.

Dinner tonight was good, but also sad. It was good in the sense that Ranjit made his version of Thai food, which is most certainly not pad thai or tasty yellow curry from Krung Siam in Palo Alto (and did you know that it's really Kiung Siam or something? their sign is impossible to read). Nonetheless, Ranjit's curries and noodle dishes are always good, and he topped it off with a delicious custard. However, it was sad because we all started reminiscing about the foods that we miss, such as hamburgers, or sushi, or (and I admit that I was the only person who missed this) bologna sandwiches on white bread with Miracle Whip. I've probably had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch on seven of the last ten working days; there's a cafeteria, but the food is all a) spicy, b) greasy, and c) gross. I like some spicy foods, but I can't eat it with every single meal; I like a lot of greasy foods, but only if the grease is the result of frying or the result of too much cheese on a pizza, not if it is just pools of grease forming in an already-unappealing curry sauce; and c) I have eaten a lot of gross stuff in my life, but I try to limit my gross experiences to two meals per week. Some days I eat the food just because I can't stand the thought of peanut butter again, or because the guys who work in the cafeteria look crestfallen when I head for the peanut butter rather than the real food...but most of the time I can't bring myself to do it. So, on days when I have time, I have a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast and a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, followed by a large dinner; but some days (like today) I have to skip either breakfast or lunch because I have meetings. Sad, eh?

Nothing else is happening here; Tuesdays are pretty dead in the expat community in general and in my life in particular. I had a call tonight from 9:30 to 10:30, so I couldn't go out, and I also couldn't go to bed at nine like I wanted to. Tomorrow, however, I'm going to Meena Bazaar on a perilous errand to get my lehnga stitched in time for the wedding I'm attending next week; whether I will return with my temper and sanity intact is anyone's guess, since I'm currently railing against my complete lack of independence and so feel a little snappish towards service people of all kinds. The people at Meena Bazaar are nice, however, and they usually serve you Thums Up in a small plastic cup while you're waiting, so I can't be too annoyed.

I've been here almost five weeks! That's amazing to me--and it feels like my normal home self has finally crawled into some sullen dormancy so that I won't be dwelling on what I'm missing back home. That's good--now the part of me that misses Iowa, and which I beat into submission several years ago, will have something to keep it company while I blithely go about my business. I really can't believe that I'm in India--it's so alien from my experience in the States that it seems like the States can't really exist. I know objectively that it's 11am on Tuesday in California, that people are probably now at work after their enjoyable three-day weekend, and that many of my friends are preparing for finals and/or graduation. And yet, it is impossible that any of that is happening; how can there be a place where there are traffic lights, and steak, and ketchup that isn't rotting in the bottle, and all of the friends and family whom I have left behind? No, it's easier to believe that these things have ceased to exist, and that they will be reanimated just as I left them when I return.

That's incredibly self-centered of me, isn't it? I think it's a defense mechanism; for instance, my mind can't accept that the lipgloss that I wear to work probably cost more than most of the people walking constantly in the street make in a whole week. So, it's easier to accept, highlight, and cherish the surreal than it is to get down to the business of actually thinking about where I am and what everything means.

Okay, enough of this--I sometimes write just because I like the way the words sound, and I don't really think that any of you are paused until I get back, or that I can't comprehend my surroundings. However, I do feel guilty about the sheer amount of stuff I have, and the fact that I accumulate more every day. I don't know whether to hope that that guilt will pass with time or not; if it passes, I would be more comfortable, but then again it would imply that my heart has become completely hardened to my surroudings. I can't act upon anything I think about right now anyway, so I think it's time for bed!

discipline, self-discipline

I found that discipline touched upon my life in two very different contexts today. First, I woke up early (and by 'woke up early' I mean 'painfully dragged myself out of bed at 7:45') and went swimming, and was inordinately pleased with my own fortitude. The pool was very nice at eight a.m.; there was no one else there, it was already warm outside but not blisteringly hot, and I was able to go to work with the smug satisfaction of someone who has accomplished something which she does not normally do. Self-discipline is a very good thing, although I do not normally practice it because I'm too busy trying to squeeze as many absurd moments out of life as possible, and discipline does not lead to absurdity.

At least, I *thought* that discipline does not lead to absurdity, until I was at work today. I will only touch on the merest insinuations of the conversation that I had at work today, since I know that my nieces read this...but suffice it to say that I had to explain to a very confused, very innocent Indian girl what discipline means in a shockingly adult context, including a discussion about how latex is not merely a type of sap exuded from a tree (which is the definition she had found), but also a material that certain subcultures turn into their own perverse form of haute couture. I'm used to explicit conversations with my friends, but as I attempted to explain the word 'masochist' to the completely uncomprehending stare of someone who had no idea what I was talking about, I felt like every word of my explanation was making the world a slightly worse place.

Tonight, I finished reading the romance novel that I started yesterday; I was supposed to go to bed early, and I was also supposed to call my mother, but both of those noble goals were abandoned after I convinced myself that I would read just one chapter before picking up the phone. One chapter turned into a couple hundred pages, and now the book is done and I need to go to bed immediately. So much for self-discipline. The novel was 'Sylvester', another Georgette Heyer--her dialogue is fabulous, and I just couldn't put it down. It's a shame that I didn't have a cup of tea and some of Claude's cucumber sandwiches while reading the book, since it would have fit the mood perfectly. Rather than dwelling on what is lost, however, I think I shall go to bed.

the graceful edifice of the salar jung museum in hyderabad (no cameras allowed inside--the metal detector was only to find my camera, since they didn't confiscate the large swiss army knife that serves as my keychain). 

the ubiquitous autorickshaw (this one is surprisingly well-maintained) 

spf 75 my ass

The title is not meant to imply that you should put sunscreen on my derriere; rather, it expresses disbelief at the supposed protection offered by my Biotique Ayurvedic Recipe SPF 75 Aloe Vera sunscreen. I picked it up last weekend, but did not have occasion to use it until this morning. I went swimming before brunch (the zoo that I was supposed to go to didn't happen, since I woke up at eight, promptly decided I was stupid for waking up, and went back to sleep until eleven), and I put on the sunscreen before getting into the pool. Perhaps I didn't put enough on, or perhaps it isn't sufficiently waterproof--but I laid in the sun for only fifteen minutes after getting out of the pool, and my chest and legs have a not-so-healthy pink glow. They probably wouldn't have burned if they weren't so deathly pale, since my arms were mildly tan and are not burned in the least. However, if the sun is powerful enough to burn me in fifteen minutes at noon, I shudder to think how badly it would affect me during the heat of the afternoon, or if I had laid out for an hour.

The pool is beautiful, and I am attempting to get over my irrational fear of water (induced by a near-drowning experience involving a foam kickboard and an inattentive teenage swim instructor), so perhaps I will spend more time in it. That is, I will spend more time in it if I can find some sunscreen that will actually do something to protect me against the sun's fiery caresses.

Perhaps you can tell by the overblown language present in much of this post that I started reading a romance novel this afternoon; I put Naipul's 'Guerrillas' down for a few days, since I was in no mood for seriousness. Today was v. nice--I went swimming, had brunch at the Taj Krishna (and it induced none of the melancholic introspection that I so melodramatically expressed last weekend), and then went shopping with Regina. I got a pair of uber-stylish sunglasses; I've wanted a pair of sunglasses with almost-clear lenses for a long time, but I've always been able to convince myself that I could survive with only one pair of sunglasses. My covetous nature has been increasingly vocal about the need for a second pair--and after buying the sunglasses, I made a concession to sensibility and didn't buy any shoes (which was what the shopping excursion had initially been for). So, I can't feel all bad about buying them--and it's funny that I think that it's stupid to spend money on sunglasses, considering that I wear them every single day, my eyes are too sensitive with my contacts to go out without sunglasses, and so monetarily I've probably gotten more worth out of my sunglasses than just about any of my other possessions.

Enough about sunglasses. I made my first stop at an ATM today, and was dismayed to find that it only produced 100-rupee notes. The problem with this is that the exchange rate is around Rs43 to $1. That means that withdrawing 4000 rupees was something equivalent to withdrawing a hundred dollars from an American ATM, and getting it all in two-dollar bills. Don't get me wrong, I like two-dollar bills as much as the next girl, and enjoy giving them to cashiers, since it confounds the normal bill system they have set up in their registers--but I would hate to get them as the only monetary unit available in an ATM.

After shopping, I read the aforementioned romance novel while doing some laundry. I don't know what is wrong with my weather sense (my broken finger just aches whenever it feels like it, I think, rather than as a warning system for weather changes), but I always do laundry right before it gets incredibly windy. The romance novel effectively shut down all of my senses, and so I didn't notice the wind until I went outside to gather my clothes--and found multiple articles of clothing strewn across the balcony. We only have a washing machine, and so the clothes have to be hung to dry, which is normally v. effective since it's as hot outside as the 'tumble dry low' setting on most machines. The wind took care of the tumbling part today; all of my shirts seem to be accounted for, but I have too many pairs of underwear to know if any of them have gone missing. Luckily, the strong sense of female propriety that runs rampant in this country has induced conservatism in my clothing choices--the translation to this is that if any of my underwear ended up in the driveway below, it was at least of the cotton-bikini type, rather than the frothy confections that I favored in college. I doubt that I will ever know whether Gopal or Jafar came across my panties, and I don't particularly feel like asking, but I will definitely pay more attention to the weather before hanging my laundry up in the future.

Tonight I did some work while watching Star Wars Episode 4; we still have to make it through five and six this week. I do not get Memorial Day off, which is v. sad, and that means that I should be going to bed. Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

dhoomed!

I have this Hindi song stuck in my head; it's the main song for the Bollywood movie 'Dhoom', and Regina and Arod are learning some dance moves to it so that they can eventually perform at one of the Friday meetings (the same meetings that have churned out memorable miming, a trivia show, and some guitar renditions of Led Zeppelin). It's super-catchy, which is unfortunate, since it's drowning out the usual techno soundtrack playing in my head.

Today was jam-packed with fun. I had breakfast (the best French toast ever), then read my book for an hour or so. Matt, Brian and I went to a museum this afternoon; the collection was started by one of the rulers of Hyderabad, and contains artifacts and pieces of art dating back to the 1st century AD. There was a strange juxtaposition of Indian and European artifacts; the weapons room contained both Indian swords and European chain mail, for example. It was ridiculously hot, since the museum isn't air conditioned, and so we only saw the first floor and decided that we would come back to explore again at some other point in time (i.e. after the monsoons cool the place down a bit). But, there were a few items of note:

1) The most impressive thing in the entire place wasn't even an Indian piece of art--it was a marble sculpture made by some Italian dude. The piece was called 'Veiled Rebecca', an artistic representation of a scene from the Bible when Rebecca draws a veil over her face when presented to Isaac for their betrothal. It was lifesize, carved out of a single block of marble, and it actually looked like a veil was covering her face and flowing down across her gown. The veil and her clothing were extremely lifelike; when I first walked into the room, not knowing what the statue was called, I thought that it was weird that it was shrouded in something. It was absolutely breathtaking.

2) On a lighter note (since there's always a lighter note with me), there was a room full of ivory, and it amused me to no end that the same people who probably killed elephants just for their tusks later carved elephants out of those same tusks. The best artifact was a knife carved out of ivory, with a handle topped by an elephant statuette. It was like the made the knife and put the elephant on top so that the wielder could go into the jungle and remember what he was supposed to kill. Brilliant!

3) There was a 'children's section' that was actually quite frightening. There were way too many examples of taxidermy; most of the specimens appeared to be decades old, and were much the worse for wear. There were a couple of birds that looked like they had just flown into the case and died there, since they weren't perched or posed anywhere, but were just lying rigid on the floor of the case. The best thing in the children's section, though, was the miniature exhibits on village life at the turn of the century. One scene had lots of water buffalo, farmers, etc...but there was one water buffalo lying on its side, clearly dead, and birds of prey had ripped out its intestines and were gorging themselves on his corpse. I know that it was just a model, rather than the real thing, but it was still shocking to see sculpted intestines in a children's section.

After the museum, we stopped at Coffee Day (the Indian equivalent of Starbucks), then came home. I took a nap and then went out to dinner with Lauren and Heather; we went to Angeethi again, and again it was tasty, although I was sad that they could only give me Thums-Up instead of Coke. Hopefully I will learn to appreciate the taste of Thums-Up soon, since it is v. popular here.

I then got roped into going to a club w/Arod and Regina; I'm glad I went, since it turned out to be quite amusing. The band was called the Bombay Rockers, but they were originally from Denmark...weird, huh? The venue was a lot like Frost Amphitheatre at Stanford--a series of steps leading down to the stage, sort of like the terracing used in farming to prevent erosion. We met up with some of the guys there, all of whom had started drinking way before us (or in my case, at all, since I didn't drink tonight--if there isn't any Old Monk, I won't drink it). We all ended up coming back to my place and several people played Halo 2.

I'm happy that I went out and did stuff today, but I'm retarded for agreeing to go to the zoo tomorrow; we're leaving at 8:15, and it's already 4am. Disaster! I'll post pictures later, but now I have to sleep.

by this, and this only, we have existed / which is not to be found in our obituaries

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
-from 'The Wasteland' by T.S. Eliot

I was too busy at work today to have the chance to get anything done, which is always horribly ironic. I came home, read a little bit (a serious book this time, rather than romance: V.S. Naipul's 'The Guerrilas'), then had dinner upstairs. I hung out in that apartment the rest of the night, and we ended up watching 'Star Wars II: The Clone Wars'. Unfortunately, we didn't start until midnight, so the movie didn't end until after two a.m., and I am v. tired.

Tomorrow, I should really go to Meena Bazaar to find a tailor and get my outfit stitched for the wedding that I'm going to in two weeks. However, someone else expressed interest in going to a museum, which I would really like to do, and so maybe I'll go to the museum and then run the errand to the bazaar later in the week.

I think I'm finally starting to feel settled here; it takes me time to warm up to new groups, since I'm rather shy initially, and it's hard to be the new person in a group whose social dynamics have already formed. I've now been here long enough to feel at home in my surroundings, and I'm developing a shared history with my coworkers that makes future interactions even easier. I am definitely going to have to start taking more pictures, especially if I go to the museum tomorrow--the weight of history here is amazing, and I can't wait to go to the north, where the history is incredible. I would write more about the infinitely interesting subject of whether or not I should take pictures, but unfortunately it's time for bed.

ten downing street

By seven tonight, I was desperately in need of a break from work, if only for a couple of hours. I figured shopping would do the trick--I have nothing to buy here and everything that I do buy can be expensed, which somehow removes some of the satisfaction. I'm dangerously close to becoming 'the man' in the capitalist system, as I'm accruing capital without being able to 'waste' it on meals and movies with friends and appliances for my kitchen. So, I decided to go swipe some plastic at FabIndia, one of the top stores on the expats' list. FabIndia has some great stuff, both clothes and home decorations. I got two tops, several scarves/shawls (since it's freezing in the office on the days when the power doesn't go out), and two bathmats with a matching pair of slippers. The bathmats are great--they're peach and yellow, and they're reversible to suit my mood. I adore textiles of all kinds--I think that learning to weave and sew was one of mankind's great achievements, and I would much prefer to be artistic with fabric rather than paint. If I were serious about quilting, I would definitely pick up tons of fabric here, but I will have to content myself with the occasional bedding or bathroom purchase.

I thought that FabIndia was going to be my break, and so I came home at eight p.m. with the intention of eating a quick dinner, watching 'I Heart Huckabees', and working until I fell asleep. The best laid plans often go astray, as they say, and I ended up going out instead. But first, dinner--Ranjit made dim sum! Of course, it wasn't the Hong Kong Flower Lounge--his take on dim sum was just chicken or veg potstickers (with ketchup instead of sweet and sour sauce), another very tasty chicken dish, and some noodles. It was all very tasty, but there was nothing to rival (or even approach) the har gar or the deep fried shrimp in bean curd. I would have even taken some pigs' feet w/petrified egg in black vinegar sauce. Actually, that's going too far, the food here is good and I am definitely not missing meat so much that I would resign myself to the pigs' feet at this point in time.

After dinner, six of us went to 10 Downing Street, an English-style pub in downtown Hyderabad. Thursday is karaoke night at 10 Downing Street--and it's funny, because I realized that the only other time I've been to a karaoke bar was also in a foreign country (Berlin, two nights before the Love Parade). The bar was great--they served decent drinks, the decor was stellar, and the karaoke was fun. I took pictures, but I'm too lazy to upload them tonight, so you'll have to wait.

I didn't get anything done tonight as a result of all of the fun that I had, which means that I will have to work this weekend. Boo. I also have to go back to Meena Bazaar to get the blouse made for my sari and to get my lehnga stitched, since I'm going to a wedding on June 10. I'd like to start exploring the city a little more; I've already been here a month, and I feel like I don't know my way around at all, and I haven't seen anything other than the major stores and a couple of cricket fields. If I keep telling myself that I have plenty of time, the whole trip will slip through my fingers.

First, however, I am going to explore the mystical wonders of my bed!

throw away your television

Some things just don't translate. I'm watching the Indian version of 'Pop-up Video' on Indian MTV; they have pop-up commentary on Indian music videos. The best, though, were the jokes interspersed in the video commentary:

Q: What do you call a girl with a hairy back?
A: Bear back!

Q: What do you call it when a cricketer has an affair?
A: Extra Marital innings!

The first one I didn't find funny; the second one, I didn't get at all.

So, I started switching channels, and I saw a screen that just said:

How do you get the British to surrender?

A. Execute prisoners
B. Call off negotiations
C. Threaten attack

Just when I thought that I was going to get to see a primer on guerrila warfare, or at least on the British occupation of India, it turned out that it was just a History Channel show on the American Revolution, dubbed in some other language. Sadness.

I was at work for almost fourteen hours today, which totally rocked. I'll give a shout-out to Lizzie, who hoped that she'd get an official mention after sending me a nice email and some music. Since I was at work all day, I don't really have much to report. However, it's been exactly four weeks since I got to India, which is impossible to believe. It seems like I've only been here for a few days, but it's already been a month! It's no wonder that I'm getting a little stir-crazy; I feel like I should be out exploring, or doing interesting things, rather than spending all my time working and sleeping. However, since I'm paid to be here working< I can't really complain about that. But hopefully I'll get out and do something this weekend. Or, I could wait a couple of weeks until the monsoon hits, and then it may be cool enough that I won't die if I'm outside for more than twenty minutes.

Pizza Hut in the United States is incredibly tasty; in India, it's downright amazing. Since some of us were at the office late, we ordered pizza, and it is unbelievably satisfying to eat greasy American pizza after a day in which I subsisted on corn flakes and popcorn (I had meetings straight through lunch, which was brutal). I also took a break around eight p.m. to sit in the massage chair; we have the same massage chair here that we have in the office back home, which I think is really funny, particularly since they still haven't bothered to translate the controller, and so you just end up pushing random buttons and seeing Japanese characters telling you doubtlessly-vital informaiton right before the machine starts molesting you. Despite the fact that it would occasionally squeeze my calves until I was afraid that my legs would be broken, it really helped my neck, and it gave me a much-needed boost before my last meeting of the day.

I have a lot of things to ponder, but I do not feel any closer to resolution about where I'm going with my life than I did the day that I showed up in Hyderabad. However, tonight is not that night that my fate will be resolved, and so I think I'll go to bed instead.

waiting for the moon to come and lock me up inside

I managed to spend only nine and a half hours at the office today, although I did have a conference call from 9:30 to 10:30pm that counts as work as well. However, I got to go out on another team dinner this week; since I'm not officially part of any set team, I apparently get to go on all of the bonding activities. Pretty sweet, eh? This dinner was at Cinnabar Redd, an Asian fusion restaurant in Banjara Hills. All of the restaurants seem to be in Banjara Hills; it's across the street from Angeethi, which is where I went on Saturday night, and shares a building with Fusion 9, which is apparently a great Italian place. The food was wonderful, and I had *beef*--they had a beef skewer that we discreetly got a few of, and it was tasty (although definitely no prime rib). We also had the ubiquitous chicken dishes, since it's the one meat accepted by all non-veg cultures (well, mutton is accepted too, but not by the religion of 'I only eat tasty things'). The prawns were good, as always, and the company was very entertaining. I'm glad that I went, although I have quite a bit of work to do and so will have to go into the office very early tomorrow.

The most random thing I saw today (and there are a lot of random things to see here) was while we were driving to the restaurant...I looked out the window and brieflys saw a middle-aged Asian man standing all alone, wearing a tshirt that said 'TEAM'. I haven't seen any other Asians (and by Asian I mean non-subcontinent Asians) here, so that was the first weird thing. It is also rare to be standing anywhere here and not have five hundred other people crowded around you at the same time, so he looked even more like an outcast without anyone nearby. And finally, the fact that his tshirt only said 'team' made absolutely no sense, particularly since his team was nowhere to be found. I think while I'm here, I should try to get some tshirt made that just say 'team', and then foist them off on my friends when I get back to the States.

Okay, enough blogging--you don't get to know anything more about my life until I get some sleep :)

silks from the orient 

most interesting snack at work: canned corn 

titanic brunch

I was at work for thirteen hours today, which was brutal. It was made more brutal by the fact that I didn't go to bed last night until 1:30am, with the expectation that I would get to sleep for six hours. Instead, I was shaken out of my blissfully strange malaria-pill dreams by a violent thunderstorm around four a.m. The lightning and thunder were intense, the wind threatened to knock my windows in, and rain came into my shower through the bathroom window. Luckily, it does not matter if one's shower is soaked; in fact, the rain water was probably cleaner than the water that I actually bathe in. I have missed thunderstorms during my time in California, so it was nice to have one, but hopefully my sleep will not be interrupted again tonight.

At the office today, I ate a whole package of Ritz-cracker-knockoffs (i.e. they taste like Ritz crackers, but are made by someone else and only cost six rupees, or around eleven cents). They were extremely tasty, and the package revealed their stunning secret: they are made with 'edible vegetable oil.' I am shocked and devastated to learn that my entire life, I have been eating products made with potentially-inedible vegetable oil. As a daughter of the Corn Belt, I feel cheated and lied to.

Since nothing happened at the office today worth repeating (the power even stayed on all day!), I will regale you with more tales of my weekend. Namely, I shall describe brunch at the Taj Krishna.

The Taj Krishna is a luxury hotel approximately twenty minutes from my apartment, which is located in Hitec City. The Taj Krishna is across the street from the hotel in which I stayed at the beginning of my trip; as you can tell from the name of my former hotel, the Taj Residency, the two hotels are related. I do not know why the same company owns two equally-upscale hotels across the street from one another, but I have stopped questioning things that do not make sense here.

The brunch at the Taj Krishna is called the 'Titanic Brunch', which seems to be a rather unfortunate reference, although I suppose that everyone on the actual Titanic drowned before they had the chance to contract food poisoning from the ship buffet. There is a pool outside the restaurant, and so the drowning option exists for us as well. Every Sunday at around noon, any expat who is awake piles into the cars (driven by liveried drivers wearing white shirts, white pants, and a small 'CosyCabs' logo on the left breast) and takes the short trip over to the Taj Krishna. Once there, we always sit at the same long table, and we all order the same things that we typically get. My default order is a barbecued chicken pizza, and I also eat a croissant with smoked salmon while enduring the interminable wait for the pizza. However, many other people choose to eat waffles, and the chefs also turn out some remarkable French fries. I find it ironic that I usually cannot have ice at the Titanic Brunch, but c'est la vie.

Brunch at the Taj Krishna makes me contemplate my expatriate status more strongly than just about anything else. By Sunday at noon, most of us have spent Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night with each other; that leaves very little to discuss over brunch. We talk about the same things that all Westerners seem to talk about (the heat, the weather, our work, the five restaurants we always go to and how they compare to each other, which stores we should go to this weekend, etc.).

That is all perfectly fine; I enjoy spending time with my coworkers, and some of them are becoming genuine friends. However, the expatriate feeling is inescapable at the Taj Krishna. The Titanic Brunch caters to a large crowd of Westerners, and so it feels like what I have always imagined a British club to be. Looking around, one sees a) intricate artwork, b) stunning food creations, c) more white people than any other place in Hyderabad, and d) uniformed natives catering to one's heart's desire. I do not think that some unfortunate British wives went mad because of the heat; they went mad from attempting to layer their old lives on a completely alien world.

At the Taj Krishna on Sunday, I noticed that a man sitting at a table near ours kept looking at us, and he appeared to be sketching as he stared. He was hunched over his journal, long straggly grey hair falling onto the table, and he would occasionally look up furtively (but intensely) as his hand moved across the paper. I made eye contact with him several times--that awkward, startled eye contact of one who has been caught staring, but cannot feel too ashamed because the person who did the catching was staring as well. I had been skimming the surface of the conversation around me, and was focusing most of my attention on my inner thoughts and on a bird perched beside the pool outside. I was also engaged in the same sort of detached observation that I typically practice when in a group that I am not wholly a part of; observation that protects the inside as much as it watches the outside. And so, while it felt unsettling and surreal to furtively watch someone who was furtively watching us, I did not want to draw anyone else's attention to him. Since I was essentially doing the same thing, only without paper, it seemed unfair to turn him into an object of amusement, or scorn, or revulsion. I wanted to see what he was drawing, but it was impossible without inviting the attention of everyone else, and so we left the Taj Krishna and the moment disappeared.

Brunch at the Taj Krishna is not a comfortable tradition like dim sum; it is a reminder of how alienated I am from this country, and how different I am when I am with coworkers, rather than family and friends. On the surface, brunch is just a pleasant Sunday activity, replete with tasty Westernized food and the occasional after-brunch pedicure at the salon downstairs. However, beneath the waves lurks all of the fear, dislocation, culture shock, and indescribable wonder of living in Hyderabad.

The message is heightened by the Sri Lankan calypso band that plays in the restaurant; their best songs are 'One Way Ticket' and a cover of 'Hotel California'. Surrounded by loud expatriates and deferential waiters, staring at (and being stared at by) a mysterious artist/pervert, idly eating salmon on the surface while facing an existential crisis beneath the waves, the lines 'you can check out but you can never leave' seemed to have been written just for me.

no words, no talk, we'll go dreaming

If I choose to use a sample of a techno song as the title of my post, and the techno artist sampled that lyric from another source, how far am I removed from actual artistry?

This weekend was not busy enough to excuse my lack of posting, but every time I've gotten ready to write, I've gone to sleep again. Tonight was going to be no exception, but I decided that I couldn't abandon my blog for the third night in a row or my mother would kill me. So, to recap my weekend:

Friday: I went to work, and we had another fun-filled Friday afternoon meeting. A couple of guys had gone to a lot of effort to find a lot of English and Hindi songs and movie clips, and they had set up a trivia game around these clips. We split into eight teams; the first round, every team got an English and a Hindi song, sans words, and had to name the song and what movie it came from; the second round, every team got an English and a Hindi music video, sans music, and had to name the song; the third round, every team got a Hindi film and an English film and had to describe what happened right after the clip. It was really fun, even though all the expats were a liability, rather than an asset, to their teams. The people in the office knew *all* the songs, movies, etc., and could even sing all of 'Sweet Child of Mine' when asked. Crazy!

Saturday, I had brunch, sat around, and then saw 'Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith'. Despite the fact that I've only seen bits and pieces of the original three, and had not seen either of the most recent films, I really, really liked it. The overall Star Wars story arc is so ingrained in popular culture that it would be hard not to have *some* idea that Anakin Skywalker was going to go over to the dark side. The very knowledge that his fate was already known made the whole movie so much more tragic, and I enjoyed it immensely. I'm making a push to watch the other five movies with another girl who hasn't seen any of them; however, we discovered tonight that we can't watch them with people who've seen them a thousand times, because it's much too annoying. We started to watch 'The Phantom Menace' tonight, but the presence of a lot of people who had seen it before was not appreciated. So, we stopped the movie and pretended to lose interest...then waited for everyone else to disperse and started the movie over by ourselves. I think I enjoyed 'The Phantom Menace' more than a die-hard Star Wars fan, especially since I was satisfied with Episode III and am willing to tolerate the back-story that leads to Anakin's fall.

Seeing a movie in India is very fun. The theatre is a huge complex, replete with a gaming center, food court, and an IMAX screen. We saw the movie on a regular theatre screen, although the seats were pleasantly tiered so that everyone had a pretty good view. The movie started exactly on time, which took me by surprise (no trailers!), and the ushers were constantly walking back and forth with flashlights to escort latecomers to their seats. They also cut off the movie abruptly in the middle for an intermission, which was really strange and not appreciated at all, although I know that it happens in every movie. There was also a mouse in the theatre; while I did not feel it, I heard reports that it was crawling across the back edge of people's seats, which must have been discomforting.

After the movie, we went to Angeethi, a super-tasty Indian restaurant with the ubiquitous giant naan. Then, we saw part of our company's first corporate cricket match against another company in Hyderabad. Some of the guys set up their own team, replete with jerseys, and are entered into some cricket tournament. The game didn't start until 10pm, to beat the heat, and apparently didn't end until our victory at 2am (although I didn't stay that late).

Cricket is a fun game to watch because it is so weird. We waited half an hour for the game to start, and it seemed that the only things we were waiting for were a) some of the cricket players who were chain-smoking in the field behind the stadium, and b) these two people who were pushing this really large, really heavy metal roller across the main part of the field in an apparent attempt to keep it as flat as possible. It looked like a miserable job, made all the more miserable by the fact that it appeared unnecessary.

Today I had brunch at the Taj Krishna, then went to Hyderabad Central and picked up swim goggles, then back home (where I started to read a book but fell asleep instead). I talked to my parents, and went upstairs for dinner (we ordered in, as the staff has Sunday off). We watched 'The Phantom Menace', and now it is definitely my bedtime. I will endeavor to be more communicative in the future.

mainland china

I had dim sum tonight! Actually, I can't really qualify it as dim sum; it was siu mai, but it wasn't nearly as good as the siu mai at the Hong Kong Flower Lounge. We went to a restaurant called Mainland China for a small-team dinner, but their dim sum selection left much to be desired. They did have something along the lines of 'bean curd delight', but since I was being safe and tame for my coworkers (rather than playing the 'Shrimp or Feet?' game), I didn't order it. The food was pretty good, although I think I preferred the Chinese food that I had at Ohri's two weeks ago. They did have these awesome butterfly-cut jumbo prawns that were to die for, and there was a crackling spinach dish that was intriguing and surprisingly rich, but the lemon chicken had a day-glo tinge to it and the fried crabs were smothered in a sauce that I didn't care for. However, dinner itself was fun; there were six of us, all female, and so the conversation was very entertaining...and also manageable, unlike when I go out with a group of fourteen people.

For a girl who showed up in California without ever having held a pair of chopsticks before, it was quite a surprise to find myself at a dinner where I was the only person who wanted to use them. Eating dim sum every week for several years has definitely improved my chopstick skillz, even if it hasn't done anything for my bank account or my fruitless endeavors to lead a normal, grown-up life.

I interviewed someone for a job today, and it was quite shocking to find that he had studied at the University of Nebraska. Moreover, when I asked him to describe a bad customer service experience he'd had in the past, he referenced Hy-Vee (the local grocery chain headquartered in Iowa)!! It's funny that he mentioned Hy-Vee...I was hoping that he'd claim he'd gotten food poisoning or something, but instead he said that the bagger was this old lady, and that she'd put his carton of eggs at the bottom of the sack and then put a heavy bag of rice on top of it, and the rice had immediately crushed the eggs. He asked her what she thought she was doing, and she said that she'd been doing it for thirty years and he shouldn't question her. So, he ended up with eight crushed eggs, no one was manning the consumer complaints desk, and he ended up switching grocery stores.

This will probably only be funny to people who shop at Hy-Vee, particularly the one in my home town, where the grocery store only has seven aisles, the meat is usually slightly suspect, and they also serve as a video rental store. It definitely made me feel very sympathetic toward the candidate--going from Hyderabad to Nebraska is probably as much or more of a culture shock than going from Iowa to California to Hyderabad. And since I only talk about Hy-Vee with Ritu back in California, it was super shocking to hear it in an interview here. Small world, eh?

Now, it's time for bed. Also, happy birthday Uncle Mark!

never get involved in a land war in asia!

The advice given in 'The Princess Bride' apparently holds true in the game of Civilization as well; I got involved in an ultimately mostly-fruitless war against the Russians, even though I knew better, and I wasted a lot of time building up a war apparatus when I could have been pursuing cultural hegemony. Sigh. I think that 'wasted a lot of time' is the operative phrase in that sentence, since I could have gone to bed hours ago if I hadn't gotten sucked into the game.

Work today was fun; since it's so hot, there are occasional brownouts, even in Hitec City. It doesn't really affect work, since the computers stay on via the emergency generator; but I had a meeting with my manager today, and the power went off at least three times in half an hour. It's quite exciting, and breaks up the monotony of a normal day in corporate 'america'.

For dinner, Ranjit made 'Mexican' food; it's pretty close to Mexican, but it's not quite there, since there was no cheese, no sour cream, no refried beans, etc. However, the chicken fajitas were great, as were the burritos--I think he's cooking more of a weak Tex-Mex than a real Mexican cuisine, and I don't know where he's getting the recipes, but since I'd only had a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, I still managed to do his dinner justice.

I find that I'm getting more acclimated to having servants; I've come to accept the futility of convincing them that I can get my own water or that they don't need to stand up every time I enter the room, and so I'm not quite as uncomfortable as I was before. However, I'm still uncomfortable with the idea on a more abstract level...it makes me feel like an imperialist, like I should be getting paid by the East India Company instead of my actual place of work. I will definitely have to return with silks and spices, or else all of the guilt I feel over being essentially a high-tech colonizer will be for nothing.

check

This post is merely to inform you that I am still alive; however, I am too tired to engage in my usual fecundity. I will return to my extreme blogging tomorrow. Thanks for your patience and understanding in this matter.

sibling revelry

Nothing much to report, except to say that my brother turns twenty today. Shocking!

Work was busy today, and I had a conference call tonight, which was unfortunate since all I want to do is crawl into bed. However, I'm such a night-owl/procrastinator/stubborn idiot that I refuse to go to sleep earlier than midnight, even though I clearly need it. So, I played some Civilization and called my mother. I hadn't played Civilization in ages, and it sucked me in just like it always does, so even though I was only supposed to play for an hour, I ended up playing for two. Due to my politically incorrect sense of humor, I decided to play as the imperialistic British, even though (or rather, because) I am in India, and despite the fact that I could have played as Gandhi instead. However, I was good and did not tell the game to put the Indians in it; I always have enough fun trouncing the French or the Germans, without having to go out of my way to be insensitive.

I was first turned on to the Civilization franchise when I was in Ukraine; Vova gave us some pirated games, and the original Civilization was one of them. In many ways, I still think it was the best; the movies that it played when you built a Wonder of the World were truly moving, and the game wasn't so complex and graphics-intensive that you couldn't keep track of everything. Ukraine was quite the trip--and also half a lifetime ago, which seems impossible. Spending an entire year cooped up in a Soviet-style apartment may have created a difficult schism for me and my brother, but I believe things are better now that we've grown up and I no longer torment him quite as mercilessly as I did when torturing him was my only form of entertainment. And, regardless of where our lives take us, we'll always have Kiev, and airport pizza, and Sergei the Wise and Little Sergei and Sergei Chicken and Sergei Pickup (all Sergeis in our lives were differentiated by their key characteristics), and our amazingly inventive Christmas program, and 'The Charm School', and doing homework to the staticky strains of Voice of America Radio.

Happy birthday, Michael! It's already the seventeenth in India, but I hope the last half of your birthday rocks.

harbinger of doom

Tonight, I hung out in the apartment that I am supposed to move into in about two weeks; we ordered pizza from Dominos, and watched 'The Bourne Identity'. I've seen 'The Bourne Identity' multiple times, and in fact own it, although we were watching someone else's copy. Jason Bourne is about as hot as it gets--it's a classic assassin-with-a-heart-of-gold story, and as I've said before, the great thing about him is that he is intelligent about what he does, rather than just using brute strength to win the day. And, as every heterosexual female under the age of eighty must feel, the scene where he dyes and cuts Marie's hair is about the hottest thing one shall ever see--his muscles are bulging, he's hacking away at her hair with a pair of desk scissors, and the end result is impossibly good, better than the expensively stylish haircut that I got in LA a couple of years ago. So freaking hot!

However, what was *not* hot was that, during the movie, mice (or rats?) were hanging out in the apartment with us. They're rather brazen; the best was when one of them scaled the entertainment center and disappeared into the air conditioning vent above the TV. Since we were watching the movie at this point, this definitely did not escape our collective notice. My first confirmed rodent sighting has greatly increased the possibility that I will contract the Black Death, thus fulfilling one of my fondest imaginings. I took my malaria pill tonight, mostly because I don't want the malaria to take me out before I have the chance to develop the classic buboes associated with the plague.

I woke up around ten this morning, none the worse for my prolonged interaction with the Old Monk last night, and went to the Taj Krishna hotel for a pedicure before joining the rest of the expats in the restaurant for brunch. After brunch, I came home and read most of a Georgette Heyer romance novel, since it was too hot for extended shopping (the high today: 44 degrees Celsius, or 111 degrees Fahrenheit). I was desperately in need of some tammy time--the correct name would be 'sara time', but 'tammy time' has better alliteration, and I stole the phrase from her, so I might as well keep the name of the grand tradition that Tammy has started. I really like the other people who live here, but it's nice to have a short break from the madding crowd. Anyway, I got sick of sitting in my room around four, so I procured a car and went to a bookstore. They have a surprisingly good selection, and I was able to pick up some classics that I've been meaning to read, as well as another Georgette Heyer novel. The ordering scheme threw me off until I realized that the fiction section was (mostly) alphabetical by first name, and then I got along swimmingly. On the way home, we stopped at Baskin Robbins and I got ice cream for me and the driver; they claim to have 31 flavors here as well, but it seems that they are perpetually out of most of them, so I think that it is false advertising. Also, the tragedy of an ice cream cone is that it is oh-so-satisfying through 98% of the cone, but then the last bite leaves you just as thirsty and unquenched as you were before the first taste of ice cream hit your tongue. The last bite is almost always mostly cone, despite how you try to ration the ice cream and push it to the bottom--so while the strawberry ice cream was delicious, I was annoyed at the end of it. Luckily we pulled up to the apartments at that point, so I was able to find some water.

In other news, I shouldn't have taken my sari out of the box; it's beautiful, but I am too short to be capable of easily folding nine yards of brocaded silk mesh. I am also completely out of my element when it comes to draping a sari; I can understand that nine yards is more than enough fabric to cover myself in all modesty, but I don't understand how to wrap it in such a way that it manages to look elegant and stylish, instead of just like an elaborate bedsheet worn to a college toga party. I hope that some latent ability to wear saris manifests itself, or I will have quite the uncomfortable time at the wedding I'm going to this summer.

Now, time for bed (and dreams of Jason Bourne...and more importantly, a stylishly short haircut).

the old monk wishes you a happy passover

Well, today was quite the eventful Saturday. I had to go into the office for a couple of hours this afternoon, and afterwards I went shopping w/Arod and Regina. I had only intended to go to pick up the pants that I got made last weekend, but we ended up doing some serious shopping at Meena Bazaar. The place is absolutely fantastic if you love fabric (which I do), and the end result was that I walked away with a sari and an absurdly expensive lehnga. Saris are the traditional wraparound formal outfit, which I do not yet know how to wrap around myself; lehngas are fitted tops and full skirts, with a matching scarf of sorts. The sari is this gorgeous red, and the lehnga is a sky blue that goes against my traditional color choice but makes my skin look nice and pale, so I had to go for it. I had to get something for a wedding that I'm going to in June, and I figure that between the two of them, I'm pretty much set for any Indian weddings that I may attend in the future. Yay. If nothing else, the red one would make some fantastic pillows at a later date.

The end result of this absurd shopping excursion was two unfortunate facts: we were an hour and a half late for dinner, and I have to go back to Meena Bazaar for the third weekend in a row next weekend to get the top made for the sari and get the lehnga custom-fitted and stitched. Boo. I was *starving* by the time we got home, since we walked in the apartments at 9:30pm and I hadn't eaten since my light breakfast at 11am.

So, it was quite amusing that dinner tonight wasn't a groaning-table feast at a fancy restaurant, but rather a super-belated Passover seder. One of the guys finally received a package from his mom containing matzah and other fun Jewish things, so we did a pseudo-seder tonight. The cooks turned out some mighty tasty matzah-ball soup, but we can't get wine here for love or money (well, you can get it for money if you want to spend $100 for a bottle that would cost $15 in the States), so we drank pina coladas instead of wine. Each pitcher of pina colada contained half a bottle of 'Old Monk' rum; surprisingly good stuff, since it costs about $4/bottle and is called Old Monk. Let me just say for a second that it's really weird to drink Old Monk with your boss and your boss' boss in the same room; the director of the whole office was sitting beside me, which was a little trippy. It got even better after someone pulled out her karaoke machine; however, since it was plugged in using a veritable Erector Set of transformers, adapters, and surge protectors, it's little wonder that the thing overheated and died after a few songs.

Much to my pleasure and enduring happiness, we made up for the lack of karaoke with a screening of 'Eurotrip', and I made up for a lack of pina colada mix by throwing together the last of the Finlandia vodka, some Old Monk, and a can of Red Bull. 'Eurotrip' was just as great as always, but I had to vacate when someone put in 'Donnie Darko', since I want to see that movie in a completely sober state of mind.

While I have v. fond memories of passover seders in the States, I must say that there was something v. entertaining about celebrating passover in India, more than a month late, with a rum called Old Monk instead of bottles of Manischewitz. We spent an inordinate amount of time talking about popes and Catholics, no doubt due to the beneficent influence of the Old Monk. And, of course, 'Eurotrip' climaxes in the Vatican, and I was so late for dinner that I missed most of the important ritual stuff, so I don't think this really qualifies as a seder for me at all. Oh, well, perhaps I'll celebrate one next year. Now, it's time for bed!

'cause i've been waiting all week to feel this way

Ah, the joys of Friday. I got out of the office by 6:30, came home and took a powernap, and then went to a restaurant/lounge called Touch for a pseudo-bridal-shower. This place was hysterical; there was an inordinate amount of mood lighting, there were little squares of water embedded in the tables with rose petals and floating candles, there were floor-to-ceiling sheer drapes all over the place, and everything was v. white and v. 'modern'. It felt like something straight out of 'Shock of the New', for those SLE kids out there--actually, I was a terrible SLE kid and don't remember much of 'Shock of the New' other than that I thought all the modern art was ridiculous, and since that's what this place was, I assume that it could have been featured very prominently in our spring quarter class [for those of you who didn't go to Stanford, SLE is 'Structured Liberal Education', and I wear my participation in it like the mark of Cain].

Despite the silly decor, the food was really good, and the drinks were entertaining. I have a penchant for entertaining drinks, rather than good drinks, and I definitely hit the jackpot at this place. They were actually serving something very close to the infamous Tokyo Army (a Tokyo Tea is a real drink, w/Midori melon liquer, vodka, gin, rum, sweet and sour mix, and triple sec...but the Tokyo Army was concocted at a party with a v. limited selection of mixers, and involved brandy and blue curacao so that it was army drab instead of the superbright Midori green). They called it something else, but in my mind, a mix of blue curacao and whiskey could only end up being a Tokyo Army. I avoided that, but I did have a blue martini that was served, very surprisingly, in a bowl-shaped glass with a glowstick in it. My second drink was a Green Demon (midori and some other stuff; I essentially split the Midori and the blue curacao into two separate experiences, and was happy that I did). After that, I stopped, since I was sitting next to my boss and it just seems strange to have any drinks at all with your boss, let alone two. It's rather unavoidable here, since we all live together, eat together, work together, shop together, go out together, etc., etc., but it's still just slightly weird.

The rest of the day was good as well; some of the people in the office are putting together and band, and they played a few songs this afternoon at the end-of-week meeting. Their version of Radiohead's 'Creep' needed some work, but they are pretty good at Led Zeppelin, which was highly amusing. It was also more enjoyable and interactive than the miming performance last week, so things are looking up.

American slang is proliferating amongst the people who work for us; when Gopal, one of my favorite drivers, was bringing me home last night, we almost got hit by an autorickshaw. His reaction? 'Oh snap!' That's so hot. I wonder what he would think of 'Zoolander'?

I have to go into the office tomorrow afternoon, which is an unfortunately necessary evil. I'm trying to leave the rest of the weekend relatively unstructured; I know we'll have brunch on Sunday, and I want to go to a bookstore, but I'd prefer to spend the rest of the time sitting around and reading or writing. Yes, writing...the romance novel has to get finished while I'm here, and I have to start sometime. Will tomorrow be the day I start? Don't count on it :)

starry eyed surprise

I had my Q1 review via cellphone this morning; yes, Q1 ended at the end of March, but I was pretty difficult to track down while I was getting ready to come to India, and now that I am here it is hard to coordinate my schedule with that of my former manager. I took the call at my apartment before going to the office this morning, which was good because I didn't risk being late for it, but bad because I could get more easily distracted in my room with a view than I could have in a windowless conference room. And oh, what a view--it's reproduced below for your edification.

What you cannot see from this view is the image that completely snapped me out of the usually-focused state that I enter when talking to managers--the sight of a man walking into the field below, squatting beside a scrub bush, and defecating in broad daylight. He was too far away to actually see anything indelicate, but it was blatantly obvious what he was doing, and I was so arrested by the fact that this was happening in front of me that I completely lost my train of thought. I wasn't entirely surprised, because someone had said that people frequently use the field behind the apartments as a latrine of sorts, but I hadn't seen it before and so was caught offguard. If the intense 105-degree heat and the fact that there are several drivers who sit downstairs all day waiting to take me wherever I want to go weren't already enough of a deterrent, this just convinced me that I never, ever want to walk around and explore here. At least not in open 'nature.' If my mother can recount the time when, as a toddler, I stepped in a mudpuddle and started sobbing brokenheartedly because I had gotten my feet dirty, you can only imagine my reaction if I someday embed my delicate gold sandals in a pile of human waste. I will leave the rocks and scrubbery (for I cannot call it shrubbery) outside my window for someone else to explore and conquer.

Despite that, my review went off with flying colors. I'm getting settled in at the office, although I still don't feel busy enough--but I guess that's to be expected, since I haven't gotten to the point where I have regular meetings and a rigid agenda on top of all the work that I want to accomplish. Right now, what I'm doing is actually doable, and so I suppose I shouldn't be complaining.

In another instance of things that I profess to hate turning up in my life with alarming frequency, I've found that a lot of foods here that are attempting to be Western end up using fetal corn. I'm sure other people don't call it fetal corn, but you know what I'm talking about--the baby corn that shows up in California salad bars, even though any good Iowan knows that the only way to eat corn is fresh from the field, straight off the cob, and covered in butter and salt. The crap in salad bars is just an ear of corn that was aborted before it could reach its full potential. So imagine my surprise when we ordered pizza for the office last night (from Pizza Hut!) and the vegetarian option came covered in fetal corn. Luckily for me, I am not a vegetarian, so I chose the chicken and pineapple (aka Hawaiian for Muslims)...but the sight of fetal corn on pizza made me laugh. Pizza Hut, though, is really quite tasty, which is huge--the food in the apartments is very good, but sometimes you just want pizza, you know? And I'm always starving at the office--lunch is completely unappealing to me (they serve Indian food every day except Thursday, which is Chinese food--and it's always either a chicken or a fish dish, and I'm getting sick of chicken and I don't really trust the fish, so there goes that), and they have Lays potato chips but they're all weird flavors like 'magic masala', so I'm not eating those either. Therefore, I subsist on crunchy peanut butter sandwiches and the occasional bowl of corn flakes, and survive on idealistic dreams of perfect non-fetal-corn pizza.

I got really good feedback from one of the managers today that my emails are too long--it was refreshing to actually get feedback on something that can be improved, and I appreciated it. However, do not expect any attempts at conciseness to spill over onto my blog; I'm already going a little crazy because I am not communicating like I do back home (and by that I mean all the freaking time), so the blog is a good outlet with which to remind myself that I am still capable of stringing words together somewhat intelligibly. However, I really should go to bed, so I will leave you with this tidbit from my brother (he who turns twenty in three days):

"Tonight I enjoyed a frozen pizza supper with my father, which was interrupted by a bat flying around the living room. Dad beat it to death with a pillow off of the couch. Supper continued un-phased."

I really, really wish I could have seen that. The pillow he was referencing isn't particularly large (it's square, perhaps a foot and a half across) or threatening (it's a lovely forest green), but for a brief moment in its life, it suddenly became a deadly weapon. My brother elaborated on this in conversation and told me that my father actually held his dinner plate with one hand while swinging with the other, but ended up handing the plate to my brother so he could get a better grip on the pillow. It takes a lot of skill to hit something equipped with a) sonar and b) wings with a pillow, so I'm quite impressed.

the view from my bedroom window 

two points for honesty

Most of the Indians I have met, particularly in the office, are brutally honest. It's like all of the American attempts at subterfuge, diversion, and (to use my favorite phrase) passive aggression are lost on them. For instance, the other day someone said to me, 'I wanted to tell you that you have a really cute face in your picture'. She was referring to the picture on my entrance badge, which was taken when I was hired a year and a half ago, and in which I have much shorter hair and a more meticulous makeup job than I've been wearing to the office here. The way she said it, though, did not imply that I had a cute face in general; instead, it seemed to indicate that I had looked cute in the picture and should attempt to look like that again. I've heard reports of even stranger things being said (for instance, one coworker has a picture of herself before she came to India, and someone looked at it and said 'India has really taken its toll on you'). I think perhaps things are more literal here; for instance, I gave a presentation today and asked for feedback on it, and I actually got feedback from people on it. In the US office, I would have given the presentation, asked for feedback, and it would have been understood that no one would respond and I wouldn't be offended by the lack of response. So imagine my surprise when I actually got messages from people who attended the presentation with suggestions for improvement. Crazy! It's just a further indication that my passive aggressive tendencies won't work particularly well here, despite my affinity for them; I've honed them almost to an artform in the US, but it's hard to stay passive aggressive, rather than just aggressive, in the face of comments about one's appearance.

I was at work for a mere thirteen hours today, and came home and spent another half hour sending some emails, as well as twenty minutes or so talking to one of my roommates. I'm switching apartments at the end of the month; apparently they are as anxious as possible to put me in an apartment with other women, despite the fact that I am already settled into my room and do not have a problem living with men (reference Walter). I do have a problem calling them 'men' rather than 'boys', but they're also both older than me and managers in the bargain, so I guess that is what I must call them. Perhaps HR is trying to avoid difficult issues like whether I should call my roommates 'men' or 'boys' by moving me to an apartment with other girls/women. So anyway, I will attempt to refrain from buying more things over the next couple weeks, since I have an alarming tendency to accumulate possessions, and it would make me very sad to have to move a lot of stuff. I've already picked up two bedspreads, two shirts, a pair of platform shoes, some books, a DVD player, and a lot of hangers, and I've only been living in the apartments for a week. Haha. It's only going to get worse, I'm sure, and then I'll have to look into getting a sea container to ship my stuff back home in. Accumulation seems to be in my blood; it's probably why my family has always stayed in the vast emptiness of the Midwest, since there's so much more space for storing things. Speaking of, I'd like to wish my brother luck in cleaning out his warehouse; he's only 19 (20 in four days!) and he already has a warehouse. Lucky!

spin spin sugar

I'm on a massive techno kick right now; I dumped a whole bunch of Orbital and Crystal Method and Juno Reactor into a playlist, and I've been quietly rocking out to myself at my desk at work. The music is perfect for work right now, since it has strong driving beats (for energy) but not a lot of distracting lyrics. Watching 'The Saint' set me off on my current techno trip; I'm sure it will go away when I watch a different movie or become interested in something else, but right now all I want to do is a) listen to techno music, b) watch 'The Matrix' or 'The Bourne Identity', and c) go back to East Berlin and dance in an abandoned factory complex until the sun comes up. As an acceptable alternative, I would take the overheated euphoric party during the Crystal Method set at Coachella last year...but I somehow think that I'm not going to get my wish.

In related news, I just discovered that the song that plays during the credits of 'The Bourne Identity' is off of Moby's CD '18'--which is really annoying to me, because I actually own the CD and haven't listened to it in years, and never bothered to rip it onto my laptop. So the choice comes down to paying a dollar to buy a copy of a song I already own from the iTunes Music Store, or spending the next six months thinking glumly about a song I could be enjoying constantly. Six minutes is probably a closer estimate to the amount of time I will spend mourning my loss--but if anyone could send a copy of Moby's 'Extreme Ways' to my gmail account, I would love you forever. Or at least for awhile.

Nothing happened today, which is why this post is long on thoughts about techno and short on thoughts about India. I went to work, did some work, came home, ate dinner, and then read the first third of Malcolm Gladwell's 'Blink'. That does not imply that I got home early; I didn't get home until ~7:45, but I'm a fast reader. I'm reserving judgment of the book until I read it all...but that's horribly ironic, since the whole point of the book is that your subconscious can usually make accurate interpretations of situations in a very short period of time. My subconscious says that most of what he's saying is horribly obvious; but, he's also a columnist for 'The New Yorker' and is writing for a popular, rather than strictly scientific, crowd. His book 'The Tipping Point' was really helpful for my honors thesis, but there just aren't that many books out there about network theory because it's such a relatively new field, and his book ended up being central to my claim that Bonhoeffer was important because he served to connect members of the German resistance, not because he was a leader or a particularly influential person. 'Blink', however, deals more with the subconscious and how we make decisions--interesting stuff, but I think my subconscious already knew a lot about how people read each other and why decisions are often inexplicable, so I'm finding it rather elementary. Still, I'm going to stick it out, if only because I'm curious to see what conclusions he'll draw from the copious amounts of anecdotes he's using.

I'd also like to take a moment to engage in a little bit of that great American pastime: Soviet-bashing. The celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe were on May 8, and as I'm sure you're all aware, the biggest gathering took place in Moscow. I'm sure there was something horribly ironic about seeing a bunch of leaders of NATO countries watching a Soviet-style parade in Red Square, especially given that the army units were dressed partially in WWII-era uniforms and carried Soviet flags. However, humor aside, I'm deeply worried about the state of Russia (and the State of Russia), and I don't like where things are headed. Unlike most of the Eastern Bloc states, where democratic roots were planted in brief spurts over several hundred years and can still be remembered by people who were alive during the brief and fragile interwar period, Russia doesn't exactly have a good history of government by the people and for the people. Between the Vikings, Mongols, Tartars, Swedes, French, and Germans, as well as the tsars and the Bolsheviks, the Russians have always been (at best) downtrodden and (at worst) completely screwed. Yes, they have an impressive and amazing history; but it is made more impressive and amazing because of the obstacles standing in their path, not because they have had a great record of human tolerance and growth. While the rest of Europe has spent sixty years trying to outgrow the rampant nationalism that led to two world wars, Russia seems to be embracing nationalistic tendencies again in an effort to shore up her low self esteem. Hmm, can we name any other countries that faced hyperinflation, poverty, complete disintegration of government services, and a tendency bred over hundreds of years to accept and yearn for a strong authoritarian government as long as said government kept food on the table? While the Middle East is understandably a top world priority right now, Russia has hundreds of millions of people, scads of nuclear weapons, potentially large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and a historic propensity for sacrificing her own people in the name of the leader. While I do not agree with all of the foreign policy decisions made by the current Administration, I hope that Condoleezza has been keeping up on her knowledge of Russia...I think we're going to need some serious diplomacy in that area of the world.

Anyway, back to the bashing--I hate the Soviets with a passion, but I don't think the Allies had much of a choice; however, they completely sold out all the Poles and Czechs who had spent so much time forming plans for governments after the war, and condemned an entire swath of Central and Eastern Europe to another fifty years of foreign domination in exchange for freedom in the West. Did they have any other choice? Probably not--Britain was on the verge of starvation, the entire infrastructure of Europe was completely destroyed, and the Allies (and especially America) would have their hands full with the still-engaged Pacific front for months after victory was declared in Europe. The West *might* have been able to beat Stalin if it escalated into full-fledged war; but they couldn't have done it without opening multiple fronts, and Stalin was crazy enough that he would have thrown every single man, woman and child in front of the war machine if necessary.

Okay, so there wasn't much of a point to that, other than to say that while I applaud the immense sacrifice made by the average Soviet citizens during World War II, I think that Russia is deluding itself by thinking only of itself as a victor nation without discussing its own horrendous past. Yes, 20 million Russians died in WWII, as many as all other nations put together. But after the war was over, how many Americans and Brits were killed by their own armies because they had seen that Berlin, even at its nadir, wasn't as bad as some Soviet cities? The Soviets were just *awful*--most of the soldiers who occupied Germany had to be 'reconditioned' or sent to gulags just because they'd been tainted by contact with the Nazis and/or capitalism. When the Soviets and the Nazis jointly occupied Poland in 1939, it's basically a toss-up to determine which side was more oppressive. So Russia, congratulations on winning the war--but maybe you'd be doing a little better with this democracy experiment if you started owning up to your past and working to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

my kingdom for a scented handkerchief

I came home from the office late tonight (around 9:30pm), and the driver had very clearly been outside for the twelve hours that I had been in the office. As we were driving back to the apartments, I felt like I could have very happily been one of those ridiculous, fastidious, foppish Englishmen on a Grand Tour of Europe, holding a scented handkerchief to my nose to mask the scent of the unwashed masses. Alas, I had no scented handkerchief, so I just tried to breathe through my mouth as much as possible. I'm also not on a Grand Tour, so I didn't go gambling or brothel-hopping after work; instead, I called my mother and then had a late dinner in the apartment above mine. The chef, Ranjit, and the assistant chef (?), Suraj, are very entertaining and make fantastic food as part of the bargain. Ranjit often refers to his former boss, 'the Swedish madam', who taught him how to make many of the things that he cooks for us; I'm working under the assumption that she isn't a madam in the prostitution sense, but who knows? That seems like an indelicate question to ask him, since he clearly adored her despite the fact that she tried to convince him to eat beef and did convince him to eat other meats despite his previous vegetarianism. Tonight he made some excellent almost-macaroni; it was too gourmet to satisfy my Kraft mac-n-cheese tastes, but it was delicious in a different way and so acceptable. I think he's going to make mashed potatoes for me at some point this week; I don't get to plan out my meals like this unless I'm home and my mother is trying to pack as many of my favorite foods into as short a time as possible. I wonder if Ranjit can make a decent casserole? I'm betting that casseroles were not part of the Swedish madam's repertoire.

And yet despite all the wonderful things that are happening to me in India, I still feel that I have fallen into a deep, nameless chasm. Actually, I can name the chasm--it's the chasm in which one ends up watching Rob Thomas music videos. I have VH1 playing in the background, and I'm 'rocking out' to Rob Thomas, which is low even for me and my plebian tastes. Oh, good...now it's U2's 'Vertigo'. Uno, dos, tres, catorce, time for bed!

the shape of my heart

I went shopping today; the driver, Aziz, apparently loves the Backstreet Boys, since he played one of their cassettes while we drove around town. He also claimed to know the words, although he refused to sing for us, and so I had to content myself with imagining Aziz singing 'The Call' and 'Everybody (Backstreet's Back)'.

It's a really strange feeling when you hear a song that is so strongly associated with another time of your life in a completely separate place. It must have been my junior year of college when I listened to Backstreet Boys' 'Shape of My Heart' on constant repeat; I remember sitting in the 24-hour study room working on papers and listening to an endless loop of that song until four or five in the morning. 'Shape of My Heart' is forever associated with a time that will never come again, and the person I was then apparently no longer exists. So, it was quite surreal to be driving through the packed streets of Hyderabad, watching the autorickshaws, the cars, the pedestrians, the water trucks, the stray dogs, the endless stream of humanity in a whirling maelstrom of rich, poor, ecstatic, miserable...watching everything that is so alien to me while being tied by the music to a point in my life that is irretrievable and that I am now alienated from.

On a lighter note, today was quite a success. I had Sunday brunch at the Taj Krishna, which is a weekly occurrence and so shouldn't be special, but I had the barbecued chicken pizza again, and again it was outstanding. Then, Shadie and I spent the afternoon on a mission to find a DVD player for my room. We stopped first at Hyderabad Central, a surprisingly nice mall that sells everything from traditional Indian garb to electronics to Lacoste polo shirts (at approximately half the price that they are in the States). They were out of DVD players, however, so we headed over to Shoppers Stop. We made a brief detour through FabIndia, which sells bedding, but the selection did not rival what I bought yesterday and so I wasn't tempted to make another purchase. Shoppers Stop also did not have DVD players, although I picked up a copy of 'Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell; I've wanted to read it for awhile, since I made great use of 'The Tipping Point' while working on my honors thesis. The next stop was Lifestyles, which is a department store cum Target-wannabe (Indian English ascribes the old British meaning to that word, which means 'together with' or 'plus', making for some entertaining billboards). They'd apparently liquidated their electronics section, although they do sell entertaining, somewhat-Engrish tshirts...one of my coworkers has a shirt w/a picture of two pears, and it says 'Brittney's Pears' in a strange attempt at humor...so I may have to go back. Finally, we met with success at an actual electronics store, so I'm now the proud owner of a Sony DVD player.

With the advent of the DVD player has come a desire to watch an endless stream of movies; I kicked things off with 'The Saint', which I had picked up in the States during my DVD buying spree. The movie entertained me, although the beginning dragged a bit and I wasn't as thoroughly entranced as I was the first time I saw it; then again, I'm about five years more removed from Ukraine than I was when the movie came out, and so all things Russian resonate with me just a little bit less than they did before. Val Kilmer is still hot, though, and I'm always attracted to characters who are wildly efficient at getting out of deadly situations, saving the world, and eluding the authorities at the same time. Plus, I've listened to the 'Saint' theme by Orbital more times than I can count, so the techno backdrop to the movie was much appreciated.

Indian TV is pretty hysterical. I'm watching VH1 right now, but it's VH1 the way that VH1 was meant to be; it has the same logo and some of the same commercials as current American VH1, but as far as I can tell, it only plays music videos. Since my English-lanugage channel options are limited to Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Nickelodeon, some local news channels, and a knock-off of the Food Network, music videos are as good as it gets. Oh, and there was some channel that was playing a very detailed, in-depth series of interviews with the cast and director of...'Reindeer Games'. That was so strange to me, because 'Reindeer Games' came out several years ago, back before Charlize Theron was famous (or hot...she looked v. different in the interviews) or before Ben Affleck became part of the Bennifer debacle. The show about it was like a detailed promo-piece for a new release, and it's not like 'Reindeer Games' met with such commericial and critical acclaim that it deserves retrospectives and continued attention. I watched fifteen minutes of the damn thing so that I could find out at the end why they were playing it, but it still didn't make sense; they just switched subjects completely, without even referencing 'Reindeer Games' again. If anyone knows why 'Reindeer Games' is so important to the culture of modern India, please send me a message.

fo' sizzle

Gopal, one of the drivers, has picked up some truly entertaining American slang; he now refers to the mini-discoball dangling from his rearview mirror as 'bling bling', and he also says 'that's rad' and some other key phrases. However, he can't quite pronounce the 'sh' sound, so Snoop-style speech comes out 'fo sizzle' instead of 'fo shizzle'. This definitely makes Gopal one of the most entertaining drivers to ride with, even if conversation isn't particularly enlightening.

Today was great; I slept in, had French toast and pancakes for breakfast, and then went shopping. Some of us went to Meena Bazaar, which specializes in fabrics and custom tailoring--you can take a preexisting piece of clothing, choose some fabrics, and the tailors there will copy your shirt or pants or whatever to whatever color you want. I did a test run with my orange capri cargo pants, although they will not be cargo pants since I told them to nix the pockets by the knees; they will also not be orange, since I'm getting one pink pair and one yellow pair. The fabric selection was *amazing*--there were more fabrics there than I have ever seen. Well, perhaps that isn't true. But the fabrics were unbelievable, especially if I was looking for dressier stuff; you could get gorgeous evening dresses made from some of the fancier fabrics, and they had great silks as well. We'll see how they do with the pants, and if I'm satisfied, I'm definitely getting a lot of clothes made while I'm here. Grand total for the fabric was less than $10, and the tailoring was also less than $10--so that's about $17 for two pairs of custom-made pants. How hot is that?

Afterwards, we wandered into a shoe store on a whim, and I got a pair of comfy platform sandals; I almost went crazy and got the tallest pair they had, which added about six inches to my height, but I was talked out of the madness and so settled for comparatively tame four inch platforms instead. Then we went to Kalanjali, this v. upscale department store, since I was on a mission to find bedding. And boy, did I ever find bedding. This place is my new Mecca...not that it can satisfy all my needs, since they didn't appear to sell sheets, but the bedspreads were absolutely gorgeous. I can't pass up great bedding, especially when it's such a comparative steal; so, I walked out with two comforters, both of which I will definitely take home with me and so am not expensing and then leaving behind. The first one is several shades of pink/peach, in what looks like a fairly famous quilt pattern, but I can't remember the pattern name. Anyway, it's made of organza, I believe; one main color is spangled with small beads and stars, the the other main color is woven w/a really subtle leaf pattern in another shad of pink. I know that it sounds horribly gaudy, but it's really quite lovely; I'll take a picture of it when I'm not quite so tired. The other one is heavier and darker, sort of a muted reddish-orange, with really intricate embroidery and tiny mirror-work. I'm happy as a clam with all my new bedding; I'm predicting that I'll have a hard time getting through customs on the way back to the States because they'll think I'm running an illicit importing business.

We all had dinner at this place called Oory's; the first floor is ice cream, the second floor is Indian food, and the third floor is Chinese food. We had Chinese, and it was really ridiculously good. The best was the lobster; I had far too much of it, considering that it was an appetizer, and almost made myself sick by trying to eat more food when the main courses arrived. The funny thing about the lobster was that they brought it out before they cooked it for us to inspect, but they garnished it before they presented it for inspection, so one of the guys ended up holding a raw, ugly lobster covered in pretty carrot flowers, and was completely confused about what he was supposed to do with it. Once they cooked it, however, it was to die for. Since I didn't eat anything at the office all week, other than peanut butter sandwiches, I'm definitely making up for it on the weekends.

After getting back to the apartments (which, by the way, are labeled Silicon County on the complex sign, which amuses me every time I see it), some of us watched 'Spanglish'. The movie was surprisingly depressing for a comedy; it's just painful to watch a movie about someone who is clearly with the wrong person, even if that person is played by Adam Sandler and so can't help but being just a little bit amusing. I think he's doing a really good job of getting away from playing the complete retards that he normally plays, however; he was really great in this movie, and he managed to grasp and hold the audience's sympathy throughout the movie just by being so...nice, rather than funny. I have trouble remembering to be nice, rather than funny, sometimes myself, and so I guess this movie has given me a lot to ponder.

With that obscure Zoolander reference ('the results are in, amigo! what's left to ponder?.....nice comeback!), I think it's time to go to bed! Sweet dreams (or sweet daydreams), everyone!

fun new office fad: mimes!

Nothing exciting happened today; after all, it is hard to top the margaritas and excellent pseudo-Mexican food we had last night, especially if you're trying to top it with ten or eleven hours in the office. However, at the team meeting this afternoon, someone volunteered to perform a mime routine. In the States, most people wouldn't be caught dead performing in front of a group of coworkers without significant amounts of liquid inducement, but this guy was completely sober. He mimed a breaking-and-entering...and the soundtrack to his routing was 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go'. That song is much more well-known as the song playing during the infamous 'orange mocha frappuccino' sequence in 'Zoolander', so I was hoping he would mime that, but I was out of luck. He wasn't bad at all, but his routine lasted two minutes longer than the song, and five minutes is really a lot of miming, unfortunately. It brought back fun memories, though, of when I went to TASP in high school; the summer camp was six weeks long, and we were at Kenyon College in Ohio, so it was pretty dead. One of the only other major camps there was a school for mimes, so we had fun making fun of them and ended up seeing their end-of-school mime performance for good measure. I'm not a fan of mimes in general, but the guy's performance was entertaining even if it was weird that he agreed to do it in the first place.

After work, I came home, and had a nice, relaxed dinner w/Heather and Lauren. The cook had made truly excellent spaghetti, and some tasty chicken, and he cut up some mangoes for dessert. We are well and truly spoiled by this whole arrangement; the food is ready when we get home, we can eat as much as we like, and then they clean everything up for us. It's unclear how many people work for us in these apartments; there are two cooks, a supervisor-type who is very friendly, and at least three other guys and one girl. I'm pretty sure there are others, though, especially since I appear to share people with the apartment above me (where most of the cooking happens) and there are a couple of apartments in the next building over that probably have their own staff. Crazy!

This weekend should be nice and relaxing; I'm going shopping tomorrow (for bedding, dangerous), and I have dinner plans Saturday and Sunday. Perhaps I'll get around to reading some real literature, or writing my romance novel, but there's also a good chance that I'll just hang out by the pool. Of course, since it's 100 degrees outside, the pool is always less appealing than you would think it would be. Now, though, I'm going to go to bed early and dream of all the silks I can procure tomorrow...

mexicans and indians

Please see the photo below for something truly strange; I had heard reports that the servants' knack for organization was uncanny, but this surprised me. I expected them to straighten out my cosmetics when I dumped them in a big pile on the shelf in my bathroom, although I didn't need organization since I normally keep them loose in a basket at home. However, rather than lining them up on the sides (as would make sense, since the bases of lipsticks are much smaller than the length of the tube), they managed to stand up all of my tubes of lipstick, my mascara, and all other products vertically. Crazy! It also made me feel guilty about my horribly conspicuous consumption; that was 22 lipsticks or glosses, plus two mascaras, plus multiple eyeshadows and blushes, not counting the two lipglosses in my purse. Since I have relatively expensive tastes in cosmetics (justified by a vague statement by a nurse once that brand-name cosmetics are better for your skin than the kind you get at Target, although I really think the 22 lipsticks don't play into that), I probably have more money invested in those cosmetics than the person who lined them up will earn all year. Throwing them away would be a noble and completely stupid gesture, although I can't help but think that Pope John Paul II would have prefered for me to donate $20 to a children's charity, rather than spend it on an eyeshadow named 'Ashes to Ashes' in honor of his death. Ah well. At least I can endeavor not to knock them all down by accident, so that the servants can avoid having to arrange them again tomorrow.

Tonight is Cinco de Mayo, and a special one at that, since it's 5/5/05. Surprisingly, Cinco de Mayo is not particularly popular here; the people in the office were quite puzzled when we told them that we were all going to have dinner in honor of Mexico's independence day. We managed to round up some outrageously overpriced tequila by buying it from a bar; liquor taxes are very high here, and so a bottle of Jose Cuervo Silver cost around $100. So we finished off two bottles of expensive-cheap tequila by making margaritas. The cooks did a great job with their attempts at Mexican food...the salsa was great and they made very tasty chicken fajitas. The tortilla chips weren't quite right (they left a funny sweet aftertaste), and there were no avocados to be had for love or money, but the food overall was fantastic. It definitely settled a few cravings, at least for a few days. I also found out that there is dimsum served buffet-style every weekend at a place called 'Mainland China' in Hyderabad. I'm so excited I could scream...ohmigosh, wouldn't it be horribly ironic and funny if the waiter at Mainland China is named Habib?!?! Clearly I need to go and check out the scene at the earliest opportunity.

So, Cinco de Mayo was a good holiday to ramp me up into celebrating random American holidays in India (particularly since Cinco de Mayo isn't an American holiday--it takes all the pressure off). I think the major holidays would be hard to do here, but the random smaller holidays are really fun. We may be having a party for Memorial Day, for instance--definitely more of a major holiday than Cinco de Mayo, but not quite as big as Christmas. Not that we really need plans for a party...we'll still have dinner cooked for us, and alcohol is an option regardless of whether or not it's Cinco de Mayo. But, being able to leave work at 7:30 without feeling guilty was quite nice.

However, I must say that the Cinco de Mayo version of the 'Mexican or Indian' game was almost infantile in its simplicity. This is a game that I sometimes play with Adit and Claudia; Adit points at someone, and we decide whether they're Mexican or Indian. Some are completely obvious, while others throw people off because their appearance manages to straddle the fine line between Mexican and Indian. However, here, you're much more likely to guess right if you take a stab at 'indian' rather than 'mexican'. The game quickly lost its luster, so I concentrated on eating fajitas instead. Perhaps next year I'll be able to celebrate Cinco de Mayo the way nature intended it--holding a large margarita (made with plentiful fresh ice, rather than the jealously-hoarded amounts of non-tap-water ice we find in our apartments), wearing a sombrero, and hanging out with a more favorable mix of Mexicans and Indians. And on that pleasant dream, it's time to sleep!

since i didn't let them make me breakfast this morning, they repaid me by arranging my cosmetics perfectly by size and height. crazy! 

work, fatigue, relaxation

Work is going well, but the lingering effects of a) jetlag and b) poisonous bacon are not really helping me to settle in. I woke up at three a.m. today and was completely, utterly awake; I fell back asleep unexpectedly around six, so overslept and didn't get into the office until 9:30. Consequently, I desperately wanted to sleep as soon as I got home (well, after eating dinner--the cook made some delicious Chinese food, although he's no David and his sauce-covered prawns were no har gar), but instead I stayed up by reading most of a romance novel. It's decent, but by no means groundbreaking; however, I do appreciate the title, since it's called 'Potent Pleasures', which I thought was a bit overdone, but it turns out to be completely appropriate because the hero apparently granted an annulment to his first wife even though she falsely claimed that he was impotent, and the ensuing scandal almost prevented his marriage to the heroine since everyone thought he was a 'floppy poppy'. I'm entirely unconvinced that anyone in the history of the English language has uttered the phrase 'floppy poppy', much less with a straight face, but if that's what the author is claiming was used in early-1800s Britain, then I won't argue with her.

Other than that, nothing else to report; I worked, I read, and now I shall sleep. Oh, and I had breakfast; when I woke up this morning, there were three men outside my room waiting to cook for me. Normally, this would be any girl's fantasy, but I just found it vaguely disconcerting. I don't normally eat breakfast, but I asked them if they had poptarts (not an unreasonable request, the apartment above me where they make dinner has them), and they offered me toast instead. So I accepted toast--and they exited the kitchen five minutes later bearing four pieces of toast and some scrambled eggs for good measure. I can't eat four pieces of toast for breakfast even at my most hale and hearty, so I ate two, and then surreptitiously made a peanut butter sandwich w/the other two pieces so that I'd have something for lunch at the office that wasn't filled with spice/poison. The fear is that my apparent consumption of four pieces of toast will lead to four pieces of toast being prepared for me every day until I leave India, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Also, I don't like being called 'ma'am'. It makes me feel unnecessarily old. Especially since the cook, it turns out, is also 23, and so I'm quite probably younger than he is. Oh well. The romance novel I'm reading is one of those 'refreshing' ones where the heroine has reached the ripe old age of 20, rather than getting married at 17...and so I guess I should hold out some hope that I may not die a spinster. Waking up to someone my own age calling me 'ma'am' before making me an unnecessarily large breakfast, however, does not make me feel particularly youthful and optimistic.