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!