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.