reach for the cup of life 'cause your name is on it

There are times when I realize that I am a terrible person. Tonight was one of those times. I was extremely tired all day, due to the fact that I was up until almost three a.m. last night. I came home and ate dinner, then did some work in my bedroom. I went downstairs around ten to get something to drink, and there were people hanging out, so I joined them. For awhile it was fun, but the conversation unexpectedly dove into a very serious discussion of one person's volunteer work at an orphanage for children with AIDS. It's a very sad story; there are 27 kids living in a main space the size of our living room, they have one cricket bat and ball, and the home itself is underfunded.

This is where we get to the part about how I'm a terrible person. All I really wanted to do was escape the conversation and go upstairs, because if it wasn't a truly relaxing few minutes there was no reason for me to spend that time listening to something depressing when I still have work to do and will probably have to work all weekend. There was no acceptable way to get out of the conversation, though, and so I sat silently, waiting for a natural break in the conversation (which felt like it took forever because everyone else was v. interested and so kept asking questions).

Now, on top of the fact that I am tired and overworked, I have to contemplate how I just don't have the same level of compassion as other people. I feel guilty about it, to the point that I almost want to delete everything that I've just written. But between my job, my passion and caring for my friends and family, and my desire to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, I don't have a lot of time or mental energy left over to sit around and discuss suffering. I really admire the people who go out and do something about the problems around them; however, I really don't admire extended conversations about suffering with no plan of action to change things. At least the person who is volunteering at the orphanage has a plan...but I was just too tired and cranky to hear about it tonight.

So, to completely switch gears in the most inappropriate way--while everyone else was talking about orphans, I was mentally planning my trip to Europe. I'm taking vacation in August, and I bought the tickets today! I know, I should have taken vacation in India, but I don't want to travel here by myself, and I desperately need a vacation. I haven't taken a vacation that didn't involve going to Iowa since I visited Katie in New Orleans over a year ago. It should be quite fun, and I intend to eat all sorts of beef (mad cow disease be damned), drink wine, and generally have a fun-filled time. I think I'm going to Paris and Italy, although I'm flying in to London, and so I may spend a day or two there depending on travel arrangements. I still intend to travel around India on long weekends or if my family comes out, but a vacation in August sounds extremely appealing. I sort of hit the wall this week in terms of work, and while I'm actually quite chipper about the whole deal (since I am at my happiest when I'm pressed so far up against the wall that I can't even remember a time when I was able to relax), it would be nice to get a break. To top it off, it takes less travel time and fewer switched timezones to get to Europe than it does to go home, so the trip should be relatively enjoyable.

Okay, time to get back to slogging. By the way, I love that word. I was explaining to this Irish guy yesterday that when I hear 'slogging', I think of trench warfare; but both Indian English and UK/Ireland English treats 'slogging' as an appropriate synonym for 'hard work'. Maybe I read about 'slogging' in the trenches and thought it only applied to mud, lice, and mustard gas, but I have now learned that it also applies to corporate cubicle farms, excel spreadsheets, and subsistence diets. I intend to popularize this in the States, so please be prepared for the revolution when I return.

you're the dj i'm the song, take me out and turn me on

True to form, the Geri Halliwell song that I mocked two days ago is now stuck in my head, and I may be forced to download it. I saw it on VH1 again tonight, and it turns out that it's a pretty recent release. I wish that I could claim to have good taste, but that would be a complete lie, so I will fall asleep with the europop melody of a washed-up Spice Girl playing in my subconscious mind.

Sleep sounds so wonderful; it's 2:30am, which is absurdly late. But, I got a lot done in the past three hours, and I'm now prepped for my meetings tomorrow morning. And today wasn't all bad...I read that freaking report last night and this morning, and then at the meeting we ended up eating a lot of pizza and ignoring the case study, which was both good (because I had nothing to say about it) and frustrating (because I spent an extremely masochistic hour reading about hamburgers in a country that does not eat beef). Then I hung out at home for awhile and talked to my parents before working and watching VH1. Fun.

Okay, I can't be coherent anymore, it's time for bed!

swing swing swing

I'm cranky. It became apparent that I was cranky at dinner, when I mentioned 'stabbing someone in the face' one too many times. So thank you, mafia kids, for making that such an indelible part of my vocabulary. Now my coworkers think I'm certifiably insane. Yay.

Actually, things aren't that bad, but I am really tired, and it's warm in my room because the power keeps cutting out and resetting the air conditioner in the process. Nothing here works quite right, which just contributes to the apartment's subtle charm. The power cord to my computer vaguely shocks me every time I touch it, although it apparently isn't hurting the computer; one of the windows downstairs leaked during the storm this afternoon, flooding someone's room; when they made my mirror, they stamped the model number across the mirror side, rather than the backside, and now it won't come out; the outlets in my room that don't shock me are completely non-functional. I've heard even better stories from other expats; someone who was here last year was telling me that once there was a hole in the wall or something, and pigeons got in, and to 'fix' the hole they stuffed it with newspaper, and then a pigeon got stuck in there and died. I can't wait for that to happen to me--then I can stab it in the face and relieve some tension.

I need to choose my foods more wisely tomorrow than I did today; I had French toast for breakfast, and the sugar rush meant that I crashed and burned before lunch, and lunch was too disgusting to contemplate eating. So I had some crackers and a cup of reconstituted veg soup powder (it's amazing how carrots can appear out of nothing).

To top it off, one of the extracurriculars at work is to read business school case studies; even though I have no desire to go to business school, have plenty of other work to do, and don't want to sit in a SLE-style discussion section, I have to read a case study on a restaurant. It's so unfair--I just read fourteen pages about how great their hamburgers are, and how they make real milkshakes, and when the food you eat most often is reconstituted veg soup from a foil packet, the last thing you want to do is read about hamburgers.

But, there are good things too, and it's important to remember them. There is a swing hanging in the living room downstairs; I think I've mentioned it before. It's like a bed suspended from the ceiling, and it's so nice to just lay on it and take a nap. The people in the office are fun, and I like the people I live with. However, I need to go to bed before I vent any more frustration; at this point, sleep will help more than venting. And I promise to be extra careful when plugging in my computer, since I don't want to feel the unpleasant jolt of electricity coursing through my fingers. Unless that jolt of electricity can be weaponized, in which case I'm all for it.

welcome to the caribbean

I'm watching VH1, which, as I have mentioned before, actually shows music videos 24/7, rather than ridiculous reality TV shows. The 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' video always amuses me; as the lead singer looks pensive and laments, 'it's only me and I walk alone', his two bandmate are walking right beside him, also looking pensive. You'd think that they could have come up with a premise for the video that cut across all of them actually walking alone, rather than walking together.

The real question, though, is why I'm still awake after one a.m. The answer, my friends, is that I have a lot of work to do. I could probably work straight through until morning if I wanted to, but I don't; this isn't college, and I can't sleep off the effects of an all-nighter by taking a nap in the grass outside of Meyer. I was at the office by 8:30 this morning, stayed until 7:30, came home and ate a quick dinner, had a conference call at 8:30, and then came upstairs and watched 'Pirates of the Caribbean' while doing some work. Now I'm watching VH1 and contemplating sleep.

I think 'Pirates of the Caribbean' is one of my favorite movies ever; it definitely defied expectations, considering that it was loosely based on a Disneyworld ride. It makes me wish that a) I could be a pirate and b) I had the incentive to engage in long-term plotting and scheming. Actually, I don't think that I would like to be a pirate; ships are dirty, there is little fresh water for bathing, and sailors typically aren't the most savory lot. But, plotting and scheming is definitely fun, and I can't do much of it here because there is nothing to scheme over. Granted, I have yet to work through my scheme to get bubonic plague; I'm going to have to procure tickets to visit the rat temple, but that just requires planning, not actual scheming. Now, *scheming* would be to get the plague with malice aforethought, and then demonstrate said malice by taking a plane to Genoa and unleashing a bunch of plague-infested rats on the unsuspecting populace. Unfortunately, I've heard that bubonic plague is highly treatable with modern antibiotics, which sorta takes the fun out of it.

The monsoon was a great invention; it was so hot here before that the monsoon has made us very grateful for a relatively-frigid 85 degrees. It rained off and on all day, which was lovely. Maybe the newly cooler temperatures will encourage me to go out and explore; seven random dudes in an autorickshaw are even more pleasant to ride with when the temperature is twenty degrees cooler.

Okay, VH1 has dubious tastes; the current video is a Geri Halliwell (aka Ginger Spice) solo effort, and she is cavorting around in series of ever-more-ridiculous outfits. And now that she has danced while holding a giant banana, it's time for me to go to bed before I stab myself in the face.

it's all for you...just stop breaking my heart

I did make it to brunch today, and despite the high probability that I would succumb to digestive distress, I did not experience any adverse effects from my weekend of culinary risk-taking. I celebrated by having a pizza at the Taj Krishna, followed by a whole lot of nothin'. I had intended to go to Coffee Day and work on my romance novel; I had also intended to sit down and do several hours' worth of work so that tomorrow would be more bearable. Instead, I did a load of laundry, fell asleep on the swing in the living room while waiting for my laundry to finish, and then laid on my bed and surfed the internet until dinnertime. For dinner, I went to Angeethi, our favorite Indian restaurant; they have delicious garlic naan, and I am in love with murgh makhni (a super-tasty chicken dish). On the way home, I lost two key points in my war to prove that I am not a hick when I revealed that my brother can fit thirteen quarters in his belly-button and that my grandparents owned a feed/seed store. They all agreed that the quarter thing alone did not necessarily mean that my brother was a hick, but when combined with the rest of my life story, it certainly did not help. Oh well, if being a hick means that I enjoy tasty rare steaks and like listening to stories about my dad shooting things in the backyard, then I guess I'm a hick--and my life is more entertaining as a result.

This week promises to be hellish, since it's the end of the month and so all sorts of things have to get done. But, I'm actively planning future trips; I may get to go to Thailand with some people in either July or September, and I intend to go to Delhi and Goa as well. I'm betting that my mother will un-ground me before any of those trips happen; otherwise, I may have to go to Thailand in a rowboat with six random dudes. It would certainly make for a great story! Since I'm a huge fan of turning absurd and uncomfortable situations into great stories, perhaps a rowboat trip across the Indian Ocean is exactly what I need.

if you want to love me, then darling don't refrain....or i'll just end up walking in the cold november rain

After my autorickshaw adventure, the rest of the afternoon paled by comparison. Ranjit made some tasty veg burgers that were, surprisingly, so good that I could accept and even enjoy the fact that they did not contain any meat. I went to Himalaya Bookstore with a couple of people, and I finally broke down and got a copy of 'The Da Vinci Code'. I had successfully avoided it in the States because they still hadn't realized it in paperback and I refused to pay for the hardcover version, but I was able to pick it up here for around five dollars. However, I have too much work to do over the next few days (or months) to actually read it anytime soon.

I spent the evening at Maya's; she was one of the first people we hired in the office here, and she's one of the nicest people I have ever met. She invited all of the expats over for dinner and general hanging out. She and her husband have a band, and the band mainly sings covers of old rock songs. Her husband absolutely loves Pink Floyd, so we listened to a lot of that, as well as Guns 'n' Roses, Led Zeppelin, etc. Maya's apartment is on the third floor of a house owned by her in-laws, and she has this amazing patio that we all hung out on. It was raining off and on, since the monsoon has finally arrived; but contrary to rain in most places, here it is actually quite welcome despite the dampness because it is so much cooler during and after a shower. So we sat outside in the rain, and I watched the chameleons crawling around the light fixtures. 'November Rain' is a great song, and I enjoyed it even more tonight, since I was sitting in warm June rain rather than cold November rain. However, having had straight Indian food for the past four meals (excluding the French toast this morning), I fear that my chances of getting sick have increased to about 85%. We'll see how things turn out, since I really want to make it to brunch at the Taj tomorrow.

You've gotten two posts out of me today, so I refuse to feel bad about the relative brevity of this post; it's definitely time for bed!

escape from madhapur

My mother has apparently grounded me for getting mehndi on my hands. She abhors tattooing, and I knew that she would be unwilling to accept my henna'd fingers. Having never been grounded before, I was unsure what I should do about my newly-fettered status. So, I did what any rebellious teenager would do (and clearly I am a rebellious teenager to get henna in the first place)--I escaped from the apartment and went shopping.

This was actually quite the escape. I woke up around ten-thirty and came downstairs for breakfast, and discovered that no one was here but Chris. I ate some French toast and was contemplating a very relaxed afternoon, but Chris suggested going to Music World to pick up a DVD of a Bollywood ripoff of 'E.T.' Apparently, in this version ET is a poorly-designed puppet that dances during all of the music sequences. Thinking that this sounded like a reasonable way to spend my morning, I readily agreed. We went downstairs and found that Ismail was not happy about the expats' profligate use of the cars; car organization has become a big headache for him, because there aren't enough cars for each of us to take one, and so if we don't tell him in advance so that he can organize more cars, someone inevitably gets stranded. This means that for much of the weekend, I feel like a prisoner in the apartment complex (which has definite benefits, since there is a pool and air conditioning and the internet and my rapidly-growing collection of Georgette Heyer books). Ismail told me all about this while Chris ran upstairs to get his wallet, and because several other people had already taken cars, we were going to have to wait for five or ten minutes for someone to show up and take us to Music World. When Chris came back, we decided that we didn't want to wait--and that we would take the tantalizingly absurd option of the autorickshaw.

We lied to Ismail and told him that we were going back upstairs to watch TV, since he has forbidden all of us to take autorickshaws. Apparently at night they are somewhat dangerous, since the drivers like to drink whiskey, but since it was only noon we felt fairly safe. So we cut through the apartment complex and made it to the main road, where Chris flagged down the first rickshaw.

Here's where the fun began in earnest. Apparently, there are two types of autorickshaws--the type that function like a taxi and take you directly to where you want to go, and the type that just drives up and down the main road of a particular neighborhood, acting like a miniature bus. We happened to get the latter version. When the rickshaw pulled over, it already had four passengers, plus the driver; two of the guys in the back got out to make room for us, and then crowded in with the driver in the front seat. Seven people packed into a rickshaw made for an entertaining ride. We got to the edge of Madhapur (our neighborhood), gave the driver 14 rupees (about thirty cents), and switched rickshaws. The second one operated like a taxi, so we were the only passengers. We ended up going to Hyderabad Central, rather than Music World, and so I picked up a pair of sneakers since mine are falling apart. We took another taxi-style autorickshaw back to the apartments (total for the ride home: Rs62, or $1.40), and I skirted around the parking lot so that Ismail would not see me with my tousled hair and my Hyderabad Central bag.

The upshot of this story is that I would definitely ride in an autorickshaw again. It feels so much more real, since you can see your surroundings without the interference of tinted glass, and you can feel the wind rather than the frigid blast of the air conditioner. It is not my preferred mode of transportation, but it's nice to know that the possibility of escape exists, even if I do not use it often.

Despite my groundedness, I'm going to someone's house for dinner tonight, which should be fun. And so far, I'm happy to report that the food last night has not made me sick, which is fantastic. Now, though, I should accomplish something with my day!

i want to take you far from the cynics in this town

This evening was our quarterly offsite, and it was held at Family World in Begumpet, Hyderabad. This means nothing to you, and very little to me, since I am oblivious to directions unless I know that I will have to drive someplace myself. Anyway, the offsite was great fun; people could bring their families, and so there were lots of adorable kids running around. It was set up like a carnival, with food, fortune tellers, games, performers, and other fun things. The things of note:

1) The games were all extremely cheap and shoddy, and so brought back fond memories of the carnies that Katie and I were so enamored of in high school. The guns in the shooting game looked like they could be dangerous, the throwing game required a lot of time to keep setting up the fallen cups, and the ring toss' sole object was to toss rings over snacks that we can normally get for free in the office. Not a fan of the games, but it was cool that they were there nonetheless.

2) The fortune-teller was really fun. You would lay your right hand over his deck of cards, he would let his trained parrot out of the cage, and the parrot would pick a card for you before dutifully returning to its cage. The 'card' was actually an envelope containing several cards, which he would then read to you. I got one of my coworkers to translate, and the gist of it was that I would marry someone with whom I would have a tendency to fight, although that would go away, that I would have three kids (the first of which will be a boy), and that I will die at the age of 75 (and I hope that Western medicine can make me last longer than that). The most random thing, though, was that he said that my parents raised me more like a boy than a girl, and he did not elaborate on this. In any event, the parrot was awesome.

3) The girls doing henna tattoos (aka mehndi) were really good. I didn't intend to get it done, since it has to dry and is generally a pain until it is set (and I think looks fairly funny on my pale skin). Vidya, please know that I did it in honor of your sister's wedding.

4) They brought in some people to give away bangles, so I walked away with two dozen glass bangles to match the top that I was wearing. I'm definitely going to have to raid a bangle store in the near future.

5) Dinner was good, although there's probably a 64-percent chance that it will make me sick. We shall see...

Okay, there was more, and the night was fun, but I'm exhausted. Please see the pictures below for more info. Goodnight!

henna tattoos (mehndi) on my hands 

cotton candy (or as the brits call it, candy floss)...instead of paper cones beneath the cotton candy, they use v. splintery wooden sticks. dangerous, but even tastier because of the adrenaline rush of risking bodily injury. 

a guy with a workplace-hazard machete chops off the top of an unripe coconut, and then they stick a straw in it so that you can drink the juice. 

it appears that they stole snacks from the office for this game; the snacks are usually free, but the only way you could get these was via a ghetto form of ring toss. 

object of this game: knock over the meticulously-stacked cups with a cricket ball. 

dangerous-looking shooting game. 

puppet show...one guy played the drum, while the person controlling the marionettes played a kazoo. the best part was the surprise ending where a puppet snake would come out and attack one of the other puppets. 

offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and i decline

I really want to watch 'Independence Day'; the 17-hour playlist continues to serve me well, and today I got really excited for no good reason about REM's 'It's the End of the World As We Know It', which was the theme song for the aforementioned movie. Granted, around the time that I heard the song, I was talking to Walter about how he could move to Iowa when the coasts are destroyed in the coming years, and that he could probably bring a robot with him to help with the farm chores. I'm turning into my father, who would often discuss how we would have to eat squirrels after 'the bastards' (and it was never clear who the bastards were) took over. I get unnecessarily excited about chaos, though, so it's little wonder that I really like movies such as 'Independence Day' and fondly remember drivel such as 'The Day After Tomorrow'.

Anyway, today was grueling; I was in the office by 8:30ish, and didn't get home until 9:30pm. I had PopTarts for breakfast; I was discussing this with Durand (one of two coworkers to come to the party we had before I left for India, and the lucky recipient of Vidya's awkward question 'Please describe the place you hold in Sara's heart'), and we came to the conclusion that the only adults who like poptarts are the ones who grew up in middle America with parents who didn't buy poptarts. People in California seem to be too good for poptarts, what with their desire for foods that are 'fresh' and 'healthy' and 'wholesome'. Bah. The poptarts were probably the best thing I had today, even if they are a slab of sugar covered in frosting and sprinkles, and even if they threw me into a delicious sugar high before I crashed around eleven a.m. Poptarts are even better when chased with a Diet Coke, and the memory of my 'breakfast' sustained me through an awful lunch of weird paneer (cheese) with rice, and an interminable afternoon and evening before coming home to a cold plate of leftover Chinese food.

Despite the paneer and rice, not all is bad; Ranjit makes freshly squeezed lemonade every night, and the house staff leaves flowers in my room every Thursday. Granted, I'm usually allergic to the flowers, but through my swelling eyelids I can still appreciate their delicate beauty. I've been in India for two months now, which means I'm already a third of the way through my deployment. I feel that I'm getting a pretty warped view of what's going on in the States; the only people I talk to regularly are my parents, my brother, Walter, Claudia, Vidya, and Can Sar. If you know any combination of that group, you may begin to understand why my view of the US is warped. I know a lot about round barns, Chevy pickups, robots, upcoming music festivals, Taco Bell, and all the insane stuff that Can talks about, but that's basically the extent of my knowledge. So, if you expect me to come back from India with more sense and sophistication, you're going to be sorely disappointed. It's more likely that I'll come back believing that some AI firm has come up with a way to dress robots in mod clothing and have them rock out while eating baja chalupas.

If you're smart, you'll patent that idea before I get around to filing the paperwork. I'll give you a head start on it--it's time for me to sleep!

do it like the italian job

Today was substantially more fun than the typical weekday. I got up early enough to have breakfast before walking out the door, which means that I didn't get lightheaded from not eating lunch and subsisting only on a cup of soup--I'm heartily sick of the food at the office, because it is all bathed in grease and full of spices. It's just never, ever appetizing. It's not quite as bad as some of the stuff we ate in Ukraine ('shit-in-a-pot' is a memorable example), but it's also served every single day, so the monotony adds an extra kick to the disgustingness. I don't think that I'm just being finicky, since all of the other expats, and most of the non-veg people in the office, feel exactly the same way.

Anyway, I went to the office, was productive, and then got to leave at 5pm to see 'Batman Begins' on the IMAX screen. I really loved the movie--I'm a sucker for movies that have dark, brooding heroes with cool toys and great fighting skillz. Some of the dialogue was cheesy, but other bits of dialogue was really funny, and so I had a good time with it. I would definitely watch it again (which I guess isn't saying much since I saw such gems as 'Matrix: Revolutions' twice on opening day).

After the movie, I came home and ate supper--Wednesday night is 'Mexican' food, which as I said doesn't taste exactly Mexican, but it's acceptably close and so v. satisfying. Then, I had some work to do, so I popped 'The Italian Job' into the DVD player while working.

That was a huge mistake. The best parts of the movie involve driving really fast in Mini Coopers, which just made me long for my car even more. I miss the thrust of acceleration as I speed onto the freeway, or the rush of adrenaline while taking the curves between Stanford and the ocean a few miles per hour above the recommended level. When something is really bothering me, I can get in my car, roll down the windows, open the sunroof, and drive up into the hills until the wind strips everything away. Here, that's not an option; I can't drive, you can't get above 25 miles per hour because of the insane traffic, and if you roll your windows down, the beggars start touching you. So, 'The Italian Job' made me nostalgic for when I saw it in the theatre during that halcyon summer right after graduation, when I was living in a closet of a room in Phi Sig and scrounging meals off of friends' trays at FloMo. After I saw the movie in the theatre, John and I raced each other all the way to the city, which was incredibly stupid, but it definitely satisfied a need for the open road that is not being met here. Considering the fact that the last time I saw the 'open road' was on the way back from Srisailam, past the bus that was blown up by the Naxalites, I think I'll have to suppress further urges until I get back to the States.

humble folks without temptation

So I think that my current issues may be related as much to allergies as to an actual cold, which is unfortunate, because it means that it won't just go away. I guess this is to be expected--now that it is raining occasionally, plants may start to grow and flower outside, which can only lead to woe and misery for me. One of my coworkers would laugh at me over IM every time that she heard me coughing from across the office today. That made me wonder what it is about my personality that encourages such behavior from almost all of my close acquaintances and friends--if it weren't for the fact that I think it's pretty awesome that all of my friends are absolutely insane, I might start to think that my life had taken a wrong turn someplace.

I worked today, came home, had dinner, talked about shrews (no one else knew what they were, but I've seen them first-hand, since our cat used to kill them), had a conference call from 10-11, and watched two episodes of South Park while doing some more work. 'Scott Tenorman Must Die' is possibly one of the most horror-inducing episodes in all of TV history; I first saw it with Claude on Comedy Central a few months ago, and we were both so shocked that we just sat staring at the tv, covering our mouths with our hands, for at least four minutes. Yay.

I was supposed to go out to ten downing street tonight to see a couple of people from work perform in their rock band (which apparently focuses mostly on Pink Floyd covers)...but at the last minute this afternoon, the police denied their permit to play live music in the bar, and so the event was cancelled. They were really disappointed, and it was really unfortunate that it got cancelled. So I came home thinking that I would be able to sleep early, but between the conference call and the work that I had to take care of (and South Park...thanks to my friends at work who got me three seasons of South Park on DVD before I left California, you're enabling me to stay up past my bedtime), I'm going to bed after midnight, as usual. Sigh.

Could someone please remind me to do something this weekend that doesn't involve either shopping or reading a Georgette Heyer romance novel? Thanks.

i'm only happy when it's complicated

The craziest thing--there is a couple here who once worked at the American Embassy in Kiev, and they were in Kiev about a month after my family left in 1994. We sat around after dinner and exchanged stories, although theirs are admittedly much better than mine, since I was twelve and they were in their twenties. However, it made me very nostalgic--Ukraine was a very formative experience in my life, for all that it now seems like a weird dream, and I wish I could go back and see it all through adult eyes. You can never go back, though, since the changes wrought by ten years of free-market capitalism and thuggery have made it a completely different country from what we saw in the summer and fall of '93.

I really want to start traveling; there is so much to do, see, and experience, and I feel like I am missing all of it because I'm chained to my desk. Since being chained to my desk is what I'm here for, I can't be too upset, but I would like to go to Goa, and Bombay, and Delhi, and see the Taj Mahal and Fatehpur Sikri and all sorts of other cool things. Thus far, I have seen one museum, one blown-up bus, a temple, and a bunch of ravaging monkeys, plus the insides of all the nicest restaurants in Hyderabad. I'm not acquiting myself so well, I feel. I keep saying that there is plenty of time--but if I'm really coming home in October, I'm already a third of the way through my time here! That's unbelievable, and also incredibly scary.

Here is where I must insert a shout-out to Vidya, who pleaded for a mention in my blog because she likes to ctrl-f and look for her own name. Knowing her prepped me for the insanity of India and Indians, and I am very grateful for it.

I'm sorry, kids, I'm too tired to think of else fun things to say tonight, so I'll have to leave you. Goodnight!

and i believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own

Despite my love of all things terrible (leading one roommate to comment that I have a 'eurotrash soul', which I took offense at until forced to admit that it's true), I must say that Billy Joel's song 'Summer, Highland Falls' is probably one of the most beautiful completely-unknown songs in existence. He has prodigious piano skillz and puts them to good use in this forgotten gem that seems to only be known by me and my brother. However, we both know it so well that we almost make up for the fact that the world has ignored it. If you can find it, listen to it--it's gorgeous. I'm still rocking the seventeen-hour playlist, which means that I won't hear it again for many many hours--but it takes my breath away every time it comes on, especially when it is unexpected, so I looped it and listened to it on repeat for half an hour. Awesome.

Today was uneventful, as Sundays should be; I had brunch at the Taj, followed by some desultory book-shopping (I'm quickly amassing the best Georgette Heyer collection this side of the 1960s, since all of the books that are out of print in the US are available here from British imports, while all of the books that are out of print here/in Britain were purchased by me in America before I left). I went to Coffee Day in the afternoon and enjoyed an iced tea while working on my romance novel; the iced tea left much to be desired, since I was spoiled and got used to microbrewed Tejava tea in California, but I finally finished chapter six of my romance novel, which has blocked me for the past couple of months. It's not great, but it's done, and so hopefully I can move on to chapter seven sometime this week. After that, I took a twenty-minute nap, talked to my parents for an hour or so, ate some gross take-out chicken tikka (I described it as a desert in my mouth, since it was both hot and v. dry), and worked for a couple of hours. Then, I got into a half-hour conversation with Ranjit about his home village; he's very very nice, but also quite talkative, and so it's difficult to cut off a conversation once it gets rolling. I finally told him that I had to work, but I decided to go to bed instead.

Happily my back is virtually perfect again, but I've picked up a sore throat that has remained persistent for several days. As is always the case, it has migrated to my lungs, thanks to the asthma that I contracted from John in college. I know that most of you think that asthma isn't contagious, but I know at least half a dozen people who did not have asthma before living near John, and they all have asthma now, which indicates that they got it from the same source. Anyway, I now have my old familiar cough, so hopefully I will lose my voice this week, because that's always the best.

Actually, the cough is kind of nice; it makes me feel like I have tuberculosis, and there is nothing more romantic than an author with consumption coughing fitfully over her work as she tries to complete her story before the disease consumes her. I have not started coughing blood into a handerchief, and I sadly do not have the gorgeous translucent skin of a terminal-stage consumptive, but it definitely helps set the mood for the romance novel.

I need to start learning French; funny that I'm in a country with about a billion languages and I want to learn one of the few languages that has had absolutely no influence here. But, French is often used in passing in romance novels since it was popular with the English aristocracy; and, on the off-chance that France will ever get its act together and start effectively conquering things rather than dithering about socialism, it might be a handy language to know. Until then, I only know 'joie de vivre', 'je ne sais quoi', and 'je voudrais un croque-monsieur'--and unless my heroine wants a ham and cheese sandwich, none of those phrases will really help her much. I would order some French cds or something--but based on how much time I spend at the office and my complete inability to do anything other than work, they would probably sit and collect dust. Or perhaps they wouldn't collect dust, since they would get dusted six times a week, but the dust they would accumulate on the staff's day off would be prodigious.

Okay, you have wrung enough from me for the night, and you should be ashamed of keeping me up to write to you (particularly if you are among the 98% of my friends and family who ignored my plea for an email). Perhaps you shouldn't be held responsible for my compulsive blogging, but I don't want to hold myself responsible, and you're a good subsitute. Goodnight!

goodbye hair, hello habib

There are times when I feel that the hand of Destiny is acting a bit too forcefully upon my life. When my friends discovered that I was moving to Hyderabad (or Hellabad, as they affectionately term it), Shedletsky and Tammy became convinced that I would take up with a gentleman named Habib, and that I would never return to America for love of him. Unfortunately this has not yet come to pass; but, the name Habib was naturally emblazoned across my imagination, and so it was with some amusement that I discovered that the foremost chain of hairstylists in India is called Habib's. Had I not had several very amusing conversations about Habib in the States, I would not have given more than passing consideration to getting my hair cut at a place called Habib's--but thanks to Tammy and Shedletsky, I could not pass up the opportunity.

Habib himself was not in attendance (although a six-foot tall poster of his face did grace the entrance). From what I have read on the internet, he has opened salons (or saloons, as they are called here) and styling schools across India, and he has recently expanded to London and New York. Instead, there was a very capable woman named Neena (I think), who vigorously washed my hair before setting in with the scissors. I had a moment of slight panic as she started cutting; since I parted with five or six inches of hair, it was possible to hear each thick lock hit the floor, and that induced some vague feeling of remorse. I was also struck by the thought that if I begin growing my hair out tonight and do not cut it again, it will not reach its previous length until sometime just after my 25th birthday, which seems impossibly old.

Despite those fears, the haircut is better than I had hoped. The best thing about getting your hair cut in a country with a billion people who need jobs is that the ratio of workers-to-clients in the salon was absurdly high. After doing the initial cut, Neena dried my hair so that she could do the secondary texturing. She was standing on my right-hand side blowdrying my hair with acceptable speed and style--and so I was very surprised when another guy approached my left-hand side and started drying my hair simulataneously. It was a very strange experience to have two people dry my hair at the same time; the feeling of two dryers, and two hands massaging my scalp, was difficult to grasp with my eyes closed since it was completely outside my realm of experience. However, the guy only helped with the initial drying; once the stylist brought out the round brush, another woman came over and held the dryer for her while the stylist brushed my hair. The stylist had a complicated system for telling her when to dry and when to stop drying, which involved tapping the brush and shaking her head rather than speaking. Both women were essentially using one hand to complete her appointed task; at one point, the stylist was brushing with one hand and holding her cellphone to her ear with the other, while the other woman held the dryer and looked bored. Strange.

The results, however, were great, and I'm very happy to have cut my hair. I had denied the urge to cut my hair for several weeks, but it finally became too much for me to take. And best of all--the haircut cost a grand total of about $10. That's probably exorbitantly expensive here, but it would be ridiculously cheap in California, and I don't think that SuperCuts could make me happy with their attempt at this style. So thank you, Shedletsky and Tammy, for helping me to find my true love; I am forever in your debt.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful; I came home, took a nap, read a book, and went out to dinner at Cinnabar Redd with some people. After coming home, I finished my book (another Georgette Heyer), and now it is probably time for sleep. Perhaps I will have more to share tomorrow.

One more thing, though. I implore all of you to start a blog, or, if you have a blog, to write in it more frequently. I feel that you probably have a fairly good idea of how I am doing in India, since I write volumes every day, but I feel that I've completely lost touch with the goings-on in the US. I am beginning to fear that I will step off the plane in October and be confronted by a group of strangers--it will be difficult enough to reaccustom myself to being around people who bathe every day, or meals that contain beef, or days that are temperate rather than broiling, but it will be even more difficult to pick up the strings of my old life if I no longer know any of my friends. Alternatively, if you do not wish to blog, I accept emails and letters, and I am not too ashamed to beg for them. Please write to me soon, or else I may be compelled to track down Habib, force him to leave his wife and children, and lead him into a life of sin (although it will be very hot for both of us, since he can cut my hair as often as he likes provided that each haircut is at least somewhat reminiscent of that scene in 'The Bourne Identity'). If there's anything you should hope, it's that I won't return to the States bald and married to a forty-year-old hairdresser, and so I implore you to dissuade me from my current course.

self-portrait 

pittsburgh hearts: an open letter to [you]

Dear [insert your name here],

This is the letter that I have meant to send to you for quite some time. Every night, I come home and think, 'I will write a real letter to [insert your name here]!' And then every night I discover that thirteen hours of work strips one's desire to pen a letter, even to one's [pick one: best friend/roommate/parent/sibling/niece/nephew/generic relative/favorite former resident/closest coworker]. But please believe me when I say that the lack of individual attention does not mean that I care about you any less.

India is very entertaining, and I am enjoying my stay here. Tonight, there is a film crew in the clubhouse area of the apartment complex, and they are recording what appears to be a movie or a fashion show. The juxtaposition between the movie set and the scrub-filled wilderness beyond the wall is quite jarring. The juxtapositions *everywhere* are quite jarring--women in beautiful saris carrying concrete in buckets on their heads; autorickshaws covered in Christmas lights sputtering past Hindu temples; tent cities set up against the walls of marble mansions; the miniature disco ball swinging from Gopal's rearview mirror above a small figurine of Ganesh. In a country where my pale skin and American clothes make me an object of fascination, nothing ever seems to make sense, and there's a crazy sense of vertigo beneath the typically-mundane schedule of work and sleep. It reminds me of the Rob Thomas video which I know that you [love/hate/aren't aware of], in which he keeps singing while the rooms, objects, and people flip and switch around him. I can be working at my desk, doing essentially the same job that I do in California, and I can forget where I am--until something jars me into awareness, like the flickering lights of the ubiquitous brownouts, or the dull thud and rumble of dynamite destroying rocks in the construction sites that ring our building. Then I'm brought back to reality, even though it seems that this can never be real, that it is just a dream that my overactive imagination has forced upon me.

But you don't want to hear about this; you just care about [silks/foods/prostitutes/whether I get along with my coworkers/when I get to come home]. I understand your curiosity. And the short answer is: they're [beautiful/sadness-inducing/cheap/entertaining/going to send me home in October]. The longer answer is probably not worth it in this letter, although I can't wait to talk to you when I get home and show you a five-hour slideshow of every single picture that I've taken here. I have about eighteen different shots of my bedspread which I think are quite interesting, and I'm sure that you would not begrudge me the six minutes of your life that it would take to show you those particular photos. That's why the bond between us is so strong--you're willing to put up with my [sense of humor/affinity for the bizarre/love of Zoolander/intense sarcasm/desire to live as far away as possible from Iowa], and I am willing to put up with your [silence/comic books/Round Barn/tendency to invite me to more gatherings when you know that I'm too far away to come/obsession with trucks/belief that I won't notice when you hook up in the same bed that I'm sleeping in]. And really, I feel that these differences have only brought us closer.

Now, my [love/friend], I think that it is time for me to sleep. Please know that I miss you tremendously; when I am not thinking about work, or about guacamole or chocolate chip chewies or steak or any other food, I sometimes think about you instead. It always brings a smile to my face and a skip to my heart when I remember [putting you in the fish cage/playing mafia/skanksgiving/partying in squaw valley/sonoma/milk rotting in my mouth/die another day/chronicles of riddick/shrimp or feet/the rivets burning us at area51/the great barrier reef/pingpong/pearl milk tea/miniature golf/that one perfect day with the rowing and the cemetary and eating at swanns at five a.m.]. Please know that despite the distance between us, I love and miss you. I hope to hear from you soon!

All my love,
Sara

P.S. 'pittsburgh hearts' refers to a great album by a band called Grand Buffet. Or rather, I'm assuming it's great based on the only album I own by them, which is called 'sparkle classic', and which I picked up at a Wesley Willis concert that they opened for a few years ago. 'pittsburgh hearts' does not have the song 'Let's Go Find the Cat', which you [may remember from the time I killed the iParty/have fortunately never heard]. Despite that, I suggest that you pick up something by them; they apparently released a new CD on June 7! They're also touring like crazy this summer, so you can check them out in [London/Boston/Pittsburgh/New York/Oklahoma City].

P.P.S. I have rediscovered the joy of Ricky Martin's 'The Cup of Life'. Thank you for [sharing my enthusiasm/loving me anyway].

finding out true love is blind

The turf war between the chefs is heating up, and we are all benefiting from it. It all began right around the time I got here, when Anup (who cooks for Gamma 301, which is where I lived at first) went on vacation. When that happened, everyone ended up eating in 402, which is where I live now and where Ranjit reigns supreme. Since we all got used to eating upstairs, and since we would rather eat as a group anyway, Anup came back to find that he had been usurped. I probably ate there twice in the month that I lived there, much to his continued chagrin.

However, now they're fighting it out over Matt and Ramsey, who still live in 301 but often eat in 402. Last night, Anup made Chinese food and Ranjit made Mexican food. To lure Matt and Ramsey back into the fold, Anup acknowledged that they would physically eat in 402, but he made up plates of his food for them and took them to 402, rather than letting them eat Ranjit's food. Ranjit was clearly upset about this, and despite his usually solicitous nature, didn't offer to heat up the cold plates for them, and kept pressing them to try his Mexican food instead (which, by the way, is very tasty, but is not really Mexican, since there is no sour cream, no guacamole, and some subtly wrong spice combinations).

Today, when I got home, I found that Ranjit had been cooking for three and a half hours, and he had made nine different Chinese dishes (noodles, fried rice, veg spring rolls, non-veg spring rolls, veg dumplings, non-veg dumplings, manchurian vegetables, chicken in garlic sauce, and chili prawns). I got him to admit that this was partially in reaction to Anup's offerings last night. This is quite amusing to me, and I can't wait to see what they cook up next.

I think that I'm getting sick, so I should be in bed--too much work, not enough sleep, and poor nutrition, combined with exposure to the plague that has ripped through the expat community, is potentially too much for me to withstand. So tonight, I came home by seven (shocking!) and finished 'The Rule of Four'. I've reverted to my childhood days when I could make my way through a 400-page book in two days, and I find that I missed those days more than I knew.

I thought that the book would be very similar to 'Angels and Demons', just with better writing, but I was wrong. Where 'Angels and Demons' focused almost entirely on ancient riddles, with a love story thrown in as a formulaic afterthought, 'The Rule of Four' turned out to be much more about love and loss, and the solving of the puzzle was just a red herring that distracted from the greater truths that the book was trying to impart.

Since the book was set in college, and since Stanford graduation was last weekend, it's probably natural that I started to feel nostalgic for the past. The strange thing about my college experience is that I feel like I had two wildly divergent lives in college; it's like I got to do college twice in four years, and the result is that one of those experiences feels like a faraway dream. I suppose that you could call those experiences Loro 1 and Loro 2--there's a pleasant symmetry to my college experience, in that it began, ended, and began again in the same dorm. I still feel very connected to my second college life; I keep in touch with my Loro residents, I try to see them as regularly as possible, and the experiences of that time are still fairly fresh in my mind. The first three years of college, however, are rapidly fading into memory, and it's hard to believe that I actually experienced anything that I know I did during that time. I have vague flashes, strange images of beaches, balconies, Phi Psi parties, and papasans, thoughts that encroach unbidden on my waking mind. But just like it used to seem like that could never end, now it seems like it never started, like it was all a dream that I had one restless night during my second life.

I think that life is a series of crossroads, where you have to choose what to keep and what to leave behind. It's like that old game 'Wizardry' that I played on our 486 computer--your knapsack only has a certain amount of space for things that you pick up, and every object you take means that you have to throw away another object in its place. There are things that I definitely want to keep from India--the memory of heat, the welcoming friendliness of the people in the office, the crawling sense of guilt regarding servants that holds me firmly grounded in the proletariat. And there are things from college that I definitely want to drop--the feeling that I could have accomplished more if I had made better choices at other crossroads, the bitter taste of friendships grown cold from misunderstandings, the knowledge that I spent so much time playing games that meant nothing, when I could have actually been living.

But now is not the time for regrets. I am coming back to California in approximately four months--and by the time I step on the plane, I want to have a better picture of what my destiny holds. If nothing else, 'The Rule of Four' reminded me of the importance of friendship, and also flung all my old academic curiosity back in my face. This is not to say that I intend to go to grad school (for those of you who read this in the office)...but I should be doing more with my spare time than watching VH1 and baking chocolate chip chewies. However, at this moment in time, chocolate chip chewies sound like the best thing in the world, so if I were given the choice right now, I would not be likely to turn them down in the quest for knowledge. Someday, though, I shall have more fortitude.

they do it with sticks...a building is springing in the middle of the emptiness outside of my apartment complex. they make the floors first and balance each new floor on a thicket of sticks, completing the walls last of all. 

beyond the wall lies the wilderness of the city. 

the pool area below my apartment. tonight, there was a party for a nameless occasion. 

where i end and you begin

The monsoon has arrived, and a storm is in its birth pangs outside; the wind is shrieking around my corner room and there is lightning in the distance. My internet is flickering in and out with the power, which disrupts my work since I have to type in a password to get onto the secure network every time the wireless router resets. So I have decided to go to bed early and get up early to accomplish what needs to be done. Whether this is a viable possibility remains to be seen, since I frequently convince my sleeping self to stay asleep instead of waking up to face the day.

Had I been smart, I would have stayed at the office longer, or worked after eating dinner at home, but instead I picked up a book and was immediately lost. I'm reading 'The Rule of Four', which is written by Princeton grads who clearly enjoy the taste and flavor of the English language, and use clever verbiage to dress up an already-interesting plot. Walter had picked up the 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili' last summer, probably because beneath his endless silence lies a vocabulary that surpasses my own, and I was interested in both the original Italian work and the modern-day 'Da Vinci Code'-style thriller that uses it as its primary plot device. However, I was never interested enough to abandon the baking of Olympic ring cakes and the enjoyment of endless summer popcorn flicks, and so I didn't read either book last year. Now, however, in a land where books are cheap and friends are scarce, I'm rediscovering my youthful passion for literature. Of course, by 'literature' I mean romances and thrillers, so perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit.

The book is making me quite nostalgic, however, for an academic career that I have let fall by the wayside in my pursuit of the good ol' American dream of financial success. Actually, it's not financial success that motivates me, but rather inertia combined with a desire to stay in California a bit longer. Ironic, isn't it, that by wanting to stay in California, I have ended up in India?

But seriously, the only thing that I felt serious passion for at Stanford was the work I did for my honors thesis--I spent three years researching one man and one doomed conspiracy, and at the end of it, all I was left with was a sense of futility. It was better than the sense of futility that must have been felt by the men I studied, since I did not experience my futility while dangling from a piano-wire noose as Berlin burned around me, but it was still a life-shaping experience. As much as I was good at the research that I did and excited about the subject that I studied, it still felt somewhat derivative and useless.

And that, my friends, is why I have not gone to graduate school--while I think that I could probably be a great teacher, a solid researcher, and a benefit to my chosen field of study, there has to be something more to life than researching the lives of others. What that 'something' is, I have no idea. I feel like I should know what it is that I'm supposed to do--or maybe I already know and am just refusing to acknowledge it. As every SLE kid worth his salt knows, Saint Augustine once prayed, 'Give me chastity and continence, but not yet'. Perhaps that's what is wrong with me--I want to know what it is that I'm supposed to do with my life, but I don't want to know yet because I'm afraid that it's going to be fraught with difficulties and will not necessarily be an enjoyable experience. Every day that I go to the office is filled with fun interactions with people and enough work to make me sleep dreamlessly; but it's also a day that I cannot retrieve, and it's another day that is lost to whatever purpose my life is supposed to hold. Unless, of course, my purpose is to slave away in corporate America, in which case it's highly ironic that I'm so concerned about what great things my future might hold.

Perhaps it is just the storm outside, and the crescendos of thunder, that is making me feel restless tonight. Perhaps my delusions of grandeur are unhealthily enhanced by servants and marble floors. Perhaps I am obsessed with World War II because I believe that it is my destiny to be the first person to conquer Russia from the West. Perhaps my life is passing me by while I listen to Shakira alone during the monsoon. Perhaps my life has not yet really begun, and perhaps I am placing too much emphasis on my current position of uncertainty.

Okay, this post has worn out its welcome. If I am going to make it into the office early enough to accomplish everything that needs to be done, I should really sleep. Goodnight!

two decades of failure, betrayal, and disaster

Ah, the joys of being employed. Today was quite stressful. I had more to do than I could possibly accomplish in the day, and then I got a couple of extra projects added to my plate that couldn't be pushed aside. One was an interview that wasn't originally scheduled for me, but the original interviewer was sick, and so I helped out. The stressful thing about that was that it was shadowed by the head of the office here, which made me nervous since I don't have a lot of experience with interviewing and don't feel that I'm particularly good at it. It went well, but I spent almost an hour prepping for it, in addition to the half hour that the interview lasted, and so that ate up the one big block of time that I had set aside to clear out some other tasks. So, I worked form 9-6:30, came home and had dinner, then worked from 8 until midnight, with a conference call somewhere in there.

It's not all bad, though. I watched 'The Royal Tenenbaums' while working, which means that I probably could have been more efficient if the TV was off, but I also probably would have fallen asleep, so watching the movie was the lesser of two evils. I love 'The Royal Tenenbaums', mostly because it has a completely offbeat sense of humor. I've previously said that a good test of potential friendship is asking people what they thought of 'Zoolander', since someone who hated that movie could never get along with me; however, I think that 'The Royal Tenenbaums' might be a better litmus test. The humor in the latter movie is more bizarre, and cuts out the people who are only into 'Zoolander' for the (admittedly brilliant) orange mocha frappucino scene.

iTunes is apparently bulimic ('you can read minds?!' - that's from 'Zoolander', natch)...it's on shuffle mode, and it just started playing 'I Started a Joke', which is the song that plays in the background when Zoolander leaves the VH1 Fashion Awards, asks 'who am I?' to his own reflection in a mud-puddle, hears Hansel say 'The results are in, amigo! What's left to ponder?...Nice comeback!', sees the billboard in Times Square announcing that 'Confused Loser Zoolander Tries to Steal Award', walks home, and cries himself to sleep in his absurdly small bunk bed. It's sort of a heart-wrenching song by The Wallflowers--who apparently just released a new album last month. Since my exposure to new music here is limited to the latest Telugu radio hits and random techno songs sent to me by Can Sar, it should be understandable that I have no idea what's going on with the music scene in the States.

It may be apparent from the level of detail in the last paragraph that I'm too obsessed with 'Zoolander', but I could name two other people in the world with equal or greater levels of knowledge (think Allie and Walter, since we watched it any time that we wanted a break from the residents, which during orientation meant four times in seven days). This is probably not particularly beneficial or enlightening to any of my readers, and it's certainly not helping me to get some much-needed rest, so I think it's time for bed!

are you a mexican or a mexican't?

I'm watching 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico', but I need to go to bed. I was at work for thirteen hours today, came home, ate dinner while talking to my parents on the phone, and then had some more work that I had to wrap up, so I put in a movie to keep me awake while I worked. The sad thing is that now I want to finish the movie, but I don't want to keep working, so the smart thing to do would be to go to sleep, but the awesome thing to do would be to finish the movie. However, I've already seen it, so it's not like it's imperative that I finish it.

When you spend the entire day at the office there is nothing to report, and so I'm afraid this post will be quite boring. However, I've said it before and I'll say it again--Johnny Depp with blood flowing down his face from gouged-out eyes is just as hot as Johnny Depp with both eyes intact. I doubt that you could say that of a lot of people.

...and with that, the movie ended, which means that I'll get almost seven hours of sleep tonight. Fantastic! I should lie down, if only to rest my back; it's not happy after I spent so much time at my desk today. However, Ismail told me that he would pick up the medicine that he always takes for his back--I won't take it unless it's given to me in the mouth of a live fish, so hopefully he comes back with something that is thrillingly exotic.

nothing hurts like your mouth

I got absolutely nothing done today, which is both unfortunate and wonderful. I should have unpacked all my stuff, done my laundry, and caught up on work. Instead, I had brunch, got a manicure, went shopping, saw 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith', and had dinner at Cinnabar Redd. I shall describe each event in order, since the only thing I really do on this blog is go into excruciating detail about the mundane aspects of my life.

Brunch was enjoyable; I had a BLT, and while the bacon is not the same as bacon at home, I am none the worse for it and so consider myself quite fortunate. I undertook the manicure because I have had hangnails recently and did not want to take my granddad's 'cure' of supergluing them to my fingers, and I thought that the manicure would soften my hands. Unfortunately, my skin is super sensitive, and so while the woman was doing a good job, three of my cuticles ended up bleeding. It's clear that concern about biohazards is not strong here, since she just kept going (after expressing remorse over making me bleed, of course). So now, I have no hangnails, but I have three scabbed-over cuticles, and so I think that I ended up with less attractive hands than I had before. Evidently this is the price of vanity.

Since we have to coordinate rides back from brunch, I ended up going shopping with some people; the only store we went to was FabIndia. The store clearly caters to the expatriate community, since I see a much higher proportion of white people there than I do anywhere else. I got a shirt and some soap, then sat around and waiting for half an hour while the people I was with finished picking out curtains for their apartment. I spent the downtime watching Ramsey play a brick-breaking game on his BlackBerry, which was about as dull as it sounds, but the chair we were sitting on was comfortable and so I couldn't complain.

'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' was v. satisfying; I love hot people and explosions, and assassins have always been very appealing to me (perhaps because they are efficient in the most deadly way possible), so I really liked it. However, Indian theatres are endlessly frustrating; cellphones are ringing constantly and people actually answer them, and there is an intermission in the middle of the movie that always seems to occur at the most inopportune time. Today's intermission came as Brad Pitt was climbing an air shaft to reach his target, and so being forced to take a break in the middle of a key scene was really annoying. I will definitely get this one when it comes out on DVD, and then I can enjoy it sans intermission.

We had dinner at Cinnabar Redd after the movie, which was lowkey and quite enjoyable. Now, I should be working (or calling my parents), but I really want to sleep instead. So, I'm going to be bad and go to sleep. I'm sad that I'm missing Stanford graduation, however; commencement is probably still going on right now, and I'm not there to wish anyone well :( Congratulations, everyone! I hope that graduation rocks.

it's a false sense of accomplishment every time i quit

Today was pretty much completely uneventful. I slept late, had French toast for breakfast, then sat around waiting for my roommates to shower. We went shoe-shopping briefly, and I picked up an adorable pair of sandals; at this rate, I'm picking up one pair of shoes every two weeks, which outstrips even my relatively rapacious acquisitions in the States, and means I'll come home with about fifteen new pairs of shoes if I continue at my current pace. However, given the fact that I paid about $15 for this pair of shoes and I estimate that they would have cost $70 or $80 for a similar pair at Nordstrom or Nine West, I can't feel too guilty.

After shoe-shopping, we went to Coffee Day, which is the Indian equivalent of Starbucks, with the added benefit of having hookah on the menu. You can apparently buy hookah and have a hookah pipe at your table for half an hour, which is strange to say the least. We refrained from the hookah, and instead had a couple of coffee drinks each while pop music (such as Britney Spears' 'I'm a Slave 4 U') blasted on the speakers. At some point they switched to techno, which made the place seem like a club without the darkness or the dancing. I worked on my romance novel for a bit, but I didn't finish the chapter that I'm working on; however, I've passed the 20,000-word mark, which is pretty good.

After Coffee Day, I came home and took a nap; we sat outside for the first hour or so, which was rather draining since it was in the height of the afternoon heat. Several other people were going to watch the office cricket match, and I was supposed to meet them for dinner after. When I got to the restaurant, they had decided to go to Mainland China instead because there was a 20-minute wait at Chutneys; but when we got to Mainland China, the wait was going to be at least 45 minutes. We ended up ordering takeout from Mainland China (which took over half an hour to be finished, since the place was a zoo)--and it's a good thing we did, since by the time we got our takeout, the people who had gotten there before us still hadn't been seated. We brought the takeout home and ate in my apartment; so, it was a completely futile mission for me, since I could have gotten the takeout without even leaving my apartment, but whatever.

So, Saturday was completely relaxing. Tomorrow will hopefully be relaxing as well--and then it's time to get down to some serious work to make up for the stuff that I fell behind on while I was out of the office off and on this week.

sweet dreams are made of these

I went to my first Indian wedding today; hopefully it will not be my last, since I expect my Indian friends back home to a) get married and b) invite me to the festivities. It was quite fun, despite the fact that it was relatively early in the morning. The festivities started around eight a.m., and when I left around 9:30, it was still going, although the bride had briefly departed to switch saris. I had to go to the office, so I couldn't stick around, but I very much enjoyed the parts that I did see.

This wedding was very different from my experience with American weddings. While there is a lot of tradition and ritual, probably moreso than in American Christian weddings, there is also a lot more freedom on the part of the guests to be able to move around, talk, explain things to hapless foreigners, etc. In the weddings I am familiar with, you have to sit quietly in a pew for an hour or so while the priest or preacher drones on for awhile and someone sings half a dozen musical arrangements. Then you have to go stand in a receiving line, and everything is very polite and constrained (at least until the reception). This wedding, however, was not like that at all. People were constantly moving around, talking to each other, and trying to get the best angle for a picture or a video. It was also clear that only the priests knew exactly what all the rituals were, so I didn't feel like I was that much more out of the loop than everyone else there.

For the part that I saw, everything started outside of the wedding hall. From what I gathered, the groom was pretending that he didn't want to marry the bride, but she came out of the hall and he was convinced to wed her anyway. They were lifted up into the air and exchanged their garlands, then they sat on a flower-decorated bench and did something involving drinking small cups of milk. Their feet were bathed by their female relatives, and the relatives threw candies in front, behind, and to each side. This was a very entertaining part of the ceremony, since the candies invariably hit hapless onlookers. After this, the couple moved inside, where a flower tent of sorts was set up, and more stuff happened. We left before they walked around the fire, but I did see the fire, so I suppose that was pretty good.

As you can tell, my understanding was limited at best, but I'm really glad that I went. I'm happy for the bride; I work with Ashwini, and she's a great girl. This was a love match, rather than an arranged marriage, and so you could tell that the bride and groom were happy with the wedding, rather than apprehensive or anxious. It also gave me a chance to wear a really ornate, colorful outfit; if I showed up at a wedding (or anything) in the States wearing the heavily-embroidered lehnga that I wore today, I would stand out rather uncomfortably. Here, however, you would stand out if you were wearing something plain and undecorated. I love the fact that clothes here are so colorful--and that's why I could never move to New York, since I would go insane if I could only wear black or grey.

I spent most of the rest of the day in the office, although I came home for a couple of hours in the afternoon to rest my back. After work, we went out to Angeethi, which is quickly becoming our favorite Indian-cuisine restaurant. The only thing I really want to eat there is murgh makhni (a tasty chicken curry) with plain, buttered, or garlic naan (and tonight I had all three!)--and the murgh makhni may be the only Indian food I ever crave. I can take or leave just about everything else (such as the mutton biryani they served at lunch today; I, like just about every other expat, had a peanut butter sandwich), but the murgh makhni is astoundingly good.

I don't have any plans for the weekend, which is just the way I like it; I intend to lie flat on my back as much as possible. I also have to catch up on some work, and I may try to see a movie on Sunday, but we'll see if that pans out. Now, though, it's time for bed!

ashwini sitting on some dude's lap. my friend maya explained that it used to be pretty common for the bride to actually be a child and thus held in her father's arms; this tradition has continued even though ashwini could probably support herself if necessary. 

the bride and groom. right after this, there was some ritual involving drinking numerous small cups of milk (?), and then the female relatives took turns throwing sweets to the four winds. 

ashwini, the bride, throwing a garland on the groom. their families lifted them into the air and they (rather violently) exchanged garlands. 

wedding singers, sans singing. think more drums, less 80s love ballads. 

thomas, chris and brian 

me in my lehnga; the embroidery at the bottom was extremely heavy, but gorgeous. 

california dreamin'

I somehow managed to make it to India without a copy of 'California Dreamin', despite the fact that I definitely have it on a CD someplace back home. I downloaded it from iTunes tonight, and I also picked up a copy of a techno remix of the song, which is rather hysterical. I'm not feeling nostalgic, precisely, but it would be v. nice to have my car again, and be able to drive places and not have to deal with the insane traffic and the cringe-inducing near-accidents that we face on a daily (or minutely) basis. I miss my car more than just about anything else--the sunroof, the CD player, the feel of the gearshift under my palm, the broken side-view mirror, the vague smell of rotting watermelon and vinegar. Oh, car, I hope that you're safe and happy!

I can't believe that it's already June; if I don't get my trip extended, I'll be home in four months! Home in four months sounds nice, but I have a daunting amount to accomplish between now and when I leave, and from that angle five or six months sounds more reasonable. I should know in the next couple of weeks, and then I can begin planning my remaining time in earnest.

Ismail picked up my lehnga and my sari for me today; I probably should have gone with the fixed-waist option, rather than the zipper and drawstring option, for the lehnga skirt. I still don't know what fixed-waist is, but the drawstring option resulted in a skirt that is at least two sizes too big that you then tie closed. The tricky part about this is that the skirt is really heavy from all of the embroidery and sparkle, and so I will just have to hope that the drawstring will suffice and that the skirt won't fall off at an inopportune moment. Despite that, it's gorgeous; I'm also going to have to learn how to wrap a sari at some point, since I really want to wear the sari but can't figure out how to make it look like anything other than a poorly-wrapped bedsheet. So I'll wear the lehnga tomorrow, and try to get sari lessons from one of the house-women.

Work was fine; I had a lot to catch up on, and I had wanted to leave early so that my back wouldn't start hurting, but despite the fact that I got there a little after eight, I still didn't leave until six. By that point, it was too late for my back, and it's definitely not well yet. So I came home, tried on the lehnga, laid around downstairs, ate dinner, and now am ready to go to bed. I have to leave for the wedding by 7:15am tomorrow, and then go to work straight after that, and then out to dinner because some people are visiting from California, so it's promising to be a long day. This weekend, I'd like to catch up on some work, and maybe (maybe!) work on my romance novel. No promises, though--I don't like making promises, because then I feel constrained, and constraints drive me insane. But, if all goes well, perhaps my main characters will make it past their wedding night!

it takes my pain away

When I woke up this morning, my back had not improved at all, and so I stayed home from work and went to the hospital for a check-up. This was a huge step for me, considering that I typically avoid doctors like the plague (which I usually already have when I am in doctor-avoidance mode); however, the only way that my family's traditional home remedy for illness (whisky) would cure my back pain was if I drank enough of it to dull my senses, and so I thought it was prudent to seek medical attention in case there is something seriously wrong with me.

'Medical attention' entailed a visit to the hospital. This was quite an experience, and I am glad that as long as I was standing upright rather than sitting, I was actually able to experience it in a better way than most people would. I am, however, reminded of the line in 'Eurotrip' in which Cooper talks about how his brother used a public toilet in New Delhi and had to have his leg amputated...but I digress. By the time I got to the hospital, Ismail was already there and had already gotten my paperwork for me. I filled it out, handed it to the receptionist (along with the Rs50 registration fee, which is about $1), and was told to see the neurologist in room 11. We had to wait in the hallway for about twenty minutes before I could be seen; once I got in to see the doctor, he asked me a few questions, prodded my back, told me that if I'm not better in three days to see him again, and gave me a prescription for Combiflam and Voveran Emulgel. I paid the Rs300 consultation fee, the Rs60 for my two prescriptions, and was on my way.

A few thoughts on the hospital experience:

1) The grand total of all fees, including prescriptions, and without any insurance at all, was Rs410, which is about nine dollars. This is absurdly cheap to me, but would be expensive for someone who was not deathly ill.
2) I don't mind being stared at in general; I figure that I must be a rather freakish figure for most people, and I almost respect that they don't make any pretense of ignoring me while simultaneously staring at my covertly. So while other expats seem to be really bothered by the constant attention that we get whenever we go outside, I don't really care--maybe it's a result of living in a small town and feeling like I grew up with fairly constant scrutiny anyway. However, it's a much more uncomfortable experience when you're already cranky because of a sore back, and when you're stuck in a room with people staring at you for twenty minutes. It was exacerbated by the fact that everyone (nurses, staff, my driver) kept asking me to sit down, as I was leaning against the wall, and I had to keep explaining that sitting down was the worst thing for me to do.
3) It's weird to be given prescriptions that don't have ten pages of warnings and contraindications. The only warning sign I saw anywhere was a piece of paper tacked up on the wall in the waiting room that told people they should take their pills with cold water rather than warm water, and told a cautionary tale of some guy who used warm water and ended up getting the pill stuck in his esophagus and spending five days in the hospital. They even used the phrase 'one guy took a pill', which I thought was amusingly informal. But, I got no information about my prescriptions at all; the gel has a stick figure mimicking back pain, and all I know about the Combiflam is that it's a combination of ibuprofen and acetaminophen. They cut a sheet of blister packets in half to give me the amount that I was prescribed, which helpfully cut off the warnings and contraindications. So, this is all I know about it:

Caution: Bronchospasm ma
patients suffering from or w
history of bronchial asthma
not be given to patients in
other non-steroidal anti infl
induce the symptoms of as
urticaria
Warning: Overdose may be

I have a feeling that warning may have applied to me, but I can't be sure, and I wanted my back to stop hurting, so I decided to go with it anyway.

I spent the entire day lying flat on my back; I had lots of work to do, but sitting at my desk for long periods of time hurts (which is why I need to cut this off soon). Spending so much time lying down or standing up definitely helped, so hopefully I'll be better tomorrow. I also got Siraj to make me macaroni and cheese; there were a few boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese, which I figured would be the best cure for illness. I had fun talking to him in our bastardized mixture of English, Hindi, and pantomime (he's pretty shy about speaking English, but very entertaining anyway) while the macaroni cooked, and I was amused to watch his method of combining it. He didn't add any butter (sad), but he heated the milk and added the cheese packet to it as though he was making a real sauce. So it turned out good, if not quite as buttery as usual, and since no one else was around, it was okay that I made a spectacle of myself by eating while kneeling on a dining room chair.

I had a call tonight that I couldn't get out of, but I took it lying beside the phone in my apartment, so it could have been much worse. Now, I shall use the questionable gel and get some sleep!

expatriates in peril

So it seems like a plague of physical disaster is spreading throughout the expat community. My back is getting worse, rather than better, and Regina (whose back had not hurt initially after the accident on Sunday) is now experiencing back pain as well. Several people have a variety of stomach ailments that are typical to India (although no one has cholera, much to my chagrin), one person has tonsillitis, and one person went to Malaysia on holiday last week, got a foot massage, and has severe swelling across the bridge of one of her feet as a result. Now is apparently not a good time to be an expat, and I hope that the plague passes before I develop any respiratory issues. Although if that does happen, I know that I can just go swallow a live fish, and so I'm not dreading it like I was before.

I switched apartments tonight, which didn't help my back; I had intended to come home early today, but I had a growing list of things that had to get done immediately, and so I still didn't get home until six-thirty. Once I got here, I had to pack up everything so that it could get hauled upstairs to my new apartment. In some ways it's nicer than the previous one--the bathroom is definitely nicer, and there are more drawers and shelves. However, the bed is smaller, and the pipes make a strange shrieking noise occasionally, so it's kind of a toss-up as to which room was preferable. I'll give it a few days before passing judgment, since the fact that I had to pack up all my stuff made me ill-disposed to liking the new place. I'll also take pictures once I'm actually unpacked, since right now things are just deposited wherever they happened to end up.

If I continue to write, all I will do is whine about my back, or the amount of work that I have, or the fact that I spent all afternoon drooling at my desk over the thought of Jack-in-the-Box's Bacon-Bacon Cheeseburger after having a 'lunch' of a half-cup of spicy potatoes followed by a snack of microwave popcorn. I will be in a much better mood after I've had some sleep. And please, do not take the crankiness of this post to indicate that I am not enjoying India--India is fantastic, and I wouldn't trade this experience for the world. Unless the world was made of bacon, in which case I might have to reconsider that statement.

can't you feel the warmth of my sincerity

For those of you who were too lazy to read my entire post about my weekend (which my mother said amounted to seven pages when she printed it out for my grandmother), a recap: the Naxalites bombed a bus on the road to Srisailam, the temple itself was awesome but difficult to understand, we saw monkeys, and on Sunday my driver rear-ended someone and I vaguely hurt my back. You're now all caught up!

I should be working right now, but it's so tempting to throw in the towel once you reach your eleventh hour of work. I was almost lured into going to Meena Bazaar, but after waiting for the car for a few minutes, my common sense prevailed and I came home instead. I had a nice, long conversation with my parents, and was pleasantly surprised to find that my mother was not overly worried about me despite the picture of the bombed-out bus posted below. The people who went to Meena Bazaar should be back soon, so I'll go up and have a late dinner with them, then do a bit more work before going to bed.

Update on the whiplash: my back was aching all day, which is unfortunate, and all I wanted to do was lie down, but I had too much to do to go home. Sadness. It's not *bad*, it's just not great, and since I refuse to seek medical treatment or succumb to illnesses unless physically incapable of going anywhere, I shall persevere. Unfortunately, this can't be cured by a shot of whisky like my semiannual sore throat, so I'll just have to grin and bear it.

Speaking of cures, however, I had a somewhat-garbled conversation with Ismail today that led me to believe that I can cure my asthma here. He said something about how at the very beginning of the monsoon season (which starts in the next few days), tons of people come to Hyderabad to do some sort of natural asthma cure that involves swallowing a live fish. From what I understood (which could be completely incorrect), these fish appear in the lake at the beginning of the monsoon, and you put some medicine on the mouth of the fish, and then swallow the fish. Or something. I do know that it involves swallowing a live fish, and that you're completely cured of asthma after this treatment. Great, eh? Had I known about this, I wouldn't have brought albuterol inhalers.

Okay, the Meena Bazaar people are back from their excursion, and so it's time to go upstairs. Happily, I'm moving upstairs in the next couple of days, which will be great, since I spend most of my time there anyway. Goodnight, everyone!

my weekend: road trippin', srisailam, naxalites, cinderellas, mainland china, whiplash

I had a fantastic weekend, but that's probably because I have a morbid sense of humor and take pleasure in ridiculous and random occurrences. We left for Srisailam at six a.m. on Saturday, with the intention of spending the night there and returning today. The journey was initially uneventful; I managed to sleep for an hour or too, until the bumpiness of the roads jarred me awake too violently. We had fun listening to Indian music and making pleasant conversation, occasionally interrupted by fear of death as our driver would attempt to pass motorcycles by playing chicken with oncoming buses.

After we entered the boundary of the restricted area containing the nature preserve, we happened upon a group of men carrying what looked like AK47s who were surrounding the recently-burned-out shell of a bus. It turned out that the dudes with guns were policemen (out of uniform), and that the bus had been blown up by a bomb in the road the night before. The crater was probably three feet across, and was about fifty yards past the bus; it looked like the bus had caught fire from the bomb, but had enough momentum to carry it another fifty yards before coming to a stop across the middle of the road. The policemen who stopped our car asked our driver about his cellphone (which didn't have reception); we found out later that they weren't worried about our safety, but rather didn't have a radio of their own, and they wanted to use our phone to report that they had just found another bomb in the hill above the road.

We occasionally have major communications issues with the drivers, who speak rather limited English; our driver told us that the bus had been blown up by Naxalites (a violent Communist group that likes to blow things up), but that no one had been hurt because they had asked everyone to get off the bus first. This seemed a little shady, since as I said above, the bus had clearly been moving when it had gone over the bomb, and it seemed unlikely that a driver would voluntarily let everyone else get off the bus and then drive full-speed over a bomb by himself. We told him that we wanted to turn around if it was dangerous, but he assured us that we'd be fine. Since we had to assume that he didn't have a personal deathwish, we continued on our journey. We found out later from Ismail, the head driver who speaks better English and tends to be well-informed, that the truth was that seventeen people had been killed in the blast, and that the Naxalites had blown up the bus in an attempt to block the road while they carried out an attack on the police station in the nearby town.

I knew that the Naxalites are a problem in India, but I hadn't realized that they are operating within four hours of Hyderabad. I'm not concerned about it, since they're targeting government officials rather than tourists or foreigners, but it made us all slightly nervous.

The drive, however, was beautiful, and we stopped to take pictures at the dam over the river Krishna. But, when we arrived at the hotel that we were supposed to stay in, we were told that there were no rooms. We couldn't get clarification at the time, but we later found out from Ismail that our rooms had been commandeered by the police. So, we went on to Srisailam, which was another half hour away. The drivers looked for some hotels there, but they were all either completely full, or shady, or both. We finally found one with vacancies that looked decent, but they wanted Rs.2500 for five rooms, plus another Rs.2500 deposit. We knew that they were trying to rip us off (we later found out that the going rate for those rooms is actually Rs.100/room, rather than the Rs.500 they were trying to charge); we also knew that if we gave them a deposit, they would claim that we had damaged the rooms, or the office would be closed, or whatever.

This was another instance of failed communication with the drivers. Sharif was communicating between us and the hotel guy, and at first he was trying to explain to us that the deposit was compulsory and that we had to do it. We kept saying that we refused, and he kept explaining to us that we had to--when suddenly (and none of us could figure out why he changed his mind) he told us that we were getting ripped off and under absolutely no circumstances should we give the hotel another Rs.2500. Since this is what we had been saying all along, it was v. confusing when he started to explain to us that we couldn't give the hotel a deposit.

So, with no place to stay, and no desire to be stuck in Srisailam if the situation was about to get worse, we went to the temple in the heat of midday rather than waiting for the procession at five p.m. The temple was an interesting experience, marred by the fact that none of us knew anything about Hinduism in general or the temple in particular. We paid 100 rupees each to skip the line to see the shrine, which seemed to kinda miss the point of waiting patiently to perform obeisiance to the gods, but then again, they weren't our gods. Still, turning someone else's religion into a tourist activity is a little awkward, although I don't have any problems with non-Christians wanting to see cathedrals in Europe or whatever. The problem was that I didn't understand anything about what the thousands of people in the temple were waiting in line to see; the temple at Srisailam is one of twelve temples in India devoted to Shiva, and apparently this one is one of the most important ones, and traveling to this temple will absolve you of all sins and potentially 'free you from the vicious cycle of life and death' (according to a website I read after the fact). I also didn't get to really see or understand the pinacle of the experience; there was a small room in which some priests or acolytes were burning a flame, and something involving coconuts, and a stone that represents Shiva, but you can only stand in front of the door to the room for three seconds before the guards motion you onward to allow the next worshipper to have three seconds in the proverbial sun. By the time my eyes had focused, I already had to move on.

However, despite my obvious ignorance, it was on the whole a rather powerful experience. The temple at Srisailam has been in existence for almost two thousand years, and the never-ending stream of pilgrims (many of whom had shaved their heads as part of the rituals) was moving. A recorded chant of 'om namah shivayah' played constantly over loudspeakers in the complex, which could help to create a transcendental experience for those so inclined. Also, you can't wear shoes in the temple, which helped me to connect to it, if only because the rocks were superheated in the sun and the pain was a constant reminder of how much this would mean to the worshippers there, even if the religion isn't my own.

The only thing that marred my time there was the fact that we were such a noticeable, large group. It's hard to really focus and understand and experience (although I hate saying that this is an 'experience', it sounds so fake and pretentious) when there are other Americans talking unnecessarily loudly and doing things that just make you cringe as you intuitively feel that they're probably offending the people around you. This wasn't a problem with any of the people I work with directly, since we're all pretty decent people, but it's still hard to have a meaningful experience in a serious place with a large group of people. Despite all that, the temple was awesome (in the awe-inspiring sense of the word, as well as the more modern 'dude, that rules' sense of the word). We couldn't take pictures in the temple, but I did take a picture of the temple itself.

Since we couldn't stay at the hotel that we were supposed to stay at, and since the Naxalites were busy trying to blow things up, we couldn't get the guides that were supposed to take us in jeeps into the nature preserve. So, after spending an hour at the temple, we turned around and came home. We briefly stopped at another small temple to Ganesh on the way home, and stopped again in a village halfway between Srisailam and Hyderabad so that the drivers could take a break. We made it home by seven; it was a long day, fraught with many strange occurrences, miscommunications, and funny situations. However, I am so glad that I went. Despite the Naxalites, the lack of rooms, and my almost-complete ignorance of Hinduism, the temple was definitely worth seeing. I also enjoyed getting out of the city for the first time and seeing the countryside (which was gorgeous despite the lack of water in the last weeks before the monsoon).

We all showered upon returning to the apartments, and then went out for dinner at Mainland China. This was v. welcome; we didn't have lunch, since it's not smart to eat food from roadside restaurants (a lesson reinforced by memories of the terrible food poisoning my father got from the shashlik stand near Kiev), and so I subsisted for the entire day on two poptarts and a few crackers. My second poptart was great; I'd put it in the cargo pocket of my pants, then fallen asleep on it, and the heat from my thigh actually warmed it up almost effectively as a microwave. No one else took me up on my offer to cook them a poptart, however, and so my talents were wasted.

Despite the tastiness of my poptart, I didn't eat much; I also didn't drink much because my fastidiousness doesn't allow me to use a squat toilet more than once in a day. Needless to say, Mainland China was awesome; we ordered tons of food, and most of us had drinks as well (I had a pina colada, which actually tasted like a rum milkshake, and two 'cinderellas', which were a couple of difference juices with rum and an umbrella). We also went out afterwards to a club in the basement of the Taj Krishna; the club was fun, and they played a mix of Indian music and techno (including 'Sandstorm', possibly the best techno song ever). They also played the worst techno song ever--a techno remix of 'California Dreamin' by the Mamas and the Papas. We got home a little after one, I started watching a movie w/one of my roommates, but fell asleep on the couch and missed the last half. Sadness.

Today was much less eventful; brunch at the Taj Krishna, followed by shopping (of course). I checked out a pearl store, and a bookstore, and FabIndia; then, I came home and worked for a few hours. And so, that was my weekend. Lessons learned:

1) Don't let someone else organize a trip for you, particularly if that person does not speak your language fluently.
2) Even more importantly, don't expect to understand what is happening around you if the only English spoken by your driver involves the names of the stores you frequent, and if the only Hindi words you speak are the equivalents of 'hello', 'thank you', and 'go faster'.
3) Poptarts can be slow-roasted with body heat.

Oh yeah, and I also finally learned the meaning of the song 'Rock the Casbah'. In the song, the background is 'Sharif don't like it'. Now, if 'Rock the Casbah' referred to our driver named Sharif, then it would be clear that what Sharif don't like is driving with any sense of prudence or caution. Yesterday was harrowing enough, and that was out in the relative openness of the countryside highway; today, he was the driver who took me and Regina shopping, and I can assure you that riding with him in Hyderabad is even worse. He rear-ended another car while we were out and about; luckily for him, the other car was pretty tall (SUV-like) and so he didn't damage it at all. We were back on the road in less than a minute, after both drivers got out and checked their cars; you apparently don't file a police report here unless one of you is pissed off. However, I think I got some mild whiplash; my back started hurting after the incident, and I've felt nauseous the rest of the day. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow--and between Naxalites, whiplash, and ten hours in a car traversing the Andhra Pradesh countryside, I'm guessing that my week will seem positively boring by comparison.