06.28.07
Posted in India
at 23:01
Since arriving in India, I’ve ridden on/in a number of vehicles: Planes, taxis, cars, scooters, motorcycles, buses, and most recently, an auto rickshaw. Prior to coming to India, I had never ridden a scooter, motorcycle, or auto rickshaw. Though I religiously wear my seatbelt and bicycle helmet in the US, and though helmet laws are on the horizon in India, I have not worn a seatbelt since arriving in India, and have only worn a helmet on one occasion. People just don’t do those things here. Autorickshaws don’t even have doors. And actually I take that back. I’ve worn seatbelts on planes in India, but not in cars.
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Posted in India
at 22:40
A really strange happening that transpired sometime last week:
Walking down the street, I saw an odd sight. A white person. He was about my age. I started to wave, then realised, Why the hell should I wave? I don’t know him! And he saw me. We kind of looked at each other, neither of us stopping or saying anything. Then we passed. Replaying the incident in my mind, I can think of all sorts of funny things to put into thought balloons above our heads. What I was actually thinking was, What are you doing here?
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06.27.07
Posted in food, India
at 23:28
So I seem to have come down with a bit of a cold. The family I’m staying with is vegetarian, but Auntie prepared the South Indian equivalent of chicken soup–rasam. Rasam is usually eaten mixed with rice, and contains a number of beneficial herbs. Why do we eat chicken soup when we’re sick anyway? Why not vegetable beef or cream of celery?
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Posted in India
at 23:14
We went to the zoo on Sunday. I got to see golden jackals, with which I have a slight obsession. The name of this website, in fact, comes from the binomial name of this creature. I took my film SLR and my camera phone in hopes of getting a good picture to spice up my rather bland layout. Sadly, the bars of the cage were very close together, and so the shots I took are not worth posting. Unless I got something stupendous on the film camera that is. Alas.
The jackals were so cute, though! They were smaller than I expected. Most were lying down, snuggling in groups of three or four, watching the people watching them.
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06.13.07
Posted in India
at 23:15
So last night I went up on the roof of our apartment building to look at the stars, armed with this month’s star charts for both northern and southern hemispheres. Got to see some stars I’ve never seen before since they are not visible in the US.
At first Pratik and I climbed up on the huge, concrete, box-shaped water tank for an even better view. But then the parents came up and were nervous about this. So we got down. A few minutes later, my host dad received a call from a friend. He had been looking out his window across the way and seen two people up on the water tank. He wanted to warn us that there may be burglars in the vicinity. Yeah, about that…
Even from just the roof, the view was spectacular. I’m really glad I took Astronomy last summer, and that I paid attention.
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Posted in India
at 22:56
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06.08.07
Posted in India
at 22:25
So yesterday I received a USB cable in the mail, which means I can finally upload all the stuff I typed during my travels. To make things more confusing, I think I’m going to chop it up into individual posts and date them appropriately. So in other words there are new posts mixed in with the old ones. I’ve also been playing with the video camera on my phone, so maybe I’ll post a video as well.
Here are links to the new old posts for tonight:
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06.03.07
Posted in India
at 12:42
I’ve had to become a little child. In America, we only use the implements God gave us for eating: Fork, knife, spoon, napkin, and occasionally chopsticks. Since coming to India, I’ve had to learn the ins and outs of a new eating utensil: my fingers. It’s not always easy figuring out which hand to use for which course. I mean you never touch your food with your left hand, but sometimes it’s OK to drink with it, or hold a dish you are eating from. And for the inexperienced, lifting wet, messy food into your mouth with four fingers without dropping some into your napkinless lap is not easy! So I’m the messy, clumsy one at the table.
And like a child, I’m constantly trying to watch people’s facial expressions and gestures and mimic them at appropriate times. So far, I’ve gotten nodding down (sort of). And smiling is universal. So I mostly smile and nod like an idiot a lot.
And I’m learning my ABC’s. There are 234 instead of 26. Some little girls giggled and ran out of the room when their grandfather made the sounds for me. I couldn’t help but smile as I realised how ridiculous I must look.
I’m having to learn how to cross the street. There aren’t many crosswalks so everyone jay walks. Crossing the street is like throwing yourself at a moving car and missing. *Obscure literary reference.*
So yeah. That’s my story about acting four years younger than my shoe size.
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Posted in India
at 11:50
(For about 0.7 seconds)
So I’m getting these bumps in my eyebrows. Last night as I was washing my face, one of them started to bleed. What’s going on? I wondered. I thought maybe if I could get rid of that hair I’d be able to get a better look. But then I realised aside from looking like a total freak with no eyebrows, the razor would catch the bumps and then all of them would bleed.
Right now my predominant theory is that when washing my face, the extra surface area created by the hairs on my eyebrows has contributed to improper rinsing in that area, and the remaining soap has caused skin irritation. I also considered that it might be bedbugs or mosquitoes. But I wouldn’t know a bed bug if it came up and bit me (clearly). And why would a bedbug (or any bug for that matter) choose my eyebrows? So I’m sticking to my soap theory.
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