Chennai hotel

This dog has had one rough weekend

Chennai from the back of a very old Ambassador

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Oh, I get it

So there's this part in shantaram where the main guy decides to just say yes to everything and he finds he gets along much better ( I think, its been a while since I read it I may be making it up ).
I've found myself over the last week declining a lot. No, none of that, no, I don't want to go there, etc. I think its just part of the culture shock.
While I was sitting there early this morning waiting for shoguns plane, in the pitch dark with two shoeless guys in the oppressive heat and seemingly impossible humidity ( I thought at some point humidity just gives up and becomes rain?) at one point I counted 17 mosquitos on just my one arm at once. The one guy leans over and offers me this dirty bowl of dirty looking grease, to which I promptly reply "no thanks!" Having no idea what the hell I would want that for. So he shrugs and proceeds to sparingly rub a bit on his arms and neck and poof all his mosquitos move over to me. After about 10 minutes I finally ate crow and gestured that I wanted his bowl of grease. And it worked as well as Deep Woods Off.

Waiting at cargo

The "luxury car transport" from the hotel to the airport was a sparsly appointed honda civic. And you know what, it was luxurious. As my knees pressed into the seat in front of me and my head stooped to fit under the roof, I thought, oh, this is quite nice. How quickly our perspective changes.
Now sitting in a dirty lawn chair with two middle aged dudes who don't speak english and are staring at me. Not menacingly, I could definitely take both of them at once, just staring. They were quite gracious, insisting I take one of their chairs in front of an old fan, and the dude who was displaced is now squatting, butt on the back of his ankles. They can sit like this for hours. I suppose its a trained position to not be painful.
I'm at the "old" airport where cargo comes in. I don't know when this airport was replaced but I hope it was a long long time ago. It looks like something out of temple of doom, circa the 30's.
Its 3am but very hot. Very humid, mosquitos are feasting.

Things to learn how to do part 1

From dinner last night: "you've got to learn how to tear your naan with one hand. Because, you know, you wipe your bum with the other..."

The technique involves pressing your palm to the plate and ripping upwards. I will practice at home so as not to gross out people by using my left hand at dinner again.
I'm actually so significantly left handed that eating with my right hand is really hard. You forget the lack of dexterity in your off hand until you have to use it for something new...

Big sale on outer ring road

Saw a hand painted (the only kind here) sign today over a little mud brick stall surrounded by street dogs. Sign read:

STD
1 rupee


I don't know exactly what they're selling, but it sounds like its one rupee too expensive...

Note: will not leave the house w/o a camera again...

Indian Casa de Henderson

The out of the box furnished Indian house. Working on hiring a decorator to make it a little less, uh, brown.








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Big difference between...

1st and 3rd world; clean, constant electrical supply. The power goes out here several times a day, sometimes just a brown out (off then immediately back on), sometime out for an extended period. When the power goes out, the little window air conditioner in the bedroom, tasked with cooling a several thousand sq foot home (it is tasked with this, but has never achieved the goal), goes out, and stays out long after the power comes back on. Even worse, the Xbox shuts off, erasing any progress you may have made since the last power outage. I just got a local UPS system that I'm hoping solves the XBox problem.

Office View

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Gerund Abuse of the Day

"If you are having a resting, we can be coming back later"

Museum FAIL

In Bangalore

Lufthansa lost two bags, the one having all of my electronics, xbox, dvd player, video games, dvds, camera. The other has my toiletries, work shirts, and all of shoguns medicine. Definitely the worst two to lose. Spent an hour and a half dealing with that. Then spent the next hour and a half in customs. They initially asked for 50000 INR for my declaration of wine, coffee, and even the stuff in the lost bags as I had to detail everything that was lost. That's a 1000 US dollars. Hour and a half later I got through for 15000 (300) after many conversations with dudes with machine guns and finally getting to talk to a guy in a distant office.
Not fun. On the way to my place. God only knows how its been furnished and decorated. I expect it will be photo worthy.

Heading Back

Ontario to SFO was easy. Checking 7 heavy bags to india took the woman @ the ontario airport about an hour. I don't think she does that much.
The plane into SFO was delayed about an hour due to fog. It was friggin tiny.