Lana in India

Closed for business

2010-05-25T18:06:00.002+05:30

Going...
Going... *

Gone!

Well...almost gone!

* Can you see a polished stripe on the wall above the table? Because our front room was a living room/quilting studio/office I didn't have much space between my quilting frame and the wall. That polished stripe is bum height. We're not going to mention that to the landlord...

How to make IT more appealing

2010-05-24T20:36:00.002+05:30

This building alongside the NH8 always made us smile.
No disgruntled employees, everybody loves everybody. Great camraderie, and plenty of banging tunes. A motivated workforce...but possibly not the most focussed...

Farewell - the sequel

2010-05-19T00:23:00.003+05:30

I was going to sneak this photo into the farewell lunch post but I thought the eagle eyed amongst us will have noticed that Eileen and I have changed clothes. And that the restaurant got an awful lot brighter!
In the middle of the sofa are Laurie and Kehi. They couldn't make it to lunch. So I made sure I snapped them when we were at Laurie's last week. She likes you to leave your guns outside too...

So Long, Farewell, It's not the Sound of Music!

2010-05-18T23:28:00.006+05:30

Yesterday my quilting group, Garam Masala Quilters, took me out for my farewell lunch. We went to my favourite restaurant in Delhi, Fez. There's only one problem with Fez: What to do with your country made rifle...

Fez serves Middle Eastern/Lebanese/Moroccan food, and it's absolutely yummy! I had za'atar coated vegetable skewers. Za'atar is a mix of thyme, oregano, sesame seeds and other spices. I had to look that up on Wikipedia, but trust me, it's fabulous! And I had a creme brulee, which I know is not terribly Middle Eastern...

Here I am with Greta and Alison. I reckon if I only have my photo taken with short people I could look tall. Hey, we all look tall! Alison and her family are heading back to the UK over the summer too. Her daughter Rhiannon and Keir are quite friendly...she thinks we could even become mothers-in-law one day. Hopefully not too soon...

See I've already forgotten to only have my photo taken with short people. Actually, I'd run out of short quilter friends. Here's Eileen and Helen.

Okay, if there are no more short people to be photographed with, make the tall ones bend over! Here's Christine and her daughter Mina. Mina's shorter than I am...

And here's the rest of the gang who stayed to the bitter end. These are the gals with staying power! Alison, Leticia, Mary, Me, Linley, Suzanne and Anju.

Then we all went outside and collected our Glocks...

Loads a money!

2010-05-17T09:17:00.004+05:30

We sold the car and the new owners came over to make the final payment. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a huge wadge of cash...and another...and another...

Okay, he didn't use the brown paper bag...but it makes a better picture!

Many high money transactions are conducted in cash here. In part that's because Party A wouldn't trust a cheque written by Party B, and also because cash can be "black money", undeclared to the tax department and sometimes obtained by dodgy means. Reading the papers here shows many examples of dodgy means - bribes, scams, bribes, facilitation fees*, bribes. We're assuming this money's not dodgy, because each bundle had a piece of paper from a bank around it stating how much was in the bundle. But then, you know what they say can happen when you "assume" things...

So Rod and I had to count it all. 320,000 rupees, not far from five thousand pounds. Being a law abiding Western girl, I've never handled that much cash before. Counting it was quite stressful... But it was correct, we gave the new owner our car registration documents so he could have it transferred to his name before our handover date just before we leave and off he went. Then we had 3 lakh 2, in cash, in our house. That was stressful still! So we called Peggy from the movers and asked her to come so we could pay her for the shipping. And I put the rest in my handbag (as you do!) and we walked around the corner to deposit it in our bank. The teller there gave us a strange look, as if to say we hadn't really grasped the Indian "black money" way... I'm all for not going down that route. Otherwise I'm going to need a bigger handbag...

* Facilitation fee: A sum paid by Party A to Party B, so Party B will award lucrative contract to Party A. For the uninitiated, or to use the Indian, for those who came in late, a bribe.

Hot Hot Hot

2010-05-16T23:07:00.002+05:30

This is one of those times we're hoping you can't believe everything you read in the papers. Jon Bon Jovi thinks Tuesday just might go my way, it can't get worse than yesterday. Jon might not be right this time...

Spilt Milk

2010-05-16T16:54:00.002+05:30

Thalia spilt some milk on the sofa today, and the last thing we really want on the sofa when it's 44 degrees is some mouldering milk. So we took the covers off to wash...

Under the cushions was the requisite smattering of small change and a pen or two. Rod shoved his hand down the side of the sofa, and pulled out another handful of change. But then he turned the sofa on its side, and shook. There was the tinkling of metal on metal... it sounded like standing next to a slot machine at Burswood Casino... so Rod shoved his hand down the side of the sofa again.

We found: the front door key Rod's been looking for for the past two weeks, a few more pens, two hairbands, 97 Indian rupees, £11.44 in British money, 32 US cents, half a Euro and one Thai ringgit. Crying over spilt milk? No way - we're rich!

I'm not a tourist. I live here. For now at least.

2010-05-15T20:46:00.004+05:30

Here's my latest purchase:

The t-shirt says: I'm not a tourist. I live here. It should serve me well next time I need to get a rickshaw!

The t-shirt is the brainchild of Fading Ladies and caused Raju much amusement!

During the week I emailed the Fading Ladies and placed my order. I got a text Thursday morning asking if I'd be home, as my shirt was with the Fading Ladies driver, ready for delivery. But the driver never came. At half twelve I got another text, which read:
"We had a minor fender bender this morning. Sorry for the delay. Can we come now?"
I replied, "Yes. Hope you are okay".
She replied "All is well. Was scary experience as man was thrown underneath car while we were driving but no one was badly hurt."
She's definitely no tourist if she can describe any event where someone ends up under your car as a minor accident!

The Italian Connection

2010-05-14T09:13:00.002+05:30

We're selling our car, so the other day we sent Raju off to get the interior cleaned so it would look nice for the new owners. For some reason unknown to man, it took eight hours for the car to be cleaned. It really wasn't that dirty... But anyway, because the car wasn't going to be ready at school pick up time, I had to take a rickshaw to collect the children.

I walked down to the main market, just two minutes away. The first rickshaw driver looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language - okay, to him I was :-) The second rickshaw driver spoke enough english to tell me he didn't speak english. Can't complain here either, because I speak enough hindi to say I can't speak hindi - Nahin bolo hindi. Bolo english (No speak hindi. Speak english). The third rickshaw driver understood me very well. He looked quizzical when I said "British School, Chanakyapuri" (they all do), and nodded when I added "near the American Embassy". He quoted me 150 rupees one way, 300 for a return journey. Now, the going rate for a white girl is 200 rupees return, far more than an Indian would pay. I told him 300 rupees was way too much, this journey always cost me 200 rupees. No he said, pointing to his watch, not at this time. That wasn't really the right answer, as I've only ever taken a rickshaw to school to collect the kids at school pick up time. He was treating me like a tourist! So I walked away and hoped I'd find another rickshaw quite soon, as pick up time was drawing closer.

The next rickshaw looked pretty new and unbattered. It was probably too much to hope that this guy would want to charge me a "reasonable white girl rate" to get the kids. Again he looked quizzical at "the British School, Chanakyapuri", and nodded when I said "near the American Embassy". And he wanted 200 rupees return. Result! I got in and off we went. Just to be safe, and because I don't really want to go to the American Embassy, as we get closer to school I start giving directions. It's not too hard, because there's a series of roundabouts, and you want to go straight across all three. But just as we join this stretch of road I spot the car in front has a "British School Authorised Parking" sign in the back window. So I proclaim, "Follow that car!", which amused me far more than it amused the driver. He obviously hadn't seen as many car chase movies as I had. Although to be fair to him, most of those movies didn't involve chasing a 7 seater people mover with two child car seats in the back...

As the car in front went straight over the last roundabout he checked again that that was the way I wanted to go ( if I had wanted to go to the American Embassy, we should have turned right). Straight ahead, I told him, and straight ahead he went. As we were pulling alongside the Italian Embassy, he said "ah, The British School", like they all do. I have no idea why no rickshaw driver knows where the British School is until they reach this point of the journey, but they all have that "realisation moment" at the same spot. Strange...

Kehi Catch Up

2010-05-10T23:56:00.005+05:30

Today Rod and I had a lovely day out with my quilty friend, Kehi. Kehi and her husband Marcus have just moved to Chennai, so we were lucky to catch up with her before we go.

She told me of her visit to Ideal Beach on Sunday, about an hour's drive from Chennai. There's a resort hotel there and some beach shacks selling trinkets for tourists. One of the shacks sold seashells (probably easier to do than to say), and Kehi spotted a great big orange shell she wanted. Badly. But the man said the price was 750 rupees, which Kehi felt was quite a lot for a seashell. She told the man she'd be back later to hear his best price. Then she went down to the beachfront to sit under a palm tree, read a book and drink champagne. I'm not really a beach person, but this beach is well named, for that sounds pretty ideal to me.

Around two o'clock a worker from the resort next door came over and told everyone the beach was closed, there'd been a tsunami warning. Now they take tsunami warnings pretty seriously here, as eight thousand people died on this stretch of coast in the Boxing Day tsunami. The hotel guy said they wouldn't be allowed to stay on the beach, but they could come and sit by the pool. Presumably they wanted Kehi to drink their champagne...

Marcus collected their things and began to move towards the pool. But Kehi was not going to give up on that shell so easily. She ran back to the beach hut, not because she was afraid of the impending waves, but because the sand was hot and Marcus had taken her sandals. The shell seller was closing up, he'd been given the tsunami warning too. Kehi offered him 300 rupees, but he really wanted more. She reminded him a tsunami might be on its way, so he took the 300 and she took the shell. Then she joined Marcus and all the others around the resort's pool, a whole five metres further back and two metres higher up than the tree she'd been so happy underneath. And the tsunami never came...

Kehi, Rod and I spotted this shop in the market in New Friends Colony. It sells cigarettes and paan, a mixture of tobacco and spices wrapped in a betel leaf. Paan is chewed by many across India and South East Asia, and after chewing, leaves your mouth full of red saliva, which stains your teeth and is customary to spit out. It's not wine tasting, there are no spittons, it's on the ground. Lovely. On both counts.

This shop keeper's obviously a fan of alliteration...

(I am) Packing Up

2010-05-09T23:03:00.004+05:30

In just over three weeks we will be leaving India and heading back home to Britain. Rod and I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to sort out everything needed to make the move back as painless as possible. One of the things we had to arrange was a moving and packing company to get all our stuff back home. You might think that wouldn't be so hard...but, if it was that easy, I wouldn't be writing about it here, would I?

On our first attempt we called a number of moving and packing companies we found in a local version of the Yellow Pages. Two of them had quoted for our move from Gurgaon to Hauz Khas last year. One turned up, walked around the house looking knowledgably at the furniture we would be taking back, made a few notes on his pad and never got back to us. The other turned up, walked around the house, went away, came back the next day with another guy, took some photos of our furniture and went away again. When Rod called a couple of days later asking for their quote, both guys came back to our house with a scrap of paper. They said it would cost us 160 rupees a kilogram to send our stuff by air, or $70 USD a cubic metre to send it by sea. But they didn't know how many cubic metres the stuff they'd photographed was, nor had any idea how many kilograms our stuff weighed. So, a really, really comprehensive quote... Now, as I do not work for a moving and packing company I do not assess housefuls daily, so I didn't know either. But I was going to hazard a guess that with two sofas, a double bed and mattress, a dining table, six chairs, a chest of drawers and assorted boxes all made from Sheesham (Indian Rosewood, really heavy) and a longarm quilting machine and frame, as well as clothes etc, we wouldn't be sending our stuff by air!

Thankfully, our third moving company had a representative who did assess housefuls daily. Maybe not daily, but often enough to be able to look at each piece of furniture to work out how much space we would need in our container. And Peggy got back to us with a quote, typed, on headed paper without us asking for it. But the only problem was, even though we had had three companies visit, we only had one quote. So we tried again...

This time, we asked for recommendations on an expat internet group. Peggy's name came up, along with another two companies. Joy, joy, joy, more appointments...

A guy came, but he wanted to tell us how he'd arranged lots of moves for people at the British Embassy. We told him we weren't with the British Embassy, and weren't using the British government to pay for our move back, so we didn't want an "Embassy quote". The money's got to come from our pockets, which even in these troubled times, are not as deep as Gordon Brown's (or whoever is running the country right now!). And could we tell him how much we wanted for the RO water filter?

A lady came. I say came, she rang to say she was on her way, could we give her directions. We did. Then she rang back, telling us what landmarks she could see around her, and could we give her directions from there. We did. And then she called back, describing another set of landmarks, further from our house than the first set of landmarks, and asking could we give her some more directions. We did. Didn't think this boded well. If a moving and packing company can't find our home in Delhi, can we trust that they might be able to get our stuff to us in England? Anyway, she found her way here eventually. I say she found her way here, only after Rod told her to stop driving and wait for him and Thalia to walk to where she was so she could follow them. Anyway, once she got here she was very nice and efficient, but I couldn't help feeling maybe her company would do better if they invested in a map. Not a world map, just an Eicher map of Delhi...

Unsurprisingly, we went with Peggy. She found us first time, was on time. She has this air of efficiency about her. She's tall and imposing, speaks fluent German, English and Hindi. I have this feeling she won't let anything go wrong on her watch. Please God, let me be right this time!

A Stitch in (Indian) Time...

2010-05-07T19:52:00.003+05:30

I might have brought the only longarm quilting machine into India, but the country is teeming with sewing machines. There must be five tailors shops in my local market alone, turning out everything from Western suits for the gentleman to cholis, the little blouse worn with a sari, for the ladies.

The model in the photo has really taken to his part. Suits you, Sir!

Not all the sewing machines are in fancy establishments like this. Outside, on the pavement, between the darbar cooking curry in a huge metal pot and an electrical repair shop, there’s a man sitting on the sidewalk with his sewing machine. All day long he hems dupattas, long, wide, scarf-like lengths of fabric, which ladies wear with their Indian outfits. The dupatta is a draped across the front of your blouse with the ends flowing behind your back (to prevent glimpses of cleavage), as a shawl if it turns chilly (it does happen, just not often), to cover your head if you’re going to a temple or holy place, or to protect your hairstyle when you’re on the back of your boyfriend’s motorbike. Unless they’re in a sari (which at 6 yards of fabric is a dress and dupatta all rolled into one), a lady’s not dressed without her dupatta. Personally, I can’t see the point of draping a yard and a half of extra fabric over me when it’s 45 degrees outside. Guess that makes me no lady! Anyway, the guy with his sewing machine is busy. He doesn’t even need to stop when the power goes off. His machine is powered by foot.

With all these industrious sewers around me, tailoring entire garments for sums you’d pay to have a broken zip replaced back home, I decided to treat myself. I’d brought a blouse with me I really liked, and wanted to have it remade in silk. I took it to Ramesh, whose sewing machines were hidden away from the front of the shop, so they could have even been some of those new fangled electric ones! Ramesh took my fabric and the shirt I wanted copied and told me to come back in a week.

So more than a week later, because Indians’ sense of time is “flexible”, I returned to the shop. Ramesh had stepped out, so the man who sat behind the counter decided to help me. I don’t know what his official job title was. Every time I’d ever been in the shop I’d never seen him do anything but sit behind the counter. I showed him my invoice, so he could get my blouse. He asked me to describe it. He barely spoke English. Having an invoice, with an invoice number, didn’t mean he knew where to find my new silk shirt. So not exactly a very efficient booking in system. In a pile of clothes behind the counter, I spotted an offcut of my fabric. I showed it to him, and using it he trawled through a pile of plastic bags under the counter to find the garment to match. That scrap of fabric could have been purchased by anyone! Maybe I had bought it, maybe I spotted it for the first time and liked it. He’d have no way of knowing…

But where was my original blouse? I found it at the bottom of a heap of other clothes, presumably other customers’ sample garments. I know my original blouse was only polyester, but it was still pretty. It didn’t really deserve that kind of treatment! I made him go and find the rest of the left over silk. No idea what I’ll do with it, but being silk it was expensive (by local standards at least), and it was mine. I’d paid for it. Eventually Ramesh returned and gathered together everything that belonged to me. I gave him my 500 rupees (£7, $11USD – double the usual price because working with silk takes twice as long) and left.

As a longarm quilter, the whole experience amused me. People bring me things that are precious to them – their quilt tops - to turn into finished quilts. I pin a label to them to identify who the quilt belongs to and hang them in a wardrobe, safe and clean, until I get to work on them. And once I’ve finished the quilting, the top and any extra backing and batting, get placed together in a bag with a copy of the invoice and hung back in the wardrobe until I can return it. I know at all times where the quilts are, and if I dropped dead, Rod would know who to contact to get them back to their rightful owners. It’s a fairly simple system, and I bet most longarmers use similar ones. Unfortunately Ramesh doesn’t use a system anywhere near as complicated as this one. And before we diss him too much, he’s one of the better ones. Heaven help the next lady who can’t spot a scrap of her fabric in the pile in the corner…

My Favourite Oxymoron

2010-05-06T23:29:00.003+05:30

Yes, it's Fresh Cream. In a tetra-pak. Needs no refrigeration till opened. Best before 120 days from manufacture. I've no more to add...

Darwin Award

2010-05-02T13:10:00.004+05:30

The other day Rod and I saw a serious potential candidate for a Darwin Award, the honour bestowed on those who "do a service to humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool". We were driving along the NH8, the motorway between Gurgaon and Delhi, where the official speed limit is 50mph, but the actual speed you do depends upon whether you're in a car, tractor or rickshaw with a two stroke engine. Some of the vehicles which use the NH8 only dream of a top speed of 50mph, many more see the speed limit as something which only applies to other drivers, not them. But it was not the speed at which this potential Darwin candidate was travelling that caught our attention...

In the lane next to us was a guy on a motorbike. Maybe he'd rushed his morning routine, because he had failed to do his stretches in the comfort of his own home. So he was doing them on the motorway, while he was riding his motorbike. First he reached his right arm around his back, placing the back of his hand on his opposite hip, while his left hand held the bike handle. Then he changed sides, repeating with his left hand. While we thought this was a little odd, at least he had one hand on the controls. Which he did not, when he joined both hands behind his back and opened out the front of his shoulders by stretching back. We thought we'd seen everything, but then he took his phone out of his pocket and started texting. While riding a motorbike at 50mph on the motorway...

As Raju was driving our car and Rod was a backseat passenger, he tried to take a picture with his telephone. I don't have a problem with passengers using their phones, I just object when it's the one allegedly in control of the fast moving vehicle who does it. Our Darwin candidate spotted Rod and took his helmet off, possibly so he would look more dashing in the photo. While riding a motorbike at 50mph on the motorway... Rod was unwilling to take the shot, because he didn't think it appropriate to do anything that might encourage this guy to attain his Darwin Award sooner rather than later. But it's only a matter of time...

The Hole Story

2010-05-01T21:51:00.006+05:30

On Wednesday, a group of men came along and dug a bloody big hole outside our house. This hole prevented us from using our parking bay, which is a problem, because parking's very hard to come by in Hauz Khas. The workers piled the contents of the hole on the side of the road, which isn't very wide, so that was a problem too. No one informed us they were going to dig the hole, and no one told us why they needed to. They dug the hole, and went home.

On Thursday, three men turned up at half past one in the afternoon. One man got in the hole and dug a bit more, and the other two sat in the shade under the frangipani tree and watched him. They all left at half past three. We still couldn't park in our parking bay, and the road was still being encroached on.

On Friday, no one turned up to work at all. The only change to the hole outside our house was that someone had thrown some rubbish into it.

On Saturday, there was a change to the status quo. Someone drove their car into the hole. I'm sure he didn't mean to...

Notice the barricades, orange cones and lights warning passersby of the presence of the hole. Don't worry if you can't see them, the driver didn't see them either, or the hole for that matter! Rod says he wasn't too pleased...

He used his tyre jack to try to lever the car up, but that wouldn't do it. A couple of labourers who were working on the building opposite eventually came over, jumped into the hole and tried to push the car up and out. That didn't work. Someone found something resembling a concrete paving slab and half wedged that in the hole. All in all, it took them about an hour to eventually get the car unstuck.

For us there was a positive aspect to the car falling down the hole, though I don't suppose the driver would see it that way. Very soon after the car had been lifted up up and away, the workers came back, laid a cable and refilled the hole. I can't say it's been done to a terribly high standard, because it seems there's at least a third of the hole debris still on our drive. I suppose we'll find out tomorrow when we try to drive off in the car how well they've tamped it all down!

Just like Snap, We've Got The Power!

2010-04-25T22:38:00.003+05:30

Well, now at any rate. It's not been a great week for electricity in sunny South Delhi. Every summer, the power companies fail to make enough electricity to run luxury items like air conditioners, fridges and ceiling lights. And as we're currently experiencing the warmest start to the year since records began, you wouldn't be wrong in assuming the usual electricity under supply is...proceeding as usual.

For the last couple of weeks we've been having a few power outages a day, generally for an hour or less. It's almost routine now. Everyone has a torch, and we have a portable battery back up light in the dining room in the centre of the house. The light plugs into a wall socket, charging up. When the supply to the socket fails, the light immediately turns on. You wouldn't want to read a newspaper by it, but it's plenty bright enough to see where the furniture is when all the other lights have failed. I've even cooked dinner by it.

Friday at 3.40, when we got home from collecting the kids from school, the power was off. We have no idea when it actually went off, it was on when Rod and I left the house at 12.30. Our emergency light was faithfully glowing when we opened the door. The power didn't come back on until 6.10. I quickly cooked dinner. The stove and oven are gas, so are unaffected by the electricity supply. But the cook likes to use lights to see what she's doing. Luckily the family doesn't need a lot of light to eat, as the power went off again 35 minutes later. After that we retired into the front room. We have a car battery in the corner of our living room, which works in the same way as our back up light. It keeps the television/DVD/Tata Sky box/modem/telephone going until the power company restores power to our area. So we watched Kung Fu Panda in the dark. Then, because there's not much you can do when you can't turn any lights on, Keir went to bed, Thalia went to use the last 24 minutes of her laptop's battery, Rod watched some television and I had a bath. You don't actually need electricity to have a bath, not when the water tank is on the roof and it's been another 43 degree day. What comes out of the cold water tap could be taken to court for false advertising. Rod gave me the battery back up light, but within moments it forgot it was in a beige bathroom, and thought it was in a nightclub, flashing on and off like a strobe. The power had been off for so long our battery backup light had died. So not Duracell then. We switched to candles. You don't want the heat, but you need to not fall over the furniture. It's a dilemma. Power was eventually restored at 10.10, when I blew out the candles and turned on all the AC's.

Saturday was a much better day. Maybe the power company was trying to make up for the previous day's incredibly long outage... but we weren't surprised when we were plunged into the dark at 10.10 that evening. But after 10 minutes or so, Rod realised the glow he could see coming through the glass door from the dining room was a golden tone, not the cold light from the back up. The power had failed, but only in the living room and Thalia's bedroom. We checked the fuse box by the door. Everything, including the geckoes, was in order. This is not the first time we have lost power to half the house. Just before the kids and I went to Australia last summer exactly the same thing happened. An electrician came and fixed one of the main supplies into the house by using two pieces of bare wire to replace a fuse because he did not have any fuse wire. In case any long time readers thought at the time, "I wonder how long it will be before that catches fire", about 10 and a half months.

So it was dark outside, after the burnt wires stopped glowing, and it was dark in half our house. Too late to do anything about it, we moved Thalia into Keir's room and watched DVDs in our room where the AC still worked.

In the morning Rod reported the fault to Mr Gupta who lives on the top floor. He's in charge of building maintenance and repair. Mr Gupta said he'd send an electrician in half an hour. Three and a half hours later, Rod called him to check when the electrician would arrive. Mr Gupta hadn't called one yet, he'd been busy. So Rod told him he would go and fix the fault himself. And he told him, falsely, that he would have to turn off the electricity to the entire building, including Mr Gupta's apartment, while he did this. That seemed to get his attention, because within three minutes Mr Gupta was standing next to Rod. Rod pulled the fuses to our floor and the top floor (but not the first floor, because it wasn't their job to get the electrician). Mr Gupta sent his houseboy to the market to find an electrician. The houseboy returned with one five minutes later. How busy can you be, if all you're going to do is ask someone else to do something for you! But half an hour, and 150 rupees later, we had power back. Not sure the work's been done to an extremely high standard, but it only has to last five weeks... and when I return to Britain, I will be well qualified for a job as a cinema usherette!

The Prodigal Son (and Daughter) return...

2010-04-15T23:53:00.003+05:30

Tommy and Gurshagun, our pet geckoes, have returned! They disappeared over the winter, but now it's warm (41 degrees C/106F...bit more than warm in my books!) they've ventured back into the house. Last night on my way to bed I spotted a gecko on the wall above the front door (which patently could do a better job of fitting the doorframe). I thought it was the return of Tommy, until I spotted another gecko further up the hallway. Both were much bigger than they had been last time we saw them. But I suppose, that's what grandparents etc always say when they see their grandchildren again after an extended time...

Tommy - my, hasn't he grown!

Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting

2010-03-29T08:40:00.003+05:30

And so, apparently, is Monday morning...and Tuesday afternoon...

Rod's been in London for a week, and returns home this morning. Raju will go to pick him up, so I checked the flight information for Indira Gandhi International Airport to find out if the flight was going to land at 11, as expected. Top of the Google search (IGI Arrivals) was the official website, with a number of quick links to the pages requested most frequently. The page I wanted was first on the list: Fight Information. See, I told you they were an unruly bunch...

Flying High

2010-03-27T17:44:00.003+05:30

When you're on a flight, and the airhostess smiles and says "Is there anything I can get you, Sir?" do you think:
a) Chicken or beef, or on an Indian flight, veg or non-veg?
b) Gin and tonic or scotch on the rocks?
c) Do I really want the pack of peanuts? or
d) She fancies me.

Most people, I think, would pick a), b) or c). Possibly all of them. Most people on the flight, I think, would assume the airhostess smiled and made eye contact with them because it was her job, not because she actually fancied the overweight, three sheets to the wind bloke sitting in 25C. According to the paper this week, enough people think d) to force the Indian Civil Aviation Organisation to consider amending the rules regarding passenger behaviour on planes. It seems they've just realised passengers have been able to get away with unsocial behaviour (smoking, being drunk and disorderly, outraging the modesty of an airhostess) because if the offences take place in foreign airspace, they cannot be tried under Indian laws. And yes, there is a law regarding outraging the modesty of an airhostess...

If you want something done properly...

2010-03-24T23:52:00.002+05:30

...then don't ask the maid to do it! Or as an alternative title: How often does a dish have to be washed before it is actually clean?

Monday to Saturday Santosh comes "to clean the house". I use inverted commas, because she doesn't see dirt, or dust, or cobwebs. It would really be more accurate to say she sweeps and wet wipes the floors, washes the dishes and makes the beds. But she doesn't make Keir's bed. Never has. When he slept on the top bunk I understood it, because she's short, and it's not easy. But when he moved to the bottom bunk it would have been an easy job. Maybe she just doesn't see his bed either...

On Monday morning Santosh washed up all the dishes. Before making dinner each night, I put them away. I noticed a small white bowl wasn't clean, so I put it back with the dirty dishes. On Tuesday, Santosh washed the dishes. When I went to put the dishes away that evening, I noticed the dish was still not clean. I know it was the same dish, because I recognised what it had contained. It still had purple conditioner in it from the hair treatment I'd done on Sunday. It was definitely the same bowl. Nothing else I'd cooked was pearly purple, nor smelled of lavender... To ensure the dish really got clean this time, I filled it with water to make sure it was easy to get off, and left it to soak by the sink. Wednesday Santosh did the dishes. Was that dish clean when I went to put it away? What do you think? So I washed the bloody thing myself. It's clean now...

Why don't we get a maid who can see dirt? Well, she's cheerful, relatively punctual and doesn't steal. All of which we rate higher than cleaning ability...

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you

2010-03-20T00:22:00.002+05:30

Spotted in the newspaper:

How does the Indian Government classify documents as "confidential", "secret" and "top secret"?

"Top Secret", obviously! If the Central Information Commission told you it wouldn't be much of a secret, now would it?

How's this for an Unique Selling Point?

2010-03-16T15:59:00.003+05:30

Spotted on a billboard in Amritsar:
Havells Electrical Cable - cables that don't catch fire
That may be Havells USP. Personally, I would have hoped that was a given for all cables!

Everything's pretty impressive in Amritsar

2010-03-13T11:55:00.006+05:30

The Wagah Border is not the only reason to visit Amritsar.

The Golden Temple is the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion, and a truly magical place. Inside the square complex of mainly marble buildings is a large man-made lake filled with crystal clear water. And in the middle of this sacred pool sits a marble and gold temple, the dome gilded with 750 kg of pure gold. It’s hard not to be impressed.

Sikhism is an inclusive religion, and people of all faiths are encouraged to enter the temple to meditate or listen to the prayers for peace. It has doors on all four sides, as if to say travellers from all directions are welcome. Of course, so many people now come to the Golden Temple (more people visit it than the Taj Mahal), that there is only one way in these days. Unless of course you are a foreign tourist, whose guide has had a word with the guard at the out gate, and lets you in through the out queue. You could feel a tad guilty, but there’s no way I could have convinced Keir and Thalia (nor Rod, really) to queue for at least an hour to use the regular entrance, and we really wanted to see inside. And let’s face it, after 19 months in India, we’ve paid extra for being foreign on enough occasions to take benefits when they’re offered.

The most orderly queue we've seen in India. Maybe that's why it seemed the longest too!

Sikhs come to bathe in the holy water, which makes its sparkling cleanness even more surprising. Large fish swim in it, content in the knowledge that while inside a temple complex, Sikhs follow a vegetarian diet. And on the subject of diet, like Sikh temples around the world, there is a large dining hall on the grounds. Anyone can come and receive a meal - dhal, a vegetable dish which changes throughout the day, chapattis and a rice pudding. The food is vegetarian, so everyone can eat as equals, without dietary restrictions imposed by their own religion, and everyone sits on the floor in rows, underlining that equality. The food is free, although donations are appreciated. Once again, no one is too poor to eat, nor so wealthy that they receive better food. There can’t be anything wrong with what’s offered - 40,000 meals a day are served.

Just a few of the dishes used in the temple. That's a lot of washing up!

The religion encourages Sikhs to work hard, share their wealth and do good deeds in the community. All the food in the temple is served and prepared by volunteers. But just as you don’t have to be a Sikh to eat here, you don’t have to be a Sikh to help either.

The kitchens are extensive, and they need so many chapattis they’ve had to install a chapatti machine to turn out 2,000 chapattis an hour to supplement those made by the ladies (and gents).

That's a mighty big teapot!

Monty Python is alive and well… and living at the Wagah border

2010-03-12T11:12:00.002+05:30

Last weekend we took the train to Amritsar, 6 hours north of Delhi, and the closest city to the only road border crossing between India and her neighbour, Pakistan. The relationship between the two countries isn’t great. You wouldn’t find them chatting over the garden fence, nor would they pop around to borrow an egg or a cup of sugar. Raju, our driver, is adamant 95% of Pakistanis are terrorists, and that dropping a nuclear bomb on Pakistan would be a good thing. Raju is not alone in these sentiments. So you might think that all things considered, a trip out to see the border would be cold and unfriendly, and not something a tourist, or any random Indian would choose to do. But you’d be so wrong…

Between 10am and 4pm the border operates as normally as any border between two not so friendly countries. Trucks of vegetables pass through to Pakistan from the farmlands of the Punjab, and trucks of dried fruit come into India. But at 4 o’clock the border guards stop processing vehicles and passports, and begin the real job of the day. Crowds of Indians, who have no intention of crossing into Pakistan, fill large grandstands on either side of the Grand Trunk Road. Loudspeakers play the Hindi Top 40, and lots of ladies dance in the road in front of the brick guardhouse. They don’t dance around their handbags, because handbags are not allowed - you can only take to the border what you can wear. A camera around your neck was just jewellery, but the camera bag was not allowed. Their arms in the air, they jingle their bracelets, and sing along to the music.

We came armed with our passports, which gets us into the “Foreigners Enclosure” in front of the main grandstands. There’s quite a few people in the Foreigners Enclosure who would have needed a passport to prove they weren’t Indian. We weren’t in that category, but we took them just in case. After all, this is an army border crossing, and lots of people have guns. Hopefully only the ones who work there. On the other side of the gate, in Pakistan, crowds are filling up their segregated grandstands, the women kept apart from the men. There’s no dancing in the road, but there’s lots of flag waving going on, and a decent attempt to drown out the Hindi Top 40 with patriotic chanting.

At ten to five someone turns down the music. A man with a microphone and a voice loud enough not to need one yells “Hindustan”, a catchier name than the Republic of India. The crowd replies, “Zindabad”, which means long live. Somehow they all knew the right words - unlike us, they must have been here before. On the other side of the border their guy with the microphone calls out “Pakistan”, the crowd yells back “Zindabad”. A line of border guards stands proudly in their uniforms. They are drawn from all over India for their six month stints, chosen it seemed because they were all really tall. The average height for an Indian man is 5ft 5 inches, and these guys were all over 6 ft. Unfortunately they seemed to be wearing trousers designed for the average Indian. The other selection criteria: funny facial hair and an ability to stamp your feet and march in a manner which would make Monty Python proud. They can only work at the border for six months, because all the high kicking and foot stamping takes a toll on their bodies. One guy was a little shorter than the others, but he could yell a note for a very, very long time. And he had a well waxed handlebar moustache…

The guards take turns showing us how they can march up to the border, and this whips the crowd into an uproarious frenzy. When they get close to the gates we can see the Pakistani guards on the other side, because they’re matching the Indians every move. This is a “whatever you can do, I can do better” situation. And in this case, “my uniform’s scarier than your uniform”. The Pakistanis are in a menacing black garb, with a hint of Ninja to them. They look much more fierce than Indians, who are in Army khaki with those too short trousers. The trousers are a mistake, really. As a consolation, the Indians get some fancy headgear, with plumage on top. I got the impression that they were aiming to hit that plumage with their toes while they marched.

The Pakistani crowd is just as vocal as the one on this side of the border. The whole spectacle is a little bit football match, a little bit theatrical performance. It’s bizarre…but fun.

After the marching there’s the “Lowering of the Flags” ceremony. The flags at the border gates (because there’s an Indian gate and a Pakistani gate, with a little bit of land with a white line down the middle between them), and those on the arches at the end of the grandstands are slowly lowered synchronously, so neither country appears to have the upper hand at any stage. Once off the flagpoles, the flags are folded and marched back into the guardhouse, the gates are closed and locked, and the border between India and Pakistan is closed until the morning.

Agra, continued...

2010-02-21T15:02:00.003+05:30

Once Benny had been returned to us, it was time to move on to Agra’s other sights. Even though we had been told the security at Agra’s other World Heritage sites was nowhere near as draconian as at the Taj, Benny was relegated to the minibus, with Keir’s Nintendo DS and Thalia’s Ipod for company. Agra Fort is 2 kilometres and on the other side of the river to the Taj. From one of the Fort’s balconies you can see the Taj Mahal. This vista is very different to the one you get from inside the Taj, much grubbier and more real. Having seen it, it struck me that it would really be better to have not seen the Taj from Agra Fort at all.

It’s probably better to concentrate on what you can see inside the Fort rather than look around outside. It’s very much the best house on the street. Rajiv was able to tell us everything about everything. There was nothing relating to Agra and its Mughal empire he did not know, apart from how to impart this information in a manner that could keep his audience engaged!

Rajiv gets it right, this time...

Then it was time to climb into the minibus again and drive to Fatehpur Sikri. Fatehpur Sikri is a ghost town, 40 kilometres from Agra, and I think, much more interesting than Agra Fort. The Mughal emperor Akhbar oversaw building the city, 60 years before the first stones were laid on the Taj Mahal. Akhbar wanted to create a new capital because he was weary with the crowds at Agra. I know how he felt! Fatehpur Sikri was only in use for 16 years, and then it was abandoned. There are various reasons suggested for this. Maybe water had been in short supply, maybe it was more militarily useful to be back in Agra. Maybe Akhbar found the road journey between the two rather tiresome. I know we did! We could have spent more time wandering around Fatehpur Sikri, as it seemed to have been abandoned by tourists as well as Akhbar, but we had to get back in the minibus and back on the road to Agra to catch our train home.

The journey began well. However it was not long before we found ourselves at the end of a queue of motorbikes, cars, buses and trucks. This was a single lane road, with a dirt verge. This dirt verge became another lane of traffic. Vehicles began overtaking us on the other side of the road, so many vehicles that it became another lane of traffic heading into Agra. Vehicles began overtaking this lane of traffic on the dirt verge on the other side of the road. I don’t know what these vehicles thought they were ever going to achieve. It seemed obvious to me that at some point there would be to be four lanes of cars travelling north on a single lane road pointing directly at four lanes of cars travelling south on the other side of the same single lane road. And knowing India, both sides would feel they had right of way, regardless of which side of the road they were on. After 30 minutes of going absolutely nowhere, Rajiv turned around from his seat alongside the driver and told us we would be moving to Plan B. This was a good thing, because while we were not yet behind schedule for the train, we were beginning to think dinner would be out of the question. Rajiv said there was another road we could take, one that not many people knew about. He had taken the British Labour politician Barbara Castle down this road when she too needed to get to Agra Train station. So we turned the minibus around, a feat requiring quite a bit of skill from our driver as all four lanes of this single lane road already had stationary vehicles on them. Behind us the traffic was lighter, so after a while we were able to rejoin the tarmac and drive on the correct side of the road. You might think it would feel good to be travelling on the correct side of the road, actually moving past many, many stationary vehicles. Except some of the drivers of those vehicles had not yet worked out that there was no way anyone was going anywhere ahead. We saw headlights approaching. A bus was driving straight at us. He made no attempt to pull over. Where could he go? There were already two full lanes of traffic on the correct side of the single lane road. He should give way to us, for we were on the side of the road allocated to us by street designers. But he was bigger than we were, and in India, the accepted rule is the bigger vehicle takes precedence. Thankfully the other bus driver slowed down, and there we were, two vehicles pointing directly at each other on the same side of the road. Our driver drove back on to the dirt verge and we continued back towards Baroness Castle of Blackburn’s Plan B.

When we reached Barbara’s road it became apparent pretty quickly that calling it a road was probably not entirely accurate. I don’t know when Barbara Castle was in India, but she left public office in 1989. This dirt track probably hadn’t seen any maintenance since then. So we bounced along , being very grateful that Holly had her car seat, and that the bus actually had enough working seatbelts to strap her in. This track between fields led to a village, and after a while, back to the road between Agra and Fatehpur Sikri. The traffic on this side of the jam was no better than it had been before the dirt track, but it was all heading up towards Fatehpur Sikri, and as we weren’t going that way, we didn’t care! We finally reached Agra railway station, dinnerless but with 20 minutes to spare. As we'd rather go without dinner than spend another day in Agra ,it was a result!

Agra and back, in just one day...

2010-02-20T17:53:00.003+05:30

One of the things you just have to do before you leave India, they say, is visit the Taj Mahal. Rod, Thalia and I visited this majestic monument back in 1998. Thalia doesn’t remember much of it, but as she was 11 months old at the time, we’ll forgive her for this. Keir, Stumpy and Nutty had never been, and bizarrely neither had Holly. As the temperature hadn’t started rising past the comfortable level yet, it seemed like a good time to go…

The Taj Mahal is in Agra, which is a hellish five plus hour drive from Delhi. It can also be reached by train in two hours. Guess which option we chose! The downside of the train is that it leaves New Delhi Railway Station at 0615, so it was a rather early start indeed. But the train deposited us at Agra station at 0815, and it took until 0815 and 15 seconds before the hassle started. Agra is a dump, with no reason to visit beyond the Taj Mahal and possibly Agra Fort. So everyone getting off the train is a tourist, and therefore, ripe for touting. We had booked a minibus with driver and guide. This proved to be a godsend, as Rajiv was waiting for us on the platform with a little sign saying “Roderick Fairweather and Friends”. Okay, it wasn’t really a little sign. It would have been very easy for Rajiv to spot us, as the platform, while teaming with people, didn’t have many parties consisting of six white people and a baby. But we needed the sign, because it told us which Indian didn’t want money to help us, but only because we’d already paid him.

Rajiv led the way outside to the minibus and we climbed in, into an oasis of calm amid the teeming throng of Agra. This minibus was perfect with a passenger compartment consisting of four individual seats and a bench seat across the back. It even had two fully functioning seatbelts, plus less usefully, one half of a seatbelt. We strapped Holly’s car seat into one of the seats with both sides of the seatbelt. Rajiv told us our first stop was to be the Taj Mahal. Actually, our first stop was the Taj Mahal ticket booth, half a kilometre from the gates. This is as close as petrol and diesel engined vehicles can get to the Taj now, in an effort to curb the effects of pollution on the building. There are lots of restrictions on what you can take into the Taj grounds, so we were advised to leave food, fiction books (guide books are okay), packs of cards, Ipods, electronic games and USB cables in the bus. Didn’t have any USB cables on me. We then were given the choice of which type of environmentally friendly transport we would like to get to the gates. There was the free option, walking, but it was uphill and the start of what would be a very long day. Also, walking would give lots of opportunities for young men to try to convince us we really needed to buy whatever tat they were selling. Or we could pay some locals to go in a carriage pulled by a flea ridden horse, or in an electric rickshaw. Guess which option we chose!

The rickshaw deposited us as close to the gate as was possible, leaving a short distance for the young men to try to convince us we really needed to buy whatever tat they were selling. They had nasty replicas of the Taj and Rajasthani shoes, even though Agra is in Uttar Pradesh. No one was selling T-shirts saying “My boyfriend went to the Taj Mahal and all he got me was this lousy T-shirt”. A missed opportunity, for marketing and amusing spelling mistakes, I think. We reached the security check point and split into gender groups. From my queue I heard Rod explaining that Keir was in the right queue, even though his hair might suggest otherwise. I had to open my bag so the security lady could check inside to make sure I had not brought in anything subversive like a magazine or chocolate bar. Unfortunately, my bag did contain something she considered subversive. For inside was the instigator of riots and top of the Interpol Watch list, Keir’s teddy, Benny. Having known Benny for nine years I vouched for his behaviour. I promised I wouldn’t let him out of my bag. But this was not good enough. The lady would not let Benny in. I asked her what damage could a child’s small stuffed toy do to a 378 year old marble building. I begged for him, like an American Idol contestant facing the chop. But like Simon Cowell, she would not be moved. So I did the only thing I thought right, and started shouting over to Rod that the lady wouldn’t let Benny in. Maybe that teddy was a bad influence… Rod had also not been completely above board. He’d been carrying a copy of the ultra subversive, “Sunday Times of India” newspaper. That too would not be allowed in.

Rajiv came to the rescue. He apologised for not telling us back in the minibus we were not allowed to bring stuffed toys into the Taj. He’d only done this tour one thousand times, and was unaware stuffed blue teddies could be so subversive. He gave Benny to one of his friends in a shop outside the Taj for safekeeping. So after we’d visited the monument to love, we were going to have to visit the monument to marble nick-nacks to negotiate a hostage release. Marvellous!

The Fairweather Family, minus Benny

Holly: Mum, why am I sitting on the Taj Mahal?

Nutty: It was your father's idea, darling. Humour him.

I believe I can fly, just like R Kelly

The reunion shot

The Lotus Temple

2010-02-14T23:28:00.006+05:30

Here's a shot to prove we made it out of India Gate in one piece. This is the Baha'i Lotus Temple in Delhi.

The Baha'i faith is a very interesting one. They want to remove prejudices based on race, caste and language. They believe in the equality of men and women and in universal education, for women as well as men. They think true religion conforms to reason, with a harmony between religion and science. They don't believe in superstition, outdated ceremonies and sermons. And they want to abolish the extremes of wealth and poverty. All in all, not a lot to object to.

The Lotus Temple was completed in 1986. Like all Baha'i Houses of Worship, it has a nine sided, circular shape. Outside there are 27 marble clad petals, inside the building is devoid of religious icons, and has no altar or pulpit. It is a white, peaceful, calm oasis inside a bustling noisy city, even though it is one of the most visited buildings in the world, with 13,000 people walking through its doors every day. But not on Sundays...as we found out the first time we tried to visit.

They have an education centre on site, which Stumpy, Nutty and Rod found very interesting. I stayed outside with Holly, as children under 12 were not allowed inside. I'm not sure how that sits with their universal education stance, really. But Stumpy contributed to the cause, coming home with a plastic replica of the Lotus Temple, to give to one of his work colleagues who is a Baha'i. It plugs in and everything, with pretty blue lights. All for four quid!

I predict a riot!

2010-02-09T17:11:00.005+05:30

Another month, another lot of visitors, another shot of India Gate!

This time it was Stumpy and Nutty, with their 11 month old baby, Holly. Many photos of Holly were taken on this ten day visit. This one is unusual, in that it was taken by Rod and not by some random Indian for his own personal collection. For Holly became a celebrity while in India. Everywhere we went, polite people would stop us and ask if they could take Holly's photo. Less polite ones just took the shots. And it didn't stop with photos - people in the street wanted to hold her. Some asked, others just lunged for her. We all got very good at anticipating these movements, and placing ourselves between Holly and her adoring public. We were just like a group of bouncers, except that no-one was muscle bound, and other than Rod, no-one was over 5 ft 6 and a half!

While we were out Holly got hungry, as babies do, so we found a quiet area under a tree. I would've called it a quiet grassy area, but grassy might be stretching the truth just a little. It wasn't exactly secluded, but this is India, so not much is. But we were away from the main India Gate strip, the two cricket matches and the busloads of school children, so it was as good a place as any. Or so we thought...

It transpires that in India, there's nothing quite as interesting as observing a white baby eat baby food. Some school children saw us, and came over to watch. Some of the cricketers saw the schoolchildren watching, and came over to see what was happening. Children from a different school joined in too. The first group of kids had kept back like we asked them to, but with each new wave of watchers the gaggle was getting closer and closer. A souvenir seller saw the crowd and decided this might be a good place to set up his pitch, and came over to join us. When Nutty noticed the change of tone in Rod's voice she glanced over her shoulder and decided while Holly might not think she'd finished her lunch, for safety's sake she had.

Feeding time at the zoo when we only had one school and half a cricket team. The boy in the black jumper really didn't want to move back...

Choose your friends well

2010-01-21T22:09:00.002+05:30

A headline in the newspaper grabbed me recently. "Friends, kin behind 97% kidnaps". The article went on to say that in 32 of the 33 reported kidnap cases in New Delhi last year, the victim knew at least one of their abductors. Relatives and friends were behind the act in almost exclusively, with many of the abductors being first time offenders. So, while you have to take what you get when it comes to family, choose your friends wisely!

Why do they call it a black eye...

2010-01-14T09:10:00.002+05:30

...when it's really yellow and orange and red and purple?

This is a vast improvement on the big white bandage. That said "Look at me, I'm injured." This dressing says "Look at me, I'm hard!".

Discharge instructions

2010-01-12T08:15:00.002+05:30

So we leave hospital armed with a stitched together boy and a discharge note. The discharge note covers some easy stuff we have to do: have Keir sleep with two pillows to elevate his head to reduce swelling, and some less easy stuff, like preventing the scar from any sun exposure for the next month. It's not too difficult right now because 1) he still has a wound dressing on and 2) there's hardly any sun because it's winter. Prevailing weather conditions in winter in Delhi are fog, low cloud and low temperatures. The sun rarely makes an appearance, and even if it does, it's pretty weak. But true winter lasts about three weeks, and we're about halfway through it. So before the month is up we will need to keep the sun off the scar. The plastic surgeon suggested Keir wore a cap whenever he was outside. As you could imagine, this held little appeal. And we have enough trouble getting Keir to wear a hat during the hot times, when it is really needed. Wearing one now wouldn't be the easiest job. Or, the surgeon said, considering the location of the scar, he could wear sunglasses. This was a much cooler suggestion. Keir approved. I'm fairly sure the school won't be happy with Keir wearing sunglasses while playing sport, so I think we'll alternate between the two.

The discharge note also contained a prescription for the medicines Keir would need. But unlike hospitals in the West, Indian hospitals don't have an on-site pharmacy. We'd have to go to a local chemist to get the medicines. As it was now half past 11, that was going to have to wait until Sunday morning.

Luckily we have five chemists within a three minute walk from our home. The surgeon thought Keir would need antibiotics, painkillers, vitamins and a topical antibiotic cream. I thought if Keir hadn't needed painkillers when we got home last night he wouldn't need them now. We weren't supposed to take off the main dressing until Thursday, so the antibiotic cream wasn't urgent. And if there was ever a child who got all the vitamins he needed from his food, it was Keir. He's always hungry, and loves fruit, vegetables, bread, cheese, yoghurt, food. But the antiboitics were urgent, so down to the market I went. I walked past the first pharmacy, a dusty place with a facade that probably hasn't been changed since India gained independence from the British in 1947. The next pharmacy opened after we moved to Hauz Khas in April, so it's clean and overly brightly lit. However it didn't have the medicine. It did have one whole wall of bulking up powder for body builders, and another wall dedicated to ayurvedic (herbal medicine) products. It didn't have antibiotics.

A bit further down the parade is the next chemist. It's modern (ish), but doesn't believe in increasing its carbon footprint too much. It's a bit dark. Even though it has more medicines than food supplements, it doesn't have the one we need. Right next door is another chemist, probably last updated while Indira Gandhi was alive. But it's closed. So I walk down the next lane. The pharmacy there has a good mix of drugs and the other stuff you'd expect to find in a chemist - nappies, health food, bath products, razors. But our particular medicine was proving elusive...

So back to the pre-Partition pharmacy I went. The man inside had no computer, so he had to look on his shelves to see if he had the right one. After a bit of hunting he found it. Result! He sold me the bottle and home I went.

Keir can't take tablets without a palaver, so I'd asked for a liquid. I'd been sold a powder to which you add water to make the liquid. I'm sure it's exactly the same as the ones in the West, but I've never been expected to mix the medicine myself. That's what the pharmacist spends five plus years training to do. Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be the pharmacist! Despite my lack of training, I am able to fill the bottle to the mark with boiled water. Hey, it's just like making Pot Noodles! I have now made 30mls of antibiotics. I check Keir's prescription and see he needs to take 10mls twice a day for five days. Even without a degree in Pharmacology I can see the problem here. I've spent an hour plus getting enough medicine to last until tomorrow morning!

Keir fought the floor and the floor won

2010-01-10T14:35:00.005+05:30

There was always an element of inevitability about it, but we've now seen the inside of an Indian A&E department. What's most surprising is that it's taken us 17 months to do so.

Indian houses have very hard floors, because they're easier to keep clean. Our floor is marble throughout. And Indian bathrooms don't put much stock in keeping water from the shower area from covering the entire bathroom floor. There's not more than a centimetre drop from the floor to the shower area. Even after lengthening the shower curtains so they would touch the floor, that's not enough to stop water from going everywhere. And marble is slippery when wet. And Keir's a nine year old boy.

Last night from Keir's bathroom there was a loud bang, and an even louder scream. I flew into his bedroom as he ran out of the bathroom and picked him up and carried him to the kitchen table, yelling Rod as I went. When I got to the table I was able to look to see what the damage was. I didn't need to look far. I yelled again: Rod. Blood. Rod says I have a very special "Rod Blood" voice, one that implies don't waste too much time getting to me. We have experience in this area.

Keir had obviously slipped in the bathroom, and used his face as a brake. He had grazed his cheekbone and his nose was swollen, but what really caught our attention was the 5cm (2") gash on his left browbone. Frankly, it was hard to look past it. Out came the first aid kit again. Thalia got towels and warm water. Rod cleaned the wound enough to determine how bad the injury was. On the sliding scale "The Cut on Keir's Foot", this was worse. We didn't go to A&E when Keir dropkicked the wineglass because we thought we were at least as able as an Indian hospital to deal with the injury. In hindsight, we should have gone for stitches. This time it was an easier call to make. Hospital, here we come!

Raju had already finished for the day, but Rod called him at home. The words "Keir, blood, hospital" worked slightly slower on Raju than on Rod, but he dropped his dinner and jumped on his motorbike and was with us in twenty minutes. The fact that he lives half an hour away means that he might have been a bit slow on the uptake but now he was making up for it. We used this time to temporarily bandage Keir's head, using gauze pads and the crepe bandage last put into action on his foot. We also collected passports, water bottles, biscuits, a quilt, anything we might need. Didn't know what the state of the hospital would be...

We all bundled into the car and set off for Max Hospital in Saket. Max Hospital is a couple of miles away, much much closer than Raju's home. However, it takes us half an hour to get there. It's a big, modern, Western style hospital. We rushed through the A&E doors and were pointed straight to a bed in the triage area. The first doctor wanted to know which hospital we had been to to get Keir's head bandaged. He looked at the wound and got another doctor. He looked at the wound and got another doctor. The third doctor said the A&E staff were able to stitch the wound, but it would be better if a plastic surgeon did it. We agreed...

So Keir was given some painkillers and we waited. And waited. The plastic surgeon arrived. Keir needed twenty surface stitches and five or so internal ones. Rod didn't count them. He said it was a bit gory. I just held Keir's hands and made sure I couldn't see! The plastic surgeon would make a good quilter, because his stitches were beautiful. Rod commented they were 12 to the inch!

My little soldier, the morning after. Pretty sure no one's going to notice his new haircut when he goes back to school tomorrow!

Christmas lunch

2009-12-26T21:38:00.004+05:30

Not fancying the idea of cooking Christmas lunch with my limited kitchen utensils, nor knowing where to find a turkey, we decided to eat out again this year. I'd heard of a restaurant, Cafe Oz, which was advertising a Christmas lunch menu. Rod and I went to check up on the menu on Tuesday because, well because it's India! It looked so promising, as we went down the Middle Lane of upmarket Khan Market. Cafe Oz had a sign on the door saying they were having a Christmas buffet, booking advisable. So we climbed the stairs and asked if we could see the Christmas Menu. Yes, they assured us, they would have a special Christmas Menu. The waiter didn't know what it would contain, but it would be special. He was sure of that. We asked if there would be turkey. I don't know Ma'am, he said, but there would be salads and fish and other things. We told him we needed to be certain there would be turkey. If there wasn't turkey we did not want to eat in his establishment. He said he'd go and check with the manager. I was hoping the manager would know whether they were going to serve turkey at Christmas or not, what with it being three days before Christmas...

The waiter came back with two A4 sheets of paper, outlining the menu. We scanned down, past delicious sounding salads, cheesy ravioli, and the traditionally festive lemon pepper sole (?), and found turkey breast and cranberry sauce. Further still, plum pudding, rum balls, tiramisu, icecream. We were happy. Can we reserve a table, says Rod. We can, the waiter tells us, and smiles. Do you want to get the reservations book?, suggests Rod. The waiter looks a little bemused. I don't think they have a reservations book. I'm so pleased "bookings advisable" was on the door...So Rod wrote on the sheet of A4 paper, confirmed table for six, Fairweather, and got the waiter to sign it. The waiter gave it back to Rod. So we had a confirmed booking for six...we knew it, but the restaurant didn't really...

So on Christmas day, armed with our sheet of paper showing we thought we had a confirmed booking, we stepped into the Middle Lane of upmarket Khan Market.
It looks even more upmarket in this picture, because you can't see the broken manhole covers... The waiter recognised us when we got there, and had to make a table of six for us. Weren't we glad we'd booked ahead! But the food was lovely, and plentiful, as was the wine. And we didn't have to cook or wash up afterwards! Result!

I did take one of my Christmas CDs with me, just in case they had Boney M on a loop, but thankfully it wasn't needed.

Christmas Eve

2009-12-25T10:55:00.003+05:30

My baby's nine! It's hard to believe. When I asked him how he got to be nine, he looked thoughtful, and replied "I've been alive for nine years". So there goes it, the philosophical musings of Keir! Being born on Christmas Eve, Keir has never been able to have his birthday party with his school friends. So we held that party after school at the beginning of December. 100 helium balloons and 100 regular ones filled the house. The helium ones didn't stay up very long, but we've still got a few straggler regular ones. Very useful for balloon throwball.
Fast forward to Christmas Eve... The request had been for yoghurt cakes, so I got baking. Candles were tricky to source, as they had been last year, but given the choice between relighting ones (we so don't need any help in burning the house down) and these ones, well, these ones won!

We got all crafty after that, with a couple of Christmas ornament making kits. Thalia and I made planets...

and Claire made shooting stars.

We won't say what Aaron made!

Twilight Zone, or just crap stuff?

2009-12-23T21:53:00.003+05:30

Ferret has suggested maybe I live in the Twilight Zone. Unfortunately, I think I live in the manufactured (badly) in India zone. As an example:
This is the inside of a power board, the kit that turns one power point into three or four. This is the one that had our fridge and washing machine plugged into it. As it had to deal with heavy duty appliances, we chose the most expensive one in the shop. This is what it looks like after the wires have caught fire. The power boards don't work very well once that's happened. The blue wire fed the indicator light. I'm going to use the light inside the fridge for an indicator light in the future. It's more reliable.

The thing I really like about this most expensive power board in the shop is the judicious use of cardboard as a packing device. Yes that's cardboard, well known for its insulating properties, at the top and bottom of the power board. Cardboard, that rarely catches fire, inside a power board less than a year old that's obviously tried to catch fire already...

Cracking up

2009-12-23T01:04:00.002+05:30

Strange thing happened the other day at D59. Iwas laying the table for dinner - placemats, napkins, plates, cutlery. I went back to get the food from the kitchen when Keir said, this spoon is broken. I thought he had it all wrong, I mean, how can it be? It's a metal spoon. It came in a wooden box with 100 other pieces of cutlery. And it came from a proper department store in India. But no, he was right and I was wrong.
The spoon truly is broken. I have no idea how Santosh the maid managed it. If we had a dishwasher I'd understand, but Santosh is the dishwasher and she's Thalia sized! She might be small but she's obviously mighty powerful! Or Uri Geller came to visit and I did not notice. Do you think I've been hypnotised?

Saturday at India Gate with the Surrey Posse

2009-12-20T23:35:00.002+05:30

Hanging with our visitors, Claire and Aaron, at India Gate.

Claire and I are obviously not as cool as all the young dudes... though some dudes are younger than others :-)

Peace...brother.

What should you do when the soldier with the rifle outside the Parliament buildings doesn't want you to take his photo? Take a different photo...

Tree's made

2009-12-13T23:24:00.005+05:30

There are no sleigh bells ringing. It's just the sound of the wedding brass band at the illegal wedding hall around the corner. For not only is Christmas coming, it's also the marriage season! An important part of the marriage ceremony is the Baraat, or marriage procession. This is where the groom, in his wedding finery, rides a white horse, often for the first time in his life, to meet the bride at the wedding venue. To keep him company, and possibly give suggestions to the amateur equestrian on how to ride the horse, his friends and relatives and a brass band (including men with gas powered chandeliers on their heads so everyone can see where they are going) follow him. I am sure the bride's heart swells with joy when she hears the band. Ours, however, do not, because it generally means the band is going to block the road for at least half an hour and cause traffic chaos! And they're going to be playing "Man Dole Mera Tan Dole", a huge hit from 1954. Possibly more than once. Who can tell...

Today we put up the Christmas Tree. Longtime followers of this blog will note it is much bigger than last year's tree. Rod and I discussed whether we should put some of the Diwali lights on the tree. We felt considering the high standard to which they had been manufactured (not!) we could be pushing our luck. The fire engine's not going to be able to get past the band...

A mighty big quilt

2009-12-12T21:35:00.002+05:30

Just to prove I am still quilting I thought I'd show you the latest quilt I've finished. It belongs to Anju from my quilt group, and is the largest quilt I've done on my new 10ft table. The top was 93" by 101". Rod had to unscrew the rubber endstop so I could park the machine clear of the backing. Even with it gone I only just cleared the needleplate. It's one of Anju's smaller quilts, and she only made it that small because I told her I couldn't quilt it if she made it any bigger. You can get away with saying things like this when you're the only longarm quilter in the country!

Christmas cards - tick!

2009-12-12T00:46:00.003+05:30

Today I wrote and sent my Christmas cards. Was this an exercise in futility, as the cards are unlikely to ever reach their destinations, or a reaffirmation of the "glass half full" optimist in me? I suppose time will tell!

Writing the cards wasn't difficult. I admit to not putting too much blood, sweat and tears into the messages inside, after all, there's no guarantee they'll ever get to someone who can read English, let alone the person named on the envelope! I had a dozen to do, and Rod six. He barely manages to write cards to more than his immediate family each year, and getting him to complete this task always feels like drawing blood to me. He asked if I needed him to write a little letter to go in the cards. I want to post them today, I replied, which was the answer he wanted, and within an hour we were done. This was really good going, I mean, it was still December 11th. I don't think getting the cards done had ever been so quick, or pain free. Then Raju and I drove to the post office. Things went downhill here...

We've used the post office in Sarojini Nagar before. It looked like a relic from the 1960's, which, on previous visits, was when it last appeared to have been painted. But it was a relatively efficient and straightforward post office, much more orderly than the one I used in Gurgaon once. Some of the cards I sent last year even reached their destinations. But this year...well...someone had taken a big pot of paint to the building and spruced it up. It was white and shiny, with red trim and a white, gleaming floor. Unfortunately, the improvement in the surroundings was matched by a decrease in the service provided...

When they painted the hoardings above the counters they forgot to paint in which counter did what. In the past there was a counter for stamps, one for parcels and international mail, one for postal orders and railway ticket bookings. Every post office has a counter for railway ticket bookings. No idea why, they just do. There were still three counters, but no indication which counter was the right one. The tellers behind the counters weren't very interested in explaining which queue was the right one. Actually the tellers behind the counters weren't interested in doing very much at all. The soldier, the uni student, the three wideboys (one wearing pinstripe trousers), the man trying to get a postal order filled, a couple of regular guys, Raju and me were left trying to get served at a post office which looked like it was trying to shut up shop for the night, even though there were still four and a half hours of trading time left, if the newly painted sign on the wall was anything to go by. We queued at one counter for a while, then the teller packed up her bags and left. So we all shuffled to the next counter and waited. The teller here was working, but not really working. He certainly wasn't serving anyone. Then he sold a stamp to the soldier, I suppose it's important to get him out of the post office and back on the streets. If he's in the post office he can't pick up Pakistani terrorists, which according to Raju are everywhere.

Now that the soldier has gone, Raju, not really one for authority figures, has managed to get to the front of the queue, if it could be called one. The queue doesn't form in an orderly fashion, single file, back from the counter. It sprawls along the counter, a barrier to keep the masses away from the stamps the post office isn't trying very hard to sell. But Raju is dead centre, and waving my 18 envelopes. Raju asks how much to post to Britain and Australia. The teller hears, clocks he might have to do a little bit of work to determine the correct answer, and decides to serve the uni student. Raju persists, and the teller takes my card and weighs it. Rather than finish with my transaction, he begins to serve the wideboy with the pinstripe trousers. Money, Ma'am, Raju says, in the hope that flashing some notes will help the teller work out what price the stamps need to be. He needs to tell me what it costs, Raju, I say. I can't get the money for him until he tells me how much it will be. Wideboy laughs. It is decided, I am not sure how, that postage will be 25 rupees for each of my cards. I have 18. If any of this discussion had been in English I could have done the sum for the teller far faster than he. Raju and the man trying to get the postal order filled tell the teller the stamps cost 450 rupees. He takes my money, serves one of the regular guys and gives me my change. I still don't have any stamps.

Raju turns to me and asks do I want to put stamps on every envelope. He hasn't posted many letters in his life. He'd never been inside a post office before I needed to send last year's Christmas cards. Then another discussion takes place, between Raju, the postal order guy and the teller. The only bit I understand is "panch" - five. "Panch panch", the good guys on my side of the counter keep repeating. Eventually teller guy either decides they do know what they're talking about, or decides he doesn't care if they're wrong, and gets out his sheet of stamps. It's a big sheet, 100 stamps, 10 rows of 10. With his finger he counts the rows across, and then the rows down. He carefully detaches the row at the bottom. I think, that's 10 stamps, I need another eight. But he counts the stamps across the sheet again (it's still 10) and counts the stamps down one side (now it's 9). He counts the stamps down the other side, just in case it's a different number. Is anyone shocked to know it isn't, it's 9 too? Then he keeps the strip of 10 and gives me the sheet of 90 stamps. It turns out he only has 5 rupee stamps, and I need five for each card, hence the "panch panch".

So Raju and I retire to a bench and I try to separate these poorly serrated stamps into strips of five for Raju to stick to the envelopes. I get the glue stick out of my bag. Indian stamps aren't very gummy, and UHU glue stick makes a much better bond. It makes it harder for the postal workers to peel the stamps off your letters once you've handed them over and left the post office, to be resold to the next customer. We both take turns making sure the stamps are well stuck to the envelopes. Then we take our nearly posted cards to the "delivery area" around the back. We get directed to the desk of the man who has the cancelling stamp. Once the stamps are cancelled they cannot be reused. This reduces their resale value somewhat, thus increasing the chances of the cards getting out of the post office. The man tells us to just leave them on the table, he's busy now and will cancel them later. He does not realise I've been in India for 18 months now, and I know this scam. We'll wait until they're done, I say loudly and clearly. Amazingly he gets less busy rather quickly, and cancels the stamps. Raju and I both counted each card, him in Hindi and me English, as they were cancelled to make sure each one was done. This is not our first experience of the Indian postal service...and we know at least some of their tricks!

So Christmas is coming. Maybe cards are coming too. Who knows!

Call in CSI, I need to dust for prints...

2009-11-27T20:11:00.002+05:30

Isn't technology marvellous? Back in March, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi started tracking the attendance records of it's 127, 094 employees biometrically. When they turned up for work, they had to sign in with their biometric cards or give a thumbprint impression. What's remarkable is that in the last eight months, 22,853 of these employees failed to turn up for work once. Do you think it's possible these 23, 000 employees, who have paper records only, never really existed? The paper says, and I quote "there seems to be a scam as the MCD is spending 20 million rupees (more than a quarter of a million pounds) every year on the salaries of ghost employees". I'm not sure the phrase "seems to be " really sums up the situation fully...

The Mayor of Delhi has declared the introduction of the biometric cards a grand success. Not only has he found he employs 23,000 people fewer than he thought he did, those who do actually exist have become so much better at timekeeping. They are more punctual than they've ever been. Not only can they turn up in time now, they don't seem to need to work overtime either...

If you're happy and you know it clap your hands

2009-11-26T21:37:00.003+05:30

But be careful if you're in India. It might be misinterpreted...

This afternoon, on the way to collect the kids from school, I saw something new...

When our car stops at red lights, I am used to people coming up to it, trying to attract my attention. Sometimes it's kids selling magazines; sometimes it's women, in dirty clothes and holding a baby partly clothed in rags; sometimes it's urchin children. They knock on the car window in the hope that I will pity them, wind down the window and give them some money. The urchin children usually repeat the mantra, "No Mama, No Papa, No Chapatti" (My friend Kehi tells me the correct reply to this is "No Country Club Membership"). But today the person trying to attract my attention didn't fit into any of these categories.

While waiting for the lights to change on Lodhi Road, a lady wearing a long woolen shawl walked elegantly down between the rows of cars. Her face and clothes were clean, she was wearing lipstick and her hair had been brushed. Between the fingers of her left hand she had notes folded lengthways, 10 rupees, 20 rupees, 50 rupees. Alongside every car she clapped her hands once. After she had passed our car, I asked Raju if she was a beggar. Yes Ma'am, he says, she's a beggar. But, I say to Raju, she doesn't look like a beggar, and she doesn't act like one. The beggars knock on the car window and, because we're white (therefore wealthy, and possibly a pushover), they wait until they are sure we won't give any money. Raju waits a moment. Ma'am, he says, she's not a beggar. And loading as much innuendo into his voice as he could muster he added, Ma'am, I think you know what she is.

Oh, I say, just a little surprised. I check my watch, it is 3pm. Isn't it early, I say, for the ladies of the night to be out? Raju replies with a laugh, Ma'am, she isn't a lady. *

The lights change and he drives on, still chuckling to himself. After a minute or so he looks in the rear view mirror, catching my eye. Ma'am, he says, she was fresh. I take this to mean not all the clapping ladies of Lodhi Road are as pretty, and wholesome looking, as this girl.

* However, I would put money on her being a woman. I've seen hijras (the Indian third gender, neither man nor woman) and this lady was incredibly feminine compared to them.

Lana's Bananas

2009-11-18T23:04:00.003+05:30

I feel like I've fallen into Cafe World...

Today I've been attached to the stove, just like the little cartoon me in my Facebook Cafe, Lana's Bananas. While the little Lana cooked Triple Berry Cheesecake and Spitroast Chicken, the real Lana (a great deal bigger but still little, to be honest), cooked up a huge pot of basic meat sauce. I knew I was on to a good thing when the kids got home from school and rather than "School. Moan. Boring. Can I have some money?", Thalia's first words were "Mmm, smells like Bolognese". Not quite right, because I'd decided the first batch of basic sauce was going to be Chili Con Carne. Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be... The freezer is now stocked with plastic containers, ready to be turned into Bolognese sauce or Shepherd's Pie relatively easily. And there was enough Chili made with the other portion of basic sauce to pop another family meal in the freezer as well. It's a little like trying to keep enough food available to serve in Cafe World. I'm not sure this qualifies as life imitating art, though...

Got a light?

2009-11-09T21:31:00.003+05:30

Having dinner by candlelight is old hat. To be truly cutting edge, you have to cook it by candlelight! Okay, so it's not really a candle, rather our emergency light. But the effect is about the same...

We had a power outage just after 5pm. These outages are less frequent than they were in the peak of summer, and usually don't last more than five or so minutes. The longest ones are about an hour. But 6pm came and went, and the power still hadn't returned. I knew dinner, chicken and vegetable pie with a filo pastry topping, would need to cook for at least 45 minutes, so I couldn't risk leaving it much later. I'd found one packet of filo pastry in the supermarket, something I'd not seen since Tesco, July 2008, so nothing was going to get in the way of me using it. Not even not being able to see. So I took the emergency light into the kitchen so I could distinguish between my fingers and the vegetables. Luckily the hob and oven are gas, otherwise the lack of light wouldn't be my only problem! Power came back just as dinner was ready.

Success at last!

2009-10-25T15:27:00.005+05:30

Finally we have an in focus picture of one of our elusive geckoes. I'd like to introduce Gurshagun.

Tommy and Gurshagun are camera shy. Actually they're people shy too. Late at night, when Rod and I are on our way to bed we often catch them in the hallway or kitchen out of the corners of our eyes. But then they run and hide, under the fridge or underneath the front door. Trying to catch them on camera has been really rather tricky. But last night, when I put my tea cup in the kitchen on the way to bed I didn't turn the light on, because there was enough ambient light from the dining area. And that's when I spotted Gurshagun. I know it's Gurshagun, because she is smaller than Tommy. Don't ask me how I know she's a girl gecko though!

Amazingly she was still there when I returned with my camera. Geckoes, like puppies and four year old boys, aren't very good at listening to directions from photographers, so I was surprised she stayed still long enough for me to take a number of snaps. Everyone, say hi to Gurshagun.

Sign your name...

2009-10-24T21:22:00.002+05:30

One of the things that's distinctive in the area we live, is signs outside houses showing the name of the people who live in the house. These name plates would also be really useful for the postman, except the mail for these houses has probably already been redistributed, probably to people whose names were not the same as those on the envelope. So on our street we have signs saying, among other names, Chakrabati, Mirchandani, Batra and Gupta. Actually most of the signs in our street say Gupta. Our landlord is a Gupta, a cousin lives on our top floor, and his mum lives across the road. And they're just the connections I've made already. Our house has one of these nameplates. It says Gupta, Mehra and Institutio Hispania, the Spanish Language School. The space next to Ground Floor is blank. We could add Fairweather, or Fairweather Dragicevich to it, but
a) proper paint is not cheap (so says our friend, Shireen)
b) the space isn't large enough for all those characters
c) Indians often get confused between forenames and surnames, so Rod is often Mr Rod, and I am Mrs Rod, so maybe the sign should read Rod or Rod Lana instead
d) we're the only white people in the street and everyone knows where we live already
and e) no mail really ever arrives anyway, because it's been nicked!

But we can't be the only white people in Hauz Khas, because I saw this name plate around the corner from the market.
Short, sweet and identifying enough!

Happy Diwali

2009-10-17T14:30:00.001+05:30

"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.…"

King Rama was exiled in the forest. He fought a lengthy war against Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, and kidnapper of his wife, Sita. King Rama slays Ravana, rescues Sita, and together they make their way back to Ayodhya, the capital of Rama’s kingdom. But finding their way home is not easy in the dark. So the people of Avodhya lit rows of lamps, called diyas, along the way to light their path through the darkness.

This is the story of Diwali. It celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, goodness over evil and knowledge over ignorance.

Today Indians decorate their homes, inside and out, with fairy lights and diyas to help Rama and Sita on their way. It is believed lighting diyas welcomes prosperity and well-being into the home. This pleases Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth. I’m sure we could all do with pleasing Lakshmi at this time :-)

Operation Smile

2009-10-15T22:32:00.005+05:30

Do you want to know how loud 14 expat women can be when it's all for a good cause? Really, really quite loud! Members of my Monday quilt group and the Thursday knitting and stitching group gathered in Kehi's house today and made quilts for Operation Smile. Operation Smile provide free reconstructive surgery to children with cleft lip, palate and other facial deformaties. While recovering from these surgeries, nurses place a roll of soft fabric under the patient's necks. A roll of soft fabric is fine, but a quilt is so much better. Of course it is!

Many of the knitting group didn't know how to piece or rotary cut, but they found themselves called upon to choose fabrics for the quilt tops, press the quilts as we stitched, do any handwork required and make copious cups of tea. Trust me, they were vital! Thalia is home from school this week and she came too, tracing applique shapes, taking photos and making a quilt for the pile. She also found herself much in demand when it came to laying the quilt tops on the backings. We had to use the floor for this, and her back and knees are much younger than the average!

Suzanne stitching
Our first finished quilt, modelled by Kehi

Thalia's quilt

Today's effort

In all we completely finished 8 quilts, before we ran out of the fleece we were using for backing. Another two tops are ready waiting for more backing to be purchased, and many of us took home bundles of fabric to make some more. So a day spent doing something really useful, and having great fun with it!

Twinkle! Sparkle!

2009-10-14T21:45:00.003+05:30

What do you do in a predominantly Muslim suburb in the days leading up to Diwali, the biggest Hindu festival of the year? You buy Christmas decorations, of course! At Monday's quilt meeting I was given the address for the Christmas Decoration man, and told not to wait too long before paying him a visit. Helen said you'd go to a suburban home, walk down into its basement and be blown away. She wasn't wrong! A basement not much smaller than our Hauz Khas home full of sparkly, dangly stuff! Three rooms of colour coded baubles, wreaths, tree skirts and tree toppers - everything you'd need for Christmas, with all the baubles priced at 50 rupees. Well, almost everything. There wasn't any wrapping paper...

A small selection of our purchases

We bought 17 baubles, two of the stand up stars and a tinsel tree for each of the kids' rooms. This one's Thalia's. As the Christmas tree we bought last year is only marginally bigger than this turquoise one, we're going to need to get a larger tree if we're going to have any hope of hanging all these trinkets on it!

A walk in the park

2009-10-13T19:14:00.005+05:30

Well the weather seems to be finally on the turn, the maximum temperature has been 34 degrees (93F) for the last couple of days. Not enough of a drop to wear different clothes yet, we're wearing the same things we did when it was 40 (104F), and just sweating into them a little slower :-)

To celebrate our new found freedom on Sunday we went for a walk in the park. Nehru Park is in Chanakyapuri, near the Australian High Commission and one of Delhi's premier hotels, the Ashok. For the past week, The Ashok has been playing host to the Commonwealth Games Federation General Assembly, who came to check on Delhi's readiness to host the Games this time next year. Delhites think there's lots of work being done, so it will all be okay. But there's 19 venues and none of them are finished yet, nor is the athlete's village. A lot of work is being done, but there's a lot that needs to be done! Delhi will think it's ready on time if everything is complete on October 2nd, the day before the opening ceremony. For something as important and complicated as the Commonwealth Games, I know I'd want to see most things ready at least six months in advance! I don't suppose the Commonweath Games Federation sees it any differently. To ensure all this work is completed on time, the CGF has said it will put in place foreign experts (a.k.a. people who don't work to Indian Stretchable Time). The Games getting the go ahead is very big news for Delhi. If the CGF had come in and said there was too much to be done and the Games will be held in Melbourne instead (a.k.a. Plan B), work on all those venues, and the road works, bridge building and traffic control measures underway all over the city would just stop. Driving here has been really dreadful. If all work stopped we would have had gone through hell for nothing. That's just too awful to consider!

Anyway, back to Nehru Park. In the sun it was still too hot, but in the shade it was almost pleasant.

Aren't we cool?

Aren't they cute?

Aren't they handsome?

If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium

2009-10-10T16:54:00.005+05:30

but it's Saturday, so it's Switzerland!

Today we went to the Swiss Embassy for their Festa of Lights Mela. Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, is next weekend, so the Mela, or Fair season is well underway. Traditional gifts to give at Diwali include candles and diyas (oil lamps) and food. This mela had lots of those on offer, and much more. Clothes, shoes, handmade paper crafts - anything a girl could ask for!

Thankfully for Keir they also had a kids area, with a ball cage. He was much happier there than browsing through Indian clothing stalls. They didn't know it, but the stall keepers were happier too! There was a gourmet food court, so Rod and I decided as we were in Switzerland we should do as the Swiss do, so lunch was bubbling Raclette cheese served with boiled potatoes, pickled onions and gerkhins. Though I suppose in Switzerland it's not generally served on a plate made from recycled palm leaves... Yummy, nevertheless.

And after the bustle of Switzerland we moved back into India. To celebrate our return, we enjoyed an icecream on the much less crowded footpath. Not the way round things usually are!

School run, the harder way

2009-10-07T12:43:00.004+05:30

We have a great driver Raju, who can get us anywhere we need to, even into Old Delhi (even though he doesn't like it). But sometimes Rod and I need to be in two different places at the same time, and not even Raju can manage that. That's when we use an auto rickshaw, or tuc tuc. Yesterday was one of those days. Keir had to be collected from school at 2.15, and Rod needed to be in Gurgaon at 3. As the school is much, much closer to our place than Gurgaon is, I pulled the auto straw.

At 1.40 I walked down to the market to find a rickshaw. It's never hard to find one there, but you never know how good the driver's English will be. You also don't know how good a driver the rickshaw guy will be, but the state of his vehicle can give you a few clues on that front. It's a good idea not to make eye contact with any driver with a really battered rickshaw! Luckily the first rickshaw who offered me a ride had all 3 of its wheels, an non cracked windshield and only a few holes in its upholstery. Fingers crossed he would understand where I needed to go. Toes crossed he would know how to get there! I show him my school ID badge, which says in big letters "The British School". I say, clearly, "The British School, Chanakyapuri". The badge also gives the street address, but that's not going to be much help. The driver isn't going to be able to read much English (because if he did, he wouldn't be a rickshaw driver), and even if he did, he wouldn't use a map to get there, because Indian drivers are unlike men anywhere else in the world. They actually like stopping to ask for directions! I know, freaky! The driver nods, to indicate he knows where I want to go. I've done this enough to know that the nod doesn't actually mean he does know where I want him to go, but he thinks he can get me close enough so that I'll pay him. I ask him how much to get to the school, wait 10 minutes and then bring me back to Hauz Khas. He repeats "British School" and thinks, because all auto rickshaws have meters, but none of them work. Fees for hiring an auto are not determined by distance covered, nor time of day. They're determined by how much the driver thinks he can get out of you, before you go and try your luck with the next auto in the queue. My guy decides 150 rupees (£2, $3.20 USD, $3.60 AUD) is the tipping point. This would be exhorbitant if I wasn't white, but the journey's cost me 200 rupees in the past, so I take it.

We set off in the right direction (so far, so good), and after a short while he asks me "which Embassy?" Now Chanakyapuri is home to many of the Embassies and High Commissions, so it's not a bad assumption I'm going to an Embassy. Except that less than 5 minutes ago I told him "The British School", and he repeated it back to me. I say clearly, again, "The British School", and add "near the American Embassy", in case it helps. The driver keeps driving, and soon we are heading up Africa Avenue, and into Chanakyapuri. We turn into Satya Marg and the wide streets of Diplomatic Delhi. We come to a roundabout. The driver enters the roundabout and stops in the middle. I yell and point, "straight ahead", because I'm not too keen on being stationary in an open sided, three wheeled vehicle in the middle of a roundabout. The driver goes straight ahead. We come to the next roundabout. Because I didn't want to play sitting duck again, I tell him straight ahead as he enters the roundabout. He makes a noise which I take to mean he doesn't believe me, but he does what I say anyway. When we get to the next roundabout, I say straight ahead. He hesitates, and the penny drops. "Ah, British School", he says, no differently to I have been saying it, and he has been repeating it back to me all along, and takes me to the school gate. I get out and ask him to wait while I go collect my son. I know he will wait for me, because I'm not going to give him any money yet.

I get Keir and he is so excited to be going home in an auto. The driver smiles as he climbs in and Keir wishes him Namaste (hello). The driver grins even wider and asks Keir if he speaks Hindi. He replies, Han ji (yes Sir). The driver turns to me and asks if I speak Hindi. I reply chota (little). We set off back to Hauz Khas. As we get back to the market I direct the driver to our house. I get him to stop outside D59, and Keir thanks him in Hindi (Dhanyavad) while I get out the fare. The driver asks me "do you live in Delhi?". I reply, "I live here", and point to the house. He looks confused, and repeats "do you live in Delhi?". I'm confused, because I would have thought the fact that I collected my son from school and directed him back to our house, telling him it was my house, were enough clues. Maybe they aren't, so I point to the house again, and repeat "I live here". Just in case we still aren't clear, I leave. Quickly.

Not fair weather, not yet

2009-10-01T22:37:00.003+05:30

It's October already! Rejoice! Why? Because all Indians say the weather is best in Delhi from October to February. That's when the endless days of temperatures over 35 degrees come to a close, and locals start mentioning that it's turning cool. I'm waiting...because it was 37 degrees today, and it's forecast to be 37 for the next four days too. Now where I come from, that's just not cool...

I am really, really bored with my wardrobe. I am tired of opening it up each morning, and trying to find something suitable to wear when the forecast says 36 degrees or more. And it's not that I want to go out and buy more clothes suitable for this weather. Really, I have enough. I just want to wear something different, something suitable for a day when the forecast says 24 degrees. I have those clothes already. I haven't worn them to death since March. I still like them...

I know I need to take a reality tablet. I'd settle for a 28 degree day, even though we're getting 28 degree nights. There might be a 28 degree day in November...

Things you don't expect to see on the motorway

2009-09-22T14:14:00.002+05:30

I've been in India over a year now, and I'm much more used to seeing things I wouldn't have expected to see than I was when I first arrived, a novice traveller who'd only lived on two continents. I've seen people living in buildings that didn't look like they would withstand a light puff of wind. I've seen people surprised that it rains in the monsoon season, and all the roads wash away. I've seen trees growing in the middle of roads. But I've never seen this:

Yesterday was Eid-ul-Fitr, the day that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Thousands of Muslims gathered at mosques across India to offer prayers. And thousands gathered on the NH8, the Delhi Gurgaon Expressway, and offered their prayers there too. Traffic is often at a standstill on this road, but not usually caused by human gridlock.

Wine glass 1 - Keir nil

2009-09-15T09:00:00.005+05:30

Sunday evening we were provided with the reason why we have carried a Boots First Aid kit around for years. For on Sunday evening Keir decided to use a wine glass as a football. In case you're wondering, wine glasses do not make good footballs. Especially if you have hard marble floors...

First Keir kicked the glass with his foot (actually first Rod said, mind out for my wine glass, but considering what followed, that bit is a little redundant). The glass slammed down into the marble floor, bounced back up and then glass shards scattered over a large part of the living room. Rod yelled "stop", to prevent Keir walking on any of the fragments. I saw blood on his feet, yelled "blood" (I'm good at stating the obvious in an emergency) and scooped Keir up and carried him to the dining table. At this time all we could see was blood. Quite a bit of it. After cleaning up his feet we discovered Keir had a cut about 4cm long (1.5 inches) on the top of his right foot. Rod applied pressure to the wound and we hoped it would stop bleeding. Because a trip to the local emergency room was not really how I'd planned to spend my Sunday evening.

Here's where the first aid kit came in. Surprisingly, considering Keir is part of our family, we've never really had to use anything from the first aid kit before. But it contained enough steri-strips, wound dressings, bandages and micropore tape for us to avoid a trip to Max hospital. Max is the best hospital near us, and one of the best in New Delhi, but we weren't convinced they'd be as well stocked with sterile dressings as we were. I'm even more convinced today, as we were unable to refill the first aid kit after visiting three chemist shops yesterday. None of the pharmacists had ever seen steri-strips before.

Keir spent yesterday on the sofa pestering Rod, sorry playing Farkle and Farmville. He went to school this morning, proudly showing off his well bandaged foot. He has bragging rights today...

a further bathroom break

2009-09-07T21:19:00.001+05:30

A little more to add on the bathroom situation. Yes there’s more. I just didn’t want to say it yesterday because:
a) I already had cramp from writing all that, and know there are published novels out there that are shorter and,
b) I was afraid if I made the post any longer some of you would look at it and decide: too many words, I’ll wait until Readers Digest bring out the abridged version. Yes Julie, I mean you…

I now know why Indian houses have lots of bathrooms. It’s not because Indians all want an en suite, it’s because they won’t all be fully working at the same time, and having lots of bathrooms means there’s a chance whatever you need will be working somewhere. See, our master bathroom has the best bath. Actually, it has the only bath. This worked even when we had no hot water, because we could carry a couple of buckets of hot water through from the kitchen. But the shower was cold, so Rod would use the shower in Keir’s bathroom, which is the best shower in the house. But Rod couldn’t use our bathroom to shave, because we had no hot water, nor could he use Keir’s bathroom for shaving, because Keir’s mirror is so bad you can’t see anything in it. That left Thalia’s bathroom for shaving. Thalia’s shower can be dodgy at the best of times, but she has the best mirror.

That of course was last week, when the master bath hot water cylinder was on the blink. Rod has had to go to London for 10 days, so at the moment, no one needs to be able to see their face in a mirror to shave. My hot water is now working perfectly (touch wood). Keir’s hot water cylinder worked last week, but now only gets to lukewarm. Keir had cold showers for a couple of days before he said anything. I know that cylinder was working last week because Rod would never have done that! And we don’t seem to be able to get any hot water out of Thalia’s hot water cylinder. Actually, we don’t seem to be able to get any water out of Thalia’s hot water taps at all, not hot, not cold. Fingers crossed my hot water cylinder lasts until Rod gets back on the weekend!!

In hot water...not!

2009-09-06T21:13:00.002+05:30

How many Indians does it take to change a hot water cylinder? It's not a joke, I'm just asking. Because it's taken days already...

A little bit of backstory first: The hot water cylinder in our bathroom stopped working while we were in Australia, and Rod got it repaired in time for our return. For Rod is a good husband, and knows how important a bath is to me all of the time, and even more so when I've just got off a plane. Fast forward six weeks, and the hot water cylinder stops producing hot water again. Now as far as I'm concerned, this makes it not a very good hot water cylinder. So we went to the same repair shop in the local market and asked for a repairman to come and fix it again. It was late in the afternoon and the owner was not in, so the man behind the counter said he would come tomorrow morning.

The following afternoon, the shop owner and his repair guy came to our house. Unfortunately they had chosen to come while there was a colony wide power cut, so they could not test the electrics on our hot water cylinder. Why did they come when they knew the power was out? They want us to call them when the power is back on. When power was restored we called the number they had given us. The man said he would come in half an hour. At six o'clock, three and a half hours after the half hour, I get Raju to call to find out when the repair guy will arrive. I don't want anyone saying I don't understand... Raju calls, and tells me it is Tuesday and they are not working today. Now I knew it was Tuesday, and I know many shops shut here on a Tuesday, but it was Tuesday four hours earlier when they stood in my house in the dark because the power was out. But it's not Raju's fault, so I just have to accept that they will do as they say, which is come to my house to fix my hot water cylinder the following day at 10.30-11.

Wednesday morning comes, and while I have hopes that the hot water will work today, I have no expectation that someone will be in my house at 10.30 fixing it. But I need to go out around lunchtime, so I'm going to need the repair guy to have an un-Indian approach to time-keeping. At 10.45 I explain this to Raju, who goes around the corner to the shop to make sure they understand I need them working in my house in the morning. The shop isn’t open yet. So Raju calls the mobile number he has been given, and is told we are the repair guy’s first job of the day.

Repair guy and his toolbag carrying sidekick arrive at D59 at 11.45, and repair guy sets about checking the cylinder. He decides to disconnect the water supply to the cylinder. At least I think that’s what he does, for copious quantities of water pour out the side of the cylinder and all over my bathroom. Sidekick stands in the bathroom holding a screwdriver. Raju stands in my bathroom holding a bucket. Repair guy takes out the scorch marked heating element, and two rods, one of which has a melted hole in the side I’m sure the manufacturers hadn’t intended.

I may make this sound like a quick job, but in fact this takes 45 minutes. During the 45 minutes, water continues to drip out the side of the cylinder. Maybe repair guy hasn’t been as diligent in turning off the water to the cylinder as he should have been. But he leaves with the three broken pieces and a 1000 rupee advance, saying he will be back to fit new parts later that afternoon. With more forethought than the repair guy, I balance the bucket on the loo seat to attempt to catch some of the drips. Why bother at this stage you may think, considering how much water has already gone on the floor? But it feels like the right thing to do, and when I returned home after my errands I found the 22 litre bucket close to overflowing.

Repair guy returns at 4.30. He empties the now again half full bucket and attempts to fit new replacement parts. He’s finding this a little tricky, because there’s a stream of water coming from the hole he’s trying to plug with one of the rods. He can use a cloth to plug up the hole. That stops the water, but he can’t get the rod in with the cloth in the way. He can take the cloth away, but then the water stream comes back. Hmmm.

Eventually he manages to get the hole plugged with the rod and he can close up the side of the hot water cylinder. He tells me it works, and asks that I test it that evening, and he will be back tomorrow to check all is well. I tell him I will check it that evening, because I’ve been looking forward to having a bath where I haven’t had to carry the hot water in from the kitchen in my 22 litre bucket. Unfortunately, that evening I was not able to have a bath, as there was no water coming out of my bathroom taps at 8pm as the roof tanks had run dry. This is not uncommon, and it often does not last for long. It might not even have been connected to the water feature that was my bathroom earlier that day. But I checked again at 9pm, and then at 10 and 11 and midnight. When the water came back I do not know. But I’d lost the urge to bathe by then!

Television 101

2009-09-05T16:56:00.006+05:30

I don't think Keir has quite grasped how television works. This surprised Rod and I, considering how many years we have worked in the industry. And what led us to this conclusion...let's start at the very beginning, it's a very fine place to start...

Back in 2007, one of Keir's absolute favourite TV programmes was "Any Dream Will Do", the search for a new West End star to play the lead role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. It was must see television in the Fairweather household, so much so that I made him his own dreamcoat for his birthday. That dreamcoat came with us to India, and it's still one of his favourite things. (Will I continue with the musical references? Maybe this time...)

When we returned from Australia we discovered one of our satellite channels, BBC Entertainment, was showing re-runs of the show. Keir was very excited. But after a couple of weeks, he said something that didn't quite jell with us. He was surprised when Craig was voted off the show, and said he hoped Keith would win. Now, I had hoped Keith would win, back in 2007. But he didn't win then, so I wasn't expecting him to do so in the repeat. Not even maybe this time...

So we gently tested our theory that Keir thought it was a whole new programme, but with all the same people, singing all the same songs. When asked who he thought Andrew Lloyd Webber would send home each week, he would look thoughtful, and declare Lee. For those who didn't see the programme like we have, twice, on two different continents, Lee was the eventual winner. Any dream will do, but sadly Keir's dream of a different outcome was just not going to happen!

The burning question...

2009-08-29T14:46:00.002+05:30

After a long and detailed investigation (we opened the wall switch) Rod used his extensive knowledge and experience to identify what he believed may have been causing the sub-optimal performance of the fan in Thalia’s room …

Style Icon

2009-08-25T23:57:00.002+05:30

My boy's a style icon! Imagine my surprise last Friday, at a 9 year old birthday party (that is, a party for a 9 year old, not a party which didn't know when to end) when the Mum of one of Keir's classmates came up and told me Suraj wants a ponytail because Keir's got a ponytail.

He's such a trendsetter! I'm sure Suraj would look good with a ponytail. We won't be in India by the time he has it, as Suraj currently has a number 3 cut!

Vegetarian shop discovered in Hauz Khas

2009-08-18T19:28:00.002+05:30

I know where the vegetarian shop is! The paneer selling vegetarian shop. What Bapi meant was one of the vegetable stalls down the high street. Now why didn't I think of this? Possibly because the vegetable stall consists of a plank of wood on a couple of trestle legs, and no refrigeration? Bapi took me down the street and I admit I wasn't expecting to stop at a veggie stall. But under the table, in an esky (coolbox) was paneer and a big block of ice. Considering how often the electricity goes off, and how shopkeepers don't like paying for electricity to keep refrigeration units cold (it must be true - I read it in the papers!), a big block of ice is probably just as reliable, maybe more so!

Cooking with gas

2009-08-17T23:25:00.002+05:30

One of the delights of India is the relative cheapness of household help. This is a delight, because I love household help, but I'm cheap! The daily maid is no luxury - India is so dusty, and the doors and windows so ill-fitting, floors have to be swept and washed daily. And dishwashers do exist, that's the maid again! We've had a part-time maid since we arrived last year, and send our ironing out to the press-wallah down the street (for the princely sum of 3 rupees an item, less than 5 pence!) but have not succumbed to any more help. But now we've splashed out and hired a cook! Bapi comes to us each Tuesday, and spends 90 minutes or so making 20 rotis (chapatis), a paneer (cheese) dish and a vegetable dish. This gives us two family meals each week, for 800 rupees (£10) a month! All I have to do is provide the ingredients - Bapi turns them into dinner. Bloody marvellous as far as I'm concerned!

So Bapi gave me a shopping list, and last Monday I went off to make sure I had all the right ingredients. He said to buy 2kg of Atta (wheat flour) at Big Apple, one of the local shops. I went to Big Apple, and right inside the door they had 2kg boxes of Atta. I bought one of those. And I went to Mother Dairy, the milk stall, and bought the paneer. And I bought a large selection of whole spices I've probably never cooked with before. Maybe I have, but Masterfoods wrote in English on the outside of those bottles. These spices weren't in bottles, nor were the labels in English, so I called on another lady customer to help me identify them. Big cardamon, green cardamon, black cardamon...I'm not even sure if we like cardamon! But I was pleased with my purchases. Shopping for unfamiliar ingredients, when you only know their names in a language not used on the labelling, isn't the easiest job!

Unfortunately Bapi was less pleased with my purchases than I was. He couldn't understand why I had bought that box of Atta. As far as I could see, it was the product he'd asked for, the size he'd asked for, in the shop he sent me to. But it was the wrong kind of Atta. And I'd bought the wrong kind of paneer. It was starting to feel like I was back in Britain, on the platform at Motspur Park, listening to British Rail explaining that the late arrival of my train was because the autumn leaves on the line were the wrong kind of leaves, or the snow in winter was the wrong kind of snow... Bapi was confused as to why I had gone to Mother Dairy (the milk shop) to buy the paneer (a dairy product). The best paneer, he told me, is found in the Sweet shop or at the vegetarian shop. I've told him he's going to need to take me shopping this week. I'd never ever have thought to look in the sweet shop for cheese, and I don't even know which shop in the market is the vegetarian shop. No shop in the market has that written on their shopfront, not even spelled incorrectly!

Straight, sort of...

2009-08-13T18:45:00.002+05:30

Thought you'd enjoy seeing one of my Nehru Place purchases. I asked for half a metre of this checked fabric. The young man behind the counter snipped and tore the fabric to make a straight edge he could measure from. He then cut this piece for me.

It's 66cm at the short end, 85cm at the other. I'm so glad he tore to get a straight edge to start with! To think we used bitch about the fabric not being cut straight in quilt shops in the UK!

Wet T-Shirt Competition

2009-08-12T19:32:00.004+05:30

Yesterday I took part in an impromptu "Wet T-shirt" competition. And I won! I was at least 15 years younger, and 15 kilos lighter than the other three participants, so it wasn't that tough a job. But we were all white women, so we were going to be stared at, wet or dry!

Yesterday I went out shopping with some members of my quilt group. We were going to go to Lajpat Nagar, a market (new to me) where they had silk threads, beads and buttons, and then on to Nehru Place to check out some fabric shops. When there's fabric on offer, a little bit of rain was never going to deter us. It's the monsoon season after all. It's supposed to rain. As it turned out, it was the second wettest day this season, just under 44mm (1 and 3/4 inches), and all in the two hours we were outside!

After a while, you can't get much wetter. And as we found out, if you hold the plastic bags containing your purchases to your chest, that at least stays dry. This prevents your clothes clinging to your nipples quite as badly as they could. See, it's important to shop!!

Bug Update

2009-08-11T09:57:00.006+05:30

Those teeny tiny ants I told you about last month have, like Elvis, left the building. Hooray! They had to be tackled, so Rod found a packet of powdered cement. He mixed it up in the bottom of a coke bottle using all his cement mixing knowledge (zilch, but there were no instructions), and applied it to the join between the tiles and the window sill in the kitchen. That's where we'd seen the ants enter. And we had no more ants, until the next day. The next day the ants had moved to using gate no.2, otherwise known as the join between two pieces of wood in the window frame. This wood is brown, so the white powdered cement was going to look ugly. We went out to see if we could find a prettier fix. Trust me, if we couldn't we were happy to go with white cement! Luckily we found some clear silicone sealant. We even found one of those guns you place the silicone cylinder in. We didn't find the nozzle you put on the front of the cylinder to direct the sealant where you want it to go, but two out of three ain't bad! So using two high tech tools (his finger and a toothpick) Rod applied the silicone and we had no more ants, until the next day. The next day the ants had moved to using gate no.3, a hole in the window frame near the right hand window. Rod used the sealant and his high tech tools to plug this hole. And we had no more ants, until the next day. Now, try as we might, we couldn't see where gate no. 4 was, but it obviously existed, because we still had ants. So we decided to try a different tack, and went and bought a can of Mortein Gold All Insect Killer. This is pretty impressive stuff, because all we did was place the can on the counter. All the ants ran away! And they must have sealed gate no. 4, because they haven't come back!

The Breezers are back in town

2009-08-09T23:08:00.003+05:30

Back in April something dreadful happened. The slots on the liquor shop shelves where the Bacardi Breezers should be became bare. This was bad, because Breezers are 35 rupees each, about the same as a can of soft drink. A bottle of Indian wine costs fifteen times this, imported wine about twice the Indian wine price. So you can see why Rod and I enjoyed having unfettered access to Breezers. But like Old Mother Hubbard's, the wine shop cupboard was bare, and it wasn't until we opened the newspaper one morning we discovered why. Breezers are manufactured under licence in India, and the existing licences expired at the end of March. Someone forgot to file the papers requesting the renewal of the IMFL (Indian Made Foreign Liquor) , so production had to stop until the new licences were issued. In a country which so values paperwork, especially when carbon paper is involved, failing to have the right papers was a really big mistake. It seems the authorities wouldn't allow the licences to be fast-tracked, as it's taken four months for Breezers to get back to the shops. Maybe they didn't offer a bribe, or the bribe wasn't big enough, or the Commissioner for Excise is a whisky drinker. And it wasn't just the licence for Bacardi Breezers that had been overlooked, many of the foreign beer brands were also withdrawn. You couldn’t buy Fosters, not even in the Australian High Commission. Strewth! What’s the world coming to!

Newspaper musings

2009-08-06T08:29:00.004+05:30

I found a number of articles amusing in yesterday's newspaper, so I thought I'd share them with you. On page 17, one past an entire page of Vladimir Putin's summer holiday snaps (which I did not find amusing, does he think Carly Simon wrote "You're So Vain" for him?)

Bugger, I seem to have misplaced my shirt, again

there was an article entitled "Chinese trust prostitutes more than govt officials". Results of an online survey found sex workers were considered more trustworthy than government officials and scientists. 91% of respondents admitted they'd take government data with a pinch of salt, because they feel they have been fed so many lies in the past. After all, what's the worst lie a prostitute's going to tell you: "Oooh Sir, that's the biggest one I've seen!"

And on the back page, Ross Brawn, head of Formula One team, Brawn GP, could lose his licence after being acccused of driving 30 mph over the speed limit in May. At least the man has enough money to pay for a driver for the duration of the ban. I understand Nelson Piquet Jr's available...

Legal at last!

2009-08-05T17:34:00.006+05:30

Well who would have thunk it! Not I certainly, when Rod came home from the FRRO at 12.30. He'd seen the man at Counter 4, who had looked over all our papers. Counter 4 guy noticed our visas had expired and queried this with the Incharge. Rod doesn't know much Hindi, but he recognised the word "penalise". The Incharge waved him away. She knew it was their incompetance, not ours..

Rod been told to come back at 2pm with an "undertaking letter" from his employer, nothing to do with funerals, but a letter "undertaking" they would pay to have us repatriated to the UK if we were naughty. Thankfully one of the company directors lives in the next suburb, so Rod made it back to the FRRO on time. Unfortunately, power was out at the FRRO. Luckily they have a battery operated emergency light like we do. Ours doesn't give off much light, but at least it stops us bumping into chairs. Theirs is the same size as ours, and their office is about the same size as our whole house. It wasn't giving off enough light for the counter staff to check the badly photocopied forms they are so willing to accept, so Rod just waited. Power was restored at 2.45. The undertaking letter was okayed, and the stamp pad came out to finalise our registration. Then Counter 4 guy gave Rod 3 visa forms and told him to fill them out. Rod did. He asked for our passports. Rod handed them over. He stamped them. We didn't think we'd get this far without a trip up to the Home Affairs Office (the place where they take all day to give you the brown envelope covered in seals that you're not allowed to open). Then he told Rod to go to the Cash payments desk and pay for our visas. Rod calls me, because he doesn't have enough cash on him (16,000 rupees, or about £200) to pay for the visas, and there's no ATM at the FRRO. So I get cash at the market, throw the kids in the car and rush there.

First day of school. Morning, obviously, we're still clean and tidy!

The security guard at the FRRO won't let us in, because I cannot show him my passport. I try to explain my passport is already in the building. I call Rod, and he comes to the guard, who decides the kids and I can enter. We pay at the Cash desk and get sent to the Incharge. At 5pm the Incharge signs our visa stamps and we are legal! Until June next year! We don't have to visit the FRRO again, unless we move house. And trust me, we're not going to move house, because we're not going to the FRRO again!

Today is Rakhi, a lovely Hindu celebration. Brothers pledge to look after their sisters for ever. Sisters tie a decorated string or rakhi on their brother's wrist as a remembrance. They in turn are given a small gift, like chocolates.

Big Brothers - Keir and Raju

Illegal aliens

2009-08-04T11:24:00.002+05:30

I thought I'd give you all an update on the status of our visas. And no, just in case anyone was wondering, we're not legal yet. Rod, the kids and I spent four and a half hours yesterday at the FRRO. Our papers have arrived (finally!) from Gurgaon, and now we are in a position to move forward. Unfortunately the fact that this was Rod's fifth visit (and the kids and my second) since July 23, and the fact that we had been in the office for many, many hours already did not allow us to complete our visa extensions, because we hadn't filled in the necessary forms (possibly because we'd never been given them!). But we left the office with two different forms to fill out (in triplicate) and the Incharge told Rod to return with them in the morning. He kindly said we needn't bring the kids again. This is a good thing, because school starts today and Thalia doesn't want to miss it. Keir said he didn't mind if he missed school, probably because he played on his DS for the whole four and a half hours! So Rod is back at the FRRO. I don't expect we will get our visa extensions today. The forms we were given all relate to our re-registration in Delhi. We aren't overly concerned about not being registered in the right district, but the FRRO obviously thinks it's vitally important. I think this is a step we just have to go through. But I am hopeful we will complete the registration today. Hopefully.

One year down...

2009-08-01T19:46:00.002+05:30

Today is the first anniversary of our departure from Britain. You'd think in all that time we'd have learnt a few things about life in India. For example, it's a good idea to have lots of torches to deal with the frequent power failures. It's even better if you know where they are before the lights go out! We have a battery powered emergency light which comes on when the mains power fails. This gives us enough light to find the important things we need, like torches. But last night I gave the emergency light to Thalia, because the lights went out just as she'd put the conditioner on her hair. Her need was the greatest. But what I should have done was located another torch before I handed over the emergency light, because once it was in her bathroom, I was in the dark!

A good girl...but not for much longer

2009-07-30T21:19:00.002+05:30

This is the last post I get to write to you as a upstanding, law abiding citizen. For tomorrow I am a criminal. So is Thalia and Keir. Rod has managed to stay on the right side of the law - it is just his family who are villains. And our crime? Our visas run out today. From midnight the kids and I are illegally staying in the country. Now you'd think we would have made efforts to stay within the law, after all, we were brought up to do the right thing. Well, we have made efforts, but an old friend (?) is making things difficult for us...

Rod has an employment visa, and the kids and I have X visas. X visas used to be called Dependents visas, and they allow us to stay for the duration of Rod's employment visa. When he went to Britain over the summer he got his new employment visa. He could have got our new X visas sorted in the UK, but for that he would have needed our passports. But as we needed our passports to get into Australia, that wasn't going to work. So I tried to get the visas sorted in Perth. That wasn't going to work either, because the lovely Sikh man at the Indian Visa Service there told me that for the children's visas, in addition to the standard forms and Australian passports, I'd need:

1) a letter from both parents stating that we were happy for the visa to be issued. This letter had to be witnessed by a Doctor, Police Officer or Justice of the Peace.

2) Full Birth Certificates for both kids, and our Marriage Certificate (if applicable)

3) Both Rod and I had to sign the Visa Application forms, preferably in front of the lovely Sikh man at the Indian Visa Service.

This I explained to him was hard, because:

1) Rod was in Britain, not Australia, and was not really expecting to be in Australia before June 2010, quite some time after we needed our visas.

2) The kids didn't have Australian passports, they had British ones, because they were British citizens, born in Britain, like their father, and

3) Rather than trying to take the children away from their dad, I was trying to get them back to him!

The lovely Sikh man looked at our passports and declared our current visas were fine. I explained we were due to land on the 16th of July, and the visas expired on the 30th. Would we have difficulty in getting in? No he said, they will just point out you do not have much time left and will need to sort your visas promptly. Dhanyavad (thankyou) we said , and left.

The Immigration Officer at Passport Control at Indira Gandhi International Airport did not point out we had only a little time left on our visas. If he had not smiled at the changes in Keir's appearance in his passport (in the passport he's 4, with a number 3 cut. Now he's 8, with hair to his shoulderblades) I would almost have believed he didn't look at them at all.

But we heeded the lovely Sikh man's advice, and last Wednesday, as soon as the jetlag had cleared, headed to the Foreigners Registration Office in Delhi. We got there early, because we thought there might be a queue. Unfortunately for us, the Foreigners Registration Office in Delhi opens at 9.30, half an hour earlier than it's counterpart in the Mini Secretariat in Haryana, where we had been registered before. We joined the queue for the reception desk, two rooms away. I won't say it took a long time for the queue to move, but Rod left an important paper at home, went back for it and returned to us just as we moved into the room that housed the reception desk. God bless Nintendo DS and Ipod! When we eventually reached the receptionist we discovered we could not have our visas extended, because our RP (Residence Permit papers) were still at the Mini Secretariat in Haryana, even though we had attended the Foreigners Registration Office in Delhi requesting their transfer in May. We were told to wait. Three and a bit hours after we had arrived, the Incharge told us we would need to go to Haryana to ask for the papers. We pointed out our visas did not have much time left on them, but the Incharge said she was not able to process them until our Residence Permits arrived at her office.

So Thursday morning Rod drove to the Mini Secretariat, and gave our old friend Mini Secretariat guy the letter from the Incharge requesting our RP papers. Mini Secretariat guy says the papers will be sent tomorrow, and gives Rod his phone number so he can call to check. On Friday Rod calls. He's told the papers will be in Delhi on Monday. On Tuesday he goes to see the Incharge in Delhi - the papers are not there. On Wednesday he goes to see the Incharge in Delhi - the papers are not there. The Incharge looks a little embarrassed, she says come back on Monday, bring the whole family. Rod points out our visas only have one day left on them. She gives a look Rod hopes means, "don't worry, we'll sort it". So guess what we're doing on Monday?

As safe as a dangerous sport can be

2009-07-27T17:02:00.002+05:30

It was a Formula One weekend, so I spent most of it glued to the telly. I found it was hard while I was away from India to keep up with all that was going on in my favourite sport. Australia only seems interested in sports that use balls - Aussie Rules, cricket, rugby. Balls do not feature in Formula One. Well, not that kind!

It was a unusual race weekend, what with Felipe Massa's freak accident during qualifying on Saturday. For those who may not share my enthusiasm for the sport, those who spent the past weekend in an alcoholic stupor, and those who just don't get out much, the car driven by Rubens Barrichello suffered a rear suspension failure. A spring came off and bounced along the track. Four seconds later, the spring struck Massa in the head. His Ferrari then ploughed into the tyre barrier. Pictures of Massa's helmet show the force of the impact. Four years ago the helmets were upgraded to carbon-fibre, twice as stong as the previous material. This carbon-fibre is being touted as the reason Felipe was able to survive the crash. The design of the car, and the tyre barrier, also played their part.

And I've just seen footage on the BBC news of another reminder that Motorsport, in spite of all the safety precautions, still has its dangers. Driver Tony Kanaan was taking part in the Edmonton IndyCar race on the weekend. Things were going swimmingly, until his first pit stop when the ethanol fuel hose filling his car appeared to not shut off properly, dousing him and his car in fuel. Seconds later, the car was on fire. He drove a short distance down the pit lane to prevent the fire spreading to his pit garage. Other teams' pit crews doused the flames and helped Tony out of the car. He suffered minor burns to his thumbs and face. In an interview after the event he was asked "what if it had been worse?". His reply: "How much worse could it be? I was on fire for 45 seconds. I'd like to thank the people who make Nomex (the fire-retardent fabric his driving suit is constructed from)". I'll second that!

Come in...make yourself at home

2009-07-25T16:08:00.006+05:30

Today there was a news story on BBC World News. Scientists have discovered a new species of lizard in the lush Western Ghats mountain range in the Indian state of Maharashtra. They're not alone. I've discovered a new lizard species living in my fusebox, just outside my front door. I just haven't got around to letting the BBC know yet. The lizards are geckoes really, a couple of inches long and almost translucent. I don't mind them living in my fusebox. I only have to go to the fusebox when we need to reset one of the fuses, which, because of the reliability of the power supply and the quality of the electrical work, only happens a couple of times a day! So we have a fusebox routine, which goes:

1..Open fusebox with one hand.

2..Keep other hand close to your body while geckoes run for cover.

3..Visually identify flipped fuse.

4..Quickly reset fuse and close fusebox.

The geckoes don't bother me there. They can have a party in my fusebox for all I care, as long as the Bhangra's not too loud, they put their empties in a neat pile, and scatter when I perform fusebox routine stage 4. However, some of the geckoes have started to get a bit familiar, and have begun coming into the house. I haven't invited them...they just waltz in under our ill-fitting (but by Indian standards, probably top quality) front door. While I wish they wouldn't I can't get rid of them. I tried. They move much faster than I do. However, they eat bugs, so at least they have their uses.

It's not just the geckoes that seem to have found my home much more inviting than I had intended it to be. We also have teeny tiny brown ants who like congregating on my kitchen worksurface. In the past it's been really hard to see them, because the worksurface is dark. But Rod washed the kettle the other day and they have been attracted to its now gleaming whiteness. They may be small, but I can see them very clearly now. I can even see them when they fall in to the water and boil to death. While I don't want them inside my house, I don't need them to suffer that much. I wonder if I can convince the geckoes to eat the ants...

And if you're wondering, why, when we have a maid, did Rod wash the kettle? It's like this, Santoss is not the best maid in the world, and sometimes she struggles to see the dirt we can so clearly see. Or maybe she does see the dirt, but doesn't think she needs to do anything about it?

I know how lunchtime works...India yet to catch on

2009-07-22T23:17:00.004+05:30

I'll start with some good news - the third tap in the kitchen now dispenses water, just like it should. There was some problem with stop cocks, pipes, and the water tanks on the roof of the building which took a couple of Indian plumbers two full days of very loud conversation and banging on pipes outside Thalia's bedroom window to fix. But fixed it seems to be...we are happy!

Onto the slightly more surprising news - restaurants in India seem to be caught out by a practice, known in Australia and Great Britain, and probably in America too, as "lunchtime". For the uninitiated, at lunchtime people gather in food vending places, and try to purchase food to eat. I've done it, and it's quite good :-) . It works best when the restaurant has food ready at the appropriate time. Lunchtime can be a little flexible, but it's traditionally held sometime between 12 noon and 2pm. It seems no-one has told India this is how it works...

Today, McDonalds in Green Park had no fries ready to purchase at 1pm. Did not stop the server asking "did we want fries with that?" And this is not an isolated case. On Monday we went to Great India Place in Noida to buy longer shower curtains for the kids' bathrooms, because the current ones are about 30cm too short, and trust me, an awful lot of water can travel an awful long way in that 12 inches, especially when there's an eight year old boy involved. But I digress... Noida is fair drive away so we were going to have to eat lunch out. We opted for Kentucky Fried Chicken, because you know what you're getting - Colonel Sanders secret blend of 11 herbs and spices, same the world over, on chicken pieces. The bones of a chicken carcass are also the same the world over. This makes it a reliable meal. They also offer a seasoning mix designed for the Indian palate, "Hot and Spicy", but we're not Indian, what worked in Kentucky in 1929 is what we go to KFC for. Well, it's lunchtime, it's KFC, and there's no Original recipe chicken available. Our order will take five minutes (and we know how long five minutes is in India. Longer than on the Northern Line.). So how does it happen, that Kentucky Fried Chicken has no Kentucky Fried Chicken at lunchtime? It's not asking for much, is it, to want chicken that's finger licking good at 1.15? It's not like I asked for a Big Mac...

And as a sidenote, the longest shower curtains that were available were only 20 cms longer. We'd hoped that would be enough, but Keir can still audition for "Singing in the Rain" after his shower. I so do not relish the idea of being a stage school mother. We considered (for a very short while) lowering the pole, but decided it would be easier to cut up the old curtain and add a bit to lengthen the shower curtains. Not prettier mind, just easier.

Lana returns...

2009-07-20T16:46:00.003+05:30

Well, we're back from seeing the wonderful wizard of Oz and I'm pleased to report India hasn’t changed while we were away*. It’s still dodgy. The power’s been on the blink today. On and off all day, which is unusual, because we normally only have one outage a day. And we've got one tap in our kitchen with an intermittent water supply. There are three taps in our kitchen. If we can’t get water out of one of them but the others still have water, you’d think it was no big deal. But the only tap that has had interrupted water since we got home is the only tap that is the right shape to feed our washing machine. Unsurprisingly, I’ve wanted to do washing since coming back from holiday. Unsurprising, because I need to wash most days normally. My machine is a front loader, so once there’s some water in it, the door locks so I’m really rather committed to the wash. When I say committed, I don't mean like as in a mental asylum, well, not yet anyway...

Thursday the machine got halfway through the cycle before the water turned off, and the clothes sat for five hours before I got bored waiting for the water to come back on, turned the machine to a spin cycle and hung them out. Friday I got up at 8.30 and checked we had water coming out of that tap before loading the machine. In the time it took to get the clothes in, the water turned off and it took until 6pm before it came back and I started the washing. Just to confuse me, on Saturday the water ran perfectly, so I thought everything had gone back to normal. I should have done LOTS of washing on Saturday, because Sunday morning I checked we had water, filled the machine, started it and it got a whole two minutes into the cycle before the water ran out. At 8pm I gave up and opened the machine door, to air my slightly soggy, not clean clothes. Got up early this morning, checked the water was on and got 30 minutes into the 38 minute cycle before my water window disappeared. Decided these clothes were clean enough, so I turned to a spin cycle and hung them out. Who knows whether we'll have water tomorrow...I know I could find something to wash!

* because if it had changed and gone all predictable on me I'd have nothing to write about!

update

2009-06-09T13:00:00.005+05:30

Hi not from India but the Perth Hills. I know I'm not in India because it's not blistering hot, and the water and power supplies have been constant

:-) . Upon opening the newspaper at sparrows fart last Tuesday morning we discovered why we had no water. A major pipe had burst in Vasant Kunj, and most of South Delhi had been without water for two days. We must have more water storage tanks on the roof than we thought, or all the rest of the building must have been away on holiday for our water to have lasted as long as it did. Anyway, that was restored midway through last Tuesday and Rod was free to wash again. Phew...

The landlord turned up later that day with an electrician to sort out the electricity supply. Rod had used his multimeter to determine one of the feeds coming into the fuse box was dead. To do the same thing, the electrician used a lightbulb with two (bare) wires attached. We had no lightbulb moment - there was no flicker at all, so the electrician, the landlord and Rod trooped down to the building's fuse box around the back. One of the fuses feeding our floor had died. This wasn't one of those lovely, easy to fix, flick the switch back into the up position fuses. This was one of those old fashioned, wire ones. Being a typical Indian tradesman, the electrician had turned up with no tools. All he had was his lightbulb with two wires, so he had to use Rod's screwdriver and one of his wires to fix the fuse. But light, and AC were restored to the entire house, and Rod was able to reduce the "health and safety" nightmare D59 had become.

p.s. Passing through Indira Gandhi Airport was actually a breeze. The information boards didn't want to tell us the right information, feeling we'd like to check in at blocks G-H. We could have, possibly, but the check in staff at block D had our booking. They also weren't busy, probably because everyone was wandering down to the wrong set of desks!

AWOL

2009-06-01T22:19:00.004+05:30

Lana in India will be a little quiet for a while. For at sparrows fart tomorrow (an incredibly specific time India is generally incapable of acknowledging), Thalia, Keir and I will fly to Singapore to begin our six week summer holiday, in Perth. The fact that it is wintertime in Perth is, as far as I'm concerned, an absolute bonus. For tonight I sit in my supposedly posh New Delhi suburb, with no water, and only half a house of electricity. The back half of the house has power, the front has none. And it's not a circuit that's tripped - that's the way it's going into the fuse box. Answers on the back of a postcard...which may or may not get stolen by the mail service. Rod has miraculously gerry-rigged a collection of extension cords and power boards, with UK and Indian plugs and a fair bit of insulating tape, from the back power point of the dining room, where there is electricity, and artistically draped them across the hallway into the front room, so I can type on this computer, we can recharge the enormous battery that powers the TV, DVD player, Satellite TV box, modem (life's essentials, obviously) and have a floor light. Unfortunately we can't gerry-rig power to the AC or the ceiling fans, so this post isn't going to be long... our bedroom, in the back of the house has electricity, AC and a TV/Satellite box on a small battery. Guess where I'm going? At least until the entire suburb loses power...

Time will tell tomorrow if Indira Gandhi Airport is capable of being ready for us at sparrows fart, even if that's the time printed on our e-ticket. Well, not literally...

I saw a sign...and then another one...

2009-05-27T15:35:00.003+05:30

A lovely, new, modern supermarket has just opened near us in Saket. It stocks a range of gourmet imported goods and basic foodstuffs, so your bills aren't so high you need resuscitation afterward. But what really sets Le Marche apart from other shops near us is the refrigeration units are actually cold on the inside. Most of the ones in the shops near us no longer actually refrigerate. When you open the glass door to get your butter, for example, it's already at room temperature. Which might not be exactly what you wanted, especially when it isn't butter you were hoping to buy but frozen peas . Rod has a special name for these kind of refrigeration units. He calls them cupboards.

As I was being driven to the supermarket today I passed a couple of signs worth mentioning. The first was on the hoarding alongside the Metro (train) extension. It read: "A care full man is the best safety device". Me, I'm not sure a man with all the worries of the world on his shoulders is really the safest bloke on the building site, but that wasn't the sign that really tickled me. Across the back window of a car, where Indians often add their name, instead of Ram or Adi or Amit and Arushi (Think Kev and Tanya, or Wayne and Raeleen), someone had decided to put a little ditty. It read: "After the whiskey, Rohit is risky". I wonder if Rohit finds he gets stopped by the police more often these days? Maybe he should try adding a red flashing arrow to draw a little more attention to his bad habits...

Adjectively Speaking

2009-05-25T17:02:00.002+05:30

Rod and I were watching a TV channel we don't often view last night, because it was showing the final of the Indian Premier League. The IPL is 20 overs a side, so even I, a decidedly non-cricket fan, find it fast, fun and really rather engaging. At the fall of wicket and at the end of every over, there's a commercial break. As the match reached its climax, and the wickets tumbled (Go Deccan Chargers! Adam Gilchrist - what a star!), we saw lots of commercials. But as we were viewing a channel we don't always see, at least the ads were different from some of those we see so often. One, in particular, grabbed our attention:

Lovely Professional University, Punjab. Transforming Education, Transforming India.

It took us a moment to catch on. They're not adjectives. They're nouns. And really, wouldn't you rather tell people you went to Scunthorpe Polytechnic, than Lovely Professional University?

Fixed!

2009-05-21T21:15:00.003+05:30

My DSM is fixed! A little man, with limited English, came to my house yesterday and fixed my sewing machine. His English wasn't limited in the same way most Indians I meet have limited English. He understood the phrase "hook timing". Or at least he nodded sagely as he stuck his finger inside my sewing hook and rotated way too much of it. In fact the problem was the retaining finger had become loose, and wasn't "retaining" anything at all. It turns out it's almost as easy to adjust the retaining finger on a DSM as it is on a longarm, but only if you know how to take the entire base off your sewing machine first. I didn't know how to do this, and, having watched him, I'd lay money on he didn't either. But now I do. He overcharged me enormously by local standards, but I can't imagine I'd have got much servicing done for the equivalent of nine quid back in England. Especially as I didn't have to leave home...

Smoke

2009-05-19T21:36:00.002+05:30

We're using the new i Google as a home page on our computer, where we can have lots of little useful applications at a glance before we go off to find the webpage of our desires- news headlines; a four day weather forecast in London, Perth and Delhi; the current time in Delhi, London and Ohio (don't ask me why Ohio, Rod set this up, I don't think we know anyone in Ohio...); a currency converter - lots of useful things.

Well the four day forecast for Delhi is really bothering me today. It's not just that it says the maximum will be 43, and the minimum will be 33 (109 and 91 in farenheit, respectively). That's wrong, obviously. 33 as a minimum temperature is just wrong. What's really, really bothering me is that the current weather conditions are described as smoke. I didn't know smoke was a weather condition. I thought it was a question, as in Smoke? - no thank you, it's a filthy habit or a local news item: building went up in smoke, or just a really good way to serve salmon.

How Embarrassing!

2009-05-17T23:06:00.002+05:30

This afternoon, I set up my DSM (domestic sewing machine) to do some piecing. But before I could get onto that, I had a little mending job to do. Thalia is getting taller and has outgrown some trackie bottoms. I offered to turn them into shorts for her. Turning up the second hem, I threw out my hook timing! I didn't hit a pin, it wasn't a chunky seam intersection, it was just two layers of cotton knit! But thrown out it certainly is. It was metal on metal, and the part of the hook race that is supposed to be stationary is moving really far too freely for my liking. This is why quilters don't like mending!!!

What is so embarrassing about the whole affair is that I don't know how to fix it. If it was my 24 inch, industrial sewing head on my 10 foot frame I would have had it up and working again within 10 minutes. This is a much smaller machine, which only sits on my dining table, and while I know how to identify the problem, and how the mechanic (when I find one) will fix it, what he will actually do to make it work again is just beyond me!

If you want to know if your bum looks big in this...

2009-05-15T20:36:00.004+05:30

don't ask Keir. He'll tell you the truth, without even a little bit of tact to protect your feelings. He attended a school friend, Daniel's, birthday party last weekend. He came home, bouncing about and covered in paint (it was a swimming/pottery and T-shirt painting party). I asked him did he have fun? His answer:

Oh yeah -there was pizza. Did I have any pizza, Mum? Of course I did. We all did, except Arjun. He doesn't want to get fat. Vijay had five pieces, he's fat already.

As an adult you cringe, but he's not wrong...

*some of the names have been changed. Keir might not have any tact, but I have a little...

We ate red meat!

2009-05-14T20:32:00.002+05:30

Well, pork. But it was real pork fillet, and my lord it was yummy! One really good side effect of moving to Hauz Khas is that we're only a 10 minute drive from Jor Bagh market. Even in this heat I reckon it's safe to eat meat that's only been out of refrigeration for 10 minutes or so. The pork fillet was surprisingly inexpensive (less than two quid for 400 grams), considering the general pricing at Jor Bagh's exclusive Steakhouse. The Steakhouse, of course, doesn't sell what you or I would call steaks. They'd be beef, and this is a Hindu establishment. That's why it sells pork. I am told it is possible to get beef in Delhi, but you have to go early in the morning to the Muslim area of Old Delhi and have a good grasp of Hindi. This is hard for me not because I'm not prepared to get up early. It's hard because only Raju has a good grasp of Hindi , and I'm not sure what would offend him more, being made to buy beef, or being made to go to Old Delhi!

And for those who were wondering, I cooked the pork fillet in a sauce of apples, mustard and kwark (local cream cheese). Yes, Julie, I made a substitution (when do I ever not?) ...but I wouldn't have used double cream even if I was at home!

Election Time

2009-05-13T15:33:00.004+05:30

Today's the final day of voting in the Indian General Election. Hooray! I know India's a big country, with an even bigger population, but voting began over a month ago, and I'm getting mighty bored by it all. The newspapers are full of page after page of who is cosying up to who and who's likely to garner a few extra votes by giving out free alcohol. So not exactly subtle electioneering. But it has led to some fun headlines, like "Left is Now Right for a Desperate PM". I'm a bit confused, because only yesterday "Left was the Centre Ground".

India has some unusual electoral laws. You can't stand for election if you're a convicted criminal, as Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt found out. He's spent some time behind bars for gun running. His fault, he committed this crime so long ago it his case had reached the courts, and he'd been found guilty and served time. But there's away around this - it's not unusual for it to take 7 years or more for a case to reach trial. Commit your crimes and then stand for parliament while you're waiting. It's what they do in Bihar, over a third of the politicians in this state are awaiting trial - corruption, extortion, murder. Just the usual stuff.

There's barely any space left in the papers for the regular features, like what Pakistan is lying about now (because according to the Indian papers, and Raju, there's always something), and the exciting lives of Bollywood stars - who's been seen with who, and who actually ate food at a function. Not all the actresses do. It's really "in" to faint on movie sets. Obviously there's still cricket on the back pages...it's the Indian Premier League (albeit in South Africa, because of fears there would not be enough police available to keep the peace during both the elections and the cricket.) Maybe if the politicians gave out less alcohol it would make policing a little easier...

I Hasn't Bin Drinkin, Hofficer...

2009-05-12T21:14:00.002+05:30

We all like it when our friends do well, but when is it not a good idea to celebrate a colleague's promotion? Maybe when he's a police officer, and you're the on-duty Station House Officer. In this morning's newspaper I read the story of Rajesh Kumar Nathani. Now Mr Nathani has risen to a position of authority in the police in North West Delhi. Good for him, and good that he is happy to welcome others into a similar level of authority. Not so good that he was on duty at the time, and was found drunk during a vigilance raid on his police station on Sunday night. When I say found drunk, the vigilance raiders didn't catch him and his fellow officers drinking. The booze had run out by then. But when asked to explain the reek of alcohol emanating from his body, Station House Officer Nathani was unable to. He also refused a medical examination to determine if he had been imbibing. He jumped in his car to drive away, and drove straight into the police station wall. Reader, I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions...

Daas Boat

2009-05-07T16:33:00.003+05:30

Keir's reading a book at the moment which is really holding his interest. It's "Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets". The plot in brief - a couple of schoolboys have accidentally created an army of evil, vicious, talking toilets which are intent on taking over the world. Will Captain Underpants save the day? Would it be giving the game away to say there's another three books in the series... Anyway, you're all wondering why I'm telling you this (except anyone who's been a parent of an eight year old boy obviously - they know how compelling toilet jokes are to this group), well the other evening Keir's bathroom was taken over by something as unexpected and frightening as a talking toilet.

It all started so innocently, like these things do. Keir had just had a shower, and I'd gone in to turn off the shower taps, which are pretty stiff. I left Keir in the bathroom drying himself. All was well. Then Keir yelped, and burst out of the bathroom. As the bathroom door opened, I was covered from waist to knees in a moving plume of really quite warm water. Then there was a loud bang, the bathroom went dark, and the water spurted at me again. So I grabbed Keir, put him behind me, closed the bathroom door and called for Rod. Seemed like the best thing to do at the time.

Rod opened the bathroom door, got covered from waist to knees in really quite warm water, and shut the door. He called for a torch. Because we have so many power cuts we have lots of torches, and they've even got live batteries in them. So armed with a torch he opened the door and we tried to find where the water was coming from, while staying out of range of the plume. It wasn't the shower, nor the basin. Eventually we spotted the culprit. One of the pipes into the hot water cylinder had come out of its socket on the wall near the ceiling. Now that we knew where the water was coming from, Rod had to enter the bathroom to try and stop it. Rod said later: "I felt like an actor in one of those disaster movies, when the submarine has been torpedoed and there's water pouring in to the vessel, and the hero has to go in to stop the leak so everyone is saved and I get the girl". Anyway, our hero climbed onto the toilet seat and isolated the water supply to the hot water cylinder and the water stopped gushing. Not quite as glamorous as they do it in the movies, but it worked. Then we had to try to clean up the bathroom. Thankfully Indian bathrooms are designed to get quite wet. Because no Indian maid, reknowned for being very generous with water while cleaning, has ever been quite this generous in a bathroom before. A day later, once the room was dry we had to go in and change all the lightbulbs. They had shattered in the incident. Still waiting for the plumber to come and reconnect the hot water cylinder. Hopefully he'll do a decent job - this is one movie that can do without a sequel.

And then it rained

2009-05-05T18:21:00.001+05:30

And weren't we grateful! After days and days of extreme heat the long awaited rain came. The kids had to go outside to celebrate. But we did it quickly, before the hail started :-) They don't call us Fairweathers for nothing...

It's really been very difficult getting much done in the last week. 44.3 degrees (that's 112) is really rather draining. Thalia keeps telling me the heat is ridiculous, and she's not wrong...

Mr Morgan knew Best

2009-04-29T20:59:00.002+05:30

A long time ago, back in the early 1980's, I had a maths teacher called Mr Morgan. He used to stand in front of the whole class and tell us to pay attention, because one day we'd need to know what he was going to teach us. I didn't know at the time how clever Mr Morgan was. How he knew that one day I would end up living in India where unscrupulous shop keepers would try to add extra charges to my bills, at a time when I didn't even know I'd go off to live in Britain for 17 years first, I'll never know...

One of the things I really like about India is MRP. MRP is Maximum Retail Price, and it's printed on every item manufactured in India. It's generally printed very small, so you have to go off and look for it in decent light, but it's always there. And as a legal requirement, items imported into India have a label stuck on them, showing the MRP. MRP is good, because everyone who wants to buy a product knows exactly what it costs. It stops the "white tax", as my friend Mary calls it, being added to your shopping just because you're not Indian. The "white tax" is much more prevalent in Hauz Khas than it was in Gurgaon. I'm not sure why, maybe it's because we're so much more foreign in Hauz Khas than we were in Gurgaon, where there is a large expatriate community. Trust me, the Fairweather family is actually no more foreign than we've ever been!

There's an "English Wine and Beer" shop in the local market, which by the way stocks no English wine or beer. It's full of spirits I've never seen before, some beers I've never heard of, and a small range of Indian wines, including a rather drinkable Indian Rose. This rose has a MRP of 420 rupees a bottle, which makes it one of the cheapest wines we've found here that doesn't make you regret drinking it later. Well, not the first bottle... Anyway, we've been in three or four times now to buy a bottle or two. I have no idea what he charged us per bottle the first time, but it wasn't the same as he charged us the second. Now when I'm in the shop handing my money over I'm sober, I notice things like that. So I had a good look at the bottle when I came home, and found the MRP. Never again was the wine shop guy going to get his "white tax" from me. The third time I went shopping I took Raju with me, so he could carry all my purchases. I put two bottles of Rose on the counter. Wine shop guy got out his calculator and did his sum. 940 rupees. I turned to Raju and said, very loudly, he's wrong Raju, it's 840 rupees. See, the price is here on the bottle! 420 add 420 is 840! Amazingly, the wine shop guy agreed he'd done his sum wrong, even while using a calculator, and accepted 840 rupees. Thank you, Mr Morgan. You're right, mental maths is important!

And it's not just wine shop guy. Thalia and I were shopping at a stall the other day and she wanted to buy some hair slides. I was after a loaf of bread. One stall had them both. The hair slides were 10 rupees a pair, she wanted three pairs: black, blue and purple (or kala, neela and jamuni if you like the Hindi). My bread had an MRP of 12 rupees, but the man in the stall thought I should be paying 22 rupees. He declared I owed 52 rupees. I turned the loaf around to show the man the MRP, proclaiming loudly that the bread cost 12 rupees, and 12 plus 10 plus 10 plus 10 did not add up to 52, but 42. Mr Morgan would have been so proud...

Hold the Front Page!

2009-04-26T23:31:00.003+05:30

On Friday, something truly momentous happened in the Fairweather family household. Something so strange, so unheard of, that Rod and I were caught completely off guard. We've asked around, and no one we know has ever heard of it happening in India before either. Workmen turned up early. I know, I should have asked you all to sit down first. Sorry about that.

You see, when we rented this flat there was no airconditioner in the main living room. That wasn't a problem, we arranged to buy one second hand off an online group for expatriates living in Gurgaon. Which was great, until the lady heading back to Austria decided to sell it to her landlord instead three weeks later. Bitch. So we needed to buy a second hand airconditioner. Needless to say, when it's pushing 40 degrees outside, there's not too many good second hand AC's floating around. So we call AC rental places and get the prices of different AC's. We decide, even though it's the most expensive, we want a split AC, because it will be quieter, and a 2 ton one, because the room is quite big, and we don't want to be hot anymore. Ever. The AC guy says he can install it at 3pm on Thursday. It's Wednesday, so that's not too bad. Our hopes are raised at 2.20pm on Thursday, when he calls to say he'll be at our place between 3 and 3.30. And he does turn up at that time, but he does not bring a 2 ton split AC with him. He has a 2 ton window AC. It'll be cheaper, but it'll be loud. I imagine my longarm stitching away, with the AC on, while someone tries to watch the telly. The TV volume is going to have to be so high eardrums will burst. There might even be blood. As all longarmers know, it's poor form to bleed on a customer's quilt, so we reluctantly send him away and tell him to bring a split AC instead. This takes great willpower, because it's 40 degrees outside. He says he will return at 10.30-11 the following day. Rod and I know what that means (11.30 if you're lucky, and never on a Sunday).

So when I woke up Friday morning at 9.15 (our bedroom in the new house is at the back and doesn't get any direct sunlight. It's impossible to tell what the time is when the curtains are closed. There's barely a discernable difference between 1am and 9am!) I put a load of washing on and sat down to read yesterday's paper over breakfast in my nightie. The paper guy still hasn't grasped the concept of morning delivery. And I have no idea who is delivering the paper. I have to wait until he comes for money to explain morning to him. Rod got up about 20 minutes later, and peered out Thalia's window to see if today's paper had arrived yet. Imagine his surprise when he saw two men unloading a 2 ton split AC out the front of our place. It wasn't even 9.45 yet. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief - this isn't how it works. We hurriedly got dressed so we could pretend we hadn't been caught out. Who knows, these AC guys could have been trying to catch the goras (white people) out...and we weren't going to give them the satisfaction of finding out they had!

Hot Hot Hot

2009-04-22T21:38:00.002+05:30

Oh My God, it's freaking hot in this country! You know it's all getting to you when you describe a 40C (104F) day as being "better than yesterday". It's not supposed to be this hot yet, it's not May. I should be floating around in 36C (97F) temperatures, glowing like ladies do. Instead I'm slumped in a heat induced stupor, sweating like a horse! How did I let myself be talked into moving to such a hot place? Diamonds weren't even mentioned as tools of bribery...

But on a positive note, the bath has moved from its original position (upright, next to the front door) into our bathroom. Considering the neighbours like to ring our doorbell in the evenings to ask us if we've settled in all right, this is a much more preferable place to bathe. And I've even learned how to take the plug out at the end of my bath and not flood the whole bathroom floor. When Rod asked the installer if the bath waste went straight down into the existing shower waste outlet and the man said "Yes", what he should have said was "Yes, and also under the bath panel into the existing shower tray, and eventually out the top end of the bath, along the wall, and then across the floor all over your bath mat, if you're lucky". I'm sure he would have said that if only his English was better. Thankfully I was only lucky once.

Good News Day

2009-04-17T22:27:00.002+05:30

Good News 1: We met our new maid today. Her name is Santoss (I'd say forgive me, the spelling's probably wrong, but she doesn't speak any English so she isn't going to be able to read it) and she starts tomorrow at 11. She works part time for the lady upstairs, Mrs Mehra, so she should be reliable. She looked not a day over 23 but she must be, as she has three children, aged 9, 10 and 12. I'd heard they marry young in the villages...

Good News 2: My bath arrived today. It was supposed to be here two days ago, so I was extremely pleased to see it delivered. A little less pleased when I found out I had to wait for someone to come and assemble it tomorrow afternoon. Imagine getting an IKEA delivery where there weren't any instructions, not even picture ones with no words. That is my bath with frame, with a small collection of assorted bolts and stuff. We don't know if we have all the right bits, let alone where they go. We've left it standing outside the kitchen, which is ultimately not where I want my bath to be.

But the bath is here, and the maid starts tomorrow, and the RO machine works and we have unlimited drinking water. Life's good!

Paper, Sir?

2009-04-15T13:51:00.002+05:30

While we were moving all our boxes in to Hauz Khas last Friday evening, a man (I'm assuming he was the local newsagent) came up and asked us if we would like papers delivered. Brilliant move, I thought, because it saved me going down to the high street and finding the newsagent who delivered papers. But...(you all knew there would be a but, didn't you :-)), I assumed the papers would be delivered so I could read them at breakfast time. I understand many Indians have a much slower start to the day than Brits, who in turn tend to have a slower start to the day than Americans. Most shops here don't open before 11am, and many don't close until 9 at night. Maybe Indians like reading their papers later in the day, but if I don't read it with my breakfast cup of tea, I might not get to it at all. I know it's only been five days, but so far the paper hasn't turned up before 10.30am. It's just too late. Yesterday the paper did turn up at 6.30, but that was 6.30 in the evening...

H2O

2009-04-14T20:58:00.002+05:30

Moving house has pointed out to me one thing all of us in the developed world take for granted. Safe drinking water. When you can just turn on a tap and drink what comes out without it giving you, at best, an upset stomach and at worst, cholera, you don't really think about how much water you use. Not just for drinking, but for washing fruit and vegetables, and cooking too. At the old flat we installed a reverse osmosis (RO) machine, which double filtered the water (activated carbon and UV light). This is brilliant, but we're still waiting for the filter guy to turn up to install it here. We were sure we had an appointment for 3pm this afternoon, but no one turned up. Rod phoned to make sure someone would come today, and was told we could have an appointment tomorrow for 12 in the morning (personally I think 12 is the afternoon. Frankly, the filter guy is so unlikely to turn up at 12, it will be the afternoon, even for Indians...) Anyway, while we are waiting for the RO machine to be connected, we are using bottled water. No sooner have we cleared the flat of the cardboard box mountain, of the protective newspaper mountain, now we are floundering in the empty 1 litre plastic bottle mountain. Like a volcanic island peeping out of the ocean, it is growing day by day. It feels wrong to throw them out, because I know the maids sell them to make a little extra money. But we haven't got a maid in Hauz Khas yet, so I have no one to give the bottles to. I really want to rectify both these problems (too many bottles, having to do all the housework myself) really soon! Both are bad!!

Moving On Up

2009-04-13T22:07:00.005+05:30

For a while I was stuck underneath the cardboard mountain of boxes that Caravan Packers and Movers transformed A151, our Gurgaon apartment, into. Then in our new Hauz Khas apartment I was buried underneath every newspaper I'd read in the past month. Caravan Packers and Movers seem to be of the belief that if wrapping a glass in a sheet of newspaper will keep it safe, wrapping it in six sheets will keep it really safe. Unwrapping all those really safe glasses and half used bottles of condiments made my hands ache for two days! This afternoon the last big puzzle piece fell into place, when Airtel came and gave us a landline and broadband internet connection. So now I can blog again, and email again, and receive spam again... Joy!

For a while things were a little touch and go with the new flat, we weren't sure if we would be able to move in as planned. We had a “final, pre-moving check” last Sunday evening, five days before we took possession, and found there was still a lot of work to do. And before you think we’re fussy bastards, all we asked for was the electrical sockets to be screwed into the walls, for curtain poles to be fixed above the windows, the tatty furniture inside the apartment to be removed and for the house to have an industrial clean. We opened one of the bedroom cupboards and found a stockpile of plastic department store bags, an entire double shelf, neatly folded and stacked. Maybe the previous occupant had OCD - not one with a cleanliness angle - I’ve seen the ceiling fans. The landlord’s son (obviously a layabout in his 20’s whose Dad is trying to make work for his keep) said the reason the place wasn’t ready was that the painter hadn’t turned up today. I didn’t know painters did electrical work, fixed curtain poles and chucked stuff on the Indian version of a skip? And what was the painter doing on the previous 10 days? We understood, because layabout son told us so, that the cleaner couldn’t come until the painter had been. Like, obviously…

On Thursday morning, while I supervised eight hard working but unfortunately unattractive men turn A151 from a home to a giant pile of boxes, Rod went to view the new flat with the landlord. Unfortunately for the landlord, not much progress had been made since Sunday, and Rod admits he may have yelled a bit. Quite a bit. The painter had been and there was one youth cleaning the place with a cloth but no cleaning products - less industrial clean, more rearranging the dirt. The plastic bag collection and old sofas were still in place. The landlord told Rod not to worry, the flat would be ready by eight that evening. Rod told the landlord like Arnie, he'd be back...

On his return back to Hauz Khas after dinner, Rod the sceptic took the full cleaning kit: a large bucket, a scrubbing brush, cream cleanser, disinfectant. He's not sure what they fed the youth doing the cleaning, because he'd actually cleaned the whole place. Not well, of course, but it was a start. Rod showed him how to use cream cleanser to clean all the dusty grease from the light switch plates, and how to clean the inside of cupboards. The kid looked surprised. A white man is a man of status, and men of status don't clean, they get their minions to do it for them. Rod was happy for the landlord's minion to do it, but only if it was done to Rod's standards! Between them the place was clean enough to move into the following day. Which was a good thing, because we didn't have anything to sit on at A151 that wasn't covered in bubble wrap or cardboard!

Simple somethings...are sometimes hard

2009-04-09T15:27:00.002+05:30

We're moving into a new apartment tomorrow, in New Delhi proper. So the last few days we've spent sorting and packing up our stuff. On Tuesday, Rod and I dismantled my quilting frame. It's not a job we enjoy doing, but we've built and rebuilt frames so many times over the last six and a half years we're getting quite good at it. What is a little more difficult here in India, is that a lot of useful things we would normally have lying around our home back in England we haven't necessarily accumulated yet, for one reason or another, in India. Unfortunately as a consequence of dismantling my table we discovered one of those missing useful things...

Rod wanted to bundle together the hydraulic legs for the table and tie them to the underside of the frame, so they wouldn't get damaged in the move. He asks me where we keep the string. Unfortunately the last ball of string I remember seeing was in my kitchen drawer, the one above the bin, at 77 Marina Avenue, about eight months ago. It might even still be there, because it's a damn fine place to keep a ball of string, but it's not exactly helpful to us here in India. So I decide to do the good wife thing, and go out and buy some string. How hard can it be to buy string in Gurgaon?, I think. Well considering it's Tuesday, the answer is very hard indeed.

See, for some strange reason, most shops in Gurgaon close on a Tuesday. Something to do with them opening Sunday, I think. But food shops are open, and wine shops are open (hurrah!) and so are newsagents and stationery shops. So Ragu and I head off to Needs supermarket, because they have a large household department, and I'm sure they have string there.

They don't. They say try Spencers Express, in the same shopping complex. They don't either, but they know a shop that does. It's on the next floor up, but it's not open today because it's Tuesday. So Ragu and I head off to Galleria. I try in the Stationery Shop. After all, a shop that sells pencils, erasers, rubber bands etc in Britain would probably sell string. This isn't Britain, Toto, and the shop has no string. The assistant tells me: "String is a speciality product, Ma'am and I need to go to the market to buy it. But market is not open. It is Tuesday". So I try the newsagents. They proudly hand me a packet of Scooby Doo Strings, the thin, multicoloured plastic strings that were all the rage to make small macrame-like twists a couple of years back. I'm starting to think, if I want string today, on Tuesday (which is obviously so unreasonable of me) I'm going to have to be prepared to think outside the box... Worst case scenario, Rod laughs at the Scooby Doo strings, and Thalia makes some multicoloured macrame like twists. As it turns out, Rod didn't laugh (because he too has tried unsuccessfully to find something simple in Gurgaon on a Tuesday). He used some of the Scoobys to tie up the table legs. Thalia made some Scooby Doos as well.

Australia Post

2009-04-06T22:15:00.003+05:30

I visited Australia today. And before anyone gets gets their knickers twisted because I didn't pop in to see them, it was that little part of New Delhi which represents "the lucky country", the Australian High Commission. I belong to a quilting group here and apart from our leader, Anju, we're all expats. The majority of the group is Australian, with a few of us having had extended stays elsewhere. We have a couple of North Americans, a Venezuelan, a Belgian, a few Brits and a New Zealander. Today's meeting was at Paddy's house, and Paddy (proudly from Canberra), lives in the High Commission. Inside her apartment it sounded like we were in Australia, with only Anju's Indian accent and Kehi's New Zealand one amongst all these Aussies. But outside her apartment...we were still in India, Toto, because I didn't hear another single Australian voice. Shame.

But soon I will get my fix of Aussie voices. We booked our flights to Perth this afternoon for our six week summer holiday. New Delhi gets bloody hot in June - I've been told 50 degrees celsius (120 F) is not unheard of. It might be an urban legend, but I'm sure I don't want to be here to check! Why would I - when I can go to Perth for their winter when it will be 20 (70F)!

Give a Man a Fish...

2009-04-04T23:28:00.002+05:30

And he eats for the night, teach him how to fish and he buggers off each weekend, so the saying goes. This evening I decided to try the theory out with Rod. Obviously I wasn't using fish, because he gets violently ill at the mere thought of seafood. I needed a much better lure (should I keep up the maritime theme?), and trust me, flapjacks are much better than a hook and feathers (okay, I'm done).

Rod loves flapjacks. To be honest, we all do. But when I make flapjacks, only he suggests I hide the tin where the kids can't get to it. For the sake of parental unity, and because Thalia reads this, I won't say if I do or not...

Rod's not the world's greatest cook. He can fry eggs, and make toast. And now he can make flapjacks too. He better not go buggering off for the weekend, and if he does, he'd better leave a few behind for the rest of us!

50/50

2009-03-31T19:38:00.003+05:30

The bank wrote to me today. They've received the form Aashish helped me fill in that told them they had my address wrong, so they've changed it for me. They changed it from A ISI (letters) to N 151 (numbers). It was only half right before, and it's still only half right! What progress!! HDFC's slogan is "We understand your world", pity they don't understand handwriting in capital letters.

My name is Lana and I am a Petrol Head

2009-03-29T22:52:00.004+05:30

Today was the day Rod and I had been waiting for since November 3rd last year - the start of the Formula One season. 147 days (yes, I counted) without our fix of roaring engines, squealing tyres and reckless overtaking manoeuvres. Of course, we have seen plenty of the above during that time...whilst driving on Indian roads, unfortunately. The Albert Park circuit in Melbourne is better suited to speed than, for example, the NH-8 (the freeway between Delhi and Gurgaon). I hope that one day people will come to see that...

Anyway, back to the real speed demons. We may have had to wait 147 days, but oh boy, the wait was worth it. A one-two for Brawn GP, a team born 23 days ago from one of last year's underperformers. A long awaited second win for Jenson Button, out of 154 race starts. A well deserved second place for the oldest driver on the grid, the truly ancient 36 year old Rubens Barrichello. And a third place for Lewis Hamilton, after starting from the very back of the grid. And neither Ferrari finished the race, but for decency's sake, I'll try not to gloat too much.

Here's hoping the rest of the season is as good as this...