Lots of miscellaneous things

Comments about the hotel: I've mentioned before that the hotel is not as nice a place to stay as my aparatment was last year and in 2006. That is becoming more and more clear. The room is small. That would be ok, except (1) both Richard and I have big scars on our shins from walking around the platform bed and hitting them on the platform corner. And (2) there is no comfortable chair in the room. Lying on the bed is not very satisfactory for typing on a computer (although that is what I'm doing now). In addition the internet access is fairly poor. It is slow at the best of times but sometimes it is downright snail-like. It's ok for email and off-line stuff, but forget connecting to the office machines to do useful work.

I think I have not mentioned much the restaurant at the hotel either. Breakfast is served in one room on the 2nd floor of one of the buildings. For some reason the first couple of weekends, it was in the room downstairs from this, which seems to be used for no other purpose. Both rooms get kind of hot later in the morning so we took to getting our breakfast and eating outside. The waiter diligently followed us with coffee, toast, omlets, etc. Much more pleasant. We have usually had dinner at the bar (The Unwind Island). I have mentioned this place before. It a place with a thatched roof and a moat (usually dry, thank heaven) around it! They seem to have a buffet of some sort, but it is really unclear how it works. We have ordered off the menu. The food is variable. Some things are ok. Some less so. There is a mix of western-like and Indian-like things. But here is the ugly part: It gets pretty buggy in the evening. That would be bad enough, but the hotel also keeps sending someone all around the grounds with a fogger. Gaag! This guppy oily smoke blowing all around that you just KNOW is not good for living things. They don't spray it right into the "Island" but the wind blows it in. I try to cover my face and my food when it comes in. Not pleasant. I'm also not sure how much good it does, although it probably makes some improvement. Oh, yes, and the UI is very dark (good for not attracting bugs) so you can't really read the menu or see the food! Luckily my cell phone has an LED flashlight. What a great innovation!

I continue to be bemused by how inconsistent things are and how dependent they are on individuals. Example: Tonight I went to dinner at the UI. I wanted something fairly plain and resolved to order pizza which I have had before and found to be pretty good and pretty ordinary. This time there was a new waiter. I suppose our regular guy had the night off. I ordered a Kingfisher. "Blue or premium?" Huh? I'd never been asked this before. I had no idea there was a "blue". I asked and found that it had a higher alcohol content among other things. No thanks. Then I ordered the pizza. "Veg or non-veg"? I'd never been asked that before, but I did not think there was meat on the pizza I had had before, so I ordered "veg". The pizza came with French Fries, and it was much differnt than I had had before. Some Indian flavor to it, and somewhat spicy. Not what I had in mind, but still pretty good.

The Election: I have found out more since the last entry. There are many more weeks of elections, and it is not exactly by state. Each state seems to have segments within it that vote on different days. Last Thursday seemed to pass without major incident. However, in Bangalore there were a few precincts that had problems (voting machines died, etc) and they are going to re-do the vote for those districts. Can you imagine? Another really good reason not to announce the results immediately!

Richard and I went into work on election day, but in the AM there were very few other people there, and the A/C was off the whole day. It was not sweltering, but it was surely warmer than I would have chosen.

Visit to a friend's: Richard has left gone for Delhi and Agra before heading home, so I am alone now. My friend/coworker Asha was kind enough to invite me to her house for dinner, where I met her husband and daughter, and her husband's mother and father. The daughter is 7, and what a smart and charming young lady she is! Asha says that English is her first language, and it really shows. We had fun together telling elephant jokes some of which my Aunt Frances used to tell me (Why did the elephant wear yellow sneakers? Because his red ones were dirty. Etc.) She wants to be an astronaut, so we talked about India and the US's space programs and how I had applied to be an astronaut myself.

For dinner Deepak's mother had made prawns, mussels, chicken, biryani, a mint chutney (with home-grown mint), curds (yogurt), and plain rice. Wow! What a feast, and it was delicious. They kept asking if it was too spicy for me. Truthful answer: Not at all...it was really nice with interesting flavors and a nice tingle of hot. THe mussels were really best eaten with the fingers. They were fairly small and using a finger to pull out the meat was a good technique. I mostly ate with my fingers like everyone else, although I did fall back to silverware occasionally. For dessert we had some ice cream with a nice sauce. (Bailey's? Tasted a bit like that anyway). I had to leave fairly soon since it was a longish ride back and I still had some prep to do for Saturday's talks. (Remember, they are making up for Thursday off by working Saturday).

Oh, and I should mention the house. They had it designed for them by an architect. Deepak and I exchanged architect experiences (they don't LISTEN to us!). But the house was beautiful. It is in a fairly new area. Deepak told me that because it was so new, and not fully built up, there are still a lot of snakes around. He then proceeded to tell me how the cobras around are not really that dangerous if you understand them. They give a lot of warning before striking, and in fact generally the first time they strike it is just a warning; they will not really inject any poisson. I found that all not particularly comforting.