I'd say my main activity has been eating ice cream. In in the last days 7 or 8 days, we have gone out for ice cream 3 times, and I have brought home two buckets of Baskin-Robbins mint chip. Their chips are fabulous, by the way. Sometimes mint chip just doesn't have enough chips, or they are those skimpy little rectangular boxes of chocolate. But this is loaded with chips of chocolate. All sizes and shapes. I can just imagine someone shaving a large block of chocolate to put in that ice cream. Plus, those buckets are doubling as tupperware.
Other non-healthy activities have included watching a lot of television. Our current temporary apartment has only three english stations- the Indian version of the WB; a movie channel that is in an odd full screen mode that stretches everyone like Mike Tevee from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; and a channel that basically plays the junk you didn't watch in the States anyway (it is always gossip news or Rachel Ray or David Letterman early in the morning). But the WB plays Friends twice a day, so that has been nice. We've seen The Matrix twice already... Cats & Dogs wasn't too bad.... but thank goodness I brought the complete set of the X-files. I've already watched eight episodes!
As a side note, I would like to point out that one of the Indian stations was playing 1960s Bollywood films. It is amazing that you could just look at the cuts of their Indian attire and hair and STILL know it was a film from the 1960s. I had no idea that trends were so global.
Anyhow, slightly (if you don't count breathing the air-I learned today that the fire smell was burning garbage) healthier activities include walking around. We've done that a lot, as the weather is beautiful right now. Plus, you have to walk to get to those ice cream shops. We've mainly been walking along Marine Drive, which borders the Arabian Sea. And I do have to say that the Mumbai skyline is the most beautiful skyline I have ever seen. You can drive for miles looking at it. And it all curves around the sea. So that was quite nice to walk along. Just don't look at the individual buildings too closely. That spoils the picture.
Other activities of course include working (for my husband, at least), frustrations with trying to get a phone that actually works (neither of us have an Indian number STILL), apartment hunting (a universally painful subject), and job hunting for me.
Apartment hunting is done now, thank goodness. It is very different from hunting in Chicago. There we'd make our own schedule, with the appointments 30-60 minutes apart. You show up, they talk a lot in their office, showing you the different floor plans and prices and floor levels. Do you want a city view or lake view? they force candy and coffee on you. Then you go up and see the perfectly decorated and painted show rooms that no one has actually ever lived in (which inevitably already had the light on before you arrive, what a waste of electricity) before rounding it off with a tour of the amenities. Here, you hop in a car, drive to a building, and wait for that particular apartment's cook/maid/driver to arrive with the key. If you wait for more than a minute, you can be sure your broker is on the phone yelling at said cook/maid/driver to hurry up, even if they clearly said they wouldn't be there for another 10 minutes only 1 minute before. When they do arrive, you go up an elevator that still has the metal grill bars that you manually shut, wince at the terrible paint jobs in the hallway, take a look around the apartment (which may been completely nice & clean, or more likely, covered in dust and dirt and bugs crawling in the freezer when you open the door), and hop back in the car. So you'd average one apartment every 15 or 20 minutes rather than every hour. We looked at 37 apartments by my count. In Chicago I think we looked at 7 or so before picking. And Chicago is a heck of a lot cheaper.
We took apartment number 37. It was apartment number 56 for last year's ambassadors (the people who, in 2010, have my husband's current 2011 job). We had no desire to look at another 20 apartments to see if we could top their choice. It is actually a great apartment, located in Bandra (ironically enough, not far from where that 1960s movie was probably filmed). When we find our camera cord (MIA since the beginning of the trip), I will take pictures to post. But until then, rest happy knowing we have a good place to live come Feb 1 (ish). Especially good since it has that coveted washer and dryer!
Other non-healthy activities have included watching a lot of television. Our current temporary apartment has only three english stations- the Indian version of the WB; a movie channel that is in an odd full screen mode that stretches everyone like Mike Tevee from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; and a channel that basically plays the junk you didn't watch in the States anyway (it is always gossip news or Rachel Ray or David Letterman early in the morning). But the WB plays Friends twice a day, so that has been nice. We've seen The Matrix twice already... Cats & Dogs wasn't too bad.... but thank goodness I brought the complete set of the X-files. I've already watched eight episodes!
As a side note, I would like to point out that one of the Indian stations was playing 1960s Bollywood films. It is amazing that you could just look at the cuts of their Indian attire and hair and STILL know it was a film from the 1960s. I had no idea that trends were so global.
Anyhow, slightly (if you don't count breathing the air-I learned today that the fire smell was burning garbage) healthier activities include walking around. We've done that a lot, as the weather is beautiful right now. Plus, you have to walk to get to those ice cream shops. We've mainly been walking along Marine Drive, which borders the Arabian Sea. And I do have to say that the Mumbai skyline is the most beautiful skyline I have ever seen. You can drive for miles looking at it. And it all curves around the sea. So that was quite nice to walk along. Just don't look at the individual buildings too closely. That spoils the picture.
Other activities of course include working (for my husband, at least), frustrations with trying to get a phone that actually works (neither of us have an Indian number STILL), apartment hunting (a universally painful subject), and job hunting for me.
Apartment hunting is done now, thank goodness. It is very different from hunting in Chicago. There we'd make our own schedule, with the appointments 30-60 minutes apart. You show up, they talk a lot in their office, showing you the different floor plans and prices and floor levels. Do you want a city view or lake view? they force candy and coffee on you. Then you go up and see the perfectly decorated and painted show rooms that no one has actually ever lived in (which inevitably already had the light on before you arrive, what a waste of electricity) before rounding it off with a tour of the amenities. Here, you hop in a car, drive to a building, and wait for that particular apartment's cook/maid/driver to arrive with the key. If you wait for more than a minute, you can be sure your broker is on the phone yelling at said cook/maid/driver to hurry up, even if they clearly said they wouldn't be there for another 10 minutes only 1 minute before. When they do arrive, you go up an elevator that still has the metal grill bars that you manually shut, wince at the terrible paint jobs in the hallway, take a look around the apartment (which may been completely nice & clean, or more likely, covered in dust and dirt and bugs crawling in the freezer when you open the door), and hop back in the car. So you'd average one apartment every 15 or 20 minutes rather than every hour. We looked at 37 apartments by my count. In Chicago I think we looked at 7 or so before picking. And Chicago is a heck of a lot cheaper.
We took apartment number 37. It was apartment number 56 for last year's ambassadors (the people who, in 2010, have my husband's current 2011 job). We had no desire to look at another 20 apartments to see if we could top their choice. It is actually a great apartment, located in Bandra (ironically enough, not far from where that 1960s movie was probably filmed). When we find our camera cord (MIA since the beginning of the trip), I will take pictures to post. But until then, rest happy knowing we have a good place to live come Feb 1 (ish). Especially good since it has that coveted washer and dryer!
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