Kuala Lumpur Weekend

I had a very hard time writing this particular blog.  I think it is because I really, really enjoyed Kuala Lumpur and the freedom I felt there is not replicated in India.  I feel oppressed in India.  I am alone here (my husband is practically nonexistent due to his busy work schedule) and each day is hard when you are alone.  I truly don’t think I would be so unhappy if we were actually experiencing the country together.  But we are not.  I am experiencing it and he is working it.  So each time I started to write this blog, I would rant and rave and leave behind very negative words about India.  But I do want you to know that there are some good things about India, too.  (That list mostly consists of all of my relatives and mangos.)

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Near the end of May my husband and I traveled to Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia.  He had a three-day conference, and I, of course, as a housewife, had a desire to travel and see someplace new.  His conference was Wednesday through Friday and we planned to stay the weekend and see the city together once it was over. 

My husband flew in before me, and I flew in on a redeye landing early Thursday morning. 

I was super excited to spend some time in the much bigger international airport (since I usually fly out of Mumbai’s small domestic airport) but I was shocked to find that I couldn’t spend my rupees because I had an American passport.   I haven’t been in the US for nearly six months; I don’t carry around US dollars…. But I wasn’t allowed to buy from the duty free shops because my passport was American.  What a rip off. That really shows how pathetic and/or easily counterfeited the Indian rupee is, though.   They’d accept US dollars or Euros or English Pounds from anyone of any nationality, but only Indian rupees from Indian citizens.   No bag of snickers for me…. I suppose, really, the duty free shop was just trying to keep me healthy and fit. 

When I first arrived in KL I was a bit grouchy.  I had nicely switched from a front seat to a back seat in the airplane so a couple could sit together.   When I saw them leave customs a full hour before me, I was regretting that decision.  Because I flew in from Mumbai, the line in customs was mostly full of pushy Indians (sorry, nice Indians that I know out there, but it is true.  In any line, people are super duper pushy and drive me crazy).  The line was long and the aisle wide. I couldn’t maintain control over my personal space in line.  I was just one person and couldn’t block the entire aisle.  Left and right people were cutting in front of me.  I lost count after fifty. A single girl alone just can’t fill up the aisle, and as soon as I’d do my best to block people cutting on the left, they’d squeeze up and cut on the right.  Sigh. It is so lonesome and tiresome to fly alone.  So of course I was in my typical bad mood brought on by interacting with strangers of Indian origin (I’d like to point out that I don’t get that bad mood when I interact with non-strangers of Indian origin), helped along by only one hour of sleep on the plane, when I finally left the airport well over two hours after landing.  

So quickly, so quickly, I forgot about the pushing and shoving; I forgot about the woman who smacked her baby against me four times in line, and her shopping bag full of his toys seven times, because I was driving through roads with humans who understand the concepts of traffic laws and the beauty of greenery on the roadside.  I was a bit afraid, however, because the car driver was going 120 kph (75 mph), which was far faster than I’d ever gone in Mumbai.  But there were no cars driving on, rather than between, the traffic lines.   It was a proper highway, with dividers that couldn’t be crossed.   So I sat back, tried repeatedly to kill the lone mosquito in the car, and enjoyed the scenery.

The flora was bright green.  I think they were mostly coconut trees.  As we distanced ourselves from the airport, small housing communities began to pop into view.  It actually brought me back to a sustainability class I took years ago at UM.  I remember learning that it was more sustainable and energy efficient to make small clumps of houses, rather than spread out farms in the countryside.  Seems sort of obvious now, but the first time you hear an idea it is always interesting. 

The housing was fascinating.  I’d just never expected such uniformity.  I wondered what kind of government ruled Malaysia.  All of the homes were basically the same; it is like driving past army barracks (but much, much nicer looking!) at home in Michigan.   Each community had a light tan (or maybe it was pale yellow) exterior walls and red roofs.  Some might be town houses, others condos or apartment buildings, some high rises, but they all looked exactly the same. 

As we got closer to the city, a bit more diversity appeared; I saw one clump with gray roofs, another with some green paint.   Up close, they were a bit more different, but it was still interesting to see such uniformity; I had never seen it before.

Another thing that made me giggle was my Driver’s (in Mumbai) prediction.  He has been to Malaysia twice, and he told me to watch the men riding motorcycles; they would wear their jackets backwards.  True to his word, the first guy to drive past me on a bike was indeed wearing his jacket backwards!  I wish I had been able to get a picture for him, but we were going too fast.   I am convinced that my Driver was more excited about my KL trip than I was; it is his dream to get out of India and make something of his life.  He did try it once in KL, but it turned out to be a scam and he lost all of his family‘s (extended family, even) money. 

Also making me happy was the radio.  For once, I could very clearly understand what was actually being said.   The Malaysian accent was much closer to American English than Indian English, and it was actually possible to understand every word.   My exterior crustiness remained, but my insides were starting to soften and just feel happy being in this beautiful country.   As we’d been landing, the airplane TV played a catchy little jingle, “Malaysia, the soul of Asia, the heart of Asian, Malaysia, etc, ” that I sang to myself repeatedly.   It really is a song that gets stuck in your head.  I still find myself absent-mindedly singing it two weeks later.  

Within a half hour or so the city skyline appeared.  It was beautiful, and I picked out our hotel right smack in the middle of it.  On one end of the skyline was a needle-like thing that reminded me of a car antenna from the 1980s with a bright foam ball stuck on it.  On the other end of the skyline were the Petronas Towers, which were matching and big and pretty.  My friend Deeps loves skyscrapers; I’m sure these pathetic attempts at descriptions are painful for him to read! 

Once inside of the hotel, which was very nice, both lobby and room, thank you, thank you, thank you, I promptly fell asleep for a couple of hours.  I woke around 1:00 pm local time and called housekeeping to clean up my husband’s mess.  He’d only been there for one day before me, but his clothes were strewn everywhere, the entire set of sheets and blankets were on the floor, an ice cream bowl melted by the desk, and a wet bathrobe (what on earth was he doing?) was in the bathtub.   It wasn’t the best of room conditions to see for a first impression.  

Housekeeping was quick.   The employee was female (as opposed to the male employees at the hotels in India), and she was nice, even made me giggle, and, when her cell phone rang, she very properly ignored the call and continued to make our bed.   Oh, KL, how I love you and your politeness already.

My husband had a break from his meetings and snuck a bowl of ice cream up to me.   Isn’t that sweet! We shared it as we discussed our day, but he quickly had to go back to the conference.  I decided to shower, doze, and finally got dressed and checked out the world. 

I went shopping.  A massive mall (I’m fairly certain it was bigger than the Mall of America) was right across the street.   I really enjoyed the mall.  It was having a comic convention of some sort, but the stage was empty and I mostly just glanced at the awesome life-sized Batman and Superman statues (can I call them life-sized action figures?) and the various Green Lantern T-shirts.  Eventually I started shopping (I put all of my fancy dresses in storage and I am going to a wedding in July) and found a very cute dress; I went to an amazing bakery (the red bean pastry was fabulous); and, when my husband finished with his conference, ate the best pizza I’ve had since being in Asia.   We ate at the hotel because he was really sick.  The restaurant stunk of fish and seafood (something that makes me nauseous) so we sat outside.  I watched a cockroach shuffle from inside to our outdoor seating.  Fortunately, I didn’t see it until after we had finished our pizza.  

We came back to the room and I dismantled all of the shelving in the mini fridge to make space for the leftover pizza.  My husband was getting sicker by the moment (a cold), so we just stayed at the hotel and he zonked out quite early.   Unfortunately the cold would be a persistent thorn in our side for the entire otherwise blissful trip. 

After only one day in KL, I was firmly convinced my life would have been better in KL than India.  Of course, after only one day, I didn’t have to deal with cooking, grocery shopping, getting a cell phone, etc.  But after only a few hours there it felt as though a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.  I felt like myself again.  Just happy.

That isn’t to say that people and life in India isn’t nice.   Everyone seems willing to help out in India.  But the bureaucracy of getting anything done is incredibly frustrating.  Something as simple as opening a bank account or getting a phone can take over a month.  But the hardest part of living in India is simply being a blonde woman (and I’m barely blonde; mostly dishwater blonde). 

In India, blonde women are zoo creatures.  The only point of a zoo creature is to stare at it.  Or photograph it. I get both on a daily basis. It is just emotionally wearing to have a person give you the creeps each and every time you walk outside. An American would advert their eyes and be embarrassed when caught staring.   Here, they keep right on looking at you with an intensity that could kill someone.  One day I’m going to smack one of them and get in trouble.   It is emotionally wearing to be asked to take a photo every time I do anything slightly touristy or leave my Bollywood bubble of Bandra.  It is emotionally wearing to see people walk past you, stop, turn, and then follow you for blocks so they can stare at you and your hair.  All of these things happen frequently.  It isn’t fun.  It makes you change your entire lifestyle, no fun clothes.  If I go out, I’m sure to wear long sleeved Indian attire.  It just sucks to have to face it each and every single day.    

But in KL, I didn’t even once experience that creepiness.  No one stared at me in that rude manner, no one photographed me.  I was just another human, not a zoo creature.  What person wouldn’t prefer such an environment?

The next day, Friday, my husband still had a half-day for his conference, so I had the morning and afternoon to myself.  Usually, in India, my daily goal is to not go outside, but instead stay safely inside to avoid being stared at. I have exceptions, of course.  Everyone at the gym treats me well, and I don’t mind most parts of Bandra.   But overall, I, who once spent the majority of my days in a tree, am now happiest inside away from the people.   But now that I was in KL?  In the beautiful freedom that was KL I was just itching to go out and do something. 

I slept late (KL is 2.5 hours head of Mumbai) and, rather than congratulating myself on a few well-spent hours, I chastised myself instead for wasting opportunities.  I spent the early afternoon working on those long Delhi blogs and then walked around outside again.  

At one point in the elevator I met a couple from South Africa.  They said the weather was unbearably hot and humid.  I thought it was rather dry (Mumbai must be the most humid place on the planet) and rather pleasant.  I guess I’m getting used to Indian weather, if not the strangers I interact with in India.

I next went back to that fabulous bakery (it is called The Loaf if you ever find yourself in KL) and got some snacks for my husband and myself.  The orange juice was fabulous, too.  They mix it with sprite, or some fizzy pop.  It was quite good. 

My husband was still sick, but wanted to make an effort on my part so we went to the mall and got food instead of going out.  I’d spent hours that day looking up good restaurants, reading suggested restaurants from his co-workers, and had picked a rooftop bar to eat and (more important to me) actually get dressed up and wear something cute without being stared at in a creepy manner.    So I was disappointed that we didn’t get the city view, but more disappointed I didn’t get to dress up.   My poor husband could barely walk to the mall, though, so for him it was much better! 

The mall food court was amazing.  I think I could live in that mall and be perfectly content.  We passed every restaurant you could imagine.  There was even a Beard Papas, my sister’s favorite pasty shop in Japan!   We ended up at a Mexican restaurant and I had the best tacos I’ve had in at least six months.  To be fair, I haven’t tried tacos yet in India….  But they were very, very good.   We ordered some fun drinks with pineapple juices in them and then went back home so my husband could continue to sleep.  

What was NOT good were the next morning’s hotel waffles.  Oh, they were terrible.  They tasted EXACTLY like an Eggo waffle you bought at the store, made in the toaster, forgot about and, as a consequence, left out for two hours, and then for some cheap reason decided that they would still be good and you decided to eat them and warm them up in the microwave rather than just throw them out and start afresh.   I had chocolate waffles, which I assumed meant there were chocolate chips in them.  Nope.  They were drenched in chocolate sauce.  I love chocolate, but even I couldn’t eat that much chocolate sauce.  My husband told me to call and say we wouldn’t pay for them, but I am a wimp and just ate two of the three.  When they asked how the meal was, I was honest and told them terrible.   There was much apology and they sent us a box of chocolates instead.   Despite the fact that the chocolates weren’t great, just getting something for free was enough for me to be completely mollified. 

I went back to the mall to buy my husband some cold medicine. I got distracted by the comic convention and spent some time watching Batman and The Joker duke it out (well, jest it out might be more appropriate, there was a lot more talking than fighting) before I dragged myself away and found a pharmacy.   It was an interesting process to buy the medicine.  I went to a store like CVS or Walgreens, but all of the cold medicines were behind a counter and I had to talk to the pharmacist.  She asked me all the symptoms (I guessed the answers) and then gave me the drugs.  I had to sign my name, hotel room, and even provide my driver’s license number.  But it was nice that she talked to me about the symptoms, I supposed. 

Our original plan for Saturday had been to wake up around seven and get in line to see the Petronas Towers.  Now, we were mostly doing this because it is the ‘thing to do’ in Kuala Lumpur.  Really, the walkway is only on the 42^nd floor, so it isn’t exactly high to someone who spent all of their years in Chicago on the 35^th floor.   Nor is it high to someone who has been 110 stories up in the Sears (ahem…Willis) Tower.  But whatever.  It is the cool thing to do.    You have to go early because they only give 1700 tours.  I think that number is right.   

Of course, my husband was incredibly sick, so when the wake up call came at 7:00 he was in no condition to get out of bed.  I had actually already been up.  That is how excited I was.  I truly was back to my normal conditions.  I used to jump out of bed every morning ready to seize the day.  Now I sleep in lazily.  Amazing how a change of city can just bring back the real you.    Anyhow, the real me might have been ready, but the real husband was in no shape to go.   I read for a bit and eventually fell asleep (7:00 am KL time is only 4:30 am Mumbai time, after all), and when I awoke I got those nasty waffles.  

Of course, at the mall, after the nasty waffles, I decided I needed more food.  So after Batman and the pharmacy I headed back to the food court.  I (see my slick use of foreshadowing?) got Beard Papas and brought it back to our hotel room.  I insisted that my husband try them.  He wasn’t impressed.  But I love them! 

After the mall trip I was starting to get antsy.  My husband’s case was so busy that he had moved his flight on Sunday to (1) an earlier time and (2) to go straight to Delhi rather than Mumbai with me.   So we really had less than 24 hours left together, and he’d been (very sick, of course) sleeping through all of them.

To make matters worse, his phone had stopped working.  We were using an absurd international calling plan that charged $3/minute.  Now his international calling was for work, and his company was paying for it, but apparently (we learned later) he’d reached the spending limit (over $600) and his phone was turned off.  So we spent a good amount of time griping over that and trying to get it to work.  No avail.  He used my phone for the rest of his business calls.   I learned, when back in Mumbai, that I was less than $20 away from getting my phone turned off, too!

I really want to go someplace other than the mall (sure, it was grand, but it was still just a mall) in Kuala Lumpur.   I started to wish that my passport would magically disappear and I’d be forced to stay here for a longer time.  

Eventually, my husband (probably a dumb health decision in retrospect) decided he could handle going to one tourist attraction.  We went to KL Tower, which is the car antenna-like building described earlier.  We took a cab (good thing, because you go up a pretty steep hill to get there), got our tickets, and waited in line.   The women working in the building had one of the prettiest headscarves I’d ever seen.  They had a sort of short neon green visor thing and it was covered with a neon pink, yellow, and green scarf.  I know it sounds weird, but the city is vibrant and alive and it just fit.

A HUGE group of school children arrived at roughly the same time as us, but we were fortunate to be in front of them in the line.  It wasn’t a long wait and we were soon in the elevator going up, up, and up.   It is about the same as going to the Hancock building, except much less fun because I can spot my own home and friend’s homes when I’m in the Hancock building and in the KL Tower I don’t know or care what all the buildings are below.  But it is still fun to look at things from such a high height.   

My husband grew thirsty and bought the official ‘KL Tower’ water.  The wrapper said,  “More than Meets the Eye.”  I wonder if they had to pay Transformers to use that line.  And really?  It is more than meets the eye?  How?  It seemed pretty straightforward to me.   Anyhow, it was fun, but soon those eighty or so schoolchildren were swarming around us and we knew it was time to go back down.

We next went to the ‘Malaysian Cultural Village’ that looked like an extremely hokey movie set from forty years back.  It was supposed to represent all of the different homes in Malaysia, but you couldn’t walk through them or anything. It was instead a rather pathetic rendition of the front step and doors.  I usually love historical stuff like that (Greenfield Village in Dearborn is one of my favorite places on the planet), so I’d been expecting better and was disappointed.  Anyhow, we half-heartedly looked at them and left when the eighty kids ran in and started banging on every drum (and there were quite a few) in the adjacent building.

Our next and last stop was the ‘Animal Zone’, which is also part of the KL Tower set of attractions.  This was my favorite place, except for the animals that weren’t on display, the mosquitoes, did their best to distract me from the feature attractions.  I got to take a photo with some birds and a snake (my dear husband was terrified for my wellbeing with the snake).   But I really just enjoyed seeing how different a small ‘zoo’ in Asia is from one in America.  By that, I mean that the animals that eat our garbage in America, raccoons, are featured attractions here in Asia.  I’d have just never thought to put one in a zoo.  So I really enjoyed seeing the raccoon as a strange and exotic animal rather than a bandit that makes weird oinking sounds and keeps our family trapped inside the house at night.  Yes, that did happen one summer.  We had a brutal family of raccoons living in our tree.  They’d hang out on our front step and imitated pigs.  My poor dog just didn’t know what to do. She was great at barking from inside the house, but couldn’t go out and take five or six raccoons at once.   It was great fun.   For one day.  After a week or so it was annoying. 

My poor husband was utterly beat by the time we finished the Animal Zone.  We went back to the hotel, he rested, and eventually we went to TGIF for dinner.   Yes, we went to TGIF.  When you are sick, sometimes you just want familiar foods.  

The next day we spent mostly at the airport.  It is massive, and as we walked around all of the fine dinning choices, I kept repeating that I wanted to go to Burger King.  My husband looked at me a bit like I was a weirdo, but he is a good husband and let me eat at BK.  It has been so long since I’ve had it!   Well over six months.  It was just time for a Burger King hamburger.  It was delicious.  I was so happy.  By the way, their ketchup containers are slightly different.  In the US, we have those little paper cups; here they give you a nearly flat piece of plastic.   I thought they were trash until the BK employees explained their purpose. 

I left my husband at BK to do work and I window-shopped. I went down to the atrium set smack in the middle of the airport and walked around.   You quickly forget that an airport is running AC, but the temperature inside of the open-air atrium was at least 20 degrees higher and much more humid.   I enjoyed reading the tree names and watched the waterfall for a while.  I eventually overheated and went back to air-conditioned portion of the airport. I next looked inside all of the shops, overjoyed that I could look without being harassed by the sales clerks.  

My husband was flying to Delhi business class.  I was flying to Mumbai economy.   His company was paying for his ticket!  So, I would like to say that the airline we used, Malaysia Airlines, is pretty stiff upper lipped about their rules.   My husband wanted to go into their lounge to charge his computer, and they wouldn’t even let him bring a guest (me, his wife).  We went a couple times, asked different employees, and no one would let me in.  It was just a bit surprising.  We thought that having a first class or business class ticket meant you could do whatever you want.   Isn’t that at least what Billy Idol said in The Wedding Singer?

Anyhow, my husband went in to charge his computer and I continued to wander the airport.  I bought some candy (obviously) and found a cluster of TVs playing a Detroit Tigers Game!   Did I mention I loved KL?   I watched my team lose until it was time to fly out of there.  

When I landed back in Mumbai, despite being very late at night (11 or 12, I don’t remember), there was still an incredible amount of traffic, yelling, and fighting.  One man refused to move his car, and my driver and I had to wait for twenty minutes before we could even leave the airport because of it.   My heart was already beating a bit faster and I was slightly more stressed.

I keep telling my husband that I am like a zoo creature.  Not just the blonde part; there is also a stress component.  By that I mean that it is very, very difficult to get some animals to reproduce in zoos.  (NO, I am not trying to reproduce right now.  Focus). For example, rhinos. Even if we provide them with huge ranges and good food and natural habitats, it just doesn’t work as well. Many animals are just stressed.  Of course, some animals have no problems reproducing at all.  I vaguely feel like rabbits are an example.  I am the rhino and my husband is the rabbit.  I am in a good habitat with a nice big clean home, good food, a car and driver, and a gym membership.  But it doesn’t matter.  I’m still in a foreign environment, no matter how you dress it up, and my body and mind are just constantly under a low state of stress. **

There were many other things in KL that either surprised me or made me quite happy.  Here is a list of things not included in the text above:

(1) The service at the front desk.   When my husband lost his key, and asked for another one, they actually checked our ID.  I was so happy.  I mean, I want to assume that everyone is honest when they go to a front desk of a hotel and say, “I’m in room 8, I need a new key,” but it would be so easy to lie and then go rob someone.   So I very much appreciated the checking of our IDs.  

(2) My health.  Within one day of arrival, the whites of my eyes reverted back to the color white.  In India, the air is so lousy that they had a permanent red tinge that would make anyone think I was high on drugs.   

(3) No headaches!  I’m not sure if it was due to the lower air pressure or the cleaner air, but for the first time in months, I didn’t have to take ibuprofen multiple times in the day.  I had no headaches!  

(Incidentally, within 24 hours of being back in Mumbai my eyes were red and I was popping ibuprofen again).

(4) Much better TV in the hotel.  We got to watch a new episode of House!   That was fantastic.   

(5) Fun tea in the lobby.  I love tea and it was a never-ending joy to try a new flavor each and every time I walked through the lobby.

(6) The clothing.  It was so much fun to see women wearing cute things.  Not that saris and salwar kameez aren’t cute; they are.  But it was fun to see arms showing and legs showing and hair down and NOT BE STARED at in a creepy manner.   Everyone was dressed quite nice, but still had an element of casualness.  Even the Muslim women, who are supposed to be covered from head to toe, had their sleeves pushed up and were wearing Capri pants. 

(7) Window shopping is SO much better than in India.  It is awful in India.  All I want to do is look without someone annoying me.  But they HOOVER.  Even when clothes shopping, they will just follow you around, three steps behind you.  Often if you walk by they call you to go into their shop.  I always refuse because it annoys the heck out of me.  But in KL I could wander at peace without anyone to bug me.  Oh, it was wonderful.  

There was exactly one thing that made me unhappy in KL:

(1) Smoking.  Everyone smoked like it was 1980 in America.  The rest of the city was incredibly modern and clean, but the smoking was very out of place and frustrated me to no end.

I had asked my cook/maid what she planned to do while were gone for the weekend.  She said she would go to a wedding if she wasn’t menstruating.  Can you believe it is the 21^st century and she could still be forced to participate in such a bunch of nonsense?   Fortunately, the 21^st century has medicines to combat such bull, and she took some drug called Regestrone that suppresses your period and went successfully to the wedding.  

** Fun fact for people who believe in gay rights (which had better be all of you).  While I was double-checking which animals had trouble reproducing or not, I discovered that giraffes have anal sex.   That’s right.  Also I learned that homosexuality was documented in EVERY SINGLE species that reproduces via sex.   

The Hamburger Hangover

I wrote this one ages ago and never published it….  It took place in early to mid-May.  I am finally re-reading and editing it in honor of my Friend E, who is leaving this weekend.  Maybe I can entice her to read the blog when she is back in the US.  

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A few nights ago a couple of friends invited me to the Hard Rock Cafe to watch a 1980’s big hair cover band.   That happens to be one of the very few types of music I actually like, so my two sides- the slightly social side and the incredibly hermit-like side- had an internal argument.  Big hair won, and I accepted the invitation.   

A lot of us were going, but my friend contact with this group was Friend E.   Our relationship was an arranged relationship.  In Portage, MI, unbeknownst to us, our parents played Indian matchmaker.   We checked out each other’s stats via gossipy e-mails (yes, you really do that in Indian relationship matchmaking; somewhere or other I have a sheet of paper with my cousin-in-law’s height, weight, parents’ jobs, bride-worthy photo, etc) and then we decided that we looked good on paper, so we had better meet for an ice cream date.   Of course, those Indian matches always work out (such a low divorce rate here), so Friend E and I hit it off and have been hanging out ever since, despite the fact that she doesn’t like chocolate, which is nearly always a deal breaker for me.    

At 9:00 pm sharp I pulled up outside their apartment building.  We’d been planning to cram seven people in the car, including my driver.  But only two were outside.  Apparently doubting our ability to mimic a clown car, the other three had left in search of a cab.  Being India, it is perfectly   plausible to jam seven grown adults in one small Honda, and we set off in pursuit of the disbelievers. 

We found them at a corner, not yet in a cab (to be fair, the third member of their party had only just arrived, so they hadn’t time to hail one), and swiftly talked them into jamming in to the car.   Did I mention one was pregnant?  7.5 people.  We then headed off to the HRC. 

It was my first time at the Mumbai HRC.  It looked pretty standard- the cement gray walls were decorated with guitars, jackets, and records of famous musicians, just like any HRC.  They had a small shop selling plenty of t-shirts, lots of seating, a bar, and stage.

The main floor was different from most Mumbai restaurants in that it smelled perfectly normal.  No whiff of cleaning supplies, nor musty smell reached my nose.   The bathroom, however, was similar to most Mumbai restrooms in that it had mothball cakes in the bathroom sinks.  I still don’t understand why places do that.  So the bathroom did have the usual disgusting Mumbai bathroom odor.  But at least the restaurant smelled normal for once.  

We were seated in a large booth.   My Auntie and Uncle recently visited, and were educating me in wine, so I quickly noticed that the only red wine on their menu was an absolutely disgusting Indian merlot.  Sigh.  I ordered the Indian white zinfandel, which was at least made by a different bottler, but it wasn’t good either.  I think I was happier not knowing the difference between good and bad wine! 

The wine wasn’t good, but the hamburger sure was!   It was my first burger in probably six months.  It was huge.  The basic burger, for some reason, comes with onion rings and bacon on it.  I ate the onion rings, but left off the bacon. I only like really crisp, practically burnt bacon.   While gorging myself on the burger, I turned my attention to the cover band. 

The stage was interesting.   It was suspended directly above the bar.   The back of the stage was attached to the wall, but the remaining three sides were supported by wire attached from the ceiling.  It wasn’t too big, but there were only four members in the band and thus plenty roomy.

In the back, stage left, was the drummer.  My view of the drummer was a bit obscured as his face was behind a cymbal, but he was wearing a t-shirt and what looked liked a black ski cap with flames. 

In front of the drummer was one of the guitarists.  He was incredibly good- definitely the most impressive person in the band.   He was muscular, with a tight fitting gray t-shirt with an image printed on it.  He also wore a skullcap, and, despite the dim lighting, sunglasses.   He sort of looked like one of my Indian cousins.  

At stage right was the other guitarist.  He looked like The Rock’s cousin from Somoa.  He had frizzy hair pulled up in a ponytail, a white t-shirt with a beer belly, and jeans.  He stood up straight to play his music.  He didn’t move around.   He was very calm.  The most movement he did was to occasionally move his foot, a’ la Captain Morgan, onto the speaker and then off again.  

Front and center, of course, was the singer.  His character, to paraphrase Louisa May Alcott, I leave for you the reader to discover.   He wore a black t-shirt, sleeves cut off, and tight black and gray checked pants.  He was rock star thin and had tattoos from his bare left shoulder to wrist.  His face was square, like Steven Tyler, and the highlighted ends of his shaggy short haircut flipped up, reminiscent of Farrah Fawcett. 

They started slow, with a few songs our group didn’t know.   I looked towards the dance floor that was directly below the stage.   One guy was definitely a fan.   He was standing there looking up at his idols with a star-struck face.    Head banging his short hair, he was too excited to even remove his backpack.  His excitement was infectious, and I really like people who are so enthusiastic.  I kept watching him throughout the night; never once did he stop dancing, or even take a breather to remove his backpack!    The band noticed him, too, and would every so often lower the microphone down to the floor to let him belt out a line or two.   

I started to recognize the music and enjoy myself.  The music was decent, though the singer did take it upon himself to change it up a bit, rather than mimic the original songs.  But it was what the singer decided to do with his hands that had us all rolling in hysterics/horrified.  There were lots of good songs, such as Smoke on the Water, Welcome to the Jungle, etc, but he did one song….oh, it is almost embarrassing just to write about it, called Party in my Pants.  The singer, rather than just singing the words, decides to pull up his shirt, and take a long time pulling his pants away from his body, so he can look down them.  Between that, and the constant do-it-yourself gestures, we were just wide-eyed and a more than a bit grossed out. 

But they certainly rocked the stage.  In fact, the right side shook independent of the left, and we watched the floor sway up and down with a bit of trepidation in our eyes.   It would be awful if it fell- the bartenders were directly below them.    But the singer soon grew tired and stopped running and jumping around and the stage slowly stopped shaking.  

The singer’s voice was actually pretty decent.   But his work ethic was questionable.   When there were no words to be sung, he’d run and sit offstage.  He even managed a bathroom break, scaring one member of our party, who thought there was a girl (remember his hair) next to him in the bathroom at first. 

Despite the obvious weirdness of the singer, I enjoyed the music, and definitely recognized many more songs than I heard at that Bryan Adams concert we attended when we first arrived in Mumbai.  After an hour and a half or so, the music ended and we started to prepare to leave. It had been different. After all, it was hard rock with an Indian voice and accent, but overall, I had a good time.  

We discovered that, besides being a cover band, they also wrote their own songs.  So perhaps the songs we didn’t recognize were simply their own.    They told us this during one of the few times the singer stopped singing and decided to talk instead.  The other things he decided to tell us were a bit too obscene (his own words) and I’d rather not repeat them here.   But, like his eyes and hand gestures, they involved his private parts.  

Before we could leave we had quite the eye-opener for how different things in India are than the US.  How different, you ask?  Well, I’ve seen people dance on the bar before.  My friend used to line-dance on bars, even.  But have you ever seen grown men do a combination YMCA and Macarena dance?   As employees of the HRC?  It was the most horrifying thing any of us had ever seen!  They did it right on the top of the booths, so every time they did the Macarena hip thrust, the employees would grin down at us.  Some were obviously a bit embarrassed, some were really into it.  The six of us were laughing so hard, and I felt bad about it.   I mean, I wouldn’t want anyone laughing at me while doing that….but of course, I also wouldn’t do the Macarena at all, much less embed it into the YMCA.    

We left, to our relief, to good canned music- Sweet Home Alabama.  It put us back in a cheerful mood and as we stood outside, singing along, we saw the (good) guitarist on his cell phone.  We all thought we should tell him good job, but no one was brave enough to actually do it.  I wish we had, especially as we were making fun of the singer.   Oh well….

We climbed into the car and I discovered my belly felt a bit off.  Much to my dismay I discovered that others in the party had the same problem when they too had a hamburger for the first time after being in beef-deprived India for months.

The next day, I woke and did my best to head to the gym.  But there was no doubt about it.  I had a hamburger hangover, and it felt awful.

 Aftermath

Shortly after this event, there was a huge argument on one of the expat e-mail lists as to whether anything served in Mumbai is actually beef, or buffalo instead, but is called beef.  I’ve had buffalo burgers many times before (I am from Michigan, after all), and I’m ashamed to say that I really don’t know which I ate that night.  

But be warned; any beef you eat in Mumbai MIGHT be buffalo.  

It is raining!!! Again! (aftermath)

My husband did indeed successfully fly into Mumbai. In fact, he was only an hour late.  His flight was one of the very few that made it all the way in to Mumbai.  Apparently they announced in-flight that they might divert to Ahmedabad (yeah, I don't know where that is, either), but his flight came at the tail end of the storm and it was unnecessary.  It sounds as though more people spent the night in Ahmedabad or other cities than made it back to Mumbai.  

The next morning I awoke and did my usual pre-gym routine.  I got up, ate a bowl of chocolate lucky charms and a banana, proceeded to drink an entire liter of water (hey, it is HOT here), and checked my e-mail.   I next showered.  Yes, I shower before going to the gym.  It is so hot that I just stink to high heaven.   When I return from the gym I shower and wash my hair, and then, near nightfall, sometimes I shower again because I have sweated so much my hair is unbearably smelly. 

Anyhow, after the shower I walked back into our bedroom (quietly, because my husband was still asleep).  I slipped, and almost fell.   Confused (it was dark), I felt around and discovered that the floor was wet.  In fact, a lot of the floor was wet.   Despite his sleep, I flipped on the light switch.  A gigantic puddle covered a quarter of the room. It was bigger than the puddle in our family driveway, which, if you’ve seen that after a rainstorm, you’d be sufficiently impressed now.  

Both of our suitcases were sitting smack in the middle of the puddle.  We didn’t bother to completely unpack and put them away because we were both flying out in two days.  Both were flat, which as much floor contact as possible, but fortunately both were also closed.  His dress shoes and other items had been unpacked and thrown on the floor, but fortunately were still encased in a plastic bag and unharmed.   I gingerly picked up his various scattered items (he was still fast asleep), took the towel off my head, and wiped them down.   Next I picked up his suitcase and water just gushed from the back of the suitcase exactly as you’d expect in a dramatic movie version of our life.   I zipped up each pocket and dragged it away from the puddle.   Next, mine.  Mine actually had stuff piled on top of it, but that was all dry.   I dumped the interior items (still dry, fortunately) on the bed (now my husband was starting to stir) and zipped it up, too, and moved it aside.   I then took all seven towels out of our closet and tried to cover the puddle.   It wasn’t enough to soak it all up.  

My husband, 99% asleep and facing the opposite direction of the puddle, mumbled that it was due to the suitcase.  The trip from the airplane to baggage claim had soaked it, and then it expelled all of the water onto our bedroom floor as he had slept.   I accepted that theory.  I had been wondering how the heck my shower water had seeped through a closed door and coalesced onto our floor. 

Of course, when we were both fully awake, after I had returned from the gym, and had the wisdom of our maid with us, she pointed out that it was probably due to our air-conditioner.   It just so happens that we hadn’t run the AC the previous night, so I had disagreed with her at first.  But my husband’s suitcase was directly beneath the AC, so maybe it started to overflow during the storm.  My friend E has an AC unit in their house that drips water whenever the outside bucket fills (I don’t quite understand all of this).  But I guess an AC is like sewage or the storm drains on your roof.  It can overflow and get backed up.  I think our AC just got overwhelmed and the water flowed back into the room.

The drive to the gym (certainly less than five minutes) resembled a drive through home after a big storm.   Except Mumbai is really dirty and full of trash, so there was a lot more garbage strewn about than in Michigan.  Trees were down, leaves were everywhere.   Massive receding puddles marred the roads.  

The worst sight, however, was a huge downed tree.  My driver stopped near it, and pointed.  Hidden way beneath the bright green leaves was an auto rickshaw.  The tiny vehicle was completely crushed.   Oh, I just hope it was parked and no one was in it.   My driver was outraged because the owner wouldn’t get his money from insurance for three to four months.  I tried to ask him if he’d heard of Hurricane Katrina and FEMA, but he just didn’t get it that three to four months seems fast in some cases. 

He told me that the downed trees and electrocution were the worst problems in the rainy season.   True enough, I checked the paper on Sunday and someone was electrocuted during the mild storm on Saturday (this blog is about the aftermath of the big storm on Friday).  It was just a man, leaving his office after working too hard on a Saturday.   He just happened to have stepped in one of the many puddles by his office.   But one puddle must have had a wire through it, somewhere.   He died.  

My driver’s report was that everything in his home was soaking wet.  He was wearing his red long-sleeved button down shirt, which I know that he hates wearing (he prefers T-shirts), so I guess it was the only thing buried deep enough in his clothes stack to be dry. 

When I returned back home, I asked my cook if her daughters had been scared during the storm. That thunder and lighting was so loud and close that I was jumpy.  Her daughters are about three and thirteen.   I would have been terrified if I were them.  But she said no, and laughed.  Apparently, if I understood her correctly, Indian children in general aren’t afraid of thunder and lightning.   I wonder if that could possibly be true.   I thought all kids were afraid of it at some point?

My husband and I decided to go to lunch and a movie for our Saturday event out.  I prefer lunch out over dinners out because I like to eat a lot.  It just makes more sense to eat a lot at lunch rather than dinner.  My husband loves me, so he agrees and we often go out to lunch rather than dinner.  Of course, being from the country, I call the biggest meal of the day dinner, so we are still going out for dinner.  I just call it lunch to satisfy my husband’s newfangled ideas…  

Anyhow, in movies, when there is a bomb, and they always save the day right when there is one second left before it blows up?   Our dinnertime time rain was like that.  We went down the elevator, to our lobby, jumped in our car, and it just started to downpour the second both car doors were shut.

When we got back home (the movie- I’ll write another blog about that), despite the rain, there was no puddle on our bedroom floor.  So who knows?   Maybe it was just a fluke.  

These showers have just been pre-monsoon.   The real stuff starts on Monday, apparently.  Of course, I’m flying back to Delhi on Monday, so I guess I’ll miss the good stuff. 

It is raining!!! Again!

And NOW I am impressed.  Much better this time around.  The thunder is nice and loud, the lightning bright, and rain is so thick it looks white, and loose plant material is flying everywhere.  Now this is a storm I can enjoy watching!  And jump. That thunder is LOUD!

Honestly, though, I feel bad, too.  For me, it is beautiful, cooling, and fun to experience.  I love watching thunderstorms, although as a kid I'd lay on my floor, cuddling my dog, afraid the massive walnut tree outside my bedroom window would fall in and kill me.   My dog was more fearful than me, though, so I could just pretend I was comforting her. 

But, for my driver, these storms can be a nightmare.  He told me that last night water leaked into his home.  He lives on the top floor of a two-story building.   The ground floor, I'm sure, floods, but his roof leaks.  He wanted to patch it today, but I kept him out shopping until nearly seven, and the rain started around eight-thirty.   I hope he could do it in an hour.  I hope it doesn't require time to dry.  He said it is a glue he puts in it.  It is something he must do every year, patching his roof.

His roof is made of corrugated sheet metal- four sheets of it, he told me today.  Last year, during the very first rain of the season, all four sheets blew away.  Everything in his home was ruined: TV, refrigerator, even his cell phone.  Much of their clothing blew away, too. 

It is so easy for me to smile and grin happily at the sheets of water pouring down.  I even brave the mosquitoes to watch.  I love the rain.  But now, a part of me just worries about my driver and cook.  In India, they consider themselves middle class.   They live in a one-room home, but here, it is considered middle class.   His roof still blew away. 

So what is it like for those who aren't fortunate enough to have sheet metal for a roof? Those people who have flimsy blue tarps, or are homeless?  I guess this weather is still better than freezing through a Chicago ice storm, but I can't imagine being trapped in this rain with no home.  

Wow!  The thunder is right overhead; I can see the lightning in my house. Well, not really, but it is reflecting off the kitchen wall in a way that makes me shake.  I am incredibly lucky to be in a big steel and concrete building....   I'm wimping out and shutting the balcony doors!  My husband's flight is due to land in Mumbai in just an hour.... I hope it stops soon so I can see him tonight....

It is raining!!!

I am so incredibly happy it is finally raining!    Monsoon season has arrived! 

It has been so hot recently that even I, a Michigander who claims she can withstand any weather and refuses to ever admit defeat by nature, thought it was too hot to even live.  I think Michiganders can only withstand large temperature fluctuations throughout the day.  70°F at 2 pm and then frost that night?  I can handle that.  But this constant heat is something we find unfamiliar and I only know how to combat weather with layers and snow boots, two things completely unnecessary in the current heat. 

For the past week, with the heat index between 106°F and 107°F, I have stared repeatedly at the weather report.  50% of rain, 50% of rain.  No rain, no rain.   Wednesday it finally rained, but so briefly I didn't notice it until I looked out of the balcony and saw that the cement driveway was wet.  

Our balcony.  Since arriving back from KL (which should be the forthcoming blog) I've found it way too hot.  I was desensitized by the relatively pleasant climate.  So, you’d say, just run the AC and eat a lot of ice cream.  Of course, our electricity bill runs in correlation with the temperature, and is also way too large.  Check on the ice cream, though. Indian electricity is like American taxes.  The more you use, the higher bracket, and the more you pay.   We are in the most expensive bracket, the '100 rupee bracket'.  If I could just get us in the bracket below '50 rupees', we'd be paying half as much per every unit of energy consumed.  Anyhow, because of our ridiculous electricity bill, I've been keeping the AC off and the balcony door open.

If you stand on our balcony, crane your neck to the right, and jump, you can see the Arabian Sea.  Otherwise you just see the tops of buildings.   But being so close to the sea does give us a pretty good breeze.  So each day I open the balcony doors, plop myself next to them, and doze in the heat.  

At least I can sleep inside.  For my cook/maid and driver, it is too hot inside their homes.  They have to stay outside during the day so they don't fry like an egg.   

So I have been using our balcony every day. Each day, when my maid comes in, I smile and tell her I hope it will rain.  Each day it doesn't.  Except for that tiny amount that neither of us noticed.   It is hard to notice the rain because the people of India reinforce their windows like they are trying to taunt the folks from Mission Impossible to sneak inside the home.  In our case, we have three 'layers' to our balcony.  The first layer (on the outside) is simple chicken wire, which is known as pigeon wire here.   It has worked fairly well.  So far, in four months, only two pigeons have wound up on our balcony. 

The next layer is metal, and painted sea foam green.  It is some decorative stuff that is apparently considered attractive in this country.  I find it a nuisance, ugly as sin, and useless.  What if I have to tie my sheets together and jump out of the window in case of a fire?  This stuff wouldn't even be allowed in the US.  At least they aren’t vertical black prison bars; they are wavy horizontal bars; I think it is supposed to represent ocean waves.  I just see it as a death trap. 

The last layer is a layer of mosquito netting.  I swear, one of those Mogul princesses who aren’t allowed to be seen by men could use our balcony for viewing.  No one can see in or out through that fine mesh.  But it is good, because it allows me to keep the balcony open, mosquito free, and everyone knows that I attract bugs better than a heat lamp.

Unfortunately, we have to shut the balcony doors at night.  I didn’t latch it properly, just once, and it swung open, waking us up.  Also, rats chewed on our bananas that night.   So the doors stay shut at night.  The rats and I have an agreement.  I get the balcony during the day, they rule at night.

Anyhow, back to the glorious rain.  It has now been raining for exactly 40 minutes.  My driver had insisted it wouldn’t rain today.  But as I was sitting next to my open balcony door and watching an episode of Huge (I love that show), I noticed that the sky was turning a distinctive green color that Michiganders know to either love or hate, depending on the current condition of the corn crop.  About ten minutes after the green appeared, the TV satellite went dead.   I started internally cheering, knowing the rain would soon be on the way.

I repeated walked to the edge of the balcony and stuck my nose, best I could, through the pigeon wire, wavy metal, and mosquito netting to see the ground.   Still no rain.  Still no rain.  And then, rain!   The kids who play cricket outside the apartment building started cheering.   The college students across the street ran for cover, and are still, 40 minutes later, standing in the same spot.  

It is dark now, and I can see a bit of lightning that I didn’t initially notice (I think the clouds are so thick they could block anything).  But it isn’t an extreme thunderstorm.  It was mostly just a very nice downpour that lasted forty-five minutes or so. 

The patch of dead-end road that my apartment building is stationed at is flooded.  It is hard to tell from this angle and the dark, but I’d guess maybe three inches of standing water.   I was hoping for more.  I really wish it wasn’t dark, and that it was at least a foot deep. I really want to go and run outside in it!  I didn’t buy ugly rubber (‘gummy’) boots for no reason! 

It is dark, so I can’t even stand on the balcony anymore.  The mosquitoes (yeah, the net isn’t that good) and the rats rule the night.   But now that I’ve shut the balcony, I sure wish the satellite would turn back on!

Yeah!! Monsoon season is finally here!!!  I love rain!

By the way, random fact of the day: did you know that it is so humid; my extraordinarily stick-straight hair is curling a bit?  That is humid!    

Hotel Delhi: Sunday & Departure

My husband’s work has taken him to New Delhi, and I joined him for a week of hotel adventures while he worked entirely too hard.  I had arrived at the hotel Monday and by Sunday we were desperately hoping for more time together; it was the first and only day of our weekend, and I was heading back to Mumbai on Monday.

We slept in and lazily woke at 11:30.  All week I had gazed wistfully at the dessert table of the restaurant buffet and my husband finally agreed to try it. We ate our overly expensive brunch and were not at all impressed. My husband, who doesn’t enjoy the lure of the chocolate table as much as I, was downright angry about the lack of food choices.  It was probably a great price for the people who drank all of the free alcohol and ate the exotic meats and seafood.  But we ate the cold pasta.  I had a lot of cheese. We had just woken up, so drinking seemed plain wrong. I did try coconut milk, fresh from the coconut with a hole punched in it.  It really looks a lot cooler than it tastes, because the taste was awful.  But the dessert buffet did have really good dark chocolate truffles. My endless apple pie quest, however,  failed as once again the apple crisp was terrible.  

After stuffing ourselves silly we promptly took a nap/worked for the rest of the day (note that the latter option only applied to my husband!).  In the evening, I woke and we ordered pizza.  Once again the delivery came and the pizza was quite cold.  Neither of us felt very well; we were both having hot and cold flashes, and our uneventful day ended with hot cocoa and going to bed early. 

I was leaving on Monday, so we both woke early and left the building together.  Incidentally, my bowl of choco flakes was much smaller that morning.   How can they serve me a bowl that was half the size as the previous bowls?  But I didn’t care, because I was going to the airport and I could soon eat American junk food.

My driver clearly wanted to practice his English, and the drive to the airport basically consisted of him pointing to cars and buses and telling me whether or not they ran on diesel or CNG.  The buses were nearly all new, and, despite not riding the buses in India, I was jealous of the shiny new green vehicles, just for the sake of Mumbai.  Delhi just makes Mumbai look second-class. 

I do believe the majority of my blog entries revolve around the airport, and, as I am a consistent person in nature, airport tales will dominate this one as well.  As you probably remember, to enter an airport in India you must have a printed piece of paper with your flight information on it.  Since the stupid hotel charged $75 a week for internet (which clearly I did not buy), and my photon (like a USA sprint card for internet) was acting up, my e-mail had been down the day before and I had been unable to print out that little gem of a paper.   So I, and the other unfortunates who didn’t have it in hand had to go stand in a small room outside of the airport and wait for the people behind the desks to take pity on us and print it.

I do mean that literally.  I don’t know what the people do in those small offices, but they could care less about printing that piece of paper for us.   I was flying GoAir, which is a lousy airline compared to Kingfisher.  Fly Kingfisher if you come here.  The employees wear all red and are super nice and cheerful.  Even red shoes. That is cool, no wonder they seem so happy.  GoAir is like flying in America circa today.  Kingfisher is like flying in America back when it was cool to fly (minus the smoking, of course).  At Kingfisher, as soon as you enter the airport, one nice employee takes your bags and you follow, empty handed, to the ticket counter, and they print off that magical slip of paper that is wrapped around the handle of your checked baggage that safely directs your bag from Delhi to Mumbai.  Meanwhile, immediately upon entering the building, another employee took your precious piece of paper with the flight information on it and prints the ticket.  The second employee brings you your ticket right in time for the baggage claim sticker to be placed on it.   And you are done!  No line, ever (well, so far for me), with Kingfisher.

But, alas, I was flying GoAir.  I should really stop doing that, as my husband’s company was paying for the flight.  But I picked a good time, not a good airline.  And so I was stuck in that little sweaty room with three employees behind a desk.  They were doing something, I am sure, I’m just not sure what.  When I walked in, customer A being helped by employees one and two.   Employee three was busy being yelled at by customer B. I stood around, for about five minutes, waiting for either employee one or two to stop helping customer A and help me instead. The conversation between employee three and customer B got interesting and I made an active point to listen.  Of course I was eavesdropping, although I don’t think it counts as eavesdropping if you can hear the shouting of customer B from fifty feet away.  Their conversation went something like this:

Customer B: “You told before me you’d have it in five minutes!” 

Employee three:  “it will just be another five minutes”

Customer B: “Don’t tell me five minutes if it is really twelve minutes!”  (Yes, he really picked the number 12 while yelling).

Customer B:  “Or twenty minutes!  Don’t tell me five minutes if it is really twenty minutes!”

Employee three just stammers….

Fortunately, at that point, the male employee behind the counter decided I was hot (it is the curse of blonde hair in India), wanted to flirt with me, and thus took my flight information and printed the paper for me.  A full minute of stupid banter later, he finally handed me the ticket from the printer.  I happily left, customer B still shouting.  

Of course, the curse of GoAir was not over; I still had to go into the actual airport building.   Once I showed my passport and printed piece of paper to the security officer (four people cut in front of me before I pushed my way up to him), I went to the GoAir ticket counter to check my bag and print my ticket.   Yes, this is all very repetitive, isn’t it?  Why couldn’t the piece-of-paper-printer guy have just given me an actual ticket instead?   Regardless, I’m used to the process now.  

But remember, I was on GoAir, not Kingfisher.  So I went up to my counter.  The counter on my left had a guy yelling, too.  But he was yelling in Hindi so I couldn’t eavesdrop.

I was quite early, so after my bag was successfully dropped off (no yelling by me!), I made a beeline to the bookstore.  I love shopping at airports.  My husband’s life goal with airports is to spend as little time as possible in them.  Mine is just the opposite.  It is a great place to window shop.  And book shop.  I buy so many books at the airport.   Plus, as I said earlier, I get to eat American junk food.    The ‘before going through the security line’ bookstall was pretty small, and my ongoing quest to find a new copy of 2 States was denied.  I had given my original copy away to an Aunt, and I hate not having books in my actual possession.  Even if I don’t read it again for a year, I need to know that all of my books are in my home where I can lovingly stare at them.  You never know what book craving will hit next.   I’m sure I could just go to a book store in Mumbai and buy it, but then what would I do at the airport?   I fly nearly ever week, so I know that I will find it at some point.  

I went through the security line.   The line was short and no one cut in front of me.  Usually, that would be the end of the security line discussion. BUT, I was utterly shocked to see that the security line wasn’t segregated by sex!  I thought that in India it was a hard and fast rule to have the males on one side, the females on the other.  But we all went through the same line.  Go Delhi!  I like you more and more.  Of course, it did lose the advantage of the super short line for women.  But I’ll go for equal rights over the shortened line any day. 

 I was still frisked by a woman, though.   In America, the word ‘frisk’ is mostly reserved for drunk, shirtless men thrown against their car in an episode of Cops. But here, you get frisked each and every time you are in the airport.  They feel you up so much that they find the chapstick in your tight jeans pocket.  Normally the women who do the frisking are serious, don’t smile, and scare me just a teensy bit.  But I really like the woman who frisked me this time.  I think she did her job about as well as I would.  She first tripped over a chair and fell against the x-ray machine.  She wasn’t embarrassed or angry, she just broke out into cute giggles.   She straightened up, brought me behind the curtain and continued to giggle nonstop while she waved the wand around my body.  It was much preferred to the scary women. 

As someone who uses the restroom at least once an hour, I of course do that first thing when I get through security.  I then window shopped the entire terminal (it was quite small) and read for an hour before deciding the choco flakes had completely worn off and it was time for some good old fast food. 

I selected KFC, because sometimes there is just nothing more satisfying than chicken strips and honey mustard sauce.  Well, no honey mustard sauce here, unfortunately… they had cold salsa and ketchup, though.  I saved the ketchup for my Freedom fries and threw away the salsa.  A nice guy from Tibet sat at my table, and we had a good conversation about his ethnicity.  He lived in Toronto, so he confused everyone- was he Chinese, or Indian from the subcontinent of India?  When he had long black hair, everyone thought he was Indian from the continents of the Americas. Anyhow, it was very nice to have a conversation with a stranger who just treated you as a human being rather than something to creepily stare at. 

But I got the creepy stares, too.  After I ate, I sat and opened my kindle.   A guy was staring at me SO intently; I had THOUGHT he was looking at the kindle. I was about to offer it to him, in case he wanted to see what it was all about, when he left.  He came back a minute later with a friend.  “Can we take your picture?”   “NO,” I said emphatically.  I buried my head back in the book.   The woman sitting next to me gave me a dirty look.  What the heck was the dirty look for?  Am I supposed to say yes?   I am in an airport, for goodness sakes.  You are all rich people who can afford to fly and obviously have seen a white person before.  Just leave me alone.     I continued to stare pointedly at my book.  After a minute or so of intense staring, the woman turned back to her family.  Weird.  

I had an aisle seat and the flight was smooth.  Of course, I was in India, and pushy people rule on the airplane.  Someone, and I still can’t quite figure out HOW, the two people next to me, that is to say, the window seat guy and the middle seat guy, both managed to get off of the plane BEFORE me.   Seriously, how on earth did they both manage to squeeze out like that?  There must be some dark arts employed here.  

In my notes (as I’m writing this over a week later), I had written a funny phrase that I saw sometime along this trip.  The phrase was SO good, I didn’t write where and when I actually saw it.  Clearly, it impressed me so much I thought it would be ingrained in my memory forever.  Regardless, I now have no idea where the heck I saw it.  Maybe it was on the airplane, maybe it was in the airport.   But here is the phrase:  

Caution door may operate.

Thanks for the warning!  I wasn’t sure if the door functioned properly as a door or not, but now we do indeed know that the door is in fact a door, and not a painted door like some Wile E. Coyote v. Road Runner adventure.   Thanks, sign maker! 

I landed in Mumbai and went out to get my cab.  It was HOT.  Now, before, I’ve been saying, “I live in India, I expect it to be hot, blah, blah, blah”.  I hate hot weather, by the way.  Everyone who knows me knows that, temperature-wise, summer is my least favorite season.  But I had been bracing myself all year, and so I’ve managed to delude myself into thinking it wasn’t that hot.  But a week in Delhi, with no humidity, and air-conditioning that I wasn’t paying for had unconditioned my body.  It was HOT.  Darn it.  Michiganders are highly embarrassed to be bested by the weather.  We think we can handle anything.  My skills are slipping.

It was so hot; my cab driver didn’t even stand outside to wait for me. Usually they stand at the airport exit with a little sign with your name on it.   Nope.  I couldn’t find my name.  So I called him (they always text you the number of your driver).  He just told me to go wait at the pick-up location and told me the last four numbers of his license plate.  By the way, you don’t say ‘license plate’ in India.  It is your ‘car number’.  My driver is endlessly correcting me on this.    

So somehow, instead of him waiting in the hot sun, I stood there, sweat dripping between my legs.  I mentally prep myself not to tip him for being lazy and staying in the car.   He pulls up ten minutes later.  He can’t speak a lick of English, despite that being a requirement when we book the cars.   Even worse, his car looks and smells exactly like how you’d expect a car to look and smell in Jamaica.  He had a tropical towel draped over the seats, and the entire car smelled like that Cucumber Melon scent from Bath and Body Works.  I can’t stand odors of any sort (from BO to too much perfume) so it was really not my favorite.  I get carsick easily, so any odor is really not helpful.     I sat there, mentally trying to decide if the overwhelming perfume or BO was better.  I’m not sure. But I’m getting used to the BO, at least, in this country.

I tried to give him my address.  I kept saying, “Bandra” and “Carter Road” as slowly and clearly as possible.  He had no idea what I was saying. He called up a boss/friend/whomever and I said the same.  I pass the phone back to the driver, who listens.  “Oh!  Carter Road” he exclaims, understanding the word when spoken with an Indian accent.   Who knows?  I really try to say stuff with an Indian accent, but it is hard.  

We drove home.  I gave him a tip, anyway.  I’m a creature of habit.