Mosquito Bites

I sincerely hope that every child in America (well, the English-speaking world) has read Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar.  For those of you who grew up under a rock, or in a foreign country, they are short stories about school children in a crazy 30-floor school. It is sideways because it was supposed to be one floor with thirty classrooms, not thirty floors with one classroom each.  Builder’s mistake.  Of course, there was no 19^th floor. Mrs. Zarves teaches the class on the 19^th floor.  There is no Mrs. Zarves.   I still find myself thinking about the various stories now, even years later.  I’m fairly certain I can still quote (or misquote as it may be) significant portions of the books.  It was that good. 

One of my favorite chapters, of course, included a story about ice cream.  Each character had their own ice cream flavor.  By that, I mean, if I gave you a scoop of Emily ice cream, you would look at it, and say, ‘this tastes like Emily’ and know exactly why. I always wondered what flavor I would be….  The mean kids tasted bad, so I always hoped I could prove I was a good kid by the flavor that tastes like me.  But of course, you can’t taste your own flavor.  It tastes like nothing.  Another chapter consisted of a kid who could count every single hair on his head!  I would always try and quit.  I don’t see how you could even do it to yourself.   Someone else would have to do it for you. 

Anyhow, this morning (and this entry takes place, time wise, within the entry Back in Delhi),and so many other mornings before, as I was brushing my hair and wondering how many strands were on the brush, another story was stuck in my mind.  The students were learning math, and one of the students couldn’t do it.  She was too busy scratching at her itchy mosquito bites. 

The story progresses such that the teacher magically knows how many bites are on each limb of the itchy kid.  So they do math to add up the number of mosquito bites and the bites are turned into numbers.    At the end, she was so busy having fun doing math, none of them itched anymore. 

One of the best book lines comes at the end of that chapter (paraphrasing and probably slightly misquoting) “I’m glad we were doing math; I could never spell mosquito.”  I definitely remember mosquito being in italics, and being confused as to the reasoning of the italics.  Maybe it was the first time I saw italics.  The funny part, besides the line itself, was that I still couldn’t spell mosquito, and I thought that it just looked like a funny word.  Like moustache.  I always thought that was pronounced ‘mouse tach E’ and confused people, I am sure, whenever we played that awesome board game “Guess Who?” and actually used the little game cards rather than making up our own questions. 

Anyhow, back to the massive amounts of mosquitoes bites.   I’m sitting in a hotel in Delhi (a different one, this one is much better than the last one), and after my shower, I realized I look like I have the chicken pox.

Honestly, I don’t actually remember what I looked like when I had the pox.  I was too busy scratching myself.  But I currently have so many bites and bite scars that I am covered in little tiny red and brown circles.  Between the bites and moles (thanks for that bit of genetics, dad), I looked just like an infected kid.  Spotty (in the American sense, not in the British acne sense) all over. 

 I was at a hotel near the airport, well over a month ago, and was attacked by massive mutant (well, probably not really mutants, but who knows) mosquitoes. I was wearing a dress, and they covered my legs.   They were incredibly itchy, and I still have slightly purple welts covering my legs as a result.  They are about the size of a dime.   Late last week I suddenly noticed new bites covering my torso.  Not my arms, or any exposed part of my body.  But they must have actually been flying around in my shirt.    I even have one smack in the middle of my armpit, which is really something when that one starts to itch.   Maybe I have fleas.  Who knows?

Anyhow, I’m either becoming immune, or the later bites are from babies, because I’m doing a better job of not scratching them until they bleed.  Especially the ones that I can’t see.   Still, I look like a seven-year old kid with the chicken pox.  Yeah for me.  

Censorship and Movie Theatres OR The Hangover, Parts I & II

I like giving the blog entries Rocky and Bullwinkle-like titles.  As a child, I was always so confused that the episodes would have two titles.   Was I supposed to pick one?  Would there be a quiz after the episode, and I would have to figure out which title was ‘real’?  How was I supposed to know?  Both seemed to fit to me!  Or, more likely, I didn’t understand the titles at all and neither title made sense…. These were the things I worried about as a child.  Life was way easier then.  No worries about Pakistan knocking at your door.  

My husband and I decided to go to the movies a few weeks back.  It was our second time going, and we like to go to a massive movie theatre that puts every single theater in America to shame.   We were going to see The Hangover Part II, and to prep myself I rented The Hangover on the night before.

I’m glad I had the movie, because the massive storm would have kept the satellite down, anyway (for those of you confused with my lateness in blog writing, that puts this entry, time-wise, right after those “It is raining” entries). 

So I started to watch the movie, ready to sit back and laugh.  Except it wasn’t the movie!  It was CENSORED.   Such a dirty, bad word to Americans.  I was so upset.  Why do they even let people watch the movie here if they cut sections out?  I guess that I’ve heard of such things, but I think of censorship in the modern day as something that happens in China when people do Google searches.  I didn’t know it would happen with a movie rental in India.  Two scenes that I definitely noticed missing were the scenes where Heather Graham is feeding her baby, and the fight scene when Ken Jeong jumps out of the car trunk.  Maybe there were more that I didn’t explicitly notice were missing. 

Now, I only recall a few cases of censorships  (to use that term very loosely) that I distinctly remember being angry about in America.  That masterpiece set of books, His Dark Materials, by Phillip Pullman, is censored in America.  The first book, The Northern Lights (edited to The Golden Compass in the US) has some scenes, deemed too ‘adult’ cut out in the American version.   I think this really angers me because I haven’t read the real version.  

Just like I still haven’t read all of the real Nancy Drew books.  Did you know that the earlier books were all rewritten, starting in 1959? It is a pain in the butt to find the originals.  There is a publisher, selling them for about $30 a pop, but check your book- if it has 20 chapters, it is a re-write.  The originals had 25. I keep a detailed list of those books, so that each time I go to a garage sale I find the real ones.   Not exactly censorship, but annoying. 

Plus all the ‘Americanizing’ of the Harry Potter books really frustrates me, but I think it is common knowledge that it is done and easy enough to get the British copies.   But it wasn’t exactly censorship; the majority of it was just changing ‘telly’ to ‘television’ and so on.  As if part of the fun of reading Roald Dahl wasn’t the use of (to Americans) funny words.  Apparently the American book industry thinks we’ve gotten dumber since Dahl and can’t handle the British English. 

Oh, yeah.  America also censors all of the Degrassi TV shows (A Canadian show), and won’t even show the episode where Manny gets an abortion.

Anyhow, censorship is annoying and controlling and upsets me.    It should have, at the very least, made some statement how this is an incomplete version of the movie; parts deemed inappropriate for the Indian audience were removed.  That way the public knows they are being cheated, at least.  But it seems wrong and backhanded to not inform the public that they are getting a watered-down version of the movie.  

The country is lately obsessed with editing the contents of the television.  Now, at the bottom of TV episodes (which are already edited), a running marquee bar gives a number to call/email if you find the contents of the program inappropriate. 

So after my anger watching the edited version of The Hangover, my husband and I went to watch The Hangover Part II at the fancy pants movie theatre. 

The theatre is spectacular.   The squashy purple chairs are exactly how Dumbledore would design movie chairs. They are big and comfy and even recline.  The stadium seating is very good; no one ever blocks your vision.   You can buy your seat in advance, so there is no reason to get there early to pick out the perfect seat before someone else takes it. 

It was cheap, too. We bought the ‘normal’ seats, and it was only $5/person.  The ‘special’ seats are just oversized versions of the ‘normal’ seats.  They are located in the back two rows.  But they were sold out, anyway. 

Now, the only bad part of about watching a movie here is the soundtrack.  It is stuck on super-duper, extra loud.  I think next time I’ll bring earplugs and listen to it. I’m sure I could still hear just fine.  After the movie my husband and I had to shout (no joke) just to hear each other.  

Interestingly enough, before the movie, everyone is asked to stand and they put an image of the Indian flag on the screen and play the national anthem, just like we do at sporting events.  I wonder why we don’t do that in the US?   Everyone is very respectful during the anthem, too, not like the annoying Americans who no longer deem it necessary to remove their cap and shut up.

Anyhow, after the anthem and previews, the movie started.  I immediately notice that Zach Galifianakis’s character has a copy of Jurassic Park in his room (my all time favorite). It is subtle, but my eyes are trained to recognize that font.   Later, at the wedding, his character uses a Jurassic Park quote, “We spared no expense.”  I’m fairly certain I was the only person in the room to catch that tiny tribute to Jurassic Park, but it made me quite happy to notice it.

What about censorship?  Well, it is hard for me to tell, since I haven’t seen the real version.   There was no nudity; the scenes where all of the male body parts are shown were all blurred.  I’m guessing they weren’t blurred in the US.  But how am I to tell?   It isn’t as though that is exactly something I want to see, but it is how the movie creators want us to see it, so it just seems so wrong to chop it up and blur their movie vision.

Anyhow, another unique thing about movies in India is that they all have intermissions.  Now, the only movie I had known to have an intermission was the Sound of Music, because all of the VHS copies I’ve ever owned still include it in the re-sale.  But that movie is long, over three hours, right?  It makes sense.   But really, it made no sense to put an intermission in a movie that was significantly less than two hours long.   Just disruptive and annoying.    At the first movie we saw, I actually started giggling out loud when the intermission started.   I really, really wonder if they do it with those 90 minute Disney movies.  

The point of the intermission is, as far as I can tell, because of the vendors. Like a baseball game in the US, vendors come into the theatre and try to convince you to buy even more junk food than the food you bought already before the movie.  Again, might make sense when the movie is over three hours long, but seems silly now.   I didn’t see a single person use the vendors; although I did see a couple of people leave during intermission and come back with popcorn. 

Anyhow, overall, we enjoy the movie-going experience, although after the movie you aren’t let back into the lobby (you have to exit the building directly) so maybe the intermission is good for bathroom breaks, at least. The movie theatre bathroom is a heck of a lot nicer than the bathroom outside of the theatre.  

Was it censored? I guess I have to go back to the US to find out….

 

Making Friends

I’m fairly certain that I am bad at making friends on my own. That isn’t to say I don’t have friends.  I just have never gone out with the purpose of making friends.  There was no need before.    

Think about it.

As a kid growing up in our small hometown, our parents had already been friends.  Some of them had even gone to school together.  So we just continue that legacy.   We were friends before kindergarten had even started (or in my case, young fives).  In college, my best friends were the people in the same residence hallway as myself.   It was hot outside and one guy had by far the best fan.  Seriously, that fan was amazingly.  It was the only room in the hallway that wasn’t 90 degrees.  Instant friendship between a hallway that lasted for all four years.  In graduate school, your friends are the other students.  You have to be friends with your softball team and officemates, right?  So truly, it wasn’t until I moved to India that I had to learn how to make friends from scratch.   I’m terrible at it.

My first friend (Friend E) that I made was actually arranged by our parents, back in Michigan.  So again, not my work at all.   My second friend, Friend N, began our friendship via an e-mail inquiring in to the history of my last name.   So I’m still a big fat zero on making friends by my own initiative.  I have friends; I just didn’t make them on my own. I tried, a bit.  I invited a teacher friend to dinner; she refused.  I joined an expat group; I didn’t find anything in common.  I tried to do coffee with a girl a couple of times, it never happened.   Am I just bad at making friends? 

My first friend has since moved; I mentioned her in a few blogs: Coincidences, The Hamburger Hangover, and briefly in Back in Delhi.  She, her husband, and her housemates were a lot of fun but are now back in the good old US of A. 

Our very last adventure together was great.  She finally got me on a train.  I cheated a bit, and had my driver drop us off at the train station.  It was a Friday and so we had to dodged our way around praying Muslims (Friday is their holy day) and pushed ourselves to the ticket line.  I asked if we were riding 1^st class; it was only a dollar or so.  She scoffed and told me I could handle the 5 rupee 2^nd class train car. 

Now, I’ve been on plenty of trains before; I commuted to school on the Metra Electric line for many years, and always take Amtrak or NICTD home to Michigan.  Of course, when visiting friends in Chicago I’d use all aspects of the CTA, including the L lines.  So I figured I could handle this train.  But what I didn’t expect was how nice it was!

Now, Friend E picked a good, mid-day, no rush hour time to ride the train.  In India, there are also female only cars, so we didn’t have to interact with the creepy eyes of the male portion of the population.  We climbed aboard our car.  It wasn’t too full.  Maybe there wasn’t a seat available, but there was still (in Indian terms) plenty of space. 

The car had open windows that generated a great breeze while the train moved.  The blue seats were bench style and occupied by women clad in saris and salwar kameezes.  The women in jeans were standing.  Just like riding the Red Line at night in Chicago, vendors walk through the train selling items such has barrettes.  One woman had a basket of rags/scarves plopped on the floor to buy. 

I didn’t see any trash, which was shocking given that trash is everywhere in India, but even more shocking was the lack of smell.  I’ve been on an awful lot of trains and I’d say the usual odor of a full train is a nice mixture of urine and body odor.  But neither was present, so we just leaned back, made fish faces at a cute little kid, and enjoyed the breeze. 

We got off a half hour or less later.  We wandered around downtown, window-shopping our way to the Colaba Causeway.  We were shopping for gifts for Friend E to take home.  We looked at beautiful old signs and photos of Mumbai back when it was Bombay and before the invention of such newfangled things as cars.  Eventually we reached the crowded Causeway and began bargaining for deals.  She is much, much better at it than me.   

In the end, I got a beautiful multi-colored scarf, which began unraveling immediately upon wearing; a wrap skirt decorated with rhinos and elephants that had ties that were too small to wear it properly; and a long dress/shirt that bled upon hand-washing for the first time.  I think I’m going to stick to clothing items that cost more than $2 next time I go shopping…  Despite the later troubles with my items (no word on whether her gifts were appreciated) we had a great time and eventually stopped at McDonald’s for a snack. 

It was my first time in McDonald’s India, so I was eager to try it out.  We walked up to the restaurant, which was on the second floor of a building, found ourselves some paper crowns, and ordered from employees clad in McDonald’s backpacks.  We ordered the potato wedges; her because she liked them and me because I’d never had potato wedges from McDonald’s before.  They were pretty good. 

I, of course, am constantly desirous of ice cream and chocolately things, so we went back down the stairs to the ground level to order ice cream.   I got a sundae with brownie and chocolate sauce.  Yum!  Friend E is only the second person in the history of human beings to not like chocolate, the first person being, oddly enough, the guy with the amazing fan from the second paragraph above.  She went to the same college, lived in the same dorm, and also liked the chicken broccoli bake in the cafeteria…. coincidence?  Needless to say, she didn’t get a sundae. 

We continued on our merry way; my driver came down to pick us up and take us to each adventure; we went to exchange some of her books and exchange a baby shower gift our friend K had been given.   We were stuck squarely in rush hour traffic on the return ride home (I guess we should have taken the train both ways, but it was monsoon season so it seems like a good idea to have a car) but chatted happily until we reached Bandra.

That weekend we did one more couple’s dinner, complete with homemade chapatti making, before they left.  But not before Friend J, Friend E’s husband, showed me how to remove the fuel from the awesome gun lighter I had bought my dad as a father’s day gift.  Thanks, Friend J!  Now I can finally get those home safely. 

Friend E and I had only met in March or so and she was gone in a couple of months.  But a month or so before she left I had made my second friend, Friend N.   Friend N is fascinating.  Originally born in Iran she is now an American citizen who met her Indian-soon-to-be husband in the US.  The first time we went out we met for coffee.  We both ordered desserts instead of coffee.  Match made in heaven.  We ended up talking for hours and even have matching cell phones (somehow that seems important). 

Friend N and I next had a massage date. We went to Aroma Thai, which gives the most amazing massages.  It focuses on your feet, but our 90 minutes massage was from head-to-toe and definitely included the best back massage I have had since arriving in India. 

Friend N and I kept up a constant stream of chatter throughout the 90 minutes.  We are both good talkers and it was great to just chat about life with her.  She is going through the process of marrying an India, much like I went through the process of marrying an American with Indian-born parents, so we can really relate, although it was much, much easier for me.  I just had to deal with relatives in two countries (USA & India) and she has family around the globe. 

After our massages we went for the longest lunch break in the history of my life, chatting for hours over mango salads and dim sum.  For how long did we enjoy ourselves?  I drank two liters of water during that lunch.  Eventually we realized we had to go, but our next lunch date is tomorrow. 

Maybe I haven’t done a good job of making friends, as my mom started friendship one and Friend N completely initiated friendship two, but I really have enjoyed both friendships and I hope that I am better at keeping friends than making them!

 

Back in Delhi

Well, as my husband’s never-ending case progresses, I am back in Delhi for another week of non-adventures.  My last blog series on Delhi was so boring I even had trouble writing it.  Did you really care that I ate choco flakes each and every morning, and that the bowl was smaller on the last day? Didn’t think so.  So, this time around, I’m going to try (keyword is try) to be less verbose (can you use verbose for writing?) and squeeze a whole week into one entry. No minute details on the showerhead.  Again, the keyword is TRY.

I am not fond of flying (though I am fond of window shopping at airports), especially in India when I am surrounded by mostly men (some of whom take photos of me, even in the airport) and women who can only be regarded as pushy.  The flight in was no exception- I got into a death stare match with one woman who kept trying to push in front of me in the security line.  I eventually won.  Being a foot taller helps, although she was a foot wider.

I do have to say that her pushiness was balanced by a very nice woman who switched seats with my husband so that we could sit together.  Therefore, the total grumpiness level of flying was a wash.  The flight in was at the crack of dawn, 6:05 am, but it was Kingfisher (so I got the awesome pre-flight juice box that oddly elevates my happiness) and I was sitting next to my husband so I felt very content indeed.  

My husband snoozed, and I read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.   The guy next to me was either trying to (1) touch my leg or (2) realized he was making me uncomfortable and thus became uncomfortable himself when he kept putting his arm over the armrest onto my side and then quickly removing it as I moved my entire body as far away from him as possible.  

But anyhow, back to the book.   I had tried, once, to watch the movie. I believe it might have been on the flight to Mumbai from Chicago, actually.  I found it incredibly boring, and didn’t last more than five or ten minutes.    But I have always been a reader, and was enjoying the book, although I don’t understand why it was necessary to use so many swear words.  I guess she just truly speaks like that, but she does seem to have a bit of a potty mouth. 

I got the book from Friend E.   She just moved back to the US, and she and her husband are even cheaper than me, because she was trying to sell back all of her already used, illegally copied books to the street sellers.  (You buy a lot of books on the street here, take them home, and then realize that the page numbering is completely off and that the book is probably a copy and that the poor author didn’t get any money for your purchase.  It is really annoying, and now that I know about it, I know not to buy a book from anywhere but the real, not-under-a-tarp, bookshops.   But it takes a few lessons before you learn it, simply because, as far as I know, such a practice doesn’t even exist in the US.) Even my driver laughed at her when he found out what she was doing.  So I squeezed Eat Pray Love from her stack before she sold it.  She wound up getting maybe $5 for the stack.   Maybe she can buy a happy meal at the airport.

So now that I have the book, I was happily reading it while sipping on my Kingfisher juice box, sitting next to my husband.  That is the good life.   The slightly unpleasant aspect of life arrived when we landed at the Delhi airport and our driver was nowhere to be seen.  Let me take a moment to remind everyone how wonderful the Delhi airport is to me.  It is so empty.   It is so clean.  It smells nice.  The bathrooms are good.   Did I mention it is empty and clean?   I am very content while walking along those flat moving walkways.    But once we got outside, and didn’t see a sign with our name on it, a tiny bit of stress started.

Stress for my husband, not for me.   I had nothing to do or see.  But he had a meeting and he, naturally, didn’t want to be late for it.   A few phone calls later and he made contact with the car rental shop.  No one at the rental place speaks English, at least not well, despite the fact that every single person there tells us they are proficient in it.  After a lot of empty threats, finally the company calls the driver and tells him to mosey along and pick us up.   A few minutes later he casually saunters up and unrolls his piece of paper with my husband’s name on it.   We are finally in the car, but the ten or fifteen minutes wasted waiting on him has now put us squarely in rush-hour traffic.  

Eventually, after a few more calls, the driver figured out where he was supposed to go and dropped my husband off at his client’s office.   Then I was dropped off at the hotel.  Before I left, the driver gave me his card.   I don’t think I’ll be calling him.

I wasn’t very happy with the first hotel in Delhi, so my husband and I are trying a new hotel this time around.   The last hotel was very pretty, but the food was incredibly expensive and the rooms just smelled awful.   Plus, don’t forget that the first room they put us in had carpet.   On the walls.  There are some things in life that are just too difficult to forgive, and carpeted walls are one of those things.   

Now, this hotel was beautiful, too.  I have absolutely zero knowledge of architecture and painting or styles.  My knowledge has solely been picked up from garage-saleing with my mom and dad.  Mom will pick something up, say, “oh I love this art deco piece.” (By the way, it is always art deco that she likes; now you know what to buy her for Christmas.  That or paintings of Dutch stuff.)   Well, the constant flea marketing plus one architecture tour on the Chicago River years and years ago are the extent of my knowledge about style.  So, now that you understand how well versed I am in the topic, let me say that the style of this hotel is Art Deco meets the 1960s meets India.  Got it?  I think it is awesome, and I love the appearance.  The other hotel just seemed plain after the crazy carpeting in this room.  

Of course, the vinyl marbling in our bathroom horrifies the geologist in me.   But that is another story. 

So much like Mr. Darcy’s little sister Georgiana was determined to be pleased when she first met Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, I was determined to be pleased with this hotel and thus adore it.   Sure the rooms are a bit smaller, and it took 27 minutes (no joke) to check in, but those were minor details compared to the pretty pink couches in the lobby and the fact that the room smelled like…get this…. Nothing!  Exactly the way I wanted it to smell.   So I was very pleased indeed.   

Of course, as per any Indian hotel, all of the employees were overly nice and concerned about my well-being.  The bellhop even insisted upon showing me how to use the remote control, and jokingly pointed out the beer in the mini-fridge, to which I replied I prefer wine, allowing him a giggle.  I think they are often treated as non-entities, so I always try to be nice and smile and treat the hotel employees as humans.   Because, in fact, they are human. 

So there I was, in my nice Art Deco-1960’s-Indian-style room. 

Throughout the week, I explored the building.  Heck, it is a small building; I explored all of it on day one.  The first thing I found (naturally) was a lovely bakery inside of the lobby.   Each day I allowed myself one cake found them all to be delicious.   Yum!  By Thursday the cake employee was offering suggestions because he felt like I favored the chocolate varieties too much.  So I tried the rasmali cheesecake (if people remember the white dessert served at my wedding, that was rasmali, but not in cheesecake form).  It was the first cake I didn’t really like.  My officemate in Chicago makes much better cheesecake. By that point of course, the cake dude recognized me and slipped a piece of chocolate with “To the Best Guest, Emily” written on it.  He told me he’d be gone the next day to take an exam.  I wished him luck, and he got slightly teary eyed and told me that no one, not even his own girlfriend, had wished him luck.  I was the first.  Isn’t that odd?  Is it less common in India to tell people good luck?  In America it is a phrase everyone says automatically without even thinking about it.  Or maybe he was pulling my leg.  I don’t know. It was semi awkward.  I do, of course want him to do well. I have no reason not to. But I also didn’t want to sit and hear all about the subject, either. I never saw him again, so I don’t know how he did on the exam. 

The hotel is rather small, less than ten floors, but it had a nice gym and pool, which I never used.

On Monday, my husband’s team decided to do dinner at the hotel restaurant, so that was fun.  In total, there were eight of us dining, including an adorable toddler son of one member of the team.  It was fun to wear something other than gym shorts and a tank, meet them (it was the first day on the case for a pair of them), and interact with people again.  I don’t want to get rusty in my socializing skills!   I had a great time, but I was amazed that, after waking up at the crack of dawn, they could take the time to enjoy a meal for two hours, leave at midnight, and still do more work.  

The tomato soup was really good, by the way.  In fact, their breakfast of tomatoes stuffed with spinach and cheese was really good, too.  I ate more tomatoes this week than I have in a month before.   I guess I’m on a tomato kick.

I am also on a mediation kick.  What?  I’m sure every single person who read this has the same reaction.  Sure, I’ve meditated a tiny bit before, at the end of a Flow class at the gym, or at the end of a video session of Yoga Booty Ballet.   But I’m not exactly good at it, or found it an integral part of my life.   

But what I AM good at is being convinced by TV commercials.   You have no idea how much I want this darn orange scooter they keep showing on TV.   My husband rightfully laughs at me for craving everything I see on the TV commercials.  At least I never bought Fair and Lovely skin cream.  I’m immune to that one commercial, I guess….

Anyhow, the combining factors of an ingrown toenail that is really painful (and thus I don’t want to wear shoes) and the fact that she mediates a lot in Eat Pray Love convinced me to try it.  I sat on the floor in the comfy hotel robe (I’m a sucker for trying that one at each and every single hotel) and started with one of the mantras mentioned in the book, “I am that”.   I made it six minutes before I had to uncross my legs and re-cross them the other way.   Another four minutes.    Ten minutes for the first session wasn’t too bad, I guess.  I tried it again on Monday evening and made it twelve minutes and then seven on the next leg.  I guess I’m getting better.  I also switched from “I am that” to “I am at peace and I am happy” which seemed to work much better for me. 

The next day I managed twelve minutes without moving, then fifteen that night.  It was no longer my legs that made me twitch, just my aching back and lack of concentration.  

So on Wednesday, I decided to remedy the back problem with a massage.  Well, who am I kidding, I just wanted a massage. But I really do have a lot of back pain.   It had been almost completely gone until I started flying (and thus carrying a heavy backpack with my computer) frequently. 

Now, massages here aren’t quite like the US.  I feel like anyone could just be hired off the street to do a massage; it is a lot more rubbing and a lot less pressure, no matter how hard you tell them to do it.  In other words, they aren’t very good.  But they are cheap, and I figured it was a nice hotel so it would probably be a lot better than the woman who does them in the gym, because she was terrible.   Ironically enough, as I am proofreading this, that woman called. I ignored it.  She always tries to sell me chocolates or her sister (as a maid) when she gives me massages.  It annoys me.  One free one and one paid one was enough. 

I’d tried one other kind of massage before in India, a Thai massage.   If you look at pictures, it sounds really cool- they put you in yoga poses, etc.  But really it isn’t cool at all.  They do very few poses (mainly just the one on any image for a Thai massage).  The rest is the same low-key rubbing.  

Anyhow, I went down to the hotel spa (honestly, I was actually looking for a haircut, but I couldn’t find that) and signed up for a back massage.  $20.  It was about the same as before, but she did do some nice thing to my neck that sent chills down my back.  I (probably naively) translate chills and pain as to doing a good massage.   So that part was okay.  

The end of the massage was funny; she use oil instead of lotion, so I was supposed to shower.  Fortunately, she got the picture that I was modest and left the room so I could do it in peace.   I turned on the faucet, but I couldn’t get the showerhead to work.  Very clearly there was a knob to pull or turn.  I twisted and pulled to no avail.  I decided to try the movable handheld showerhead instead of the fixed showerhead.   I twisted and turned that knob, too.  I just couldn’t get either to budge!  Finally I soaped up, squatted lower than one would for the limbo, and knelt under the very low faucet to wash my back.  I couldn’t reach my neck, but I just kept my hair up and took care of it when I got back to the hotel room.

When I exited the massage room all four female employees, plus one male were just standing there, staring at me.  Not in a creepy Indian-man stare, just they were all obviously bored and hanging out together.  But it was still awkward to walk out and see all of them, especially because I promptly forgot which one gave me the massage (I know, that is terrible, but you are on your stomach, you don’t really see their face much and everyone was dressed alike, pretty, and had black hair up in the same style) and just hoped it was the one who gave me the glass of water.

So did the massage actually do anything for my back (the theory being that if it doesn’t hurt so much when I’m trying to sit and meditate, it would be easier)?  Nope.  Well, yes and no.  My back did feel much better.  But when I wasn’t focusing on my back pain, my mind wandered from my mantra to the idea of getting a haircut.  I haven’t had one since arriving in India. My morning meditation was interrupted by housekeeping at the eleven-minute mark.   I didn’t do it that evening.  

The next day, Thursday, I quit.  It just isn’t for me.   Besides, I had moved on to a new book.

Also, after reading Eat Pray Love I’m really jealous we don’t have that medicine woman from Bali.  She seems amazing.   I bet she could have fixed my back in two hours.  

I have ‘sort-of’ made a friend here.  Friend might be a bit of an overstatement.  A person to smile at might be a more accurate term.  My floor is a happening place.  The first morning I went down the elevator with a Chinese man (my guess is Chinese b/c he had a shopping bag that clearly had nothing but Chinese writing on it).  As he got on, I noticed he still had the sticky ‘Medium’ tag on the back of his collared shirt.   I hesitantly tried to tell him the problem, but finally just picked it off for him, and we both had a good laugh and grin.   We now smile warmly at each other every breakfast from across the room.

So far I have only raided the minibar once.   By that I mean once each day.  I have the Mars bar, each and every single day.  Chocolate is my weakness.  But it makes me so happy!  It is becoming a standing joke between myself and the guy who checks the minibar, though.  Every day he knocks and everyday I tell him I ate the chocolate.  

On Tuesday, as I stood waiting for the elevator (ironically enough, with the man who’s shirt sticker I fixed), I gazed absentmindedly at some of the hallway decorations.  The floor was a beautiful white marble, by the way.   Perched atop the marble was a pedestal, about thigh high.  At the top of the pedestal was a small tray filled with grey rocks.    I wasn’t quite sure what the heck it was for, but they also had rocks spilled about the floor for some artistic purpose so I figured it was part of the décor.  On my way up, after lunch, I noticed matching black marble pedestals on the lobby level.  They looked like they had peanut shells in the top tray; I looked closer and realized that they were actually reddish rocks.   And then, it hit me.  Memories from the 1980s flooded my head and I realized that these were, in a previous life, ashtrays.  The realization that I had completely forgotten something that was once so common and globally prevalent made me incredibly happy.  I mean, happy that smoking in most places is such a thing of the past that I don’t immediately recognize it as a fancy ash tray and instead had been turning my brain trying to figure out the purpose of a pedestal of rocks. 

I am in Delhi, so it was entirely expected to experience power outages throughout the week.  I wondered if the key works in the door during an outage but I was always sitting around in my bathroom and too lazy to switch to real clothes when the power went out.  So I never tested it.   Normally the outages are during the day, but a half dozen or more happened fairly quickly on Wednesday evening. I was glad I had my cell phone, because it was DARK in that room.  Also, for some odd reason, only the bathroom lights would automatically restore when the power was out.  So I just sat in bed, in the dark, and watched those lights, every five or ten minutes, abruptly shut off and then turn back on.  Originally I’d gotten up and turned the room lights back on, but there were so many outages it wasn’t worth it. I just sat in bed and played brickbreaker on my cell phone instead.    

The TV must have died in the power outages.   A nice guy in a blue jump suit came and fixed it.  I am pretty sure he didn’t speak a lick of English.  Or he was deaf.  Either way he was fast and efficient.  He probably just had to flip a fuse.   He went out and got the most unstable looking ladder you could possibly imagine.   He placed it by the door and opened the grill on the ceiling.  His ladder placement scared me; for some reason he placed it all the way to the left side of the narrow hallway when the fuse was on the right side of the ceiling hole.   Maybe he knew what he was doing, though, because his ladder was leaning precariously to the far left and he leaned precariously to the far right.   A perfect balance, I suppose. 

A few words about those grills in the ceiling.  They sort of creep me out.  They are open and you can peer up into them.   There is one in the bathroom, too, right about the showerhead.    You know when you hear about some creepy person videotaping people in the hotel bathroom?  I now understand how they could do it.  I really don’t like that open grate just there.   But of course, I let my imagination get away from me.  I’m sure there isn’t actually a creepy person with a video camera hooked up over the showerhead.  

During the power outages I also watched a Baraat (a sort of parade where everyone dances their way to the wedding).  It was right outside my bedroom window.  The first Baraat I attended was for a college friend of my husband, back in 2009. It seemed so full of life.  Hundreds of people were dancing in the street and having fun.  Now that I have watched so many more, however, it just looks like a dying tradition. The one I watched had less than two dozen people and of them, only three were dancing.  It was sad to see.   It is the same story in Mumbai; we drive through them a lot but they are always small and few people are actually dancing.  Maybe it is always like that and the one wedding I first attended was an exception, I don’t know.  But it is sort of sad rather than fun to watch.

Breakfast room service on Wednesday had been completely messed up (coke instead of diet coke, and an omelet full of yummy veggies instead of a very plain, egg-white only omelet for my husband).   As a consequence, he actually went down to the breakfast buffet with me, which was nice but short.   The next day the cook apologized profusely and sent up some fruit, chocolates, and cookies with breakfast.  

I may complain a lot about living in India, but once you are ‘in’ someplace (in this case, a guest at the hotel) everyone treats you fabulously and nicely. 

Wednesday I had been in a really bad mood for some reason. Thursday was much better.  Probably because we got the nice free breakfast items.  Also because my Internet was finally working.  The three days before it had been going in and out and I couldn’t even write e-mails half of the time.   So good Internet is apparently now a requirement for happiness. 

By the way, my husband and I both agree that this hotel serves much, much better (and cheaper) food than the first hotel.  It also smells much, much better than the first hotel.  However, the first hotel was fancier with bigger rooms.  The first one also had a better minibar. In fact, the food was so expensive at the first hotel; it was cheaper to just eat dinner from that well-stocked minibar.  So if you are traveling in Delhi and want to know the hotel names, just let me know. 

One interesting thought occurred to me on Thursday.  The toilet sits on an incline.  What? you are probably asking me.  Yes, that is right.  The seat is not parallel to the floor.  It is decidedly inclined.  I’d guess by maybe 15 degrees, but I didn’t bring a protractor so I could be a bit off. If you are curious, the back is lower than the front.  Tall as I am, my feet don’t reach the floor with this one. 

Anyhow, I have been puzzling over this in my head for over three days, trying to decide why exactly the toilet was on an incline, because, as far as my memory goes, this is the first time I’ve ever experienced it, when I finally got a hypothesis.   It brought me back to a picture I had taken in Kuala Lumpur, see it below.  Pay attention to the lower left image.

Check out the lower left image!

Notice how the person is standing (my cousin corrected with ‘squatting’) but if your shoes planted firmly on a toilet, I think it is perfectly fair to call it standing, too) on the toilet.  I had laughed at this photo and wondered who the heck would make such a mistake.  Then I showed it to my cook.  She told me everyone does that.  I showed it to my driver.  He told me the first time he used a western toilet, he didn’t know what to do and that is exactly what he thought he was supposed to do.  It makes sense; you are used to being in the squatting position over hole in the floor, just replicate the same position on the western toilet….  Well, not to me; why not just squat over it instead of on it?  Anyhow, the point is this.  My driver also kept assuring me on the superiority of the squat toilet rather than western toilet because, when you go number 2, there is more pressure and you get more stuff out of you (he really enjoys talking about his bowel movements).  No idea if that is true or not.  I’ve never had a problem….  So, back to the inclined toilet.  Presumably, when you are sitting on this thing, your torso is no longer perpendicular to the ground.  In fact, if you sit parallel to the wall, your knees are elevated above your hips; you are slightly mimicking the squat position, thus to an Indian’s eyes (or at least my driver’s eyes) in a better position to fully expel everything from your body…. I have no justification as to whether or not that is why my toilet is in an incline position.  It is pure hypothesis.  But just something to think about.  

On Friday the cleaning guy came extra early.  There are too many people in India, so they really disperse the jobs.  One guy cleans, another comes later to check the minifridge (and refill that candy bar), and a third comes in the afternoon to water the plants. 

The cleaning guy this morning was rather creepy.   He started off nice enough, asking where I was from, etc.  I was semi-afraid to mention Chicago- that same day was the day the Chicago jury decided someone was not guilty of the 11/26 bombings; the Mumbai equivalent of 9/11.   So I stuck with my usual answer of “USA but I live in Mumbai”.  Anyhow, he kept talking, did a very, very overly thorough job of cleaning (he even took the obviously never used, folded shoe bag from under the luggage rack and dusted it) and then, horrors of horrors: he insisted on putting slippers on my feet!

This is why I have such an issue living in India!  Geez Louise!   I mean, I thought I was safe from weirdoes inside the hotel.  No one stares at me in that creepy manner and everyone is polite and nice.  But now even the darn room-cleaning guy is playing Prince Charming and I have to star as Cinderella?  I don’t know if he is always like that, or only like that to women, or only like that to people he wants a tip from (clearly I did not tip him), or only towards blondes.  I don’t know.  All I know is that it is freaky, weird, and just depressingly odd.  I also find that I have NO idea how to respond to such a situation.   

In other news, my husband got really mad and yelled at the front desk because our room keys never work.  His, in five days, has NEVER worked.  He has to get a new one each day and then I let him in the room.   Mine often dies, too.   On Friday I changed the key three times.  So I will grant everyone the idea that they are really annoying.   I had been voting that the key death was due to power outages, but on Saturday I was actually window-shopping in the atrium when we had another outage.   It was super dark down there!  Fortunately power kicked back on immediately.  My key worked fine when I returned.   So it must just be that the majority of the keys are old. 

On Friday (before yelling at the front desk) we went to dinner in the hotel.   We got a bottle of wine because the only wine by the glass was an awful Indian wine.  After one glass I realized why people say not to mix alcohol with cold medicines.   I thought I was going to pass out right at the dinner table.   Needless to say, I stopped drinking and the nearly full bottle sat unused in our hotel room for the remainder of the trip.  

Saturday was gearing up to be incredibly boring; my husband’s 10-2 meeting also had a phone call from 3-5 so a short work day was growing longer by the minute.   I woke up Saturday convinced his meeting had been moved to 8:45 am…. It is probably a bad sign when I can’t remember if dreams are real or not!  Of course, my other dream had been that I saw Jordan Knight of the New Kids on the Block at our Founder’s Day parade in Climax.   I was super excited in the dream. Clearly that dream was false because it was always Joey that was my favorite, not Jordan.  

Anyhow, it was supposed to be boring but my Friend R, from UofC was in town for a busy wedding/work weekend.  We met at her house, which was great fun to see.  Her mom made me a fabulous cold coffee plus milk plus ice cream drink and some yummy rotis.  Also she fed me mangos.  It was a very good introduction to her home!  It was nice to just sit in Friend R’s bedroom and see her childhood.  Eventually we decided to get pedicures.  

The pedicures were rather lousy, in the end.  I came home to look at them and noticed bits of the old red paint still visible under the bubble gum pink paint (bubble gum pink; I figured I needed a change).   But the pedicures, even if our toes weren’t the best, were a great setting for a much needed gossip and gabfest.  It was so wonderful to talk with a friend again.

She gave me some good advice; basically to toughen up and stop thinking that everyone is staring at me.  When people take photos, yell at them.   We’ll see how good I am at following it!  

Oh, exciting (for me…. because I have no life).   On Saturday evening I was finally properly dressed and shoed when the power went out.  I grabbed my key and went into the hallway to test the ‘does the key work during a power outage theory?’   It was DARK in the hallway.  I’m glad I wasn’t stuck in the hallway before.  I had to keep my hand right on the handle/key slot so I wouldn’t lose it.   But the key worked!  So now you know….

Waiting for my husband to come home…got a new high score on brickbreaker: 9880.  So close to breaking that 10,000 mark!

Saturday we went to dinner at a restaurant called La Piazza.  It was located in the Hyatt hotel, maybe thirty minutes away. We’d heard two good reviews and wanted something yummy (Italian, of course).  And it was the best diner so far in India!! Yea!  Their bread was amazing.  They first served some normal large loaf of bread, and after we devoured that they gave us pieces of bread cut like a pizza.  They were amazing.  The seasoning was incredible.  Some of it was fresh rosemary.  I did a good job filling up on that before our meal even arrived.   We both had salads and then I had pumpkin ravioli for my main course.

Now, I’ve complained in several blogs about the lack of good apple pie in India.  I have also been systematically testing all of the pumpkin ravioli on every menu.   There are a lot of vegetarians here, so it is pretty common.   I had been incredibly disappointed each and every time.   Regardless of the description, each plate would come smothered in a disgusting thick white sauce that would cause an instant heart attack.   Pumpkin ravioli should be light and savory so you can taste the pumpkin.  Come on people! Some of the raviolis didn’t even have pumpkin in them.  Or at least, it was so little you didn’t notice.  So, fast-forward five months and we are sitting at La Piazza.   Out comes pumpkin ravioli.  A very light buttery sage sauce.  It was translucent, thank goodness. Some milk foam.  Heaven.  You could tell the raviolis were handmade, and fresh, too.  It was amazing.   Have you seen TV commercials were someone eats the food and they close their eyes and just look so happy you know it is fake?  That was me.  And the expression was not fake. 

The desert was only so-so, but it was served with very good ice cream.  

Sunday we slept in, ordered a lot of room service, and I finished the book I was now reading: Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen.  I love this book.  It is basically the history of the military build up from nuclear warheads to spy planes and all of the espionage in between.  It does, of course, offer new insight as to what really crashed in Roswell, too. Just read it.  It was wonderful if you like American history, war history, engineering, aviation, etc. 

 

I then moved on to Earthly Joys, the next book in my ‘I am going to read everything written by Philippa Gregory’ plan.  It is the first book I have read of hers that has males as the main characters rather than women.   Some books have some male characters, but usually women dominate them. It is about a famous gardener (with, of course, a huge emphasis on the royal family, as normal with her books).  I like it so far.  My husband worked the entire day.

 

On Monday I travelled back to Mumbai.  I was leaving in a few days for Korea, so I was excited to head back.  For the second time our entire breakfast was messed up, which was frustrating.  The guy who came to the room had an ‘in training’ name tag.   You could tell he wasn’t a full employee yet- he tried to take away the food cart before folding down the table wings.  It didn’t fit through the door.  He was also completely confused as to what he should do when the order was wrong.  My husband had to tell him to call downstairs and fix it.  I don’t think he will be a very good employee…

 

  The airport was crowded for the first time in my memory, and I stood in line next to a guy with a broken leg.  My how casts have changed since we were kids!  I didn’t even know it was broken until he told me.  He was walking just fine on a small cast that was completely hidden beneath his jeans.  The guy was interesting to talk to; he was going to film a documentary on some astrologer. 

 

The plane ride was a disaster.  There was a family with a handful of young children and tickets and each and every ticket was in a different row.  I swear our flight was delayed 20 minutes just waiting for them to get their act together.  In order, I switched seats (for this family) from 20A to 20E to 12A to 12B.  I mean, come on.  Just go on the computer and switch your seats together before the flight, not when the captain is yelling at you over the intercom to sit down and buckle up.  

 

I ended up behind one of the kids.  He had a shirt on that said, “Amazingly Tippy.”  Wonder what that means. 

 

Next stop?  Korea!

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.