This and That

There I am, hard at work on the blog.

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As I mentioned, we didn't do a lot of "exciting" stuff our last few days in Madras.  I tried to blog but was constantly being foiled.  Let me tell you, blogging in a third world country is no picnic.  There were constant power cuts, and I would lose 20 minutes of work and have to start all over.  The cyber cafe would close for Muslim prayer time.  And one day the guys all had to go to the hospital cause their buddy was in a motorcycle accident.  He turned out to be OK, but they closed for the rest of the day and hence there was no blogging done.  Grrrr.

Minor nuisances like that are just part of life in India.  There were power cuts almost every day of the last two weeks we were in Madras, but normally they only lasted an hour or two.  One day there was an especially long one, though, so Sishir and I went to the beach to escape.  That worked for a while, but when we got home, it was still not fixed, and it ended up staying off all night long.  THAT was a completely miserable experience that I hope to never have again.  Without the A/C, or even a fan, the house was a stifling oven.  Opening the windows didn't help at all because there was no breeze.  I laid in bed for an hour, listening to my sweat drip onto my pillow.  Finally I couldn't take it anymore so I got up and sat outside on the (marginally) cooler balcony.  At 4:00 AM I looked down into the neighbor's courtyard and there was the biggest rat I have ever seen.  Not that I've seen a lot of rats, mind you, but this one could have taken on Spirit Sky.  It was dis-GUST-ing.  I tried to take a pic but he ran away, darn the luck.  I named him Randolph.  Yes you do crazy things when you're sleep deprived and suffering from heat exhaustion. 

One night we went out to dinner at the Park Sheraton. We missed the Chennai Super Kings(IPL cricket team) by about five minutes.

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One of the fun things we did do was open the toy chest.  Sishir's parents have carefully preserved all the boys' toys and we had fun going through them.  Apparently Indian kids have the same toys as Americans.  Check out the pics for some examples.