MTV Cribs - India Style

Anyone with a blog will tell you that there is not much in this world more annoying than losing a blog post. It sucks. I lost probably the best post ever earlier this week, and I'm just now recovering and coming to terms with it...trying to get over my loss...I tried earlier this week but I wasn't emotionally ready. Traumatic experience, I would not wish it upon anyone. Here's my best attempt to re-create what will forever be lost...(Speaking of LOST...Selin and I are now watching that show on DVD. It's not as good as Prison Break. Not nearly as good. But I'll have to give it more time...maybe one day it will warrant it's own blog post. Not yet.) Anyways here's a feeble attempt to recreate the week's earlier blog magic.

I was feeling rather sick on Monday this week. Not an entirely unusual experience, since arriving in India, I've found my stomach is rather normally in a bit of a state of disagreement, from some food or another, just adapting to the different cuisine and sanitation standards...but this was the worst yet. Delhi Belly 2.0. Woke up feeling ill, but as I'm such a soldier trekked in to work, hoping I'd feel better...I lasted til around 1. Pretty good effort, but between the throwing up and numerous other bathroom trips, I wasn't being that effective. I headed home for some sleep. Before curling up and dying I managed to take a few pictures of home...take a look. we've got it pretty nice over here.

On the right: 2 pictures from my bedroom. You'll notice...the gynormously huge bed. It's gigantic! And it's also impossible to miss, as it makes up the vast majority of the room...it's almost a complete square. In fact I'm lying on it now and i think it might very well be a complete square. You can sleep on it horizontally or vertically, and it does not make a difference. Notice how nicely it is made also...yep, it's like that every day. Our man Suravanan or another guy whose name unfortunately I do not recall (I will have to be sure to ask again -- names are VERY difficult to remember here. Take the difficulty of remembering people's names in the US -- Rob, Thomas, James, etc... -- hard enough, now make those names crazy words and sounds you've never ever imagined before and that's what it's like. Challenging, I've taken to writing names down as that's the only way I remember) make up the room every day. Anyway you'll also notice Brewer the surfboard there, perched behind the bed where he stays cooped up most of the time (not tomorrow though--headed to Mamallapuram!!). Also the other shot is taken from laying in bed, looking into the attached bathroom. Interesting note about the bathroom, in India there are traditional Indian bathrooms and Western bathrooms. Western bathrooms use probably about 5x as much water as an Indian bathroom (primarily due to the difference in shower tactics -- here it is customary to fill a bucket with water, and then use the water in the bucket as the shower, as opposed to just running the shower continuously. Now I think about it that is probably a lot more than 5x as much water, maybe 50x as much!). My bathroom is an Indian style bathroom, but only in design. I still shower the American way...gonna be pretty tough to get me showering out of a bucket. I love the feeling of a warm water shower far too much...but anyway the bathroom is sort of interesting, because there is no tub or anything, no separation of the shower from the rest of the bathroom. You just turn on the shower, and the whole bathroom starts getting wet...haha it's like that in all these bathrooms. Interesting. They are designed (well, in theory) to have a bit of a slope so the water will drain to the corner where there is a large drain. But it's sort of fun to take a shower and have the whole bathroom get wet, the toilet, the sink, the entire floor. Just takes a little getting used to (or using a bucket). You'll also see in that picture if you open it up bigger a cool knife I got in Hampi, that they say is from Nepal but I give about a 30% chance of actually being from Nepal, but it only cost $12 so OK, a cool drum from Mumbai, a cool fish picture from Goa, a hat from Goa, a super sweet laser from Bigha, my dirty clothes hamper (which also gets emptied every day if I so inclined, I've taken to keeping dirty clothes in my closet and only putting them in the hamper once a week or so), the TV, the mini-fridge (yep, in room mini fridge!), our new plant which Murali (our main house guy) got for us the other day, and a few family pics. :) speaking of the family pics, the other day I was talking w/ some of the house guys, and they were saying they had seen the pics, and didn't know who was who between Joel and me! they got a kick out of that. They also asked when you all are coming to visit. What should I tell them? :)

Next up are some shots taken from outside, in front of the house. We live in a gated neighborhood of probably about 25 different homes or so I'd guess...they all look similar to ours. Very new, hate-to-say it but cookie-cutter home development type homes. That said though they're some of the nicest places to live in Hyderabad. Each guest house has 4 different bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. There's also a deck you can see out in front on the 2nd floor, but it's entirely empty right now, and also a roof deck too, which is also empty except for the solar power panel. In my house, I live with Selin, and also Rob (from Ireland), and Paul (from Scotland). Both Rob and Paul work out of the Dublin office, and are both stellar blokes and a whole lot of fun to live with. I learn as much from those guys as I do from Indians!!! Sometimes the two of them will talk and I have no clue as to what they are talking about. There are so many expressions I've never heard before...that unfortunately I am blanking on right now but are well worth a blog post at some point. Haha, funny guys, both of 'em...very quick-witted and just good conversationalists, and I suspect they get a bit of amusement out of watching me try and decipher what ever the heck they are saying and will turn it up a notch from time to time, Paul coming up with crazy Scottish things and Rob doing the Irish equivalent...Anyways, quite a lot of fun, living in a house with two Euros (and a third, Stephan, from the UK, usually is over for dinner at our place...he lives next door with a bunch of girls, so naturally he comes over to our crib for dinner as it's a much better crowd). I'm glad to be living with these guys, as it really even makes coming home an international experience!

In the first pic, mom please make special note of the uniformed guard, standing watch 24 hours a day to ensure our safety... :) haha actually there always is a guard, good thing as there isn't a lock on the front door. The guards are always super friendly, always stand up and come open the gate, ask how was your day sir, always extremely friendly. At least most of the time, tonight the guard was sleeping when I came home. (don't read that mom).

Next up you'll see a picture of the living room...this is taken from the front entrance. Notice the marble (or is it granite?) flooring...livin' large you know!!!!!!! Lots of stuff is actually made from that stone here. This is the dining room table -- where we eat breakfast and dinner. Lastly, here's a shot from the roof...amazingly each house has it's own solar power panel!
And OK one final one for good measure. Here is a picture taken from the deck, looking across and down our street. As you can see there is construction across the street, just like at home in San Jose!! :) Luckily it's not as noisy though, as they do EVERYTHING by hand. Far as I can tell, they don't use any machines or anything, it's all manual labor. This picture is also worth a closer look just to see that they hold up the construction with STICKS...lots and lots of wooden sticks. This is not a one-off situation either -- seriously huge high rises are built with scaffolding made entirely of sticks and branches and tied together with rope, and people climb all over this scaffolding and build these things. It's something to behold, Dad you'd get a kick out of it as I bet Joel would too.

Alright time for bed, got a big day tomorrow...3 year Anniversary big!!!! g'nite...

AND AGAIN HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIS!!! :)