Inja, you spice up my life

So one thing I will miss about India is being able to get phenomenal chai at any time. This morning I happened to make the clearly unaware-of-my-surroundings request for them to make it spicier than normal. and now it has the same searing hotness of a shot of whiskey or something. but no matter. it is still spicy and fabulous in its peppery gingerness. my tongue is numb.

today is Eid, a huge Muslim holiday. It is a bank holiday in India. No one in our office happened tell this to our project manager because we assumed the office was still open and ready for us. not so much. locked. I refer to my previous post where i predict that hell for the Dutch will turn out to be India. I think there is probably a whole village full of dutch people somewhere in the middle of india being confounded at every turn. Not that i love it when things don't go as expected. but my usual response it to laugh and laugh.

India

HBO in India keeps playing cheesy Blockbuster action films. Last night was Mission Impossible III and tonight is The Island, a movie that no one but me apparently loved.

I would tell you what India is like, but all I can really tell you about is my commute to and from the office, the 3 restaurants downstairs, and what it is actually like inside the office. WHat I can tell you is that there are likie 100 men and 3 women. That we were stared at like aliens, hostile aliens, may i add, for the first few days.

Work here starts for most people around 930/10. But my project manager and senior coworker are Dutch, so we leave for the office at 8:15 and arrive around 8:35. We have scheduled a few meetings for 9am, and have never actually started a meeting before 930/10. This frustrates my Dutch coworkers. a lot. Cabs who don't know the location of our building but say they do and insist on asking directions from people on the street also frustrate the Dutch. a lot. Actually I believe that hell for Dutch people will be India.

A few weeks ago my friend Devika from Wellesley happened to be in Mumbai with her mom and they took me to lunch at this sort of adorable restaurant with an owner who LOOOOVVVVEEESSSSS George W. Bush. He could not stop telling us about how much he loves George Bush. How he wants to invite Bush over here. How he would build him a white house here that he could live in forever. I told him that he might be the only person in the world who felt that way about George Bush and that Bush might seriously have to consider taking him up on it. He said GWB is about freedom, democracy, and wealth and that the only things India can create are poverty, corruption and more babies. Apparently, GWB is also associated with keeping Muslims in line or something to that effect. Call me cycnical, but i'm inclined to believe the latter more than the former. Although, he was right about the poverty. It's pretty much unbelievable. one of the boat tours you can take will bring you by a palce where 5000 women wash their clothes in the river...the river that infects everyone and takes like 30 expected life years from them. water we arent even supposed to shower or brush our teeth with. hmmm.

sarees are still gorgeous and bright and drapey.

medical care is good and cheap. i have these two enormous cysts that i have to get removed and i got a sonography for 30 dollars. xrays and everything. it's pretty incredible.

the food is excellent. what Indians can do with spices is phenomenal. They can make mashed vegetables taste like a delicacy. We need to leanr. because our mashed vegetables are bland as crap. if vegetables always tasted like this. well. mwah.