I looked out the window to my balcony the other day and there was a lizard scurrying across it. A lizard that looked just like Guido! He followed me all the way here!

I was not in time to grab my camera, but it seriously looked blond-colored just like him!

Princess Bed!
(Only made possible by a lucky nail I found, a magic place to put the nail in the concrete wall,
and an extremely convenient loop net configuation.

So I decided to get the mosquito net (that I bought from McGuckins back home) out. I actually don’t have many mosquitoes up here on the 12th floor, but it is worth it to not have any buzzing in my ear at night. It’s also kind of cool to sleep under.

There are more mosquitoes now that the temp is regularly hitting 100 during the day and not getting much below 80 at night, but not tons. It is still quite dry and hasn’t rained in quite a while. Notably, even though the temperature outside the other day has overtaken the absolute record high in Boulder, I feel like I haven’t really *felt* it. I think that is because the office is freezing. Freezing. My fingers are so ice cold that walking out into the heat feels great!

Team Lunch

So we had a team lunch at a restaurant in the corner of the Sector called Binge to welcome our newest team members. I liked it – it was one of the better buffets I’ve had. One of the choices was, I’m not making this up, called “Cheese Steak – Tomato Sauce.” In this country of Nearly No Beef, I knew they did not mean a cheese steak like I thought of it. So what did they mean? Grilled paneer! Cheese cooked like steak. In tomato sauce. It was delicious, but anything with paneer is. I haven’t had cheddar cheese since I’ve come, but with paneer, which I’ll describe as a soft cheese with the consistency of tofu but a taste more like mild mozzarella maybe, I haven’t missed it as much as I thought I might. (In the Trivia That No One But Me Cares About: Binge is the name of an establishment in my science fiction novel. So I thought it was cool to eat there. Even though I’d never eat at the one in my story.)

Still learning culture every day. I noticed one day at lunch that there did not seem to be sufficient ringage for the number of married men – i.e. just about all of them are wed but only a couple had wedding rings, so I asked. Turns out men in India wear wedding rings on their right hand while women wear it on their left hand. Sure enough, almost all of them had a right-handed ring that I overlooked. I guess it makes for easier wedding photos!

(Looks over shoulder in office)
Oh, that’s where I am.

I had to inform the foreign registration office of my address change. You’d think that would be done with a phone call or over mail. No. I paid ANOTHER $150 (!) for the company that does the paperwork to meet me at the FRRO office again. I had to provide a copy of my lease, but honestly the paperwork this time seemed very minimal, so the price seemed ridiculously high. I think my money went toward this man’s taxi from Gurgaon (on the full other side of Delhi) and the whopping fifteen minutes spent with me. My office this time did not bother to tell the taxi driver the address. So, for once, I was glad of my smartphone. I was able to open my e-mail, look it up, and write it on a sheet of paper for the driver as we headed in the general Ghaziabad direction.

The FRRO was, again, empty (which I think would make any Delhi ex-pats green with envy as I’ve heard nothing but DMV-style horror stories from Delhi’s version). The sum total of what the FRRO officer did was: take my file out, scribble out the old address and write the new address, sign the change. Then scribble out the address on my official form, write in the new one and sign it. Woo.

Chocolate: I’ve stopped giving it out because it is too hot now. It just melts. Even bringing a Cadbury bar home from the supermarket caused it to melt (though I think it had a head start with the power outages in the supermarket.) Speaking of chocolate, I confirmed that in India, like in Great Britain, a “chocolate shake” just means “chocolate milk.”

As much as my mood depends on the color of the little light
it is pretty amazing that I’m connected to the world through it

My “data card”, my 3G USB modem thing that connects me to the internet, is excruciatingly inconsistent. The light turns blue (3G) for awhile, but then’ll go suddenly back to green (2G) which is essentially like the internet stopping right when I’m doing something like Skypeing with my parents. The owner told me the 3G was very consistent in the bedrooms. So I moved my whole operation (i.e. my laptop, chair and table) in there. Made little difference to the 3G, but I’m enjoying A/C proximity. I’m seriously considering looking into broadband.

This having a maid business is odd. She comes in the mornings (so it is amazing how quickly I am up, dressed, and breakfasted) and cleans the floors and does the dishes. She speaks almost no English. And I speak almost no Hindi. Despite that, we sort of communicate. Though when it came to money, she had to call someone to explain to me in English what I wasn’t understanding. Turns out when the owner called me a week or two ago to “ask” if I could raise her monthly rate to 1500 ($28) if she did an occasional bathroom clean (to which I said no) that he wasn’t so much asking as telling. On one hand, I think she is overcharging me as he told me once that he paid 800 and that was with the dishes of four adults and a kid! On the other hand, it’s still only around $2/hour. She seems smart and on the ball which I like. Though I don’t think she does dishes as well as I do, which I try not to think too hard about.

We had a couple confusing conversations where I think she was telling me her 10-month old had a fever and needed shots. But I can’t figure out if she was telling me just to tell me, telling me because she needed to take the day off (which would be totally fine with me), or telling me because she wanted money. She said a sentence later where the only words I understood were “10 rupees” but it did not seem like she was expecting me to do something. Who knows. This, among other things, had started to make me more motivated to continue studying Hindi. I mean, I clearly hear the words I do know, so it is a good start. But I need to increase my vocab.