Tuesday: Discovered I had a new roommate:
Had this been an arachnid or rodent, you would have already known about it
because you would have heard the screams from there.
But geckos – or whatever species this is – are cute. If they eat bugs, double bonus! Will name him Guido.
Wednesday: Finally got my new Axis Bank ATM card to go with my new proper account. Went to bank to check my balance. 0.00 Rupees. Luckily, I had savings at my credit union in the U.S. I paid the taxi driver his the usually weekly amount plus tip and wonder if the owner of the service is ever going to want me to pay for Saturday’s taxi… (not the same driver.)
Thursday: Account funded! After nearly two months, I finally got paid! Celebrated by paying my bill at Cabana with my new red debit card. Also received a birthday package in the mail! Awesome surprise! Sent two weeks ago, looks like India Post might work after all (and be worth the fortune it costs to send something here.) Will see if I receive other expected items…
Friday: Our group at work went for a team-building exercise: cricket night! Promptly at 5pm, some of the guys went to a giant field not far from work to reserve a spot. Someone brought wickets, someone brought bats, and someone brought post-game munchies.
Cricket & Wickets
I don’t know the rules of cricket, other than what I’ve been able to gather from Lagaan and other Bollywood movies.
However, you don’t need to know the rules to play, you just need someone to tell you what to do! I ran when they told me. I stayed put when they told me. I bat when they told me. (I even hit a few! Granted they were pitching, I mean bowling, extra slow for me.) I even got to pitch myself! And when they said, “We got the wicket again!” I dutifully gave my teammates a high-five, even though I couldn’t have told you whether that was a good or bad thing. Someone was keeping track of runs and overs and wickets and innings and other cricket terms. We won one inning and they won one, so we declared it a tie, though there was some question of whether one of the balls was a 6 when my co-worker caught it, as the field was vaguely defined by some trees and poles in the area, sharing fields with half dozen other cricket groups.
A Major League Moment
I’ve never NOT seen people playing cricket on this field when we drive by in our daily taxi, so it was nifty to finally play on it ourselves. The field, though, was mosquito paradise around sunset with all the random holes and standing water. I brought spray and luckily, none of us actually seemed to be bitten. We’ll see how the mosquito situation goes as the weather warms.