Suzie's Eulogy

Hubby’s Version
*or rather what I think he would have written

She started appearing about two to three months ago. I hardly noticed her at first but as time passed and as we bumped into each other more often, there was a sense of familiarity. Though we never talked, it seemed like we had acknowledged each other’s presence. I gave her a name – Suzie.

Most things are generally okay until the wife notices and reached her threshold of tolerance. That day came last week and I had to put this to an end.

It's true that in the next day or two, I couldn’t help thinking about where she is now. However, that tinge of attachment that I felt during our infrequent sightings was probably imagined as I didn’t miss Suzie at all after.

To Suzie: Wherever you are now, I hope you are well.


My Version

The hubby noticed her before I did and seem to do so more frequently than me. Some call it affinity, I call it coincidence.

Soon, I established her routine of appearing in the evenings. Sometimes, I would see her from the corner of my eyes but there are days when I would not spot her. Many things around us form our environment and that was what she was to me. Until, she decided to become a threat.

Around last week, she broke her routine and started appearing more frequently. Not only that, she had also started to stop and stare at me too. This went on for a few days until I decided to ask the hubby to take action.

So, in order for me not to be harmed, we went on the offensive. We gave her poison and when it didn’t seem to be enough, we plunged her four floors below.

Till today, we cannot be sure if she died as she is not human like us. We had not seen the corpse of this dead lizard but neither has she come back to haunt me.

Dear Suzie, things could have remained status quo but by breaking your routine, you broke the rules of engagement.

Bus (no) Stop

A few things I observed about bus transportation when we got here:
1. There are plenty of buses on the roads but where are the bus stops?
2. Most traffic deaths in the newspaper seem to involve buses. School bus, public bus, etc.

And my conclusion:
1. Try to avoid buses on the roads
2. NEVER cross the road near a bus

Well, I will not know for sure if buses could be the statistically highest killer on the roads here but I think I have found out why there are no bus stops.

Reason being: The buses generally do not stop!

I am not trying to be funny here. Serious.
Let me help you set your imagination straight here first before I continue. The buses here are not air-conditioned. Both the front and back doors are always kept open. There is definitely black exhaust coming out from the exhuast pipe.

What I have observed is that when you see a large group of people gathering beside the road, they are waiting for the bus. When the bus approaches, keep your eyes glued to the doors because that is when the magic happens. Without the bus stopping, people are getting on and off the bus.

How? Before approaching the group of people, the bus will slow down about 3-5m before and people will start jumping off the bus.
As the bus approaches the group waiting, people will start running alongside the bus, trying to get the right speed and then jump up through the doors. Just like comrades, those on the bus extends a hand to pull the new passenger up.

Though this is the usual scene that I see, there are also those rare moments where I see the buses stopping. But till now, I still have not quite figured out if they are required to stop at certain places.

I would love to put a video up for viewing but it is quite difficult though I am still looking out for opportunities to record it. In the meantime, you can put your visualisation skills to good use.

Oh, by the way, bus stops are actually called bus shelters here.

48 hours of Bandh

Definitation of Bandh according to Wiki:
Bandh (Hindi: बंद), originally a Hindi word meaning 'closed', is a form of protest used by political activists in some countries like India and Nepal. During a Bandh, a political party or a community declares a general strike.

Often Bandh means that the community or political party declaring a Bandh expect the general public to stay in their homes and strike work. The main affected are shopkeepers who are expected to keep their shops closed and the public transport operators of buses and cabs are supposed to stay off the road and not carry any passengers. There have been instances of large metro cities coming to a standstill.

Starting today, a 48 hour Bandh was declared in Hyderabad. This Telangana Bandh is 'called by Telangana Joint Action Committee (JAC) in support of their demand for early introduction of a bill for formation of a separate state'.

So, how does this impact day to day living?

For one, my cleaner didn't come today because there were no buses to take her into the city.
For the kids, schools have been declared closed for 2 days.

For transportation, there will hardly be any buses available and the autos who are defying the ban and plying the road will be charging extra. There will be road diversions leading to traffic jams as traffic will be prevented from going near key government buildings and places like the minister's house. Going to the airport might also prove challenging as the taxis are also on strike.

For basic necessities, people started stocking up on essentials like fresh food as the shops might not be open the next few days. Once I heard of the news, I had to call the company delivering our drinking water to make sure it will be sent. Cars were queuing at petrol pumps for hours to get filled.

In short, life of ordinary people who still have to go on with their daily activities becomes inconvenienced. Sadly, these protests will usually end without anything being resolved till the next time some group decide to take up the same cause again. So for a great majority, it is paying a price for nothing.

But for those who takes a personal interest towards the cause, they will take to the streets protesting and in some instances, clash with the police. Already from yesterday, university students who are pro-Telangana have been hurling stones and the police as a result had to use tear gas to disperse the crowd and make arrests. But largely, it has been considered a rather peaceful Bandh with just another one or two isolated incidences of buses and a railway station being damaged.

It is actually good that these are organised strikes as the government are informed beforehand and can then take the necessary precaution of road blocks and deploy extra police. At least there will be no surprises.

As I am home most time, life still goes on without the cleaner today and I might just skip gym tomorrow. The only other thing that bothers me really is the frequent loud siren of police vehicles on the road. Hm, now that sounds rather frivolous in light of the matter but it is how is it.

Adieu Pigeons And Please Do Not Return

Yes! It's you. So go away!!!

Finally, they did go away thanks to the people shooting at them enthusiastically yesterday morning. I should think that they came from some bird control department but who cares as long as the pigeons are gone? Hurray!!!

Let me tell you how pigeons became an irritant in my life.

1. One of them had died before in the open kitchen wash area. Thank goodness it was the cleaner who found the corpse and got rid of it.
2. These bold pigeons have walked into the house before on more than one occasion.
3. When we returned from our trip recently, the entire veranda floor was covered with pigeon poop.
4. It's ridiculous that I am shooing pigeons a few times a day and spending my time to plot against them.

More than the results of my plotting, it is God who answers prayers! Just a few days ago, I was praying that God will remove these pigeons somehow and He said that no problems are too small for Him to handle including pigeons! PTL! 

In any case, I hope they will take up home somewhere else and never find their way back to this area again.

Do onions make you cry?

Yes, food prices are on the rise. It is the same every year and fingers are always pointed to the weather as the culprit. Too bad the sky does not have fingers to point back to merchants who are taking the chance to jump onto the bandwagon.

For this matter, one vegetable has been hogging the news here in India recently and it is none other than the crying onion.

By the end of Dec 2010, onion prices have increased to 40 percent higher than from a year ago and it is the hot topic of discussion amongst people of all levels from the government to the domestic helpers.

Newspaper reports that similar onion crisis has brought down Indian administrations twice before in the 80s and 90s. In response, the government stopped all exports of onions and started importing from China as an interim solution.

On the home front, I suspect that my cleaning lady took onions from my kitchen on Monday. I say 'suspect' because I do not count the number of onions that I buy! But surely, I would have bought more than five to use over the week.

Sigh. It actually troubled me for a day about how to broach the topic with her since firstly, I cannot be 100% sure and secondly, I do want to continue using her. She definitely didn't help herself by complaining to me last week that onions are getting very expensive.

What did I get myself into? It is easier to manage employee's issues at work than to confront someone about missing onions! >_<

People have warned me to watch over domestic help at home because they can hide anything in those layers of saris when they leave. I already take care to put away valuable things but onions?? I mean, really???

In the end, I asked her if she had thrown away any onions while cleaning the kitchen that day because I think my onions are missing. How stupid does that sound? Gr...

Of course I was not expecting a confession but hopefully, I sent across a message strong enough to tell her that I am aware of things and do not try to be funny!

Well, so onions do make me cry in more than one way other when dicing it. Hope it is only happening to me.

Mystery of the Dead Fruit Flies

Wednesday was everything but routine.

In the morning, I had gone to open the balcony door as usual and I could only stare at the sight that greeted me. Half the balcony was covered with dead fruit/ water flies plus a few other random dead insects. Just so that you can have a better idea of what I saw, imagine that you had disturbed the ant nest, all the ants came out but died on the floor. Except that instead of ants, they were flies. 

What happened???
On Tues night as we were in the shower, we already noticed that there were more of these flies than usual. As these flies seem to like damp/ wet areas, we decided to make a bigger effort of drying out the bathroom so that they do not multiply so fast. But on weds night, things had gone back to normal, the flies from Tues had disappeared (probably dead on the balcony).

The few theories that we came up with:

#Theory 1
We leave a small light on during the night and that light had attracted the flies who tried to come in. But of course, they could not fly through the glass balcony door. Therefore, they had hit themselves on the glass, sustained head injury and died.

#Theory 2
Animal migration. It could be that they were flying through the area in a big group, some got stuck/ attracted in the balcony area and decided to die there. But this theory does not explain how they died.

#Theory 3
I had sprayed some baygon in the balcony area on Tues to kill an stick insect on the floor and my helper had removed away the dead insect. But there could have been some baygon lingering around the balcony that killed these flies. But my question is, how can the baygon on the floor kill flies that are in the air?

Can anyone solve this mystery for me?
*There are no pictures as it is just too gross

Anyway, I have kept the balcony door closed the last 2 days (even in the daytime) to keep out all these unwelcome visitors. But because I had to dry the laundry today, I had started to keep it open again.
Every morning now, I say a very short and quick prayer before opening the balcony door. Lord, please no dead insects/ flies/ creatures.

What else kept Wednesday far from routine was:

1. Gmail seem to have lost/ not able to display the emails from the past one plus month. I freaked out as I do not use an email client and everything was online. There was no important emails lost (I think) but how could Google do this to me?!?
I did a quick search online and realise that this is not a new issue for Google except that it is not common. My emails started showing again yesterday, so I had quickly downloaded them all. So guys, you have been warned by me.

2. Installation of Windows 7. With the Gmail incident, I decided that it was finally time to do the upgrade on my lappy. As most of you will know, this is time consuming and not fun at all.

3. Power cuts. Of course, it had to happen more frequently today because it will disrupt the internet connection that I need to install Windows 7. Murphy's Law. Didn't help that today the building's back up generator took its own sweet time to kick in. At about 7-ish, I sat in darkness with my backup lamp staring into space for about 20-30mins.

BLACKOUT

There is a new phrase that has come into my daily routine - Power Cuts.

In this country where demand for electricity outstrips supply, what happens is that electricity gets cut in certain areas. Sometimes it is planned and you can check the newspaper if your area is scheduled for one and at what time but more often than not, the cuts are just unexpected.

Because of this, one of the criteria we had for selecting an apartment is that they should have backup generators. Else, we will have to go get inverters to keep the important appliances up and that does not mean aircon. That will be your fridge, computer and a essential lightings. Usually when there is a power cut, the backup generator will kick in within 5-10 seconds but sometimes it doesn't.

These power cuts just continually reminds me of how uncertain things are in this country. On a good day, it would happen once or twice,with the generator kicking in almost immediately. I absolutely dread it to happen when you are showering after dark. Remember that it is not only this block that has a power cut. It is the entire area, including the street lights, so it is pitch dark. Luckily, I haven't been in that situation yet but the hubby has. We usually do not move for the first few seconds, crossing fingers that the power would come back up. Else, we would be inching for the torch or powerlight that we have in the house.

Everything goes down during the power cuts, including the internet connection that takes some time to start up again. Sometimes in the evening, I will sit on the couch trying to see how often is this going to be and if I should start cooking because I am totally not interested to cook in the dark.

So far most things are quite tolerable but this really can be unbearable. Everyone has been telling me about it gets only worse in summer when everyone wants the aircon/ fan/ cooler switched on. With temperature going up to as hgh as 40 degrees, I can only imagine. In any case, my backup plan is to run back to Singapore if it gets so bad. HA!