Sunday, September 8, 2013

Then I looked up in the sky, And I'm thinking why oh why, These are all the many changes in my life...

I guess it’s my turn to start. In a couple of previous entries, Rae and I have written about language challenges we’ve faced. Today, I am picking up that loose thread. You may hear that everyone in India speaks English. Well that’s not true. You have read before of the language issues Rae has faced with various workers. Unskilled laborers rarely speak English. The best educated speak English quite well. Everyone else falls somewhere between. Even quite educated people often shift back and forth between Hindi and English, even in the same sentence. The advantage to this Hindi/English is that I often catch enough English words to keep up with the general thrust of conversations. My vocabulary is growing but if the conversation is totally in Hindi, I am lost.

Actually, sometimes even when the conversation is entirely in English I get lost. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, Indian English accent takes some time to get used to. This has to do with cadence as well as pronunciation. I think I mentioned that during a meeting shortly after I came here one of the managers told me he sometimes had a difficult time understanding me because of my accent. What? My accent? Well, I have tried to adapt at least to some of the local cadence and pronunciation so I am easier to understand. So, when I get back if I apologize for reaching you on your mo-buy-l, don’t assume I am just quoting Friends. Besides, I probably wanted to reach you on your mobile. Part of the issue with lack of understanding has to do with use of some colloquial expressions. It is often commented that Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language. Throw in the differences in cadence, pronunciation, and accent and you have India and the US.

Often, if I am trying to figure out what to call something, I ask myself, “What would I call this in the UK?” That doesn’t always work but it often leads to the right word (such as chemist rather than pharmacist). A friend gave me a list of common India English words and phrases. In hopes that it will prepare and inspire you to come visit, here are a few items for you to memorize:

India                                             US                                  Use
Belong to                                      come from                       Where do you belong to?
Bunk                                             skip                                 John bunked school today.
Cabin                                            office                               Which is your cabin?
Colony                                          neighborhood                   We live in Friends Colony West.
Cribbing                                        complaining                      She was cribbing about the heat.
Flyover                                         overpass                           He stood on the flyover watching the traffic
Fresher                                         recent graduate                 Many of our students are Freshers.
Geyser (pronounced GHEE-zer)   hot water heater                No hot water. The geyser is broken again.
Gravy                                           sauce                                The gravy on the fish was very spicy.
Hoarding                                      billboard                            Turn left just after the Honda hoarding.
Hostel                                          dorm                                  Many of our students stay in our hostel.
Jab                                               injection                             I got a jab at the doctor’s office today.
Ladyfingers                                   okra                                  The ladyfingers in masala are delicious.
Out of station                                away                                  Phil was out of station that day, in Nepal.
Prepone                                        move to earlier                   The meeting was preponed to Tuesday.
Revert                                           reply                                   I will revert next week.
Savings account                             checking account                We have a joint savings account.
Shift                                               move                                 When did you shift to India?
Specs                                            glasses                                He put on his specs to read the sign.
Tube                                              light bulb                            We seem to go through tubes too fast.
Tuition                                           tutoring                               I need tuition to learn Hindi.

Now that I have reviewed those phrases, the rest of the blog lies (she has or has responsibility for) with Rae.

Well, another week has passed and I continue to learn new things, get frustrated by some of the same old things, and become more comfortable with my surroundings. 

Let me start by saying that I can feel a slight change in the weather.  It is still warm and a bit humid, but the humidity is certainly less.  The windows in my house are no longer foggy and I don’t want to die if the power goes out and I know there will be no AC for a while.  I can even turn the AC off in some rooms at least for a while.  I can even walk outside to get into the car and not feel like I need to go back inside for another shower.  I feel that there is hope that it will eventually cool off enough that I’ll be excited about going out to see some of the sights and visit the open air markets. I am excited to do that, just not when it's so hot.

Yesterday it was my and Phil’s turn to help clean our church building.  Let me say that even though it is a bit cooler, by the time we were finished, I was soaked in sweat and more than ready to come home and shower.  We will include a few pictures of our building from the outside, but they will not show some of the unique features of our building on the inside, so I’ll try to explain a bit about how things are inside.  Phil told me years ago the building used to be the home for a wealthy family, which has been remodelled into our Church building. If you think of a large two story home rather than a church, you may have a better visual image. Here are a couple of pictures of the outside, just off the entry.



There is a lobby as you enter, but the lobby is rather an open air room and so there is no AC for that part of the building.  Off of the Lobby is our chapel area, a doorway to an outback patio (which is where our baptismal font is located), a couple of classrooms and a marble stairway that leads up to another open area with a few classrooms and the Branch President’s office off of it.  This inner corridor has no AC and so moving from the chapel to the classrooms means a trek thru this warm inner area.  Also, any gatherings or baptisms take place outside on the patio area, so those are always toasty in the summer months.  The chapel and each of the classrooms have individual AC units and ceiling fans, so they are usually comfortable as long as someone bothers to turn them on or the power doesn’t go out.  Here is a thought that I’ve had, there are doors that close the Lobby to the outside, and so in my US mind I think…they could just close those doors, add AC units and that inner area could be so comfortable, I wonder why they don’t think of doing that?

There are some things about cleaning our building that are things I’ve always thought would be a nice feature for any home.  Often as I’ve cleaned my bathrooms I’ve thought that a room with a drain and tile floors and walls would mean that I could just hose the room down.  Well, that is just what we do for parts of the building.  There are tile floors and walls in the bathrooms and drains in the floors.  There is a tap that connects to a hose with a spray nozzle that is located next to the toilet (a version of a bidet) and so it makes hosing down the bathrooms pretty slick.  The lobby area upstairs, the stairs and the lower lobby are all marble, so they are also hosed down.  There are large squeegee like tools that are used to move the water off the floor, down the stairs and out the lobby doors.  I know I’ve talked about the black soot before, but it is amazing to me to see all that black water that comes off those floors. Some of the other aspects of cleaning the building seem fairly antiquated and not very affective.  I’ve already made mental notes of some of my own cleaning things I will be taking with me for our next time. 

I think I’ve mentioned before that our kitchen was rare from other kitchens I looked at, in that it had an oven.  When we looked at the flat, the person representing the landlord said that they were going to replace the stove/oven unit.  That didn’t happen and it turned out that the oven didn’t work.  I’ve been both disappointed and frustrated that I haven’t had an oven.  A couple of weeks ago the landlord showed up with a toaster oven.  I was shocked and disappointed if that’s going to be my oven.  I asked the landlord if he wasn’t going to replace the other oven.  He said later, and we all know what that means.  Anyway, I do have a sort of oven now and have done some baking, just don’t plan on any 9x13s or cookie sheets.  Today I made an entire dinner for the 1st time since I’ve arrived here.  It was both fun, fulfilling and frustrating [Phil – and delicious!].  I have to do a lot of adapting both with measurements, ingredients and equipment, so I was pleased that it turned out as good as it did.  I think I’ll try to do this occasionally just so I don’t completely forget everything.  Below are a few pictures of my stove/oven equipment, and also the finished project. 





Well, I’ve probably kept you spell bound long enough with my captivating writing skills.  Hopefully next week will have some new adventures to share.  Possibly something exciting like trying to buy the vacuum I think I want. 


Namaste.

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