Rae here. This week has been uneventful so here are a
few random things that may or may not be of interest.
One thing has been
consistent this week and that is power outages.
I wasn’t here at this time last year and Phil was usually at work during
the day so I don’t know if this was the norm last year. I’ve been told that the heat is the reason
for the outages, but according to our driver there is another reason which I
will explain in a bit. Anyway, whatever
the reason, it has become a pain and I’m beyond tired of it. It is not exaggerating when I say that we lose
power a dozen times a day, or more. We
have a generator that gets turned on after a few minutes so the house doesn’t
get too hot, but it’s still annoying to be in the middle of something and have
to stop.
Here’s the other
reason for the outages, according to our driver. India has a new Prime Minister, a man named
Modi. I know our driver did not want him
to be elected and had some dire predictions about what would happen if he was
elected. Robinson says that the power
outages are his doing and are directed to certain areas where Modi didn’t have
their votes and support. Also he is
Hindu and only likes Hindu’s, and also this is his plan so that he can raise
electric rates. Modi must be pretty
powerful and vengeful. My theory is that we live in India.
While I’m sure it is
MOST interesting hearing about power outages two weeks in a row I thought I’d
share a few other random bits. I’m including a picture of me holding a
banana. Why you may ask. I thought seeing the size of bananas here
might be of interest. In the US our
bananas are pretty big, usually unblemished, and quite often we buy them green
and let them ripen. Here they come
smaller, usually look a bit beat up, hardly ever picked green, and here’s the
best part, are more flavorful than our US variety. You’ll have to take my word on the flavorful
part.
These next two
pictures are of Phil down a very narrow street buying light bulbs. I think we’ve explained that there really
aren’t any Target, Walmart or Fred Meyer type stores here so when you want
light bulbs you go to a light bulb store/stall, when you want fabric you go to
the fabric store/stall, when you want paint you go to the paint
store/stall. You get the idea. The street that Phil went down has several
electric (light bulb) stalls, one right after the other. If one doesn’t have what you need then you go
to the next and so forth, until you are hopefully successful.
I think we have
mentioned in previous blogs that our branch doesn’t have anyone that plays the
piano. While I’m pretty pathetic, I’m
quite often the best they have and I end up trying to play for sacrament
meeting. The only way for me to practice
is to go to the church. That’s what I’ve
done in the past, but that only happens about once a week and doesn’t make for
much improvement. Since I’ve vowed to
try to stay inside and out of the heat as much as possible going to the hot
church building to practice hasn’t happened.
Phil braved the heat and went out and bought a keyboard so that I could
stay in the comfort of my air conditioned house and practice. What will be my excuse now for being
pathetic? I know, I can blame the power
outages for interrupting my practicing.
There, we’ve gone full circle and made our way back to power outages
Hi, Phil here. I have
just a couple other items to talk about. As with Rae, nothing terribly
important today, just a couple of randomositities.
First, I am very
disappointed with myself. I have been in India for over a year but I have
hardly made a dent in learning Hindi. I have been looking for a tutor or
convenient class. I really want to get to the point that I am at least
conversant. I have tried Rosetta Stone but I haven’t been thrilled with it. So far,
most of the Hindi I have acquired has been by listening, trying to determine meaning
when I hear the same thing over and over, and when all else fails asking
someone. I have always thought I had a pretty good ear for languages. I still
remember with pride the time I passed as Japanese in a café until I stood up
and the person saw that I wasn’t Japanese after all (I still kinda smile at the
shocked look on his face). One of my professors (native Japanese) told me when
I made mistakes, I made the same mistakes as Japanese. I attribute that to my preferred
way of learning a language as described above.
I say this not to
brag but to reinforce that I at least used to have a good ear for languages.
All of that self-delusion went crashing down yesterday. There is a commercial I
have heard a hundred times or so. There is one particular line from the
commercial I think I understand but I wanted to make sure. So yesterday, I said
to our driver, “there is a line in this commercial (repeated what I thought I
was hearing), “what does that mean? He replies by repeating exactly what I had
said. I said, right, that’s it. He said, “No, that makes no sense at all. That
is a meaningless statement.” Wow, so much for my mad language skillz!
World Cup is going on
currently in Brazil. Although I read there is more interest in the US this year
than in previous World Cups, four years ago that wasn’t particularly the case.
The rest of the world goes crazy and in the US it attracted less attention than
a regular season of college football. Well, I have found a place that even
cares less than the US about World Cup. In India, there is no apparent
recognition that it is going on. I have missed having someone to talk to about
it. I have had to seek out a couple of African students who I know like soccer and
a Nigerian brother at Church today just so I can talk about it for a few
minutes. I don’t know which is weirder. That no one in India cares about World Cup
or that I care enough that I am seeking out people just to talk about it.
Well, tune it next
week to see what new adventures we might uncover.
Namaste.
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