But I would walk five hundred miles, And I would walk five hundred more…

Well not me exactly. Or at all. But as you will see walking pays an important part of this blontary. So, thanks Proclaimers for providing the title to this week’s entry.

I am struck this week by the willingness to sacrifice for one’s belief. I mentioned a few weeks ago that Ramadan was starting – 30 days of fasting by believing Muslims. During daylight hours, observant Muslims go without any food or drink; they break their fast with Iftar, or the meal that breaks the fast. I have watched staff members and students observe their fast and gather in our auditorium for evening prayer and Iftar. I am not a stranger to fasting but I haven’t come close to fasting for such a long period. I am impressed with those who have fulfilled this important aspect of their religious observance.

Now to the walking part. Shifting from Muslims to Hindus, this week marked an important Hindu observance: Kanvar Yatra. During Kanvar Yatra participants carry water from the Ganges to their local temples that honor Shiva (see below), where the water is used in purification ceremonies. This is where the above referenced 500 miles comes in. It is not at all unusual for Kanvarias to cover hundreds of miles. Originally participants walked or ran the entire distance, usually barefoot. Now, most often they participate in teams, taking turns in walking or running. In between, they ride in the back of trucks, in cars, or on motorcycles. One characteristic of most of the trucks is blaring VERY LOUD music. You can hear the trucks coming from a long ways away. Participants keep going 24 hours a day until they complete their journeys. There are rest stations, provided by local communities, to support those who are walking. At these rest stations there is food, drink, and even medical attention for those who need it. Providing support to the Kanvarias is considered as much a form of worship or service as actually making the journey.

Also originally the water was carried in simple pots on either end of a bamboo pole carried across the shoulders. Those simple arrangements still exist but they are increasingly rare. They have been replaced with elaborate scaffolding of light wood and paper or fabric. Even full shrines are carried by teams of walkers, some with colored lights all over them. Here are some pictures Rae and I took. All of these were at night so the quality isn't great but I think you’ll get the feel for what we saw.

Rae here,

I’m going to add a few other random thoughts and tidbits that I got out of watching part of this process.  It seems that there are only male runners.  There seems to be very little involvement of women.  Women are mostly standing along the road and giving out some food, water, or just cheering on the runners.

 Phil talked about the trucks that travel along with the runners and play loud music.  Sometimes the music is live, being made by the actual riders with a heavy emphasis on drumming, but quite often it seems to be broadcast from some sort of recorded source.  There is a platform built on the top of the truck and that is where the musicians or other supporters sit, stand and dance around.  They are usually quite enthusiastic and excited.  It would be pretty hard to miss the fact that they are coming your way.  I don’t know if the open space below the platform is used as a resting place for the runners or a place to store supplies, or what.  While the picture we got is blurry hopefully you get a bit of an idea.    

Most of the runners are dressed in orange.  I’m not sure of all the significance other than it is connected to saffron, and that is what they call that color of orange.   Saffron in Hinduism is a highly religious color associated with sacrifice, abstinence, and the quest for light and salvation. Hopefully that helps explain some of the significance. 

The walkers/runners of the pilgrimage make their journey down the same roads that all the rest of us travel and I know we have mentioned on more than one occasion how crazy and crowded the traffic here, and other places is.  In most areas there are no special provisions made in the way of clearing a lane or blocking off areas.  The trucks and runners somehow manage to make their way through the traffic and the traffic somehow manages to accommodate them.  I guess when you are used to avoiding cows, you can also avoid some noisy trucks that are announcing runners. 

It was a fun to watch and learn a bit more about.  Phil picked me up after work one evening and we traveled a ways out of Delhi to try to get a better look at the runners and a bit of the process.  It was getting dark and most all our shots were taken from the car so the quality is not great, but hopefully you get the idea.  It is a highly religious event that takes place in the middle of the everyday world.  Amazing, crazy, and inspiring.

Hope you enjoy the pictures. 

       

Namaste.                         

We are not alone, being on our own….

Thanks to the Fruit Bats (yeah, I don’t know them either) for today’s lyrical title. It reflects what it was like at Church today. Since I have been called to be in the Branch Presidency, I have dreaded the day I would be the only member of the Presidency in attendance. Sure, there is the issue of having too many things to do and no one else to get them done, but that isn’t my issue. I always figure I would only do what I could. If things didn’t work exactly right, or if absolutely everything didn’t get done, “oh well”. Fifty years from now, who would remember? I did however have a couple of apprehensions.  Initially one of my concerns was not knowing all the members of the Branch, well that’s not an issue now.

My other concern was and remains speaking essentially no Hindi, what do I do when a member who speaks essentially no English needs something? I have written before about giving interview. At least as long as another member of the Branch Presidency is here, I can always hold up a finger say “ek minute (one minute)” and go get someone else. So what to do when there is no one else there?

Well, today I found out. It wasn’t too bad. I made it through unscathed and got home perhaps only an hour later than usual. President Jurial is with his wife and new born baby boy (Rimpy gave birth on Wednesday – picture below) and President Kuberan is in the South visiting is wife’s family. So I got to live one of my fears. As I said, not too bad. I once again got to give an impromptu talk, as one of our speakers did not show up. However, speaking, whether with or without notice is not an issue. It’s always been a joke in our family, although one born in truth, if you want something done, ask Rae; if you want something said, ask Phil.  In other words, I am all talk.

Here, now is a woman of action, Rae.

Life on the home front was pretty quiet with only some of the usual issues to deal with, i.e. power outages, lies from the landlord and his managers, you know, the usual.  I know, same song and actually the same verse.  I won’t bore you with those fun details, but will say I’m tired of feeling lied to and jerked around.  There, I’ve vented.

Saturday we decided to try another movie.  We had planned to go see How to Train Your Dragon II with the Slocombes.  We were too slow and the movie ended on Thursday.  So we decided to see Planes, Fire and Rescue.  It was a fun movie and the Slocombes first experience at the movies.  Normally we would have gone to dinner afterwards but it turned out that Phil had to go to work for a (hopefully) quick meeting at 4:00.  I went home to chillax while Phil went to his meeting which only lasted 3 hours.  Oh yeah!  So much for his day off.  That’s how we roll in India. 

I did go to lunch with Phil one day this week.  That’s always a nice break. 

Phil did talk about today and how shorthanded he was.  That was the case for primary also.  Just before church Phil got a call from the primary president’s husband saying that she wouldn’t be there today.  That doesn’t seem like a big deal, but they are in the process of reorganizing the presidency and only one counsellor has been called.  She however is the woman Phil spoke of earlier that had gone home to visit her family (President Kuberan’s wife).  Time to regroup.  I told him that I’d go in there and come up with something.  I’m normally in YW for 3^rd hr.   There was a small group today and it really was pretty fun being in there with them.  The Primary all meets together so the biggest challenge is trying to do something that works for the varied age group 3-12.  Didn’t realize that Phil stuck his head in and took a picture of us.  Guess I was having fun. 

I know I’ve talked about how close cars come to each other and to people.  Well, to illustrate that let me tell you why the primary president wasn’t there today.  Last Sunday as she was walking home an auto (a motorized three wheel taxi) drove so close to her that they ran over her foot and fractured it.  See told you we are close.  Poor Ruchika. 

So, today was play the organ for sacrament meeting, teach primary, and then meet with the YW president to do some planning.  My Sunday was shorter and easier than Phil’s.

 Namaste.                        

And all he’d say was rain, rain, rain….

The monsoon started this afternoon, two weeks late and three days early. Two weeks late because historically the monsoons should have started by now based on historical start dates. Three days early because the weather man said the rains were supposed to start on Wednesday. The two week delay is actually a big deal. A deal of three weeks means the monsoon will produce so little rain that crop harvest will be catastrophically low. A delay of two weeks like this year will mean crops will be reduced but there will still be a viable harvest. I read an article the other day that stated, probably correctly that there is no single weather phenomenon that affects more people than monsoon in India.

I have decided to kick up my study of Hindi. I have been focused on learning the Hindi alphabet. This may be more detail than anyone else wants to know but I think it is kinda cool. The “natural” state of consonants is accompanied with a short “a” sound like the (A in America). So (written in roman letters) the consonants are ka, kha, ga, gha, and so forth. These consonants are changed to other consonants not by adding another vowel to the k, kh, g, gh, and so forth but by adding a mantra to the base consonant.  This is harder to explain than to show, so I’ll show it using ka as an example:

The red marks you see on the "ka" symbol are called mantra. As I said, they change the sound of the base consonant. Note the third symbol. The mantra that changes the sound actually is written before base symbol (in this case a short i sound, as in bit). The fourth symbol is essentially the mirror image of the third; it make long the base symbol a long e sound, as in feet) So, too much information, right? I am sorry. I know it makes me a nerd but I think this is really cool. 

Here’s Rae.

This week has been pretty uneventful so this entry will likewise be pretty uneventful.  I did go out to lunch with Sister Slocombe and a sister from our branch, Amy Paul.  Sister Slocombe is a senior missionary, here with her husband, who are assigned to the mission office.  Amy and I had agreed to meet her at the mission office and then go to lunch from there.  The mission office is on the 3^rd floor.  Remember that the way they do floors here is ground, 1st (which we would call 2^nd), 2^nd (which we would call 3^rd), etc. So, the office is on the 3^rd floor (which we would call 4^th).  The building is being remodelled.  The basement, ground floor, and 1^st floor are being converted to take the place of the building that is currently being used for 2 branches.  The old building is about a block away and is owned by someone else and leased by the church.  This new building is part of the mission home, office and Mission President’s residence.  I digress.  Back to lunch, and my reason for the long explanation about the remodel.  Because of the remodel, the building’s elevator was not functioning and so a trek up the stairs was required.  I know that sounds like I’m in such bad shape that climbing the stairs was too much. This building like the one we meet in [Phil-and like most buildings in India] doesn’t enclose and air condition the stairs.  So when you need to use the stairs, you have to enter the “hot zone”.  The multiple flights of stairs was not the problem, it was the 104 degrees that I objected to.  Anyway, we survived that and had a nice lunch at a local mall that had nice air conditioning.  It was fun to spend time with these ladies. 

I’ve been thinking of writing a bit about some of the buses around here.  There are basically three different colored public transportation buses.  Green, orange and red.  I’m unclear on the difference in the green and orange, maybe routes.  The red bus is the only one that is air conditioned and it costs a bit more to ride. There are pictures below of the red and green but we still need a picture of the orange one there. Here’s the part that I find interesting.  I’ve been told by more than one person that women should not ride the red bus because it is air conditioned.  Air conditioned buses, it is explained, are bad for women and will cause them to become ill because they are too cold?!?!?  I’ve tried to pay attention to see if people really believe this and if the red bus is only ridden by men.  While I know this is not a scientific test, I do have to say that I have observed mostly men on these buses.  I’ll keep observations going and update if I find my conclusions are wrong.   Poor women!

Today was branch conference at the Delhi 3^rd branch which meets in the old building that I talked about above.  Since I’m the 1^st counsellor in the District Young Women’s I visited that branch.  I was told that normally they have 4 or 5 young women but today they had a record number [Phil - the word had gotten out that Rae was going to be there].  There were a couple of investigators, one young woman that was baptised last week and one young woman that just came in from primary.  I thought you’d like to see what a Young Women’s group in Delhi India looks like.  There are some really impressive young women here and they will be the future leaders of the church in India.    

Namaste.                         

I saw a film today, oh boy….

After a year without seeing a movie in India, Rae and I saw two movies this week. On Thursday, one of the teams from the campus went to see a movie. It was their reward for completing a very long, very complex project. I asked them what kind of reward they would like to have and seeing a movie was the unanimous answer. I was willing to send them all off to see a movie but they insisted that I go with them. I thought, “Fine, if I am going to see a Hindi movie, then Rae should go with us.” So I paid for her ticket and off we went.

As mentioned, above it was a Hindi movie, the English translation of which is One Villain. Bollywood movies are best known for singing and dancing – lots of light fun. However, they also make thrillers, as well as every other genre including westerns. This one was a thriller with a fairly complex story structure, jumping back and forth in time. Trying to understand everything that was going on, with the dialog in Hindi and no subtitles, was a challenge. Fortunately, based on sample of three movies I’ve seen, they always seem to have intermissions. During the intermission, I cranked up the Google machine and read the plot summary. All of a sudden the pieces came together and I enjoyed the second half of the movie much more.  Oh, I guess I should say just because it was a thriller doesn’t mean there was no singing and dancing. However, it was set in a night club and didn’t involve the movie principals, except as observers. It was also quite dark by typical Bollywood standards.

Movie two was in English, Transformers 4, and I actually think I understood the Hindi movie more fully. OK, the plot was dead simple but the way the movie was cut, the similarity of the good and bad transformers, and the overall grey tone of the cinematography made it difficult for this old man to understand the details of all the computer generated graphic action scenes. Since that was, oh, 90% of the movie, you can see my problem. I am not sure watching it in 3D really helped me with understanding the computer generated graphics either, for that matter. But it was cool watching stuff fall.

So on balance, “Yes” to Ek Villain and “No” to Transformers 4.

Now a couple of things about the process. First of all, and most importantly, they have popcorn. Since I am married to a woman who is genetically unable to watch a movie without simultaneously eating popcorn that was a very good thing. Second, the popcorn wasn’t too bad. Finally, a very cool thing is all the seats in the theaters are reserved. You can get them at the box office but you can also do it online. There is an app called Book My Show, which covers most theaters in Delhi. So you go on to the app, pick the movie, pick the theater, pick the time and pick you seats. Easy, peasy.  Since we’ve been here a year many things may have changed – is a similar app available in the US now?

Here’s Rae.

My part of the blog is going to be some highlights of my week.  These are random and kind of all over the place so bear with me. 

I know we have mentioned in the past that it is not uncommon to see men standing at the side of the road urinating.  Earlier in the week Phil was telling me that India is one of the top countries for public elimination, so not just whizzing.  Tuesday as I was out and about I witnessed my 1^st, I’ll call him “squatter”.  As the car turned the corner and moved behind him I was probably 6 feet away.  The image of his bare backside will be etched in my mind for heaven knows how long.  Later in the week I noticed another guy but luckily he was behind a small mound of dirt.  Unlike some of my next experiences, this experience comes without pictures.  Phew!

This is mango season and fresh mangos are at the top of my list of favorite fruits.  There are several varieties of mangos depending on the area they come from.  Lychees are also fresh right now.  While I have eaten and loved lychees I’ve never seen them fresh.  If I did I didn’t know what they were and I wouldn’t have thought they looked particularly yummy.  So, I thought some of you might be interested to see what fresh lychees, and one variety of mango, look like.

Friday afternoon Phil and I went to the National Museum.  The museum was interesting and we didn’t see all there was to see so we will be going back again.  The thing about the museum was that it, like almost everywhere we’ve visited, is poorly maintained and things are not clean.  I know that dealing with the black soot that covers everything is a challenge, but cleanliness just doesn’t seem to be a priority.  Anyway, hope you enjoy the pictures.

Cows are not uncommon, but I’ve usually seen them wandering around, laying off to the side of the road or laying on a center median, rarely in the middle of the road. Friday on the way to the museum there was a cow laying in the middle of the road.  The car that you see the side of is our car which was about 6 inches from him with motorcycles on two other sides of him.  He wasn’t bothered at all by the fact that traffic was moving so closely around him.  Just lying there in the shade in the middle of the road, why not?

One last thing I’d like to share.  Last week in church a young man spoke and was talking about women in his life and how they had helped teach him different things.  One woman he said had really helped him learn the importance of honesty, and then shared the following experience.  He (Shibu) is a college student and attending a local university.  He was sitting for an exam with 29 other students.  There was a supervisor who was overseeing the exam.  As Shibu was working on his exam he noticed a lot of the students were using books or papers to get their answers, not being honest.  After a bit, the supervisor took their books and papers away from them but, after that, he asked the class how many of them would like to be able to take the test using their books.  29 students raised their hands, all but Shibu.  The supervisor then told them if they would each pay him 300 rupees (about $5) then he would let them use their books and papers.  Everyone, except Shibu, paid him the money and he stepped outside into the hall to watch for his supervisor so that he wouldn’t get caught letting the students cheat.  WHAT? Unbelievable, except from other things we’ve heard, maybe not so unbelievable.  Yet another story of bribes being paid.  [Phil here – the preferred term is "administrative fees"].

Namaste.                         

We're not Romeo - not Juliet, No we're not - that's a fact….

So, from time to time President Jurial asks me to sit in on counselling sessions. I assume it is because I am old and he can, if required, lean on my many, many, many years of experience. In some cases, most often actually, I am not sure why he asks me to sit in. He typically gives the advice or counsel that I would. He might word it differently but the essence is usually aligned. Particularly when the person he is counselling only speaks Hindi, I am not sure what I offer.

Apropos the above was a session today. A single mom wanted to counsel with President Jurial about her 18 year old daughter who’s a senior in high school. I actually had a session six months ago with the mother and one with the daughter six months ago when President Jurial was out of town. At that time the mom’s concern was that her daughter was getting too serious with a boy. She was doing poorly in school and generally being a difficult teenager. She wanted me to counsel her that she was getting too serious and she need to slow down and be more cautious. I knew this not from the mom, who speaks no English, but she asked a Sister in the Branch to sit in with us and translate. She assured me her daughter speaks English well and I agreed to talk with her. Turned out, her English? Not so much. She sat and smiled at me as I tried time after time to speak with her. It turned out President Jurial was going to be back in a couple of days, and she ended up waiting to talk with him.

What brings us to today. Same mom. Same daughter. Same total lack English skills. Same problem with the daughter running around with boys, not being responsible at school, and generally worrying her mother. But this time mom has a solution. She has arranged a marriage for her daughter. To her this seems like a great solution. The daughter is out of her house and is the husband’s problem. President Jurial tried to counsel her that pushing into an arranged marriage shifts but doesn’t solve the problem. It’s a difficult sale in a culture in which an arranged marriage seems like a perfectly reasonable solution. The girl just sat there most of the time staring at the ceiling. I think she will be glad to be out of her mom’s house and on her own. If the price of that is an arranged marriage to some guy she has only met once, doesn’t seem too high. I am afraid neither mother nor daughter have thought long term about the situation.

Shifting gears: yesterday was the first day of Ramadan, 30 days of fasting and worship for Muslims. The fast lasts from before sunrise to after sunset. I read, a few years ago, about a Mormon Chief of Police in a city near San Francisco that in a show of unity decided to observe Ramadan (high Muslim population in both the city and the police force). Since I read that article, each year as Ramadan approaches I consider observing it myself. This year, I thought about it again. Then I thought about dealing with the Delhi heat without even water and I decided, “hmm, well not this year.” Another item for my bucket list.

Here’s Rae.

A couple of things made this week different from the usually heat, power outages and my trying to survive them.  On Monday morning I decided to put a load of whites in the washer.  When I saw there was still room in the washer I decided to take my robe off and add it.  While the washer was running I decided to mix a batch of cookies.  When I started looking for my phone so I could set a timer, I had a sick recollection of dropping it into the pocket of my robe.  DANG!  I went to the washer and sure enough it was there in the pocket.  DANG!  Immediately I shook water out of it and set it in front of my hair blower.  Couldn’t find rice to put it into.  I sent Phil and email and told him what I’d done and that if he wanted to reach me he’d need to email.  I then put the cookie dough into the fridge to wait for Christina (who has a phone with a timer) to come so that we could bake them.  I was trying to make cookies in preparation for some house guests that were coming on Wednesday.

When Christina arrived later in the day I told her what I’d done.  She found the rice and so I transferred my phone to a bowl full of rice and prayed that that would be the answer to saving my phone.  I left the phone in the rice until Tuesday night and then decided to try it.  It turned on, YAY!  But, I couldn’t get it to open so I could access anything.  Back into the rice til morning.  Wednesday morning it wouldn’t even turn on, just black.  DANG! 

Wednesday afternoon Phil arrived at the house with a new phone.  (Here it is)  

He is such a good guy.  So, I now have a new phone with some of my old info and more work to be done in getting things restored.  This whole thing has made it very clear to me how tied to technology (our phones) we are.  It was almost embarrassing how many times I found myself reaching for my phone that of course, wasn’t there.  I kept hearing my Dad’s voice saying “Well, it was an expensive lesson, but hopefully you’ve learned it”.  He, like Phil, was/is a patient man.

We had 4 house guest Wednesday-Friday morning.  Our friend McArthur who lives in Faizabad came with 3 young people.  Michael (16) who is from the US but visiting McArthur for the summer and 2 of her Indian neighbors, Ruby (18) and her brother Siddharth (23).  Ruby was meeting with the US embassy to apply for a visa to do an internship in the US. Siddharth came, I don’t know why, maybe just to come to Delhi or as a chaperone, not sure.  Michael turned 16 on Wednesday and so had made arrangements to be ordained to the office of priest, which Phil did today.  It is always fun to have house guests and get the opportunity to meet new people and share some of their experiences with them. 

Finally, the sister missionaries arranged a Branch photo this afternoon. You can't tell from this picture how HOT it is.

Namaste.                         

I rap in a power outage, don't need a microphone I can rap without it…

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.                        

Hot town, summer in the city, Back of my neck getting burned and gritty…

Well, as you know if you are a regular readers of our blog, we got back to Delhi last week. After days of temperature between 60 – 70 degrees, we came back to 120 degrees. The difference in temperature was just the beginning. As Paul Harvey used to say, “this is the rest of the story.”

It has been so hot that there have been rolling power outages, particularly in the poorer/older parts of town. That has stressed electrical systems all over the city in general and at our campus in particular. Monday it was another scorcher; about 10:00am the main electrical line into the campus burned out. We have two generators and they both kicked in. And caught fire. So we were out of electricity, had it again for about two minutes, and then nothing. No lights, no computers, no air conditioning. It was pretty sweet. Finally about 2:00pm we determined that it wasn’t going to be fixed until later in the evening. So, I cancelled classes and sent everyone home. I stayed as long as I could stand it and then went home where I had both AC and Internet. Finally about 10:00pm I got word the main line was replaced and power was restored. Whew! It was a hot day but at least now things were going to be back to normal.

Not. Next morning, things started okay until there was a power surge. First generator kicked in. No worries. Second generator kicked in and lasted about two minutes when it threw a piston and ceased up. This caused the first generator to overload, catch fire, and shut down again. Once again we were dead in the water and it was a million degrees. Again I cancelled class and sent everyone home. This time, we enlisted the help of the facilities department at our parent company. Turns out we have to rebuild both generators. Between melted pistons and totally burned wiring things are bleak. The only good thing that came of it was we were able to find and bring in a large portable generator (think small trailer) while the repairs are being done. It is supposed to be fixed by tomorrow; we’ll see. I am not holding my breath.

I know that power shortages and power outages are the norm in the majority of the world. I really don’t understand how you are supposed to conduct business, at least not modern business based on computers and telecommunications, in these conditions. I was beyond frustrated. But, Wednesday I pulled my boots on and went to work. Amazingly, power stayed on. We had computers. We had phones. We had air conditioning. Ah the simple pleasures!

Well, that was the essence of my week. Here’s Rae to tell you about her first week back.

My week has been a mixture of jet lag and power outages.  Don’t think I’ll spend any time elaborating on jet lag other than to say I’m still trying to figure out the best way to make that transition.  I don’t seem to make the adjustment as fast as Phil does.  Maybe I’m just a bigger whiner.

The heat has caused problems all over the city and that includes our house.  My day is continually interrupted by power outages.  Luckily the power never stays off too long because we have a generator that kicks in.  Luckily no fires here.  Still a bit annoying to have continual interruptions in what I’m doing.  Sadly for a lot of people there have been long periods of no power and no AC.  There have been some heat related deaths.  Phil didn’t mention that we were fortunate enough to be here when one of the days they broke a 62 year record for heat.  Should be excited about being able to witness a record being broken, but somehow I didn’t feel very excited.  Found it a bit deflating. 

Heat is the topic of the day and my goal is to avoid it as much as possible.  I can have groceries delivered, work on some projects that have been waiting for my attention and spend some time trying my hand at art again. That’s my plan for surviving these next few months.  I know, I sound like a whimp.  I am.    

Namaste.