In Hot Water

Hot water is a bit of a luxury in India; we don't have it in the kitchen or in our bathroom sinks, but we do have it in two out of the three showers, provided by the ever reliable 'geyser.'  In the UK/India, a geyser, pronounced 'geezer,' is your water heating system, a small tank of water that you have to switch on to heat about 15 minutes before you need to bathe.  However, in the US, a geyser is pronouned 'geye-zer,' and is a gushing hot spring.

Well our Indian geyser was certainly a gushing hot spring today; in fact, in less than 90 minutes of us being out of the house, it had erupted and gushed gallons of water an inch deep in virtually every room in the apartment.  Thank god for tiled floors.  Thank god for inexpensive rugs.  And thank god for saddle blankets which soaked up a lot of it in one of the rooms!  It's not the first time the geyser has erupted, but it's certainly the most dramatic.  In the course of two years in this apartment, we've probably had each one repaired in some manner about half a dozen times.  And we will again on Monday!

The whole drama reminded me of the confusion over the US/English word geyser/geezer and its pronunciation:  Our friend Ben was visiting NYC from the UK and couldn't stop laughing when he saw the brand of water 'Crystal Geyser.'  Pronouncing it the US way, geye-zer, it doesn't sound funny; switch it to the UK way, geezer, and pair it with the word's other meaning, 'old man,' and you can see why Ben decided it was a great name for a bad drag queen.  I have to agree, although the name of the world famous Tupperware sales person, drag queen 'Dixie Longate' is certainly high up on the list.  Say it a few times and you'll get it...

Back in Bangalore...

I'm finally back in Bangalore with a streaming cold, chesty cough, and horrible jetlag.  It's hotter than Satan's crotch here and my body is freaking out after two weeks of snow, rain, wind and temperatures in the single digits centigrade.   I don't know about you, but I can't do with centigrade.  If I have a fever, it should be 103 not 38.something or other.  If it's hot, I want it to be in triple digits, not double digits.  I'm also very anti kilograms and kilometers, but I still think that England shouldn't be a part of Europe and that carrots should be all different shapes and sizes, not EU-ified as they have been.  

Anyway, back to Bangalore where the big news in my absence is that McDonald's is now selling chicken nuggets.  Oh, that and by 2011, in a water purification scheme, Bangaloreans may be drinking treated waste water.  That would be as opposed to the UNTREATED waste water that appears to come out of my tap now.  Welcome home.

Breeding in Bangalore

Bangalore is home to more than 25,000 stray dogs, and while the animal welfare people are doing all they can to cull the ever-increasing population, it seems to me that the ex-pat population is more than making up for their decrease by an increase in Bangalore conceived babies. It first started with some friends last year, who came to Bangalore for six months, and nine months later went home with more than a few sarees and ganesha's as a souvenir; then another set of friends, already with two kids, bred another one in Bangalore before they left town, just for good measure; our newest friends (you know who you are) were affirmed non-parents, drinking too much and riding ponies, until the Bangalore breeding bug got them and they were pregnant before you could say, ok horn... So, what is it with Bangalore? My theory is that there's something in the water. Let me rephrase that. There are MANY things in the water, much of which you don't want to know about, and which is why I use bottled water for cooking pasta, take hot water from the office-type cooler for cups of tea, and use bowls and bowls of same boiling water to wash my veggies in pre-cooking. Maybe it's too much of one sex hormone or another in the water, or maybe it's the relaxed lifestyle that most women enjoy post their crazy western career, and the spare time they have to play wifey. Whatever it is, it appears to be spreading faster than a dose of gardia. Watch out yet-to-arrive childless ex-pat couples, you could get more in Bangalore than you bargained for!