What The Mouse Did While The Cat Was Away
We are traveling to Madurai tomorrow, a city known for its ancient temples and palaces, as a part of an Aravind Eye Hospital-organised excursion so I probably won’t be updating this blog until next week. By that time our stay in India will be half over!
Last Saturday, I wrote a piece entitled When the Cat’s Away…, detailing my options for my time alone here in Pondicherry while Anna was back in Singapore for the weekend. One or two of you might be wondering what I did during that time, I doubt it, but stranger things have happened, so I thought I’d take this oppourtunity to update you. Don’t worry, it won’t be anywhere near the essay that yesterday’s post was.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Saturday was quite a relaxing day. After I finished writing I walked down to the beach to go to the bar near the lighthouse at the Promenade. The concert that I had seen a couple of days prior wasn’t a stand alone event. It was part of a festival and Saturday was extremely impressive; among other performances they had fire-dancers, but not just adults, children, too!
Imagine trying to organise an event like this back in Australia, there would be so much red-tape, it would be an Occupational Health & Safety nightmare! Here, it seems like they just asked some kids if they can, or want to learn to fire dance and the ones that said “Yes” got the gig. That’s not to take anything away from their performance, it was truly amazing.
After the completion of the event, I continued to the bar and struck up a conversation with a really nice guy who works for General Motors in Detroit and was here for a wedding. Because he was a car nut I explained how Certificate of Entitlement works in Singapore and he couldn’t believe it.
Bars and clubs close at midnight at the latest here, last call is usually 11:30pm, and on my stroll home I saw an advertisement for a rave, ‘Pondi Electro,’ and even that was advertised as only going from 7:30pm – midnight.
The view of the old lighthouse from the Promenade bar
Sunday, March 8, 2015
My plan for Sunday was to move apartments at our resort, because the wifi in our room hadn’t been working. Anna badly needed it for work, but the only way she could use it was to move outside, however, by the time she gets home there are mosquitoes everywhere. We had previously arranged to move on Sunday, but I slept in and didn’t hear the knock at the door. That’ll have to wait until Monday.
Instead, I walked around town for a bit, then went back to the to the Promenade, first for their buffet, then outside for what turned into a substantial quantity of libations as I eavesdropped on the insanely obnoxious American tourists next to me while we watched the cricket.
“I kinda understand metres, because I watch a lot of golf, but I don’t really get kilograms or celsius. What we really need is some kinda global measurin’ system the whole world can use!” was one of their pearls of wisdom. I wanted to inform the man responsible for the above quote that there was indeed a global measuring system, it was just that his country was one of three in the world that has refused to adopt it, but it was just too much fun listening to the ridiculous crap that came out of their mouths. The local Indian man sitting at their table was too polite to say anything, opting to just smile and nod his head instead, even when they spoke to their waiter like he was something they had scraped off their collective shoes. I had the same waiter so I decided to emphasise my accent, thus he’d know we were from different countries and I eventually got a bill for three beers when I had had a lot more than that so I gave him a nice little tip and still came out on top. Winning.
Monday, March 9, 2015
I set my alarm the night before so I wouldn’t screw up again. It was time to move apartments and we went from this:
To this, our new place:
Goodbye, Michael…
We prefer the new apartment, especially the bathroom, the only problem is that I burnt my scalp on a spotlight in the ceiling when I entered through the front door for the first time; I have to duck to get through the doorway, but I didn’t realise that the ceiling was about the same height as me when I straightened up, resulting in the smell of burnt hair lingering around our new place for about 10 minutes. I have to admit though, there is one thing I am going to miss from our old room: Our painting of the Indian woman who looked to me like a ‘Thriller’-era Michael Jackson (right).
Other things I did while Anna was away:
• Killed an arse-load of insects. I decided to call my electric insect zapper “Frank”. Trust me, it makes perfect sense
“Thanks, Diane.”
• Finally grew a moustache. I hadn’t shaved since my Mum’s 60th birthday, which was over three weeks ago, for this reason and I’m glad I didn’t! People stare at me constantly over here, it’s like in old Western movies when the cowboy enters the bar. Everybody stops what they’re doing; the bar-keep pauses while polishing a beer glass, the patrons slowly put their drinks down open-mouthed, and the pianist in the corner just stops. Dead silence follows an initial collective gasp. I feel like that cowboy here every day — Maybe it’s my size, perhaps it’s my tattoos, but I still believe it was my severe lack of a moustache. Until now, I felt naked without it.
• Went to a local art exhibition. There are some really talented people in this city and it seems there are constantly art and handicraft exhibits, as well as local performances and films. Some of my favourite pieces from the art exhibit:
So, this weekend we are off to Madurai and in two and a half weeks we’re moving to Germany. This year we are constantly on the move and it seems that at least one of us has been in an airport almost every week or two, which got me thinking…
Tim’ s Pointless fact of the day: In the past 25 years, 14 trillion frequent flier miles have gone unredeemed. That equates to 75,268 round trips to the sun.
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