I think you ought to know, I'm feeling very depressed.

I am recovering from a particularly nasty belly bug, I really believe I have expelled my own bodyweight in sweat, vomit and ... well, you can imagine the rest for yourself. I cant seem to physically drink enough to get rid of the dehydration that makes my fingers and toes swell up. (I have monster munch toes! He he he!)
I woke up this morning feeling very depressed, I was bored, feeling a little like a failure that I still haven't managed to get myself a job and doubting my ability to ever get one. Generally feeling very sorry for myself. I have several to do lists, sticky notes and such things full of things to fill my time, but do I do any of them? Of course not. This mornings depression shook me a little. The prospect of lying on my bed for the whole day complaining silently about the pain in my back (the back pain is actually caused by my lying in bed all day, by the way) and listening to Harry Potter Audiobooks, (Read by Stephen Fry, I love them!) was not at all inviting. Leaving the house is not an inviting prospect either. It is very hot here during the day, I'm still not in the whole of my health and I believe one hour outside could require drinking vomit inducing amounts of water to restore my feet to normal proportions.
So I decided to do some things I have been putting off. I called three people I have been in touch with about getting a job. I have been putting off these phone calls, not really wanting to admit this to myself, because I am afraid they wont work out well. This all ties in with the confidence crisis induced by living in a place that sometimes feels so alien and inhospitable I can't go outside to buy a picture frame alone, let alone do anything remotely productive like get a job, a flat, a bank account, health insurance etc. Also the small matter of getting fired from my last job, I thought I was doing spectacularly well, then they went and fired me without an explanation. This tends to lead to a certain level of self doubt.
Anyway, I called three people and made two appointments for tomorrow and the third guy is calling me back. How encouraging! (Maybe I am not so useless, at face value?) Of course, if and when I do get a job I will have to deal with this fear and self doubt all over again, no matter how well I do, I will always wonder, will they fire me again? But that is for another day, I have to get a job before they can fire me, don't I?

The Indo Irish Christmas

So, I know its March now, but I'm catching up!
Christmas this year was great! First off, Johnny and Lindsey (my brother and his wife) came home for a week before Christmas, they were in great form, dealing with the cold! Mum and Dad were made up, all of us home at once! We had ‘Christmas Dinner’ early, about a week before the actual day. The whole family was there, and Granny arrived later too.
Johnny and Lindsey were due to leave on Christmas Eve, so they could be back in San Diego for Christmas with her family, and Sid was due to arrive the day before Christmas Eve. I was very excited, I had not seen Sid since my abrupt departure from India in October and I missed him terribly. I couldn’t wait for him to meet the family, see where I grew up and generally introduce him to Ireland.
I called him as he was leaving for Mumbai, the first leg of his journey. He was to fly to Dubai, then London then Dublin. He made it to Dubai. He went to check in to the London flight and was told his visa wasn’t right and he would not be let into the UK, even though he was a transit passenger and he had transited through London a few weeks before, this time he needed a different visa. Aggggghhhhh!
So he went to Frankfurt, the Germans are not so anal with the transit visas. At this point I was distraught. I was afraid he would be sent back to India, or get stuck in Germany or worse get arrested for being in Germany with no visa! But no need for the distress, he arrived safe and whole in Dublin only twelve hours later than expected. After a long fretful wait in the arrivals hall, imagining all kinds of terrible things with the immigration authorities, we had a happy, tearful reunion!
Unfortunately due to the giggery pokery with the flights, his bag got left in Frankfurt. (Has anyone seen ‘Meet the parents’?) So we had to swing by Tescos on the way home, it was late and tescos is open 24 hours, to pick up some essentials, fully expecting the bag to arrive on the next day. Ha!
Anyway, he was here and that was all that mattered to me! He had brought a little bit of Indian life with him, we realised when we had no water the next morning! The water was gone for different reasons than in India, the pipes were frozen outside. We got on with it anyway, and started to relax into Christmas, while also making numerous calls trying to locate his bag and trying to convince him that a shopping centre was the last place we wanted to go on Christmas Eve morning. (He wanted to get some clothes) The weather was Baltic! Icy cold with roads to match. I had fun telling him that everything will be closed on Christmas day, he didn’t believe a word! He couldn’t grasp the concept that everything would shut down, even the airport, The Airport! How? Why?
Christmas Day dawned bright clear and beautiful, there was a heavy white frost that coated everything and turned Kildare into an Icy wonderland! We had no water again, but no matter we can get by! We went off down to Granny's house, as is our custom, for tea, cocktail sausages, brown bread and something stronger. The place was packed with family, and Sid did a great job as the newcomer. Mark, my mildly autistic nephew, spotted Sid immediately, he stood in front of him, pointed his finger at him and asked the room in a loud voice, “Who is that man?”.
I told him, this is Sid, he is my boyfriend and he is from India. Mark has a huge amount of curiosity, this combined with his loud voice and lack of social skills made for a very funny encounter. Sid was solid as Mark bombarded him with questions such as “are you christian or muslim?” and “what are the main differences between Arabs and Indians, skin tone, religion or culture?”.
What do you say to that, on Christmas morning in a foreign country in the bosom of someone else's family! I have to hand it to Mark, he asked all of the questions everybody wanted the answers to but were afraid to ask. Intelligent questions too. He would have been there for hours had his mum not come to rescue Sid! Mark came by the house later in the visit to question Sid some more about India and the world in general. As I said he is an intensely curious young man!
Anyway, we left Grannys house, full to bursting of sausages and brown bread, paid a visit to the graveyard, as is not our custom, but we did it anyway as I had made wreaths for Grandad and Granny Swords. Turns out it was Sids first visit to a graveyard, he enjoyed it immensely! It is a pretty graveyard.
We arrived home, and dinner was started. It didn’t get going though, as the electricity went with a bang, leaving us ovenless. Damn.
The turkey was half cooked, having been on since morning. We waited and tried to find out what happened. We discovered, through phone calls, ESB maintenance van spottings and gossip that the transformer in the field next door blew up. damn damn. The word was that they had to go into Dublin to get another one, the roads were icing up fast and it would be at least four hours before the power was back.
Luckily my sister, who lives next door, still had power. So after several trips across the garden with various oven dishes of turkey, spuds and stuffing, the dinner was ready! There were Mum, Dad, Richie, Penny, Donny( Penny’s Brother), Granny, Sid and Myself. We had a lovely candle-light dinner and we were mildly disappointed when the power came back half way through! Siobhan and family arrived just in time for desert, as is their custom and we all exchanges gifts. The kids were in great form, and we were in great form, the wine was flowing along with the laughter.
It will go down as one of the best Christmas Days!

Indian Security

I am sitting in a coffee shop in a mall close to my house. My flat is being de-bugged by two very friendly pest control guys, so I am spending most of my day here, happily drinking cold coffees and doing bits of work.
There are security guards at the doors into every place now, especially at places frequented by westerners such as myself.
Since a bomb exploded in a popular western food joint in the city, not far from here, killing 11 and injuring many more, security has been ramped up and there are now additional guards and in depth ‘bag checks’ everywhere.
I recently ate in the Hard Rock Cafe, here in Pune and to gain entry I had to fill in a security log, name, phone number, photo ID type, passport number, company name and nationality. I had to produce said photo ID for inspection and smile for a security camera as well as have my handbag and pockets searched. These measures would be a good thing if the people doing the searches had any training, or the information given checked in any way. I could write any number, name, nationality in the log because the guy there didn't even look at the picture in my passport, never mind checking the number against the one I wrote in the book!
As I write this, I have two bags with me, both are full of electronic equipment, cables and thick books. the guards at the door looked into both and didn’t even ask what they were.
How nice it would be if we could have confidence in the security provided for our ‘comfort and safety’.

The run up to Christmas

As you may know, I had to leave India fairly abruptly due to visa issues arising from my previous boss not wanting me to work anymore. So home I went, back to a life of playing with my sisters babies, eating all round me, attempting to learn Hindi and generally having an easy time of it. I got another Visa with no real drama or hardship, caught up with some old friends and planned for my happy return to Indian soil.
To make my return less stressful I decided to embark on a little enterprise making and selling holly wreaths, as my sister has done for years. I hoped to make enough to pay for a few months rent and some other set up costs, so I aimed to make 100 wreaths and sell them at 15 Euro each over a weekend just before Christmas. So after a good few cold hours in the garage, a few trips to the canal bank to liberate some holly and two trips to a florist supply shop, I ended up making 80 very nice wreaths if I may say so myself!
To sell them, I packed up Mums car, (thanks Mum!) and took over my sisters regular spot on the side of the road in a nearby town. 5 days I spent sitting in sub zero temperatures trying to sell the dam things. I started out hopeful, but my sister had warned me that day one is always slow. Not one did I sell on day one, only 5 on day two and after dropping my price to 12 Euro, six on day three.
Day four, a Saturday, brought a surprise in the form of another seller! Another girl arrived and set up at the other end of the bus stop! The cheek! She was selling wreaths too, but not holly wreaths. she put up a sign saying ‘only 10 euro’, bitch! So I dropped my price to 10 Euro. It worked out very well for me, people saw her, slowed down and pulled up to me! I sold about 30, and I think half were due to her!
One woman even stopped and while looking at my wreaths said:
‘competition for you there’
‘not really’, I said ‘she has no holly in hers, and anyway me and my sister have been selling here for 20 years, we get the odd competition now and again but they never last’
‘Well’, she said, ‘in that case I’ll take two from you!’
I was delighted! It warmed my heart, but not as much as when various family members arrived to let me run off and pee! Mum even brought me chicken soup! I got so cold during those days that when I got home in the evenings my whole body hurt to warm up. It was like a full body bruise.
It was all worth it when I took my hard earned bundle of cash to the bank!

Our favorite Watchman

At Sangam, as with most compounds in India, we have a watchman. A watchman is a guy that sits at the gate all day making sure people that shouldn’t come in don’t and making sure people that should come in, sign in and out.
Recently we have a new watchman, he works for a security company so we never know who we will get, day to day, but this guy has been with us for a while now. He is great!
He smiles all the time, he learned our names so he can sign us in and out as we come and go, we suspect he even thought the other watchman to do the same! He gives us a cheery wave to let us know he has everything under control, keeping us safe and happy.
He also makes sure our forgetful foreign guests sign in and out too!
He must live close by, as is daughter goes to school in the area and his wife keeps him company from six to eight each evening. His daughter sometimes brings him his lunch and they eat together under a tree by the gate or giggling in his hut when it rains. Him and his family always seem happy and they laugh a lot together.
If I go out in the evening before eight, he works eight to eight, he will sign me back in before he goes home for the evening to save me the bother when I actually do come home. This is very sweet, but somewhat defeats the purpose of signing in and out!
This can be especially tricky when the night watchman locks up the gates because he doesn’t know I am out.
Climbing over the Sangam gate is not as easy as it looks or very dignified.

Pandemic Partys

India is in the grip of a Swine Flu panic. Pune, my city, is the epicenter. It started in the schools, and with the government issuing a ban on all foreigners or Indians that have traveled outside India from entering schools. A young girl died, in the posh hospital. Queues formed outside the government hospitals for H1N1 testing, people on the streets are wearing masks, more people are not going on the streets. The Schools closed, then the cinemas, then the shopping malls, the vegetable markets and now whole shopping districts are closed. There is a fear of foreigners here, when I go outside the gates I can see fear and people reaching for their masks when they see me coming. Waiters in cafes put masks on before they come to take my order. Rickshaw drivers don’t stop for me, or for our guests.
The funny thing is there is not one case of a foreigner here in Pune with Swine Flu!
It’s not going to be very funny when our next guests arrive on Friday, 65 people fresh from the UK, where they have Tamiflu and safe hospitals and not a lot of fear and panic. It is difficult for them to understand the fear here. If you suspect you have H1N1 in the UK, you go online, fill in a survey, get a drug number and you can get the drugs, quarantine yourself in your house and ride it out. If you get really sick you can go to the hospital where you can be confident of receiving decent care.
If you suspect you have H1N1 here and you, like most people here are in the low earning bracket, you stand in a queue with other people that might have it, (if you didn’t have it before, you probably do after) for several hours for a test, the results of which takes two days to return, If you have it you can try and quarantine yourself in your home, where you might live with anything from 4 to 14 family members, where you might have just one room, you miss work, which may mean no food for your family, hopefully you can afford drugs. If you get really bad you can go to a designated government hospital where conditions are so bad, and over crowded a healthy person would be unlikely to come out unscathed by infection. There are several designated Swine Flu Hospitals. More each week, in the newspapers yesterday they reported the numbers of doctors and nurses in infected each hospital.
So taking 65 foreigners by rickshaw to a busy shopping district may not be the best or easiest thing to do, even if the district is open! Not everyone is panicking, there is a core of reasonable people that still go out for coffee and meet their friends, take reasonable precautions like hand sanitiser in their offices, but not going mask mad.
There is also fun to be had, people have started having Swine Flu Parties in their homes, as most of the bars are shut or empty. The dress codes for these parties range from just silly masks to whole hog bio suits! There are also advice emails regarding the medicinal benefits of vast quantities of alcohol.
I had to take one of our guests to the hospital two days ago, she had asthma, a cough and chest pains, (quite common given the air quality) anyway, we couldn’t get past the gate without masks. She was sent to one of the swine flu hospitals for a H1N1 test, before any of the doctors would see her. Of course, the test takes two days, so it doesn’t make any difference to the doctor who sees her. When we finally did see a doctor, he wouldn’t touch her, made her wear two masks, and only asked her about swine flu symptoms. She could have had anything else, he was only interested in Swine Flu.
I have had a sore throat for a few days, no temperature or any other swine flu symptoms, I wasn’t going near any of our regular doctors, one of the girls had a similar experience to my hospital one with our regular doctor. I asked an Indian friend to recommend someone so he took me to his doctor. Never have I been able to describe a visit to the doctor as a pleasure before. So civilised, not a mask in sight, no fear in his eyes, a real gentleman. I almost look forward to being ill again, just so I can go to see him again!
(I just have a throat infection, in case folks are worried, I already feel better)
It’s ok for me, I’m a foreigner with money, so I can get the best of care.
Dead Irish Girls make too many international headlines...

Sweet, Sweet Irish Blood.

I have been in India three months now, I have grown accustomed to the food, somewhat, the heat, the noise, pollution and most aspects of everyday life in India. Everything that is except the mosquitoes. They love me. It doesn't matter what I do, they find me. They find me and bite me and suck my blood and leave itchy red bleeding lumps all over my pale pale skin. When I first arrived I got bitten quite badly, as was expected, so a week or two in I decided to try insect repellant and a net around my bed, I had 50% Deet, tropical strength spray on repellant. Every morning for a week I sprayed it on after my shower in the morning, a top up at lunch time and another top up after dinner. I also sprayed my window screens and net. No difference. not a bit. I still got bitten to bits. So I tried something a little stronger, 100% deet, maximum strength, toenail melting stuff. Full week, same routine, no difference. I gave up for a week or two, surrendered to the insects, expected to die from blood loss, but strangely, no difference. Still a steady 10 to 15 new bites each day. An Indian friend recommended an Indian product with 12% deet, Indians use it with success, so I reasoned it might work for me. No joy. On day one, I got over 20 bites on each foot, and similar numbers on my arms. I was nauseous and dizzy all day from the sheer number of bites and exhaustion, because its hard to sleep with that number of itchy painful bites. It’s like the indian cream was catnip for mosquitoes. I had enough. I got a new repellant oil lamp and burning coils for my room, and now that I have the lamp plugged in the right way up, it seems to work ok, there are fewer of them in my room anyway. I bring burning coils to meetings and events. Now I have had four long sleeved blouses specially made to wear under my clothes, new socks to wear all the time with my ankle length skirts. I fear the world will never see my knees, ankles or elbows again. The only parts of me exposed now are my hands and face.

Guess where I’m getting bitten now.