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[Kagus]

Well, thanks to the help of the doctor who treated my dad, I am now feeling quite a bit better.  Still not top, but not bad.

I've got three lovely little pills I'm supposed to take.  One to reduce stomach acid (also helps give me an appetite), one to pump me full of beneficial gut flora, and one to help keep me from pissing out the wrong hole.

It would appear that, in India, people are very sensitive.  For instance, any time you read a local newspaper, you will have at least one hanging reported in there.

There was a girl (17) who hung herself after her father told her not to watch so much TV, and put more effort into her homework.  Today, there was a report of a girl who performed a similar act of self-unhelp after her teacher reprimanded her for playing volleyball with boys.  

And it's not just suicide, there was a guy who threw acid in his father's face after his father had decided that he was going to remarry.  This was several years since his wife's death, mind you.

The newspapers also have columns with the equivalent of extreme-Feng Shui experts giving advice (very vague advice, always followed by "contact a professional to help you redesign your home").  They also sport small articles detailing helpful hints on how to run a standard life, all of which are completely absurd.  For instance, in order to prevent your child from smoking, you must not tell them that it is bad to smoke.  You must tell them that it is bad to eat fresh fruit, as this will provide them an alternate means of rebelling against you.  I did not make any of that up.  

How many people honestly expect their kids to be dumb enough to eat fresh fruit as a means of rebellion, I don't know...  But then again, considering how little it takes to push one over the edge of suicide, it might actually work.  

You want to keep your kid from smoking?  Very simple:  Give him/her a cigarette.

However, according to the newspaper, a single cigarette is enough to get a person addicted for life.  I don't think they even bothered to say "a recent study has shown..."

It's interesting. Looking at the newspaper here, and all the glaringly stupid things that are being presented to the public readers, I think I'll look very differently at the newspapers stateside. I'll be keeping an eye out for "fresh fruit".

I guess the non-conformists here are very healthy.

[Keilden]

quote:Originally posted by Kagus:
<STRONG>Ah, thank you.  That's what I wantd to know.

I'll get around to using it when we get some passable photos.

For now, here's a photo of the one man in Hyderabad who doesn't smile when a camera is pointed at him.

I'm going to assume that expression is not very good for the flower-selling business...</STRONG>

He looks like he is about to hit you.

[Kagus]

*Phew*, I still feel very full.

We've just come back from Radha's house, where we got to meet his wife and two sons, the younger of whom was named something very similar to my name, and was born six months before I was.  He's in his first year of computer engineering, the eldest is in his third.  

If you go to college in India, you are either an engineer or a doctor.  It really is kinda funny seeing which western stereotypes are painfully accurate in different cultures...

Anyways, we got to eat some food.  Eek.  At least at the restaurant we could choose how little we wanted to eat, at someone's house you've got to have everything they give you, and taking seconds is a grand complement to the cook!  Luckily, we managed.  Barely.

First up, steam dosa.  This is a soft, thick dosa that you can't find at the restaurants, served with the standard sauce (which we have now found out is coconut chutney).  I would like to mention that everything we were served tonight was homemade.

After the very tasty dosa with its wonderful texture, comes the tomato rice and yoghurt sauce combo.  I'd like to reiterate that everything was homemade, including the yoghurt.

The tomato rice was the first thing I managed to take seconds on, and I hope it was noticed.  I figured I could spare the space, since rice (coated in yoghurt) is pretty easy to pack away.

Third item, puri.  That is, a mini puri served with a slightly spicy mushroom curry, something I haven't seen the likes of before here in India.  Curry-puri puri-curry.  

That would work better if puri weren't pronounced [PUU-ri].  Anyways, once we'd managed to stuff that in, we were starting to slow down.  We had just eaten three small meals' worth of food in one sitting, and it was starting to take effect.

Fourth, was plain long-grained rice, served with homemade sambar, with a 'breadstick' in each bowl.  No, this is not the kind of breadstick you get in a breadbasket at a ristorante, this was some kind of vegetable.  You had to break it open by smushing it a little bit (it would naturally form three equal pieces), and then scrape off the meat from each piece with your teeth.  

This last course took a bit of time, and I finally learned the rule of thumb about when you've got enough sambar/other sauce on your rice.  There should no longer be any white showing.

Now, of course, we were supposed to ask for something else.  We had been given "samples" of the menu, and now we were supposed to order what we wanted.  Oi...

We managed to talk our way out of that, and made our way straight to dessert.

Damn.  Even the dessert had separate courses.  First she (it was Radha's wife serving and cooking everything.  Radha just sat back, gave serving orders, and tried to look important) put down colorful little bowls of sweetened bread-stuff, mixed with cashews, pistachios, and coriander (I think that's what the spice was.  Forgot the name).  Then, she served a communal bowl filled with chunks of various nuts, mixed together and then packed into bar-like wads using jaggery.  Because it used jaggery as the only sweetener, it wasn't a sugar overkill, and (according to the repeated statements of the whole family) quite a bit healthier than standard sugar.  Downright good for you, in fact.

And then, after all that (I've really made it all sound like much less than it was. I wish we had some pictures, but we were too busy eating to think about the camera...), we were each suposed to have a plate of fruit.  Oranges, apples, red grapes and green grapes, we were supposed to consume the lot.

I would like to mention that much research was put into what one should do when invited to dinner.  The common and most accepted procedure, according to that wonderful world wide web, was to bring a box of chocolates or other sweets.  And so we did.

Nothing told us that we were going to be getting presents, too.

My mom got a handknit blanket (again, complements of Mrs. Radha's last name) and a jewelry box, which we later found out was very intricately detailed and designed.  There was also a clay figurine of a woman holding some sort of instrument, which I think was supposed to be directed at our family as a whole.

And me?  Well, I got a knife.

Yeah, that's right.  The eldest son had picked up a Sikh self-defense knife (now an almost entirely ceremonial/aesthetic tradition) when he was in the Punjab area of India some time ago, and figured it'd be cool if he gave it to me tonight.

Damn straight it's cool.  Sure, the thing's blunt, but it's stainless steel (and thus capable of being sharpened...  Muahahahaha), and it's still a goddamn knife.  With one very fancy scabbard, I might say.

Alright, so the scabbard and hilt are plastic.  But plastic lasts a hell of a lot longer than wood, and needs much less treatment to be kept in shape.  And plastic or wood, the designs are still very nice.

Pictures coming tomorrow, or whenever they get uploaded to the computer.  I'm not sure when that might be.  

Bring box of chocolates, get belly full of good food (very full.  Gonna feel good to lie down for the night), a clay figurine, a jewelry box, a hand-knitted blanket, and a knife.  As well as memories, a few pictures, and tips on cooking and how to wear a Sari, for my mum.  

Yeah.  Sounds like a fair trade to me.

[ February 27, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]

[Kagus]

Pictures.

Here we have the handmade blanket, the jewelry box, and the knife.

Here's a close-up of the jewelry box's design:

A couple nights ago, we had a visitor.  I was sitting and plugging away at something (may have been the pirate mod), when I saw something from the corner of my eye.  I look over, and there's this tree frog, jumping through the doorway to the balcony.  Why he decided that he needed to do this, I am unsure.  However, we did manage to get a pretty good shot of him when he figured that climbing the closet door would be a good idea:

And here are a couple pictures from the India you don't hear or read about:

Whoopsie.  Probably could have found a better word for that.

That orange hair is ridiculously popular here.  We see people walking around all the time, looking like they poured hydrogen peroxide in it or something.

I assume it's what happens to their hair when they attempt to bleach it.  The resulting mistake has become the hot new rage.

The guy on the billboard has one of the mildest recolorations I've seen here.  Most people have their hair changed to an absolutely absurd color that makes them look like they're supposed to be hired for children's parties or something.  I'll get a good example up when  I can, if I can find one.

[Kagus]

Yesterday we were taken (by Radha) to Golkonda fort for a little look-around, and the place is actually kind of interesting.  Admittedly, the tour guide we got was speeding us through, but we managed to find some interesting spots all the same.

For instance, there was a five hundred pound weight sitting in one area, which was apparently used by the military when recruiting.  If you could lift that weight, you got in.

One of the main points of interest is the fact that there are some very interestingly designed portico at the main entrance, where if you stand in the exact center and clap your hands or make some other loud noise, an incredibly strong vibration will hit back at you and the sound will be quite loud.  Stand seven feet to the side and the effect is lost entirely, you can't hear anything strange.

This portico is part of a two-step design, the main entrance and the tower at the top of the hill.  Whenever something important would be going on down at the main entrance, someone would stand in the center and clap.  That clap can be heard several hundred feet away and up, at the tower on top of the hill.

We got to see a few other interesting pieces of architecture, including some water reservoirs which apparently had some significance (couldn't really hear what the guide was talking about, wasn't close enough and wasn't paying enough attention).

Golkonda used to be the largest diamond mine in the world, and produced such gems as The Hope Diamond, the Koh-i-noor diamond, and the whopping Darya-ye Noor diamond, weighing in at 182 carats.  The city was famous for its massive markets selling such diamonds, among other exotic wares.  It soon became all the rave among merchants from around the orient, and Golconda had traders from just about all the surrounding areas coming in to check out the bazaars.

The stairs at this place were horrible...  I'm going to have to go back to Germany and check out the European castles, because I can't remember what they were like.  The guide told us (although I quite seriously doubt this) that in order to carry the king up the steps, they had tall people holding up the platform in the back, and short people holding it up in front.

This begs the question of what happens when the stairs end, but he had moved on by that point.  Better to leave it to the imagination anyways.

There weren't that many points of any real interest there, it was just fun becuase we made it fun.  The architecture was fun, to be sure, and the engineering required for both the clapping portico and the corner-talk room (stand in one corner and talk at the wall.  The person in the other corner will hear you.  It's like the big whisper-dishes they've got at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle) was quite cool, but most of the entertainment value that we got out of it was from each other and the various other people who were checking out the place.

We even got to have a little chat with an Englishwoman, our first talk with a westerner since coming here (aside from each other, of course).

We've only got about three weeks left here in India.  It doesn't feel like we've been here that long, but apparently we have.  It's gonna be strange going back to the states after being here for so long, and as soon as I touch US soil I'm going to have to crank into high gear to get ready for the future.  Being here has been quite an amazing experience, but it's even more amazing how you get used to it after a while.  Being back in the states is going to be one hell of a change, just like coming here was.

I'm really gonna miss the food...

[Kagus]

Heh, sorry 'bout the lack of updates.  It's not that stuff hasn't been happening, it's just that I haven't been writing about it as diligently.

The day before yesterday, we were invited over for breakfast by one of the guys in at the office.  His wife has been making various goodies for some time, so we'd been acquainted with some of her cooking, but now we were going to taste some of her more involved work.  The main reason for the arranged visit however, was becuase we had stated before that we wanted to find out how to make some of the Indian dishes we'd been eating (hell, who wouldn't?), and he had suggested that his wife could show us.

So, we got there, had some water, and checked out some of the doodads that they've picked up over the years, including photos from when they'd spent some time in California.  Once such formalities were over, we were served breakfast.  Vadas and coconut chutney.  Quite tasty.

After that we talked for a bit, and then the main event was unveiled.  We were shuffled into the kitchen, and got to see dear and lovely Mrs. Can't-remember-her-name make up a massive batch of lemon rice (which included peanuts, cashews, curry leaves, turmeric, ghee, extra salt, some aromatic spice mixture, and even a little lemon juice), and then a similarly large batch of upma (semolina porridge, sorta.  It's a soft and tasty lump that you carve with a spoon).  Now, the man of the house happens to know how to make upma.  It also happens to be the only dish he knows how to make, and thus he is this world's prime officionado on the subject.  The preparation was peppered by comments and suggestions as his wife made upma, almost all of which were ignored entirely.

Now, here's the clincher:  those vadas we had, the ones that filled us up so nicely?  That wasn't breakfast.  That was an appetizer.

When we left their apartment building after being taken around on a tour of the grounds, we were three plates of vada and chutney, three plates of lemon rice, three plates of upma, three hand-carved and hand-painted wood sculptures, and a painted straw wallhanging decorated with real peacock feathers heavier.  But we gave them a really nice box of chocolates, so it's cool.  Oh yeah, we also left with the rest of the lemon rice in a huge plastic container which can only be described as the mother of all tupperware.

And then there was yesterday.  Yesterday was the birthday of one of the watchman's kids, and my mother (who, local traditions be damned, will stop at nothing to buy a gift for someone who is having a birthday) picked up a cake for him.  This was intended to be passed off, and then a couple pictures might be taken of the birthday boy and his shoutingly loud shirt, and then we'd leave them to eat the cake and commence with whatever partying they might have planned.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way.

Word of the cake had apparently leaked out, and we were pleasantly sitting around with the local study group of kids from around the neighbourhood (yeah.  We host study parties.  The kids are going to be coming over regardless, we may as well give them something quiet{-ish} to keep them occupied{-ish}), when the doorbell rang.  You know, you never think about how a doorbell sounds exactly the same regardless of how many people are on the other side of the door.

We were invaded.  The birthday boy came in with the full entourage in tow, and everyone piled in to have their birthday celebration at our place.

So, lots of cake was eaten, lots of pictures taken, lots of jabbering and jibbering about and lots of young semi-helpful translators converting jibber to jabber and jabber to jibber.  At the same time.  With different interpretations.

Now, I'd like to point a couple things out.  
One) Every boy in the place wanted to play computer games on the laptop, even the birthday boy, who hadn't even seen the games, let alone try any.  I'm afraid there's not much hope for the others, however, as they've already tasted computer gaming.

Two) Study group full of kids with already super-normal levels of natural ADHD + bowl(each) of ice cream when study time ended + piece(s) of cake when party started + camera/potential center of attention = whoah.

Here's how it works:  the birthday boy cuts into the cake, and cuts out several smallish pieces.  Then, in turn, everyone goes up, picks up a piece of cake and shoves it into the birthday boy's mouth (hold it, take a picture).  This favor is then returned by B-Boy, so everyone gets at least one shot at the confectionary.

It was fun, actually.  And we got a lot of pictures, with our standard ratio of 1:5, wherein the '1' is the number of pictures that are quite nice, and the '5' is the number of pictures that make you wonder how it is your face manages to get into such uncomfortable positions at such inopportune moments.

And that's my update for now.  I'll see if I can get some picture from the event up here, but it may end up being a while.

[Kagus]

Heh, had to dig around a bit before I found this.

We're making plans to take a train from Hyderabad out to Goa, so we can spend a couple birthdays (mine's tomorow, two days later for her) on a sunny, hopefully quiet beach.

The recent reports of the rapes, murders, and kidnappings of foreign tourists in Goa have not been entirely encouraging, but we're going anyway.

In other news, we have used our recently-acquired recipe for lemon rice extensively, as it's relatively easy to whip up and it keeps for a long time.  Nice to have something we can make at the apartment aside from roasted peanuts and ramen.  We have not, however, tried making upma yet.  I also have a feeling that I'm not the only one who's forgotten how to make it.

Yippee...  Eighteen years old.  Old enough to have even more expected of you than previously, while being no more ready for it.  But hey, at least I can vote!

Yup, I'm screwed.  Cheers.

[Kagus]

Turns out we're leaving on Tuesday, instead of today.  The birthdays will be spent here (and so we'll have to spend our time dodging the attentions of the locals), but at least we'll be out of Hyderabad for the birthdays of a couple local kids,  which we are expected to provide for in their entirety, since we're Americans and thus infinitely wealthy.  Also, we bought a cake once, so that means we have to buy a cake for everybody.  Bigger and bigger cakes.

That's the way stuff works around here.  Satya informed us that we should never give them anything, because just this kind of thing was going to happen.  Give them ten rupees, in a week they'll ask for forty.  Give them forty, in a week they'll ask for four hundred (more on that in a bit).  Give them four hundred, and you're already screwed so it's pointless trying to give advice to you.

So, in other news.  A while ago the cleaning lady's daughter (who cleans our apartment instead, since the cleaning lady who is also the watchman's wife is too lazy to do it herself) came to us with one of her brothers, who asked us to loan him four hundred rupees.  He said it was 'for hospital', and that he would pay us back in a week.

Well, we went out to get the money from my dad at the office (and to get some time to discuss amongst ourselves as to whether or not to actually give them the moolah), and when we came back we handed it off.  To his mother.

Turns out, he was asking for money for her to go to the hospital.  Now, the daughter is nice, the son seems like an okay guy from what we've seen of him, but the woman herself is a fat, lazy, greedy old fart.  It was at that moment that there would indeed be an upcoming cut in her payment to the amount of four hundred rupees.

Some time later, I think it was the day after, the woman went out an a huge shopping binge, buying lots of fancy fruits and vegetables, new clothes, baby accoutrements, and other assorted things.  If I were to estimate, I'd say the total cost of her trip was somewhere around four hundred rupees.  Seems like an arbitrary number, I know, but I guess I just have an eye for appraisal.

Happy b-day me.   Eighteen, and not particularly impressed with the results.

[Greiger]

Happy B-Day!  I have a birthday coming as well.  Gunna be 25.

Enjoy turning 18.  It can be rough.  [undwarven]But just think, yer getting ever closer to 21, when you'll discover that drinking aint as great as it's made out to be.[/undwarven]

[Kagus]

Today has not been even slightly productive.  I just haven't had it in me.  No song to outshine those mining songs Dark and Bullion have come up with, no update on DnG!, no update on the Simplicity mod (which is apparently bugged all to hell now), no update on the Woodsman, and not even a smidgen of the drive required to do one of those.

However, I got a really funny cake for my birthday.

The guy had asked what we wanted it to say.  My mom wrote out "Happy Birthday".  

This was apparently asking too much of the cake-maker in the back (big pants, an undershirt, and a slightly crazy look in his eye), as when we got it the cake said something slightly different...  

Here's wishing you all a 'Homme Bewilderly'.

At least my name came out alright.

[Kagus]

Tomorrow we'll be leaving on the train for Goa.  It's a long trip, so we booked the sleeper.  Now, Indian sleeper compartments may be slightly different than one might assume a sleeper compartment to be...

A small room with three metal slats built into each wall excluding the one on the side of the train.  I think you get a sheet on top of them, I'm not sure.  Air conditioning in the privileged sections is set so high you'll freeze before anything else, so we got the one without.  You don't get a window.  Train passengers in India are notorious for asking prying and highly personal question as part of the regular banter, but will be very pleased if you happen to ask them the same things, since they'll think you're just very interested in them.

Yeah, it's gonna be interesting...

So, I'll be spending a couple weeks away from the computer.  I don't think I can manage a Woodsman update until after I'm back, as I'm trying to get this doofus to bury his dog, not one of the many casualties from the immigration parties.  Death and Glory! does not currently have enough votes to dictate the next move, so that will also have to wait.  

Yep, time away from the computer, on the beach and in the sun, surrounded by lots of party people including all the tourists, since Goa serves as the place where all tourists go when going to India.  I guess that's why they call it Goa, since everyone goes there.

Yippee...  People.  I hate people.

Well, on the bright side, it's got sand.  Goodnight everybody.

--Kagus

[Istrian]

Sand ? I don't think there's any magma pipes around Goa, so you'll have to chop down the whole local forest for your glass blocks.

...Oops, I think I overdid it again...

[Thingy Master]

Indians are truly generous people.

My mom had to take a business trip to India once for her job (she worked tech support). I was ill at the time so I don't remember the specifics but I do remember that the foreman she was training gave her several incredibly detailed silk and gold woven painting. Yes it had gold woven in it.

[Kagus]

Well, I'm back.  Only got the one week there, but I feel that it was enough.

The train ride was...  Impossible to describe with mere words.  The Indian Rail System (IRS?) is one funny little critter, and dealing with it is an experience which cannot be adequately represented.  You either know it, or you don't.

Goa, on the other hand, is much easier to put into words.  Tourist hive.

We got a rickshaw driver to take us to a nearby site of accommodation for the night (the drive reminded me just a little too much of Mr. Toad's wild ride...), and found ourselves at a 'quaint' cluster of beach huts known as "Flavia Paradise".  Now, when I say hut, I mean a construction that not even a seven-year-old would put together.

It had everything.  Latticework front wall, which you could stick your hand through and push back the inner deadbolt if you happened to lock yourself out somehow (convenient!),  a loosely-woven roof which provided a lovely view of the blue(-ish) tarp which had long since passed the two-month lifetime of its waterproof coating, walls which were topped with more latticework to provide easy access for gentle ocean breezes and nocturnal monkeys, and a net hung over the bed to keep out mosquitoes.  Well, the ones that don't find the hole, or come up from underneath the edge, which hung a foot off the ground.

First night, it rained.  I got cold and damp.  The wildlife would chitter about my hut and clamber around it, so I would only be able to catch fleeting glimpses of them (since they were climbing, I assumed that they must have been monkeys), which kept my nerves wired enough to keep me from falling asleep.  

But then we got to spend our first day in Goa, almost all of it on the beach or in the water.  Speaking of Goan water, did I mention how incredibly warm it is?  We're talking bathwater here, you can walk right into it without all the eeks and acks and intakes of breath you get from trudging into the drink in other places (I'm currently thinking of Southern Californian beaches, mind you).

We spent another night in the huts, and then looked for slightly more decent lodgings.  We found them, but not until after sating our grumbling bellies with Goan cuisine.

I can sum up the dining in both Goa and Hyderabad in a single word each.

Hyderabad:  Delicious.

Goa:  Potatoes.

Everything in Goa has potatoes.  For our first meal we had samosas that were packed with potatoes, alongside potato-and-bean soup.  Plus some white bread which was only mildly less squishy and tasteless as other whitebreads.

Later, we ordered a couple curry-ish dishes from a beachside restaurant.  The first one was made from potatoes.  The second one was made from potatoes, but had some cauliflower in it as well.  

Next day, we went to a place to have breakfast.  We wanted idli.  They didn't have idli.  We ordered what they had.  We got breakfast bread and potato paste.

By now, I was pretty sick of potato paste.  I wanted something that didn't have all the sharp or spicy (Goa, being a tourist spot, has edged out almost all chillies from their cooking) flavors cooked out of it.  As we sat at another beachside restauarant (bar), I decided to try some of the non-Indian food, to see if that was any better.  I ordered a veggie burger.

When I bit into the rather dejected-looking thing with its dry bread and cucumber slices (the word "pickle" here refers to anything which has undergone the process that results in what we tend to call chutney.  I think the idea of western pickles was lost on these fellows, so I got cucumber slices.  I wouldn't call them "fresh", so let's say they were "raw"), and found that the patty had been made from something vaguely familiar...

The texture of the thing was so completely stomped that it took me quite some time before I found a chunk that could confirm my suspicion.  It was a potato patty.  A potato patty that didn't have the texture or firmness to hold its own weight.

Potato paste.

In desperation, I tried one of the fries (chips), even though they looked a bit strange.  They were potato paste-ettes, with a light garnishing of oil.

I couldn't bring myself to eat it all.  Thankfully, my parents had ordered fish curry and had some left over.  It wasn't great, but you could actually chew it, and it wasn't made from potatoes.

We eventually managed to find a couple spots that could serve us food that tasted like, y'know, food.   We also managed to spend most of our time in the water, so that's a plus.  Okay, so sometimes that water happened to be a covering layer of sweat, but you work with what you've got.

Goa had other fun things as well.  The packs of remarkably friendly dogs wandering the beach, the packs of cloth/jewellry/drum sellers that walked the same routes but barked slightly more, and the wandering herds of cows.

The cows in particular were funny.  From time to time, they would pop down to the beach and simply lie around for a while.  In the mornings, they'd make their rounds through the populated areas, since the locals would leave out baskets of food for them to consume and, well, process...

But sometimes free food is not enough.  Sometimes, you need more free food.  Sometimes, you're a cow.  

This logic led to a couple memorable encounters with the bovine population of Goa.    One time, I was standing outside a small fruit shop while my father perused for bananas, when a young bull walked by.  The bull rooted around in the turned-over offering baskets for a while, and then made his way over to the wire-grid front of the shop, where the pineapples and newspapers were kept.

Surprisingly, the daft thing went for the newspaper first.  I watched as he nibbled the corners of local news columns that were poking out of the grid, and then observed him as he turned his attentions upward and a little to the left.  The pineapples.

For those of you who have never seen a cow tongue, allow me to describe it.  It is a deep purplish color, and is long enough to extend about eight inches from the muzzle, which just happens to be long enough to wrap around the leafy top of a pineapple through a wire-grid shop wall.

Of course, he couldn't actually pull it through the wall, but he certainly tried.  After a couple attempts at stealing one of the things, he contented himself to just munching on the leaves that were sticking out of the grid.  Litte India tip:  never buy the pineapples closest to the street.

Eventually, someone came by and gave him a good thwack on the rump to send him off, and the remaining pineapples (and newspapers, which he had returned to eating after the pineapples.  I guess they tasted better).  Came as a little of a surprise to me, actually.  I wouldn't have expected an Indian to smack a cow, but I suppose times have changed, at least in the parts of India I've been in.

And then there was the time when we were eating our bread with potato dip for breakfast.  While we sat and contemplated our food, a cow came by and simply stood in the entranceway (the restaurant was mostly outside, and had a wide entrance).  After some time, someone came out and handed the thing a lump of bread, and then began pushing it out of the restaurant.  After the cow had walked on, he saw us watching and said "three times!  Three times today it has come!".  

I wondered about the level of intelligence cows must possess, in order to return to a place where they get free bread.  I honestly didn't think they had the brains for it.

I also had to wonder about the level of intelligence the person feeding the cow possessed.

So, after our times spent in Goa, with its long beaches, its restaurants with names like "Cafe del Mar", "Casa Fiesta", and "Big Delhi" (actually one of the passable spots), with their mountains of potatoes hidden somewhere safe behind the kitchens, its unreasonable drum salesmen, its water-resistant huts and water-proof rooms that had power outages on a regular basis (as well as a resident Australian), its madcap bus rides and its proliferation of shells to step on (all but one of which contained hermit crabs), we finally hopped back on the train for the 21-hour trip back to Hyderabad.

After we got back, I had the best damned sambar idli I've had all week.  

Not one potato.

[Kagus]

Today was some big company lunch that we got to go to, over at M.G. Inn.  Eleven people came, including us, and also including two guys who'd been fired beforehand.  Also also including one rookie who kept asking my dad to tutor him on hacking and who couldn't stop bouncing...

Now, there was an interesting little piece of information I neglected to mention earlier...  Apparently some time after we left for Goa, my mom's mom got really worried because we weren't responding to her emails (we didn't have computers with us, let alone a net connection) and that we hadn't called her when we arrived safely in Goa.  

What.  The.  Hell?

Anyways, she proceeded to panic and call my mom's sister (one of), who then called us, didn't recieve an answer (she was calling our phones back in Vegas), and then dialed a new number.  

The U.S. embassy in Chennai.  

They had apparently called the embassy and set out a search for us, because we were obviously missing due to our absolutely unprecedented behaviour in going somewhere without retaining all ties to the folks back stateside.  Luckily, the dogs were called off soon after we got back here to Hyderabad and found out what in the samhill was going on. I have a feeling the search never actually started, due to the overdeveloped nature of India's government bureaucracy.  

Now, last christmas, I was busy converting someone in the semi-extended family to Dwarf Fortress.  She's a gamer, and the sister of a dedicated gamer, and after I detailed some of the perticularly gory aspects of Our Beloved Pastime she seemed somewhat impressed.

That's backstory.  I recently found out that during the recent hubbub in the search for those crazy relatives who got lost in India, she decided to aid in matters.  She remembered my talk about how Dwarf Fortress was my current attraction, and gathered together a few friends to help her search DF-related forums for any activity that would point towards me, thus assuring my safeness and soundness.  I'm not entirely sure if she found this thread, since it is rather susceptible to falling back a page or two in the thread listing, but who knows?

If you're reading this now, I thank you for three things:  

1) Clever, quick and rational thinking.  2) Giving a damn.  3) Remembering my babbling about a game where stunted alcoholics will repeatedly throw themselves off a seven-foot drop in an attempt to kill themselves after they found that no, you do not in fact happen to be storing chrysoberyl for their legendary toothpick.