Cloudshooters do Delhi

more terror on Delhi streets

2012-02-13T19:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, bombers targeted Israeli diplomats in Delhi and Tbilisi, Georgia

In the Delhi attack, an American Embassy School mum, on her way to collect her children from school, noticed a motorcyclist sticking something to the rear of her car ... moments later it exploded. This morning's reports state she is in critical but stable condition with spinal injuries from shrapnel from the sticky bomb. Her driver as well as occupants of a car behind them also sustained minor injuries.

Our thoughts and prayers are with all victims of this attack

This is today's front page of the Times of India:

These photos are copied from various newspaper websites:

I've never really understood why diplomatic vehicles have these obvious & easily identifiable blue

number plates... to me it just screams "target"

Delhi's coldest day - 6 degrees below normal!

2012-01-17T19:08:00.000-08:00

Why oh why do the journo's at the Times of India always ALWAYS find a sexy girl for any old article, relevant or not? (she must have frozen yesterday, cause it was COLD COLD COLD!).

More appropriate would be a picture of a street person near freezing to death, huddled over a fire made of any old wood he could scrounge up.

These winters are so cruel to Delhi's millions who just aren't able to do much to keep the cold from penetrating their bones.

Cheese rations from NOW!

2012-01-16T01:37:00.000-08:00

The Indian Rupee has had a hammering! And we're now on cheese rations because of it!

When we moved it here in 2009 it was 32roops to the Aussie dollar. It hit 55 last week!

Now I'm no fiscal expert (as Dean will attest) so I'm not qualified to comment on how it affects India/Indians or the little chaiwala on the street, so I'm not even gonna try ... but it's plainly obvious (and has been for quite some time) that our rupees just aren't going as far as they used to, especially at the market for imported produce, and of course when we transfer money back home to cover our expenses there.

Yeah I know we could eat dahl and chappatis every day but I just can't do that with our kids, most certainly not for 3 years solid without us developing a severe aversion to the stuff, so we eat a balance of western and Indian food. Having said that though, we eat our fare share of Indian. In fact we're kinda addicted to our regular meals of chhole, lemon rice, puri's (methi puri being Emmy's other favourite food, and lunchbox filler of choice!), paneer, pea curry with lots of sauce is Xanthe's favourite, and chicken everything! I planted three curry leaf trees, and one of them is looking particularly bare .. a testament to how much Indian we do eat!

If it's one thing Emmaline will eat at the moment, it's cheese! It's also one of my weaknesses, but since my little trip to the local expat supermarket last week .. I've put myself on severe rations so Emmy can have my share!

So there I am at the market, pick up my 2 blocks of Emmy's cheese & a ball of local mozarella and the total at the register comes to a staggering Rs2,500!!!!!! I nearly fell over! Those 350g blocks of English cheddar had just skyrocketed to Rs1,100 .. that's about $20.50!!!!! Before Christmas it was 750 (and I thought that was expensive!) ... that's almost a 47% increase! (and it wasn't that long ago that it was 550!!!).

A little chat with the market owner, who's rather savvy importing all these food stuffs for expats, reveals he's got his finger well and truly on the pulse and knows exactly how much that block of cheese sells in Tesco's, what the exchange rate is and thinks that a post Christmas increase of 47% will go unnoticed!!!!! He offered me a discount and we talked more about how he needs to be more realistic with his increase (which by the accounts of expats I've spoken to over the last few days, he does after EVERY Christmas!).

When I return home, I make sure the girls know just how much that cheese now costs (they are also appropriately shocked!) and Dean taunts us with the idea of a cheese embargo ... I don't mention the fact that we're pretty light on treats (and pharmaceutical necessities) from home at the moment (that's a story for another time) ... and I also don't have to bring out the old "we're here because of YOUR job" chestnut .... for him to know when it's time to shut up, knowing I'll find a way to balance the cheese budget!

My girls have given up a lot of food while here, so I can't ask them to give up cheese too (they don't like the local cheddar) BUT, the bog standard easy peasy cheese quesadilia weekend lunch stops right now!!!!!

new Tandoor oven

2012-01-15T03:58:00.000-08:00

We've been meaning to buy a tandoor oven for ages now but ... well it kept falling off my to do list!

Talking to a girlfriend yesterday, while our daughters were playing football, I discovered she knew exactly where to buy them (well her driver did!). So three hours later ... her driver kindly loaded it into the back of my car. It was still hot and smokey as it had just been freshly seasoned!

Emmy & I drove home on this glorious day, windows down, boogieing to our favourite Bollywood hits while smoke was wafting from our tandoor out of the car windows.

as my friend's driver had kindly remembered to buy a bag of charcoal

Ramesh & Nero were given the task of firing it up as soon as we got home

and I consulted my new cookbook
"Tandoor" by Ranjit Rai

it wasn't long before the coals were glowing red
and ready for our first naan bread!

you gotta start with a round ball,
flatten it

Nero rolled while I took pictures

the trick is getting the shape right

and having a pad made ready so you can slam it onto the inside of the boiling hot tandoor and doing it without squealing like a girl and dropping it in the embers (now I wonder who did that?)

Nero had already scorched the hairs off his arms by this stage!

there it is stuck to the inside (just like the real thing!)

and it's not long before it starts bubbling up

........and browning up

and tadaaaaaaah .. fresh hot homemade delectable naan bread!

So we've got a few metal sheesk sticks already and need to buy a few more implements ... and then we'll be cooking up all sorts of stuff ... when I can do a whole tandoori chicken I'll letcha know!

a few nights later I took these cool shots of the tandoor firing up

Thanx ever so much Rani!!!!!!! It's the best $20 I've spent!

Hail in Delhi!!!!!

2012-01-14T20:04:00.000-08:00

HAIL!!!it doesn't happen often, but it does happen!

as you can see by the temperature it does get cold here, and moreso here in the farmhouse area - deduct about 3 degrees off the forecast Delhi temperature! So we often get 1 or 0degrees on a January winter's morning

Fabric shopping

2012-01-12T10:08:00.000-08:00

One of my Delhi shopping buddies, the darling Kati, left Delhi over 12 months ago (and I miss her terribly) but she did leave a lovely legacy with me .... that of trawling through the fabric shops of Lajpat Nagar and Nehru Place, looking for beautiful fabric, buying a few metres .... and then figuring out what to do with it later!

Today I bought a few metres of this beautiful thick chinese satin to be used for a table cloth for Chinese New Year dinner. What would you pay for this in the UK, the States or Australia? $20, 30 or more????? a metre? Two metres of this fabric, purchased at Nehru Place, equates to one adult movie ticket back home!

If it costs me more than $2.50 to have it edged by the tailor up the road I'd be surprised. I'd do it but my sewing skills are so attrocious that I'd end up sewing it onto itself and getting it all caught up between the foot of the sewing machine and the bobbin!

I do love to trawl through the fabrics. The selections are amazing, the saree fabrics simply gorgeous, the range of colours of satin astounding, the silk so soft, and the linen sooo cheap! I really have to contain myself because I don't really know what to do with half the stuff I oggle, ooh & ahhh over but it's all soooo beautiful, even the fluffy cookie monster fabric! God I wish I could sew! Why ohhhh why didn't I listen in Home Ec class?

Most of my curtains came from Lajpat - poly silks for 50roopies a metre (that's about 85c a metre!!!!).

I have had a few duds, but I guess that's what you risk when you're only spending 100roopies a metre! One fabric that just pulled apart when my tailor tried to cut out a pattern, and shirt fabric I'd bought to have work shirts made for Dean .. had holes all the way through when I opened it up ... note to self, don't get distracted when the assistants are cutting the fabric!

For Emmaline's sewing lessons, I bought this assortment of plain cotton at 100rupees a metre.

Anyway, last time I was at Nehru Place I took some pics of the fabrics at only two of the multitude of shops, this is just a small selection .......

blingy sari

even blingier!

it just goes on and on.....

can't wait to take Mum fabric shopping when she's here next month!

It's strawberry season!!!!!!

2012-01-11T20:52:00.000-08:00

I know in my last post I complained (bitterly) about the outrageous cost of some imported products ..... but on the flip side, there are lots of cheap things to be found here too!

Like strawberries!

And they're in season right now. But only for a very short 7 weeks....ish! Yeah I mean ..... for the whole year!

So I'm stuffing our freezer to the gunnels with strawberries. By taking the time to freeze them on a tray, they'll freeze like little berrycicles so I can bag them up and then take them out one by one (or not) as I need!

They've just dropped in price to 60roops a punnet (about $1.10 at today's exhange rate) so they're a bargain! So for about 30 bucks there are now 30 punnets of strawberries languishing in my freezer ready for smoothies, coulis, cocktails, icecream etc.

You might think it extravagant but these small things do make a difference to our girls who so desperately miss things like stone fruits, avocados and all sorts of berries (the list is much much longer but for the sake of brevity, let's stay with fruit). To watch my girls demolish a punnet of raspberries or blackberries when they're back home is a sight to behold!!!! Gone in 60 seconds!!!!

These strawberries better last longer than 60 seconds though, they gotta last us all year!!!!!!

2012-01-10T20:16:00.000-08:00

What good is Vegeland without a scarecrow?

Don't ask me why it took me so long, I had actually partly stuffed one of Dean's old work shirts months n months ago, then only ever remembered it at inopportune times!

So on Saturday afternoon, armed with a pair of old pants, some old gloves, a ball of garden string, a loop of wire, Dean's trusty staple gun and straw left over from the kitchen garden, we all trooped into the glorious winter sunshine, intent on finally finishing the job!

The straw was pretty damp from dew over the last month so when we stuffed the pants, it was way too heavy and we struggled to lift it onto the bamboo pole.

Emmy, already bored with the task of filling ... went off in search of her beloved chicken, Bitters. Meanwhile Xanthe was our "mali" carrying straw in a bucket on her head!

Dean and I struggled to loop the shirt arms over the ridiculous length of bamboo I'd chosen for his " arms" .. but with Dean's incredible analytical skills we got it - it was a stretch though!

The white gloves filled with straw and stuck on kinda looked like Mickey Mouse hands!

The cold was setting in as the sun was setting so we gave up on the legs, promising to finish it tomorrow.

Tomorrow ended up being a full on pyjama day, Xanthe didn't get out of our bed till around 3pm!!!! She was happily tucked up against cold, reading and playing computer games on the last day of three pretty lazy weeks of winter holidays!

So, fast forward to Monday afternoon when I returned home from some errands ... to find the Mali's had very kindly finished the job for us!

..... including manufacturing a head .. of sorts!

Love that he's got no neck, a 4" waist and elephantitis legs ... very human like indeed!

He's yet to be named, think we might do that once we've made a proper paper mache head and found a straw hat!

But the good news I think he's actually done his job ... the bird's have stopped pecking, well, what's left of my tomatoes!

Next job ... remind myself how to do paper mache and then go about fencing off Vegeland to keep our totally free range chickens outta there!

2012-01-09T19:58:00.000-08:00

that's it, milk's off the list now!

Making the Jumbo Vanish

2012-01-09T04:45:00.000-08:00

click on the article to enlarge

This article caught my attention, had me intrigued, and then perplexed. I had to read it a few times to check my interpretation of it.

It seems, and I've found other articles online to confirm it, that the Chief Election Commissioner has deemed "that no one should get political mileage," as the Elephant is the poll symbol of ruling BSP! http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=746855.

I found it amusing though, that the article states the covering process was halted because there was confustion as to which department should complete the task, and then that no-one could figure how much black sheeting they'd need to complete the job!

I asked my cook Nero, and his version was that the rules were in place to protect the expensive statues in the event of unrest.

Another online article states the elephant statues are to be veiled because "the Elephant is a symbol of Hinduism".

I find it difficult to follow Indian politics so I'm confused, can anyone shed any light?

more pics....

2012-01-04T23:23:00.000-08:00

charming!

Add caption

in old Delhi, right behind the Jama Masjid where we buy our fireworks, were these guys doing their morning ablutions

rain! we need rain!

are we there yet? my arms are aching!!!!!

how can you tell?

ugh

loving the meter on the outside of the Mumbai taxi

how censored would this be?

and this .. is what happens when you use henna too often!

no, it's not ours .. but it is the skinniest tree in all christendom!

a Buick Eight .. why on earth would you drive one of these on the roads here?

this billboard really perplexes me!

real paranoia or induced by a movie?

2012-01-04T22:27:00.000-08:00

Last night after the girls were safely tucked in bed, we started watching the movie "Panic Room" with Jodie Foster and a very very young but highly recognisable Kristen Stewart!

Just after the nail biting scene where Jodie Foster makes a dash out of her panic room to retrieve her daughter's insulin pack .. Dean gets up to check on the guards ... something we don't question anymore, it's just something we do on autopilot (see if they're actually awake, or actually on duty .. that kinda thing).

Surprise surprise ... no guard where he's supposed to be!

At the precise moment we were thinking "bloody hell, we're so sick of having to check on these dudes" ... the doorbell rang and it was one of the guards to tell us there was no power at his post. So Dean went to investigate.

While outside he noticed that a truck that was parked 5 or so hours earlier outside our gate on our shared driveway .. was, curiously, still there!

Kinda weirded out by this stage (probably by the home invader movie we were in the midst of) .. Dean went out to the guardhouse to investigate while I stayed by the front door of our own "panic room" (house) just in case things got nasty.

You never know!

So, after a rather loud conversation with the guards, a call to his secretary who acted as translator, a bit of argy bargy with the driver & his sidekick, Dean had the truck moved out onto the main road. He was told that the truck drivers needed a rest and drove the truck through the main gates. That didn't make sense to me!

Why would a truck driver pick our property for a rest? Why would a truck driver think he could park on a private property for a rest anyway, especially in farmhouseville? Unless maybe, he knew there were 4 properties sharing a driveway, and figured no-one would bother questioning why a truck was parked there? And that the guards would allow it?

Nup, I wasn't buying it! After Jodie dealt with her home invaders, and Kristen was out of danger of a hypo and the baddies carted off by the NYC cops .. we went to bed .. but feeling very uncomfortable about the whole truck thing.

Dean and I talked it through and freaked ourselves out further thinking of conspiracy theories! Mel Gibson eat your heart out!

Maybe this was a planned attack and the truck had been planted there earlier in the day deliberately?

So????? So the truck was parked there so they could fill it with stuff they were going to steal from us!

Maybe the guards were in on it and the whole "we don't have power" thing was a ruse to get us outside so they could knock us on the head and steal everything?

Or worse!

Our minds got the better of us with wild imaginings and we went to bed rather reluctantly.

So I set my alarm for 12 and 3am to check on things, and the guards of course!

12am, all ok.

3am .. fog's rolled in.

Guard's shut the door, I don't blame him, it's bloody cold .. but I can't see him which means he can't see any possible intruders/murderers/muggers/thieves tippytoeing round our garden. I give him a missed call on his mobile and he gets the message .. comes out and does a few reccy laps!

Between 3am and 5am I don't sleep, I'm too freaked out by this possibility of a conspiracy theory to be honest. Have we done our time on Maple Drive? Just been here too long? Read too many farfetched but yet very real horror stories of muggings / murders / rapes / theft / arson / pillage / honour killings / blackmail / kidnap in our daily newspaper? Are we jaded or too cynical now?

So when you get to this point of mistrust what do you do? Talk yourself out of it? Freak yourself out everyday with even more preposterous possibilities? Time to pull up stumps n leave? What would you do?

Dean gets to the bottom of it in the morning .. the truck delivered something to the 4th (the newly built) farmhouse and decided to stay there for a rest. Our day guard didn't question it, on the shift change the night guards didn't question it because .. well there are a whole lot of theories on that one .. suffice to say they weren't doing a very good job of guarding us!

new chickens.....

2012-01-01T02:37:00.000-08:00

Back in April we bought some very cute little chickens, in the hope to have organic free range eggs!

they were very cute!

we looked after them and kept them warm in
the shower cubicle, until they were ready to go outside

the girls even taught them

how to play wii!!!!

they had a nice big house

and nice, if not nosy neighbours!

and they were complete duds!

Not one egg in 6 months!

And, sadly, they kept dying .. for no particular reason!

So when only "Wheelchair", so named for his seriously deformed feet, remained, we decided it was time to donate him to the malis and we found some new chooks. Wheelchair might have been deformed, but he was at least 5kgs ... never has anyone seen a chicken THAT big round these here parts! He would have made quite a meal!
RIP Wheelchair!

So meet their replacements, who by the way are guaranteed to lay (and if not, then we have been assured that can have them injected to make sure they do ... HUH?).

our gorgeous girls .....Redcrest, Bitters, Nutella & Whoopsie

Emmy's a natural with birds

So that was back in November .. and on Boxing Day .. we had our very first egg! Here it is next to my cauliflower, which weighed in at a staggering 2.116kg!

Only Redcrest is laying at the moment but she's laid one every day, like clockwork for the last 6 days!!! And they are delicious with bright orange yolks .. a little small yet, only 42g but I'm hoping as Redcrest gets bigger so will her eggs!

some pics .....

2012-01-01T02:14:00.000-08:00

can't pick it? ... it's the side of the Taj Mahal!

outside the now destroyed Mehrauli flower markets

cow dung sitting out to dry

the Bahai or Lotus Temple

hidden on a road you'd never drive on, miles out of town is this entrance to a temple ... scary huh?

THE dumbest thing I've seen on the roads here

at school, in the afternoons they bring this langur monkey around .. to scare off the wild ones

this cheeky man followed me all around what we call "chilli street" in Old Delhi, what a great moustache!

FINALLY! someone smart enough to put helmets on their kids!

asking for chocolate sprinkles on your icecream not advised!

our neighbour's house all decked out for Diwali

this apparently, is Sachin Tendulkar's "house" in Mumbai

and Mukesh Ambani (Mr Reliance) built this 27 story residence "Antilla" in Mumbai .. he spent over $1b on it (it's the world's most expensive private residence) ... and .... it turns out the vastu (Indian Fung Shui) is all wrong, so he refuses to move into it!

.... more pics to come.......

Parking in Delhi

2011-12-30T02:43:00.000-08:00

As some of you may recall, I drive a lot here and I've never actually had a problem parking! 10roops (20c) and some lil guy in Khan Market, or Basant Lok will guide me into a car park, for 20 roops I can leave my keys with them and they'll move my car if need be. I'm still astounded that for 100roops ($2!!) I can have my car valet parked in 5 star hotels! But with over 900 new cars hitting Delhi roads every day, its only going to get worse and I might be paying a lot more for my parking soon!

In the days leading up to Diwali however, the roads were particularly crazy .. especially in Lajpat Nagar where I took my sisterinlaw fabric shopping! My lordy lordy me, never have I had such a drama parking ... so we were just about to give up then a car drove out of a spot .. we zoomed in .. knowing it wasn't exactly a "real" parking spot .. but hey we were one of a long line of cars parked exactly the same way! A few hours later we returned to find a parking ticket stuck on my windscreen!

I've never had a parking ticket issued here ever .. it was only 100 roops (where's the disincentive to park properly?) so we went off and paid it. Imagine our surprise to find there were two outstanding parking fines .. dating back to December 2009 and March the following year (definitely wasn't me!). So one of our old drivers had incurred the fine(s) and not told us! So much for the threat of 3 months imprisonment and a fine of Rs500 if we didn't pay the fine within 30 days!!!!!!!!

Newspaper articles

2011-12-30T02:27:00.000-08:00

a selection of newspaper clippings I've saved recently .... life here is tough, real tough .....

this needs to be advertised?

The fog.....

2011-12-30T00:36:00.000-08:00

It's been mighty cold here in Delhi, people are gathering sticks & twigs, anything that'll do as firewood, even hanging in trees hooking off dead branches to burn on fires burning by the roadsides, the smog hangs thick in the air, some days the sky is just yellow, it's disgusting.

We complain that we're cold, which is true given these houses don't have central heating .. but hey we have a roof over our heads, and a few oil heaters we snuggle around and warm clothes & blankets .. which is a hell of a lot more than most here.

Xanthe was in her bed last night and told me she'd been thinking about kids being cold here and wanted to give someone her blanket she'd got in Disneyland ... so tomorrow we go through all their cupboards, dig out clothes baby blankets etc. There's a flyover not far away, highly populated and I know there'll be lots of takers for the warm stuff that just sits in our cupboards unused.

This morning we woke to the thickest fog we've ever seen here....

and the girls had a ball playing " hidies" in it!

HI again.....

2011-11-23T00:05:00.001-08:00

Hi, back again, gonna resurrect my blog after a long hiatus!

Gonna head to Mumbai this weekend (hopefully there's no smog there) then get back into it. Got lots of newspaper clippings n news to share.

Stay tuned .. in the meantime, here's recent pics of Emmy & Xanthe at Emmy's 11th (yes she's 11 now!) dress up party!

eyelash malfunction!!!!!

Xanthe's new cutesy pose!

Pollution- the worst we've seen.......

2011-11-23T00:03:00.001-08:00

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/new-delhi-now-more-polluted-than-beijing/?ref=asia

Bye Bongo

2011-02-15T10:42:00.000-08:00

Bongo, our best friend of nearly 11 years passed away in November. We knew this day would come eventually, but it was a really really tough day. We took photos, not willingly, just so we could remember our beautiful gentle giant, who was terribly sick. It rained while we waited for the vet to come. Dean told the girls ALL the Hindu gods were crying!

Everyone loved him! All our staff came to say their goodbyes. It was very touching.

Miss Bebe Gallini & Bongo were buddies since he was 8 weeks old (could they be any more opposite in appearance?)

2001 - he was so protective of the girls 2010

Bongo was Dean's surprise birthday present in 1999

May 1999

he even had his own Buzz Lightyear!

who's a gorgeous boy?

and was right up to his last day

He had more frequent flyer points than most humans, having lived in Australia, England and finally in India!

We asked all the staff to go home and leave us alone with the girls, who were absolutely devastated. Dean and I buried him under the frangipani trees in a corner of our garden. Emmaline added a Christmas bauble "because he was going to miss Christmas", a bone, his manky old tennis ball and his blanket and we then showered him with every flower petal we could find in the garden!

Dean said we should have purchased lime. Xanthe piped in "we have lemons but not limes!". The next day we bought 15kgs of flower petals for his grave.

his candle burned non stop for a month!

thanks for the memories Bongo!

Yup, it is really like this!

2011-02-14T08:01:00.000-08:00

www.chequemate-you-can-bank-on-delhi-pedantry....

I just have to save this article in case the link above decides one day, not to work! Ben Doherty wrote the following article for The Age newspaper recently. For Delhiites, at least we know we're not imaging it! For those "outstation" .. please don't laugh, this is sometimes what we're subjected to!

Chequemate: you can bank on Delhi pedantry

Ben Doherty, Delhi

February 12, 2011

''NO SIR, we do not accept cash.'' He beamed at me from across the desk.

''But … but you're a bank,'' I replied, in a tone some distance beyond incredulity.

''Yes sir, we cannot accept cash at this bank.'

''But that's what banks do, they look after people's cash. What are all these people doing if …'' My dissertation on the fundamentals of monetary systems trailed off. I was getting nowhere.

The rules told my bank guy that I needed a cheque to open an account. ''A personal cheque,'' he added.

''So,'' I said, carefully: ''I need a cheque to open a bank account, but in order to write a cheque I need a bank account.''

''Precisely, sir,'' he said, smiling ever more broadly.

I was going to ask how the first bank account ever opened in India came into being, but I could see logic would be no match for protocol.

The next bank was no better. ''Your signatures don't match,'' the ''account relationship manager'' told me.

My signature is a bit of a scrawl, but it's a consistent one, I argued.

''No, see here, it's different,'' she said, pointing to what might generously be described as my flourish. It was perhaps two millimetres higher the second time around

''We will have to fill out an explanation form to explain the difference,'' she said. ''Here and here you need to sign like you did here, and here you need to sign like you did there.'' I did as instructed. ''Now you need to sign it, to attest that it was you who filled out this form.''

''Oh, the signature is different again. We will have to fill out another form to explain this one.'' And so it went. On, and on. It took me five goes before she was satisfied.

As well as wanting a number of scribbles, the explanation forms ask you to state why your signatures are different. The first two times I took my whack and attributed it to ''poor handwriting''.

On the third form I wrote ''pedantry''. She got the joke. She didn't laugh.

Forms are a serious business in India.

The phone company cut my mobile phone off the other day because a man they sent around to my house, unannounced, to verify that I lived there discovered I wasn't home. These were considered grounds to render me mute to the outside world.

At their shop I explained the concept of ''mobile'' telephony, but this, again, proved joyless. I must wait for the man to return to my house so that he could see I lived there.

The airport was the same. Collecting my meagre possessions from the cargo bay took more than six hours, and involved visiting at least 20 bureaucrats separated by a distance of several kilometres of corridors so they could sign a piece of my paper pile or demand money from me. One particularly customer-oriented chap just grunted, drew an X on the first of my sheaf of papers and motioned to the door. We were done.

India's slavish devotion to bureaucracy, to protocol and process, is legendary. To the uninitiated it seems pedantic and obfuscationist. It is just how India works

But while for foreigners it's so often a subject of wry aside (except when you're signing your name for the 50th time in a bank) many Indians regards it as a serious problem for the country

While ''New India'', the tech companies and manufacturers of the emerging economic superpower, forges ahead, the inflexible regulation and endless red tape of ''Old India'' hold the country back, deterring foreign investment and international trade.

The Indian public service is consistently rated the worst in Asia, and, perhaps more tellingly, in a survey of Indian public servants themselves a third agreed theirs was the least efficient civil service across the fastest-growing continent on earth. ''They are a power centre in their own right at both the national and state levels, and are extremely resistant to reform that affects them or the way they go about their duties,'' Hong Kong firm Political and Economic Risk Consultancy said in a survey finding.

By far the worst of it is the Foreigners Regional Registration Office, which every non-Indian living in the country must attend once a year to have his or her visa extended and ratified.

Expat parents in Delhi tell their children this one day a year is ''anti-Christmas''.

It involves lining up for hours from near-dawn in order to get a number. This number gives you a place in yet another line.

It is the front of that hallowed queue that entitles you to be bounced from bureaucrat to bureaucrat as your bona fides are meticulously, painstakingly picked apart.

You're required to bring at least 20 pieces of paper that identify you in some, often overlapping, way. Have just one missing, unsigned by a notary, or with a slightly anomalous signature (please, not this again), and your day is finished. You can try again tomorrow.

But even if everything is in perfect order, even if you're at the very front of the very first queue in the morning, there is still the waiting. In my case, eight hours after I had arrived I was finally in the country legally."

No need for another word really!

Funny signs......

2011-01-26T12:28:00.000-08:00

all the right words, wrong order!

is that word diseases, deceases or perhaps meant to be dishes?

You know you're in India when....

2010-11-14T02:31:00.000-08:00

One of my friends sent me a text this week saying "you know you're in India when you have to stop at a green light for an elephant". That text inspired me to ask my Delhi friends to contribute to this blog, these are their contributions:

YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN INDIA WHEN........

You spend US$10 on a bag of crisps and $1 on a dozen roses!

You see a learner driver having a ciggy while the instructor struggles to see through the totally smashed windscreen! Ditto for the bus driver over the weekend also with a smashed in windscreen!

A 20 minute commute takes 3.5 hours and you're overtaken by a cow

Toothpaste costs $1.20, a toothbrush costs $1, eye drops cost 12cents

You can buy prescription drugs over the counter, and the chemist is more than willing to cut 2 tablets off a blister pack!

You find postem mortem gloves at the supermarket!

You buy a bargain dress for $2.50 at a market but discover it's got writing on the bottom of it .... when you get home

Your household bills are addressed to "Mrs Foreigner"

You have been electrocuted in your shower more than once

Fire bursting out of powerpoints is no cause for alarm nor evacuation

The nurseryman writes your bill in the dirt

Your mali tells you it's the flying birds that are destroying your vege patch (well I don't see any kiwis, penguins, ostrichs, emus or cassowarys here!)

the mali goes on to telling you the flowers did not grow because the cause the seeds are weak

The answer to a yes/no question is "not mostly"

when you've got coat hangers dangling from all your door latches cause your maid can't reach the latches!

You have to shove a pencil in the top hole of the powerpoint to get your plug in and you no longer think it's weird or dangerous!

There's valet parking at your local hospital

Your electrician informs you that your installations need to "settle" before they can work properly

You see 2 washing machines and 2 fridge/freezers being towed down the road by ONE, yes one bicycle!!

and two beanbags carried either side of a motorbike!

You're happy that your desk at the office is closest to the khazi

The same family members repeatedly "expire" as an excuse for not coming to work

During the dark of a power out, you continue your meeting, eating dinner or shopping without missing a beat and the kids no longer panic!

You receive an invitation to a wedding ..... being held in two days!

Wedding music rattles your windows and keeps you up till 4am!

Your PA tells you (not asks) that she needs 2 days off to do yoga to "rebalance"

Bus stop ad "Refreshingly Green - Delhi is one of the greenest capital cities in the world"... yeah right, green as in shit, algae & urine green

Your waiter offers to run your bottle of Pinot under hot water because it's too cold!!!!

The Samsung repairman quotes Rs6,000 with a bill or Rs5,000 without a bill!

The answer you DON'T want to hear is delivered with a beaming smile!!!!

It only costs you $10 to see a specialist

When you see an ear picker on the street and no-one else is staring, taking pics or laughing hysterically ... and then he smears his "collections"on his wrist ewww!

and last but by no means least .....

Your new neighbour introduces himself and says "I am in your backside"

End of the Blueline buses .. however......

2010-10-31T00:47:00.000-07:00

After banning the Blueline buses from the roads throughout the Commonwealth Games, Delhi officials have realised they can do without them.

There are however thousands of people who rely upon them to commute to work, and the government is attempting to ensure their needs are met ... of course one problem is ensuring sufficient QUALIFIED drivers are available.....

they have bus drivers who can't drive???!!!!!
one third are on holidays or medical leave??

As you can see by the state of the Bluelines, it's no wonder they've been banned. Worse than the state of them is the fact they have been responsible for no less than 1,000 deaths in the last decade!

no doors!

attacked by a rabid can opener????

19th Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony

2010-10-04T22:39:00.000-07:00

FINALLY, DELHI DAZZLES!!!!

That was the headline on the front page of the Times of India on October the 4th!

By most accounts, it was fabulous... spectacular even. Of course there were some hiccups along the way but hey this is India!!!!

There were too many worries that kept us from attending, and while we have no regrets on our decision, because it was the right decision for us, I guess there will always be a small part of us that, with the bnefit of hindsight, regrets not being part of it.

So the games have begun and we wish everyone the very best.

ps; Delhi is the cleanest it's ever been, so come visit now before it reverts!!!!!

last of the Commonwealth Games sagas

2010-10-04T22:33:00.000-07:00

Communication & Conversations with my gorgeous staff.....

2010-10-01T03:04:00.000-07:00

Every day I find myself playing charades with at least one of my staff! Ok it's not THAT bad, but sometimes, between my basic Hindi and the magnificent attempts by our staff at English, we do struggle a bit to understand each other!

Shanti is the most fun, as she tries desperately to make me understand. She's a ray of sunshine, always beaming her gorgeous smile up at me (she's what 4foot nothing?), probably frustrated as hell at me, but never showing it while she struggles to find another way of explaining something to me. She's a crack up, once she starts talking animatedly, arms waving, with a little bit of acting to get the message across, she never shuts up.

Shanti's on the far right hand side

Sadly, she's a little loopy after being mowed down some idiot test driving the only Lamborghini in Delhi a few years back, it affected her sense of smell as well as her hearing (not to mention a load of broken limbs) so I have to yell out when I walk in the room so I don't scare the beejezus out of her.

A few examples of her Hinglish......

"I am looking, I am seeing .... I am not seeing"

Translation = she has looked and looked for my missing towel & bedsheet, but she cannot find them anywhere.

Shanti waving her hands in the air and vaguely at Ganesh's direction in the kitchen saying "He is upstairs making, I am downstairs cleaning"

Translation = Ganesh will clean the top cupboards, I will clean the lower ones

"I am right saying"

Translation = I am telling you the truth

"Today morning, your nightie floor money put down"

Translation = money fell out of your dressing gown when I was hanging it up. God bless her honesty, I'd forgotten I'd put it there in my hurry to get the kids to school.

"It is broking, I will fix it making"

There is a hole, I will darn it for you

She's possessive, tells me I'm her most kind and beautiful Madam, gives me the thumbs up to show she really means it, then tells me that my tummy's too big, and I shouldn't wear 100roop dresses from Sarojini. She tells me off for doing the dishes, and for putting loads of washing on every Monday morning before she gets here. And when I give her, yet another day off to attend her court case for compensation for the nasty accident she had, she's just holding herself back from giving me a big bear hug I know. And I know she's eternally grateful for me giving her a job when she's old (yeah right she's a sprightly 57!) and after she hadn't worked for 2 years while convalescing. I don't know how her other "Madam's" treated her, but I know no other way but kindness, she's like a mother to me in so many ways (sorry Mum but you know what I mean!). I love her to bits ... even when she burned holes in my favourite dress and the table cloth we got as a wedding present, there's no way I can stay cross for long!

Our guard Pandey beams a smile every night I greet him with a Namaste. Our interaction is limited to "Namaste Pandey, Namaste Madam, how are you Pandey? Good Madam" .. if I try anything else I'm blessed with only ever "Yes Madam". I would really love to sit with Pandey and talk to him but it seems not possible.

KK our day guard is always smiling, always! I love noticing his hair has all of a sudden grown grey and long, then the next day, it's jet black again (a bad dye job if ever I saw one), and cropped short. I can't seem to make him understand I've noticed he's had a "hairy"! KK has this little quirk, he always gives me the car keys with one arm extended and the other holding the bicep of his extended arm, like years ago he did it to stop his arm shaking, and now he does it as a matter of habit. He runs every time he sees me walking towards him, I just cannot seem to get through that unless the house is burning down, he doesn't need to run ... EVER!

Lal still can't make eye contact, but it's just his thing. His last boss confirmed it, he never did in the 3 years he worked for Coakie Madam! I've come to really trust him, but still get frustrated that he doesn't understand just how much I know, especially about gardening! He giggles, every day I ask him how he is, seriously, like it's the most ridiculous thing in the world he's ever heard! Interestingly he seems to understand far more English than he did at the beginning (and his last boss was Dutch with a very strong accent?????!!)!!

For some reason he dares not ask me for holidays for the mali's so I have to prompt with a "hey Lal it's Gandi's birthday tomorrow does anyone want the day off?" "As you like Madam" is usually the reply. " No Lal, it's a holiday, if the mali's want the day off they can.... As you wish Madam. Please understand that Indian families do not regularly give off days. Ok Lal, here's the deal ok .... no work tomorrow ok, that means you too"!

I did laugh though when the mali's wanted the day off to pray to the lord of iron tools, Vishnukarma .. only cause I'd never heard of it before! Very sweetly, they shared with me the sweets I bought them for this particular festival!

And Ganesh, OMG he's hysterical!

Not only can he cook and possesses more jewellery than I do, but boy he's a laugh! The day he came back from Yamato Ma (the asian grocery store) all indignant that they had recently altered the checkout layout out to make customers now pack their own groceries. He said "NO WAY, ARE YOU JOKING? NO WAY I'm packing my own bags. YOU MUST BE CRAZY, That's not how we do things in India NO WAY, packing? me? NO WAY!" .. I was almost on the floor! Ganesh endears himself to all our friends and has just celebrated his first anniversary with us!!

My heart broke when I interviewed my new maid, Gracie when she told me she thought she was 22. She's only worked for Indian's before and they clearly treated her poorly, as well as only paying her Rs2,000 per month!!!!! On Monday she explained that it made both her and Shanti feel bad to know that I had done the dishes last Sunday. NO amount of explaining would make her understand how uncomfortable I feel that they do my dishes and all the chores every day, that being given a temporary reprieve from housework was like being given a Thai massage and a pina colada every day, ONLY BETTER!!!!! Bless her! Gracie's moving in to our quarters on the weekend, and seemed genuinely touched when I told her all new furniture would be delivered today and that I have told all the men on the property to ensure her safety and privacy. I so want to give her the start in life she clearly hasn't had to date. And I just know that Ganesh and Shanti will give her the life lessons she needs to get her through. Next job, getting her to a bank and opening an account for her.

Gasper's a big kid. My girls and Nicky's boys with have this thing with Gasper where they, from the moment he sees them in the morning, have to chase each other and touch each other's head (like tag) but .... crossing your fingers is safe ... so Gasper drives all the way to school and back with his fingers crossed! Sometimes it looks a bit rough but Gasper assures me he's play acting and they're really not hurting him! They lock him out of the car, he locks them out, he chases them all over the garden, it's kinda like they have a much older brother, it's beautiful to watch! He loves it as much as they do! He asked me to bring him steroids back from Australia last trip (as if) so he can bulk up, if he's 55kgs I'd be surprised!

I could keep writing for days, but hopefully that gives you a little bit more of a slice of our life. In a nutshell, I love our staff and the interaction we have on a daily basis and there's no way I could survive here without them!

Cobra found at Tennis Stadium

2010-09-26T23:19:00.000-07:00

as if things aren't already bad enough for Comm Games officials!

this article says the Scottish officials are worried the street dogs pose a threat to athletes ... personally, I'd be more worried about testing the showers to make sure the athletes don't get electric shocks while showering (as is quite common here!)

Happy Ending Hoho Buses or is Santa coming early?

2010-09-26T08:15:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge

the locksmith saga

2010-09-24T01:27:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, a friend (let's call her Pamela) needed the lock on her front door replaced. Here's the sequence of events, as told by her (apologies there are no photos to go with this story):

Noon on said day, locksmith arrives, noticeably empty handed

12.30 locksmith decides a new lock is required
(which in itself is a stroke of genius given he was instructed 3 hours earlier to place new locks on the door!)

13.00 locksmith requests an extortionate rs2000 for a replacement lock

13.01 locksmith goes to the market, Pamela goes out

15.00 locksmith returns with lock in hand
(yes folks that's right, it takes 2 hours to obtain a lock!)

16.00 Pamela arrives home

16.01 Pamela goes and I quote f*cking apeshit end quote

16.02 Pamela realises the the reason she is going apeshit is because the locksmith has attacked the door frame with a hammer and chisel to have the door fit the new lock!

16.02.05 Pamela notices that the new lock however is for a door hinged on the opposite side. But that's ok, he has installed it upside down!

16.03 Pamela notices that for some inexplicable reason, there are live electrical wires hanging out of the door lock and are sparking as they rub together in the wind she is generating through the sheer force of her fury!

16.05 Pamela walks away telling him to fix it

19.30 YES.... three and a half hours later!!!! Pamela walks into the hallway, and as calmly and as nicely as she possibly can, says quote you need to f*cking fix this and then f*ck off end quote

20.30 The carpenter, who was originally asked to do this job, but was too busy earlier and also hadn't cleared it with his boss, arrives, removes the new lock, puts the old lock back on the door

21.15 the tradesmen leave the house

Haggling 101!

2010-09-15T06:10:00.000-07:00

Haggling might be fun when you're a tourist here for only 2 weeks but every time you venture into a market or shop, every day, for over a year or more? Arrrrrrrrrrrgh! Having to haggle for almost everything we buy pot plants, clothes you name it, is draining! Every time you go out you know you're gonna be ripped off blind. Nothing's got a price on it, no no no ... they want to size you up first and figure how much to "set the price". Walk down any street or through any market you hear ........

"hello Madam, I am here, waiting for you" "what is your good name?"

"where are you from?" "South Africa right? "India Sir? I mean your home country" England? Ah New Zealand? Australia? Ricky Ponting you know Ricking Ponting? Shane Warne, he's the best cricketer ever"

"come, come, this way, you must start here, at this shop" (which happens to be his shop)

Sometimes I just can't be bothered investing 15 minutes haggling over some trinket I can easily afford and still find so cheap. But often take a deep breath, take up the challenge and enjoy the game that is haggling .... usually when I'm alone and no-one I know can hear my still pathetic efforts!

Our girls, like all children, are sponges and time and again we are surprised by just how much they have soaked up ie; bargaining!!!

A few days ago, we're killing time at the Udaipur airport, I come out of a bookshop to find Dean watching from afar, Emmaline and Xanthe haggling with the man in the souvenir store! SOLO!

Dean's laughing his head off and suggests I leave them to it. So we watch together as our angels do a good cop/bad cop routine over these 2 small items... starting price 500rupees.

Emmy's all confident, telling the shop owner his goods aren't worth the asking price and immediately halves it.

Xanthe meanwhile is looking all angelic and pouty when he asks her sister for a better price

Emmy drops by 50roops (one of Daddy's tricks she's picked up along the way without us even realising it)
He says 350, she says 300, he says deal.

Somehow she knows not to push any further, she understands the value of things, she knows when to stop, she knows to be respectful, not to insult the vendor, she knows he still needs to make a living, to feed and clothe his children .. but she knows she's damnwell not going to be ripped off either (mainly cause she, thank god, understands that cheap trinkets will fall apart by the time she gets home!).

I've never seen 2 girls so chuffed by their success.

I don't know many 10 year olds capable nor confident enough to haggle a man 5 times her age, nor a 7 year old who knows a middle aged man can't possibly say no to a cute little girl with curls and huge eyes (fluttering all over the place) about to well up if she doesn't get her dangly ganesh thing.

I guess the stall holder of Gem Imporium was pretty impressed too cause he came over and had a chat with us not longer after.

We're so proud of our girls for doing something I know took me 42 years to pluck up the courage to do!!! And this is a little example of how this crazy thing we're doing (living in India) has some character building and personality changing/moulding moments!!!!

Security

2010-09-14T11:12:00.000-07:00

Just how many security checks at the airport do you need for one holiday?

Maybe this sign explains the added security!

These guys in red are Kingfisher Airlines staff, who are there to assist you with your bags!

see!!!!

I can honestly say I've never been bag searched so much in my life .. at shopping malls, at movies, at national monuments, going into hotels ......

pity the search isn't as thorough as it should be though!!!

Commonwealth Games 27 days to go (clippings from the past few weeks)

2010-09-06T06:03:00.000-07:00

what the?

I always know how many people are in our house .....

2010-08-26T08:17:00.001-07:00

In true Asian style, it is customary to remove your shoes before entering the house .... so, I always know how many people are in our house by how many shoes are outside the door.

or how many bicycles are parked out the front!

Monsoon August 2010

2010-08-24T21:11:00.000-07:00

We didn’t really have a monsoon last year, it was just bloomn hot. This year, however the heavens have opened up and tossed truck after truck after truck load of water on New Delhi.

Coming from a droughtstricken country, I can honestly tell you that I have never seen so much rain in my life .. actually now that I think of it, I never saw that much in England either!

We had 104.2mm of rain on Friday 20th August!!!!!

It’s kinda nice, in that the dust has been forced to settle, but then there’s mud and goo and gloop and rubbish strewn everywhere by torrents of water, but hey at least the leaves on the trees are clean once more!

That wet stuff that falls from the sky causes absolute chaos here. Don't even ask what the impact of these torrential downpours is on the Commonwealth Games ... doesn't take Einstein to figure that one out!

The poorly constructed roads open up and 5 foot deep potholes appear. Someone comes round and fills them up with bricks overnight and then another massive pothole appears further down the road.

Driving on the roads can be treacherous cause if you come across one of those potholes hidden under the water, your axel could break or, god forbid your car might just disappear into one of them.

Tarpaulins magically appear and people living on the street fortify their tents and huts with these blue tarps and whatever other rainproofing they can lay their hands on. Surviving the monsoon is tough, with firewood drenched, housing sodden or flooded, clothing saturated ... as if life here isn’t hard enough without having to battle these conditions.

Plastic bags appear on people’s heads, turban’s feet & bicycle seats and naked little boys run around gleefully jumping in puddles. Pavement vendors try, in vain to keep the water from their ruining their wares, fruit carts are abandoned when it tosses down and street dogs seek higher water for fear of being drowned.

Everyone’s wet, trousers are rolled up, shirts are stuck to lithe bodies, sari’s are duly gathered up and people walk ever so slowly through the muddy rivers, which used to be roads, hoping they won’t trip over something dangerous or fearful their shoes won’t float away.

Business continues, it has to ... cardboard has to be recycled, milk still has to be delivered, buses still need to transport hundred’s of sodden people peering through windows of condensation and kids still need to be picked up from school.

I didn’t know heavy rains brought out dragonflies but the sky was full of them that afternoon. Also seeking dry ground were the humungous chitti (ants) and worms that were at least 6inches long!

My mulberry tree is thriving, I seem to have finally had success with an Aussie avocado seed, but my poor Amaltas saplings are struggling with all this water and a few frangipani trees have succumbed to their weight in sodden soil.

My vege seedlings just cannot grow, not with this much water! There’s mould on the surface soil, my zucchinis have given up the trauma of drinking all that water, the radishes have swollen and split with the rain and heat, my tomatoes are drowned, herbs like dill and thyme just don’t stand a chance, but my palak (spinach), peppery rocket and basil seem to love tons and tons of water .... lucky for that eh? And ... the chipmunks are getting past the netting and running round like maniacs in my vege patch ... little blighters!

I’m loathe to plant my precious new seedlings and expose them to troughs of water, cause they’re quite happy in their little seedling trays right now, growing at a rate of knots I’ve never before witnessed in my life!

from seeds to seedlings in 7 days!

and in the lakes that appeared almost instantly in our garden ......

there was great fun to be had ....

yes the water was deep enough for the dolphins to float!

Ohhhhhh ..... and "singing in the rain" too!

customer service just like "who's on first" by Abbott & Costello.......

2010-08-23T21:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to an Airtel (my mobile phone provider) shop to sort out the ongoing problem with my mobile phone:

Hi I have a problem with my phone
What is the problem Madam?
The same problem continues, please pull up this reference number
Your account is active Madam
I know it's active but I have a problem
There is no problem Madam, your account is active
Let me see (I turn the screen around) and say, please open one of these service problems
That reference number is closed Madam, problem is fixed
No it's not
It is closed Madam
Well reopen it
No madam problem is fixed
It's not
Ok let's open a new complaint
Sure Madam what is problem
Same as last time
How did they fix it Madam?
They didn't
They must have it's closed
I still can't receive or make calls
Madam, when you are out of range you cannot make or receive calls
Listen, I'm know that, I'm not stupid, this morning my husband was sitting right next to me, I had full access/range and my phone DID NOT ring
I am ringing your number Madam it is ringing
It is spasmodic
I am ringing your number Madam there is no problem
There IS STILL a problem, that is why I came today, please open the previous complaint
It's closed Madam
I know it's closed, please open one exactly the same
If it's the same problem you should ring them to reopen it Madam
That's what I asked you to do when I walked in here
It's a technical problem we can't fix it you must ring Apple
I rang Apple and had 2 one hour conversations with a "senior genius" in Singapore and the same problem happens in any phone i put this sim in and they replaced my sim so, it's either my settings or my account
Can you check my settings please
(he has a quick glance at my ph) settings look ok Madam
You didn't even go into the settings option!!!!
You need to ring 121 for account problems Madam it's not a settings problem
Can't you ring them while I'm here
Yes Madam, your good name is Mr Dean yes?
No, that's my husband
Then he must ring as the account is in his good name.

Not unbelieveably I left at this point!

First day back on the job.....

2010-08-02T04:06:00.000-07:00

Well the girls and I have had a lovely 2 month break back home enjoying a cold Melbourne winter, while it fried in India, enjoying too too much as the scales kindly reminded me this morning (once I was game enough to get on them that is), but that was a no-brainer .... I knew I'd enjoyed wayyyyyy too much Aussie food and beautiful wines with family and lovely friends and it was good!

But now it's not good cause I can't figure out what I can fit into!!!!

My last days in oz weren't that great, being sick and desperately trying to fit 2 months and 120kgs of luggage into 3 suitcases and 3 carry-ons. Not having Deano to lug those 30odd kg bags into the car boot and out again just about put me in my grave ... but then of course there was the annoying French checker-in-er-er lady at Tulla who insisted I move 1kg from one locked and already on the conveyor belt suitcase into another locked and further down the conveyor belt suitcase! I was practically in tears as Mum and I had already had to do the tango with 2 cars, 6 pieces of luggage, 3 handbags, 2 fluffy toys, a policeman's hat, 3 punnets of precious raspberries, and a large metal box of Littlest Pet Shops which Xanthe insisted on carrying on the plane .. then having dropped off the hire car, leaving 2 suitcases unattended at Thrifty, we got stuck in a jam driving Mum's car back into the short term car park just as the credit on my payasyougo Aussie sim ran out and then my iphone decided it didn't like my Indian sim card after all!

So there goes my plans to ring Dad and Angela to thank them for their kind hospitality, bed use et al, I can't even ring Mum at the airport after we split up, her taking one trolley and the girls to the check in counter and me dashing off to hopefully retrieve my unattended luggage at Thrifty, and I've got 13 minutes to get my bags, find Mum and the girls, knowing I HAVE to catch that plane despite the fear of my ears causing me serious pain on the plane, cause I forgot to take travel insurance out for the very first time in my life, but knowing that if I did miss that plane then at least I'd have a really cool house warming party to go to and a pretty cross hubby!

Blah blah blah, very stressful, annoying and tears still pending.....

7 minutes to spare, we got to the check in counter and that annoying French lady did her "occupational health & safety/heavy bag" lecture all over ONE MEASLY KILO. Tears abated, luggage duly rebalanced, and we said our very sad and oh so teary goodbyes before being told by the security dude that my carry-on was tooo big and 8kgs too heavy (which I knew but thought I'd get away with if I just battered my now unmascared, very red and puffy eyelids at him).

Having a massive head cold didn't help, I'd been sick most of last week and the worst hit while we were descending into Hong Kong airport .. suffice to say know I know why babies scream their guts out when they can't clear their ears!!!! So, we flew in at 2am on Sunday morning ie; yesterday was a complete write off!

Today I woke early, a lil jet lagged, wrote a todolist for my caretaker, vowed to be firmer with staff who had seriously been taking liberties last year and spend more time with my angels, one of whom is now sick too. Awake, alive and thinking I was recharged, rejuvenated, re-enthused and all those re words and ready to tackle Delhi for another year!

Right, sure ... uhuh .... what planet are you on girl?

So on my first day I:

think I saw a shrouded dead body on our street, Dean thinks it's the same one he saw last week
have been warned that cannibal Nigerians tried to abduct a small child in neighbouring suburb 2 days ago, the same Nigerians who subsequently admitted to previously eating other small children!!!!!!!!!!

You couldn't make this stuff up right?

went to a market where I had to step over poo, mud and unknown gunk only to find black cauliflower which I quickly realised was because it was covered in flies!
have been leered at by local dudes at the atm
yelled at my cook, who after 2 months paid holiday had the gaul to ask, on his first day back, for the next 3 days off, after turning up to work 2 hours late (work colleagues coming to dinner)
had a maid turn up late because of "swelling"????
watched our caretaker drain all our water tanks cause they were silted up to the max so spent 3 hours with no water
found water dripping on our filing cabinet from a leak in the ceiling
can't email, can't call or take calls

I'm sure that's not it but that's enough for day one don'tcha reckon?

ALL not before pledging today would be my first day of an alcohol free month, how bloody stupid am I?

The trip home was wonderful but exhausting .... already stressed from 10 months living in India, exhausted from 46degree heat .... I tried to see and please EVERYONE, probably not very well, ran 3 social calendars, with play dates, sleep overs, enjoyable lunches & dinners with loved ones (but way too much food & wine), fitted in a wedding, 3 gp appointments, 2 neurologist appointments, a termite inspection, Emmy's birthday, bought presents and organised a rollerskating party for 20 kids, trips interstate to spend time with family .....

2 weeks with an exhausted husband who wanted us all to himself, tried to keep my kids occupied while their friends were back at school, without toys/dvds etc to keep them busy, 3 vein treatments, tried to look after my mother recovering from a heart attack and breast cancer, dealt with constant email problems, constantly running out of pre-paid telephone service, a visa bill threatening to engulf the entire asian pacific rim, remembered to renew 2 mail redirections, dealt with staff issues from afar, a lumbar puncture and MRI, uploaded photos so I didn't lose them, had 2 haircuts/colours to fix my blue fried hair

yes there's more ... obtained quotes and installed wardrobes into an investment property that's been empty for 4 months, then demanding new lawyer tenants who wanted internet connections in every room and couldn't cope with channel 2 being occasionally fuzzy, fired crap managing agents, who amongst other things lost keys and overlooked fence damage from tree fall during a massive storm, hired new managing agents, picked up keys, dealt with mail and bills that arrived already overdue in India via pdf and staff issues via Dean's pa, tried to renew already expired benefits for my superannuation account, updated rabies vaccinations, supported a close friend who's mother was just diagnosed with breast cancer,

ummmmmmmmmmmm unforgiveably didn't manage to catch up with many friends, including my old boss, maintained twice daily contact with a father/husband who was increasingly pissed off being alone and missing his girls, maintained contact with new friends in India, UK friends, remembered birthdays, and dealt with banking and taxation issues while trying to spend quality time with my girls and yet remain relatively sane and healthy (let's not even mention lack of exercise) while.....

remembering to buy everything we can't get in India and post stuff home so I had the room to transport it, as well as make new appointments in Delhi including the last stage of re-root canal treatment which might include a trip to a periodontist, with a tooth that split big time while I was home, all the time hoping it would hold till I could have the treatment finished and the crown done in Delhi where it's 500% less the cost in Australia.

So if I haven't managed to call, catch up or say thank you for all the wonderful hospitality, great times, presents for Emmaline's birthday (I will get to that soon as my email is back up n running) I'm sorry but I'm hoping you might understand.

Yeah so I've got 380 emails stuck trying to come into our inbox, which somehow screwed up 2 weeks after I left, and I've no idea how to re-route it or fix it!

AND my Indian simcard blanks everytime I turn off the phone when Airtel customer service rep tells me to reboot it, so I can't take or make calls, only texts ... arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

And I've still got 3 full suitcases that need to be unpacked.

Day 2 can only get better huh?

Rain decimates Delhi roads

2010-08-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

We missed the monsoon last year but have come back to daily deluges, I missed Saturday's by hours which was good cause I don't like flying in storms! The "lakes" in our garden have disappeared, the grass is green, the trees are flourishing once again, my vege patch is floundering under so much water, it's mighty mushy underfoot and boy oh boy is it steamy here!

Wet Wet Delhi

2010-08-01T22:24:00.000-07:00

The night we land back in Delhi justs happens to have been the wettest July day this year with 62.5mm of rain dumping down, taking the total rainfall for July to 239.6mm .. and it's no wonder it's steamy and there are massive potholes in the roads!

reworking this blog

2010-05-16T11:46:00.000-07:00

Hi sorry if my blog is a bit hard to read at the mo, am in the process of reformatting it as I've not been happy with the layout but being an L plate blogger I'm not exactly sure how to fix it and more to the point, nor do I have time to concentrate on it. I did try then made a complete botch up of it and haven't had time to fix it ... I WILL however go back on my older posts and fix the font at least (sooner or later)!!!!

I haven’t blogged for ages now cause I have been busy, shot back home to spend time with Mum after her heart attack and now am counting down the days till I can pack us all up and we can go home for the summer and spend some time with friends and family (Mum mostly of course) .... and of course to escape the extreme heat we're now experiencing!

But I also haven't blogged cause I had some unsavoury comments left on my blog from strangers who have obviously taken my stories completely out of context and I got all pouty for a bit there.

Anyway, I’ve decided to ignore them as my blog is intended, in conjunction with my Facebook pics and stories, as a light hearted, tongue in cheek, insight into our life in India for friends and family to perhaps try to understand how hard it is sometimes for us to live here, as strangers in a strange land, who don't speak the language, to understand the intricacies, pitfalls, highs and lows of living an expat life (which in India is far from normal) and how it affects our family.

I want to say that I feel privileged for the opportunity to explore and embrace a new culture ..... Incredible India. As an experienced expat, I did think this would be far easier than it actually is. While I never expected life here to be the same as back home, I assumed that I would be able to find and do little things that made the transition a whole lot easier than it was (and an inexperienced expat coordinator helped make me believe that) .... not just for me, my family I mean especially my children.

So, if complete strangers take my stories out of context without knowing one little bit about me or my circumstances, personality, spirit or sense of humour and wish to make unkind comments well so be it. Those who know me, understand. Those who haven't walked in my shoes, shouldn't make judgement without doing so first.

Those who assume, incorrectly I might add, that I know nothing of the culture or suggest that I attempt to do so, as well as learn Hindi should perhaps stop to ask me what I have done, and/or intend to do during my stay in India. My children are (stupidly in my books) not taught Hindi in their school so I take every opportunity for us to learn as much as we can, and for those of you who know me, you'll know that this is what I do in every country we have visited so far. My children, with my encouragement and love for languages, have learned to count and various phrases in no less than 10 languages. Not being bi/multilingual myself (something I will always regret), I want my girls to have every opportunity to become so themselves.

The first 6 months here were tough, really tough, but I now feel I'm in the "zone". I roll with the punches and the frustrations, laugh at my own expense with amazing women who are in exactly the same boat. And while our existence here is far from normal (by that I mean by what I've known for the last 42 years) I AM loving it. I acknowledge that, with the benefit of hindsight, I've predominantly used my blog to vent, and you know if I had the time right now, I would also blog about ALL the things I love about India. There's so much I wish to share, but I just can't seem to get on top of it .... blogging or anything else to be honest! So for now, after this blog, I'm done with blogging until I can give justice to EVERYTHING I experience here ..... the good, the amazing, the fabulous, the heartwrenching, the bad and the ugly!

But you know, days roll by and stuff gets in the way. I barely get round to calling or emailing my family n friends so I have used Facebook for my 000’s of pictures and blogging in a vain attempt to keep them in the loop. I constantly feel guilty about how little time I have to maintain existing friendships while I struggle to develop new ones in the country I'm now living in. Blogging was supposed to be the glue that kept me linked to everyone!

Having said that though, THE most important things to me are my children and my husband and, right now my Mum, who is struggling with constant and very serious health issues. I have let slide my blog while I attend to those more important issues and perhaps you would not judge me so harshly if I had time to give a balanced view of our life and our life here in India and you knew exactly how we live our lives.

I do however expect to have the freedom to express myself without being labelled, unfairly, amongst all things "a bigoted bitch who belongs back in a penal colony".

Those of you who know me, know that to be completely unfounded and untrue.

You know ..... raising children is not an easy gig. Dragging them out of their comfort zone (again, our choice I know), and attempting to provide them as normal a life as possible, while living in a developing country like India is even MORE difficult. And it's one gig I do happily and willingly while I support my husband, while HE helps build a business which will ultimately benefit millions of Indian families.

Our family supports 12 individuals and their respective families, we give them jobs which they might not otherwise have, we both pay them and treat them exceptionally well.
I share the vegetables I grow in my vegetable patch that I built with my own hands but mostly with the help of local labourers.
I love my staff, without them I would find it difficult to function normally here. I love the (unexpected) interaction we have, I assist them with their own troubles, provide advice and support whenever I can. And as I learn about their needs, and subsequently feel guilty about my ignorance of their needs, I give more and more. I’m a big softy at heart and I know there are expats out there (far more experienced in India than I) who have and will berate me for being as soft as I am, yet here I am justifying myself to strangers who are so far removed from this existence, who cannot possibly imagine what a normal day in the life of an expat wife entails.... and it’s most certainly not bridge, manicures & cocktails!

I'm trying my hardest. I’m on one big MASSIVE learning curve, and I am terribly upset there are some people, who live thousands and thousands of kilometres away, sitting in their college dormitories, or office without kids or a spouse to care for, sippin on a Starbucks, believing they are qualified to judge me when they cannot possibly imagine what life here is like with kids and a husband who works ridiculous hours .. or without a hell of a lot of unbiased research!

I try to make my blog as funny as I can purely for entertainment value (as those of you who know me well will attest) and I never expected that people would see it otherwise! Sure I get frustrated (as does any expat here) and you would too if you were living here. But it's one of the few opportunities I do have to purge my mind in an attempt to keep myself sane. Fellow expats get my ramblings. I’m not just speaking for myself you know!

While I do not feel the need to justify any sentiments I chose to blog, I wish I had the words to adequately describe what our life is like and how grateful I am to be here, as I'm clearly not doing a very good job of it.

To the man who made fun of my children's names ... how dare you. Completely uncalled for and out of line. You should be ashamed of yourself, especially in your profession.

Dunno when I'll be back!

You know it's hot when......

2010-05-16T10:47:00.000-07:00

It takes 10 minutes before the shower is cool enough to stand under and your geyser isn’t even turned on!

You take your watch off cause it’s making you sweat

Your hair is ¾’s dry and you haven’t even turned on the hairdryer!

It’s 7:30am and already you have beads of sweat dripping down your neck

You find your cat in the most ridiculous of places, obviously trying to find SOMEWHERE cool ... like on top of a box in the bathroom cupboard!

When the 6 day forecast ranges between 43 and 46 and it’s not even officially summer yet!

Your pool temperature is 31 and feels like a bath

When you’re taking natural diuretic tablets like tic tacs and your ankles still look like boab trees!

When a smart arse friend adds to your facebook "well the good news is that it’s not even close to over and it will get gotter than this" .. and then has the audacity to add a smiley face!!!!!!

F.R.R.O.........

2010-03-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

Well unbelieveably Dean’s almost been here 12 months which means his visa is up for renewal! No such thing as having a work visa granted for the duration of your contract, no that would be too sensible! So let’s have create extra paperwork every year shall we? It’s job creation you know and with 1.3b people in the country we’ve found soooo many ways to keep as many of them occupied as possible, red tape is one of them.

Actually applying for an extension to our visa isn’t that bad …. If you know the right way to do it .. and standing in line for 5 hours ain’t the right way (which is what Dean had to do the first time … before we knew there was an agent who for a large fee, do it all for you with only a little assistance from us!).

So we arrive at the Foreigner Regional Registration Office this morning, having only been there a few weeks ago to apply for a 3 month extension of our visa! This time we’re applying for the remaing 9 months. And we’re doing it in a hurry cause one of the pa’s at work suddenly decided it’s perhaps not a good idea (last minute in true Indian style) to leave for Dubai (on Saturday) without a full visa cause they just might not let us back in (hmmmmmmm and that would be a BAD thing?). Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, hand over our passports, 2 days before we need them, to a bunch of bumbling, inefficient, beurocratic Indian FRRO officials!

So Agent A (just in case I shouldn’t give his identity away) meets us at the entrance, shakes our hands, in what can only be described as the weakest, most pathetic handshake I’ve ever encountered … I think he managed to touch 3 fingertips … but after he wiped his clammy hands on a hanky! I’m not surprised his hands are clammy he spends his days “bribing” officials to cut redtape to make what would be THE most infuriating process ever, completely seemless!

While he's reminding us of the process, which is basically ultra confident queue jumping … I'm surveying the chaos behind him, it's a writhing jungle of races, colours, ages, the infirm, bored, irritable, tired, yet every single one of them fiercely determined to get their visa ..... so there's pushing, shouting, elbowing, paper waiving, lots of yelling, no doubt insult hurling in a variety of languages while everyone trying their best to convince the FRRO official to let them in next. The entrance is heaving, pregnant with expectant Pakistani’s and Afghani’s & dreadlocked hippies (no doubt here to do a 6 week how to be a yoga instructor course!!!!!) and outside teams of women in sari's and burkas sitting with bored, hungry children … while ours sit in the car watching a dvd in airconditioned comfort scarfing down a box of Panda biccies (yup feeling guilty already).

so the instructions are ..... follow him .... past security, don’t stop, even if someone yells at us, smile at the lady in the counter, follow him, smile at another lady at another counter and get out of there quickly and quietly (and don’t make eye contact with those poor suckers who are hopefully clueless at what we’ve just done (hopefully they've mistaken us as officials? hmmmm only wrong skin colour!) and who’ve been in line for god knows how many hours and are just about to be disappointed big time because what they probably don’t know is that the FRO closes completely and very soon for lunch). I don’t know which is worse, the fact that the FRO staff do that to the queue inhabitants or that we (the company) have paid a rather large sum (ok bribe ... let’s not mince words here) to bypass that massive heaving queue AND a hell of a lot of red tape.

Soooooooo, we do as instructed, smile when expected (I throw in a few namastes) and leave. No-one tells us to get to the back of the queue, no-one chucks a hissy fit that we’ve gone straight to the front, no-one checks our photos against our actual faces, no-one matches our forms to our id, no-one looks at our passports (I’m a brunette in my passport pic you’d think someone would stop to check), no-one asks us to get the kids out of the car … Amit takes care of everything, it probably goes something like:

“see these two smiling white people, well they are the people who’s forms and passports I’ll be bringing in later, their kids are in the car but you don’t neeeeeed to get them away from their favourite in car movie now do you??? these are the people who need their paperwork done pronto, so they can go on their holiday to Dubai on Saturday …. now you want to keep them smiling don’t you because the only way you’ll keep them smiling is if you make this realllllllllllll smoooooth and quick, ok? Teekay? Handji ... and here’s my card, oops oopsyyyy oh will you look at that …. all that money accidentally on purpose fell into your hands?

So that was 11:45am yesterday morning and by 4:20pm that afternoon our passports were returned and we're ready to fly off with our visas all sorted for the next 12 months here in schtinking hot already New Delhi!

Not a word you usually see in a brochure in a beauty salon!

2010-03-03T23:32:00.000-08:00

Holi 2010

2010-03-01T01:14:00.000-08:00

I have to finish this blog later cause this guy got me fair n square through the car window! Stupid me rolled down the window to get a clear pic and WHAM he got me smack right in the face with the same yellow Holi powder he's covered in! It's in my ears n everything, including the car interior, so I gotta go wash it off.

I'll post more pics later. Suffice to say I loved today's Holi celebrations and wish we were on the road earlier today to see the best of the throwing of coloured powder & water bombs!

Dunno about previous years but Holi 2010 has been timed perfectly! The last two days have been almost 30 degrees and of course herald the onset of 8 scorching hot months ahead!

clever girl managed to colour coordinate!

months later, I finally get round to adding more photos of this super fun day!

filling a water bomb

slimed and powdered and having a ball!

this guy's smearing coloured powder all over Dean's head

coloured and really staining powders for sale

water pistols galore for sale at the shops

walk by shooting

gabi's been ghostified!

after a Holi party, the girls are thoroughly messy, in non staining Holi powders though!

Contortion Extortion.....

2010-02-27T23:52:00.000-08:00

At so many traffic lights, cute little kids with moustaches painted on their grimy faces and a thong of leather on their hats, wait in the median strip for the change of traffic lights then zoom to the first car and start "performing",

Little ones of 3-6years old, whirl around the leather thong, doing back bends and cartwheels in between cars & auto rickshaws, when they're not doing that they're doing that horrible double jointed clasp your hands behind your head, then dislocate your shoulders, move your hands backwards, down the bum, skip over your hands till they're back at the front .... for a few rupees .... while big sister bangs away on the drums.

The money's not for them, it's for whoever slavepimpbastard they work for and it's deplorable ... these little ones shouldn't know how to negotiate their way through the Delhi traffic and furthermore and far more importantly, they should be in school!

It breaks my heart.

is she the only dentist in Delhi?

2010-02-27T03:44:00.000-08:00

So the girls were due for their biannual dental appointment so we went to see Poonam Batra, who, it seems might just be THE only dentist that expats see in Delhi! She denied it of course, but was flattered when I told her just how many recommendations I'd received. Including of course, Dean's.

You see Dean seems to have developed a habit of needing root canal treatment, almost immediately we move to a new country! Fortunately dental treatment here is damn cheap. Looks like he might even finally attend to that bloody gaping hole of a missing tooth from a footy accident over 30 years ago, given that titianium implants are soooooooo much cheaper here. I'm considering braces too!!

Anyway, so Emmaline went first and everything was normal ... until .... I noticed Poonam's three

YES I SAID THREE assistants ... see:

one to hold the sucker thingy, one to adjust the overhead lamp every 3microseconds and the other standing around generally doing not much to be honest!

Emmaline was given the aok, then it was Xanthe's turn. Unbelieveably we were ushered out of the room while they sterilised everything and reset the room. I told her I personally thought it unnecessary to sterilise between siblings, but she insisted and I obliged!

It seems Xanthe has a "tongue thrust" which meant a quick drop in consultation by the onsite orthodontist .... (that was handy, so was not charging for that either!) who determined that Xanthe needs a plate (just like her mates Jamie & Hannah) to fix her top front teeth which are protruding just a tad!!!!

Grand total Rs2000 (AUD$46 for both)!!! Will be interesting to see how the orthodontic bills compare to those from home!

Director Micromanagement, Asia Region

2010-02-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

Some of you have asked me what on earth I do with my day .... a valid question given I have 12 staff for the "farmhouse" .. more than Dean's direct reports actually tee hee!

Ok so, yes ..... my grocery shopping is done for me. But trust me, with no supermarkets here in Delhi you need help. The weekly grocery shopping could take you 3 days and includes visits to no less than 10 different markets, a few calls to wine/beef suppliers, and some serious finger crossing in the hope that the stuff you want is actually available this week, or hasn't been spoiled in transit (or frozen/defrosted 10times in the process), it helps avoid paying the "white tax" and when it's 46degrees, trust me I ain't going nowhere some of those markets .. the smells are bad enough now and our days are only 26ish degree and very beautiful days!

Oh what I would do for a trip into Coles (Leo's to be precise) or Waitrose and have the luxury of being able to buy everything I need in one shop and know to trust the quality and that I'm not paying exorbitant prices for a few "luxuries" from home, like 250g "Bega" cheese for AUD$12 or 250g "Cathedral City" cheese GBP5!

It was explained to me that one thing India does well is pamper, and middle to upperclass Indian women are indeed pampered and they take for granted those "tools" that we in the west deem decadent; cooks/ayahs/maids etc. So it's not surprising that whilst I'm here, I get to be pampered too ... trust me, in this place, with what you have to face sometimes, you need it, otherwise you'd be sent straight to a mental asylum and no collecting rs200 on the way Madam!!!!!!!

Ummmm lost my train of thought, where was I? Oh yeah what do I do with ALL that free time?

WELL!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me tell you.

I micromanage!

On a daily basis.

EVERY FREAKN DAY there’s not one, but countless situations where I’m micromanaging the most tedious of things. Scrutinising the shopping bills to make sure Ganesh isn't loading up on stuff he needs at his own home, spot checking the fridge to make sure he hasn't bought off cheese (mould usually gives it away Ganesh, look for mould when you're in the shop huh!) to check the vegetables aren't in bags ... a sure sign they haven't been sterilised! Checking on Shanti in the laundry to make sure she's set my washing machine correctly, walking the garden to see the mali's are actually weeding, not throwing their paan wrappers in the garden and not sleeping the day away. Telling Lal there's obviously no point the mali's watering today cause there was a massive downpour last night huh Lal?! Making lists of maintenance items Lal needs to attend to or what Raj Kumar the sweeper needs to do, cause he can't see that the tops of the a/c's are dusty or that the window sills are littered with 10billion mozzie cadavers. The list is endless.

I'm fortunate that my key staff are well educated, speak great English and generally do a good job, although sometimes ... sometimes ....they do really silly stuff stuff that drives me absolutely mental, keeps me stupid busy and makes me wonder about their IQ but only sometimes!

I know I'm not Robinson Crusoe here, any get together of expats generally leads to some group whinge about the frustrations of living in a country where we do not speak the language, where the conditions are very challenging (heat, dirt, dust, filth, corruption, off food and lack of western food etc etc) and we are expected by our spouses to somehow hit the ground running and find (miraculously I might add) a way to live as close to normal as possible .. which is really important for our family as we support Dean while he builds a business which will ultimately benefit hundreds and thousands and eventually millions and (we hope) millions of Indians across the nation!

So let's start with Bubba G Ticky, our cook, who (and let me say here, he's worked overseas for 20ish years, in hotels in Dubai, Rome and Singapore and on a US cruiseship for 8 years as well so it's not like he hasn't been trained!!!)

Doesn’t melt the chocolate while making a cake, stands there watching the creamed butter and sugar whirl around my precious Kitchen Aid while chunks of cooking chocolate thunk round and round endlessly, making a god awful noise, completely mangling the whisk. My only thought was how effing long was he gonna stand there before he stopped to wonder if the chocolate was never gonna melt that way!

When asked to buy 40 coat hangers (like the wire ones you bought last time Ganesh), comes home with monster wooden ones, the type you’re given when you buy a suit. When I asked him what possessed him to spend AUD$70 of our hard earned dosh on this type .. he replied, well you asked for coat hangers and .... Madam, these are the type you hang coats on. Oh really Ganesh, how many coats do you think I'm gonna need in India? Does 40 sound like a reasonable number to you when, for 8 months of the year it's well over 35degrees? No Madam, sooooooGanesh cause ... ya know what, there isn't another word in the English language for a coat hanger! I’ll tell you my theory ... he’s been snooping in our wardrobes and noticed I have a lot of wooden (and very cheap) Ikea ones oh! and the odd few wooden ones we've nicked from hotels over the years! Just in case you were worried, the coat hangers went back and were exchanged for wire shirt hangers!

The same cook who when asked if he knew anyone who could sharpen Dean’s global knives, of course obliged. Silly me, should have only sent one on a test run, but instead, without thinking, I sent the whole knife block’s contents and was disgustificated to find that they had been sharpened on a grinding wheel and they were returned with edges that resembled a chain saw! “all for only Rs100 Madam” yeah Ganesh ya know what? I can tell!

Since then he's lost one knife, broke another opening a coconut and wasn't game enough to tell me cause I'd already yelled at him once that week! AND broke Dean's ceramic knife, the very first day he used it, cutting chicken bones ..... straight after Dean told him the only thing he couldn't do was cut bones with it!

Or the driver, the one who when asked to make a u-turn cause I just noticed we’d passed the shop I was looking for, stopped the car, put it into reverse and slammed into the car behind him! AND THEN argued incessantly that it wasn’t his fault! This is the same driver who only hours earlier, crashed the car into another when turning a corner. The same driver who precisely a week later ... had an altercation with a rickshaw and came off second best. That’s 3 accidents (albeit minor ones, no-one was hurt) in a week. Only one more week and every corner of my brand new car will be ready for the Bumper Repair man.

The same driver who, unbeknownst to him, is about to start working for Dean for a few weeks .... that'll really rattle him!

Or Dean’s driver James, who lied about his sick mother, took Dean’s car for 3 days to care for her, then lied that she’d died, only to be found hours after her alleged demise, drunk out of his skull having locked the keys in the car. The same driver who, not even 2 weeks later, was ratted on by another driver for drinking while waiting for us to finish our Margaret River wine tasting evening at the Aussie High Commission! No James, just cause we’re drinking doesn’t mean you can while away the hours drinking the local (and godawful) whisky! The same driver who was entrusted to have a rabbit hutch built, only to up the price by 10,000rupees two days before Christmas and claim Dean miss heard the price!

Or the caretaker who told me the malis planted all the precious seeds I’d had sent from Australia (despite me telling him no less than 10 times that I wanted to stagger the planting to ensure I’d get constant fresh produce over the next months, not 20kgs of everything all at once), because ..... get this, once you open the airtight packet, the seeds would be damaged! HUH? The same caretaker who had the water damaged walls repainted yesterday, only he didn’t have the mould treated or the bubbling paint scraped back before painting. The same rocket scientist who told me that we couldn’t flush toilet paper down the toilet because the pipes were made of iron (not pvc) and therefore would stick to the iron pipes causing blockages!

I don’t know how many times, I’ve said ... “oh Lal, that’s complete and utter bullshit!" and then had to argue the point with him!

Or the malis (gardeners) who refused to pick up Bongo’s poo ... until the Maharajah and his doting wife ... made a big show in front of them how they’ve been doing it for the last 10 years and you know what, if it’s good enough for us to do it, then they’re damnfreaknwell gonna do it too! Whooooooooohooooooooo no more Bongo Bomb collecting for meeeeeeee!

And yes Dean, I know the bottle’s usually well on it’s way to being half full by the time you get home.. but ya know how many people I had to call, or how I managed to juggle a visit to the nearest friendly bootlegger to get said wine (that's most likely stolen) I toss down with gay abandon just to get through all this palaver?

Countless calls/texts/emails to friends, friends of friends, complete strangers even, "harassing" Mum's at school & embassy staff, and monitoring of expat forums/groups to help me source/do the stuff I used to be able to do without batting an eyelid .... in the civilised world I mean! I've been here only 7 months and it still amazes me at the networks I've developed in such a short time,or ones I've barged in on, those networks I rely so heavily upon to help us live as normal a life as possible here!

Oh and of course in amongst all the micromanagement duties I fit into my day, I also manage to complete all my responsible mummy duties too... with pleasure, mostly!

Oh and I do a bit of blogging too!

So now ya know, that's the kinda stuff I do with all the “free time” I have ... now that I have staff to do everything I did ALL BY MYSELF for the last 20 odd years!

Givin’myself a big pat on the shoulders for keeping relatively sane in this extremely hard to live in and oh so micromanaged city .......

Signing off for now, gotta get my nails done (well i would if I ACTUally had time!)

god this place is so backwards........ just 2 examples:

2010-02-20T02:48:00.000-08:00

click on the article to enlarge

Rewrite your cv love.......

2010-02-20T02:41:00.000-08:00

So ...... I've been interviewing for a maid .... when I questioned one particular girl regards who helped her write her cv (copy of a bit of it below), she told me her brother did. I suggested that perhaps she should rewrite her cv because her brother, while I'm sure he was trying to help, made it sound like like she wanted a job as a

manager in a big corporation .... not as a cleaner!

30,000 guests at one wedding!!!!!

2010-02-18T09:13:00.000-08:00

Yup, you read that correctly......

30,000 guests!!

On Wednesday (17th Feb 2010) the only son of Haryana's Chief Minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, got hitched ... well actually it was only his pre-wedding bash!

14,000 official invite cards were handed out and then ......there were the verbal invites to every family in every village!!!!

Well talk about stop the city .... 10,000 autorickshaws stayed off the roads to ease expected congestion caused by the guests, heavy vehicles had been banned for the day, and police called for 4,000 reinforcements from neighbouring districts!

I have absolutely no idea how you cater for those numbers ... just keep on cooking till someone says stop?

Here's a link to the article in the Times of India in case you're interested: Times of India article

we only had 65 guests at our wedding!!!!!!