Rantings from a mosquito bitten lunatic

Salty Snack Anyone??

Welp, Sick again!

This time they say it was the chicken I ate.  Never know the condition of the chicken that is sold to the guys who cooks the food.  Here – chicken is not sold in like a neat wing/thigh/or breast portion.  No, you get neck, vertebra, trachea, heart, liver, lungs…Its like they just gut the thing, remove the gizzard and head, then chop it into tiny chunks.  Bones are never removed.  Very rarely will you get a piece of meat without bone.  The cooks then boil the hell out of the chicken.  They curry everything here.  Its always in a gravy or sauce of some sort.  Very oily.  Its not bad, considering we only get meat 2 times a week its rather nice.  Personally, I have no idea what caused this bout of liquid butt/puke-o-rama day.  It started when I rolled over at 6am this morning.  By 11 I was at the doctors.  My “gynecologist” guy said as long as I was passing urine then I wouldn’t need an IV drip.  I would NOT NOT NOT want an infusion here.  Im terrified of going to the doctor (though this guy is rather nice).

Lord Shiva across the 1st bridge in Rishikesh

Let me share other things that have happened.  For instance, in our rooms there are 6 outlet points and 2 ceiling fans.  In my room, 3 were working.  So, it took 3 days to get an electrician to come (one of the days I waited in my room wasting an entire day).  I was told “no problem” and “after lunch he will come”.  “after 3 he will come” or “around 5 he will come”.  He never came.  I was pretty frustrated and it showed.  All the students say “DO NOT leave your keys at the front desk – the helpers are known for going into your rooms or letting strangers sleep in your room”.  I couldn’t take another day off so was forced to leave the key.  Another thing is if you do not watch them, they will not do the job properly – what I found, even if you do watch them they will not do the job properly.  My outlets have been fixed –yet somehow I traded 1 working outlet for another that blew up on me AND traded 2 other outlets for the working of a ceiling fan.  I guess you can’t have more than 3 things working in your rooms.


I don’t know if I have mentioned this, but where I work is the GIS lab.  Well, its not much of a lab because no one will take responsibility for it.  Most of the computers here on campus have viruses - because they use McCaffey or whatever that is called.  Then, the virus scanner program isn’t set right to handle the proxy server they force on us – so it never updates itself.  Even if the computer actually has the software, doesn’t mean it works.  Speaking of working, the GIS lab has about 13 computers or so.  Not a single one is a fully functional GIS computer. I have to switch between 4 different computers to run 1 analysis.  AND to make things worse, they do not have - choose not to have a shared server space.  You know somewhere you can put your files and then access it from any of the networked computers.  This way transferring between computers would be much less of a hassle – nooooooo.  Instead, I have to put everything onto my external hard drive, move it from computer to computer (remember all the viruses now) and hope that nothing happens during transfer.  They say its because students abused the privilege and would download music and movies.  Which is true, but if you were a good lab monitor and set up a proper system, you could restrict space, file types, etc.  But that’s not my job….If I try to run a program in ArcGIS there is one computer that I can use which has it fully functional.  Some have a pirated version – which means only part of the program will run.  Erdas works on a different computer and Idrisi on yet another.  So there’s 3 computers I have to use to process just 1 step of my data.  Yesterday I was running one program that is so sensitive it will crash 1.5 hrs into the process if something is wrong.  Which makes things a little hard to accomplish cuz I will not know if it works until after 1hr and 20 minutes into the run.  I have to process 14 of these files….ugh

Did I tell you about the phone conversations we have here? Here's a typical phone call you might hear to order food:
Hello? yes, Hello? yes I would like to order to Hello? I would like to order paneer tikka Hello? yes, one paneer tikka...no thats paneer tikka...no paneer...Hello? yes, paneer tikka not shikka...t - as in Tiger. Hello?  Yes, and chavel (thats rice for those of you who don't know), and 3 butter nan.  no, butter naan.  yes and one sweet lassi.  No no salt, sweet....yes sweet.  Will you repeat that back to me?....yes, one sweet lassi, 3 BUTTER naan, Hello? no....not paalak paneer! Paneer Tikka. 

You know its bad when I can pick out the spelling mistakes.  The menu's give me quite a laugh, much like the advertisements - who comes up with these things?  They are everywhere.  Mr. Morris (my high school AP English Teacher) I think would have a heart attack with all the improper spelling and grammar mistakes!  I hope you can read this...Probably not.  They got some of the stuff right.  Its a game sometimes to pick a page and see who can find the most misspelled words.  I believe I was up to 10 on one page of the menu and I am the worlds worst speller....this place had Maxican food!!! OH how I crave me a good Burrotos!

Did I show you this one posted at a Jain temple?  OH i like it lots.  Jain temples are beautiful beautiful places.  And anyone who is a vegan in the US should take cooking lessons from a Jain.  Man, I need cooking lessons from a Jain.  They have such restricted diets that the vegetables they CAN eat they need to be creative with and therefore come up with some good tasty stuffs!

Did I mention we eat “late”.  I am getting used to the schedule, but many beliefs are that if you don’t eat late you will be up at midnight eating again.  Hell even if you do eat late, some people will wake back up and eat again at 2 am.  We eat breakfast at 830am, lunch at 1pm, and then dinner at 830pm.  Im starving around 6pm ready to eat my arm – which may explain why I so readily eat the mystery chicken pieces.  OH and the chicken pieces aren’t whole.  Like you get split bones (so you can suck the marrow out or some people even eat the bones).  Each piece of chicken is no larger than a mcNugget – I rarely even see a recognizable bone structured piece of meat even like a leg bone.

If you want your room cleaned (cuz you would have to buy your own equipment and supplies to do it yourself) you can only get it done on Saturdays or Sunday’s if you can catch the cleaning boy.  Because, again, they will not do the job without you in the room.  You have to be there to watch over every step or the boy will come in and move stuff around and say he’s done.

Since I am in the “New” Hostel, the laundry man comes 1x a week.  He charges us 10 Rs per piece of clothing – which isn’t so bad.  Except that everyone in the old hostel is charged 5-7 Rs depending on the items.  He says its because he uses “more expensive” soap to wash my clothing.  Says the western style clothing is more sensitive.  Well, mister, considering I only brought 3 shirts with me and 2 pair of pants – most of my clothing I purchased here, he doesn’t need to use the more expensive soap!  It’s a total scam and he knows he’s doing it.  He does it to foreigners only because the rest of the people in my same hostel that are Indian do not get treated this way.  “Skin Tax” – what they call it.  All I can say is fine – but just don’t lie about it.  You want to charge me more because you think Im a rich foreigner – fine, don’t tell me you use different soap or that western clothing can’t handle the washing style.  That’s a bunch of crap cuz most of the students here wear western clothing (jeans and t-shirts) and Im wearing more Indian style clothing than anything else.

Beyond Orissa's wildlife

Outside of learning all the cool stuff about the ecology of Orissa, we also were shown some interesting cultural stuff.  For instance, we got to go to Kohnak the coolest place I have been to thus far.  In orissa they worship the sun and this is a sun temple.  Very interesting the way it was set up.  The unfortunate thing is that we got there just after sunset so most of the images I got from this place are really bad.  I have also been having issues with the camera (could be me but I put the blame on the camera not the operator!)

The walls of this place were completely carved.

On the grounds were statues that had fallen from the top or had been removed from the top during renovations.  Like this elephant stamping on a human

But first, we actually went to a Buddhist peace temple that was built by the Japanese.  You see this guy...lets call him Bob.  Was a great king who went around conquering everyone.  Well, one day bob climbed this hill and overlooked the valley which was flooded with bodies and blood.  Right then and there, he gave up the sword and decided to become a peaceful ruler.  Forget the guys name (i believe it makes the story better).

   

This guy sold us coconuts which he whacks open and we drink right from the nut!