Traffic whistles
Flick of the lights vs. horn
First accident
Granite Road/polluted river
Shoeless laborers
No tissue, no problem
Medicine man
DVD player
Traffic whistles - I don't remember seeing traffic cops the first couple of weeks but they have them. They dress in all brown and usually wear white hats with a brim all the way around. They don't have any weapons, no reflective or fluorescent lights, just whistles. Sometimes they sit in booths and wave their hands and blow their whistles. Other times they stand out in the middle of the street and risk their lives armed only with a whistle. Most drivers seem to obey but I imagine it must feel a little like trying teach a room full of teenagers the day before a long holiday.
Flick of the lights vs. the horn - Drivers tend to primarily honk but Chandan will also sometimes flick his lights to get another drivers attention. I've been monitoring when he honk and when he flicks and I thought I was just about ready to assert that he honks if he is going to go and flicks the lights if he wants the other driver to go but the other day he flicked the lights and didn't let the other guy go. I'm not sure there is any sort of "code."
First accident - I saw a scooter rear-end a car. No one appeared to be hurt and traffic wasn't moving very quickly but there was a surprisingly big dent in the car's bumper. George said Chandan clipped some scooter driver's leg the other evening. The other driver apparently just shook it off and kept going. For the amount of objects on the road and the aggressiveness with which they drive, you'd think I would've seen an accident in the first week 1. Not that I'm hoping to see them...
Granite road/polluted river - A few blocks away from our place, on the way to some of the main shopping areas there is a road full of marble and granite stores. Running through this street is a river that in another city might be used as scenic point with a walkway or park lining the river but here it just runs brown and is littered with trash. The garbage collects on one side and has created this large pile so it looks less like a river and more like a dump with water surrounding it. The granite and marble places are really just driveways and yards filled with huge slabs of stone. From what I can tell, there are two jobs for the employees. 1. Sit around and look at the marble and talk to your friends or 2. Move the marble/granite onto trucks. The movers use no machines or no mechanical lifts. It's just about 10 men (7 of whom are barefoot) and they just lift and walk, rest it down, lift and walk some more until the reach the truck. Then one or two will jump in the back of the truck while the others struggle to lift the stone. It takes a while for them to move one piece.
Barefoot laborers - The granite movers, the construction workers, the men and women that dig up the sidewalks all work barefoot. I saw one man digging in a pile of gravel and all these rocks came piling down on his foot. He just left it there and kept working. It's Michael "Mr. Mom" Keaton pulling his son out of the tub with his socks on - "Well, I didn't want his feet to get wet." Maybe they don't want their shoes to get dirty?
No tissue/no problem - The other weekend when George and I were walking the mall - the crowded but clean and almost "Western-like" mall, we passed a man who it seems did not have a tissue on hand. But as we know there are "no problems" in India, he simply plugged one nostril and blew hard out of the other. I've seen runners do this in road races but in the mall? Needless to say, we've been on a mad search for hand sanitizer.
Medicine man - In the past week or so, I've noticed on the same street I pass almost daily with graffiti saying, "Down with USA," a man with a tent has set up shop. It's right by a bus stop and is a relatively large, blue tent with a canopy over the doorway. Under the canopy there is a lawn chair and a sign saying that the cure for whatever ails you is in the tent - hypertension, diabetes, chronic pain, rashes, and the list goes on. You can see inside and it looks like there are two shelves lined with jugs filled with liquids. I haven't seen any people around the tent yet and I wonder how long he plans to stay.
DVD player - A few days ago George went to open the DVD player and asked, "did you watch a movie today?" I had not watched anything since we both saw The Last King of Scotland which we were expecting to find still in the DVD player. Instead, he found a Chinese movie, After This Our Exile. Vivian had let us borrow a stack of movies and this was one in the stack but neither of us put it in the player. We can only assume the house boy was using it. Although, of the movies in the stack, it seems strange to me that he would choose this one. From the picture on it, it looks like a love story. So yesterday, I spied on him. I left, went downstairs then came back up like I had forgotten something. Not only had he locked the door (that I purposely did not lock behind me) but he also put the inside lock on (like a chain lock so the door will only open an inch or so). I definitely surprised him. He looked a little startled when he came to the door to let me in. I said I forgot something and he ran over to the coffee table and started straightening things. Nothing seemed out of place and I had locked up the bedroom but I can't get used to having someone around when I'm not here. Today I locked him out.
Oh here are some pictures from Vivian's party.
Adele is in front, Sharon, me, Lucy, Tracy; Mei, me, Adele
1 comment:
As always you look good!!!
We are doing some brainstorm and writing personal stories in Eng. I may use your entry as an example.
Hope all is well.
Laura
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