How do you spell relief? R-A-I-N

I now understand why many of my Indian friends get so excited about rain. After 11 straight days with temperatures topping 90 degrees, we received a brief respite yesterday evening in the form of a few brief but substantial showers. Ahhhhhhhhh. The cooling effect of the rain is amazing. Our apartment was much more comfortable, the girls were not so whiney and life is just much better when you aren't sweating. The forecast is for more hot weather but at least for one night we got to enjoy the benefits of a mid-summer rain. Huh, I guess I just discovered another positive about the summer here, the April shower.

HOT

I graphed out the daily highs and lows for April so far. We are in our 10th day of over 90 degree heat, and no cool down is expected anytime soon. I'll update this to let you know how much worse it gets, but it is supposed to be like this until at least Friday. BLAH! By the way, did I ever mention that my gym doesn't have air conditioning or even a single fan? It doesn't and it's miserable.

Care Packages, Yippee!

We are currently a grumpy lot around our house these days. The heat is unrelenting and it is so hard to stay cool, even with the fans on it is pretty uncomfortable. I actually feel that since our roof is so hot the fans are nothing more than the fan that one finds inside a convection oven, not meant to cool but to rather circulate the hot air for even cooking. And we are certainly cooking. It is at these times when life seems the hardest that the packages that are sent by our friends and family help to keep up going. My friend Suzen recently sent several boxes of Girl Scout Cookies that were practically inhaled (Eric had the Thin Mints and the Tagalongs were mine). For Easter my parents FedExed a baggie full of Crystal Light On the Go packets which really come in handy in the hot weather since we are drinking water almost constantly. And this weekend we received a package from my friend Jen which was full of goodies for us as well as for Mira and Chaya. We aren't able to get cat treats here, they don't exist as far as we can tell and they are pretty finicky about what they'll eat (I'm afraid Eric has spoiled them rotten and of course I didn't have a thing to do with it). Jen very kindly packed some treats for the girls and also included for them a little toy as we don't get cat toys here either, except for the homemade variety, which are invariably preferred anyway. The little purple crab is so cute but I thought that they wouldn't be interested as they prefer aluminum balls and plastic bags to anything that we have brought them from the US. But to my surprise they attacked this thing immediately and just love to play with it! In fact, they love it so much that Saturday night I was awoken by a cat thrashing about on our bed only to find Chaya with her new toy in a death grip. I don't know what it is about this thing but they are crazy for it. But, true to form, they did spend a significant amount of time playing with the box, go figure. Anyway, they are loving their toy and their treats, I imagine that these gifts are making these hot days more bearable for them too. We appreciate everything that our friends and family have sent us, each of you have made our lives more comfortable and brought a bit of home to us here in India. Thank you!

Indian Summer, the real deal

After a mild March summer has come to India with a vengeance. We are experiencing daily temperatures with highs at around 95 degrees and lows sometimes at around 78 degrees. Since Sunday we have been roasting and there is no relief in sight. Aside from the heat there are a few other annoyances that are ushered in with the warm weather; more frequent power outages due to increased energy consumption that comes when all of the business crank up their air-conditioning. I don't personally know of any home that has air-conditioning here in Bangalore so I assume that it is the businesses that are hogging all of the energy during the summer months. Water shortages and rationing also accompany the summer months. We try to conserve during the hot months, but I have to take a shower in the evening so that I can cool off enough to sleep and again in the morning to wash away the sweaty consequences of trying to sleep when it is so hot out. Our apartment get particularly hot since we live on the top floor of the house and the roof bakes all day and the heat very nicely gets transferred to our apartment. In the evening it is easily several degrees cooler outside of the apartment than inside. Well, why not throw open the doors and windows and let some of that cool air in, you might ask? Mosquitoes are a problem at all times of the year but are particularly bad during the summer months. As it is I often get bitten badly at night when I have kicked off the covers on the bed, and that is with the doors and windows closed and/or mosquito netted. The mosquitoes are not the only creatures that make their way inside during the summer months, the ubiquitous ants multiply in number and seemingly take over the kitchen and the cockroaches scuttle around in the bathroom (at least until Mira or Chaya finds them, and then they are nicely eliminated). Speaking of Mira and Chaya, the hot days have made them ornery and desperate to run outside in the cool hours of the morning and evening, leaving Eric and I to chase them all over the rooftop before finally returning them to the safety of our steaming apartment. Mira is so annoyed at it all that she has taken to urinating on our bed, and did so last night with us in it! Anyone want a cat?

This year though more than last, I have decided to also try to partake in the positives that come with summer. So far I have only come up with one positive, mangoes are ripening all over India and are now available so for dessert last night I had my first 2 of the season. Delicious! I will try to think of other good aspects of the summer but until I come up with any more I will be satisfied with gorging myself on the bounty of the season.

Yay South Africa!

Good job South Africa, now let's keep it up and spread the word!

Incredible India

What up South America and Africa?

Hey South America and Africa, what did I ever do to you? And don't think that I don't notice you Russia, because I do. But the one that really stings is Moldova. (Confused? See Clustrmap in the bottom left.)

Miscellaneous

Hi everyone. Sorry that I haven't been keeping up on the posting as of late, I had a couple of presentations that I had to give but I finished up the last one today so now life can get back to normal. So since I made my last real post not a lot has happened but I will try to come up with a few things to talk about. I hope that everyone had a nice Easter, we sure did! We treated ourselves by making reservations at one of the nicest "Western" style hotels for Easter brunch in their restaurant. It was really nice, the restaurant was decorated with Easter baskets and Easter eggs and the champagne brunch was quite nice. There was a ton of food and best of all, there was all different types of cuisines, Lebanese (yummy pita pockets), ham, a turkey, an antipasto table full of cheeses, olives and cured meats, crab, shrimp, oysters, clams, chicken, just everything that you can imagine. But it didn't come cheap, the final bill was over $100 for both of us, but it was worth it for a special occasion.

The summer is upon us here in Bangalore, though we have been having really strange weather. March and April are supposed to be just about the hottest and driest months of the entire year so I was sort of dreading their arrival but instead of hot dry weather we have been getting quite a bit of rain which has kept it nice and cool. This is nice for us since we are pretty comfortable in the cool temperatures but the unseasonable rain is causing problems with the summer crops and everyone is a bit worried about the mango crop this year. People here sure love their mangoes, and I will also be sad if there aren't mangoes this year because they are quite yummy, it's too bad that the US doesn't get good mangoes, they are really good... Anyway, along with the summer comes the power outages, we get at least a few a week, they usually don't last long but last Sunday we had a bit of a rainstorm with some wind and the infrastructure here is pretty shabby so of course the power went out because either some pole came down or a tree fell and knocked down the wires. The power switched off at around 2 or 3 PM and it didn't come back until around 8 or 9 PM. Eric and I piddled around for some time but eventually got bored and decided to go outside and play catch. We brought our gloves and a couple of balls with us to India so that we could toss it around every once in a while so that when we eventually return and hopefully pick up on slow-pitch again we aren't too rusty. We have no place to actually play catch so we just played right in the street in front of our house, moving to the side to let people, cars, trucks, and motorcycles by when they approached. It was a lot of fun and since the power was out along the whole street pretty soon curious neighbors were peeking over their gates to see what the strange foreigners were doing in the street. We had a nice time and we were even able to teach one guy how to throw (until he let loose a wild pitch and hit one of our neighbor's motorcycle). We stayed outside until after dark but pretty soon we forced inside by the mosquitoes. Ah yes, the mosquitoes. With the rain has come hordes of mosquitoes that I chase around the house like a crazy woman trying to kill. I usually get several every day. I have also noticed that Mira and Chaya have joined me in my never-ending battle against the mosquito, though their favorite prey item would definitely have to be the cockroach. Every couple of days I will find either a whole cockroach that has been played with to death, but usually I just find a leg or two here and there. Gross! But I guess it is better than me finding them and killing them. I would have never guessed that cats would turn out to be such good exterminators. Why call the Orkin man when you can just bring a kitten home?

Mira and Chaya are both doing well, Chaya maybe a bit too well, she is getting a little chubby and Eric has started calling the poor baby "Fatty" and other cruel and hurtful things. I will include some pics, you can decide for yourself if she is fat, I prefer to think that she is just "healthy". They are just about one year old already and I am trying to break myself of the habit of referring to them as "the kittens" as they are hardly kittens anymore. They continue to provide us with endless entertainment except for when they are sleeping which is from around 11 AM- 8 PM or so. Last Sunday when the power was off we couldn't play with them since they were snoozing the entire time. They are mostly well behaved and we have recently learned a new game, they love plastic bags and I have taken to tying a string around one of the handles of a big plastic bag and I run around the entire apartment pulling the bag behind me with two kittens chasing me and the bag. I wonder what our downstairs neighbors think is going on... It is good exercise for them, and me too. I also learned last night that they love the laser pointer. I was practicing my talk and I had it out and they would just sit and stare at the little red dot moving all over the place. I think that we are going to take video of them moving their head back and forth and set it to music. Pretty funny, at least for us.

Okay, that is a glimpse into our fun and exciting life!

How can you tell that these are my kittens? They love shoes!


It is a bird, is it a plane, no, it is Super-Mira!

What are you looking at?

One of Eric's favorite (and stupid) jokes, "Chaya has a weight problem, she can't wait to eat!"