Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Tuesday, Monday, and Last Week

Another day, another near death experience. Ok, not really, but yesterday I rode in a tuk tuk for the first time. (If you don’t know what a tuk tuk is, check out the December 2006 archives). The crazy Indian traffic intensifies further when one weaves through it in a three-wheeled tin can. Considering one of the guys in the office, Natarajan, offered me the choice between riding on the back of his motorcycle or taking a tuk tuk, I believe I chose wisely. Part of me really wants to take him up on that offer at some point before I leave.

That reminds me...today I saw two guys re-painting lane lines in the middle of a road as my taxi courteously gave them a 6 inch berth. Hahahahahahaha. That's a good one. I'm assuming they were part of a performance comedy troupe since the disregard for lane lines here is total and complete.

You may have noticed the lack of pictures on the blog for this trip thus far. There is a good reason for this; I have not taken any yet. Perhaps my sense of wonder and amazement is diminished as this is my second trip here in three months. Perhaps I continue to forget to bring my camera with me when I go outside. Perhaps they are working me like a dog on this trip with nary a moment to spare wandering around outside. I suspect it’s a combination of all three. I do have some pictures of Singapore but I have yet to determine if they are blog-worthy. A high probability exists they are not as I was extremely hungover when I took them and could barely see.

Today we ate lunch at a place called The Rainforest. At the risk of offending my coworkers who took me there, the place was quite silly. I think I ate in a similar place at Disney World once. Fake thunder noises, rain sounds, walls made to look carved from stone, as if you are eating in a cave. The best part had to be the stuffed animals. Tigers, snakes, and monkeys all scattered around the place. One poor monkey hanging from a clothesline looked as if he was strung up by his thumbs. Good food, though. Mmmm…tikka masala.

I don’t have malaria yet. At least, no outward symptoms.

It’s not as hot here as I expected. It’s toasty, but I experienced worse during the summers of my youth in Contra Costa County. Of course, it’s only March. It is, however, a drastic change from where I was a week ago. Where was that, you ask? Driving through a flippin’ blizzard. Coming back from Tahoe I drove through some of the worst conditions of my life. This from someone who lived in Colorado for 9 years. It was daytime and the falling and blowing snow prevented me from seeing more than 2 cars in front of me and sometimes only one. If someone up ahead had panicked or become disoriented or even blinked I think we all would have followed her off the road one by one like a pack of lemmings. After dumping snow for the previous 24 hours it dumped the whole way from Truckee to Auburn and showed no signs of letting up (in Auburn it turned to rain making the visibility even worse, which was quite a trick). When trying to leave on Sunday afternoon I shoveled a good two feet of snow from around the car. After being defeated on that attempt (no, really, I love spending 45 minutes traveling 50 yards in traffic that moves only when someone bails out and pulls a U-turn), I shoveled another two feet the next morning. I mean, seriously, if you’re not going to close 80 in those conditions, when do you close it? Some portions of the highway looked like Beirut with cars scattered all over, facing every which way, people wandering around in a daze. If the weather had been like that during the snow cave adventure I’m not sure I’d still have fingers with which to type this mediocre blog entry.

Snow cave? What is this snow cave adventure of which he speaks? That’s a tale for another day, perhaps when I’m sitting on the beach in Sri Lanka, drinking a mai tai.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I went to an India blog and Tahoe blog broke out. (Hey, at least I comment!) Funny writng though, I have you at a tier three comedy level with a .0043 humor index. (International Conversion Protocol Comedy Scale applies course- so I have you at ranked at a Jeff Foxworthy +/- .9)