Waiting

All is good in India, I had a massive dummy spit last week because I haven't worked in three weeks and no-one seems to give a shit. All my colleagues were involved with the Anna Hazare hunger strike stuff to pass an anti-corruption bill in parliament - not sure if you heard about it but it was a pretty big story. Anyway so I sat around waiting for them to organise something for me. I've spent a fair bit of time in Puri. In fact just came back from there this morning. There's big floods here in Orissa at the moment so we rode up to some of the affected areas on Sunday and it is such a mess, thousands of villages have been inundated and washed away. Just got a call today from the Australian High Commission to see if I'm okay so I gave them the flood update. Yesterday was full moon so today the water is flowing back into the sea and relieving the situation. Got my hair permanently straightened last week - 99% humidity every fucking day was killing me. Now I'm getting everyone staring at me. When Pintu and I rode through a village on Sunday, I'm not joking the whole street stopped and stared and watched us go by, turning their heads and all. I told him they must like his new sunglasses.

There's some more french people in town as of last week I think so there's now five or so here. Simon one of the older ones had a french night in his apartment on Saturday which was good. He had fois gras, pate, crepes, etc which was pretty good. I left early because I was a bit crook and also wanted to get up early to go to Puri next day. I missed out on the nightclub so I'll get the goss from my flatmate tonight. All I know so far is that someone lost their zippo lighter. So I spend the next two nights on night buses going to and from Kandhamal to interview some more people about their RTI stories. It is a troubled part of the state and I was meant to go there a few weeks ago but wasn't allowed due to Naxalite activity (local terrorists) but I believe it has settled down a bit. I'm really not concerned about the naxalites and i'm pretty sure they're not concerned about me either. After that I come back for a night then off to Puri again on Friday. All the expats are going for someone's birthday and someone's farewell. Then Monday night I'm on another bus to Kalahandi and probably a night bus back again. All quite exhausting really!


So that's the general update from India. I hope you're getting a sense of the wackiness of this place. Problem is for me that I'm losing relativity and not sure what is normal anymore.