tudututuuduuuduuuu

I think I got into some kind of rhythm. You know: get up in the morning, prepare to go to work, once there think of what to do today and then go back home either by foot (when I come from the office) or by bus (when I come from everywhere else that is further away than the office). And then at night I pretty much do whatever. I just hang out a bit with my flatmate(s) when they are also home, but mostly I spend time on facebook to stay in touch with friends and family in Europe and beyond while enjoying listening to music. Last week the download/buffer speed at home was severely testing my patience so I have been listening to the albums I brought on a USB stick for quite a number of times now, but, luckily, my flatmate called to our internet provider yesterday and 2 seconds later our download speed was, literally, at least 10 times faster (yaaay!!).
Oh, and I've finished watching Season 2 of Game of Thrones. What a series that is. Truly recommendable! :D


Last Friday my colleague invited me to hang out with a bunch of friends/family of his. Since then my weekend was sort of occupied :P But it was really nice to be around other young people. On Sunday morning I joined the Mamidipudi family on their ‘memory walk’, a short walk in order to raise awareness for degenerative brain disease/conditions. It started at 7am, so I had to get up earlier than that, but it was fun to see the other people and there was also a breakfast afterwards. That is to say, there was breakfast; I guess they either did not count on so many people or they did not expect them to eat so much.. because the food ran out pretty quickly and I could therefore not enjoy some of the goodness of Indian (breakfast) food. But what I had was, of course, very tasty.

As I may have said before, the Indian weekend consists of just one day, so on that day you basically have to grasp any moment you can to enjoy not having to work. In that sense getting up really early in the morning is nice, because then the day is still full of possibilities. At the memory walk I was invited to join my new friends to a Pink Floyd tribute concert on Sunday evening. During the day, then, I just went for a little walk with my flatmate, visited an electronics store and on our way back we came across the best 2nd hand bookshop I have seen in a long time. There were all kinds of imported books from all over de world (albeit all in English) and seemingly no topic was shunned. So there were books on how to expulse homosexuality (as, obviously, that is a disease… ) whereas on the other side of the room there was a bible of gayness with “All that is Gay” (because, obviously, homosexuality is absolutely awesome). It was truly very entertaining. And I could not help myself but buying a book too. But in the back of my mind I also knew that 1) I have to spend less time on the computer at home if I want to read all the books that I have lying next to my bed, and 2) I might have to think of a way to do away with the books I have read before leaving India, cause otherwise I might not be able to take all my new clothes and goodies with me back home.
But hey, leaving India is still more than 3 months away ;) I’m sure that by that time I will know what to do with the books :P

Last Monday I spent the entire afternoon trying to find my way through 2 of Hyderabad’s neighbourhoods to spread posters for our Ganesha statues which we sell at our store. Although it was quite exhausting to walk in the burning sun up- and downhill until it was beginning to get dark, it was also fun to just be on my way from one place to another trying to find a way to the various places I needed to go to. Because although I did write down directions for myself, there are always little roads that are not on google maps :P

Yesterday, Wednesday 19 September, was the first day of the Ganesh festival. This is a 10-day-festival where the city will be decorated with I don’t know how many big and small statues of the Indian deity Ganesh. Together with my American flatmate I went to see the largest Ganesh statue of Ganesh in Hyderabad. It was truly an adventure to get there, because the busses that we wanted to take did not drive, so we had to be a bit more creative. When we took an autorickshaw with a meter, the driver still screwed us big time by first driving 6 kms back to the point where we got into a bus to get to the point we took the auto, and then another 6 kms via a different route back into the direction we stepped into his auto and then to the point where we wanted to be. And he put the music in his auto so loud that we could not speak to eachother nor to him. And even though I told him he went into the wrong direction, he told us that “the road was blocked.”… yeah sure. Other rickshaw drivers were willing to take us for a fixed price to the same place that was lower than what we had to pay him now. So altogether he simply charged us way more than necessary, and even when we got out he wanted more money than his meter indicated.

But I’m not really fond of being mocked by rickshaw drivers. So I tried not to argue with him, put a load of money in his hand (the “right” (meter-indicated) amount, though) and then just walked away.
The statue itself and many of the things that were going on around it was great to see. A pure typology of much that is Indian: colourful, full of flowers, loud, messy, children who want to sell you stuff, adults who want to sell you stuff, young adults who want to go on a picture with you, and the smells of an upper arm-think incense stick and the adjacent food stalls where they sell samosa’s and (Iranian) tea. But the moment that we were taken more pictures of than the Ganesh statue we figured it was time to go.

But of course we first had to find a way to get back…
After some walking and asking we got to a large busstop where we took the first bus into our direction. In the bus I asked the ticket salesman whether he would stop at a certain landmark. So he did, for us, and from there it was only a 10-minute walk back home. That was a much more calm and pleasurable experience.

So, yeah, that was yesterday.
Right now I’m in the office, where there is again a powercut and not too much I can do without internet. In the next couple of days I want to put some energy (and thereby hopefully also speed) into the process of developing our webshop. I have been talking to quite some young people in our shop the last couple of weeks and I think I got some understanding of what they would like to see on the internet. But first I/we need to decide what we want the website/shop to look like and how much virtual space we need in order to make our website look good and function properly. As I’m not a programmer, nor do I have any knowledge of how much bandwith we would possible need, that is going to be quite a project. The actual building of the website will be outsourced, but we need to tell them exactly what we want in order for the building to go smooth. At least, that is what I hope for.

Also, on Tuesday I heard that from oct 2-5 and again on oct 10 I and some colleagues will be going on a Field Trip! I have no idea what to expect of that, really. So I am already kind of excited and looking forward to that. Not the least because then I can hopefully breathe some clean air again… :)

Ehm.. so many more things I think I could write to you about, but I don’t really know anymore what I’d like to say so I guess it’s enough for today.
If you have any questions just let me know :P Pictures will be posted again sometime later this week. Tonight I think I’m going to visit a Buddhist ‘monastery’ 2,5kms from our flat. See if I can get some peace and quiet and a good time with the monks there ;P

Cheers!