Summer Holidays are nearly here ...

There is only one more week before school here breaks up and everyone will be leaving Chennai and going back to their respective countries, so it is going to be extremely quiet here.

We've been keeping pretty busy and all is going well. The MADRAS Kids performance was excellent ... the kids did really well and I think all the parents enjoyed it. I must admit I am quite relieved it is over. I can now relax and enjoy some quiet time.

I've heard the weather in the UK is pretty bad at the moment. Guess what it's like here? You got it - it's hot.

Penri keeps very busy with his work and seems to be working longer and longer hours. I don't know how he does it, but he seems to be enjoying it.

Not much other news from here really - all is still the same. It would be lovely to hear from some of you! Write soon!

Bad Day!!

Today started off badly ... it's been one of those days where I just have no tolerance whatsoever; this has not been helped by the little things that have been happening all day. Let me explain ...

Penri took me to the post office first thing this morning (on his way to work) and I stood patiently in the queue as there were two people in front of me. When it was my turn, I moved to the counter, handed over my packages and the man weighed them for me then I handed over the money. He then served FIVE other people while I was stood there like an idiot. I was starting to get hot and bothered and aggravated that I was being made to wait while he served other people. I picked up my packages and said 'Come on, I don't have time to wait' so he went over to the label printing machine and started typing in numbers. He managed to print one, after he had tried the label in a variety of different directions.

By this time I had three people on my right hand side all holding their money out, a lady on my left hand side waving her money and a man stood right behind me. The lady on my left called to the man saying 'Give me this' pointing at envelopes and waving her money at him. The man started to walk over to us - at which point I lost it ... I turned to her and said 'Wait. It is not your turn. He is still serving me!' She looked at me and said nothing and the man behind the counter went back to print my second label.

Eventually, I got the labels stuck on the parcels, he gave me my change and I was out of there. I was furious - it had taken 20 minutes just to get them posted, when in reality, had he stuck to just serving me, it would have taken less than 5!!

Anyway, I dropped Penri at work and then went off to meet some friends. At 5.30 p.m I decided to go shopping, so got in the car and headed over to the Music Shop. I was so surprised at how light the traffic was and wondered what was going on. Anyway, I browsed the music books for a while and selected a few. Then went over to Spencers Plaza Shopping Mall.

It was heaving with people (as is the norm), so I decided I wouldn't browse - just go in and get what I want and get out of there. Why is it when you are in a rush there is always someone who decides to walk in front of you at a snails pace?! I bought some tracksuit bottoms and some DVDs and then headed back to the car park. I couldn't remember where I had parked and was trying to remember what shop was near me when I came in. The car park at the shopping mall here is not like the UK car parks - there is no common sense to it at all. Anyway, I eventually found it.

The traffic was HORRENDOUS. The worst I think I've seen it and definitely the worse I have driven in. It took 20 minutes just to get from the shopping mall, 200 metres down the road! Anyway, it was during this time sitting in the traffic that I was thinking what a bad mood I've been in all day (must be the 45 degree heat or something) and I realised ... there were motorcycles in the lane in front of me ... motorcycles in the lane behind me and no other cars in my lane. It was then I noticed that the motorcyclists were giving me the weirdest looks. I was in the wrong lane! So, I indicated to pull into the next lane and would anyone let me out? Not a chance!

Unfortunately, the Indian people drive like they queue - every man for himself! Eventually, I bullied an ambassador car into letting me out. I pulled so close to his front that he thought I was going to hit him and considering there is a HUGE dent in the car on that front side where Penri hit a bus - he probably believed I would hit him.

I did actually clip a motorbike on the dual carriageway, but this was not my fault. I was driving fairly fast as the road in front of me was clear ahead (as were the two lanes either side of me), and this motorbike came whizzing in front of me and cut me up, I braked really hard but I clipped his back wheel. Luckily he was fine and didn't even look over his shoulder - just drove on.

By the time I got back to this side of town, I had a headache from all the blaring lights (as the mentality here is that it's easier to see with your headlights on!) and my left leg was killing me from all the clutch control. So, there you have it - my bad day today! At least tomorrow is a new day!

See some more pictures below: a family on a motorbike (not an uncommon sight - the most we have seen is 5 on 1 bike) and one of the Chennai buses - I just wanted to show you how they all just hang on the outside. It is so dangerous!

Builders and Trucks!

See the pictures above of the builders working outside our house. It's strange to see so many women working on a building site although this is a regular occurrence here. I can't believe how they balance things on their heads - they do the same thing with huge baskets of fruit and jugs of water!! I have also put a picture of the trucks just to show you how considerate they are where they park (bear in mind this is the only road leading to our house)!!

So, they have filled the foundation with sand and are now using wooden planks for the base of the floor - I wonder if this new house will stand through a monsoon! Another thing you see a lot of on building sites is scaffolding made out of bamboo!!

Unbearable!

The last few days have been SO, SO, SO HOT! Our electricity went off on Tuesday early afternoon - the whole house. We had no lights, fans or air conditining!! As you can imagine, it was a pretty horrendous night. At the moment, the temperature during the day is between 42 - 45 degrees and although it cools down in the evenings, it is still hot. So, we both hardly slept; Penri kept getting up to have a shower and then trying to go to sleep, but nothing seemed to help.

The landlord's secretary arranged for someone to come out from the EB (Electricity Board) on Wednesday morning, which they did at 8 a.m - very unusual for India as normally they say they'll be there and 4 hours later you are still waiting for them. Anyway, he turned up and fixed the electric and off he went. So, Penri and I went back to sleep as we were both shattered.

Two hours later, the power went off again. At this point, I had to get up and go out - I couldn't cope with it anymore. I went to have a shower and turned on the tap ... no water! Would you believe?! So, I put on my swimsuit, went downstairs and jumped in the pool, where I stayed until I had cooled off.

The electricity is now working again, but every hour it goes off for about 10 minutes, which is frustrating but at least it is on more than it is off! The picture above gives a pretty good idea of how it feels. I can't decide what is worse being too hot or too cold! Roll on October/November for the Monsoon season!

At the Hairdressers ...

I decided it was finally time to get my hair highlighted. I had every intention of having it done while we were in the UK, however as we were so busy, I just never got around to it. So, I booked myself an appointment at one of the 5 star hotels here. I've never had my hair done there before, but I decided that as it is one of the most expensive hotels in Chennai, the salon couldn't be that bad!

I went into my appointment at 12 p.m and there was only one other lady in the salon having her hair done. So there were two of us (clients) and eight ladies working there! The other lady was just finishing as Edna (the lady doing my hair) started to put my foils in. When she left, I had four ladies stood around me watching everything Edna was doing. When I say they were stood around me, they were literally blocking me into the chair - they had no sense of personal space! They kept asking Edna questions about what she was doing and they were all trying to help by passing the foils and the brush etc. I was very relieved when two more ladies came into the salon as they had something else to occupy themselves with.

I have never understood people who enjoy going to get their hair done! I just find it a nuisance, but something that must be done every so often. I don't enjoy it and could think of lots of things I'd rather do with 2-3 hours of my time.

Anyway, another lady came into the salon and I think she must go there quite regularly as they all seemed to know her. She sat down and had her hair washed then she went over to another chair. She had one lady dyeing her hair, another lady giving her a pedicure, another lady doing her manicure and a fourth lady sitting right next to her talking to her. I couldn't believe it. Can you imagine getting that kind of service in the UK? Hair, pedicure and manicure all at the same time and four people waiting on you?! I guess India is just so different from the UK in many ways.

The result of my highlights was ok. Not as good as the UK, but then what can I expect for 20 pounds?










While I was there, I thought I might as well get my eyebrows threaded. For those of you who have never experienced this - it is most bizarre! It is done by knotting a piece of thread and creating a trap to pull the hair out from the root (see picture above). Does it sound painful? It's not the most comfortable thing I've experienced, but apparently much better than waxing or plucking. I can cope with the eyebrows but I don't know how anyone has their entire face threaded (which a lot of women do) - I don't think I could cope with the pain of that!!

Hot, Hotter, Hottest!

Well, here we are back in India - back in the hot, hot month of May. I can't remember who said this about Chennai, but when asked what the seasons were here, their reply was "There are three seasons in Chennai: hot, hotter and hottest", which unfortunately is true. The month of May just happens to be the hottest and as you can imagine, coming back from England to this 38 degree heat is quite a shock to the system!

We had fun at Heathrow Airport on Saturday morning as they are SO strict with luggage and hand luggage now that I had to repack all of our hand luggage so we could check one of the bags in. On the BA website, it says that you can have a laptop as well as one piece of hand luggage, however when we got there we were told that this information was wrong and we could only have one piece of hand luggage each. So we had to pack one of the holdalls between our two laptop cases and pack the other holdall to go through into the hold. For those of you who have had this problem before - kneeling on an airport floor trying to make things fit and pulling out items of clothes, books and whatever else may be in your case is not an easy task, especially when there are so many nosy people around watching what you are doing! However, it happened to quite a few people while we were there and we saw lots of people packing and re-packing cases.

We arrived back on Sunday morning at 7 a.m and got a taxi from the airport to our house. Penri had managed to sleep quite a bit on the plane, but for some reason, I wasn't able to. So, by the time we got back to Chennai I was exhausted. We got into the house and put all the cases in the corner of the bedroom and went to sleep. The house was immaculate - cleaner than it has ever been before. This is because while we were away, our maid and her family stayed in the house to look after Pepsi and Socks. I think they must have cleaned the whole time they were there as everything was absolutely spotless. The cats also seemed very well and happy. I later found out that both the cats had made good friends with the family and Pepsi was sleeping in the maid's daughter's bed with her!!

At about 10 a.m. we were woken up by the air conditioner stopping. Guess what ... on our first day back in India we had a power cut! I did my best to try and sleep through it (as it is the easiest way to deal with power cuts otherwise you just dwell on the fact that it is so hot, and it becomes unbearable). The power came on a while later and we slept through most of the day. I finally got up at about 6 p.m. and unpacked all the cases and began the mountainous pile of washing. I also made a few phone calls to catch up with people and to check all had gone well with drama and things while I was away. We then ordered a pizza home delivery, ate and went back to sleep.

Yesterday (Monday), I got up at lunch time and continued with the washing. We decided to give our maid the day off as she worked so hard while we were away. In the afternoon, I went out to the supermarket. I don't really think it can be called a 'super' market when compared with Asda and Tesco. I think I had forgotten how different it is here. Just to give you an example (or two). I decided I was going to make a salad for dinner, so I began picking out tomatoes and onions. I picked up a cucumber to put in my basket and as I brought my hand back from the shelf, I saw a cockroach on the cucumber ... it made me jump (and squeal) and I threw the cucumber back onto the shelf. I finally found a couple of cucumbers (after looking through very carefully) and then I picked up a lettuce; well, would you believe - the same thing happened. There was a baby cockroach sitting on the top of it!!! I finally got everything I needed and went to the till. It took nearly 20 minutes to put through a bag of tomatoes, onions, cucumber, lettuce, carrots, mangos and a loaf of bread!! And, it took 3 girls to serve me! Oh, how I miss Tesco!

After coming home and soaking all the salad in water with a sterilising tablet (as is so important in India), I spent the afternoon with a friend and her two children. Penri came home at 11.30 p.m. and had dinner and we went to sleep at about 2 a.m.

It's amazing how when you go on holiday (even though Penri was working, he was out of his normal routine), you come home and it takes your body so long to adjust back into your normal routine. I am still absolutely shattered today and I'm sure it will take at least a week before I feel like myself again! Anyway, in keeping with my word, I am updating my blog frequently from now on so make sure you keep reading and I'll keep you updated on life in Chennai.