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Fan(,) you feel it?

It's getting really hot. This must be what menopause feels like--I can actually feel my thoughts accelerating with the temperature. As with most things, I had a big plan on how to deal with the heat. Part of the plan was not to turn on the fan in my room until March (when apparently, it gets really hot...my family has bet that I will melt somewhere around mid-March), but today I finally caved. I dragged myself over to my bed and turned on the fan switch. If my life was a movie, this would be one of the scenes that merit a "flash forward" between Anshula pre-fan, and Anshula post-fan. The problem with practicing restraint is that when you do finally give into whatever it was you were trying not to do, it feels so good that you wonder why you bothered to stop yourself to begin with. As I sat under my newly mobilized fan, feeling the air on my face, I wondered why on earth I hadn't turned the bloody thing on sooner. What difference does a week make? For that matter, what
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It's Raining Men. Hallelujah?

Yesterday, I was waiting for my bus and made two observations. Observation #1 Firstly, there are a lot of people in India. This may seem obvious since there are more than a billion people in the country, with a population density of 386 people per a square kilometre (compare this with Canada's 3.3 people per square kilometre), but the reality of these numbers only hit you when you're actually living in an Indian city. Sure, Toronto has its crowds: Bloor-Yonge station at 5PM, or Nathan Phillips Square on New Year's, but here it's Bloor-Yonge station multiplied by two all the time. Everywhere. In every building, on every bus, and on every street. People, cars, motorcycles, honking, pushing, shoving, bargaining, yelling (in ten different dialects), gesticulating (so they can understand each other), and/or rushing off to god-knows-where at least twenty minutes late (otherwise known as Indian Standard Time). It's truly amazing. Observation #2 Secondly, there are men ever
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Yes, that was a bomb

Guess what!? There's a whole bunch of crazy things going on in India right now. Here's a few: Satyam, one of the top three IT companies has confessed to 'cooking the books' for several years...media outlets are calling the debacle India's very own Enron (I've always wanted my own Enron). The government sacked the Satyam board of directors and had installed a new board in a matter of days--proof that government bureaucrats do, in fact, work (at some things). There's also federal elections coming up in March, which is exciting enough on its own. AND there's all these crazy security measures and military shows after the 26/11 attacks. There was a military expo at my university the other day, which I wasn't aware of until a few bombs went off in the distance (I resisted the urge to jump into the nearest pile of garbage--military material, I am not). Scary, but interesting to see. Anyways, tomorrow I'm going to see my aunt's NGO called Swadhar. A
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Please inform Mr. Shubash that there's an increasingly irate Canadian standing outside his door...

I've had my first brush with India's famously ineffectual bureaucracy in the form of Pune University's registrar's office. After arriving at the office at 11AM (because that's apparently when public offices open in India), I was told that I had been mistakenly registered for the economics faculty at the university. I would have to wait for a mand named Mr. Shubash to come and redo my admissions offer. Not to worry, the clerk assured me, Mr. Shubash would be arriving at the office in the next ten minutes. So I sat down and waited for a half hour. I bugged the clerk again, who said that it was a mere five to ten minutes wait, "Mr. Shubash is actually ill and at the clinic". To make a long story short, I waited another hour, after which the prodigal Mr. Shubash swept into the office (with surprising vigour for a sick man) with an entourage of five or six Europeans. He quickly disappeared into the backrooms of the office because he had to attend to his guests.
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Tortellini

Guess where I am? In the British Airways Executive lounge in London, which is actually a pretty neat spot. I've got free wireless, free food (which is key for me), showers, free booze (double bonus...okay, triple), and I've been bumped up to Business class for my flight to Mumbai. You may ask "how is this possible?" I don't know. I think BA made a mistake in my flight booking, but seeing as I missed my connecting flight due to their Toronto delays, I'm pretty pumped. I get to chill in the Exec lounge for nine and a half hours. On top of this, BA served Tortellini with (again) complimentary alchohol on the flight from Toronto, and I got to watch Wanted (horrible) AND Wall-E (cute; reminded me of a certain friend in Ottawa). Life is good.
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Preparing

I've grown a little disheartened about my apparent inability to keep in touch with everyone. So I've decided to put up a blog where people can read about my travels, perhaps comment, and maybe send an e-mail when they have a minute. To start off, I've written a short blurb below on why I decided to make this trip. The inception of the India trip took place during my Canada World Youth exchange. I was the "token ethnic Canadian", as everyone jokingly called me, but I was a poor specimen. My Bengali is, um.."accented", and I have never taken to the usual Indian cultural activities that second generation immigrants seem to flock to. Before my CWY exchange this didn't seem like a big deal; I think I actually preferred it. But during the trip I felt rootless; a point hammered home when my Project Supervisor (also known as "Jesus" because of his resemblance to the great man himself) played Ravi Shankar on a tape and asked me if I knew anything ab
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