I'm finally sick

May 29, 2010
I’m sitting in my apartment in Bangalore watching Slumdog Millionaire. Ironic? First off, I hate this movie, but when my options are Airheads, The Black Cauldron, or a plethora of Bollywood and Tamil movies (all in Hindi or Tamil with no English subtitles) you have to take what you can get. It’s been awhile, and yesterdays post wasn’t too descriptive, so I’ll detail the past 20ish hours for you.
Yesterday, after our whirlwind tour of Bangalore we went to the police station to get our residency permits. Why we need this? I have no idea, but it’s India so vhatever. We got there around 3:30 and waited in a marble shack-type building along with other hopefules – an elder Indian man who stared at us, an old aunty, 2 Europeans from the ‘80s(?). At about 4:30 we were told by Florence – our awesome aunty director - to start lining up. We were shuffled into a small roped off section infront of the building. About 30 people were in this area and the number only increased. Citizens from Thailand, the Maldives, America, and Japan were all anxiously awaiting to be let through the ropes and the receive our various permits and visas. We were supposed to be let in at 4:30, at 5:00 we were all impatiently still waiting. As time creeped on I got a peak inside the office…they were doing a pooja. Are you kidding me? We were supposed to be let in almost 45 minutes ago and you’re doing a pooja?
We were finally let in and filed behind our respective lines. I thought this what it, I’m finally getting my residential permit! But nope, pooja was still going on and now everyone was eating food and laughing while 50+ people anxiously awaited, to what? Sign 2 pieces of paper. We waited 2 and a half hours to sign 2 pieces of paper.
At this point I felt like absolute shit. I was exhausted, tired, hot, and slightly irritated, but I refused to let it get to me! Just let me get home and life will be better. Well, we got home, I grabbed my laptop and we headed to Mocha our new coffee shop hangout. After an excruciating conversation with the sexist employees we finally got some Internet. Blah, blah, blah I went on facebook, checked my e-mail, had no desire to do anything else that night, seriously planned on going home and hopefully passing out.
But of course drinking is more important, and we went on journey to find a bar. We find our little oasis in the form of 70’s rock and 80’s hair metal with a little dose of A7X and audioslave, odd mixture? You bet your ass. We spent around an hour demolishing 2 towers (I think about 2 liters) of Fosters beer. Indian beer. Let me begin to describe this for you. So far in India I have seen mostly two types of beer, Kingfisher and Fosters. For a beer snob like me this place is hell, and when we finally stumbled upon this bar that was supposed to be a “beer bar” I was pretty ecstatic. However, beer bar in India does not mean a wide selection of beers, it means 1 type of beer (Fosters) that is mixed in a myriad of ways. So Fosters we drank! It tasted a little better than Kingfisher – Kingfisher taste like flat miller light – and made do since there were no other alcohol selections of the menu.
When we got back I was dead. My back has been killing me for the past couple of days, but this time it was excruciating. I could barely move without being in a disturbing amount of pain. I popped an Advil and tried to sleep. I probably slept about 2 hours total – factoring in the numerous times I woke up and tried to situate myself of my poor excuse for a mattress. I remember one time in high school I passed out on a cement drive way. That driveway was more comfortable than my bed. I’m seriously considering going outside and making a new bed out of coconut leaves, it would be more comfortable and probably smell better. I woke up at about 6:00 to tell some fellow study abroaders that I couldn’t make the trip to Mysore today. I was pretty upset, but with my back pain and over all discomfort going on a trip for the day would not have been conducive to…living.
Instead, I went back to my plywood bed and tried to get some rest. After an extremely lucid dream, I’ve been having many of those lately, I woke up around 8:00. At this point my body hurt pretty much all over, my chest, my back, my arms, my toes. You know that feeling you feel when you’re about to get sick? Yeah, that’s what I’ve been feeling all morning. I forced myself to make some tea, boiling some water on our old school gas stove. Well, it’s not quite a stove., there’s two burners connected to a ominous gas container. As I was washing a tea press in the sink I noticed a cockroach laying by one of the pots. I’m pretty much numb to cockroaches at this point, but I was startled nonetheless. He wasn’t moving though and I didn’t have the energy or desire to do away with him. I periodically checked up on him, I’m trying to acclimate myself to cockroach’s so maybe at some point I can kill one myself.
Well my friend started moving his antennas at one point. Breeze, yes, must be the wind moving them. Then he started moving his gross ass legs, then I smashed him with a pot.
My flat mates wanted to go to the worlds craft fair to peruse, buy, and spectate, I would have loved to go if my whole body didn’t feel like one big ache. I stayed home with a heated water bottle on my back, and got to see both Mr. Anil our housing director whom communicates mostly by shaking his head, and a maid. The door bell rang earlier and I answered it only to find a 4’ 10” Indian woman with a mop and a bucket. I though she had come to clean the apartment, since maids are supposed to come twice a week, but she just pointed to the bucket and the floor. I had no idea what she meant, and her speaking Tamil and me speaking English did not help the situation at all. I somehow deduced that she needed water in her bucket. Maybe she was going to clean our apartment! Nope, the hallway. We still have a dirty ass apartment.
Well, now Im still painfully sitting in my living room about halfway through Slumdog Millionaire. I’ll probably venture out and find some elusive internet so I can post this, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll eat something. Though I don’t quite know if my stomach is up for that at the moment.