New York City relocated

This past week was about celebrating New York City and remembering 9/11, right?
So why not bring a few pieces of NYC over here to Delhi?

That's what
The Spirit of New York Exhibitionwas about.

It wasn't a very big exhibition--wall sized photos of famous NYC sights.
A hot dog/pretzel stand cut out.
A taxi to take your picture with.

And, of course, the statue of liberty.

I've never been to NYC or seen any of its famous sights for myself.
But it's so iconic, and I found it interesting that I could go to an exhibit highlighting a city in my own country and wonder if maybe it belonged to the Delhi college students studying "near" Central Park and Time Square just as much as it did to me.

Ambassador taxi

"I don't know what is wrong with her," said the taxi driver, "Sometime she do this and is then not on."
What does 'she' do?
Die while idling at every stoplight and intersection. Our ambassador taxi was not the most reliable.

"Everything okay, everything okay," insisted the driver. But by the next stoplight he had changed his mind. He pulled over and left us in the car to go in search of another taxi that would take us to our destination.
I might also mention that ambassadors do not have A/C--not that it would have worked without the engine running, anyway.

In five or ten minutes, he found us another ambassador.
It may look like a cool car, but looks can be deceiving.

A glimpse of our ride down the streets of Thanneermukkom.

Serendipitious orchestration

I just lived through a day orchestrated to bring us to Mexican food--good Mexican food.
Our plan today, my friend and I, was to go to a certain market where there was supposed to be a nice bookstore and a really good (dare-we-hope: authentic) Mexican restaurant. Good Mexican food is a rarity on this side of the world.
We found the bookstore. It was as expected. Not fantastic, but had books.
Now it was time to eat.
We found all the signage for the restaurant we wanted to go to, but where was the entrance?
"Oh that place is finished," said the guard we asked.
"Finished?"
"Finished."
Sad, sad news. No Mexican for lunch.
We found a coffee shop to eat at before we melted and returned to my house.

Meanwhile, my friend's husband was supposed to be leaving on a plane. But the plane's airconditioning was broken and they were sitting out on the tarmac in 104 degrees unable to leave. Several hours later they deplaned all the passengers and moved them to a 5 star hotel in the north of the city.
A 5 star hotel? Hmm. This might be our only opportunity to go see what it's like inside...
Our "only choice", then, was to head there as soon as nap time for her one year old was over.

Riding in autos is hard, tiring work. But that's what we ended up in.
The call to the taxi to take us to the fancy hotel was at 4:20pm. The dispatcher said: "There is no taxi available for half an hour. 5 o'clock it will come for you."
That was very bad math and not half an hour. But I agreed.
At 5:15 I called the driver and went through extensive directions on how to get to my house. Twenty minutes later I called and asked the driver where he was. The name of the location he gave me was about half an hour away.
What!
Okay, cancel that taxi service.

Now what do we do? It would be fun to go see the 5 star hotel that we wouldn't normally have opportunity to go see. But it was getting late. We would have to have time to come back for the kid's bedtime.
Our new plan? Walk out of the neighborhood and find our own taxi. If we can't get one, we walk a little further and end up at the Chinese restaurant nearby.
As we walked along, an auto passed us asking where we wanted to go? An auto wasn't in the plan. Because it was hot and we were tired and we didn't want to over-tire the kid before we'd even gotten anywhere. But there was the auto...
With a reasonable price.
We looked at each other.
We took it.
So we didn't exactly arrive at the five star hotel looking as if we belonged there, but they let us in anyway.
We walked through the lobby (unimpressive) and put our feet in the pool (slightly impressive). Then we headed out again to find dinner.
We thought we would go to a nearby pizza place and we got an auto to go there. I told him which block to take us to and when he pulled up, what did I see? A sign for Sancho's, the Mexican restaurant we'd been trying to find at lunch time.
"There's Sancho's," I said.
My friend misheard me to say, "There's a sandpit." Which was also true. Because all in front of the restaurant was construction and sand and a great big hole--no way for us to walk through.
The driver, though, showed us the path where people were walking through the construction site.
So my friend and I stood outside the Mexican restaurant and had this short conversation:
"We came here for pizza, but there's Sancho's. Which one do you want to go to?"
"Well, we know what pizza tastes like, we haven't tried Sancho's."
"Right. Let's go."
When we stepped inside and were told they had a baby chair, we knew we had arrived. A marvelous baby chair. Even though I had to eat with one hand while I held my fingers on the latch to keep the tray down and the kid from escaping.
That, and the excellent food with real cheese and real sour cream made all we had been through throughout the day totally worth it to end up here.
Disappointment at lunch time.
Waiting and waiting for a taxi that never showed up.
A plane with air conditioning that didn't work.
A visit to a 5 star hotel.
A search for pizza because we hadn't been successful at lunch.
It had all brought us here.
"That's what you call 'serendipity'," I said.
"No," replied my friend, "That's what you call the orchestration of a good God who knew exactly what we needed."
Absolutely.

Immigrating

Some friends picked me up in a taxi today to go to lunch. I am reminded how nice it is to ride in a car. No jolting. No wind. No exhaust fumes.

So on my trip out, I passed the Republic of Chicken. Very clever sign on the door.
Conversely, when you leave you are 'emigrating'.
No passport necessary, though.
Not exactly a vegetarian friendly 'country', but amusing nonetheless.

The spectacular helicopter?

Our taxi driver was supposed to take us to the mall. Along the way he pulled over to the side while we were on a flyover. This flyover was near to the air force property.
The driver thought it was a fantastic thing that from this view you could see one of the helicopters. A forty years' old one, he said, that people used to jump out of with parachutes. He thought it was great.
The rest of us were not convinced, but humored him.
The real "thrill" here was probably the adrenalin rush caused by stopping next to the dangerously close traffic and getting out of the car.
We risked our lives to see a helicopter?
Why not?

I did it!

And what did I do?
I drove a motorbike from the house where I'm staying all the way to where I work. I didn't stop there, but took the u-turn and headed right back home. It took me about 45 minutes all together. Because I didn't drive faster than 58kmph.
So why didn't I go to work?
I'm able to get a ride to work most days with the lady I work with. But she leaves the office a lot earlier than I do and I usually have to take a taxi back to the house. It costs me $6 every day.
My pocketbook was saying "be braver".
I could have been driving the motorbike for the last month, but I've been too chicken to go out on actual roads with actual traffic.
Today when I arrived at the house, handed over another $6 to the taxi driver, I went straight into the house and got the motorbike keys. I started out driving around the neighborhood for a few minutes. Then I felt brave enough to leave the neighborhood. I wondered just how far I would dare to go and thought maybe I'd drive all the way to the highway and then turn around.
But at the highway there was no good place to turn, so I just joined the merging traffic and drove all the way to the office.
Now I know I can do it. And I can drive to work tomorrow and save myself some money.
Woohoo!

Getting home

After all my traveling, I am back now. My trip from the airport to the house was eventful.
I was assured by the airport authorities and the taxi driver that my airplane boarding pass would serve as "curfew pass" to get through the strict city-wide curfew that was being enforced by police and military. We were stopped around eight times before the driver refused to take me any further. He was too agitated.
At most of the checkpoints, he would very respectfully greet the military officer, they would look at my boarding pass and his taxi papers, and then wave us on. At one stop, they wanted to try out their English and ask me how long I've lived here. But what rattled the driver was the last check point we passed and the young officer who seemed to be on a power trip. "You know it's a curfew today," he said, "Are you a curfew breaker? Do you want to get beat?"
It was only just after we'd driven out of sight of those men that the driver decided that was far enough and he stopped the car. Nearby there was a path to my house, actually. Rather God-ordained. I'd never been down that path, but I could see through the trees that it would end up right near the neighbor's house. There were some women standing nearby saying they'd find somebody to take me through to the other side. So the driver took my boarding pass to help him on his way home, and I took my suitcase over the rough, chicken-and-goat path (they'd left behind their markings).
The path came out just at the end of my lane, and my tour guide wheeled my suitcase the rest of the way to my door.
Arrived at last.

Harrowing traffic

My first experience back in India was a taxi ride. It was one of the most harrowing I've ever experienced--which is saying a lot. There were squealing tires and fish-tailing as we had some very close calls. Shew, I'm still alive.
I decided to give you a glimpse of the traffic here. So you can see what's on the roads.

The traffic cop. Like his uniform?

This is where we parked the car to go shopping. (It's the green one with a roof-rack in the corner.)

As you can see, we needed to wait a while before the car was able to be freed.

You can hear the traffic for yourself:

And this is some of the unexpected traffic that goes by: