oh and another bad thing

For many weeks I've been happily walking around my marble floors barefoot (the maid cleans the floors every day so they are probably cleaner than the insides of my shoes). Occasionally I would slip a little but nothing serious, until Wednesday. I fell dramatically on some water and managed to cut my wrist in a most peculiar manner so it looks like a very half-hearted suicide attempt. and it hurts. In order to elicit sympathy, I attach a picture (I know this is not the type of India picture you want to see, so I'm also including one of some elephants to counterbalance it and stop some of the complaints)

Getting better? Escape imminent

Signs I am better

1. So late last week I started to feel better. On Sunday, upon passing a pastry shop, I had a sudden urge to buy a cake; since this was the first such urge in many months I decided to follow up on it (to be honest I’m not much good at self-deprivation anyway so even if it had been days rather than months I still probably would have gone it and bought something. I bought apple cake (only alright) and 3 truffles (absolutely delicious – probably helped by the fact they get to the perfect temperature very quickly in India).
2. I went to the gym 3 times (and once managed to jog/run 5 K)
3. I felt hungry
4. I stopped having headaches (probably due to the fact I was eating)
5. I drank loads of diet coke (a Helen standard – indeed I wonder if Coca-Cola stocks went down during my illness)

Other great things

1. I have internet at home. I spent the weekend on Skype. For those you don’t know Skype is brilliant – it lets you make internet calls. It’s free for pc-to-pc calls and cheap enough for pc to regular phone calls. Also you can telephone numbers for other so then people can call you. So even when I am in India I can have a US phone number. It’s fab! On Saturday I even video-conferenced with some friends in the US using Skype – modern technology is great
2. Had a three-way conference call (on Skype again) between Galway, Chicago and Delhi!!
3. I am going to New Zealand on Saturday
4. 2 weeks off work (and even better out of India)
5. When I come back from New Zealand I am back for a week and then off to Ireland for a wedding.
6. There are a lot of colleagues here from the US and Germany here on business. Only one woman who didn’t stay fro long but at least some other foreigners
7. With these foreigners I went off to Agra and also Jaipur so finally feel like I’ve seen some of India
8. Jaipur is beautiful – I would recommend it over Delhi any day (I tried to attach photos but failed to get it to work - maybe next time)




And now onto bad stuff

1. I’m sick again :-( On Tuesday I felt terrible and subsequently spent 11 hours asleep. The silver lining was I so sick and tired even the noisy air conditioning did not keep me awake.
2. Lots of problems at work. I had a status meeting where I reported that
• 5 team members were diagnosed with typhoid
• 1 with hepatitis
• 4 team members due to be provided by our consulting partner would not show
• Consulting partner is saying I and my company are being unreasonable in our expectations. On this last point I must say my boss has been wonderful, fully supporting me and telling the consulting partner to deliver on promises made.

So what with having lots of bad news beyond my control and being sick I guess I didn’t sound so great on the conference call. Well my colleagues were great and many sent me emails to tell me they were thinking about me, missing me. One colleague sent me a great email which is so hilarious I feel I must reprint it here. It’s long but definitely worth it.


Hello Helen,

It was good to hear you on the POP meeting call today. Sounds like you have your share of challenges! Hope things are working out for you and I thought I would share a completely non-work and non-India related story with you give you a laugh (at my expense unfortunately) and help you feel connected with us over here…..

The other day I had the pleasure of having 5 staples removed from my head. How did they get there??? Well, I’m glad you asked…. It wasn’t easy. It all started 2 Saturdays ago at about 8PM, as I was putting something in the back of our mini-van and I was closing the hatch, something caught my eye. Instantly I realized it was nothing of importance, but that half-second delay in moving my head caused the door to strike my head with considerable force. I was not knocked unconscious… but a pretty good knock none-the–less. After shaking my head a bit to clear off the circling-stars I started out of the garage. Suddenly it occurred to me that it was an odd thing that my ear felt wet. Putting my hand to my ear I quickly discovered that source of the wetness was in fact resulted from my recent encounter with the mini-van hatch when my hand was wet and red.

8PM is the preferred time to be reading stories to the Family name Children before bed, and this is generally not an activity we want to interrupt with the drama of a bleeding head…. And besides it was probably not “that” bad. So I got a wash cloth and ice and keep this new development to myself for the moment. The moment passed quickly when I received 4 simultaneous questions regarding the wash-cloth and ice from the story reader and listeners. Determined not to present any obstacle in getting the children to bed I down played the whole thing. To this I was successful as stories finished and the children got to bed without so much trouble. But now it is occurring to me that my head is still bleeding. S and I discuss the merits of going to the ER to have this checked out. Threats of infection and continued bleeding through the night finally convinced me.

So we secured my father-in-law (who by the way agreed it was not much more than a minor flesh wound) to mind the sleeping children, we were off the ER. It has been a while since I was in an ER I guess and I was rather impressed with the speed that they move you through that place. Maybe it was just a slow night. Anyways… I explain my incident to the nurse and then to the doctor, and I got the strong feeling from them that they were trying to ascertain if alcohol was involved (which it was not!) I had not had a single drink (though I could have used one). It did not help that I was pretty ragged looking as we spent the day doing yard work, so I was probably quite a site.

I cannot be certain of this, but I think the doctor only suggested staples as a “serves you right” treatment for his suspicions of my drunken condition (which I remind you I was not). I had not heard of staples before…. Stitches, yes… sutures, yes… but staples… not so much. But there you go, I get 5 staples in the head and a little bit of a hair trim to boot. We are out of there within an hour. I also suspected that this young doctor might have been using my head as practice for his new stapler. They sent me off with the instructions to take some Ibuprofen and “sleep it off”

Needless to say my father-in-law had a good laugh about it. A few of my co-workers also had a good laugh, though it was not completely obvious, so I did not need to explain it to everyone. Then on Monday (3 days ago), I visited my doctor to have the staples removed. This was almost completely painless… though it sounds worse. My doctor assured my staples were probably required, so maybe my suspicions of the ER personnel are unjustified. Now I am almost as good as new, just one extra bald spot off the back top of my head.

Have a good (and staple-free) day!!


I am very lucky to have all these people who I can call up and complain when I have problems and make me laugh. It doesn’t make me any less happy that I will in NZ where I will be driving a car on my own (impossible in India) and able to eat food withour worrying about getting sick. And I hear it will be cool and rainy – sounds like perfect weather :-)

A miracle - I have internet at home. Also surprising things about India

For the last 3 hours I've had internet at home. It's wonderful. Also it means I can post this entry I prepared earlier (just like those TV cooks!!)


Unexpected things about India (in no particular order)

• It’s not that cheap for many things – notable example hotel rooms are higher than New York or Chicago. One extreme example is Bangalore were a colleague paid $450 a night and it wasn’t even such a great hotel. But the average for a Marriott-type hotel is $200 - $250 then there are all sorts of taxes and services fees on top of that
• Men urinating everywhere – and making absolutely no attempt at modesty or privacy
• The number of cows
• Cows eating rubbish at the site of the street
• Temporary makeshift homes no more than a few square meters, constructed out of sticks and blue plastic. It’s amazing to think people live there – but more amazing to see that many of them have TV sets! (the electricity wires are cut and fed into the homes illegally)
• Power cuts – for hours at a time; many homes and business have generators to compensate
• Almost impossible to buy tampons
• People ask “Please let me know your good name, sir”
• You can go whitewater rafting on the Ganges
• Most women wear traditional dress
• People (mainly men) waiting at the side of the streets for no particular reason and with no apparent purpose (a friend suggested there could be drivers; a reasonable suggestion)
• My driver says things like “Would madam like to go to market” I hate being called madam and being questioned in the 3rd person is just weird
• The definition of considerate. We had been on a very long bus journey, about 10 people were singing loudly while about 20 tried to sleep. Eventually at 11.30 I asked the minority to stop singing. My Indian colleague explained to me that Indians were very considerate as they did not complain that they could not sleep. I, of course define the 10 singers as being incredibly inconsiderate
• I don’t find the people polite – they speak in fancy antiquated language but basically have no concern for your comfort or place no value on your time
• Airtel has 6 million internet subscribers in Delhi!
• Foreigners have to pay more to enter national monuments (about 10 times more) or to travel by plane (about double)
• Plastic surgery is big business here
• Arranged marriages are the norm. Even “love marriages” need parental approval – my colleague told me “I was lucky my parents approved that I could marry a girl from another religion” (both are Hindu but one drinks alcohol and the other not and some other differences that didn’t seem so big to me)
• Extended families often live together
• Despite a serious lack of women at work, there are quite a few women in senior positions
• Practically everybody aged 30 or more is married. I am a complete anomaly here (but I would not be if I were a man)
• Everybody talks at the same time
• The concept of queuing up for something doesn’t seem to exist. Though as discussed previously the concept of waiting is integral to the Indian culture!
• Even the Indians get Delhi belly. Our HR manager told me he assumes people will miss 2-3 days per month (that’s every employee, every month) because of illness! Just as well there’s a lot of people here!
• It’s cheaper to hire a person to stick labels to letters than pay for self-adhesive labels (or at least this was the case when my landlady worked in an Indian office a few years ago)
• There is no attempt to make India look even remotely inviting at the international airports. Delhi and Bangalore are both shabby and dirty with limited toilet facilities
• When booking train tickets, they insist upon knowing your age. My last train ticket is issued not to my name but to a 30-year-old female!!!!