Visitor!!!

My first proper visitor arrived. My brother arrived for 3 whole weeks. Very exciting. . Last week was Diwali (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali) , so I had a week off work. There was a lot of debate about what we should do. My brother naturally wanted to see the Taj Mahal but I’ve seen it often enough at this stage (not a big fan – at the end of the day it’s just a very big elaborate tombstone – I know this is a minority opinion). After deciding Rajasthan was too far away, Goa not really India, we finally settled on Nepal! Nepal, of course is not part of India. Indeed, partly to prove that Nepal is a separate country, it has a different time zone. India is GMT + 5.5 hours and Nepal is GMT + 5.75 hours. It may sound silly and petty but the half hour difference always gets me. I’m OK to Europe but US/Canada always requires serious calculations. I had just got very good at calculating and now it has changed again. Like many countries near the equator India does not observe daylight savings time, so last week India was 10.5 hours ahead of Chicago, now it’s 11.5 hours ahead of Chicago since daylight savings time has begun in North America. Nepal is a separate country; Nepal also has rupees but Nepali rupees, but I seriously question how different Nepali (the language) is from Hindi. I really only know the numbers in Hindi but they are identical in Nepali. I can’t complain too much as Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian are really all the same language but few of the native speakers would concede the fact (for more political then linguistic reasons). Despite being a separate country, amazingly Indian rupees are welcomed all over Nepal. I had been informed by my colleagues but didn’t entirely trust then. Nonetheless I had a large wad of Indian banknotes (here I often feel like a drug dealer as I’m carrying 20-50 bank notes at any time which is quite considerable). Of course they had failed to inform me that 500 and 1000 Indian rupees notes were not accepted (500 rupees is about 10 Euro). The US dollar was a lot more popular.

Now my brother (D) would say this is unfair but as he admitted to not reading my blog I suppose I’m safe writing this. I got the distinct impression that D thought I was being “a glass is half empty” person about India. At the best of times he is sensitive to my complaints that women not have equal rights in the West and he finds my impassioned words about the oppression of women in India annoying (I think he would use the words ranting and complaining). He says but Hel, you have a driver and an apartment in a posh neighbourhood, what are you complaining about. However when he arrived, he finally understood where I was coming from. He sent my mother an email complaining about my water supply (not enough pressure to shower, one must use tap), the traffic (he kept trying to warn my driver he was going to hit something, like my driver would listen to him!), the neighbourhood (where is the posh part of Delhi), the shopping (it’s impossible to buy the things you want, and inevitable to be pestered to buy things you don’t want), the inefficiency (there were 3 check-out guys but it was slower than at home with only one!) . He gathered all this is about 24 hours in Delhi. I make him sound bad which is not true at all. It was lovely to see him and he bought all the food I requested from Ireland. Toffee crisps and club orange may be the nicest food combination in the world. He also brought Barry’s tea (a very popular tea in Cork, my hometown) http://www.barrystea.ie/ which was very welcome. He is spending this week in Nepal and he’ll arrive back next Sunday.