Steps forward

May 16, 2016

At last I finally feel recovered. I still have the after effects of my cold but my gut issues are resolved and I am off the meds. We saw a scale last night so bought it and today I weigh 140. Too good to be true but it will be an incentive to keep the weight off. Nothing like food poisoning to get your weight down.

This week will be brutal temperature wise. Here’s what it looks like Mon-Thurs: 115, 117, 119, 120!!! Holy Crap Batman! Really?  Right now Sankar and his family are hanging out in our back bedroom with both ceiling fans on watching TV or napping. I have begged him to use the AC but he is just as stubborn as I am, if you can imagine that.

Yesterday we went to the grocery store as soon as they opened. I had been out of commission for eight days and there was nothing left here to eat after our great French toast with maple syrup that Ron made for breakfast. We got lots of needed items including finding a hand pruner for Sankar and a trowel. He had bought a pair of hedge clippers with money I gave him but what is needed here is mostly the pruning shears. We also bought him some shampoo since he showers here regularly. We got his daughter some crayons and felt pens and drawing books.

We came home and cooked together then ate a wonderful chicken rice dish Kamla sent over. After lunch we rested then went out at 5:30 to the small mall with the cinema. We ate at Show Time, Kamla’s family’s new café. It seats 10 and is surrounded by women’s clothing, a unique concept, having a clothing store and café combo. We had great chicken tikka burgers and potato wedges with iced tea. The café basically serves snack food: sandwiches, burgers and pizza.

We walked over to a household goods store and found out they sold mattresses. Traditional Indian mattresses are about three-four inches thick and hard as a rock. It is driving me crazy. So we looked at three styles: wrapped springs, combo springs and other material and foam. The one I liked was the most expensive. We will continue to look but I am clear we need a better mattress.

Then we went to see Capt. America: Civil War. A friend sent us a good review but frankly it is not our genre for sure. This is our second venture to the cinema here and again cell phones rang, conversations ensued, and the children behind us talked incessantly. They seem to like intermissions here so we moved our seats although seats are assigned. There were enough empties that it didn’t matter.

Afterwards we went across the way to explore the upstairs of a store we had visited before but never ventured upstairs. Ron was hopeful to find tools. Instead we found a good grocery store. It isn’t as great as where we usually shop but I can walk to it if I go when they open at 11:00. Anything after noon and I would die of heat stroke I think. It will serve for a lot of our needs but not all. I am pretty happy it is so close.

Saturday our internet provider promised Ron delivery of an upgrade to our receiver/sender by 5:00. At 5:00 he called them and they promised that night. NO show. On Sunday they called around 4:30 and promised today but were not specific about a time but again promised to call and let us know. NOTHING!  So Ron wrote what he likes to call a ‘nasty gram’. It is now 4:00 on Monday. When Kamla came over to bring lunch, she asked if our internet was working. Her son staged a protest last week when he found out the provider still had not fixed our problem. I told her nothing has been done and I related the weekend saga where Ron went to the company in person and filed a formal complaint, all the broken promises, etc. In no time she got on the phone to her son and he called Ron to get the whole story.

I told Kamla I had never experienced anything like this with all the promises that mean nothing and perhaps it was cultural and we just needed to accept it. It is extremely frustrating for both of us but Ron has been going ballistic over it. At this point we do not believe anything they say. Their promises regarding timelines are just words. I still believe they will eventually get us up and running but I am not sure we will still be living on the planet at that time. I have stayed home all day hoping they would show up and we know from experience someone could show up as late at 8:00 p.m. and that is not unusual here. What is unusual is showing up any time before noon. Or maybe I should say showing up at all.

Monday night - Ah, yet another day of no show from our internet provider.

May 17, 2016

Today the paper had an article on how hot it is in the state of Gujarat where we live. Ahmedabad is one of the four hottest cities in the state. The article mentioned how the radiant heat from the concrete sidewalks, walls and asphalt roads adds three to eight degrees to the registered temperature. So today for example the temp is 116 so depending where you are standing it could have the effect of being 119 to 124! I told Ron when we were in an auto rickshaw coming back from lunch it felt like the world was on fire. Now I understand why!

We had lunch with Arthur who is Irish and is here on a two year contract to establish a furniture design master’s program. Arthur has been teaching here for 30 years and is a wonderful resource for us. He gave us the name of a man who has a car and is for hire so we will set up an appointment to see what we can work out. If it works out it could be a huge help to us to move beyond rickshaws. With the heat and soon the monsoons we will need another form of transportation. I have my fingers crossed.

Yesterday Sankar complained of a backache or sore back. Today I pointed out to him that when he takes his afternoon break in the back bedroom he sleeps on the tile floor and that is why he has a backache. So I told him to sleep on the bed instead, something that he has refused to do, along with refusing to use the AC. Today when I returned from lunch with Ron and Arthur, Sankar was asleep on the bed! YAY! Of course he had no AC and not even the fans were on.  Small steps I guess.

Hip hip hooray…I hope. Spedigo just showed up within 20 minutes of my return. In hand were both pieces of equipment Ron had requested: an upgrade on our receiver/sender and a wifi device. They are installing them now and I have my fingers crossed that means we will now have reliable internet. As a backup we went by our phone store today to get the 3G service we paid for but never received. Ron tried numerous times to resolve the problem over the phone but never could. So if our Spedigo provider doesn’t provide we hopefully can use our phones with out any problems.

Ron tested the new equipment. We were able to call family using Skype for the first time. We could stream The News Hour with no problems. Hooray! This is huge stress reliever.