A cold and allergies.... and the same for the economy!

December 28, 2016

Christmas was a non event for us this year.  We stayed home and watched some movies on the cable network and Kamla sent over some slices of a plum cake with Christmas decorations. She is an amazing woman! Keep in mind she is Hindu yet she has Christmas decorations for cake slices.

I came back from the US with a cold which later turned into a chest infection. I took a regime of antibiotics and it got better but I still have the cough. I am very tired of it. Sometimes taking a decongestant helps but not today. I am now walking with Ron at 6:15 and Kamla at 8:15 and again at 5:00 and I am glad to be back to it.

December 29, 2016

Yesterday I had a difficult day physically and didn’t walk. I was sneezing, had a runny nose and was coughing. Today was worse so I went to my doc. I am having an allergic reaction to something so now I have three prescriptions, two that are new to me. My doc serves the poor so he charges very little for a visit, 100 rupees about $1.50 US. So the last time I visited him I asked if he had patients who couldn’t pay and he said yes so I asked if I could make a donation to cover their costs and gave him an extra 500 rupees. Today I offered again to give him extra and he said he still had some from my last visit and declined taking it. How I love an honest person. I told him I admired what he was doing and it was so needed in India to help the poor. I told him today I hoped I wouldn’t be seeing him anymore because I was tired of being sick. He laughed and said he would call the Badlani’s, our neighbors and his good friends, if he needed more rupees from me. Nice guy.

We are moving ahead with plans for departure. Ron has just about wrapped up the curriculum for the 12 classes he has created for CEPT. Kamla, our fabulous neighbor wants to buy about 90% of the household goods we are selling. This makes things so much easier for us as we will not need to answer phone calls , have people come over to view items, etc. We will give the items she isn’t buying to our staff or to a charity that resells them to help the blind.

We have planned some trips. Ron will finish his contract around the 25^th of January. On the 27^th we will fly to Kathmandu in Nepal and spend four days there before returning here on Feb 1 to pick up our luggage.

We will leave here Feb 3^rd and fly to Colombo Sri Lanka where we will visit friends and travel to Jaffna at the north end of the island. We could never travel there when we were living in Sri Lanka because of the civil war; but now it is open to tourist so we will go with our friend Suba who is from there but now lives in Colombo. 

We will leave Sri Lanka on Feb 13^th and fly to Thailand. It is a short trip but it leaves at 1:30 a.m. It was the best option as all the other carriers took us to some other place first then we would have a double digit layover time of 10+ hrs so we opted for losing a night’s sleep and getting there in a direct flight that takes 3.5 hrs. We will spend a few days in Bangkok to see friends, eat some great food that the big city has to offer and then head south to Phetchaburi where we will stay. In March we will need to leave the country as we will have a 30 day tourist visa and we will go to Indonesia, probably but it is yet to be decided because we haven’t taken time to read about Indonesia.

December 30, 2016

Demonetization is still with us. Today’s paper said the banks had 30% of the currency they needed in November and 50% in December. The lines are shorter but still there are lines. Fifty thousand local people and 100,000 migrants have lost jobs in Ahmedabad as many businesses cannot endure the downturn in the economy. High end housing is not selling. It has been weeks since we have seen an ATM that has any rupees. Restaurants are empty and mall stores are all having sales and on and on it goes. In 45 days the government issued 60 changes to the rules, sometimes reversing what they have said the day before. It is as though no one is in charge and no one has a clue as to how to deal with the chaos that has been created. Bankers have been harassed and threatened. In rural areas locals took matters into their own hands and locked bank employees out of their workplace. The prime minister is unapologetic and is convinced he has done a good thing but 1.25 billion people were impacted by this and for many it has been a huge hassle.

Tomorrow the prime minister is addressing the nation and I am hopeful he will say the bank will have adequate currency soon.

My allergies are only slightly better today but I rested after lunch and the sneezing and runny nose abated as long as I was lying down. It wears me out. I went to bed at 8:30 last night and read until 10:00. Fortunately I slept well and did not walk this morning.

January 1, 2017

Happy New Year! After a lovely breakfast made by Ron of French toast with Canadian maple syrup we sat on the veranda and enjoyed the morning air. The high today is 86  with a low of 59. Pretty great weather after suffering through summer. Every day is sunny and the air is polluted with hazy views in the distance. We have 28 days in Ahmedabad left with six days away in Nepal. We are eager to move on to what is next for us.