03 December 2010 – Guest House, Delhi, India – 2:30pm I’m telling you, it pays to have family in the Government.
H’s brother-in-law has some high-up position with the Indian Government in Delhi, so he essentially has the power of a flightless Superman. He was able to arrange for us to stay in a Guesthouse, not only here in Delhi, but in Bombay and Kolkata, too.
And what is a Guesthouse, you ask?
Well, it’s kind of like a ritzy hotel, only without the snobby doorman, the fancy lobby, the self-important Reception clerks, or the super expensive restaurant.
It’s basically just a great room with a great bed, a huge flat-screen TV, and one of the greatest duvets I’ve ever slept beneath.
And man, did I sleep well – only I’m catching a cold. And speaking of cold, as soon as the sun goes down, it gets cold as hell here in Delhi. I’m not kidding. I never would have thought I’d be worrying about the cold in India, of all places, especially when the last time we were in Delhi it was +48C! It is such a strange feeling to be wondering, when selecting something to wear in the morning, if it’s going to be warm enough later on in the day.
All I can say is that I’m glad I brought my warm jacket from Toronto.
H’s brother-in-law was also able to arrange for us a car and a driver – which is kind of like having a personal chauffeur available 24/7 at our beck and call. That means that on this particular part of out trip here in Delhi, we don’t have to travel by taxi or auto-rickshaw, which has always been the bane of getting around in India. And with The Little One travelling with us this time, it makes everything so much easier.
Right now I’m totally knackered.
We spent the entire morning running around Connaught Place searching for an electrical adapter as the one I brought kind of went tits up the last time I was in India two years ago and I wasn’t even aware of it. It wasn’t until I tried to plug it in here at the Guesthouse that I discovered that the backside of the adapter had completely melted – obviously from some magnificent power surge that would have exploded whatever it was that I had plugged into it if it weren’t for the surge protecting device built into the adapter. I was lucky this time. It could have been a lot worse. And I need an adapter because I’ve got sooooooo much electronic crap that needs to be recharged – phone, computer, cameras, iPod storage device – stuff you wouldn’t even think needed to be charged, needs to be charged. My pillow even needs to be charged!
But we eventually found one at Croma – the Indian version of Future Shop - and it was a darn nice one, too. It’s a hundred times better than the old Samsonite one I had and so much more versatile. The old one that melted was big and heavy and ugly as shit and oh-so-cumbersome. Trust a place like India to come up with sleek and ultra-modern little devices you would never see in North America. Back there, the people running the show seem to be afraid to introduce new high-tech gadgets for fear that the American people will feel overwhelmed by all the new technology and run and hide under the bed and wait for things to go back to the way they were before.
So now I can charge everything as much as I possibly want, till my heart’s content.
On a personal note, I think we should have stayed at home and rested and readjusted to India time for a day or two instead of running around like mad people on the first day we arrived.
That would have been the smart thing to do.
But we didn’t do that.
So now, we each passing second, I am feeling more and more sickly.
I think it’s obvious that whatever that idiot who sat beside us had on the flight over, I’m getting a little piece of it.
Can I sue Air India for making me sick?
Can I at least punch the miserable fuck who squeezed that diseased bastard in at the last minute next to us?
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