Hilarity

Yesterday I jumped in a ricksha and decided to explore. I took it to the department store Spencer's which is actually quite far from Kodambakkam, but I had a great time. Spencer's is Chennai's biggest shopping mall with floors and floors of stores - with western as well as Indian clothing, book/music shops, and appliances galore. I had to get a bunch of things for my apartment (tupperware, groceries,etc.) so I went there. And then of course I ended up buying fabric to make Kurthis and stuff. Anyway the store is quite impressive and I saw all sorts of people there. There were mostly tourists but not just tourists from around the world. Most of the people in the mall were from different parts of India so I had fun trying to guess what they were speaking and where they were from.

I have to say, some things in India are just so ridiculously comical because we would never hear something of the sort in the states. Just... absolutely... ridiculous. I'll give you an example. I was talking to Liz about the the housing people ordering a couch for the apartment next to mine, and so Liz calls the woman to ask what's happening with the couch. The woman says.. "Oh, we were bringing the couch back from the store in my car, but unfortunately the car happened to get stuck in quicksand. Don't worry, the couch is fine. We're figuring out a way to bring it." Um. WHAT?! The car got sucked into a giant pile of quicksand? And the lady was like "The car disappeared, but don't worry, the couch is ok." ???????????????? First of all, where is this quicksand because shouldn't we know about it if there's a possibility it could devour us whole? And second, you would think the woman would be a little more upset about her car being sucked into the earth.

Another example: I needed to make copies of some music to give to the students so I asked Liz how I would go about doing that. She showed me who the designated copy guy was so I approached him and asked him to make me 15 copies of the original. Not only did he not do what I asked him, but he managed to eat lunch and take a nap before making me the copies! You just want to laugh at how silly things are here.

The last example is the hilarity of the "Night Watchman". As expected, the night watchman is basically the equivalent of a security guard who stands outside all of the apartment houses to make sure no one breaks in. The most hilarious thing is, the night watchman falls asleep at around 10 pm! One of the faculty members came back from practicing and tried to get into his apartment at around midnight. He screamed, he kicked, he threw rocks, he tried to climb over the gate - the watchman was fast asleep and he couldn't wake him up! So he had to go sleep on the couches at KM! Ridiculous.

I'm having a great time laughing.