mungbean in india
 

Category Archives: Apartment

Challenges

So I’ve hardly posted anything here since the start of the year… partly due to being unbelievably busy at work for the last 3-4 months, and when you spend most of your day writing documentation, going home and writing more stuff doesn’t really appeal. Plus I’ve been in India for 3½ years now, and I think I’ve probably reached the point where I’ve already said most of the things I wanted to say about the country, and reported most of my observations about how […]

Rain

  So the monsoon has arrived in Delhi—and the rest of the country—somewhat ahead of schedule. Which means that summer is over, and we’re now into the rainy season.   The cooler weather is obviously a huge relief to everyone… It’s hard to believe that only 3 weeks ago it was 45 degrees, but as I write this it’s currently 25.   Last night was the first night in 2-3 months when I didn’t have to have the air conditioning on all […]

Heat

At the risk of being repetitive, I’m going to bang on about the weather again.  Because it’s now very, very hot. Today it was 45 degrees celsius when I took the photo above, and reportedly it reached 46 in Delhi at some point.  Slightly trumping the previous hottest temperature I had ever experienced, which was 44 in Athens (Greece) and Brindisi (Italy) when back-packing around Europe in the late 80’s.  My memory of Athens was that elderly people were dropping […]

Dilliwala

So here we are then.  I’m now a Dilliwala—a resident of Delhi. The past 3 weeks have been a bit hectic and complicated, given that I started a new job while living in a hotel, and meanwhile had to find a new apartment within 14 days and register the address at the Foreigners Registration Office.  But I managed it, and this time it’s an order of magnitude easier than when I first arrived in India 2 years ago, when I […]

The Days are Going Very Fast

Eating my breakfast at 8am. The doorbell rings and Kannagi my maid lets herself in with the key I gave her. We  exchange pleasantries and as usual she heads straight into the kitchen, puts down her handbag and her phone, and starts chopping and cooking.  Once that’s under way, she starts sweeping the floors while the pressure cooker hisses away. “The days are going very fast now, brother”, she says. I agree, and we smile a sad smile at each […]

East

It’s another holiday!  Today is Gandhi Jayanti, celebrating the mahatma’s birthday. After a very long wait between Good Friday (6th April) and Independence Day (15th August) we’re now into the best season with 3 holidays in October and 2 in November this year.   It’s pretty disruptive to the teaching–our 4th term of the year starts in college this week–but very welcome nonetheless. One of the big surprises about moving out to India is that I’ve become a morning person. […]

Shifted

As I wrote 2 months ago, I had to move to a new apartment — or “shift” — recently.  Actually it’s been 4 weeks since I moved, but work has been unbelievably hectic since the start of 2012 and I’m only just catching up with stuff. I had been really dreading finding a new place, since my first experience of flat-hunting in Bangalore wasn’t good.  So many apartments here seem to be a pile of junk, or really dirty, or […]

Moving On

So, after being in my current apartment for nearly 11 months, I’m going to have to move again — or “shift” in the local vernacular — partly because the landlord wanted to put the rent up, and partly because I’ve realised I need to move somewhere cheaper anyway. The place I’m in now has been great, but it’s huge and I only use half of it. It’s also way more expensive than what I’d been budgeting for, but I was […]

Power

A regular feature of everyday life in Bangalore, and apparently much of the rest of India, is the power cuts.  Since yesterday we’ve been having one thunderstorm after another, and somehow whenever there’s heavy rain we seem to get power outages to go with it.  Most of last night the power was off, and it was still off when I got up this morning.  Given that it’s Good Friday and I’ve got a day off work, it was a big […]

The Wasp Factory

I spotted this tiny pot-like thing on my kitchen window-sill yesterday, about 1.5cm across. As soon as I saw it I thought “wasp!” — not sure why. The entrance with the lip around it is amazing. Shortly after noticing this, sure enough a wasp or a hornet-type thing appeared and went to the entrance. Strange-looking, with loads of green bits hanging underneath…. It went away and came back after a few minutes. It was only then that I realised the […]