More adventures in domesticity

our furnished living room
Originally uploaded by qiubuo.

Last week I inadvertently fired our maid by trying to explain to her why I was paying her early (I was not going to be at the house on Monday, so I paid her on Sunday and told her not to come on Monday, but she never came back). We started looking for a new maid, but then one just showed up at our door. She is very energetic and enthusiastic, and has already asked me to give her our refrigerator when we leave and to take her back to the U.S. and/or France with us! (In which case, I guess, she doesn't get the fridge.)

We tried a few expat evenings out this weekend. On Friday we went to a Flamenco concert at a dance studio called Opus. It was on a small street near a big street, and we missed it the first time we went past. In Bangalore there are many streets with concrete center dividers, which makes u-turning very difficult (but crossing the street slightly easier).
We realized how necessary these dividers were when we noticed how the autorickshaw drivers get in front of other vehicles by driving on the wrong side of the road. They seem to do it on cue - fifteen of them go at once, creating the critical mass necessary to keep the cars going the right way at bay! At any rate, we had to make a few u-turns to finally get to the place, which I'm sure was amusing to the driver. Autorickshaw drivers are notorious for driving in circles to ring up kilometers on the meter, and here we are doing it for them!

The concert venue was a charming open air space with cushions on the ground and low candle-lit tables. They served a buffet of Spanish food and riled up a few Americans by not having anything vegetarian when it had been advertised. The crowd was mostly composed of students from the Canadian International School, one of the main expat schools in Bangalore, and it turned out the performer was their music teacher! Anyway, the concert was fun and lighthearted, and slightly reminiscent of a high school music rehearsal.

On Sunday we had Chinese food at Mainland China, a restaurant in the center of the city, near MG Road. We met Lauren (Gary's colleague from Macromedia) there. We had only brought 1500 rupees, which is enough for several meals in our neighborhood joints, so when we arrived and saw the waiting area and servers in suits we were a bit concerned. However, it is still India, so we had a nice meal of chicken and lamb for several hundred rupees. We got to hear some more expat scoops, including that there's a suburb of Bangalore that looks just like Irvine!

Last night we went to our first Indian party, which was a wedding celebration for the son of one of Gilles' colleagues. It was fun to see all the women in their silk sarees and to chat with the scientists. We spoke with Gilles' advisor's wife, who told us all about the language difficulties in Bangalore. I am learning about them on my own as I try to read the bus maps.

In other news, I have still heard nothing from the Fulbright people about my research clearance, so my film is still on hold. I will probably start my research soon on my own, as that will help me to clarify things. I am realizing that the settling down period is ending here in India, and it's time to get to work. Gilles has already applied for his post-doc for next year! You know, when I was ten or eleven I remember my parents telling me that time would go by much faster when I got older, and I would think to myself, "well, I'm not forty yet. They were saying I was going to wake up one day and be forty, and I'm not!" Instead I woke up 28. And November seems to be getting shorter and shorter every year.