Today was a good day

Today was good day.

At Total Mall, I remembered to have my groceries weighed before going to the checkout aisle. At the check out station, a woman cut in front of me without even asking, having only a couple items. I didn't blink - I happily permitted it. I bought pre-cut carrots, green beans, and cauliflower for $0.20. I also bought a few small potatoes for about $0.10 and a head of broccoli for $0.60. I paid using my Gift Card. I may begin violating loyalty to Food World and go to Total Mall more often. This amounted to 4 cups of vegitables.

It was lightly raining when I walked home. My Nike Fit DRY shirts stay dry.

I feel that living in a city saves time. I bet this is one reason that they are expensive, and why only the worlds' most effective people can afford to live in cities like New York, London, Tokyo, or Paris.

Slower pace of posts

No daily posts will be coming anymore; I have two planned for August, and I plan to add some details on my departure from Redlands, including my packing list. Possibly my Doctor visits.

Day 31, Sunday, Home

Today I woke up late around 1:30pm, walked into the livingroom to where my computer is, and mentally left India (or Earth) and spent the next twelve hours on the internet or in the memory of my computer.

I took a break to go to the market within the complex. We have a market called "manos" - I don't know if that's a possessive noun or what. Where I live, most of the food markets are not much larger than convenience stores or liquor stores in the United States. They have aisles and sections like an American supermarket, but the aisles are only a third as long. The meat and freezer sections may not exist. The produce section occupies a corner of the store. The checkout aisles hold two people in line at a time.

Many of the markets, electronics stores, or clothing stores have multiple floors despite having, or perhaps due to having, so little space. I visited a Gym called Chisel India that had a "Cardiac" floor, an "Aerobic" floor, a "Free weights" floor, and the "Reception" floor. A small spiral staircase connected them.

The market in our apartment complex is in the basement. Weaving your way among the parked cars, you can find the open door in the basement wall. It isn't under my "B block" apartment building, it's under "M" block, so I have to walk by several apartment buildings, cross the park, and finally walk a ramp underground into the basement. The basement has concrete beams that are less than six feet above the ground, so I bend down as I approach the entrance.

The "Chemist/Druggist", which is normally open right beside the market, was closed today.

Ankit asked me to get him some bread, and I've learned the type he likes. It is different from the kind I like. I also needed to order a 20 liter bottle of drinking water to be delivered to our room. I took a few moments to locate the bread. A man was having a conversation with the cashier despite having already purchased his goods. I could wait behind the man, but I took position to the side of him and plopped my items on the counter top. The cashier calculated my total on a calculator. I say that I don't need a bag - or "cover" as it is sometimes called - for my bread.

All the super markets do something to avoid giving out plastic bags. In Manos, they have a sign that says "Please protect our environment and reuse covers". At the Total Mall supermarket, they charge Rs. 1 to use biodegradable plastic bags. At Foodworld, they use biodegradable plastic bags by default. You can tell when the bags are biodegradable, because they have a very organic aroma.

I then asked for an order of water, delivered to B-32, my room. "--- --- pay?", the man mumbled. I only heard the word "pay" in what he asked me, but I knew that he was asking whether I would pay for the water with him, or when it was delivered. I point up toward the buildings above our heads, and I say "Can I pay when it is delivered?", and he nods his head.

"Okay, thank you" I said on my way out. He lowered his head back to whatever it is he does when he's not attending to a customer, meaning "okay".

For some reason, I felt more confident, comfortable, and "at home" during this entire interaction. Instead of escaping from the conversation, I waited patiently for it to finish. On days like this, I feel like I am at home. I am not surrounded by any degree of poverty in this place. Most of the tenants are wealthy enough to function. It feels comfortable.

I returned to my apartment and continued work at the computer.

Day 30, Saturday, Moving into Shashi's Room

Today is India's independence day, so the streets will be crowded with a lot of random celebrations. I will avoid going out to see them.

I got up a late, but went down to the gym anyway. In honor of the Holiday, there were some parents watching their kids going through some sort of...kid show.

My roommate Ankit is housing his girlfriend for the next two weeks. She flew into Bangalore last night, so I've moved out of that room and into Shashi's room. With the girlfriend over, there is some silliness going on. It seems that they will not be coming out much, and that they will be secluded in the bedroom for most hours of the day.

Moving in with Shashi was strange at first because the two of us had had very little rapport. One thing he and I both have in common is that we are very quiet. It is effortless to "be myself" in the sense that I can be quiet around him. We don't exchange many words. I feel comfortable sleeping in his room, though - more comfortable than I did in Ankit's room. I'm not sure why that is. When I get into my mosquito net, I often have a blanket thrown over the top, so I can't see or hear much. It's like sleeping in a coffin; it strongly promotes sleep.

Most of today, tomorrow, and likely Monday, will be consumed with attempts to rush as many updates as I can to my website(s). I am bitter, but I "don't have time" to work on studying. This is a violation to the rule in my philosophy about working on a diverse set of activities, and I will likely regret it very soon.

Day 29, Friday, Visiting ThoughtWorks' Bangalore Office; Meeting People

Yesterday before going into the city, I visited ThoughtWorks. This is a company that I've applied to twice in the past - once in 2006, and once in 2007. In 2006, I was not in a good mood, and I quit my interview process early when I found out I had a waiting offer at Advatech Pacific. By 2007, ThoughtWorks was looking for Rails developers and they rejected my lack of experience with it. My intention was to come to Bangalore with a job through them, but obviously that didn't happen. By coincidence, their sole office in Bangalore is also located within my complex. I didn't plan it this way, this just happened to be where I found Ankit. I introduced myself at the front desk and was told to have a seat. Phani Kumar, the recruiter, came to meet me. He chatted with me in an office that was separate from the main work area. It was very pleasant to meet him, and to see the ThoughtWorks open-plan office. I subscribe to the belief that an open-plan office is hard on concentration, but besides that, this is probably one of the best companies for me to work for in all of India. I need to generate income.

Today I sent my resume. This is the second resume that I have sent out since being here.

While working on the resume in the morning, the power went out twice. The first time it was out for about thirty minutes, and the second time I was too angry to wait to see when it would come back on. I went to run errands instead.

I went back to Nokia and returned the GSM cell phone that I bought last week. I will continue to live without a cell phone.

According to Ankit and according to my receipt, returning the phone was not really acceptable. When I took the phone back, they only gave me Rs. 700, while I paid Rs. 1990 for it. They also did this "off the record" - what they actually (told me that they) do is call a vendor who sells used cell phones, and ask him what he is charging for that type of phone. They pay me cash for it and then give it to him to sell. For all I know, this will be a street vendor in the middle of the city. They explained this to me in a friendly and patient manner.

For having an Indian phone number (to give to Pizza delivery people and what not), I will depend on a landline. Shashi has one. I had completely forgotten about landlines for awhile, but now that I remembered them, it is a relief.

I accept the loss as a careless purchase. I am not sure why I was so insistent on having a cell in the first place. I think I went out and bought one just so I could feel like I was "getting something done" - as if spending money on something counts as getting something done.

In the evening, I went to meet some people from the IndiaMike website. IndiaMike is a huge forum devoted to travelers around India. Two others showed up to the "meetup" - Anita and Sidhart.

Sidhart grew up in Dehli and now works in Hydrabad, but he had done tons of traveling throughout Northern India. He had also visited Europe for a little while. He had a knack for languages, and was familiar with about a dozen of them.

Anita grew up and lived in Bangalore. She had recently taken a year off of work to spend time traveling. She comes and goes every few weeks and organizes her schedule around spending time with her family. She also works with an NGO and had good ideas about how I could get involved.

If I do spend time volunteering, it will be a terrific opportunity for me to spend some time around kids. I will regard it as my first opportunity. She also said that it would be a great way to meet other people.

The three of us chatted for about an hour and a half. Midway through our conversation, we got some drinks. I ordered a hot chocolate. Ganesh, the barista, knew me by name. I had come in the day before to ask about the place, and before I left he asked "What is your good name?"

My good name...

Day 28, Thursday, Second Exploration of the City

Near lunchtime outside of the shopping complex, Lifestyle, on the corner of Victoria Road and Richmond Road. A larger version is available here. I used Photoshop's Photomerge tool to do this; you can see some of the merging defects in the photo.

Today I spent four and a half hours walking 12 miles (19km) near the center of the city. I've expanded the area of Bangalore that I know about. It is not that large of a city; half or maybe even less than half of the area of Los Angeles. This was the longest journey away from home that I've taken by myself so far; indeed it was the farthest I've ventured from home so far.

View Mike's Early India Locales in a larger map

I left at 10:30am and was desperately running out of energy until I fortunately found a market that sold dry, packaged food.

I visited a place that would repair pressure cookers, a Fedex dispatch office, a very large shopping center, a small mall, a small gym, the very busy Brigade road, Richmond Town, and MG road.

After getting home, I went to the gym and did some stretching for forty five minutes. I ordered a pizza, and spent time catching up on a few emails.

I took a lot of pictures, and I hope to share more of them soon.

Day 27, Wednesday, Programming

I'd felt that my programming was lagging behind a bit, so I spent the whole day on that.

It was extremely frustrating as my latency during the day to my server at Dreamhost was terrible.

Our bandwidth is supposed to be 256kbps, or 32kB/s. It seems decent at night. We can't watch YouTube or quickly download large files, but, we can do simple tasks like check email. I had thought about upgrading our connection to something faster, but I decided I couldn't afford it.

During today's work, it seemed terrible. It was the first time I thought of moving back home just so that I could have a working, functional, internet connection.

I spend almost all of my time in my apartment reading, cooking, writing, or writing code - there is no point in me being in a place where I can't afford internet services, yet require them for my project. It was a frustrating moment. I was going to write an email to Airtel's tech support, but I calmed down a bit, took a break, and tried to work with what I had. I manually downloaded some things in small pieces. I gave up trying to accomplish anything on the remote server, and waited until the evening, when my latency might improve, to work on the deployment problems.

By the time the day was over, I had solved all of the problems that I intended to solve when I started the day. I was happy. My application is now live at projectrick.mikedll.com. It doesn't seem to do anything yet, but the features are coming...

It is a working deployment of Ruby on Rails, version 2.2.2. My laptop also mirrors that environment and allows me to develop new features locally. I am use Git, which I just learned today, for version tracking. It keeps all versions synchronized. Syncplicity also creates backups of my files.

I was happy when I made a local change and saw it appear on the public website. The website is not dynamic yet, and it is featureless, but it is indeed serving both static and dynamic content. I am still writing basic specifications (in agreement with some leaders in today's software world, and in disagreement with others) for the first, basic, feature. I have gone through a couple redesign steps already while just writing the spec, as the former predicts I will, so I think I have saved myself some time.

I turned in at 11:30pm. Tomorrow I am thinking of taking a Holiday and going out and doing some other random tasks. I am behind on some of these random tasks. We'll see.

Day 26, Tuesday, More peaceful studying

Studied biology for two and a half hours. Bio study is going well and becoming a habit. Today, I examined classical metabolism, which will include glycolysis, the krebs cycle, and the electron transport chain. I focused on glycolysis today. At some points, had a hard time concentration and got distracted by trying to make a Ruby program to "implement" a model of these metabolic processes.

Studied math for four hours. It's taken me 26 years to find out what a rational number is. I didn't know that the numerator and denominator of a rational number had to be integers. This came up in one of today's exercises. It also came up a couple months ago while reading Russell's History of Western Philosophy, and I began to wonder about it.

Worked on my programming project for 4 hours. Solved a problem that should've only taken me a little while... But at least I solved it.

Day 25, Monday, Peaceful day of work

Maintained the clean kitchen this morning - roach count remains down.

Saw Nayak arriving on his bike as I stepped out this morning.

Rashida stopped by and did a lot of laundry for us.

Cut my hair. When I cut my hair, I bend down toward my feet while keeping my legs straight. This stretches my hamstrings and calves, and helps me avoid getting hair all over my body. If I get hair on my body, it sticks to my body and stays there for a couple days. It's a way for me to do two things at the same time.

Sent out a resume to LingAbility. It's for a position as a tourism guide. I am late in responding to a July 22nd Ad, though, so that has hurt my chances.

Learned how to deploy my project on my webhost. I do not have a complete solution for my problem, however. Worked on my programming project for three hours; mostly fussed around with deploying Rails on Dreamhost, which is difficult. I am able to deploy some sample applications, but I'm struggling with static route of content.

Struggled with some blogging platform decisions.

Too tired at night, though, and didn't do the dishes last night, and there would be a small surge in the roach count the next day.

Day 24, Sunday, Going to Total Mall

I went to Total supermarket today. It is like Disneyland, there. After not having been there in over a week, it was great to see all the stuff they have lying around. They have everything; cooking utensils, trash cans, food, vegetables, healthy food, unhealthy food. They have cell phones.

On my way out, I had a light bulb moment. There was a huge advertisement by the checkout aisle, and it showed that you could get gift cards. I asked about it and got one for Rs. 500. This is a great tool, because I can afford to carry it instead of carrying my much more valuable credit card. If I lose it, it's not as big of a deal. It's also rechargeable. I love it. Since I still don't have a bank account, this is great. But even if I did have a bank account, I'd still love it. I wish the supermarkets had them in the United States. Maybe they do but I never bothered to ask?

I also forgot how busy Airport road is. Bangalore is a much busier place than I remember. I've spent so much time on 100 feet road and that's a lot quieter and Airport road.

I purchased more cleaning supplies - cleaning gloves, scrotchbrite scrubby thingies, steel scrubby thingies, a new tupperware to replace one that I ruined this morning, and other stuff. I got food, too. I finally got my first almonds - about six dollars. I got whole wheat pasta, too. The sugar to carb ratio on the whole wheat pasta is incredible.

Today I had Moong Dal, Pasta, and an orange. This will become a regular meal soon.

My workout in the gym this morning went well. I worked on legs; I had worked on my chest yesterday and I didn't want to work on my arms the day after, thinking that my arms would be tired by relation with my chest.

My energy level was high in the morning, and it stayed that way for hours after the workout.

Our maid returned today. She had been missing for a few days. She said her mom had an accident and got sick, or something. I don't know exactly what happened - Ankit gave me the gist of it.

Even though she wasn't here, we had done a good job cleaning things up. The roach count remains down; I only see several throughout the day now. I used to see over a couple dozen.

The beautiful sun is out among blue skies. So far, the weather has remained between 70 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit. When it rains, it clears the skies and calms down the city, like a reduced effect of how snow can silence a town.

Day 23, Saturday, A fast-paced morning and slow evening

Before leaving Redlands, I left a computer at my old job with a coworker. Last night, he called me with a question about it. It was about 1pm in the California afternoon when he called, or 1:30 am in the early Indian Saturday morning. He called my Skype online number. Skype recorded his voicemail, and emailed me to notify that I had one.

Half an hour later, I woke up in the middle of the night, as commonly happens. My iPod was with me inside my mosquitoe net. Out of bad habit, I checked my email on it, and saw the email from Skype. With the Skype application on my iPod, I checked my voicemail and listened to his message.

To respond, I fired up the device's Safari web browser, navigated to Gmail, and emailed him. After that I fell back asleep.

I woke up at 6am to my iPod's alarm after a solid seven hours of sleep. I got out of bed after five minutes of lying awake, and turned on my computer. Because I failed to write much yesterday, I immediately sent off a couple emails instead of going to the gym.

I made it to the gym at by 7. The security guard was tired and expressionless. At this hour, there were a few other men in the gym. Later around ten in the morning, women begin to show up and have it to themselves.

I warmed up, and worked on my back and chest. I can only do one pull up.

I have three mosquitoe bites from yesterday. While I talked to my grandmother, I was standing outside on our balcony, and a very hungry mosquitoe took three bites along different joints of my index finger, even as I tried to discourage it. It seems that when a mosquitoe wants to feed on me, it aggressively hovers toward my skin. It doesn't go away if I "shoo" at it, like a fly will.

I came back to my room, had breakfast, wrote some more, and showered. I took an hour to go to the market.

Having that done, I surfed the web for news for awhile. I examined new web services including The Sixty One for streaming music through the internet, Posterous as an extremely simple blogging tool, Picwing for automatically sending printed photos to loved ones, and Heroku for simplified hosting of rails applications.

I continued writing, and deployed Script.aculo.us on my homepage. Installation worked as advertised.

Tonight there was another programming contest, but I didn't participate. I should have.

Day 22, Friday, Being Lazy

I woke up at 6am and shuffled my way down to the gym. I wanted to come up with an exercise for my hip adductors. I didn't have one, like I do for the hip abductors. I am thinking of putting my foot into the hand grip of the cable machine, and pulling toward my center.

After the gym, I spent the rest of the day in my room just surfing the web. I had planned on doing a lot of writing, but the atmosphere of my room, for whatever reason, made me feel like doing nothing instead. This is a feeling I remember at home - just locking myself up and surfing the web. It's not just an avoidance of work; it's an avoidance of everything. I don't even want to get up to eat at these moments.

Tonight it started pouring around 8pm. I felt extremely sore from the gym.

Day 21, Thursday, Whey Protein Powder

On the day before I left the US, I called to have my credit cleared for Paris (for one day) and finally for all of India. Today I tried it out, and indeed it seems to be working. It will take a day or two for me to calculate the exchange rate that I am getting, and how much Mastercard is charging me.

Today's new food items:

• $2lb container of Optimum Nutrition's whey ( $40.00 - in the US this its $25)
• Red Kidney Beans

The Red Kidney beans are designed to provide a variety of protein, yet be different from chic peas.

The whey protein powder is a huge life-saver, though. I've been looking forward to getting it for days. It provides 24g of protein a day. This will be critical in the mornings, because I've been entirely missing a good source of protein in the mornings (other than the couple of grams that I get from Oatmeal, and that is incomplete).

I spent time in the evening working on my app for a little while, and reading my biology book.

Day 20, Wednesday, Overslept, but solved a problem

I dunno what happened but I had trouble falling asleep, which was dangerously similar to last week. Today was completely wasted as I tried to get back on schedule. On the bright side, I seem to have found a good way of getting back on schedule when I fall off of it. I've added this problem and its solution to my philosophy. It worked great for me today, which is a contrast from life in Redlands, where I was unable to get back on schedule for days at a time. Now, I can get back on schedule within a day.

Day 19, Tuesday, Failing at a Bank Account, Phone

I went to the most popular bank in India to open an account - ICICI bank. From what I can tell, it is a true national bank, with an unmatched coverage of services. They can afford to hire Shahrukh Khan as a spokesperson.

I walked, threw out the words "Account Opening, Opening Account, Open Account" when the greeter in the main lobby understood me and led me elsewhere. We went out the front door, made right, walked along the side of the building, entered a side door, and made our way to the second floor. This is exactly the type of detour that happened at HFDC bank.

Upon entering this new lobby, I was taken to a small corner desk. An attendant and what appeared to be a higher-ranking attendant were on either side of the desk. "She will help you" the other told me. I waited several moments as she got into position at the other side of the desk. I announced that I would like to explain my position, and then ask what she could do for me. She listened attentively as I stated my tourist visa status, lack of employment, and need to purchase daily living goods. She asked for my passport, and I gave the informal documents to "support" the fact that I was indeed living at a local address (an inked letter signed by my roommates, my gym membership card, and the lease agreement in my roommates' name).

She thought for a moment, and then went to get the superior - the same guy who had told me that she would help me. This man - tall and calm, and without a look of confusion - patiently explained to me how things would play out. He spoke with authority, and with respect, and with confidence - it was comforting, because many times I feel like the person explaining things to me doesn't really appreciate the subject matter. I found out:

1. I need a work visa or business visa; not a tourist visa.
2. Having one of those, I can go to the police commissioner and get a special document called a residential permit (I dimly recalled similar words on India's immigration website).
3. Without these, he predicted, it would be "very hard" to get a bank account on a tourist visa.

The bank seemed very strict about this - they need a specific kind of proof of where I live.

The phrase "address proof" in India seems to carry significance beyond its literal meaning, just as the phrase "ID" in the United States carries significance beyond its literal meaning. It is used for many purposes.

It is usually an official-looking letter from your company that states and defends the notion of where you live. Or, you and your flat owner can write a lease agreement on government-issued "bond paper", and sign it, then this also works. The Indian government mandates that banks, and others, complete a checklist before serving someone, and one of the big rules is that someone is required to have an identify proof ("ID") and an address proof.

My photocopy of my passport is my identity proof, but I don't have an address proof.

I've been passively trying to acquire that since I got here. If I was a student or an employee, then all this would be easier, but I am not.

I asked the confident man if he had any advice on how I should pay for daily living costs, like eating. He silently rolled his eyes away from me, and smiled a little bit, but he gave me a good recommendation - he said to use my ATM card or credit card.

I need a phone.

Originally, I wanted to avoid getting one, but there is an enormous amount of running around town that I need to do and it would help to have one [Update: 8/17/09 in about ten days, this would turn out to be a total lie to myself, a needless violation of my philosophy to keep my physical possessions to a minimum, and a waste of 1200 rupees]. Making calls to India via Skype is 10 cents per minute, which is affordable since I rarely make calls, but giving an Indian return number is not possible.

For international travel, one wants a GSM phone where one can easily insert and recharge a sim card. The GSM phone must be "unlocked", so that they accept sim cards beyond those from the original provider. In India, one can get pre-paid or post-paid sim card plan. Post-paid plans are cheaper, but they require a formal application process where you submit identification and an address proof. I suppose this is to reduce the risk that bills will go unpaid.

In the United States, GSM phones aren't that popular. Most people get a two-year contract with a single provider, and that's the end of it. But here, they are more popular. The person I spoke with at Nokia said that 90% of Indians most people use GSM phones.

A GSM phone works on certain frequencies, or bands, and every country uses one or two bands. The "bands"used by phones in India appear to be 900 and 1800. Thus many GSM phones in India are "dual-band". To get a GSM phone that will work anywhere in the world, you need a quad-band phone. One of the nicest ones that I could find is the Motorola RAZR2 V9. This is a modified version of the popular Razr phone that Verizon has worked with. But, it would be too expensive for me, and probably not available anyway.

There is a Nokia store nearby and Ankit recommended it, so I searched online for a decent Nokia phone. GSMArena allowed one to search by bandwidth and cost, so this quickly narrowed down my choices to about seven, each about $50. Thus far, my intuition is that there isn't much of a markup on cost in Indian electronics (although there are less bargains than in the US). I could attempt to purchase a quad-band phone, but carrying a $200 appliance with me, everywhere, in India, just seems like an unnecessary liability.

After some introspection, I decided that what I really need an Indian number more than I really need a cell phone. For example, when I give out contact information, I need a number to give to people. Whatever it makes ring is irrelevant. If I can route an Indian phone number to a voicemail or to my Skype, then that would be fine. But, phone numbers are not available for purchase in India, unless I want to pay tens of dollars per month to support a toll-free number. Skype Online Numbers are great, and they exist in 25 of the world's most developed countries, but they do not yet exist in India.

A curious side-effect of living here is that when its always crowded around me, and when there are plenty of hospitals, a sincere emergency seems more difficult to come up with.

Anyway. I skipped getting a quad-band GSM phone for now, and bought the cheapest dual-band phone in the Nokia store for about $40. It was an expensive purchase that was probably motivated by panic and disappointment, which in turn came from my failure at the ICICI bank.

After that, I walked home. I uncomfortable, because I had to use the restroom, but there are generally no public restrooms here. And even if a public restroom is nearby, I probably don't want to use it. I will be sharing it with some of the world's poorest people; people who don't have the luxury of worrying about hygiene.

The toilet in my home is the only toilet that I've used so far. If I happen to be in a nice restaurant (which I've yet to be in, due to costs) then I may be able to use something else.

So, when I got home, I was relieved.

Day 18, Monday, Trying to Clean

I waited for my roommates to go to bed, put on my iPod, and spent four hours on the start of a campaign to clean the kitchen. My hands are now greasy and wrinkled.

The kitchen sink has a single tub with a single facet. Out of this facet comes local, developing-world, room-temperature, tap water. Not even my native Indian roommates will drink it. Besides germs, this water is saturated with salt. One time I boiled this water, drank it, and waited fifteen minutes until I felt gross. Fortunately that was all that happened. While I think it would be interesting to drink it without boiling it, I don't want to see that experiment go a certain way. An alternative would be to view some of it under a microscope, but right now I don't have access to one of those.

Anyway the point is that there is no hot water in the kitchen. When I want to clean dishes with hot water, I get it from the bathroom. The bathroom has a hot water facet in addition to the normal facet. There is a spot where an electric water heater is expected to be placed. You actually do have to plug the water heater into a power outlet on the wall. The power outlet is controlled by a switch outside the bathroom.

With this stuff in place, I can retrieve a pot of hot water. I soak the day's dirty silverware in the pot for thirty minutes while I scrub the larger dishes. I keep my scrubbing sponge poised and ready, alternating between the detergent and the hot water.

In general, everything I've seen since landing has been dusty and dirty. My bedroom is probably one of the few areas that is relatively clean. It's possible to keep things clean, but its hard, and its easier to give up trying and adopt a "get in and get out" attitude instead. One stops keeping things, such as deoderant, in the bathroom. Instead, one gets into the bathroom, washes, and gets out. Then, one puts on some deodorant. But not in the bathroom, because the bathroom is dirty. Likewise, with the kitchen, one goes in to prepare food, but then one escapes and eats the food outside in a different room.

But what the kitchen has that no other room in the house has are cockroaches. These roaches aren't as big as one imagines. They look like what Wikipedia calls oriental roaches, or something like that. One thinks of "water bugs" upon seeing them. I've seen one dead roach of the larger variety at the bottom of my apartment complex, but I haven't seen a large one yet. I've only seen smaller ones.

Last week, a couple of the roaches climbed into my oatmeal while it cooked (and immediately died from the temperature of the boiling water), prompting me to make a new serving. I have to be watchful when I cook.

While, in theory, we have a maid who cleans, in practice, the kitchen is not clean. Rashida only comes once a day, in the mornings, and just like us, she has grown accustomed to working in a tolerably dirty kitchen. And there is just a lot of other stuff to do, like wash our clothes or sweep our floors, and she only has an hour or two per day.

In the afternoon, Naayak the cook prepares a meal and then gets out, leaving the cookware on the counter. In the evenings, my roommates pile their dirty dishes in the sink - usually after a rinse of cool water - and then they get out of the kitchen. The roaches will have several dark hours of a moist, fertile environment in which to drink water and gather food.

A female roach can eat, be fertlized, and feel secure enough to start a family. She'll lay an egg, and with enough time, a generation of over a dozen youngsters will pop out of the egg and continue the family lineage. Recently, I captured a female roach and her egg:

Tonight I killed about 10 roaches with poisonous spray, 5 with my hands, and 2 with my shoe. A couple of them escaped by running away from me. The floor collects carcases, which either I or Rashida wind up sweeping.

I've been trying to think of how to get rid of the roaches once and for all. I can "poison them all", find and destroy the eggs, starve them of nutrition, or call in a specialist. Of these options, I am trying to starve them of nutrition. I see about one roach per week scampering around in my bed room, but they do not settle there. I see one roach per day in the bathroom, but again, they don't settle in there. I've seen dozens of them in the kitchen - many of them young. They settle here.

I think the kitchen is providing them with nourishment, and so by cleaning (and drying) the kitchen, I hope to starve them. It will take days or even weeks to get a clean kitchen. It is humid, and there is no circulation in the kitchen, so things take a long time to dry. A fan might help with this, so perhaps I will buy one, and then I'll figure out a great place to put it so that it circulates more air. Or, maybe I can buy some cheap towels just for drying our dishes.

It also might be helpful to buy a new cupboard, and create more room to store dishes. We rarely clean the counter beside the sink because we store recently cleaned dishes on it - the counter is never clear. We don't seem to have space for everything. We some unused space in the cupboards, so perhaps I can try clearing some more space out in there.

I am trying to clean this flat.

Day 17, Sunday, Didn't do a damn thing

I had a lot of trouble sleeping but when I did sleep, was apparently exhausted. I dont think I accomplished anything today.

I did give myself a haircut, thought.

Day 16, Saturday, Starting at the Gym; Enjoying Buying Food

Excitement for me is a sale on oranges. The oranges were only Rs. 55 per kg - 30% down. They were on sale when I went food shopping. After my three-day torpor, it was nice to restock on now-familiar food items like oranges, bananas, and whole wheat bread. I got up early and while I am low on sleep, I seem to be back on a better schedule.

I also bought some brand new items:

• Brown rice (great source of complex carbs and protein!)
• Olive oil (great source of fat!)
• Body soap (I'm almost out!)

Today's diet:

• 1.5c oatmeal
• 2 bananas
• 2 oranges
• 4c gold basamati and chic peas, with 1Tbsp olive oil
• 1 loave of whole wheat bread

I missed my vegitables.

Since it was August 1st, I got my clubhouse card for 200 rupees. I used it to go to the "reading room" and to the gym. The reading room was stuffy and had a couple mosquitoes in it. There is no air circulation. I may not return to it.

The gym is small to medium size, and simple.There are several cardio machines, some free weights, a few leverage devices, and one of those elaborate all-in-one cable weight machines. But they are far from luxurious. All the weights are in kilograms, and I am used to pounds, so I will have to get used to that. I didn't realize that a kilogram was so much larger than a pound. It is a little dirty and the machines clearly show their age. I found a huge, old-fashion cockroach exploring the gym territory and converging on a lady who was doing her ab crunches. Interrupting her, I pushed it aside and gently squeezed it under my foot, but this was not pleasant. There is a hamstring exercise machine that is extremely painful because the machine scrapes one's calves. I don't know how they normally get this to work. My greatest sadness is that there is no squat machine. But, there are other ways that I can try to perform squats.

All this aside, it is thrilling to have some options to work with, and I look forward to my gym visits. It's just a 5 minute walk downstairs.

When I left California two and a half weeks ago, I weighed 138 lbs, and I was relatively strong. Indeed, during the Spring of 2009, I had been in some of the best shape of my life. I arrived here in great condition. As I walked around the city on my first few days, I could feel the strength in my legs gripping the ground, as an experienced dancer's legs should do, and as mine had been doing for a few months.

But I didn't eat enough, especially at first, as I struggled to eat only what I deemed healthy enough via my own preparation, and I struggled to locate foods that I could confidently prepare. All my muscle and fat have been consumed. My victory is that my GI tract has remained perfectly clean, but my loss is that I have been undernourished, and will have to regain my strength.