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 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.

Day 9, Saturday, The Mozzy Net, Finding a Transformer

Tonight there were more mosquitoes than I'd seen before. While I was working on my computer, one flew across my field of vision and I made my first mosquitoe kill. There was a drop of blood splattered between my hands - this particular mosquitoe seemed to already be carrying someone's blood. Who's? My roommate's? A stray dog's?

My roommates seemed to not care, but I was grateful to have a mozzy net.

I setup the mozzie net Thursday night, and it feels reassuring to be able to get into it at night.

After I get out of bed in the morning, sunlight begins to beat down upon the net, and I drape a sheet over it to prolong the life of the nylon. At least that's the intention...the directions said to keep it out of direct sunlight.

The three of us stayed up playing cards. They taught me "three cards" or what sounds like "tem-pati" in Hindi. In that game, each player gets a hand, makes some bets, and shows their cards. The rules of which hand beats what hand resemble poker hands. But Three Card isn't as exciting as poker. So, we learned poker and played a variation of texas hold 'em. Unfortunately, I didn't remember the rules that well, so we played under some strange rules instead of the correct rules.

I bought a transformer from MK Retail, and it worked. It was a 220/240 V to 110/120 V converter. All appliance transformers indicate the voltages and hertz of AC current that they accept, and my electric shaver from the United States required 120 V. It only drew 20 watts of power, and that was precisely the wattage supplied by the voltage converter.

Earlier today, I went out and got a loaf of whole wheat bread. It was quite healthy; a ratio of carb-to-simple-sugar of 4 (many whole wheat breads struggle to attain this ratio, and end up with a higher amount of simple sugar). The bread was baked and packaged here in Bangalore, and only costed about fifty cents. It was my first major purchase of food that I didn't plan to cook myself. I figured that since the bread was baked, the baking process would have killed most of the germs. I at a couple slices and waited for two hours to see what occured. Nothing (well, nothing but tastiness). I devoured most of what was left during the evening.

Day 7, Thursday, Programming Work Begins

Dad (via his friends at work) has pointed out that there are some cases of Dengue running around. I believe that Dengue is a problem, but it is difficult to know whether one should be more worried than normal. A lot of the national Indian media is yellow journalism; its like the local nightly television news in the United States.

Regardless, mosquitoes have always been a problem here, and I was warned about Dengue and Malaria by the CDC and IndiaMike. My room has a fan and repellant, I always wear longsleeve shirts, and I don't go out unless its daylight, but, I haven't setup my mosquito net yet. I'll setup it up.


Today was a good day. Some firsts:

• Started computer programming (5 hours). Started a personal project, and competed in a programming contest.
• Didn't spend money today.
• Had at least three decent meals - oatmeal and an orange in the morning, veggies and two bananas for lunch, and chicpeas and rice for dinner.
• My first week here will be complete in a few hours.

My "office" is better than the one I had in the states, in the sense that I have a window that recieves sunlight during the day. I am ashamed to admit it, but I think this raises my moral as I work.

Got my final photos back from GK Vale; they're a little blurry but they should work. I went to ask about my club membership in the complex; it's Rs. 200 per month ( $4.08), starting at the beginning of the month (i.e. they won't pro-rate the remainder of a month for me). I'll probably pay the 200 rupees for July, even though there aren't many days left.

Day 4, Monday, Slept and Drank Water

Eager to fight off a sore throat, I spent most of the day sleeping and drinking water. I didn't go out.

Day 3, Sunday, Learning at the Market

I felt a little stalled this morning, but I recovered much quicker than yesterday morning.

Up at 7am, cooked breakfast, dumped last night's boiled water into my water bottles, and created this blog.

Went to the market to buy carrots. A dark, fat, sun-beaten man tried to cut in front of me, having only a few bottles of pop to buy (myself, I had just a bag of carrots). I stubbornly held my place in the queue, but the woman behind me with a cart full of vegetables let him cut in front, and without conversation. But, when it was my turn to purchase, the cashier gave me a funny look, denoting that I needed to go weigh my bag of carrots. I half-jokingly said "one-kay-gee" (1 kilogram). She smiled, shook her head no, and said "weight!". Then, the queue-cutter got vocal and pointed me in the direction of the...weighing procedure.

I learned that I need to have my raw food weighed and labelled before going to the checkout counter. The "weighers" are workers with lightning-quick dexterity; a girl snatched my bag of carrots, fluttered fingers over keys, and sealed the bag with a label. All without my eyes being able to follow.

Most people shop on the weekend, and they spend Rs. 1100 - Rs. 1400 ($22 - $24 USD), so I feel foolish when I ring a mere Rs 22 ($0.50 USD). The cashiers look mildly surprised, too. They ask if I have 1-3 rupees to simplify my change, which I usually don't.

On the way home, crossed the street against oncoming motorcycles; my best street-crossing yet. Oncoming motorcycles move at 20-30 mph. Like a school of fish magically avoiding an obstacle, four drivers swam around me with grace. In this way, I crossed sooner than the native Indian behind me, who preferred to wait for a complete break in traffic.

I explored a bit; saw some conventional developing country sights. A cow laying down in a heap of trash. A dog asleep on a small mountain of dirt. As in Mexico, there are stray dogs everywhere. They all look like descendants of the same mutt. Each dog seems to reign over a block or two of territory. This is part of why Rabies is such a huge problem in India. I saw one dog with a couple newborn puppies - future strays. The streets hold plenty of trash for them to live off of.

While exploring, I found a store selling ON Whey supplements, which sharply got my attention. It is just as expensive as in the United States, though. Perhaps in a month or two, I can get some.

Toward the end of the day, my throat felt dry. I originally diagnosed this as excess salt in my drinking water, and tried to solve this problem. But, I realized that I was just getting sick. My current explanation is that my immune system is dealing with three things at the same time: undernourishment, slightly different strains of conventional germs, and mild stress. All of these things will improve over a matter of days. I slept longer and drank more water, and this has helped. An important victory is that my GI tract seems to be just fine so far.