Entry 698: Weather Insanity

We've had some bonkers weather the past few weeks -- probably the craziest I've ever experienced. As I mentioned in my last post, it was bitter cold a week ago, as we were in the aftermath of a couple of snowstorms that dumped almost a foot of powder on us. Then, this week it was unseasonably warm. Within six days, we went from a high in the mid-20s to a high in the low 70s. I've never been somewhere that snapped between temperatures that extreme that quickly. You could see the snow melting in real-time. It was like watching one of those nature documentaries where they film a wintry area for several months, and then speed up the tape so that the ice thaws and the flowers bloom in a few seconds, only nothing was sped up. I'm sure it's a sign of impending climate doom that we had June temperatures in January, but it was nice to go running outside--in shorts and a tee, no less.*

*The gym in my sister in-law's apartment complex, which she gave me a key to, has gotten weirdly crowded of late. For the first time ever, both of the operational treadmills were occupied when I got there, so I had to do the elliptical machine, which feels like a fake workout to me compared to the treadmill. Actually, it's not that weird. It was probably crowded because of the bad weather.

In other news, S is out of the country again for work, so I have the boys to myself. They've totally flipped on me, so that now Lil' S2 is the easy one and Lil' S1 is the difficult one. Well, Lil' S2 is still a bigger headache we he's home, but that's the beauty of it: He hangs out with his pals so much that he's either not here or he's here with a friend and they are occupying each other. Last night he had a sleepover at his little buddy's up the street, so I didn't have to deal with him at all at night, and then during the day, I took him to the park to play football with some other kids, which I don't mind, because I will either play with them, which is fun, or I'll just walk around and listen to my podcasts, get some steps in, and maybe even do some calisthenics.

But with Lil' S1, it's different because he's so loath to leave the house. I'm mean, he will if he has an activity, and he does do a decent amount of activities--he went to coding class yesterday, for instance--but he when he's home, he's just home. He doesn't seem to want to go anywhere or do anything, even with his friends.

I'm not sure why this is. There are two possible reasons I can see, either of which could be worrisome or could just be part of growing up today. The first is that he's not actually that close with his friends -- not in a bad way, just in a normal changing-of-relationship way. You know how you have people in your life that you like and you're fine hanging out with when circumstances put you in the same place, but you would never actually contact them to do something? Of course, you do -- this is probably the majority of adult friendships. Maybe that's how Lil' S1 is with his friends. They are friends mainly because they've been friends, but now things are changing, and it's not enough that they are all the same age and their parents get along, like it was when they were littler. It would make a lot of sense if this was the case. That's how friendships work. I didn't really find my ride-or-die BFFs until I was a few years older than Lil' S1 is now. So, maybe he'll make some new friends that he will take more initiative to hang out with when he gets a bit older. We will see.

The other possible reason is that he just likes being by himself. He has solitary interests and wants to pursue them in his spare time. This in and of itself is not necessarily a problem, but it has me concerned because I'm worried he's already getting sucked into the virtual vortex of inevitable despair. It's one thing if you just like doing things by yourself in your spare time, and it's part of an otherwise balanced and happy life. It's quite another if you are addicted to your devices and crave their ersatz company over real-life relationships. That, to me, seems like an almost guaranteed path to unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

It is hard, though. I understand because I have to fight the same urges. We all do. That's how society is structured now. Everything is too easy, and that makes it hard. It's so easy to live a lazy device-life and not have to bother with the annoyances that are other people. But it's making us all miserable. That's the thing about it. The verdict is in when it comes to this type of super online, device-oriented, shut-in, lifestyle: It's bad for us, and we don't even really like it, but we do it anyway. Most adults, with fully-formed prefrontal cortices, struggle to fight back against this. What chance do children have left to their own, um, devices?

So, when S gets back, we're going to have to seriously lay down the law with device usage. We've said this to each other before, but now we actually have to follow through with it. It's only going to get worse as he gets older and discovers how easy it is to see naked people on the internet (if he hasn't already). Can't wait for that to come down the pipeline. That will be fun to navigate. *Sigh.*

Until next time...

Note: I edited this entry because I thought my first version was too personal concerning Lil' S1. Not many people actually read this blog, and it's anonymous(ish), but still, my kids don't give me permission to write about them and don't even really know. So, their privacy is something I have to be mindful of going forward.

Entry 697: Snow And Water

When you think about it, snow is nothing but frozen water vapor.

We got hit with a couple of snowfalls here in DC this week-- nothing terrible, but legit storms. It looks like there's about nine inches on the apron of the trampoline in our backyard. The streets never got that bad. Contrary to what people might say,* DC seems to be pretty good about plowing the roads, especially if you live in the mayor's neighborhood like we do. They are super cautious when it comes to schools, though. If there is any new snow on the ground whatsoever, it's at least a late arrival -- we got one of those on Wednesday -- and often a closure. There was no school both Tuesday and Friday this past week. 

*Is there anything more ubiquitous than people complaining about city services? Every city is the worst-run municipality in the country according to the residents of that city.

I'm of two minds about snow days. On the one hand, they're super inconvenient, made much more so in recent years by Zoom culture. This is when a flex-schedule backfires. In the olden days, if the office was closed, not much was expected of you. Yeah, you might check some email or log into your laptop for a bit, but for the most part things were shut down. Now, for the vast majority of traditional office jobs, there's no difference between a snow day and a regular day. You're working from home in a business-casual top and PJ pants, regardless. We workers demanded this flexibility, and we mostly got it (thanks, Covid!), but we have to take the good with the bad. You don't have to sit in daily rush-hour traffic anymore, but, on rare occasions, you do have to keep your children occupied, while simultaneously putting in something that passes for a full day's work.

[Snow day view of the field with the big hill]

On the other hand, snow days are fun and make me happy. They bring people together. In our neighborhood, during snow days, everybody goes to one of two fields for sledding and frolicking. If you have small children, you go to the field with the small hill; if you have big children, you go to the field with the big hill. We are definitely a big hill family, so I took the boys there on Wednesday, and S took Lil' S1 there on Friday.* We live a little too far from the field to walk to it in the snow and cold (it makes for a lovely promenade on warm days), and they wanted to go at different times, so I spent the afternoon shuttling them back-and-forth and standing in the freezing cold, chatting with parents I kinda know. But it was really cool to see all the kids out and about. That's something I didn't get much of growing up. There were only a couple other kids in my neighborhood (nobody I was really tight with), so the spontaneous mass gatherings of childhood revelry were few and far between. I was always jealous when I'd go to a friend's house who lived in a "happening" part of town, and we could walk somewhere with decent odds of chancing upon some random classmates. 

*Lil' S2 was refusing to go for some reason. Perhaps because it was 25 degrees out, and he outgrew his boots, so he would have to wear sneakers, which fill with slush 20 minutes after going outside. Actually, that's a pretty good reason.

[Lil' S1 racing down the hill against some other kids, with me providing excited commentary. If you listen carefully, you can hear him proclaim "I win," after completely wiping out.] 

So, I'm not mad at DCPS for cancelling school for two days, even though it was not that difficult to get around either day. (As I said, the roads were almost completely clear, and everybody could have driven to school fairly easily.) What I'm mad at them about is their makeup day schedule. Instead of designating a few of the numerous off-days students have between now and the end of the year as makeup days (there's no school next Friday, for example), they tacked them on at the end of the year. What's more, school ends on a Monday, but the makeup days aren't until Thursday and Friday, so two days of snow effectively extend the school year a full week. I'm sure DCPS could give me reasons why it had to be that way -- the off-days are actually professional development days for the teachers or something like that -- but why can't you turn those into makeup days, and then make them up at the year's end, if need be. Staff would have to come in all the days either way. Also, I see at least two days on the schedule between now and June that are just marked as "no school for students or teachers." They aren't holidays or development days or parent-teacher conference days or anything. Why can't those be makeup days?

The thing is, it's DC, we get snow here fairly frequently. It's not some rare occurrence. It's about 50-50 we will have a snow day in a given school year. They need to have a better contingency plan that doesn't involve extending the school year a week for one or two makeup days. Now, one could argue that no matter how the schedule works, the school year has to be extended in some way to account for snow days. If you want to have built-in makeup days throughout the year, like I do, then you would have to push back the scheduled end date, thus extending the year. But that's okay. People would rather know up front.

Part of it is psychological. If you tell somebody they have to wait for something for an hour, they will be a little annoyed. If you tell them they have to wait for a half-hour, and then you add 25 minutes once the half-hour elapses, they are going to be really annoyed, even though they actually waited less time than in the former scenario. That's just how humans are, and parents are humans.

But part of it is practical. Parents have to make plans for their children for the summer -- camps, vacations, summer classes, etc. -- and it's difficult to do that if you don't have a set end date. But maybe I'm just particularly salty because the makeup days could actually mess up our summer plans this year. Waiting around those extra four days could force us to rearrange a bunch of things. We could always just skip the makeup days, which is probably what most parents would do,* but our kids already racked up a bunch of unexcused absences from our India trip. I don't want DCPS social services showing up at our door wondering why our kids are delinquents.     

*This is another point: If you have in-year makeup days, they will likely be treated as real days that actually advance the curriculum. If you have makeup days two days after the "final" day of school, they will likely be treated as bullshit goof-off days. My conspiracy theory is that the teachers' union intentionally pushed for it to be this way to make it easier on them. I'm sure this isn't actually true and is incredibly insulting to hardworking teachers across the city. But ever since they fought so hard to keep schools closed for Covid after vaccines were widely available and after it became clear kids were low risk and not great vectors for spreading the disease, this is where my mind goes first.

 

[Lil' S2 preparing to punt a football in the snow]

Anyway... Thursday was the only full day of school for the kids, and it turned out to be the most stressful one of the week. I woke up and turned on the faucet to brush my teeth, but no water came out. Instantly, I thought a pipe was frozen, which made me super nervous, as we had one freeze and burst at our old house, and it was a huge headache to get everything repaired and dried. But that turned out to not be the case. Something was wrong with the pipage on our street, and the water was turned off in several houses while they worked on it.

I was actually relieved -- to me, that's much better than a frozen pipe -- but it made S really anxious. Whenever our water or power goes outs or something like that, she worst-case-scenarios it and starts thinking about staying the night at her sister's or going to a hotel. I've learned to just not say anything and let her work through her disquietude* on her own. Nothing I say will help. If I agree with her then, then I just add fuel to the fire. If I disagree with her, then I invalidate her feelings (not my intention, but that's how she perceives it), which really makes her mad. So, I say nothing but think to myself: We could do that, or we could just wait a few hours until everything comes back on, as it almost always does.  

*I think this is the first time I've ever used this word. It's a great word -- way underutilized.

But this time S was totally right to be so worried -- well, maybe not totally right, but certainly not wrong. The issue turned out to be much bigger than just "the water went out for a few hours and now everything is back to normal." There was some sort of major leak in our neighborhood -- for the past few weeks we've seen sitting water in the street at the bottom of our hill, even on dry days -- and it apparently proved quite difficult to fix, if it's even fixed now. Since Thursday, our water status has intermittently fluctuate between totally off, a tiny trickle, low but tolerable, and normal. Right now it's normal, pressure-wise, but also undrinkable. We got numerous messages from DC Water (which prompted a very funny text chain between all our parent friends in the neighborhood) that we're in an area of the city -- a big area, containing probably a third of the total population -- that is under a "boil" advisory for the weekend. Do not drink the water without boiling it first. Awesome.

I did not expect to be more concerned with safe drinking water after we returned from India. But here we are.

Until next time...

Entry 696: Indian Christmas: Part III

I was quite ill for the last leg of our trip back in Bangalore. I had all the usual cold symptoms -- sore throat, cough, runny nose, cloudy head, lack of energy, etc. -- and they were all pretty bad. The sore throat was especially brutal. Had I been at home, I probably would have taken sick leave and sat on the couch all day, but since I was not at home, I powered through to the best of my ability. I didn't want to spend my last few days in India for -- what? three years, five years, ten years? who knows when we'll come back? -- cooped up in a hotel room. That would suck for me, and it would also be disappointing to everybody else. So, I heroically suffered (mostly) in silence and tried to carry on as if everything was fine.

Although, had I decided to hunker down in the hotel room, we would have been in the right place for it. Being bougie at heart, S booked us a really nice hotel for the last two nights of our trip. It was even nicer than the hotel in Mysore. In general, lodging is much cheaper in India than it is in the US (where we were, at least), which is how we could afford to stay in a luxury hotel. Well, that and S's parents paid for everything and kept giving us money. They have a bunch of rupees that they don't want to convert to dollars, because you never get a great exchange rate when you buy foreign cash, so they want to spend as much of it as possible in India. My father-in-law would sometimes stroll around town carrying a tote bag full of twined-wrapped bricks of bills. Some people keep their money in a bank; he keeps his in a sack. He would be the ideal target for a thief, but he's so unassuming, nobody would have any reason to think he's flushed with cash.

One of the places S's parents spent some their money is the jeweler. We were there for like two hours one afternoon. I was just tagging along and ended up getting a new wedding band out of it. I lost my original one about ten years and never got a replacement. There just always seemed to be something better to spend our money on. I'm arrogant in a lot of ways, but one way I'm definitely not arrogant, in fact I'm rather diffident, is when it comes to buying ostentatious things for myself, like jewelry. I never think I'm worth the cost.* But with my in-laws offering to foot the bill -- sure, why not?

*As with with the hotel, prices are significantly less for jewelry in Bangalore, India than what you would pay anywhere in the States. See, I feel compelled to say this. I have to make it known that nobody spent that much money on me.

Of course, I couldn't find anything that fit. I don't mean that I couldn't find anything I like that fit. I mean they literally did not have a single ring in the entire store (multiple stories!) that fit my stubby ring finger. I had to order one to be custom made. My in-laws will pick it up when it's ready and give it to me when we next visit them (probably this Spring). I was hesitant to go through with this -- what if they want to come back to the US early or my ring gets delayed or something? -- but they assured me it would be okay. So, okay.

The entire experience was kinda fun. They really fete you. They bring you coffee and tea and little sandwiches throughout the process. (They even have a childcare room.) I couldn't take full advantage of it, because I was feeling lousy and did not want to eat or drink much, but still it made feel important just to be offered it. Honestly, I mostly just sat in my chair silently while my in-laws did the talking. I put a mask on, primarily as to courtesy to everybody around me, but also because I felt more comfortable in it. It's easier to zone out wearing a mask, and if my nose starts dripping nobody can see it. It's such a shame masks got so politicized, as I think there is a time and a place for them. Like, if we had a norm that people wore good N95 masks in public when they were feeling ill, I think it would help prevent the spread of disease and keep us healthier. But, alas, that ship has sailed. We botched that one.

Anyway, I'm really running out steam with this miniseries of posts and not that much exciting happened our last few days -- you don't need to hear about us seeing Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom* or watching cricket at S's cousin's place -- so I'll just put up the rest of my pictures and call it a post.

*But here's my review: Completely vapid film. So dull and derivative, even by superhero movie standards. The filmmakers didn't even try to mask the lack of creativity. They openly ripped off other shows and movies. For example, in the opening scene you see a sea monster that opens it head just like a demogorgon in Stranger Things. Then, later, there is a scene at Jabba's Palace. They don't call it Jabba's Palace, of course, but it's Jabba's Palace. Even S, a Star Wars naif, noticed it.   

[View from the hotel in Mysore]

 

[Monkeys climbing around the hotel in Mysore]

[A different view from the hotel in Mysore]

[Two pics of a temple in Mysore]

 

[Lil' S2 and his second cousin swimming at the pool in their complex. Swim caps are required, so we had to go to the sporting goods store to buy one for Lil' S2.]

[View from the guest units at S's cousin's complex. I would frequently see cattle being herded on this patch of land.]

[View of a more rural part of Mysore near the above temple]

Until next time...

PS -- Here are links for Part I and Part II.             

Entry 695: Indian Christmas: Part II

We chartered a driver with a minibus to take us from Bangalore to Mysore (Mysuru) on the morning of December 22. It takes about two and a half hours to get there, and the departure time was a small point of contention. We couldn't check in to the hotel until 3pm, but S's mom still wanted to go early. She said that if we arrived in the afternoon, everybody would say they were tired and nobody would leave the hotel, and we would, in effect, lose a day in Mysore. She was probably right, but the rub was that some of us (e.g., me) didn't mind losing a day in Mysore. We had three other days there, and we had three preteen children with us. I wasn't worried about losing days; I was worried about keeping them occupied for the time we did have there. But when it comes to S's parents I try very hard to be deferential to their wishes. They ask for so little and give so much. It was a small concession to leave in the morning.

There were nine of us total in Mysore -- S and me and the boys, S's cousin and her son, and S's parents and her aunt. S's cousin's husband and their daughter couldn't make the trip because she had to take an important college-entrance exam, so they stayed behind for that. The exam was no joke, either. I saw the sample math problems, and it was stuff I certainly did not know as a 16-year-old high school student. I barely know it now, to be honest. Everybody was joking that I could help her with her studies, and I was like Give me a week to review the material first, and then we'll see. It's a bit disheartening to look at stuff that used to be cake for me and not know immediately how to do it, but it's been nearly 20 years since I've  done any higher-level pure math. You use it or lose it. I've definitely lost it -- for now. I'm confident that if I actually sat down and looked at it again, it would all come back to me very quickly. In fact, I'm hoping one of my boys gets really into math, so I have a reason to do it again. Left to my own devices, I don't know that I will ever get back into math again in any sort of in-depth manner. I have too many other interests and distractions.

The big attraction in Mysore is Mysore Palace, so we went there first. It was cool, but too damn crowded, and they herd you through the palace so quickly, it's difficult to really see anything. The big topic of discussion among our group is that S's grandfather -- or maybe great-grandfather -- has his picture in the palace somewhere. Nobody actually knows where though, and finding it on the fly was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, if you have men in kepis blowing whistles at you, telling you to move away from the haystack. We did not find it. We did get to take a ride in a horse-drawn carriage around the palace, however, which the kids got a kick out of.

[Mysore Palace]

 

 

[The crowd surrounding Mysore Palace]

With a trip to the palace under our belts, S's mom was content to go back to the hotel for the evening. It's a five-star hotel, meaning everything is super nice and convenient, until you actually need something, and then it's going to require multiple calls to the front desk and a 45-minute wait. That's kinda how it goes in India. Superficially, service is amazing -- there's somebody to greet you and bow to you and compliment you -- but underneath that veneer it can be difficult or slow to actually get what you want. For example, at breakfast at the hotel, getting a simple cup of coffee, a cappuccino, would take like 20 minutes. I got in the habit of ordering two at once, because I usually I wanted a second one and didn't have an hour to spare.

I think this is part of a broader cultural thing. My in-laws were telling me why they prefer to live in the US over India, and the main reason, surprisingly to me, had nothing to do with pollution or noise or crowd. It was that getting anything done in India -- passports, visas, property sales, etc. -- takes forever and is frustrating and expensive. There's level of corruption or incompetence or apathy in Indian bureaucracy that isn't present to the same extent in the US. The main reason S's parents were, and still are, in India is because they are trying to sell a condo and a plot of land they own there. Supposedly, they had a deal while we were there for the condo, but everyday there was a new snag and a new reason the closing date had to be pushed back. It was really frustrating for my father-in-law.

And this is one reason (of many) why Donald Trump is such a menace to society. He rallies his minions against American institutions, and American institutions, though obviously imperfect, work pretty well compared to a lot of other places in the world. But a big part of why they work is because people have faith and trust in them. Once that trust gets eroded, things turn to shit, and everybody gets cynical and in it for themselves, with no attention to the greater good, which causes things to erode further and go to shit even more. It's an institutional death-spiral.

Anyway...

Our first night in Mysore we ate at a traditional South Indian restaurant near the hotel. I wasn't super hungry (big lunch), so I just ordered some Masala puri, a very traditional snack (chaat) of the state of Karnataka. It was so effing hot. I mentioned some spicy chicken wings in my last entry, but this puri was like those wings rolled in chili powder and doused with hot sauce. S's cousin got the same thing, and even she -- somebody who grew up on this type of food -- said it was hot. (Her son had a few bites and started profusely sweating.) To my "credit," however, I ate the entire plate. My lips felt like they had been dipped in lava, but at least it gave me a good excuse to order a milkshake -- I had to cool my mouth off. What else was I to do?

The next few days in Mysore were spent shuttling from family member to family member. This is where S's mother grew up and most her family is still located. It was a challenge to keep the kids engaged (especially Lil' S2), but we distracted them with screens, and they also thought it was fun to ride the rickshaws. Sometimes the driver would let a kid sit up front with him and steer. It seemed wildly unsafe to me, but I just went with it. When in Rome...

[Lil' S2 driving us around]

S's family members all seem to be doing very well for themselves. One of her cousins is a doctor who practiced in the US for several years. Now he lives in Mysore with his sister and their aging parents. He took us out to eat at a really good (and renowned) dosa joint. I got a Masala dosa, and it was quite tasty, but I think my mother-in-law's are better. S's cousin has a picture on his phone of the fabled palace photo of S's grandfather (or great-grandfather), so I can verify its existence, even though I didn't see it first-hand.

Another one of S's cousins owns (or owned) some land containing a quarry with valuable minerals, so he's quite rich. He lives in an absolutely beautiful house with his wife and their recently betrothed son and daughter-in-law. The house is in a more rural part of the country, and the way I can describe it is on the show Succession, if the Roys go to a rural getaway, it looks like this house. Everything is new and nice, and it has a gorgeous backyard with a koi pond and a remote control waterfall. There's a rooftop garden with a big table for dining or playing board games (a favorite pastime of the family, apparently). The house even has an elevator in case you just don't feel like walking. Actually, it came in really handy for S's mom as she has a lot of trouble traversing stairs.

The family now owns an egg farm, so we went out to see it. I could have done without that trip -- the smell of farm gives me a headache -- but it did afford me the opportunity to drop my "Do the chickens have large talons?" joke on Lil' S1, so that was fun.

[My father-in-law at the egg farm]

The weirdest part of our Mysore leg came when we went to look at S's old house. For four years in the late '80s and early '90s, S's family moved to India and settled in Mysore. The plan was to stay there, but, as my father-in-law tells it, S and her sister (both middle-school-age) were relentless in badgering him and my mother-in-law to return to the States. Eventually, they relented and did just that.* I think of this every time I see S get frustrated with our kids for not wanting to do Indian things. Like mother, like son. Actually, that's the story of every child. No kid is into their roots. It's something you learn to appreciate later in life. 

*The plan was for the family to start a farm, but that fell through for some reason, which I'm sure also contributed to their decision to move back to the US. It's pretty hilarious now to think of S and her sister as farmers.

We just wanted to look at their old house from the outside, but when we got there, there was this old woman sitting on the walkway out front. S's parents started talking to her, and she turned out to be the 96-year-old grandmother of the woman who lived in the house, so she went inside and got the owner, and the owner not only invited us in, she gave us a tour of the house. She was unbelievably nice, letting a bunch of randos infiltrate her home for a half-hour. (Her college-age son was also there and very kind, himself.) She tried to make us lunch, but we said we had to go, so she blessed all the women, rubbing kumkuma, on their foreheads, and sent us on our way. It was kinda surreal.

[S's old street and her old house]

On the night of Christmas Eve, we went to see the lights on the palace, which is a thing they do there. It was so crowded, however, we couldn't get into the palace grounds, or even particularly close, so we just took rickshaws around the perimeter. I thought it was still really cool, but S's mom was disappointed. "Oh, this is nothing," she would reply every time I said something good about it. I think she really wanted to show-off the city's major attraction to us and didn't feel like our view from the rickshaw was doing the job. But it's one of those things, where if she just would've relaxed and let us all enjoy the show, we would have very much enjoyed it -- or at least I would have, anyway.

[The lights at Mysore Palace on Christmas Eve]

The next morning it seemed like it was going to be a lovely, if atypical Christmas day. The sun was shining; I was able to get in a decent jog at the hotel gym; and I arrived at the breakfast buffet just as they were replenishing the pancake bin with a new batch of hot, fresh cakes. Everything was coming up roses.  But then, S's aunt came down and told us that S's cousin was skipping breakfast and staying in bed because she was sick with a really bad sore throat. Immediately, I started thinking of the little irritation in the back of my throat. It was small, nearly imperceptible, the type of thing I'd feel if I slept with my mouth open and the fan on. Normally I wouldn't give it a second thought, but now that I knew somebody I had been in close proximity with was sick, it had me worried.

Alas, my worry was well-founded. Throughout the day, my condition progressively worsened, until I was forced to admit that I was indeed sick. It was some sort of brutal respiratory thing. It might even have been Covid -- I didn't take a test --  but I don't think so. I've had Covid twice, and I've had colds dozens of times, and it felt much more like a cold (albeit a really bad one) than it did Covid. Whatever it was, it laid me up but good. I was oozing snot and hacking up phlegm like some sort of disgusting snot-and-phlegm-producing machine. The quality of facial tissue is subpar in India, too. They don't have the nice, soft, lotion-infused Kleenex we have here in the States (at least not that I could find), so I was going through boxes of the stuff, rubbing my nose raw. I had few tissue travel packs from the US in my backpack, and I was rationing them out like they were sticks of butter in WWII.

Whenever I get sick like this, I know there is nothing that can really help me but time. I just have to wait it out. My t-cells will win in the end, but it's going to take a few days. There's no other way about it. I will take medicine, but it's for other people, not for me. S, for example, will give me stuff, Zyrtec or what not, and I know it's all bunk. If we actually had something that could cure the common cold, then we would have something that actually cured the common cold -- you know what I mean? But I take it anyway, just so that S can't hold it against me. She responds to me getting sick more with annoyance than sympathy, and so if I take her meds, then she can't say that I'm not trying to get better. Also, S's cousin offered to share her cough medicine with me, so I took it just to show I was grateful for the thought. It reminded me of being sick as a child, very Robitussin-y.

We left the day after Christmas to go back to Bangalore, with me in full-in "life is miserable" mode. S's dad was lamenting on my behalf that my ailment couldn't have delayed itself a few days, so that I could have been sick at home instead. But I'm not so sure I agree with that sentiment. One of my travel hot takes is that the best part of any vacation, no matter how good, is coming home. I think I would actually rather be sick the last few days of vacation than be sick the first few days after returning home. It's a tough call, though. It's a Political Gabfest-style conundrum.

Anyway, I'll wrap up this entire thing later with a Part III about our final leg in Bangalore.

Until next time...

Entry 694: Indian Christmas: Part I

India was a trip, literally and figuratively. It's a wonderful crush of humanity and fauna and vehicles. On the streets, people and livestock and automobiles commingle in a sort of structured chaos. It's madness, but it's delightful madness.

[Scene from a random Bangalore street.]

The flights there were long and uneventful. I watched Moneyball and The Godfather Part II on the plane -- two classics I had somehow never seen before. I enjoyed both quite a bit. We had a longish layover in Frankfurt, Germany, so we booked a hotel room in the airport, which allowed us to take showers and lay down for a bit. It was a nice respite, even though we had to juggle four people on a single twin bed. It was kinda pricey, so we only got one room, instead of two, but then they way undercharged us, for some reason, and it ended up only costing about $30, so that worked out nicely.

We left DC Thursday evening December 14, and right around midnight Saturday the 16th, we arrived in Bangalore. The official name is Bengaluru, but it seems like everybody who lives there calls it Bangalore. It's a huge tech hub -- the "Silicon Valley of India" -- so over the past few decades they've seen a lot of immigration from other countries and other parts of India. As a result, the traditional local language, Kannada, is becoming less prominent, in favor of Hindi and English, which are more widely spoken. There's been a push by the local government to retain the language -- for example, all business signage must contain a Kannada translation -- but I don't know if it's really working. It's hard to mandate such a thing. People are gonna talk how they're gonna talk.

For the first few nights, we stayed at a hotel across the street from S's cousin's apartment. It was a fine hotel -- pretty bare-bones, but inexpensive and a buffet breakfast was included. They also had good internet, a theme of our trip (the beauty of staying in a tech hub), so I was able to keep tabs on the NFL games being played in the middle of the night, while I was jet-lagged. I followed in real-time as Christian McCaffrey scored 46.70 points and led me to victory in the first round of my fantasy football playoffs.

The main problem with staying in the hotel is that we had to cross the street to get to S's cousin's place. That might not sound like a big deal, but there are basically no crosswalks and very few stoplights anywhere in Bangalore (or anywhere else I've been in India). Getting from one side of a major street to the other is like playing a real-life version of Frogger. When it was just me, it was no big deal -- I'm still spry enough to handle it -- but it was a bit nerve-wracking to shepherd the kids across. In general, it's really jarring at first to have vehicles drive so close to you as a pedestrian. But that's just how it is there, and you kinda get used to it. It reminds me of working construction on scaffolding. At first, it's pretty scary to be up so high, and then eventually you don't even really think about it.

We only stayed in the hotel two nights before moving to the guest units in S's cousin's complex. That was very nice, even though the rooms were essentially dorm rooms. We were completely doted on by everybody staying with S's cousin. In total there were seven people living in about an 800 sq. ft. apartment -- S's cousin and her husband, their 16-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son, and S's parents and her aunt. Every time we would go over there, we were offered food and coffee and a place to sit and relax. It was great. Also, S's cousin's son is about Lil' S2's age and really into sports, so they hit it off pretty well, even if Lil' S2 was frustrated nobody in the country cares about American football, his is newest obsession.*

*S blames this on me, but I'm like, I have two kids, one of them loves football and one of them doesn't, so... yeah. Plus, if I actually had that much influence on Lil' S2, he would be a Seahawks fan. But he's not. Much to my chagrin, he's a Cowboys fan. Before we left, we got him a Micah Parsons jersey as an early Christmas gift, and he's worn it just about everyday since.

[One of the places we went to that Lil' S1 loved and Lil' S2 said "sucked" was an animal sanctuary, where we saw emus, among many other interesting creatures. Lil' S1 knows so much about animals. He was answering all the guide's questions correctly. He even got her trick question: Which of the emu sexes lays the eggs, the male or female? Everybody else said male, but he said female, which is, of course, correct, by definition.]

Another good thing about staying in S's cousin's complex is that we had access to a gym. Being on such a weird sleep schedule, I was able to hit the treadmill at 6:00 am, while most everybody else was in bed. It was nice. Although, I was struggling to maintain any sort of decent pace. I had the treadmill set on 10 km/hr, which converts to about a 10-minute mile, well below my usual clip, and I couldn't keep up. I had to slow it down to a glorified walk. At first I thought it was just the travel, but that didn't make sense -- why would that make me lose all my cardio? I surmised that Bangalore must be at a higher altitude (it felt like the time I went for a hike in Boulder, Colorado), and sure enough, it's located on the Mysore Plateau over 3,000 feet above sea level. It all makes sense now.

The big excursion for the first leg of our trip was going to an entertainment complex called Loco Bear. They had trampolines and video games and bowling and stuff like that. We met like five of S's cousins* there, and they brought their spouses and kids, so we had a huge group. Go-carting was the main event. It was really fun, although it set a bad tone for the trip for Lil' S2, because he was too short to go, even though he was clearly taller than the line on the sign. For some reason, they still wouldn't let him go. He was really upset about it, and it started a trend where he would say everything we were doing "sucks." This bothered S quite a bit -- I think it hurt her feelings -- but I tried to put things into perspective. Imagine you're an 8-year-old, and your parents tell you that Christmas as you know it is canceled for year, and instead you have to travel to the other side of the globe to go somewhere you never signed off on in the first place. That's a tough ask.

*I'm using this term loosely. I think they were actually second-cousins or maybe cousins-once-removed. I'm not sure. It's difficult to keep your own family tree straight, let alone somebody else's.

One good thing that came about from Lil' S2 being such a wet blanket, however, is that it compelled Lil' S1 to go the other direction. Sensing the opportunity get one over on his brother, he would say everything we did that Lil' S2 didn't like was great. "Wasn't that just so much fun?" he would say in obvious earshot of his brother. It was sibling rivalry nonsense, but at least it was sibling rivalry nonsense that made things a little easier and more pleasant for S and me.

A few other activities we did while in Bangalore: saw Wonka, went shopping, went out to eat a bunch.

Somehow one day it ended up being just me, Lil' S1, and my father-in-law together, so we went to see Wonka. Buying the tickets turned out to be an adventure. We went to the box office at the theater, but we still had to buy the tickets using a mobile phone. I couldn't use my phone because you had to have an Indian number, so we had to use my father-in-law's Indian mobile phone. The problem with that is that he doesn't know how anything works on it, and he didn't even know what his number is. He had a ten-minute back-and-forth with the guy at the counter, trying to figure out how we could purchase the tickets. They finally got it settled, whereby the counter guy bought the tickets, my father-in-law gave him cash, and then the counter guy took a picture with my father-in-law's phone of his screen showing the sale. We then showed that picture to the person checking tickets to get into the theater. It was quite the ordeal, but we made it in.

The movie was pretty good. It was in "4-D," so the seats would shake and jostle during certain moments and fog and bubbles would come out in front of the screen. I would have preferred the usual 2-D experience, to be honest. I found the moving seat to just be annoying. Lil' S1 said he liked it though. It didn't hurt that he got a huge -- I mean truly massive -- piece of chocolate cake as his "movie snack." I was actually kinda trying to limit his junk food intake (this trip was bad for that), but that's impossible when a grandparent is around. They always cave.

Shopping in India is always tough for me because I'm way bigger than the average dude there. I mean, I'm bigger than the average dude here, and that sometimes makes finding my sizes challenging. But in India, it's way worse. Not too many people are above six feet and those that are typically aren't as buff-fat as me. A lot of stores don't carry XL size, and for certain brands even XL isn't big enough. All I wanted was a zip-up sweatshirt with zipper pockets for the flight home. (The one I wore on the way there has a hole in the pocket, as I discovered by losing Lil' S2's headphones. Thankfully, we found them.) I finally found one, but I had to go to like ten different stores. I wasn't being picky about style or color either;* I was just trying to find something big enough. I also got a few kurtas and a pair of those Indian drawstring pants, for occasions that call for such garb here in the States -- Diwali parties and whatnot.

*Well, that's not entirely true. I found something else that fit, but it was some race car brand, and it looked too 1970s European for my tastes.

The best part about being in Bangalore is that we had S's cousin and her husband (such nice people) to show us around and take us to various establishments. Dinner was rough because they eat later there (7:00pm is an early dinner), and we were fading early, but we rallied and went to a few great restaurants. My favorite place was a microbrewery with an excellent hefeweizen. I had three of them, which, come to think of it, was the only alcohol I had the entire time we were in India. We also got some chicken wings, which were delectable but absolutely lit my mouth on fire. Beer, spicy foods, India -- you might think my tummy was hurting later that night, but it wasn't. Amazingly and thankfully, I had no major gastrointestinal issues the entire trip.

I don't remember the name of the microbrewery, which is a shame, because they have such great names in India. The English is often a little off to the American ear, which makes them delightful. Here are a few good ones I made note of: Pothead, Meat & Eat, Rolls Rice Cafe, The Frozen Bottle, Time Zone, and my personal favorite, Munch Box. I didn't see that one this trip, but it's so funny, I still remember it from 13 years ago.

After six nights in Bangalore, we set out to Mysore. I'll get to that in Part II.

Until next time...

Entry 693: Jet-Lagged In The USA

We are back from India. We've been back for almost a week. I've been trying to find a moment to write a proper post about the trip, but I've been unable to do so. The problem is jet-lag. It's been absolutely killing me. Currently, it's 8:30 in the evening, and my eyelids feel like they're tethered to anvils. It's been like that all week. My body and brain just shut down at 8:00 pm, and I struggle to put together consecutive coherent thoughts, let alone write out a long blog entry. It's taking me like 15 minutes just to write this paragraph.

So, an India post is forthcoming, but it will likely have to wait until my night owl powers return.