Law of Averages

Some things happen so super quick it takes you by surprise and other things take forever & ever so following the law of averages it all evens out to be generally good service here in India.

Most events of the day are blog worthy as we navigate highly amusing situations and varying levels of frustration. Last night I rang Reception to ask for two tea towels for plates and promptly four plates arrived : ) they came back with 2 dinner napkins oh well they will do.

This morning we are waiting to go back to the police station to complete our FRRO application again. Izzie and I went last Thursday armed with a huge pile of paperwork & enough snacks to last a week only to be turned away after 2 hours of faffing cause DP had registered in central Mumbai rather than Navi Mumbai so he needed to get transferred to the correct place before we could make our applications. Fingers crossed we get out in under 4 hours with our new little blue registration books. (PS 6 days later we are still waiting for FRRO to be completed)

I have too many stories to tell so I shall just list a few quickly...

• I looked across the lawn and saw a bunch of ladies sitting & chatting ... on closer inspection they were manicuring the lawn with their bare hands & scissors!
• A lad at the hotel is cleaning our car everyday this week for pocket money (300 INR per week) Danny saw him washing the giant 4WD with a 500ml cup of water and a hankie.
• I busted the housekeeping guy cutting his finger nails with DP's nail clippers. (I hope DP is not reading this else he will go into toxic shock like the time he found out our UK cleaner was wearing his slippers ...Don't worry DP I disinfected them and boiled them for an hour). I wonder if the men have been having facials with my beauty products & shaving their faces with my lady shave also : )
• Izzie is such a novelty everyone loves her blond hair & blue eyes. We are thinking about charging for photos.
• A guy at DP's work was showing his colleagues some photos of a white lady and a blond baby that he took at the local mall and one of the guys said "Hey! That's the bosses wife!" Small town Mumbai - there is 16,000 people at DP's workplace.
• DP had his 2 seconds of fame today when he was filmed for the Indian news channel touching the Cricket World Cup.
• We were having a casual conversation about installing a security door at our new apartment and less than 2 minutes later a man arrived and measured the door out of no where.  The walls have ears!
• Every 6 months the car has to have a PUC (Pollution under Control) Certificate. Our driver was super worried about not having it and we looked around to see the smoky fires, trucks bellowing smoke and chemical plants 4 blocks away ... well at least it's a start India.
• DP now has a working phone but it has taken 4 weeks, 5 phones and 3 networks to actually get voice mail, international dialling and roaming all working at once but it still gets block every couple of days for random reasons.
• Kitchen cupboards are not a standard requirement in ones apartment???
• DP has brought his 3rd BBQ in as many countries since leaving Oz 5 years ago
• DP's friend Mukesh also nicknamed "Google Boy India" or "The Sourceor" has been amazing & looked after us like a brother - we ask and it appears.  He managed to locate some prime beef fillet and brought over the huge 1kg lump. It cost him 200 INR (2.75 quid or $4.35 AUD) for what would have cost at least 50 quid at the St Margaret's butcher. The BBQ boy is now beaming towards Mecca. 
• The washing disappears every morning at 9.30am and comes back freshly washed & ironed at 5pm. However it appears to shrink, fade & lose essential fastening components on each occasion.
• I was conducting an interview for a cook/cleaner yesterday. We sat down to begin and all six tradesmen in the apartment stopped work and gathered around to listen.
• One guy was cleaning the kitchen tiles with a toothbrush (Not DP's hopefully!) and two guys were supervising and telling him he was missing bits. 
• I tried to get the hotel kitchen to cooks some Izzie allergy friendly food ... DP was about to send out the search party after 45 minutes and 5 men later we agreed that they would cook chicken fried rice phew!
• Our driver likes to listen & sing to Hindi devotional songs. Every time he gets out of the car Izzie says in a very loud voice "turn off that music I don't like it!"
• After a few beverages at the Taj; DP was given a lecture from the driver about spirituality and how that booze is not the answer and he must meditate to relax. Ten minutes later DP woke himself up snoring (the meditation must have worked : )
• The IPod docking station has taken on a life of its own and if we accidentally leave it on it will blast out a random tune from the Grease musical somewhere between 1 and 4am
• The weather is currently 32oC during the day and about 22oC overnight - this is winter. Apparently the pool is not getting cleaned because it's too cold to swim and people are walking to work with their beanies & jackets on.
• Health & Safety where do I start?! The playground at the Hotel obviously hasn't had children playing in it since 1953.  We narrowly escaped A&E when Izzie and the large wooden Seesaw fell to the ground. Next day we were at a furniture expo and Izzie was testing out an outdoor swing which somehow fell 5ft and landed on my foot - Iz was fine thankfully. Then there is the everyday life happening around us with the families of four on a motorbike with no helmets, large gaping holes in the footpath with no barriers or signs and bamboo scaffolding & no safety harness.
• DP lost his dinner tonight cause he though he found the chef's finger nail in his Szechuan Chicken. Who would have thought he was a farmers son?!
• Indian's seem to love paperwork and the more the better. I am so over writing my personal details in triplicate.
• I put on 2kg in the first week and promptly lost it in 24 hours after a meal from a restaurant ironically called "Vicious Circle"
• I popped over to reception to ask for a can opener but they had never heard of such a contraption.  Out came a very large and blunt knife and they proceed to hack at the can until open.

DP and I have cried with laughter as we tried to remember all the funny things that have happened over the last 2.5 weeks. I can't begin to imagine the stories we will have after 2.5 years - bring it on India!