7.8.2005

Dear Family and Friends,

As I am sitting here typing this email at the office in the dark (the power is out), it reminded me to say how grateful we are for our back up generator in our apartment complex, the power went out at least 5 times yesterday. It reminds me of life in Mexico, I remember studying for finals by candlelight because the power would go out so often.
This solves a mystery for us. We thought our washing machine was broken, it would randomly stop on certain cycles either leaving our clothes soapy or soaking wet. We couldn’t figure it out, until yesterday we realized that it would stop mid cycle when the power would go out then it wouldn’t start again. Mystery solved!

Friday we went to a party at our friend Subir’s house. Yum, Yum, Yummy! Lot’s of great foods, especially meats. We had wild boar, goat intestines (I didn’t try that one), some chicken, and miscellaneous sausages. We also experienced a new spiced rum called “Old Monk” very nice. Claire made friends with Shiv’s (another co-worker) son, Piyush. He is about 3 years old and she had a blast getting chased around by him. She was up 3 hours past her bed time at this party, so she was a little delirious. She also gave him forehead kisses, and he would promptly “wipe them off.” (See recently uploaded pictures to the website.)

Sunday 3 kids came up to us at church and asked what Claire’s name was. I said Claire, and then they ran off. They came back 5 minutes later and wanted to know if her name was “Clear.” (Her name is a difficult one here) Then they asked if she was a boy or a girl (this is a common question about Claire). We couldn’t understand for the longest time why people would ask if a girl dressed in pink was a girl or not. It’s quite obvious for us. Now we know that she doesn’t have the cultural gender identifiers, Bindi, Anklet, Earrings, Bangles, etc. for a girl. The color of clothes has no bearing on gender here. Now we know! Unfortunately she won’t keep her anklets on, so we are going to try bangles and see if that works. Saturday a friend put a bindi on her and she was ok with that, so we might try that too. I’m just not up for piercing her ears at this age.

Interesting experience:
Last Saturday night as our driver was leaving to go home, he asked Clay what time he should be at our flat Sunday morning. Clay said 7:30am, he hesitated for a moment, then said, “yes sir” and left. Clay and I both looked at each other thinking he wasn’t ok with that, but didn’t say anything, so we assumed all was good.
Sunday morning at 8:15, there was still no sign of Shah. He came up around 8:30am, and we left. He didn’t say anything about being late all day. Sunday night as he was leaving Clay told him next Sunday, when he says 7:30am he means 7:30am. Shah said he left his house at 6:30am, but there were no autos (taxis) running at that hour, so he had to walk the whole way to our apartment (6-7 kilometers), which is why it took him 2 hours to get there. Clay said, “You have to tell me the next time there is something you know that I don’t” (like the fact that autos aren’t available that early on a Sunday.) He said, “But sir, how can I?”
This is a perfect example of how employees will never say, “no” to an employer. We are learning, slowly, but surely.

Claire’s Corner:
Claire got a new pink car with a horn on Saturday (birthday present from Grandma Clyde). It’s her most favorite toy right now, check out the pictures.

She also experienced her first ear infection and her first trip to the doctor’s office in India. All in all it was a pretty good experience. Definitely no HIPPA laws here, they gave me a piece of paper to fill out about Claire, basic information, but they gave me some guy’s medical chart (instead of a clipboard or a book) as something hard to write on. Wow, can we say law suit in the US?
Anyhoo, it was very clean and we got in on time. Actually I called at 9:00 to get an appointment at 11:00, but Claire was still napping at 10:30 and I didn’t want to wake her up since she wasn’t feeling well, so I called back and was able to reschedule at 12:00. We were in with the doctor by 12:05. He was a very nice man, Dr. Swaroop. He was trained in the UK and has been back in India for 6-7 years practicing here. Claire did NOT want him to look in her ears.
The doctor’s visit cost 250 rupees (about $6), he prescribed amoxicillin for 7 days and some cream for her nasty diaper rash, the total pharmacy bill was 227 rupees (about $5). The amoxicillin came in a powder form and we had to mix it with water and make the solution ourselves. Luckily it has a citrus flavor so Claire doesn’t fight it too much.

Be sure to check out the photo album again, it’s been updated with a 3rd Album.
Go to http://www.clubphoto.com/
In the field in the middle of the page type Clay’s personal email address:
claytman@excite.com