…I’d have a lot of butterflies. Or something like that.
I’ve discovered why you don’t drink the tap water in India. Last Friday, I got back to the guest house rather late, so the night shift was there. They’re not quite as on the ball as the day shift. I asked for a bottle of water, as my Friday Night Adventures had left me quite parched. Normally, what they do is they go in the kitchen, and run the filter into a recycled 1 liter bottle. This time, he went back, and came out with a bottle of water, like what normally happens. It was warmer than what usually comes from the filter, but it was water, so I didn’t complain. I got back to my room and immediately chugged at least a quarter of that water…
…and noticed an odd smell about the water. Much like the odd smell of the water that comes from any given tap around here. Crap.
Over the weekend, I was sick enough to make it quite the effort to go out and eat at the guest house dining service, but I was well enough so that even after catching up on some work and some movies I brought with, I was going stir-crazy. I suppose it could have been worse; I’ve been slowly working my way up on street-vendor food here. The food at the guest house and the nicer restaurants I’ve eaten at are all pretty clean; if I haven’t been having the street vendor food, I most likely would have been completely unprepared for the tap water. That would have been Very Bad.
Other than that, I rather like it here. I believe myself to be the only white American here; I’ve made friends with an Englishman, a Frenchman, several Indians, an Argentinean, a Sri-Lankan Australian, an Israeli, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few. It’s exciting to feel like I’m very clearly the dumbest one here; dinner conversation has gone from advanced pure mathematics, to the economy, to climate change, to applications of nano-scale fuel cells (and the design problems going into them), to effects of climate change on India’s hydrological cycle, and, as usual, lots of hypothesis of how various factors (climate change, phase of the moon, etc) effect the results of cricket matches. “Your favorite team sucking” is very clearly out of bounds here. I feel safer in India than I do back home, but I think an Indian would rather you disparage his/her mother instead of their national cricket team.
And *that* is the State of Matt in India.
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