Weekends in Chennai

Last weekend was a three day weekend for us, as Diwali was on Friday and a holiday at work. While the locals enjoyed their firecrackers and meals with family, Mr R and I spent a quiet day at home reading, cooking, and sleeping. We are learning to cook with dried, rather than canned, beans and have decided it’s time to make our own salsa. Spaghetti sauce is next. Then I’m thinking about making baked beans (remember, no meaningful or affordable source of canned/packaged foods here) but have no idea what the ingredients will be and if I can find them. I think I can get molasses reasonably.

Saturday our driver took us to a bird sanctuary about an hour southwest of our house. It was a big wetland brimming with pelicans, egrets, cormorants, and other big water birds. We discovered we are better at admiring them than identifying them. We had the book but I got a headache trying to peer through the binoculars to see marks to help me identify them in our bird book.

There was also a family of monkeys there, including a sweet little guy and his mom. I got close enough for photos but then scooted away in case they got mean. The big guy was probably 10-13 pounds. Oh, and we saw a gargantuan millipede.

But the oddest part of our visit was the reaction people had to us. There was the usual staring (have I mentioned that before? It was freaky at first, and it still pissed me off sometimes, but we’re sort of used to it by now), but we had many people grinning and trying out their English on us. “I am pleased to meet you.” One man ran after Mr R, “Boss, boss, my daughter wants to talk to you.” It was funny, because her parent’s English was great but maybe she doesn’t see Westerners often herself. We had our photos taken with a few groups, and one family was thrilled to use our binoculars (the only pair we saw in use there).

So after our brief bit of fame we were off. It was before noon, so we went to Pondicherry. This is a town on the Bay of Bengal south of Chennai. It is famous around here for being a French territory. And even more famous among the expats for having more than one brand of beer in the shops and no liquor taxes. We had lunch, stopped at a hotel and had a drink (not cheap), and called it a day.

Sunday has become our “workout and brunch” day at the Asiana hotel. Today we added in massages, had the place to ourselves due to the cyclone (really, it wouldn’t even warrant a storm warning in Michigan), then headed to our dark house.

Some small notes:

Pool is out of commission. There was a leak in the works so they dug up the patio to fix the leak, drained the pool, cleaned it, refilled it, and realized the leak is still there. Not sure what’s next but it turns out I miss it.

When they sew clothes they call it “stitch”, as in “I sent my clothes to be stitched”.

There are big sections of pipe along the side of the road that leads to our street (in prep for what looks like a major project). The goats take shelter in them and climb on them.

The temp dropped into the low 70’s (I’m guessing) the other morning. It was lovely.

Sad news: the big gecko who lived in the light fixture over our door was eaten by a large bird of prey. This happened just a few days after the caretaker told me he’s lived there for 6 years. Mom, Mr R and I were in the pool and they saw the bird swoop in from across our yard, grab the gecko off the wall, and swoop away. We had some hope when our caretaker checked and said he was still in the light fixture. But his telltale poop has not shown up on our doorstop so I’m sure he was the one taken.

Ms S is due here in two days. We are going to visit the north of India so I should have good stories and photos to share with you in a few weeks.