It becomes progressively more difficult to update this blog as more time elapses since the last entry and it becomes progressively more difficult to summarize my experiences in a pithy fashion. However, I do have a bunch of entries drafted and not posted, so perhaps I’ll just scorn chronology and just post them in a jumbled order.
My life is pretty much the same: working around the clock, trying to eke out a little time to do graduate school applications, and wasting too much of that on television when I’m too tired to think at the end of the day. My lack of deviation from that pattern really struck me yesterday, when I decided to check up on washingtonpost.com, and thought to myself, “Wait, WHAT? There was an election in the US? Huh. Interesting.” However, you may be happy to know that I’m keeping up with the important stuff, like what Priyanka Chopra (huge Bollywood star) had for lunch the other day. Can’t keep up with everything: gotta prioritize what’s important.
This week is Diwali, probably the biggest holiday in Northern India. It’s a festival of lights, and I have to say, Delhi has outdone any Christmas decorations I’ve ever seen. The lack of regulation of the fireworks market also means that Diwali absolutely owns the Fourth of July: for the last three hours, no more than 15 seconds has elapsed without some firework going off near my apartment. And it has been going on for pretty much the last week: while everyone around me seems to be used to it, I keep looking like an idiot as I jump at the nearby sounds. A couple of kids have followed me around and kept setting them off when they saw how I jumped, which was kind of funny, but may have lost me a little respect in the eyes of my staff…
For Diwali, we decided to give our staff a few days off, and set up a picnic for our senior level personnel and office staff (about 20 people). It turned out to be a great deal of fun, with an especially useful effect: having interacted with them in a social context, I have much less desire to kill/scream at those who often lead to rapid spikes in my blood pressure. Because only guys showed up, it turned into a male-oriented sports day, with Frisbee dodge ball and a couple of similar games. At times, it was a little weird: I got picked first for teams each time and ended up winning dodge ball, after about 20 minutes of them unsuccessfully trying to hit me with the Frisbee*. I am not sure whether that is because they didn’t want to hit their boss or because they are an extremely unathletic group, but am hoping it is the latter; at the least, they seemed to demonstrate a strong desire to get me once I started a little taunting. Now my calves are sore, but it was some of the most fun I’d had in weeks. All in all, a happy start to Diwali that I hope to continue with fireworks tomorrow!
*all credit for this goes to TJ wrestling and the many hours of dodgeball we played after practice
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