It got me thinking about the differences between yoga classes here versus in the states. Here most of the students and teachers are male, in the USA most are female. Here the teacher's delivery is reminiscent of a calisthenics class, whereas in the USA classes are usually delivered with more yin than yang. The Indian students here are at about the same level as American students in Catherine's classes back home. They are not any more or less flexible or advanced.
Catherine has had some stomach pains on and off over the last several years, for which she had an endoscopy 5 years ago, with no big revelations. In our walks near the neighborhood of the Institute we walked past the home office of a gastroenterologist. The sign said "Endoscopy here with Doctor T. Ravishankar." She went in to get information and get the "feel" of the place, since she is still having problems. The cost was $1,000 rupees, or about $20. I think that her last endoscopy cost more than $2,000 back home. She got the endoscopy this morning, while I watched, and it was "interesting". The doctor uses an anesthetic spray into the back of her throat, then she swallows, thereby numbing her throat. In the states, they actually put her under anesthesia. She laid on her side while he snaked the scope down her throat, her esophagus, down through her stomach and into the upper part of the duodenum, while she fought the urge to gag. I watched the television display the whole time... a moist, pink corrugated tube. The doctor brought her right out and drew some pictures to show us what was wrong. He said that she had some inflamation due to H. Pylori.
We went to the same restaurant as the one I described in my post of yesterday, and I decided (as an experiment) to drink the water they poured out of stainless steel pitcher into my stainless steel cup. It tasted very good, just like the water out of my well back home. I must have drank 16 ounces, and had no bad after-effects.
I closely observed the other diners at the restaurant. They weren't tipping 15%, they were just leaving any coins that came with the change from their bill. For instance, on a 70 rupee tab, they might leave 2 - 5 rupees for a tip, or none at all.
I love this food. I'm not eating much, though, because I'm never hungry. Losing weight like crazy.
Catherine and I like to travel like this.... instead of taking a tour and seeing a bunch of sites. I feel like we're immersing ourselves in the culture by going to the Indian doctor, dentist, buying a SIM card for our mobile phone, doing yoga with the locals, doing our own laundry, etc. We're figuring out how people live here, what's different and what's the same.
I came across legal notices in the newspaper regarding people changing their names, and wondered how that worked. It wasn't women changing their last name when they get married. So I found the answer in this article on Wikipedia.
I was lying in bed last night listening to the ever-present honking, and decided to compute the probability of no horn honks in a one second interval. You'll be happy to know that it is under 1%, throughout the hours of 5 AM through midnight.
When they serve you coffee or chai here, you get it in a stainless steel cup, and that cup is sitting in a small shallow stainless steel bowl. Steel transmits heat really well, so you can burn your hand on the cup. The idea is to grasp it delicately by only the rim (which is not as hot), then pour the coffee back and forth between the cup and the bowl, until it's just the right temperature.
