6 April 2008

Talk about thunder storms!! We had a whopper last night. The lightening was amazing. The sky was a dance of bolts crisscrossing in all directions. At one point the TV just turned to static. None of the channels worked. Fortunately I had just recently turned off the computer. So, now everywhere you go is mud instead of dust.
Today is sunny, a bit of breeze and not so many horns. Sunday is the one day in the week when most folk don’t go to work.
Well, I’ll be … I just saw a squirrel. It was scampering along the ledge just outside my window. I would not have expected to see a squirrel in India. I just checked on the world’s largest encyclopaedia. It called a palm squirrel. Apparently they also have a giant squirrel. It’s got a long black tail. Doesn’t seem as bushy as normal squirrels. The squirrel I saw was gorgeous.
Around 1 pm Khilandeep and his family arrived and we headed out of town to visit the Tiger Safari. He would have arrived a little earlier but the chairs arrived for the lab and he needed to supervise them being put into place. The trip was eventful. (Good and, … not so good) It was really lovely being with Khilandeep’s family. They are really lovely people. His dad is a retired army Captain. He still works for the military in some capacity. Not sure what. He wanted to tell me all about his army days and cars. Not necessarily in that order. There were a lot of jokes and plenty of laughter.
We were travelling on a flyover when we passed a car that had been left on the road with the back end jacked up and no back wheels. It was hilarious. Right in the middle of the fast lane. I don’t think it had been stolen. All the impressions were that it had broken down and was left part way through it being fixed.
When we got to the safari park, he told me about his days in Africa. It would seem that he and his wife spent about four years there. Not sure why. The animals we saw were mainly deer of some kind. We got on a bus that took us around the Tiger enclosure. That took all of about five minutes. We saw three Tigers shading under various bushes and one was in the tiger house. I think there may have been five in all. The tigers had a reasonably big enclosure. It may have been about three acres. Beautiful cats. The sad part was that I lost my sunglasses. As soon as I realised that I had lost them I retraced my steps. But by time I got back to where I am sure they fell to the ground, they were gone. Khilandeep’s father came and helped me try to find them. After the trip around the tiger enclosure, his mother and wife also retraced our steps. Still, never mind, I wasn’t about to let that spoil and otherwise wonderful day.
We had Chinese for lunch. (Its funny to go to a Chinese restaurant and not see a single Chinese face in the room.) We went to Khilandeep’s house for a relaxing coffee and chatted for a while about New Zealand and, … cars.
To finish the day Khilandeep took me home via work to have a look at the classroom. Wow. What a transformation. The chairs were there, the fans and air conditioning were working. The rooms were, … cleanish. (Still a lot of dust. Apparently a cleaner has been hired as a permanent staff member and will be hovering around all day. I’ve been told he’s a clean-a-holic.) We took some photographs. I may not be able to send them home. The email system I’m using doesn’t seem to be able to handle large attachments. I’ll bring them home with me at the end of the month.