14 Oct 2009
I had a really solid sleep. Woke up once but not for long.
Its amazing what the lads can put on their three wheeled bicycles. Today I saw a man and his step through motorbike on the passenger tray of a tricycle.
We went to one of the first malls in Asia today. Ashutosh wanted to show me where one of his advertisements was showing. I also needed to go for a bit of a walk. I have been sitting down for the last two days. I had a yoghurt icecream at the mall. It would seem that it’s a fairly new thing here. It was really nice. It had real fruit sprinkled on it.
After the mall visit we did a most curious thing. Ashutosh took me to a local river. (You get the impression that the river can flood in the right season). Now you may be wondering what’s so odd about going to a local river? Well, I’m not really sure what it was all about. Ashutosh said that he wanted to go and feed the fish. On the way, he had popped into a shop and come out with a bag full of saffron coloured something or other. Maybe bread crumbs? So when we got to the bridge we stopped on the side and walked down to the river’s flow. When we got there Ashutosh emptied the bag into the river and we walked back.
I get the impression that there was more to this than feeding fish, but Ashutosh wasn’t inclined to discuss it and I have no desire to interfere. What I did notice was that there were people on the bridge throwing things into the river. Looked like rubbish to me. But, when I think about the whole incidence and the fact that there is this amazing temple in the far distance, but still close to the river, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was some religious significance to the river.
The computers are nearly ready. We just have one more piece of software to install and that’s it. The computer lab is quite small. I hope we don’t have any beefy Indian lads on the course. They may have trouble getting down the stairs and into the room. Its going to get really close if we get ten students. I hope they like each other.
The offices are around four floors up in the central area of the city. To get there you can either take the lift or the stairs. If you take a lift, there is enough room for maybe two and the bell boy. The notion of a bell boy is rather gorgeous. I hope the poor lad doesn’t have to big an imagination, he’d go stark raving bonkers sitting in that lift all day. The students aren’t allowed to use the lift. So he doesn’t get the pleasure of their company. Still. One thing I have learnt over here is that unless you have a job, you don’t have a living. (No welfare) Thus you are on the street, or your family is extremely wealthy. So any job is better than no job at all. I counted six waiters in the dining room this morning. There was only one guest for a time. Me. Then about 6 or 7 other guests came in. I read in the newspaper that the government are considering changing the ‘poor’ level. This is an amount earned per month, a bit like our minimum wage, except there is no guarantee of a minimum wage here. The new ‘poor’ level is considered to be 2000 Rupies a month for rural and 2500 Rupies for town folk. Now you do the maths and say that one NZD is equal to 3.4 Rupies, you’ll get a bit of an idea what the poor level is. Since I have a currency calculator I’ll save you the bother. It about $73 a month.