Hehe. Betcha didn't think I'd ever get around to doing this, eh?
Well, I promised y'all and update about the things I'd experienced for my seemingly eternal (from this side of the see-saw, anyway) absence, so, here I am, updating. In an effort to make this a less intimidating read, I've broken this entry into five self-explanatory sections. So, anyways, kick back and grab a billy goat by the beard! We're about to get going!
The Incredible:
Me: Seriously. What were you expecting me to say? The trip had a few good parts to it, but nothing really stood out as "Incredible". Well, that is, unless you don't discount my near limitless patience with my family. During the time spent on this trip, I've become convinced that my home life, in effect, is some high-level being's sick, real life version of a crappy reality show. I swear. Someone in the Heavens must have been drunk off his ass when he decided that it'd be funny to put four people with four radically different types of personalities in the same family. Needless to say, it took a godly level of patience to not kill the rest of my family. That would have been bad, because Indian jails smell funny and frown on things like "sanitation" and "basic human rights".
Granted, this wouldn't have really affected me for long, since I've got enough money to bribe myself out (I kid you not. The legal system in Kerala is a joke.), but really, it's the principle of the thing.
*pats himself on the back*
Oh, and if that wasn't enough, I managed to beat Pokémon Emerald using only a Pelipper (a stupid bird that has a hard time attacking anything) and a Wobbuffet (a monster that can't attack anything, period). GO ME!
The Good:
Chocolate/Ice Cream: Gods, the chocolate and the ice cream here is in a word, magnificent. It really puts most thing you find here to shame. I'm not sure why this is exactly, but I would probably have to guess that it has something to do with both these things being luxury items. That, or it might have something to do with the bad taste the air there generally leaves in your mouth. Whatever the case might be, Indian chocolate get props from 'The Blash.
RAIN!: There was so much of it! And it was soooooooo pretty! Granted, it killed thousands and left many thousands homeless, all the while causing millions of dollars in assorted damages, but it was still fun to play in! *Squee*
The Wildlife: As breakdown inducing as it can be sometimes, there are definitely advantages to living in a tropical jungle. During my stay here this time around, I got to go hiking in a dense, tiger infested, jungle. While I didn't see any tigers, I still saw things ranging from wild elephants to birds that Cody or Carlos would have killed to see. Wootage.
Cricket: I'm generally not a sports person, but cricket tends to be the one sport that I usually enjoy watching/playing. While I didn't get to play any this time around (and I rarely do, since I'm really the only cricket fan in the family), I did get to watch a little bit. This is great, because American TV sucks and never plays any (to my knowledge). Watching the Indian team play disappoints me, though. They’re the epitomy of the words "wasted potential".
Gramma: Yes, she's old. And yes, she's crazy, and probably senile to boot. Despite the fact that she stuffed me with food and constantly barked nonsensensical orders at me during my stay there, it still felt kind of nice. You see, I'm probably her favorite person in the world, she's happiest when I'm around. That, and she takes all the niceness that she should be throwing at everyone else and hurls it all in my general direction. This drives the rest of my family nuts, but hey, I'm not complaining.
The Bad:
The (lack of my) Music: You know, it's not that I have anything against Indian music: I don't. It just isn't for me. With the exception of a small minority of songs, most of the stuff I hear is just so...mellow. By the end of my first week there, I was already missing my happy, bouncy, sugar coated love (Ooh! And my trance too! Can't forget that!). I thought I was going to explode with joy when I heard the peoples at a salon put some Aqua on. Hooray Aqua!
Mosquitoes: Gods, I hate these things. They were everywhere. I'm firmly convinced that the mosquitoes here must be imbued with superpowers of some sort. That, and they must have great taste, since they all seemed to only want my blood.
...And with all they went through to get it, I'd almost say that they deserved it.
By the time I fall asleep, I'm usually protected by multiple mosquito traps, a mosquito net (on occasion, depending on where I'm staying), a high powered ceiling fan, and a blanket. To top it all off, I sleep in the highest room in the house, farthest away from the openings most convenient for these buggers. Despite all this however, I still got bitten several times a night, and some of these bites hurt enough to wake me up.
Well, that's about when I started to fight back. Since I had many, many, many, opportunities to practice, I have now gotten very, very, good at killing mosquitoes. I now have a +20 to kill mosquitoes when unarmed, and can swat any mosquito within five feet of me as a free action. Should the mosquito fail its saving throw (DC 15), it immediately takes 12d6 damage, regardless of AC or any other damage reducing status.
Leeches: These little pests have replaced mosquitoes as my least favorite member of the animal kingdom. Why, you ask? Simple. They suck on everything. Even things that they absolutely have no right to be sucking on. Thank the stars for denim. Without it, I’d have been in one hell of an awkward situation.
-_-;
The Theaters: So, my cousin Josef (He’s a rare specimen: Family I actually LIKE) took me to watch Mr. & Mrs. Smith at a local theater. I’d already seen the movie once, but he hadn’t, so I agreed to go along. I’d liked the movie the first time around, so I didn’t think anything of going to see it again. My experience with the movie was completely different this time around. On this occasion, I left the theater hoping that I’d never see the movie again.
Now, this wasn’t really the movie’s fault. It was the theater, and the fact that the movie will forever remind me of the theater. You see, nobody there knows the meaning of the words “SHUT UP DURING THE BLOODY MOVIE!!!”. The dim roar of conversation was present at all times, broken only by occasional hooting, hollering, and other strange sounds. Cell phones were going off, and to top it all off, the movie was louder than your average sonic boom.
They didn’t stop messing with my experience there. In addition to all the background racket, they chopped off random pieces of the movie (presumably bits they deemed “naughty”), and to top it all off, there was a bloody intermission at one of the most inopportune points in the movie.
You see, I’m the kind of person that can only enjoy a movie if he completely immerses himself in the atmosphere the movie is trying to create. If I can’t do this, I can’t enjoy the movie. Yeah, I know it’s a little strange, but that’s just how things work with me. Heh. Well, needless to say, I didn’t enjoy the movie in the slightest. I don’t think I’m going to take Josef up on offers to go to another movie until I’m ninety. By that point, I’ll probably be deaf, so the volume should be just about perfect.
=\
The Awful:
The Roads: Have you ever seen a pothole so big that it threatened to swallow your entire car? No? Well, then imagine one. Now put twenty of them together, and connect them with bits of broken tar. That, folks, is a Kerala road. You know, when I first got there, I was excited to see that they’d finally added lanes and traffic lights to their roads. I’d hoped that driving would be a much safer experience now because of these things.
No such luck. If anything, the roads have become only more dangerous.
You see, lanes are only a suggestion here. Nobody drives on their side of the road. Everybody drives on whatever the hell side of the road they feel like driving on, regardless of whether or not there’s a car heading toward them. I cannot count the number of time I’ve either been face to face with a trailer. I also can’t count the number of times that I just narrowly missed one.
To make matters even worse, seat belts are nonexistent, meaning that death is all but guaranteed if you should happen to get hit by something. If getting hit by a car doesn’t kill you, all the carbon monoxide in the air will. Seriously. It’s bad. Most roads are blanketed by a thing white fog of exhausted fumes, impairing visibility and more importantly, breathing. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that I was smoking eight packs of cigarettes a day.
*shudder*…Six Flags has nothing on this.
The People: This, folks, is probably the biggest reason I dread going back to India. I intensely dislike the people there. They're the biggest bunch of cutthroats and opportunists you'll ever see this side of a sleazy motel. These aren't just random people in the streets I'm talking about either. These are people I'm related to, and people that are supposedly friends of the family. Living amongst these people for a month was like living with a pack of hyenas. They're nice enough when they know that your defenses are up, but as soon as people let their defenses down, they pounce. I'm not sure why people act like this, really. I don't think this is as prevalent in North India, but I'm not entirely sure. At any rate however, I'm just glad to be out of there. It's nice to be surrounded by people that you know you can trust.
Privacy (To be specific, my lack of it): I'd be lying if I told you that I wasn't a people person. I love people, and I love having them around. Most of the time. There are times however, when I NEED my space. My time alone is just as important to me as my time with people. It allows me to recuperate, redirect my energies, and most importantly, to think about things that are important to me. I don't need much. An hour a day is really all I ask most of the time. Even this however, was denied to me during my stay there. At any given waking moment in the trip, I constantly had one or more members of my family, well within my bubble, yammering about things I couldn't care less about. Now don't get me wrong. I love to listen, even if you're going to yammer about something pointless. I'm usually the kind that welcomes pointless yammerings, because I'm the kind that believes you can learn much from any kind of yammering, pointless or otherwise (That, and I just find it fun to listen to people, because I'm silly like that). All this changes when I don't have my space. If I don't get my daily dose of "me" time, I start accumulating a "space debt". The more it builds up, the more anti-social I become. Once it has gotten to a certain point, conversation becomes a chore, and as a direct result of this, I become a very bland person to be around. Needless to say, I'd almost stopped talking entirely by the time I'd gotten back from the trip. I'm still not as chirpy as I used to be, but it's slowly coming back. Cheers!
FOOD: I used to love food. It used to be comforting, caring, and above all things, delicious. All that changed when I went to India. My grandmother, in a crazed attempt to blow me up to the size of the Hindenburg, put me on a strict (and borderline psychotic) regimen that involved eating massive amounts of food four to six times a day. I've actually gained a decent bit of weight, and as a result, I now almost look...*shudder*...healthy. My new image came with a price, though. No longer is food the warming, love-filled, ambrosia that I once saw it to be. No, no...things are different now. Now, food has become an insatiable dominatrix who won't stop screaming the words "EAT ME!!!" at the top of her lungs.
*starts crying inconsolably*
The Weird:
Politicians: We all know politicians are corrupt. We all know that they secretly take bribes and milk other peoples canaries when nobody is looking. Politicians in India are different, though. They're corrupt AND proud. I'm serious. I was sitting on a train when the Minister of Education suddenly took the seat in front of me. About three minutes after the train started, his cell phone rang, and he wasted no time naming bribes. HUGE BRIBES (We're talking six to seven digit bribes here, folks). The only thing more startling than this was the fact that nobody on the train even seemed to care about the fact that this was happening. I didn't know what to make of this then, and I still don't know what to make of this now. Sheesh.
My Crotch: Now I'm not sure why this is, but during the trip, my crotch attracted all sorts of weirdness to it, ranging from leeches to assorted mammals to humans of all ages and sizes. Now I'm not what in the blazes possessed random beings to dive at my crotch, but whatever the reason might be, I found this highly unsettling (and on occasion, ever so slightly painful).
In the event that my crotch is a sentient being and happens to be reading my ramblings, I have this to say to you, old friend: Stop possessing things do dive at you, or I'm putting you in a cup. No joke. Now behave.
Strange Gifts: Packages are exciting things to get. Especially if they're waiting for you when you come home after you've been away for a long month. My excitement wavered and proceeded to die when I opened the package, and realized that somebody had signed me up for a free trial pair of...*ahem*...
...
TAMPONS.
-_-;
Now, I not be the most masculine guy ever but this just isn't funny (Okay, okay, I'm lying. It's hilarious. It's still a little unsettling, though).
Predictions: According to a fortune teller my Dad went to during our trip there, I'm destined to die and ninety-five. That sucks. It's a good thing I don't believe in destiny, or I'd be seriously bothered by that. Also, I'm supposed to get married at twenty-eight: I turn twenty-one on Saturday (yeah, I can't believe it either), so that gives me only seven years to travel the world, being incredibly naughty. Bummer. I guess I'd better make the best of the little time I've got left, eh?
;-P
*runs off to do very naughty things*
(Not really. I'm just tired of typing. I think my hands are still jet-lagged.)
XD
The Incredible:
Me: Seriously. What were you expecting me to say? The trip had a few good parts to it, but nothing really stood out as "Incredible". Well, that is, unless you don't discount my near limitless patience with my family. During the time spent on this trip, I've become convinced that my home life, in effect, is some high-level being's sick, real life version of a crappy reality show. I swear. Someone in the Heavens must have been drunk off his ass when he decided that it'd be funny to put four people with four radically different types of personalities in the same family. Needless to say, it took a godly level of patience to not kill the rest of my family. That would have been bad, because Indian jails smell funny and frown on things like "sanitation" and "basic human rights".
Granted, this wouldn't have really affected me for long, since I've got enough money to bribe myself out (I kid you not. The legal system in Kerala is a joke.), but really, it's the principle of the thing.
*pats himself on the back*
Oh, and if that wasn't enough, I managed to beat Pokémon Emerald using only a Pelipper (a stupid bird that has a hard time attacking anything) and a Wobbuffet (a monster that can't attack anything, period). GO ME!
The Good:
Chocolate/Ice Cream: Gods, the chocolate and the ice cream here is in a word, magnificent. It really puts most thing you find here to shame. I'm not sure why this is exactly, but I would probably have to guess that it has something to do with both these things being luxury items. That, or it might have something to do with the bad taste the air there generally leaves in your mouth. Whatever the case might be, Indian chocolate get props from 'The Blash.
RAIN!: There was so much of it! And it was soooooooo pretty! Granted, it killed thousands and left many thousands homeless, all the while causing millions of dollars in assorted damages, but it was still fun to play in! *Squee*
The Wildlife: As breakdown inducing as it can be sometimes, there are definitely advantages to living in a tropical jungle. During my stay here this time around, I got to go hiking in a dense, tiger infested, jungle. While I didn't see any tigers, I still saw things ranging from wild elephants to birds that Cody or Carlos would have killed to see. Wootage.
Cricket: I'm generally not a sports person, but cricket tends to be the one sport that I usually enjoy watching/playing. While I didn't get to play any this time around (and I rarely do, since I'm really the only cricket fan in the family), I did get to watch a little bit. This is great, because American TV sucks and never plays any (to my knowledge). Watching the Indian team play disappoints me, though. They’re the epitomy of the words "wasted potential".
Gramma: Yes, she's old. And yes, she's crazy, and probably senile to boot. Despite the fact that she stuffed me with food and constantly barked nonsensensical orders at me during my stay there, it still felt kind of nice. You see, I'm probably her favorite person in the world, she's happiest when I'm around. That, and she takes all the niceness that she should be throwing at everyone else and hurls it all in my general direction. This drives the rest of my family nuts, but hey, I'm not complaining.
The Bad:
The (lack of my) Music: You know, it's not that I have anything against Indian music: I don't. It just isn't for me. With the exception of a small minority of songs, most of the stuff I hear is just so...mellow. By the end of my first week there, I was already missing my happy, bouncy, sugar coated love (Ooh! And my trance too! Can't forget that!). I thought I was going to explode with joy when I heard the peoples at a salon put some Aqua on. Hooray Aqua!
Mosquitoes: Gods, I hate these things. They were everywhere. I'm firmly convinced that the mosquitoes here must be imbued with superpowers of some sort. That, and they must have great taste, since they all seemed to only want my blood.
...And with all they went through to get it, I'd almost say that they deserved it.
By the time I fall asleep, I'm usually protected by multiple mosquito traps, a mosquito net (on occasion, depending on where I'm staying), a high powered ceiling fan, and a blanket. To top it all off, I sleep in the highest room in the house, farthest away from the openings most convenient for these buggers. Despite all this however, I still got bitten several times a night, and some of these bites hurt enough to wake me up.
Well, that's about when I started to fight back. Since I had many, many, many, opportunities to practice, I have now gotten very, very, good at killing mosquitoes. I now have a +20 to kill mosquitoes when unarmed, and can swat any mosquito within five feet of me as a free action. Should the mosquito fail its saving throw (DC 15), it immediately takes 12d6 damage, regardless of AC or any other damage reducing status.
Leeches: These little pests have replaced mosquitoes as my least favorite member of the animal kingdom. Why, you ask? Simple. They suck on everything. Even things that they absolutely have no right to be sucking on. Thank the stars for denim. Without it, I’d have been in one hell of an awkward situation.
-_-;
The Theaters: So, my cousin Josef (He’s a rare specimen: Family I actually LIKE) took me to watch Mr. & Mrs. Smith at a local theater. I’d already seen the movie once, but he hadn’t, so I agreed to go along. I’d liked the movie the first time around, so I didn’t think anything of going to see it again. My experience with the movie was completely different this time around. On this occasion, I left the theater hoping that I’d never see the movie again.
Now, this wasn’t really the movie’s fault. It was the theater, and the fact that the movie will forever remind me of the theater. You see, nobody there knows the meaning of the words “SHUT UP DURING THE BLOODY MOVIE!!!”. The dim roar of conversation was present at all times, broken only by occasional hooting, hollering, and other strange sounds. Cell phones were going off, and to top it all off, the movie was louder than your average sonic boom.
They didn’t stop messing with my experience there. In addition to all the background racket, they chopped off random pieces of the movie (presumably bits they deemed “naughty”), and to top it all off, there was a bloody intermission at one of the most inopportune points in the movie.
You see, I’m the kind of person that can only enjoy a movie if he completely immerses himself in the atmosphere the movie is trying to create. If I can’t do this, I can’t enjoy the movie. Yeah, I know it’s a little strange, but that’s just how things work with me. Heh. Well, needless to say, I didn’t enjoy the movie in the slightest. I don’t think I’m going to take Josef up on offers to go to another movie until I’m ninety. By that point, I’ll probably be deaf, so the volume should be just about perfect.
=\
The Awful:
The Roads: Have you ever seen a pothole so big that it threatened to swallow your entire car? No? Well, then imagine one. Now put twenty of them together, and connect them with bits of broken tar. That, folks, is a Kerala road. You know, when I first got there, I was excited to see that they’d finally added lanes and traffic lights to their roads. I’d hoped that driving would be a much safer experience now because of these things.
No such luck. If anything, the roads have become only more dangerous.
You see, lanes are only a suggestion here. Nobody drives on their side of the road. Everybody drives on whatever the hell side of the road they feel like driving on, regardless of whether or not there’s a car heading toward them. I cannot count the number of time I’ve either been face to face with a trailer. I also can’t count the number of times that I just narrowly missed one.
To make matters even worse, seat belts are nonexistent, meaning that death is all but guaranteed if you should happen to get hit by something. If getting hit by a car doesn’t kill you, all the carbon monoxide in the air will. Seriously. It’s bad. Most roads are blanketed by a thing white fog of exhausted fumes, impairing visibility and more importantly, breathing. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that I was smoking eight packs of cigarettes a day.
*shudder*…Six Flags has nothing on this.
The People: This, folks, is probably the biggest reason I dread going back to India. I intensely dislike the people there. They're the biggest bunch of cutthroats and opportunists you'll ever see this side of a sleazy motel. These aren't just random people in the streets I'm talking about either. These are people I'm related to, and people that are supposedly friends of the family. Living amongst these people for a month was like living with a pack of hyenas. They're nice enough when they know that your defenses are up, but as soon as people let their defenses down, they pounce. I'm not sure why people act like this, really. I don't think this is as prevalent in North India, but I'm not entirely sure. At any rate however, I'm just glad to be out of there. It's nice to be surrounded by people that you know you can trust.
Privacy (To be specific, my lack of it): I'd be lying if I told you that I wasn't a people person. I love people, and I love having them around. Most of the time. There are times however, when I NEED my space. My time alone is just as important to me as my time with people. It allows me to recuperate, redirect my energies, and most importantly, to think about things that are important to me. I don't need much. An hour a day is really all I ask most of the time. Even this however, was denied to me during my stay there. At any given waking moment in the trip, I constantly had one or more members of my family, well within my bubble, yammering about things I couldn't care less about. Now don't get me wrong. I love to listen, even if you're going to yammer about something pointless. I'm usually the kind that welcomes pointless yammerings, because I'm the kind that believes you can learn much from any kind of yammering, pointless or otherwise (That, and I just find it fun to listen to people, because I'm silly like that). All this changes when I don't have my space. If I don't get my daily dose of "me" time, I start accumulating a "space debt". The more it builds up, the more anti-social I become. Once it has gotten to a certain point, conversation becomes a chore, and as a direct result of this, I become a very bland person to be around. Needless to say, I'd almost stopped talking entirely by the time I'd gotten back from the trip. I'm still not as chirpy as I used to be, but it's slowly coming back. Cheers!
FOOD: I used to love food. It used to be comforting, caring, and above all things, delicious. All that changed when I went to India. My grandmother, in a crazed attempt to blow me up to the size of the Hindenburg, put me on a strict (and borderline psychotic) regimen that involved eating massive amounts of food four to six times a day. I've actually gained a decent bit of weight, and as a result, I now almost look...*shudder*...healthy. My new image came with a price, though. No longer is food the warming, love-filled, ambrosia that I once saw it to be. No, no...things are different now. Now, food has become an insatiable dominatrix who won't stop screaming the words "EAT ME!!!" at the top of her lungs.
*starts crying inconsolably*
The Weird:
Politicians: We all know politicians are corrupt. We all know that they secretly take bribes and milk other peoples canaries when nobody is looking. Politicians in India are different, though. They're corrupt AND proud. I'm serious. I was sitting on a train when the Minister of Education suddenly took the seat in front of me. About three minutes after the train started, his cell phone rang, and he wasted no time naming bribes. HUGE BRIBES (We're talking six to seven digit bribes here, folks). The only thing more startling than this was the fact that nobody on the train even seemed to care about the fact that this was happening. I didn't know what to make of this then, and I still don't know what to make of this now. Sheesh.
My Crotch: Now I'm not sure why this is, but during the trip, my crotch attracted all sorts of weirdness to it, ranging from leeches to assorted mammals to humans of all ages and sizes. Now I'm not what in the blazes possessed random beings to dive at my crotch, but whatever the reason might be, I found this highly unsettling (and on occasion, ever so slightly painful).
In the event that my crotch is a sentient being and happens to be reading my ramblings, I have this to say to you, old friend: Stop possessing things do dive at you, or I'm putting you in a cup. No joke. Now behave.
Strange Gifts: Packages are exciting things to get. Especially if they're waiting for you when you come home after you've been away for a long month. My excitement wavered and proceeded to die when I opened the package, and realized that somebody had signed me up for a free trial pair of...*ahem*...
...
TAMPONS.
-_-;
Now, I not be the most masculine guy ever but this just isn't funny (Okay, okay, I'm lying. It's hilarious. It's still a little unsettling, though).
Predictions: According to a fortune teller my Dad went to during our trip there, I'm destined to die and ninety-five. That sucks. It's a good thing I don't believe in destiny, or I'd be seriously bothered by that. Also, I'm supposed to get married at twenty-eight: I turn twenty-one on Saturday (yeah, I can't believe it either), so that gives me only seven years to travel the world, being incredibly naughty. Bummer. I guess I'd better make the best of the little time I've got left, eh?
;-P
*runs off to do very naughty things*
(Not really. I'm just tired of typing. I think my hands are still jet-lagged.)
XD