typical

In keeping with our Indian experience as a whole, this weekend has gone from good to bad and back to good again. Dammit!! Just as I was writing that sentence I got a huge shock from the computer. Alright, now we're back to bad.
It all started, as most weekends do, on Friday night. Brad and I were very proud of ourselves because we actually left the house. We have natural homebody tendencies, which, in India, are only made worse by the fact that getting anywhere is a huge pain in the rear. But I very cleverly tricked us into going out by purchasing tickets for an event in advance, so that when Friday night rolled around and the temptation to just get into our pjs and open a bottle of wine while waiting for a pizza to be delivered got too strong we had the fact that we'd already spent 20 bucks pulling us out the door. The event was a party for the Chennai cricket team. Their coach, a Kiwi, is married to the middle school art teacher, also a Kiwi. It was held at a bar in a hotel (hotels are the only places here that are allowed to have bars) and there was a pretty good turnout, of men. It was weird, except for women from the school, and there were maybe only 7 of us, everyone else was male. But there was dance music and the party was lively until the management decided that the men were dancing too "vigorously" and switched to soft rock.
It was an ok night out that made us miss Colombia. A lot. But we weren't feeling too bad because we had massage appointments for Saturday morning. There is a Thai spa here, a little ways out of town in yet another hotel, that is so nice. We've been there three times already. It's just a perfect oasis from all the city crap. It's quiet, and smells lovely. There are steam rooms and a pool and, of course, amazing massages, and it's a great way to spend the afternoon. Afterward we went to a late lunch at Lydie's, had some great steaks and an even better dessert, and then went home to relax, the only thing left to do, since it'd started to rain.
We had a full, maybe five hours of enjoying life in India and then the air conditioner started making a grinding noise and I saw sparks out the window. In a few seconds everything was black. The power stayed out the entire night and well into the morning. I entertained myself this morning by throwing out everything in the freezer and then reading under the one working ceiling fan that is run by the generator. Eventually, we had to leave, we called our driver and had him take us somewhere, anywhere where it was cool and there was food to eat.
As we pulled out of our driveway we saw a man with a handsaw getting to work on the electricity situation. He was just squatting there, examining two severed cables. We didn't have much hope that we'd ever have electricity again, but we had a good lunch and I bought some pashminas, and really, what else can cheer you up like a pashmina? So soft, so luxurious, even the name is soothing....
Pulling up to the house again we saw that the two severed cords are now taped together, with a little plastic buffer. And when we came in to the sound of the air conditioners purring, we rejoiced. And that's when I sat down to write this blog and got shocked by the computer. Brad just reported that a switch downstairs shocked him, and when he tried to adjust the current on our big electric box he came upstairs rubbing his arm and saying, "Electricity is scary."
It sure is.