The New and Improved Ancy's Bookstore

I will miss my dear friend Joy, who I have known since my first visit to India in 1991, very much when I leave Kovalam. I have worked hard on his bookstore this trip putting all of the books (except for the Japanese) in order by author (even though I realize that they may not be in proper order for some of the other languages as accented and "special" letters do not belong in the same order as in English). I have catalogued all his 2,760 books and put a code number in each.

Over the next month Joy will work on some of the physical aspects of the store including putting up a new sign, changing the outside paint job and perhaps rearranging the shelves inside the shop.

My last project was to build him a simple website for Ancy's bookstore - I will continue to add to it over time. I hope that his presence on the Internet will help his business increase and perhaps get him - although this may be a pipedream - a mention in Lonely Planet. Here are a couple of views of the bookstore.



Ancy's is at the top of the stairs in a location just a few meters back from the beach.



We've tried not to have the stock jammed together too tightly as this makes it less easy for people to search through easily.

Farewell to Kovalam

In two and a half days I will be boarding an Emirates flight at Trivandrum and starting my (rather long) voyage back to Victoria. I will be spending Sunday night with my friend Delia in London and should be back at my sweet suite (as I refer to my lovely little apartment on Chamberlain in Victoria) by 5:30 pm on Monday, June 15, 2009.

It is hard to say what the status of the beach is - it looks as if it is done but there are still people working building a wall about 6 feet in front of the paved walkway. They've left it a bit late with the sea increasingly rough and work being interrupted by monsoon rains. Here are a couple of views looking each way.




Construction has been going on here at the Marina guesthouse as well. I knew it was going to happen but didn't really appreciate (perhaps not the right word) how disruptive it would be. My "favourite" day was when the headload workers who delivered the bricks (which are on the roof now) and sand turned up at about 6:20 am while I was having a lovely sleep. Oh well. Here's a shot of the courtyard of the guesthouse.




I will miss Vaisanthi's cooking - for most of my visit she has been preparing the food that Joy and I eat every evening and the leftovers of which I usually have for lunch the next day. She is a good cook and an example of what she serves us is below - in our 5 compartment tiffin box we usually get rice (kerala rice - not my favourite, I find it rather tasteless, it is very short grain and mushy textured), 5 chapatis (2.5 each), two vegetable dishes and finally, sambar/dal or some other "liquidy" concoction. In the photo below from left to right (in the containers above the plate) are dal, rice, okra and tomatoes (I think) and carrot thoran.



Some things I won't miss are the insects (mosquitoes have been brutal and there is a plague of tiny black flies, smaller than fruit flies, that get everywhere - up your nose, in your eyes and in your mouth), the garbage, the heat and other things that seem too petty to talk about but are so irritating when you have to live them every day.