Vacation is officially over!

I decided to give myself permission to have a 'holiday' before I got down to work on a variety of projects during my stay here - most importantly helping Joy to publicize his business (Ancy's bookstore) which is definitely suffering due to the recession. I think 10 days is more than adequate so real industriousness commenced this morning (Tuesday, January 25, 2011).

During my 'holiday' I've had a couple of trips to Trivandrum and my shopping is just about complete. I bought a very fancy (and expensive - 747 rupees which is getting on for $17 Canadian) tiffin box as well as steel plates, a thermos, coat hangers, a glass mug for morning coffee and other odds and ends. I'm still on the hunt for underwear - Jockey hipster in XXL size - but may have to settle for XL and try to diet into them :-). I have no idea what large Indian ladies (and believe me some of them make me look downright twiggy) wear but it obviously isn't Jockey brand. Perhaps they have panties custom made.

I was really proud of my efforts for about 10 minutes today thinking that I had successfully put all the German books in Joy's collection in alphabetical order by author. But then he pointed out that I'd only done so on 5 of the 15 shelf-fulls. Silly me had not realized that the next two columns of shelves were also German. The 400 or so books are now roughly sorted into A-L and M-Z and tomorrow I'll get them in proper order.

Today my netbook has spent most of its time in the custody of Phil Frampton - a writer from Manchester who is a personal friend of Joy's. He's an accomplished writer and journalist with interesting perspectives on a variety of issues. Phil just arrived yesterday and I'm not sure if he has a project in mind for this visit. Phil's trying to arrange Internet using a USB modem (many jokes about dongles have been bandied about!) so that he can surf from the comfort of his room.

I'll do a little more tweaking of the bookstore website this evening and have a quick look at Twitter. On the exercise front I walked for 30 minutes this morning and jogged very slowly for 55 minutes this evening. May get Retheesh - my friend the yoga master - to teach me some stretching though I am strenuously avoiding sun salutations (although I think they would probably be a perfect solution) since last time I attempted them they made me feel nauseous and light-headed.

'The Hangover' is on TV tonight (on HBO) and I'm tempted to watch it just to see how Indian television handles the salty language that I remember from seeing it at the theatre. I was watching something yesterday and the 'N' word was being used liberally but the subtitles - which are included even when the film is in English - kept saying 'black man' - hilarious! Sometimes they transcribe rather rude words without altering them - for example one starting with 'c' and ending with 'nt' for part of a lady's anatomy - since the censor obviously has no idea that it is an 'objectional' word.