Big fat Indian wedding

Can I just say how relieved I am that my wedding came before Lavanya's, because no event ever is going to live up to this one. Also, she looked absolutely, positively beautiful:

5 events in 7 days, a couple thousand people, lots of food & booze and more costume changes, songs and dances than a Bollywood film. I don't generally like to resort to photos for a blog update, but in this case I really have no other option:

Lavanya, incapacitated by her drying henna, manages a quick drink.

Lav's henna

Lav's mom & aunts perform a dance at Sangeet.

To go or not to go?

After 48 hours of agonizing and intensive research we have after all decided not to chance a trip to Srinagar. It was oh so tempting: the Shalimar Gardens, a houseboat on Lake Dal . . .

and the security situation at the moment is okay - but 2010 was a rather bad year up there and it just doesn't quite seem worth the risk. I was ready to say let's do it and then I read what the British Foreign Office says and revised my position (and Ian forbade me from going):

'We advise against all travel to or through rural areas of Jammu and Kashmir, other than to Ladakh, and against all but essential travel to Srinagar. If you intend to travel to Srinagar then you should only travel there by air, and you should check the local security situation before doing so.'

This followed by about three pages of details of grenade attacks, kidnappings, bombs etc 90% of them all in Srinagar and that was pretty much all since 2008. It has the same level of warning as Iraq and Afghanistan and let's face it, I'm not planning holidays there anytime soon.

The US State Department says simlilar but I've found in the past that they get a little over-cautious, they probably put out a travel alert everytime the Canadians have an election. But the Brits, generally, don't mess around. If they say don't go, they tend to mean it.

So we're back to our original plan. It's probably going to be about 113 degrees in Delhi, but we'll survive. I live 200 miles from the equator, how bad can it be?

Ready or not . . .

Not much to report from Malaysia, but our big India countdown is well underway.

I've been doing my homework and pulled straight from my Lonely Planet have stumbled upon the follow statistics:

Population: 1.15 Billion (16.9% of the world population)
Average annual income: $977
Proportion of population living on less than $1 a day: 1/3
Number of $US millionaires: 125,000+
Average cost of a big city wedding: $12,500
Percentage of families living in a a 1-room home: 42%
Child laborers: 50 million
Proportion of total global world poor living in India: 1/3

So all read up and itinerary set, we're as ready as we'll ever be.

We start with a week in Chennai (pop. 6.6 million) for Lav's big, fat Indian wedding. And then head up north with Ankit for a whirlwind week of the 'Golden Triangle' - Delhi (pop. 12.8 million), Agra & Jaipur.

Ankit may soon regret his offer to haul three Western women all around for a week. The heat alone may kill us, and bonus points to Em who will be making her maiden voyage to Asia this trip - talk about diving in head first!

Just another day in paradise . . .

Home two weeks now, we are just about back into the swing of our regular routine. We recently purchased a big outdoor gas grill with some our wedding funds and have had no end of fun with it. It is no exaggeration to say that Ian loves it significantly more than me.

Last night we made a Thai curry made with fresh grated coconut wrapped in banana leaf and then cooked on the grill. It tasted awesome and was a great deal of fun.

Now coconuts are not exactly difficult to come by in this part of the world, but getting into the tough little buggers and using them is another story entirely. A few weeks back I noticed that the Indian corner shop near our condo had a little machine outside and that it was littered with coconut husks and shells.

The guy didn't speak much English but he did recognize the word 'coconut' so he dutifully went out back and returned with two massive coconuts and pointed at the machine. I nodded.

He pulled a massive machete from nowhere and walked over to the sewer drain, he tossed the coconut lightly in his hand gave it a swift whack, tossed it again, gave it another swift whack and the coconut split dead even in two, he drained all the water from it and switched on his little machine.

This machine is almost like giant coffee grinder, only not with blades so much as a massive whirling steel bit in the centre and with the whirling steel bit facing out rather than upwards. So he just holds one half of the coconut right up against this very fast-moving, indeed dangerous little contraption. He expertly rotated the coconut so as to get as much flesh as possible and not any of the shell.

It was all over and done in about five minutes, and this guy was a deft hand to be sure, but there were several moments where the whole operation could have gone very, very wrong. This would not have flown in the UK.

Otherwise all is well, despite a tremendous thunderstorm last night, the rapture has at least bypassed this part of the world. We seem to have solved our cockroach woes, we haven't seen a single one since Ian sealed the drains and we gave everything a good spray.

I'm having a hell of a time navigating the cultural quagmire at work. My old boss, now consigliere, made me read a twenty page article on the concept of 'face' and the 'saving' or 'losing' of it from the American Journal of Sociology the other day. I have a lot to learn about work culture in Asia. Sigh.

When it rains, it pours

Our heatwave was finally broken yesterday by some of the heaviest rain I've ever seen, it was literally just walls of water falling from the sky. We had the misfortune to be out and about in Bangsar with no tools for combating the weather, so we bravely or foolishly - depending upon how you look at it - made a break for it. We only wanted to get across the street, but we were instantly drenched and the water in the street came up over my ankles (it had probably only been raining for 10 minutes at this point). We then thought we'd sit it out, but the sky had taken on that rather permanent look of rain and we seemed doomed to wasting our Sunday afternoon milling around the mall soaking wet and freezing so we broke down and took a taxi the three blocks back to the car. It was perhaps the best $1 I've ever spent.

On the upside, the rain really does seem to have broken the heat a bit, it's 7:55 am and I suspect we haven't even hit 90 degrees yet. It has been hot, ferociously hot, hot enough to even make the locals complain.

It's also been horribly hazy and smoggy. A lot of people (mostly Europeans) here complain about the smog. Typically I don't find it to be that bad - excellent by Southeast Asian standards and frankly far better than London and Los Angeles, let's not even go there. In any event, the smog and haze has been particularly bad and I assumed it just had something to do with the heat. Apparently, according to both the news and locals it's that the winds have shifted and it's all the smoke blowing across the Straits of Malacca from all the rainforest that the Indonesians are burning down (for oil palm plantations) on Sumatera. This of course provides the perfect excuse for the Malaysians to remind everyone that really it's the Indonesian's fault (everything is) and how Malaysia's environmental policies really aren't so bad after all . . . .

Home Sweet Home

Having been away for just over three weeks we have made it back to Malaysia. We had a great time in Chicago (even though the weather was lousy) and the wedding was a complete success. We have returned pale, plump and stocked with loads of North American goodies - chipoltle, hot sauce, bbq sauce, mac & cheese etc.

We returned last night to find our flat mostly as we left it - save the minor infestation of cockroaches. We keep traps down and spray regularly (just part of living in the tropics) but there were 10 dead ones in and around the flat. Extremely unhappy we went out the minute the shop opened this morning and have armed ourselves with an arsenal of toxic sprays and traps. Ian has discovered where they have been getting in, so after a quick trip to Ace Hardware this afternoon and a good spray we will (HOPEFULLY) be rid of the little (actually not so little) bastards.

Beyond that it's good to be home - it's only 10:30 and we've already been in the pool. The warm weather, sunshine and sleeping in my own bed are pretty good too. It would be even better to be home if we didn't have to go to work tomorrow morning. Sigh.

I've also forgotten how the West does spoil you a bit and in three weeks away it's amazing how quickly I had forgotten about some of the disorder that comes with life in Southeast Asia (flashback to chaotic scenes at baggage reclaim at the airport). I've also not missed at all the scent of durian.

Headline news

During our rather stressful 40 minute (on a good day) drive to and from work, Ian and I enjoy listening to a local radio station called BFM. The quality of the English is pretty good and it's largely aimed at expats and businessmen. There is even the odd edgy interview where someone might think about criticising the government or suggest that perhaps an Islamic education system isn't all it's cracked up to be.

A couple of headlines that have got our attention lately:

- Deputy Customs Director thrown from third floor window to his death from the National Anti-corruption Building.

Apparently this guy and about 100 other agents were smuggling vast amounts of money, cigarettes and other goodies into Malaysia. But really the irony of being murdered in the Anti-Corruption Building.

- Fake egg sellers face jail time and fine

Yes, fake eggs. There no details as to what these fake eggs are made of - other than that they pose a 'potential health risk.' In a country where real eggs literally cost pennies, I can't imagine how this is a profitable scam, but alas.

- There is a road fatality every 80 minutes in Malaysia.

And of these fatalities, 62% are speeding related and well over half are caused by men and/or motorcycles.