On the road again...

Guess what, we're traveling again! Gareth's in the States and I'm in the UK. He's had meetings in Colorado Springs and then onto Nashville for a conference and more meetings. I am currently working in the World Vision UK office in Milton Keynes having first had a weekend in London staying with good mates Fi & Pete, meeting their baby Joshua, catching up with my friend Wendy and bumping into an old university friend at church on the Sunday, small world syndrome. We also have to renew our visas and passports while here.

Is lovely catching up with friends, old work mates in Milton Keynes and am staying with some other good friends Kate & Kenny who are very kindly giving me a home/bed while here and when G arrives on Thursday night. We then fly to Glasgow to see family and back to MK for a few days and wedding. Then Edinburgh for another wedding and down to York for more family and onto Heathrow to sleep our way back to India.

Also over the weekend I caught up with my friend Rach one of my bridesmaids. Some of our time was spent in the beautiful country around Godstone in Surrey, walking for a few hours in the sunshine, daffodils, bluebells etc. That's something that you miss - the change in seasons and UK in spring is gorgeous.

Coming back after a longer period of time and having made Hyderabad home, I can feel/see the differences a bit more and does feel a little strange at times, but of course is all familiar. Things like cost for example - a 45 min train journey in peak time cost me 40 pounds the other day, as opposed to paying $10 for a 12 hour overnight journey from Hyderabad to Chennai inc a bed and sleeping pack.

The huge choice in UK supermarkets is also obvious, you don't notice it when living here, but again you can see the differences. These are just obvious examples, however Indian logic, thinking or attitudes, social interaction are also different and again I can see that coming back this time.

But neither are right or wrong, though I think British Rail still overcharge, I guess it's just relevant to the culture and economy. We've hired a car and I (Andi) picked it up the other night and had to mentally force myself not to beep someone to move lanes, alert them to my overtaking or give a warning etc, as per daily driving in India, scary!

Is sometime hard to explain life for us in India when people ask what it's like, of course there are some things that people can identify with, but is also unique or almost hard to describe.

Anyway this is just a little update blog, as we'll try and write some more news when back in India.

"I think we should get a plumber"

Two events this week, the first is we've joined a gym. Whether that will last we'll see!

The other is we had a mini flood in the apartment. Possibly due to the excessive heat our emergency water tank in the roof burst a leak and started gushing out - at first into the main shower (throne) room. This was not too much of a problem, as it could be contained and head down the drain. However the tank borders onto the kitchen and water started running down one of the walls and pouring out onto the floor.

As Gareth was out at the time I (Andi) called the landlord having first tried to climb up and turn the main water mains off myself (my dad would be proud).. However this was not the problem. There was an actual leak in the tank and the water just kept a comin'..

So calling Mr Yadav our landlord, a lovely man but who has a tendency to be a little slow to react, I asked him if he could call a plumber asap. He wanted more details than,"water is coming down the walls and flooding the floors" and asked me to check with our watchman if there was any solution I may not have spotted....

So I did this and Srinivas made his way slowly up the three floors to check if he could do anything, which he couldn't. Standing there, slowly shaking his head he said, 'I think you should get a plumber.'

I then called the landlord again, he asked to speak to Srinivas in Telugu to check on the situation. Fine, then after this he comes back on the line to me and says, 'I think we should get a plumber'.

By this time the water was lapping my feet and no amount of mopping it onto the balcony or frequent emptying of buckets was making a difference... Are you getting bored with this story yet??

All this culminated in my being told at 12pm that a plumber would be there by 1.30. So by 2.30 I called to check on the status/eta of the plumber and was told he will definitely be there at 3.30.

5.30pm the plumber arrived, we have never had such a clean floor. The leak was stopped and we managed to get a couple of other things fixed at the same time.

So endeth the story..

I love Indian stretchable time.

Have a heart for ducks...

Wow what a past few weeks, has been especially busy. As the weather moves into the 100's we don't seem to have slowed down, but wonder why we get tired, duh!

Having been last week in Chennai for another conf (Andi), where this time I took part in training mostly program officers around comms for a regional disaster team, which meant helping them understand how communications and media works and putting them through interviews and writing reports, stories etc! But was good time despite the 8 a.m. starts and late nights.


Three of the conference leaders in Chennai - (From left) Edward, Mike and Richard...


Then got back to go straight to friends daughter's two-year-old birthday party held at the Hyderabad Marriott - was a fun 'do', a highlight of which was after the children had finished a number of us 'adults' hopped onto the bouncy castle!

Then Monday morning as many of you might have read/seen on the news, a tsunami hit the Solomon Islands, which meant that from early morning every day till now and will continue over the next few days, I have been focusing particularly on responding and supporting the communications for the World Vision global partnership, media and region. This means not just media but updates, news releases, overall situation reports and making sure the right pix, stories and footage are being facilitated from the Islands.

As World Vision are one of the largest NGO's there, this meant that the response was fairly swift in helping people whose lives had been devastated by the earthquake/tsunami.

Tonight after work I cook a meal for friends for our (well we try and doesn't always work out) weekly American Idol update and have tried to tidy the apartment, which seems to gather dust every day and then welcome my husband home from Mumbai where he's been in meetings for the day.

Another interesting, or to me at least, story from the past few weeks is that I almost ate a duck's heart. That's right - when in rural Thailand recently we visited a very local cafe for lunch and the only dish on the menu was duck and noodles. So that's what I ordered... When it arrived I saw a number of what looked like almond nuts. Lifting one up with my chopsticks I happened to mention this fact to the Thai WV staff and saw their expressions change as they explained to me, that that it wasn't exactly going to taste like a nut...

On a different note I have had my position as crisis and relief comms manager for Asia Pacific re-confirmed as due to budget was originally on a six month contract, which means I must be doing something right! Then in two and a half weeks I head back to the UK - one week of which includes work. Gareth is in the States at the same time and then we meet in the UK for visa renewal, weddings, family and friends.


So finally. Gareth and I wish you a blessed and happy Easter and look forward to catching up with you again soon.