Rice Fish and Humidity.

When leaving the states my mother exclaimed "I think you'll have better care than you do here!" Referring to the fact that here I don't wash my own clothes, I get three meals a day cooked for me, a doctor visits once a week, and my sheets get changed. Well while this is true, there are a few more problems too. Your clothes are soggy with sweat after 8 hours of wearing them, and while in Oklahoma these clothes dry in a few minutes, here there is not much hope. There is always more sun to make you sweat, more rain to drench you, and the combination there of, leaves a humidity that must be well over 100%. While I understand that it is a logistical impossibility, the water in the air sticks to you like a car windshield, so thick you can write messages in it for everyone to see.

Now the food is phenominal let's not get me wrong, usually starting with an orange or banana and some fruit juice for a snack before breakfast, dhosas and chapatthi with an arrange of chutneys and potato masala, then a vegetarian lunch that is mostly rice and curried red beans some bread (again chapatti) and mango juice, then a dinner. Now dinner is the time which is most likely for you to get some meat. I say it like this because it is not a certainty. Now Americans, I'm beginning to notice, eat a lot of meat comparitively. This meat laden diet keeps a certain flora of bacteria in your gut, which vegetables will not sustain. This means an upset in your little gastronomic ecosystem, meaning the bad bacteria that are there get to take up the slack caused by your new diet. The result is IBS, which I am becoming familiar with. I'm here waiting on the system to equilibriate. The waiting isn't really fun, so I take probiotics, but I still haven't noticed much of a difference. I have also recently developed some body aches. If it doesn't clear up, it may be caused by a little protist called Giardia lamblia. Some of you might know it. It's a fancy term for "I drank the water," or in my case I brushed my teeth with the water before I knew which water was ok. Another more interesting diagnosis I received for my body aches is called rice flu. It's when you have eaten so much rice that your pancreas is overworked from the sugar giving you aches and making you really tired. And on water: if you don't drink about 2 or more litres per day you will get a splitting, nauseating headache behind your eyeballs. So you see, that doctor that visits once a week? Dr. Pani is just sheer necessity until everybody settles.

Now on to a less uncomfortable note, on Tuesday we went to the largest fishing operation in Puducherry, it was 40 boats. About half fall more into the category of rafts being just large shaped logs lashed together. Other half are FRP's (fibre reinforced plastics) which are a larger composite that is more adept at clearing the breaking waves, but they are so expensive that usually 3 or more people invest in them together. That day the catches were small. The gill nets hung deep in the water but the water was rough and the fish must have been elsewhere. Each boat only yielded a small pile of assorted lizard fish, a parrot fish or two, some sardines, and a couple baskets of crab. These baskets get dragged up the beach about thirty yards or so and auctioned to women who tote them all the way to the fish market. The whole process is captivating considering I have no idea where the last piece of fish I ate in america came from.

Despite being sick, this trip has been very rewarding so far, and we haven't even left for the islands yet, where we will get to do an in depth study of trigger fish behavior. Everyone is great, me and Dale have been commiserating because we're both sick. Eleanor is great to bounce ideas off and have a reasonable and funny conversation with. Neil is one of the most knowledgable professors I have had, both about India and about his field. Tarra and Anu can get anything done that needs done, and Dipani is both a genius and a good friend to have. I just love it here!