December 2007

Shopping for a Sari in Bombay – Part 2

December 29, 2007

You might think that shopping for a sari ends when you purchase the actual sari, but you’d be wrong. You don’t even get to take it home right away. First the salesman cuts off the blouse piece, a section of cloth woven together with the sari that you will have made into the choli – [...]

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Image of the Day

December 28, 2007

I followed a link – which said “Warning: Gallery contains graphic images” – from news.google.com to the New York Daily News site. This image is, indeed, a graphic depiction of extremely poorly placed advertising. You can’t quite make it out here, but the burning car is a Toyota!

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Shopping for a Sari in Bombay

December 26, 2007

At a large sari shop in Santa Cruz. This guy got nervous after a while and asked me to stop taking photos – perhaps because of the contrast between his elegant wares and his loud shirt? Dec 26, 2007 Though some articles on this site might lead you to believe otherwise, I am not usually [...]

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Bombay Signs & Sightings

December 25, 2007

Santa Claus – and Congress party head Sonia Gandhi - wish us a Merry Xmas. Santa looks concerned about something overhead… Dec 25, 2007 I took pictures during a long taxi ride today (and some other days). ^ “Drink [it] cold, make/do enjoy!” Below: Two women got into this three-wheeled scooter taxi: …followed by a bicycle and [...]

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Dakshin Restaurant: South India’s Finest, in the North

December 23, 2007

a selection of chutneys (coconut, tomato, coriander, ?) with crunchy fried things to dip in them. Delicious as these are, don’t fill up – there’s a lot more food coming! While in Delhi I spent a morning working at Sun’s office, which is such a hive of activity that desks are at a premium! Then [...]

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Shopping in Delhi: New Discoveries

December 23, 2007

a shopping mall in Gurgaon I have written before about shopping in Delhi; here I’ll add some more details and tips, organized by location. It’s a good idea to plan your shopping days geographically, as Delhi is very spread out and traffic is horrendous – it can take over an hour to get from one [...]

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Delhi Sunday Morning

December 16, 2007

I’m sitting on a rattan footstool in order to be close to the modem – the wifi doesn’t seem to be working, but there’s an Ethernet cable, and the ADSL connection is good. Outside the window is a small, presumably ancient tomb, I have no idea whose, another of Delhi’s many semi-abandoned Mughal relics. But [...]

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Woodstock School Arts Evening

December 15, 2007

We’re in Delhi now (Dec 15th), but what with everything (including a day without any Internet at all, probably due to the weather in Mussoorie), it’s taken me a week to get this video completed and uploaded. The last Saturday of the semester, students and staff mellowed out with an evening of performing and static [...]

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Fashion Statement

December 13, 2007

This Swatch was my major fashion statement for several years, until (as you can see) I wore it out. The design isn’t easy to understand at a casual glance, so people would ask me about it: “Is that a mermaid?” “No,” I would explain: “It’s Eve, gathering apples.” (As for the snake, take a close [...]

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The End of Another Semester

December 13, 2007

The weather is cold, damp, and grey – it’s definitely time to leave the Himalayan foothills for warmer climes. This week saw the last two days of exams Monday and Tuesday, then everyone had a day off to pack on Wednesday. Midlands (the high school girls’ dorm) was a chaos of trunks, clothing drying on [...]

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The Revised Woodstock School Calendar – It’s Snowing, and We Haven’t Left Mussoorie Yet!

December 11, 2007

It’s Snowing, and We Haven’t Left Mussoorie Yet! Yesterday morning I woke early to make coffee for our guest, out-of-boardingSAGE student Laura, before her 8 am exam. The sun had not yet risen when we came downstairs. I peered out the windows. “What’s that white stuff on the trees?” I wondered. “Frost? Is it that [...]

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Bollywood Rising – Watching Hindi Movies at Woodstock

December 9, 2007

dancing to “The Beedi Song” from Omkara When I attended Woodstock School, I never saw Hindi movies. This was partly a matter of logistics: Mussoorie’s two cinemas were available to us only on Saturdays, and a dark movie hall struck me as good mostly for getting groped by strange men – not something I was [...]

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How Doors Are Kept Open in India

December 7, 2007

There are lots of ways to keep doors and windows closed, but what about when you want to keep them open on a windy day? Our home in Italy has many windows, and doors that open onto balconies, which I mostly like to keep open when the weather’s not too cold. But, when there’s any [...]

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What’s Life Like at Woodstock?

December 7, 2007

Scenes in the Quad The Woodstock Quadrangle has long been the hub of school life. Elementary school students line up here before classes start in the morning, and play games after school. Students of all ages gather during recess, lunch, and teatime, pass through on their way to music lessons and practices, and, in good [...]

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Workspaces – “Office” is Where the Laptop Is

December 5, 2007

I must be the perfect modern employee. In my 20+ years of working life, I have rarely had an office or even a cubicle to call my own, and haven’t particularly wanted or missed one. In the three-room apartment that was our home in Milan for 13 years, my workspace (when I wasn’t in a [...]

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Woodstock School Jazz Band

December 3, 2007

A final burst of song before end-of-semester exams set in.

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Mussoorie Miscellany

December 1, 2007

So much to write about, but I’ve been so busy with so many things that it’s hard to gather my thoughts into a coherent narrative. So… a few random notes and photos. Life in Mussoorie is a lot more comfortable (and energy-intensive) than it used to be. Room heaters run on gas cylinders are very [...]

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