Dodging Storms

I'm just back from China. It was a quick trip. I spent 2 days traveling and 2 days there. Fortunately I got out just in time. I got an sms from a co-worker as I was returning which described Gridlock in Hangzhou from all of the snow. My flight out was at 8:50 (we left at 9:30 due to de-icing), but I was really worried when I got to the airport. I had heard that they had closed down the airport due to snow earlier in the week, and the flight before mine to Hong Kong was cancelled due to weather at the airport. Since I was also outbound for Hong Kong, I thought I was in trouble. Fortunately China Eastern Air was willing/able to still leave.

I also heard horror stories from co-workers who had come into Shanghai the day before me. It took one of them 5 hours of sitting on the road for a 2 hour trip. Fortunately I had no trouble, other than a driver who was 1/2 hour late picking me up. Not much really, considering. The road was all clear.

I didn't get any pictures this time, too cold to wander around much and the trip was too short to do much anyways. The skys were grey and the weather was COLD--especially after coming from Bangalore where it is between 25-30C every day now--just nice. I felt strange carrying my wool coat and rain-overcoat to the airport, but I was very glad to have it with me in China. Worse yet was carrying the heavy coat, along with my permitted 2 bottles of wine, back and having to wait for Manju to get to the airport to pick me up. Traffic was heavy in Bangalore around the airport when I returned. But being back was really nice, it was feeling like home...

On the way home I saw an auto-rickshaw with an interesting handpainted sign on the back. This was one of those-darn, where is my camera moments. Oh well, I'll just have to describe it. It was in small nice letters, and it said "Don't Pullet". I think it is supposed to say "don't pollute" which is a bit of a laugh on a diesel belching auto-rickshaw, but the sentiment is nice. On the other hand he could be admonishing traffic not to play chicken--which seems to be another Indian traffic management technique. I guess it could be described as making the most use of all possible pavement surfaces. If the oncoming traffic is not as heavy as your direction, just pull out and claim more of the road's width to accommodate traffic in your direction--as long as there isn't a bus coming in the other direction.

Anyways we had a fairly relaxing weekend, complete with a nap in the shade behind the house where there was an already installed set of rings for a hammock.

We also got our shipment in from the states finally. It took me about an hour at customs. Most of the time was spent in a warehouse where the receiving shipper was looking for our crates. Customs went through most of the boxes, but didn't seem too interested to dig too deeply, which was nice. It could have taken a lot longer. Now we have some real cooking utensils, etc...

Earlier last week, we had someone in to install curtain rods. Take a look at how his extension cord was plugged in. This is typical in India. On the same day I saw the guy who was installing shower curtain rods sitting on the floor with a metal pipe across his foot, to create some space between the rod and the floor. He was cutting with a hacksaw, about 1/4 inch from the end of his big toe. Later I saw the curtain rod guy with a similar setup, but he had the other end of the rod in between his big and pointer toe on the other foot to hold it still...

That's all for now, I'm getting on a plane for Helsinki in a little bit.