Indian Friends and Food

I had a very brief breakfast this morning because I met up with the instructors and needed to leave very fast. It was a very flat omelet with hot chillis and some toast. Nothing new or different.

I went to the campus and am now back in my apartment and had lunch here. There are three guys cooking in a small apartment kitchen and two of them dote over you making sure that you have plenty to eat. In addition, with me, they needed to try to instruct me as to what I was eating and how to eat it. That would be OK except that they are Indian and largely speak Hindi as opposed to English. One of the other instructors had lunch with me, but his English is worse than theirs. In any event, it was good and filling and a bit of an eye opener when I watched the other instructor eat.

I was served several different things and I haven't a clue what they were. I started with some chicken with the skin still on it cooked in a sauce. There also was something else with diced potatoes and some vegetables in a sauce and you eat it by putting it in a kind of flatbread/pita thing. There was another dish with what was close to chickpeas in a sauce. There was also a salad on the plate with finely chopped up lettuce, tomatoes, and something else. I ate the tomatoes and am still alive. Finally there was a soup-like thing made out of lentils or something like that. That was poured over rice, at least that was what they told me to do. Everything is highly spiced. You only get a fork and spoons, not a knife. Finally I had some plain yogurt which I effectively used for desert.This instructor ate largely with his hands. He took the yogurt and dumped it on the rice along with a lot of salt. He then took his hands and mixed it all together and ate it, licked his hands off and went to some other food using the fork and spoon.

I think the transportation issue has been worked out. If not, we're apparently going to take a cab so I'll get to have dinner downtown tonight and go to the shopping center. Let me know if you want me toget anything although I haven't a clue as to what locally might be interesting. Based on my initial observations, I'd guess the shopping center will look like the fashion mall in Indy as opposed to anything unique.

I do have an interest in purchasing some tulip bulbs in Amsterdam. They had them in the duty-free shop and I think you get 12 bulbs for about$20. I'm assuming that there's no problem bringing them back into thestates. Do you have a color preference? I'm thinking one packet is enough.

I didn't tell you about one interesting thing last night on the drive from the airport to the hostel. Dubai is just a series of constructionand infrastructure projects. We were going along a four lane highwaythat exited into a gas station. I think the road was under construction and it just ended and you had to take a little exit road that just terminated, literally at the gas pumps. You then had to drive through or around the back of the gas station to get to a temporary dirt road that led to a permanent road. You cannot imagine the confusion as hundreds of cars were going around the back of the station, around the front, and even down the pump isles to get through the area. There were people pumping gas at the same time who had to dodge all the traffic toget to the store to pay for gas or get other stuff (it was a typical 7-11 type station).

Power for the laptop is not a problem. The power cord has a built-inconverter and the plugs I bought in Battle Creek work fine. The batteryis charging OK. The only difference is that I'm running on 240 voltsvice the 110 we use in the states. When I plug into external power, I get quite a boost in terms of the brightness of the screen.

Got to get to work. My schedule has me teaching three session on Monday. I pity these students as they will have two tests and two smallpapers due in five days, plus reading a 300 page textbook, and listeningto me for 18 hours.