The clouds here are a little gloomier today than they have been earlier in the week. That, combined with the A/C someone decided to supercharge today, makes the office seem a little less than cheery.
Still, it's not too bad. I've already seen a tiny orange tabby jumping all over the corrugated tin roofs across the street. I saw cows or water buffaloes or something, pulling a little boy in a cart. I saw a bunch of goats by the side of the road on the way to the office. There's an apartment building opposite the office, and every day there's a different sari, drying in the wind, flying from the top floor window. There are two beautiful, rainbow-colored chalk mandalas in the courtyard down below. And hey - it's only two days to my birthday, so how un-cheery could I possibly be, right?
We didn't get to go to the Lion Fort today - the person who was going to organize it was out yesterday, but hopefully we can set something up for next week. I'm going to find out if the hotel can arrange some kind of outing for The Big Day on Sunday -- there must be something cool to see. Maybe I'll go check out the Snake Farm! Apparently there are snakes there.
This morning, there was a billboard with a cartoon drawing of one bald-headed child head-butting another little cartoon child in the chest. The caption said in big letters, "This butt-er sees red!!" and then underneath it said "But our butter? It's yellow!" and then there was a picture of a pack of butter. A few things about this strike me: 1) Man, they moved fast to get this billboard drawn and up so soon after the World Cup hoo-ha. 2) How did the pitch for this go? "I got it! This is the perfect opportunity to tie our dairy product to soccer!" 3) Dude, are you seriously telling me that the primary selling point for your butter is that it's yellow?
Additionally: After the attacks in Mumbai, the Indian authorities apparently convinced local ISPs to block access to a number of blog sites, on the grounds that terrorists were communicating with each other that way. Which explains why I haven't been able to get to blogspot since I've been here. I wonder how the U.S. would react if the same thing happened there? Now that I think about it, I'm almost surprised that it hasn't.