Day Two: Please Fasten Your Seatbelts

"The Shit piles up so fast in Vietnam you need wings to stay on top of it…”

Day Two can only be summarized by replacing Vietnam with inner-urban Mumbai and wings replaced with golf shoes. My delirium is beginning to break and I’m taking this full on Gonzo style complete with Jack (I know, the mini bar didn’t have Wild Turkey) neat, because I don’t trust the ice around here.

0940AM UTC// 30.04.07

I’m awake, seems like I’m always awake now in between moments of blacking out. Happened to get to sleep for more than 100 minutes straight last night thanks to a tape delay broadcast of the Yanks/Sox duel from Saturday or had Joe Buck not cleared customs until just then? Anyway, never made it through the game, but my faith lies solely in the Sox to pull it out, perhaps its waiting for me on the tele right on?

After thoroughly enjoying a combination listed below in recommendations, my morning was spent wondering if teleportation is ever legalized, will people choose hotels just so they can claim that they’ve been somewhere? I was beginning to think that my life was going to exist purely in the realms of airplanes and hotel rooms until….

1626 PM UTC// 30.04.07

After putting the room service cooks through my introductory test of a tasty club sandwich and chicken-almond cream soup, I’ve decided that I may need to up the bar for breakfast tomorrow. The meal was perfect and ended with a quality 110 minutes of rest, which came to an abrupt end with the call from the lobby telling me my Indian-Grandfather was ready to advance this journey to the next level.

1701 PM UTC// 30.04.07

I can’t recommend the showers at Le Royal Meridian enough…good velocity, good heat, ability to change speeds, but could go cold at any time…from now on we’ll just refer to this moment of my day as “The Felix”. I gather my belongings and head downstairs to meat my Indian-Grandfather as we begin one of the most monumental car rides in my life, only to be topped by this mornings car ride.

A little background about Indian driving, and I’m assuming this is common throughout most parts of the world not located in Canada and the US.

*Horns-to be used at all times, but never in anger. Horns are the universal verbal signal that informs the motorbike, scooter, ox-drawn carriage or fruit truck that you are behind and would like to pass or please start accelerating. Horns are to be used approximately 10,000 times during an average 45 minute commute.

*Lanes are informative suggestions about separation of cars on major and minor roads. These suggestions are strongly discouraged and dangerous.

*People are to walk with caution because they do not posses “right of way” status.

*Do not be alarmed when you are backed up behind a fruit truck that is having a hard time getting around two oxen-drawn carriages, this is normal and should be encouraged.

…and after all of that, it was by far the most interesting 45 car ride I’ve ever had that didn’t involve ____ on the road. I thought it was the most interesting car ride until I was set to go home, but since I don’t have any photos (and I will tomorrow, I promise,) I’m holding that conversation for a later post.

The work day was long and since I still do not posses Rupees to bargain with I was unable to put the feed bag on during my first shift, which made the 12 hours go by rather quickly in fact. So the first day of work is done and as I watch the smog-ridden sky glow with that big red ball, I’m reminded that the world is in fact a lot larger than I imagined.

More tomorrow and the Z-survival percentage of Bombay.

Recommendations:

Premiership:

*ManUtd/Everton-I know that no one will catch this, but caught the game on one of the two sports stations I get here on “ESPN” with Martin Tyler and Andy Gray. The coverage was excellent and it made me want to find an old skool Satellite Dish to take up my entire backyard so I never have to go back to FSC.

Learning:

*Discovery Channel’s Search for the Lost World-a group of scientist head out to study the findings and mythology of Arthur Doyle’s “Lost World”, I think Train is the only one that really cares about either one of these.

That’s it for today…thanks for reading