Day 9 (Friday) Friday - Blown Transformer & Internet From my balcony you can see (more accurately, hear) the builders climbing up and installing the transformer for our complex, in that true Indian fashion of barefooted and with hammer! I thought it wouldn't be too long before the whole thing will be working. Yet again I opened my eyes to dead insects & flies about the place, and slowly woke up over another 30 laps & more exercise. The one thing I look forward to in the morning, is the nice stinkingly hot shower you can have here (the water tank is on the roof, and slowly cooks the water in the sunlight). After my impression of a drowning rat, I flicked on the taps expecting that nice blast of water...trickle... Arse! There was hardly any water pressure left! Up on the roof I peered down into the tank only to be able to see the bottom of the tank! Then thing had run dry! Humm, I told the Security Guard who in turn promised me he'd tell the pool guy, who tell the ..... it was going to take some time and I'd have to enjoy the shower tonight! Yesterday I didn't manage to get much done because the Internet connection was down, if it was working today, bonus, if not I'll just do all the stuff offline and upload it later. Easier said than done! For the first 40mins the PC failed to boot-up, I ended up opening the case up and rechecking everything inside before it finally came on! Sandra saw this and before I knew it I was fixing a few of the other problems the other PCs had! But thankfully the connection had been restored. I'd been sat typing for only 20min before {{BANG!}} and sparks and shreds of material flew past the window. {Beep, beep, beeeeep} the power was about to die! Quickly saving everything just before everything pasted out, I stepped outside to see smoke coming from the transformer of this complex! So while ours was being fixed, this one decided to blow up! (With how things work here, I doubt they are unconnected incidents!). Classic! So now there was no power, and I already knew it was going to take them ages to fix it! I was running out of luck, first there is no internet connection, now there's totally no power! Sandra told me again about that better place in Madgoan so I phutta-phutted back into to Madgoan and found another cafe. What I like about this place in Benaulim is that I can use the entire computer and software on it, most places restrict what you can use on their machines and only really allow you to access the net. Anyhow, beggars can't be choosers, so in this fairly swankier Internet place I faffed around for ages trying to get to the USB port, looked at the screen only to be told that its full of viruses and the browser always seems to go to site dedicated for "Adults Only" Crap! climbed in behind the unit, unplugged things then tried the next machine, less viruses but still the same dodgy sites kept coming up!! Apparently this is the place where Adult Sites get bookmarked!! Embarrassed at first, I looked around and notice it was a male-only cafe, with everyone huddled over their screens blocking other from looking! Hummm! I didn't fancy looking at the range of goods on offer from these various pop-ups, so I tried to clean the browser up a bit and reset all the bookmarks & homepage. Since the owner had restricted the use of each machine, I wasn't allowed to do anything with my "insufficient privileges!". Oh Well, carry on regardless! By the end of a few hours I'd manged to assign & complete most of the Keywords, and also knew the medical names for various tablets that could cure/fix/enhance a range of 'aliments' ... as well as a few other things! It was getting too "hot" in there for my liking so I started riding back to Benaulim. On the way back I noticed the side of the road was being dug up. It seemed like a fairly massive road project was going on - and what heavy machinery would they use for this? None, just several hundred workers and their families! The roadside was being dug up for this pipe by a couple of hundred families spread out across the length of the road using nothing more that an simple shovel and bucket to carry away the dirt! These labourers (usually from the poorer parts of Uttar Pradesh) and their young families (including the wife and kids) are contracted to do the heavy labour and are paid only a nominal wage. In the morning I'd seen trucks filled with dirt followed by one filled with people passing the flat. These guys must camp outside of the area and get trucked in to various places like cargo for the various jobs. It's an interesting one, on one hand you feel bad for these guys, women & children having to carry out all this hard labour in such searing heat (to built such things as the flat I now live in), but on the other hand you see them all having fun (including the kids) and all of them earning some money at the end of the day. They sometimes form little camps on site and develop their little community around them. Further on, I pulled up outside my "office". I saw Sandra through the window and asked her if it was all working now or not, in reply I got a 3 times head wobble - normally I can understand theses, but for this question there was so many answers I had no idea if she meant: "Yes" "No" "Almost" "In 5 mins" "the computers are working, but the internet is not" "both computers and internet are now working!" Baffled by her reply, I realised I needed to actually go in and use words with her, since I couldn't decode her wobbles! It wasn't working so I returned back to the flat to be greeted by an Army of ants right across the front door! It seemed that my efforts had persuaded them to leave, however they decided to relocated from the left side of the door frame and move over to the right! They were essentially moving house and I could see all the furniture, fixtures and fittings their owned being transported across in front of me!! This was taking the piss! Out went the window went all the 'Buddhist' theory I'd picked up from Tibet & Nepal and I nuked them with the remain pesticide I had - then retreated to a sleepy restaurant and ate my guilt away at the mass murder i'd committed! Thankfully the Pest guys were coming in the morning to completely nuke the entire flat! Into this same sleepy restaurant walked a stereotypical example of {Brits on Hols}. Pale and pasty on arrival, however red and splotchy at the end of the day, with 30% of the group never making it out in the evenings due to excess sun and sun stroke! All the food {"can't be too spicy innit, and itl be popodums, coke, beer and Chicken Tikka Masala, but not too spicy innit!"} All spoken with that gruffness in the voice that says {I've smoked too many a day, and I'll continue to whilst I'm here cos it's Cheaper!} I noticed that it was common to drop the word "the" and stunnt all the sentences to make themselves understood. Its almost as if this {"English for Foreigners"} has its own grammar & rules! The trouble is this sometimes makes it harder for the other person to follow since they're also new to this "English for Foreigners" - they usually hear "Indian English" (with lots of 'actually', 'also', 'quality', 'first class', & 'really' all in confusing places) or the classic "European English" heavily accented with German/French/Russian and spoken in just a simple way it's almost structured like the Hindi sentences, but just in English. This "English for Foreigners" in its extreme cases seems to baffle most Indians as is unlike the things they hear most often! I returned to the site of a mass ant extermination and the little bodies were littered all over the place and required (another!) round of massive sweeping!