the indian way of life

India is a very interesting place. Very different from what I'm used to in singapore. So here's a list of the weird and wonderful of india...

1. Yummilicious tea! almost every morning, I'll go to the canteen and order a cup of tea for 3Rs. They serve it in small metal cups and they form a layer of "skin" on top if you leave it long enough. Very delicious.

my favourite meal of the day is breakfast. Love the dosai, khara bhath and everything indian and oily. very different from the usual roti prata, chee cheong fan and meefen that i'm used to in singapore.

2. Everything is super slow mo in india. Think nathan. So i'm also getting into the slow-mo act. Normally I'll spend half a day in the wards. Most days we go for ward rounds. It's kind of similar to singapore except they spend a longer time with each patient and allow them to ramble on and on about they stories. The doctors don't seem to be in a hurry to end their rounds. Don't know what they do in the afternoon cos I've never stayed there long enough to find out. haha.

Just a note about the rest, no everybody is as slack as me! So to all the relatives of my classmates like yvonne, your child is not slacking. Don't worry. The rest go for tutorials and lectures with the local med students every afternoon. Yvonne, kok pin, pinakin,and clara are doing a project with the paeds department on the patient profile in St. John's. They've been spending numerous afternoon working on that. Kudos to them!

3. Movies in india. Do you know that they have intermission in the middle of every movie they show in the cinema? It's kind of weird cos i dunnoe wat to do when there's a 10 min break. And by the time the movie starts, i can't remember what happened at the beginning already. There are lots of hindi movies showing here but they don't have subtitles so it's a little difficult to watch them. My last movie was XXX. erm....very action.

4. No toilet paper! Indians use water to wash up after they use the toilet. Although some shopping centers have toilet paper in their loos, most don't provide any. When travelling, we have to bring our own rolls and really ration them. They are quite costly here. They sell them here in individual rolls rather than the large packs they do in singapore, probably because nobody uses them except for the odd foreigners!

5. Peeing in public. The guys here like to stay facing the wall (along the pavement in the middle of the street) and pee! it's quite a cultural shock for me. When you walk down a path next to the road, you'll be greeted by the occasional smell of ammonia that's oh-so-interesting. They don't care if the rest of the world is passing by behind them. I guess if you have to do it, you have to do it. The funniest thing is that i once saw a urinal in the middle of the street. No, it's not a toilet, just plain urinals (albeit without flush) but yet nobody uses them!! There were still people peeing right next to it!

6. Cows. You can see cows along with people and vehicles along the street. They seem oblivious to the passing crowd. here's a riddle. why is the cow in the middle of the road?

Ans: Because it's jealous of the zebra crossing.
2nd answer: Because it's tired of jumping across the moon.

hee....i enjoy corny jokes like that.

7. Chinese food. They sell the usual staple of fried rice, wanton soup and fried noodles. They also have funny naming food like steamed momos (dumplings), chopsuey (prob crispy noodles), chicken lollipop and chicken 69. Haven't figured out what those are. Love to eat chinese food when i'm feeling homesick. It's not the same but beggars can't be choosers right?

ok...long blog. Clara and Jinnie have abandoned us and left india! Clara's continuing her elective in singapore and jinnie is going to china for some exchange. hope she can catch her flight to china tonight cos she missed her connecting flight this morning. Nathan's in tamil nadu so now left the 5 of of. Which will be the 5 that'll be travelling to kerala for the last week.

There's a meningococcal outbreak in Delhi and it just killed a young man yesterday i think. Read it in the papers just now. Delhi is quite far away from here so i think it's ok. but nathan's going there on thursday. hopefully everything will be controlled by then.

My bro just scared the hell out of me by saying that something terrible happened at home but nobody's injured. wanted to kill him!! Never ever say such scary things like that to somebody who's so far away from home. Turns out that somebody banged my car from the back. Chey! i knew my car was going to be in trouble without me to protect her. =) So i'm not that shocked. ok...school again tomorrow! surgery again.