my brain is melting

My last day of work at SAATHII is a week from today, so I'm trying to wrap everything up, but it's been a little difficult the last few days because of the following reasons:

1) My laptop (finally) died. I guess all the sand in Cairo, and now the humidity in Calcutta, has finally gotten the best of it. I'm using a desktop at the office, but I can't take any work home.
2) There's been some major load shedding (aka rolling blackouts). Today, we didn't have power for three hours.
3) My brain is melting in the heat. There's no AC in the office and the load shedding puts the fans out of commission.

Can't wait to head to the mountains.

roof envy

This is the green roof of a building next to ours. Who knew that Calcuttans are environmentally-conscious? I was thinking about trying to befriend someone in that building so that I could hang out up there. But then I remembered that I'm lazy.

where's my icy hot?

I've turned into a Bengali Uncle. See before and after pictures below for proof:

more crafts!

I collected toilet paper rolls for weeks, hoping to use them for some sort of to-be-determined craft project. Neela thought I was crazy and threatened to throw my stash out in my sleep if I didn't do something with them. Finally I came up with the idea of cutting cross sections and making a map of India on our living room wall out of them. Bangladesh (what what) is prominently displayed using bright orange origami paper. Take a look at the pic from this post to see where it is in relation to the rest of the room (its in the left corner).

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BTW, can you tell yet that I use origami paper for everything?

do lizards make out??

... cuz that's totally what these two on my kitchen floor look like they're doing. Either that, or one's eating the other's head.

squares

Picture of the Guggenheim + Rasterbator + origami paper = memories of NYC on our wall.

let the countdown begin!

Two more months 'til I'm back in the states and see the fam! Above: my parents, unknown date (though from the look of my mom's sari and the thickness of my dad's hair, I'd guess sometime in the 70s).