42

In total, it took me 42 hours to get to my destination in Thailand. 42, besides being the answer to life, the universe, and everything, is also a pretty pleasing number, divisible by 2, 3, 6, 7, 14, and 21. With a number so awesome, I basically had to do some sort of geometric visual thing with it. So this is my 42 hour trip visually represented in squares of color, with each square representing an hour.

In total, I spent 20 hours on planes (blue sky), 7 hours on a bus (green land), and 15 hours of layovers (gray airport/bus terminal).

layover delirium

My flight to Thailand had a 7+ hour layover in Taipei. In an attempt to not fall asleep and ruin my Zero Jetlag master plan, I kept myself entertained for a while by taking pictures in the airport. Most of them are crap. But here are three:

last day in india!

Most important thing I learned by living in Cairo:
How to cross eight lanes of automobile traffic without dying.

Most important thing I learned by living in Calcutta:

How to cross eight lanes of automobile, rickshaw, autorickshaw, motorcycle, cow cart, and pedestrian traffic without dying.

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?