Bob, You Are Not Welcome [Thursday, 10 June 2010]

As many of you know from my facebook page, I had a very traumatic morning. I was getting ready for work—minding my own business—when all of a sudden the electricity went out. Rather than turning on within two minutes, it stayed off for at least ten. I thought to myself, this would be a nice morning to step outside on my balcony and observe the surrounding area. I pushed back the curtains and to my horror, a lizard scurried out from behind the curtain. Clearly, I started screaming and running around like a maniac. My first thought was to knock him down, so I had the brilliant idea to start pelting him with socks. Unfortunately, I have extremely bad aim and eventually managed to not only miss the lizard, but also get my socks stuck on top of the air conditioning unit. At that point, the electricity came back on, so my next brilliant idea was to scare it away from the hair dryer. Well, (1) the hair dryer cord wasn't long enough to make an impact and (2) I don't think lizards are scared of heat. Last but not least, I found a broom in the pantry and decided the best course of action was to shoo it out. I swept along the wall and managed to get it to go back through the hole in the wall it came in through. Yes, the hole in my wall. Thanks India.

During this whole debacle, my roommate lay soundly asleep across the hall. Jerk.

After the lizard scare, I quickly finished getting dressed and then moved into a safe area—the living room. Dave eventually emerged from his room to iron his clothes around 8:45am (note: Suresh arrives every morning at 9:00am to take us to work). After telling him the tale of my bedroom lizard, the doorbell rang. Dave, being the brave soul that he is, ran away. I was left to answer the door, where I found a young Indian man speaking Hindi and, I think, asking me if I wanted him to take my laundry. I just said no and closed the door. Then, my fearless roommate emerged from his room. We spent most of the day joking that he runs away in a sticky situation, which for some reason made us laugh a lot. Oh, and before he came out of his room, he sneezed, and then walked out of the room and stated "I just sneezed." Which made me laugh uncontrollably. I don't think I can even express how many inside jokes we have: lizards, house boys, short sheets, soap, Akbar, Red Fort, etc. I think we might be friends for life now.

Suresh got in at five to nine and decided to make us tea. He makes the best tea ever, so I was more than happy to accept the offer. Plus, Dave was running around like a lunatic, so we had time.

Today I did my best to continue embarrassing the India team with my crazy American ways. For instance, I used facebook pictures of Jaimee and Vivek to introduce them via e-mail. Vivek was like, "where did you get that photo from?" and all I could do was hysterically laugh. I'm really professional. Seriously.

After work, Dave and I had the driver pick us up at 7:30pm and take us to Ambiance Mall. We discovered quickly that the drive did not speak English, so we devised an intricate sign language plan to explain to him that we wanted to be picked up in two hours. Despite our efforts, I still don't think he understood. We walked into the mall and attempted to find the Fabindia store we had recently become obsessed with. Then we headed to the beer island—specifically, Bavarian—to have some drinks and dinner. Per usual, we tried our best to confuse the servers by asking for separate checks. After diner, dave asked for two more beers and the check. He has the ability to make the simplest statement confusing, so then we were convinced that the server was going to bring us some naan and maybe a brownie instead of what we asked for. Once we left, we were all turned around and couldn't find out way out of the mall. A security guard pointed us in the wrong direction, so that was awesome. Thankfully, we found our way out to our Hindi-speaking driver and made it home.

The ride consisted of us making every inside joke we could think of, including some about my lizard, Bob, and the fact that the house boy refuses to give me a sheet that actually fits my bed. Dave wants me to leave a note that says "House boy, why dost thou hate me so?" Actually, I think that's what he was saying. Each time we tried to talk, we both laughed too much to make full sentences. Then we saw a donkey cross the street at the crosswalk and it was all over. I could barely breathe.

We made it home and ventured back into our rooms (Dave's has since been renamed "the mosquito" room and mine is "the lizard"). I knew that if Bob was there, all hell would break loose. I walked in, stared up at the ceiling, and gave a big sigh of relief. No Bob. Then I turned around to close my door and started screaming. Bob was so confident after this morning's fiasco, that he'd moved further into the room and was now behind my door. This time, Dave did not shirk his responsibilities as man of the house. He found a broom and the bucket from his bathroom and began to chase Bob around the room. Bob was not having any of this. I've never seen a creature move so fast. Eventually he made it to the floor and behind my desk. I stood on the bed and kept screaming, "Bob, no! Don't go under there!" Despite the running and crawling and jumping, Dave eventually managed to get Bob in the bucket. I ran to open the kitchen patio door and as I did, another lizard jumped out of nowhere. Screaming ensued and Dave threw the bucket on the balcony. Then he ran away like a little girl because there were mosquitoes in the kitchen and he didn't have any malaria pills for the trip. Wuss.

Last, but not least, I spent 45 minutes on Skype with my parents just now. Thirty of these minutes consisted of us doing sign language because my parents didn't have their microphone or sound on. Eventually they figured it out and we had a lovely little chat before i jumped up screaming again due to a cricket in the room. Gah, why won't these monsters leave me alone?!?