Rickie, We hardly Knew Ye!

Our second weekend started pretty much as we have become accustom. The power goes out for about 30 seconds once an hour. It always goes out just long enough to reset everything. We worked out at the gym in the hotel. There were a few other people on the cardio machines. But what is now somewhat humorous is that you can tell the “newbies” when the power goes out and they ask “Is this a power outage?” Well, duh, welcome to Hyderabad. Deb and I thought our Rochester home was on a fragile part of the power grid.
Deb had her first experience with a Hyderabadi manicure and pedicure. She was referred to the businesswoman Shashi who has her shop in her gated home in Banjara Hills. We got to learn a lot about her family from her 5 year old granddaughter who was visiting from Canada. Siya was an Indian version of Chatty Cathy. She reminded me of Leigh when she was that age. I ventured across an Indian six lane road to shop at the Indian version of Whole Foods. As I came out of the store, the traffic had picked up. I was watching for the traffic to lighten up when our driver, Ashraf strolled across the road through the traffic and said “come now.” So I must have seemed like a real wimp. But we walked back through the traffic.
We went to see Knight & Day last night. This was a Hyderabad moment. Waiting in line for the “will call” tickets, we noticed people handing their cell phones through the voice hole to the attendant. Well, they were showing him their confirmation e-mails. This one movie-goer was having some problem and kept handing the phone to the attendant and he kept handing it back. This went on for about 10 minutes as the line kept getting longer. We finally got through the ticket process and went through two security processes before we get to the theatre entrance. We got some popcorn and a drink that also came with two samosas. OK, that’s not bad. We found our screen which was still being “cleaned” so we were standing outside the doors chatting with a fellow from Microsoft who was flying back to the States last night and had time to kill before he went to the airport. As we were chatting, one of the security guys came out of the door with a little cage in his hand. And WHO do you think was in the cage? Well, it wasn’t Mickey Mouse, but none other than Rickie Rat! Well, Deb was searching for some place to hide the food and wondered if she had anything to put over her open-toed shoes. Anyway, we still went in and watch the movie, but Deb was a bit skittish for the rest of the time. She did take the time to stand by the poster outside the theatre to show we actually were there.
Today we went to mass at a small church associated with a school in Banjara Hills. We walked through a beggar-lined gate to a courtyard. I handed out some cookie packs to some of the beggars. I had confirmed yesterday that the mass was in English. The mass was celebrated on IST (India Stretch Time) so it started about twenty minutes past 9. Deb and I assumed that the priest intended to start the mass at 9:20, but tells the parishioners 9 so there were fewer stragglers. The choir was made up of students of the school and had reasonable voices. The music was an electric guitar. There was a neon cross in back of the alter. Fortunately it was NOT a neon crucifix.The homily was just about as unintelligible as the Tamil mass the week before, but I got the “hospitality and generosity” which appeared to be the main message. Check. I handed out more cookies to the gauntlet of beggars as we left the courtyard. We got back to the hotel and attended a local shopping event at the convention center. It was the typical aisles of vendor booths. We meandered around. Deb was drawn like a moth to the flame for the bangles and jewelry booths that were peppered among the many clothing booths from Mumbai, Bangalore, and Kolkata as well as locals from Hyderabad. Once again, we were the only Caucasians in the place. This is becoming a trend. From another source, I got a round figure of about 1000 expats working in Hyderabad. That’s about one tenth the numbers in Bangalore. So we don’t even qualify to be considered a club.
We then took a driver from the hotel over to the “local crafts” village called the Shilparamam. Our driver also acted as our tour guide. However, we believe that he got some kind of kick back from some of the vendors who appeared to know him. Hmmmmmm?!? The locals seem to come to the park area of the village just to walk about without the traffic or rubble.
Ooops, scratch that about the rubble. Well, we got out of there about 1500 Rs lighter but we had a good walk about, even with a reasonable grade. The park area has some art work which appeared to me to be rubble on a pedestal.
Then there were some statuary depicting various indigenous populations in the area with cows, elephants, and goats. I can get that outside the gates every day. Well, not the elephant.
Interestingly, there is a mandate for the village to offer training courses for women. Quite a list!
Hope to have some news on the residence search tomorrow.