What I do on my "day off" ...if I manage to wake up!

There is only one bad thing about this job... that we have just one day off per week (we teach two three-day classes: Tue/Wed/Thu and Fri/Sat/Sun so Monday is free) and, because the local office keeps American business hours, we work 9:30 p.m. in the evening until 6:30 a.m. the next morning.

That means Monday is our day off. Well, actually Monday NIGHT is our "day off." Which means after work Monday morning I come back to the hotel, eat breakfast, check email, and go to bed. If you keep your body on the same schedule it's been on the rest of the week, you sleep all morning and afternoon and wake up around six in the evening. You shower (just like you would in the "morning" and go down to eat dinner, and go to work. No wait, it's my day off. That means I'm free... all night. Uh, not too many tourist attractions are open between 9:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.

For example, right now it is 11:03 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Yesterday was my day off. But after breakfast I slept all day clear through until late evening, and lost any chance to go sightseeing. But then again, my body was too wiped to WANT to do any sightseeing! :( So to keep from changing my body's internal clock, I stayed up all night, checking email, doing expense reports, reading the Orlando Sentinel newspaper online, etc. It is now Tuesday morning and time to go to sleep so I can get up for work tonight. No fun.

Oh well. Now I must say that I did go for a run this morning about 7:00 a.m. through the streets, and I do mean "streets" as Hyderabad doesn't really have sidewalks. At all. Anywhere. Which means you really are running IN the street. Pedestrians are supposed to walk facing the traffic, so you can see what's coming, and here it is even more important: trucks, busses, cars, bicycles, cows, "autos" ... all are barreling toward you. Are sometimes there is a vehicle coming up behind you AGAINST traffic, and against common sense too, I would say.

It is much better to run in the early morning, as there is much less traffic and much less pollution. The little autos aren't exactly clean green machines. And offices don't normally open until 9:00 a.m. or even later, so the streets are relatively free.

SIGHTS AND SOUNDS... AND SMELLS

This is a sight I see on my morning run down to Hussein Sagar lake: the local garbage truck depot. It smells as good as it looks, even from way up high on the railroad bridge that goes over it.

YOU ARE HERE!

On our day off that first week we were here, I forced my body to stay awake and I visited the India National Exhibition. I was pretty excited, because of the great world's fairs that are called "exhibitions" and because I spent the summer of 2000 working at EXPO 2000 World's Fair in Hannover, Germany. Well, this was a little bit different. It was large and spread out, but mostly all woven fabrics, saris, bedsheets, etc. Guess I was expecting pavilions, and machinery, and rides, and exotic things. It was very interesting and saw a lot of things I had never seen before, but just not what I was expecting.

GET YOUR POPCORN! GET YOUR FRESH-DRIED POPCORN!

This popcorn stand hadn't yet opened for the day. Good thing, because the popcorn was still being dried... using solar power.

ROGER GOES TO JAIL, SORT OF

Andra Pradesh is the name of the Indian state where the city of Hyderabad is located, and the A.P. Prisons had a small building at the India National Exhibition. Notice there an "IN" but no "OUT" ?

VENTRILOQUISTS and TALKING DOLLS

This picture is for my old housemate Tom, from Atlanta. He is a professional magician and I thought he would like to know that he could always find work here in Hyderabad if the market in Georgia "disappeared."

Well, that's all for today, Tuesday, February 28, 2006. Didn't really have a day off this week (that I was awake for anyway) so maybe next week.

President and Mrs. Bush are in India starting today and will actually be in Hyderabad on Friday. Maybe I'll have some live news for you then?