Try not to work in the office in an effort to housekeep my over-burgeoning inbox. Most things are going along fine, but as usual, Zope is trying to get away. Today’s news: the artists formerly known as O’Reilly authors will also not be Wrox writers so the whole book is still quite empty, it won’t be an open sourced book and it is also being delayed until May to stave off some workload while PHP and BangLinux take priority.
Have horrid feeling that Indian telecom worker did the standard thing last week and, after not being able to find a spare phone connection in the junction box in the basement of Carlton Towers decided to splice our ISDN line to another place thus causing the interference.
Yesterday’s quake was 4.3 on the Richter scale. Gujarat is still experiencing one or two smaller aftershocks a day.
Wake early to watch superbowl and find a mozzie-designed pincushion that used to be my left elbow. Can’t think why all of a sudden all those local would tune in on one particualr part of me but there you go.
Think I feel lorry go past at 8am, but the shaking goes on until I realise it’s an earthquake too and before I can do anything it stops. That would have been me dead then if it had been a strong one. Whole city takes this as a sign and local radio plants rumours that more quakes are due at 1pm and 4.30 pm this afternoon. Of course they don’t but all schools stay shut for the day and all high rise building are evacuated for the majority of it. A four day weekend instead of three.
John’s luggage has finally made it back to Bangalore a week after John did and with it comes my modem cable which is well timed as the office network is becoming more and more unusable. Random users get randomly good access to the net and mail for a random period of time, often not more than a minute. Not good. Modem is fine though. Slink off home in frustration to make use of it.
House power supply spikes and troughs between 150 and 270 volts for five hours. makes the lights flicker more than the candles I’ve lit. Landlord pops round to check the non-functioning UPS, moves it slightly and the loose connection in there somewhere fixes itself. Sends a guy round to top up the batteries who promptly nudges it and once again it doesn’t work.
Finally figure out how to program TV, but reprogramming channels, 7, 12, 22, 31, 36, 42, 44 and 56 to 1 through 8 somehow takes the fun out of channel hopping. Still, someone spins the cable roulette wheel during the day and two channels go missing again anyway.
Go to landlord’s for chicken biryani and weird fishcakes made of chicken too. Earthquake all over tv. Estimated death toll seemingly rising every half an hour or so. Up to 20,000 so far plus injured. They have cleared the airport in one of the worst hit areas—Bhuj—though so aid can start coming in. Already, they are worrying about disease.
Republic Day. National holiday, so nothing open except cinemas, pubs and restaurants. Power also off, so guess they’re on holiday too. Get bored and go into work anyway. Fancy learning python and see how far I get. Receive mysterious email from parents—“Heard news. Are you alright?” Must watch news more often—seriously big earthquake hit N.W. India this morning.
Discover that the second best restaurant in town is a Chinese and realise that the more expensive a restaurant is, the more likely it is trying to cater to western tastes and the worse it will therefore be. Vis a vis - TGI Fridays.
Watch Arnie swagger through ‘The Sixth Day’ at cinema and comfort myself through the shock of exactly how lame it is by watching ‘Strange Days’ on TV on return home.