My morning walks

I've been walking in the morning in 90-100+ degree weather.  I try to walk everyday, but the nearby streets are getting boring.  So I started to walk above the metro line.  I've gone north 3 metro stops and south 4.  Then I take the metro back.  Now I'm getting on the metro and taking it to where I left off and walking another 2-3.  Yesterday I walked 5K.  I can only tell because I quit at Qutab Minar (WikiPedia Link) so I could plug our hospital in as the start and Qutab Minar as the end and ask google maps to tell me how far I walked.  I only quit because I ran out of water and the metro was near by.  And it was very, very hot.  And I was probably out for 2 hours in the sun which is tough even with a hat and #50 sunscreen.  I know that my rate of walking isn't very high, but again, it is really, really hot.  I got Gatorade, Barbara, but it didn't do the trick yet of preventing a dehydration headache, if in fact that's what it is.  I'm an experiment in progress, so I'll keep trying and gather more data.

I do yoga here at the hospital.  I asked if I'm doing something wrong that when I cross my legs (yoga style) the knob on my ankle was getting sore from being pressed into the floor. The teacher took my foot and pressed various places looking asking where it hurt.  Since I wear shorts, sneakers and socks outside, my bare feet and bottom part of my legs don't get tanned.  The teacher asked if I had a hemoglobin disease.  No, I said, I'm just that color normally and I'm here because my wife is sick, not me.

I saw someone get a traffic ticket yesterday.  I don't know which rule she broke.  I didn't think there were any rules.

On one walk, I saw a bicycle truck full of dirt getting on the freeway.  THE FREEWAY!!!  Maybe it is just an elevated extension where 2 large regular roads intersect and a rotary wouldn't have done the trick but in any case everybody else put the pedal to the metal when they go on that part of the road.  He's taking up most of 1 of the 2 lanes.  He's peddling up the ramp with maybe a quarter or half ton of dirt and rocks on the bed of his bicycle.  And it's 110 degrees.  The people are honking behind him - not flipping him off, but informing him there are people behind him.  He's off the seat, standing trying to peddle his hardest and everyone else are going around him beeping.  He didn't seem to care.  The guys behind him didn't seem to care either. 

 Above you see a Tuk Tuk driver fixing his ride.  The guy holding up the left side is the passenger and you see the driver squatting behind it, contemplating the problem.  Actually the passenger isn't holding it up, but applying a little upward pressure to make sure it doesn't come down.  It is balancing on the front bumper front wheel and one back wheel.  Since it is 3 wheels and it isn't heavy, tipping it up doesn't seem to be a big deal.

Above, here is one of the few cement trucks around.  Usually they have the sand, stone and cement delivered to the street and make the concrete manually.  I couldn't believe the driver here.  He just stopped in front of the fruit stand and his helper got out (not even jumped out for a quick stop, he pretty much ambled out) and bought some fruit.  They blocked 3/4 of the 2 lane street.  That didn't stop people from squeaking around and I couldn't tell what protocol they used for who gets to use whatever's left of road: the ones going the same direction as the truck or the opposing traffic or every other.  Also note that the fruit vendor has his wagon in the street too, constricting traffic even more.

By the way, they make blacktop on site too.  They have  a combination tar kettle/mixer on a trailer, rounds of tar and piles of gravel which they heat and mix into blacktop, apply it by the wheel borrow full and smooth out by hand.  It seems like there are enough people around to do anything and everything manually.

Speaking of concrete, here's a pile of rocks and a dozen empty yellow bags.  One guys shovels the gravel into a bag held by the hauler.  They are climbing to the 4th floor of this building.  Since they number floors starting with 0, this is 5 stories up.  It's 110 degrees out.

The blue boxes on the back are the hot chambers for a fleet of Domino's Pizza delivery motorcycles.  This is how take-away (not take out) food is delivered.  Even MacDonalds delivers.  Sometimes it is just a bicycle and a plastic bag, but everybody seems to deliver.

These last 2 pictures are of a computer market I've gone to.  In the second one, you see HCL, the sign is the width of a shop.  They vary from 5 feet wide to 20.  The depth ranges from as little as 4 feet, just enough for a guy to sit with some shelves with parts behind or beside him, to an air conditioned show room.  The umbrellas in the center are for the vendors who probably pay a fee but don't have anything permanent.  They schlep their stuff in and out every day, but Sunday, when the whole place is closed.  They have all the computer parts you'd ever want in market shades of white, black and gray, except for my laptop's power supply.  I'll get it any day now, as it was in Mumbai.  And cell phones - I'm getting an old one unlocked for $12.  Guys are on the street giving out handbills for software.  Like barkers at a carnival.  One thing they are pushing is their anti-virus software.  Who would want a pirated anti virus software?  Or an off brand one?  Seems like a recipe for disaster - might as well give him my credit card.

Finally I want to point out that our toilet paper and dish detergent touts it's "German Technology" as a selling point right on their respective labels.  I'm not sure why the German Technology in these two areas have an elevated caché, but I wonder how they figured out that using German technology sells more soap in India?  Unless of course that German Technology is in fact superior in it's cleaning and wiping abilities and not just a created mystique.