Settle down eveyone.

Couple of things happened last night. First, you know that I have been complaining about my throat being sore and scratchy. Well, as I explained to the throat earlier, I guess I should probably say the “throat community” to be more precise, it's out of my control. Obviously they haven't agreed with that statement and have taken it upon themselves to separate into little factious fighting groups. My voice, being good friends of the throat, finally had enough of the abuse and left during the night. I thought we were on manageable terms, but again, as usually, because I'm married and have prior experience here, I was wrong. Alas, the underlying and smoldering grudge that my voice held against me for my actions of breathing the noxious air were just too great for it to stay. It was early this morning when I heard the door open and then close softly. I couldn't do anything about it. Sometimes these things take time to sort out. Hopefully we can come to some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement. Currently, I'm in negotiations with my taste buds right now. Apparently they decided, amongst themselves last night too, that they would go on strike until their demands are meet. As I tried to explain to them, using sign language of course cause my voice left, it's out of my control. But like any good Drain, they are stubborn and willful in nature. I think I can starve them out, so that's my plan for now.

The neighboring body parts are split in their support of the throat. I'm just waiting for some of them to revolt and join up. For now, the border parts are just watching with great interest in how the scene will unfold.  No one is making big moves, so as to keep everyone guessing.  The head was making a little fuss and whining about the mistreatment of the throat, so I bribed the ache department with some Ibuprofen. That seemed to do the trick for now, but I realized that once you start with the bribes then they come to expect it and want more and more.  I might regret that decision later.

So anyway, second thing happened last night. I decided to move from my hotel room. The room that I'm in is great; first floor (not ground level, but one up from that), right on the end, OK view to the back, away from the street. But there is a semi vacant lot right next to me that is used for parties, wedding receptions, and things like that. Great! Or so I thought. Last night the party went until after 2am and the triple pane windows in my room were rattling! It was so loud that I had to have ear plugs and my headset on just to keep some of the noise out. I stayed up and watched movies, cause there was no way I could escape the noise. Bummer thing was that I couldn't even join the party. Something about black tie and an invite. I didn't understand him. But he was bigger than me and he had a couple of his friends around, so I didn't want him to loose face when I tossed him to the floor. The movies were OK without sound, cause I had the closed caption going. I just used my imagination with that part.  It's slightly harder to read the caption when it's displayed in Chinese and Hindi.  I used my best guess. 

Yesterday's ground school class was so frustratingly funny! I'm not telling you too much, lest the Indian Special Forces hunt me down, but it was basically a dangerous goods class. What can we carry and what we can't. In summary, we can't carry any dangerous good and are not responsible for any that magically hop on our airplane without permission. So, that took all of 6 seconds to say, right? Well, we were in class from 9am to 5pm learning just that! Time management is not in the vocabulary. Not at all! All the instructors like to teach the same way too. They start “teaching” us stuff in the morning and then about an hour and one half before we are supposed to be done and take a test, they realize that they have only covered about half the material. So then it's a big panic and rush to get the remaining info out to you. They don't care that you don't learn squat, just get it done! So then when you take your post instruction test and have a question about something you covered at mach. 3, they just waggle their head and say “I told you Captain! We already covered that. You should remember!” Yeah, right. I just laugh now. If they want me to pass, it'll happen. If not, I'm repeating the course.  

Yesterday, we were supposed to get 1 hour to do the test, but she said that we could get an extra half hour. Thanks! When I got the test, all 7 pages of material that we were supposed to fill out exactly verbatim from the book, I just started laughing! I told her that there was no way on God's green earth that we would ever finish in that time. I was right. I finished first in just over 1.5 hours, but I doubt they can read my writing! One guy took 3 hours! We left the ops building after 8pm. Oh well.

I'm off to see the market. Later taters. Darin