The Morning After

As of this morning, I have officially spent 1 full night in my new apartment.  When you see newness in the excitement of the daylight, things tend to look a great deal better than in the middle of the night. They are snazzy, bright and full of hope.  It is only after you have had to spend a few hours alone with them in the darkness that you begin to question you ability to make good choices.   I believe this is how you can explain people who bought the Pontiac Aztek, David Hasselhoff’s stardom and the election of Barak Obama. 

First off, if I have not mentioned it, Delhi is dusty – really dusty.  This dust gets into everything.  If you leave you door open just for a moment, it will get into you home.  It is very typical to have your servants clean the floors twice a day.  You can image how much of this dust got into my flat while it was being worked on.  I believe none of it was ever removed. My mistake was I assumed that the apartment was cleaned, because it looked clean.  What tricked me was that all the floors are beige Italian marble and the dust in Delhi is roughly the same color. Indistinguishable until you do a lap in black socks – or should I say, formally black socks. 

I was determined, though, not to let this bother me.  After all, a Puja had just been preformed and all was right with the universe.  I choose a room and began setting up.  I am not sure if I mentioned that the third bag that caused me so much angst at the airport in Minneapolis was actually packed with an airbed.  The master plan was to get an apartment and move in before my return to Minnesota to ensure everything was in top working order for the arrival of my bride (Happy wife – happy transition).  In order to do this properly, I would need to actually sleep there.  I have moved around enough to know that you must plan for this, so I hauled a deluxe, queen size airbed and pillow from the Mid-West to the Sub-Continent.  Who of you just muttered, “that was actually pretty smart!”  No rookie here. 

Anyway, with no curtains to speak of, I choose the back bedroom with the small windows and began inflating my super deluxe new bed.  It has a self-contained pump and I brought a transformer, so it was up in less than 5 minutes.  It is so super deluxe, that it raises you about a foot and a half off the floor – just like a real bed. 

So with bed inflated, I crawled under the sheet for a restful slumber and closed my eyes to dream of seeing my wonderful wife in three days.  As I settle in, a slight hum began to make itself known.  You hear it slightly at first, but then for some reason the sound sticks to your ears like the orange coating from pizza goldfish.  I tried to ignore it, but it was just the right frequency to bug the crap out of you, so I got up to investigate.   I checked the air conditioner, the fan, and the bathroom.  No luck.  I then expanded the search to the rest of the flat.  Nothing, still.  I unplugged everything, switched off the outlets and even stepped outside to see if it may be originating from another building.  Nothing.  Frustrated, I climbed back on my pillow-topped balloon and tried to sleep.  It did not come – at all.  All night, I tossed and turned listening to the hum.  About 5:00am, I decided to do an ever more expanding search around the building.  Nada. 

Tired and frustrated, I realize that I am going to have to let this one go, because it is time to take my first shower.  For those of you who have never left the comforts of central air conditioning and a full-sized basement water heater, please let me explain how the rest of the world does things.  First of all, electricity is expensive everywhere outside of the US – really expensive.  To save money, everything in the home is set up in a decentralized manner. Each room will have its own air conditioner, outlets have switches on them and each bathroom has its own water heater.  Water heaters are the mother-of-all energy consumers, so you do not leave them on.  You turn them on only when you need them.  The rub is that this all takes planning, since one of these geysers (real name) takes about 30 minutes to get up to the right temp. 

The other element is air conditioning.  Whilst my bedroom had been cooled all night, the master-bedroom, in which I would like to take my shower (it is the only remotely clean bathroom) had not been.  My room was a temperate 78 degrees, while the rest of the flat was …. well …..  ass-sweat hot and humid.  This means that I was taking a lukewarm shower in a steambath.  What was the point?  To add insult to the already hot and sweaty injury, I had completely forgotten all bathing products in the hotel.  Winner, winner – chicken dinner!

So the flat is hot, the shower is not and I have no soap anyway.  I soooo wanted to just check back into my suite at the hotel and forgot I ever agreed to come to India. 

Welcome to my first night in my new cage!