India 2012

 Saturday, May 19, 2012

I will try again.  Here I am again in India.  Different place; same people.  My trip here was not uneventful.  Bob took me to the airport.  So far so good.  United said they couldn't book me through to Kochi because Qatar Airlines wasn't in their alliance.  I found out later, however, that Qatar Airlines IS a partner.  SBN said they could put my luggage through to Kochi, but not me.  Ok.  I can deal with that.  In Chicago, I asked a United person if this was indeed true.  He said that sometimes they can book the person all the way through and sometimes not.  Still okay.  In Montreal I had to go through Customs where they took my apples!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Apparently don't travel with nuts either.  I couldn't find my way back to the Qatar counter so I flagged down an airport supervisor who said that I should have also picked up my luggage in Montreal.  She contacted Qatar counter and had them wait for me to check-in as they were ready to call it a night.  She had me running through airports, through another security checkpoint to the Qatar counter where they checked me in and started my luggage on the way to the airline.  The supervisor took me to the Boarding Gate where there was a man from Sudan in the same predicament as I.  He refused to get on the plane without his luggage receipt so they allowed me to follow suit.  Without him there I would have just gotten on the plane without the receipt.  Luckily, I followed his path because when I got to Kochi, my luggage didn't come in with me.  It was left in Doha due to problems with the plane's weight.  At Kochi, the people at Qatar were very helpful with all the paperwork, getting me through customs (twice) and out to my driver.  Fortunately he didn't give up and was still waiting.  Qatar needed a more precise address than I was able to give them. 

Wonder of wonders.  I left, came back, and could find my post from this morning.  The setup for blogspot has changed so there is no constant saving or a place where you can save until you update it.    To finish the luggage story, Qatar Airlines apparently didn't want to send someone 1 1/2 hours out to deliver one piece of luggage, but Babu took over, and the luggage arrived intact 36 hours after me.  It's been extremely hot and humid so I was glad to be able to wear something other than jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.

Anyway, for your edification:   Doha, Qatar has 80% of the population of Qatar residing in its boundaries.  I met a young guy on the plane from the University of Calgary who was going to Doha to be a student adviser for students attending the local University of Calgary.    He said that just outside the city there is an Education Center where several major universities like Georgetown have a branch.  Apparently people from Qatar solicited universities to come on over and bring their own professors with them.  I'm not sure how long they stay given that the stewardess who lives there says that the rest of the country is basically desert.  Several African countries are taking this route until their own people are qualified to teach; not to mention the fact that it looks good to have a diploma that says Georgetown.

If I come back in the morning and can find this post, I will let you all know it's up and running.

Love,
Mom/Peggy/ Granny

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

This will be my last post from this side of the pond. I leave today at 3:30 for the airport. Unable to check-in. Jet Airways doesn't even have Kochi or Cochin as a city they fly to. However, I am certain that they do as I flew in there on Jet Airways, and other people have as well.

Yesterday we went to Babu's college. Wow! I am impressed. In 2003 when the Indian government apparently said there could be private colleges, this one was just a gleam in a lot of peoples' eyes. It is very much larger than I expected. Beautiful main building. Open air hallways, computer classrooms, regular classrooms, machine shops of various kinds (engineering college), either two or three hostels and building another. Each hostel houses about 100. Three to a room, but the rooms are about one and a half size the ones in Read Center in Bloomington. They have to do their own laundry. No washers or dryers. Beating them on rocks to get them clean. I don't know if the guys have to do the same or not. Building an auditorium which will seat 1500. Doctorates and non-doctorates teaching. The Placement Director speaks excellent English. There aren't so many engineering jobs in Kerala, and other states speak different languages. He said that the students are resistant to going to other states for that reason. My response was that if they could speak Malayalum, they could learn any language.
But I also saw that in the jail. Even the Latinos who could speak some English wouldn't because they were afraid of being ridiculed by the Americans.
I was definitely impressed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The biggest problem facing the college is that the machines the students are learning on are about 20 years behind the West. And they do need to learn the basics and can do so with these machines. But newer ones are too pricey to put in for the number of students they have.

The mosquito and fly bites I have gotten this year last--and itch--for DAYS. It's awful. Didn't happen last year. Baji gave me some oil for the itching, and I keep reapplying it. It helps.

We passed some houses on the way to the college, some of which were twice the size of the rich house. Don't know if they were just the wealthy or they had been to the Gulf to earn their money. Have to wonder what will happen when all those Gulf men return to Kerala to live in their rich houses right across the road from poverty. The haves and the have-nots.

Although I love this part of India, it is the exception. As I mentioned before 90% or better of the population of Kerala is literate. But there is a dark side to India. Although there is poverty here, especially by our standards, it is nothing like what is in the big cities. Literacy is 45% at best. There are places where, if you read the newspaper, it seems like the wild, wild west. There are also areas where the Maoists are very present, bombing trains and buses, killing innocent people. Not a day goes by that a chief of police or several police aren't reported killed. Sixty-two years after achieving independence, 300 MILLION people do not get two square meals a day. They are tired of waiting for the good life to filter down to them. Hence, the violence. So, as progressive as some places are or seem to be, it certainly doesn't apply to everyone yet.

It's nearly time to go for treatment so I want to sign off thanking my children, my daughters-in-law, my sisters, and my grandchildren for all their love and support! Couldn't do it without you!

Love,
Mom/Peggy/Granny/NiNi

Monday, June 7, 2010

Monday, June 7, 2010

My fresher course is about to come to an end. I will certainly miss the wonderful fruit I have been privy to here. The pineapple juice yesterday was absolutely fantastic! And the orange juice today was equally super. Naturally sweet and no additives! The bananas, too, are naturally sweeter than most of the ones we get. Although maybe part of that is because I get them when they are one/half day short of banana bread ingredient. In other words, very ripe.

Being here has given me a timeout in which to refocus on what I want to do which is keep getting healthier at least on the inside. May not look it on the outside due to sagging, but that's ok. Focus on what's important which is continuing to getting and staying healthier.

I remember meeting a woman when David and I went to England to visit Kevin who traveled the world by herself. I was absolutely amazed. After my experience in Mumbai, I feel much more positive about maybe getting there. Amelia, too, could travel the world and be accepted anywhere just because of her personality and her interest in people.

As many of you are aware, winter and the nonavailability or expense of my favorite fruits provided a challenge. Vegetables are pretty much always available although the taste definitely changes. I have found that veggies like carrots and cucumbers definitely change taste depending on where they are grown. Spinach can change taste, too, although I only got my batch that was bitter. Apples last forever in the refrigerator as do oranges. Guess I'll just have to suck it up this winter or try alternatives. My plan is to use the cookbooks and try new things in the coming year. Maybe even eggplant and squash! Jenny has fixed those for me. Maybe I can also do it myself.

I think I forgot to tell you about my reception here. Baji, Babu, and Francis all met the minivan. I think they were surprised, although I had been giving monthly updates, and somewhat overwhelmed. Great big smiles. It's one thing to read a figure and another to see it. I also think it did them some good to see the results. That the treatment really does work if you want it to and you are motivated. I've heard about the people who stay for a month of weight loss and leave with the words that "I'm going on a cruise, and I know I'm going to eat a lot." or, if they come again, bringing their full medication containers back with them. So I think it was very positive for them, too.

I had a question about what we get to drink here. Room temperature bottled water for the most part. Hot water at meals. Ich! There is coffee and I believe tea. E-mail the colonel if you need specifics. Or bring it. The worst they can say is 'I don't think so'. And they usually say it in the nicest way.

I didn't finish yesterday's thought on Zamorin's vs other places. Baji and Babu feel that their six evening/week visits compensate for lack of tourism. (Mind, body, spirituality?) In a government hospital, a doctor will see an average of 300 patients PER DAY. Private practice is virtually the same. There are no appointments. In order to keep your patients as a private practioner, you are on call 24/7. If someone comes to the door in the middle of the night or in the middle of dinner, you have no choice but to see them right then and there or people start talking about you not being available and you lose your practice. Once gossip gets started, there goes your practice. If you don't have any patients and another doctor has plenty, the one without continues to have no patients because people figure he is not a good doctor. I will have to ask if there are any women Ayurvedic doctors.

Time for treatment. This is the last day to ask questions while I'm still here.

Take care.

Love,
Mom/Peggy/Granny/NiNi

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Sunday, June 6, 2010

This time tomorrow night I hope to be able to print my boarding pass. Won't that be great? I've enjoyed myself. However, I am ready.

At 4:15 PM today, we went to the elephant preserve, the Arabian Sea, St. Thomas the Apostle museum, and, last but not least, the huge Hindu temple which I am not allowed to enter. I swear to you that the police don't show up until it looks like I am going to try to get in the temple, and then they show up in droves. In what little I could see from the outside, one whole wall and maybe more look to be prayer candles. Really pretty.
Krishna is not one to take a lazy stroll through the elephant preserve or probably anything else, but we did see all the elephants. People can donate elephants and provide for their care by setting up an annuity. There is a waiting list of people wanting to sponsor elephants. This is probably because elephants are very important here. No longer for work in Kerala, but for a lot of festivals.

Kerala has a 1:6 person to vehicle ratio while the rest of India has a 1:25 ratio. Food prices have gone up 16.5% since the first of the year countrywide, not just in Kerala.

Geckos can certainly make a lot of noise for as small as they are. I have a pet one in my room. He doesn't bother me, and I don't bother him.

When it rains here, it seldom rains for long, but it can be of the heavy downpour sort. I have yet to see a puddle anywhere but on the roads. The rice fields are damp, but there is no standing water. It just soaks right in. When I got here, I thought things looked kind of dry. There was a drought over a large part of the country last year so they are hoping and praying for a good monsoon season. I've come to decide that monsoon season is merely a rainy season. There don't seem to be any storms like hurricanes or typhoons or cyclones. That's good because the coconut trees have a very small root system so they blow over easily.

The other day I saw an earthmover--the small variety. He was as wide as the lane he was trying to go down with a concrete wall on one side and a 5 foot dropoff on the other. He couldn't get around the corner so he put his stabilizers down and moved the back end around that way.
I know. Sometimes it takes very little to entertain me.

The other night Baji asked Krishna why he chose Zamorin's after seeing so many others on websites. He told of one in Thissur that offered Ayurveda complete with activities when you aren't in treatment. Baji said that Zamorin's was here for cures not for touristing. Treatment and tourism do not go together. Krishna's reason for coming here was in communicating with Babu, he felt the warmth and welcome that we have experienced in working with Babu.

I think I partied too much this afternoon so I am going to bed.

Take care.

Love,
Mom/Peggy/Granny, NiNi

I have a string of wonderfully smelling jamine in my hair courtesy of Krishna.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Sunday, June 6, 2010

The internet situation is beginning to really irritate me. I tried to write last night, and everything went down again. Such is life in the jungle. I'm glad I have it at all. Otherwise, I would feel completely cut off from everyone I care about.

Anyway, as I was trying to say last night, I may have rushed to judgment about Krishna. Not the part about him being a very nice person. The part about knowing EVERYthing. In addition to all the positives I listed about him before, he has many interests and is passionate about them. Last night we talked about investing for instance. He prowls the grounds looking for herbs in leaves, seeds, and seed coverings. He showed me the seed that is ground into our nutmeg last night. It's amazing how in the past every part of a plant is used for something. The nutmeg has a flower, an outer part, and the seed in the middle, which, in addition to nutmeg, can be planted to make a new tree.
BTW: Mohanon made some dish of banana STEM ala the same stem we had last year as juice. I have to say the dish tasted better than the juice.

More questions to answer.

How I am feeling now vs. a year ago. Mentally and emotionally I feel good. This place is so restful and peaceful. I used visualization last year in order to relax and could actually put myself to sleep with it. Now--here--I can fully relax without visualization. Body and mind. The yoga has contributed to that although I had already learned to keep those thoughts that keep bombarding my mind not to enter my consciousness. Now I am better at it.
Since starting this last year, I have a new mission. No, it is not to stand on a soapbox because most people just blow me off. Really and truly, I plan to live to be at least 100 years old. Sorry about that for those of you who might be waiting for an estate distribution. (Kidding.) Better than that, I am determined not to spend the last years of my life watching television from a chair or a bed.

What really pushed me over the edge with regard to changing what I eat is that first I read In Defense of Food, in which the author convinced me that our food supply is pretty much devoid of nutritional value except for fruits and vegetables. Two rules that have stuck with me of the 10 he lists are 'Never buy anything with more than 5 ingredients.' and 'Never buy anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.' In addition, iceberg lettuce, for instance, as been mutated to taste better--and it definitely does--but it has about as much nutrition in it as 1000 heads of lettuce when our older generation was growing up. (kudos to Jeff's mother and In Defense of Food). Better to eat Romaine or Spinach or collard greens or something dark in color.
I also watched that Supersize me (may be the wrong title). But it's where the guy eats nothing but McDonalds for 30 days. After two weeks, I think, his doctors told him to stop, but he persisted much to his detriment. Very damaging diet for the body.
The last thing that convinced me was reading The China Study. This is not to say that I never have meat, or dairy, or eggs. I do. But not nearly as much. I concentrate on the fruits (easy) and vegetables (not so easy).


With regard to confidence level, I now know that when everything goes wrong that can go wrong in a foreign country, I will survive. A few tears in front of a man never hurts. Also, I didn't try this, but getting angry doesn't work anywhere when you are trying to get help.

I don't think I was having any problem with my self-esteem. I am happy with my life. I have great sons and daughters-in-law who are exceptionally supportive --even when they think I'm crazy. Babu says my sons are like Indian sons except they were born, raised, and live in America. I also have God's fabulous blessing of four super-duper grandchildren. Who could ask for anything more? I have my health and I have all these blessings.

Physically, I have quit fighting yoga. After all, having a personal yoga instructor who is a happy person, has a sense of humor, teaches me Malayalum, and speaks better English than most is pretty darn cool. Of course, it also helped that he hasn't made me do some of the stuff David was doing last year. I can get up and down much easier. The heat doesn't bother me as much.
I am anxious to getting back to where I can intersperse walking with swimming again. I think the swimming was a very positive thing. Not to mention wearing a smaller size swimsuit. BTW: all my workout shirts are about to relegated to sleep jammies. They are starting to look sloppy.

Other than weight, I didn't think there was anything wrong with my health. Having tried many times to lose weight, I had gotten to the point where I just accepted it. In addition, the psychological reason for keeping the weight was that it kept men away from me. I wasn't interested and this solved the problem. Not to worry. I'm not interested in women either.
Whoa. I'm really letting it all hang out, aren't I?

Overall fitness: I can walk more than 3 miles in an hour and swim 7/8 mile in an hour. I feel positive that I could walk a 5K in under 1 hour and 40 minutes with or without hills. Actually, I notice here that I no longer have to pause walking up even long hills nor do I slow down nor am I completely out of breath when I get to the top. Hooray for me!

I will try to write more later. After afternoon treatment we are going to the Elephant Preserve and the Arabian Sea and maybe the big Hindu temple where the police were going to make absolutely sure that no white American was going to enter.

Take care.

Love,
Mom/Peggy/Granny/NiNi

Friday, June 4, 2010

Friday, June 4, 2010

And that was as far as I got when the internet and the power went out. That was 2PM yesterday, and the internet was out for 24 hours.

As I was saying--more or less--We westerners are ending up dying from 'diseases of affluence'--meaning we don't eat the right stuff to prevent heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, etc.

Read the book and be sure to read it all the way to the References section. Among other things you will find out that our own government is killing us off because it (they) would rather be in bed with the food and drug industries than promote good health. For instance, are you aware that the National Institute of Health runs or pays for all of the initial research into drugs--at taxpayer expense. Only when a potential drug looks promising do the drug companies then take over. So we are taxed two ways. lst for the studies and then for the astronomical cost of new drugs. Our government does studies where many of the agencies and scientists are also on the payroll of various members of the food industry. They will not publish anything that says too much beef is bad because that could put the beef industry out of business, etc. ad finitum. It really is horrific.

Moving right along because I know there are believers and nonbelievers out there.

There have been questions asked. So...I have lost 6 kilos--13 pounds for those of you who didn't study in grade school. My cholesterol has dropped from 234 to 200 in three weeks. My sciatica started acting up yesterday--may be due to a couple of yoga moves.

Diet Coke. I haven't had any cravings (means no addiction), and I don't even miss it. But, of course, it isn't available here. In the US it is available everywhere. Hopefully, I will be able to stay away from it, but water does get boring even after three weeks. The added incentive is that it contains aspertame, a man-made chemical. I have been reading my Nutrition Actions here, and they are against virtually any kind of soft drink. As one grows older, one's kidneys tend to function less well so I suppose chemicals merely accelerate that. Good reason to stop.

As of Wednesday there is a new patient--a 60 year old man from Chennai. Owns his own company--Computer Access Private LTD. Wife is a research scientist and breeds German Shepherds. His daughter is married to a Stanford undergrad who is a cardiothoracic surgeon in Seattle. Son-in-law was born and raised in US. A son works for Johnson and Johnson in Belgium. Krishna knows a lot about the US. Was at Yosemite last year. Knew that IU was in Bloomington, etc. Very widely read. Very bright. Very widely traveled. Knows a lot about food, medications, etc.
Actually, he knows EVERYthing. Hopefully, Tuesday will come before I slap the s___ out of him. Other than the last little item, he is really very nice.
However, I think he would like to slap the s___ out of this particular American. He obviously is used to being waited on. The first time at the table, I'm sure my jaw must have dropped open when he called someone from the kitchen to come serve him from a platter right in front of him. Once in a great while, he will actually help himself. This afternoon after yoga he was down the stairs when he saw me rolling up my mat as I always do. He came back and rolled his up.
Quite frankly, there is a tension present at meals. I can feel it. And please remember I am a shrink and am used to feeling feelings that are present.

Did you know that you can feed 30 people on what it takes to fatten a calf for market????--courtesy of Krishna.

Eating the pineapple core is good for people with arthritis among other things.

BTW: Before I forget, the papers here are saying that the only reason the BP oil spill is getting any attention is because it affects the US. Apparently, there have been several, if not many, oil spills in Africa which have never been cleaned up.

Treatment changed this morning. Now I am getting a full hour of having medicinal coconut oil poured over my body. There are worse things let me tell you.

And with that, I will leave you to enjoy your Fridays.

Take care.

Love,
Mom/Peggy/Granny/NiNi

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Thursday, June 3, 2010

I was all set to blog this morning, and then the power went out and stayed out. Incredibly, it is actually after 1PM, and the internet is still working. Usually goes out about 1:10.

The royal father was also part of his very own royal family.

When they drive at ight, they don't use horns. They just flash lights. Saturday night when I went to the festival, there were lots of men congregating along the road in groups. A few women, but they were obviously with a particular man who had to be either husband, father, or brother. No other men allowed.

Baji has thrown some cold water on The China Study--look at me-Italics!--saying that good health is not just about nutrition, but also the integration of body, mind, and spirit. I don't have a problem with that, but right now I am most concerned with my body as I think my mind and spirit are in pretty good shape for the shape they're in. If you don't agree, please keep it to yourself. For those of you who haven't read it, read it for your own benefit and for those you love and care about. Lots of scientific studies which basically say that less protein (meat, including fish