Things happen too fast for me to comment on here. I’m being bombarded with various sensory stimuli all the time, and something has to be forgotten in order for new ones to be inserted. Here goes, then.

The air smells a bit acrid in the city, since there are so many engines running at all times. The noise is overwhelming, there is absolutely never a time that would be silent. If the horns of the cars, rickshaws and bikes are not hooting, the squirrels or birds are making some din.

Riding on the back of a motorbike in the traffic can be fearsome. Please keep all limbs close to the torso at all times. Beware of bumps and potholes in the road. Even if the traffic is supposed to be on the left, it’s not always so. Be prepared that you will be stared (what, two white people on an Enfield??) and made faces at. I was very happy to have a helmet with a reflecting visor today – I was alternately making faces and smiling to the flabbergasted people.

On Nandi Hills I was having a bit of vertigo. It’s not that high up, but the walls are steep in places. It was also beautiful, and in parts it seemed to be stolen from the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. Gum trees, ancient gnarly trees and acacias everywhere. Again we were a part of the sights to be seen for the locals – enough to have our pictures taken from buses and cars going past.

The transit back from the hills to the city is a big one for the senses. In the countryside the air is clean, there are orchards and vineyards in between villages which are less than well-kept or well-organised. Cows and water buffaloes are plentiful, hen and roosters in all colours imaginable and stray dogs, packs of them. Kilometre by kilometre the neon lights and billboards start to appear more and more, and less of the orchard/vineyard/field plots until none are there. One does feel more free on the countryside, that is very much true. Not so many staring faces, no more walls around the roads, and no kingfishers sitting on electric wires.

And yet again we were back home. It is really starting to feel like home, more and more. There is still the syndrome of putting stuff down and forgetting which floor I put the said object down on, but I’m getting better on the efficiency side.

The nights are warm and my love is here with me. I have a home away from home.

Tags: food, happiness, motorbikes, natural beauty, road trip, traffic

So, we landed last night and now we’re back here, married and celebrated and everything. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this is the stuff now for some 7 odd months.

The transit went as flights generally do, nothing special. We got scanned for fever at the airport, the people are nuts about the swine flu and trying to stop it. Apparently, it’s not just another influenza here. Otherwise everything was smooth, we got our luggage and Mr. S was there to pick us up as agreed.

Today it was all about shopping for the necessaries (a helmet for me for motorcycling and heaps of food) and having  a terrific lunch at Shiro (sushi buffet, all you can eat, delivered to the table fresh, yummmy!), otherwise just trying to unwind.

It’s surprisingly cool now, the air is very humid and full of noises. The local squirrels hooted me awake a couple of times last night. I’m guessing that when I get used to them, I’ll need a seriously bad-noised alarm clock. I’m constantly reminded of Darwin in Australia, the humidity and the warmth are like nothing else I’ve experienced. It’ll take me a while to acclimatise, but I’ll get there eventually.

Just a word from Heikki, the glasses he last got from the optician didn’t have the correct lense in the right frame, so he hasn’t been able to write for a while. What’s more, we’ve been running around organising stuff back in Finland and offline anyway for a few weeks, so that’s another good reason for not to post more. But that’s about to change, the glasses problem has yet again been faced and now that I’m here, I might actually have something to say about expatting too.

Tomorrow’s agenda has a meeting with the corporate liaison who will organise paperwork and stuff for me, but we’ll take it from there and see what happens. Will keep this blog posted though.

Tags: accommodation, luxuries, motorbikes, practical stuff