A brief spell in Chennai

16/06/2013

So it’s time to check out this morning.  We headed down for the one and only breakfast we’ve had since being here (despite them being free, we’re just that lazy and would rather sleep longer than eat free food, I don’t believe that’s a good way to be!  The best things in life are free after-all).  The Manager was working so everyone was actually being busy, or pretending to be busy for once rather than sitting around doing sweet F.A.  The Manager nicely let us use the hotel room until 12pm which was great as we weren't leaving until then and my stomach is playing up again and having to use the poolside toilet right behind the bar is far from ideal, the privacy of our old room is very much more agreeable for my bowels.  My suitcase is annoying enough to lug around as it is but now the handle on the top has broken it’s a ball ache on a whole other level.  On a ball ache scale of 1; enjoyable, to 10; I’d rather chop off my hands so I don’t have to deal with it, it’s sitting at a strong 8 at the moment.  If the handle on the side goes too other than setting the whole thing on fire in a fit of rage I’ll have to buy another one which isn't going to be cheap. 
<Warning; rant beginning> I lent my original suitcase to a friend as I’m nice like that but it was never been returned and then I found out it had been trashed so I wasn't ever going to get it back or get a replacement.  So I had to replace it myself as apparently that’s the thing to do when you put yourself out helping someone who can’t be bothered to provide themselves with what they need in life so I’d picked this one up from Primark.  I should have known better, Primark is such poor quality but I was sucked in by the pretty flowers on the outside.  Damn the flowers!  So now despite having bought a good quality suitcase that I got to use myself once I’m now going to have to pay out for the 3^rd time.  You may be able to tell I’m fed up of lending things to people just to end up being put out myself. Noone ask to borrow anything from me again! My generosity is officially rinsed!  Never a lender nor a borrower be.  I’ve heard this phrase said many times and never appreciated its value until now.  (I also never processed the words through my brain and actually understood it either but it’s very true!)   

The drive to the airport was really nice, full of palm trees, rice fields and big holiday homes.  Rice picking, now there’s a bitch of a job to do; bent over all day long up to your waist in water.  No thanks!

I’m out of patience with the tip culture here.  I don’t mind if someone offers to do something for you and you have a choice whether to accept but a lot of the time they just take your bags from you without asking or giving you chance to refuse and run ahead with them and then they demand money.  But if you refuse their help they get really annoyed too.  My suitcase has wheels, I am more than capable of wheeling it myself!  3 people tried taking it from me.  It has wheels! Be-gone!
A women in the toilets (with a sign next to her clearly saying ‘no tips please’ asked me for a tip because she handed me toilet paper. Err, how about no.

 

At the airport we’re surrounded by people who think they’re higher class because they’re getting a plane rather than a bus or train.  We sat in the restaurant and watched customer after customer be unnecessarily rude to the staff like they were some kind of Sultan (I don’t know why I likened them to a Sultan rather than a King or Queen but I think it sounds better).  One guy called the waiter over just to pour the rest of his beer into his glass.  His wife called the waiter over to spoon the rice from the bowl next to her onto her plate 5cm’s away whilst she watched.  Other tables were yelling at the busy staff because they’d been waiting too long to get served, others were yelling because they had nowhere to sit.  Pretty high and mighty for people who don’t wipe their asses.  When the man from Delmonte turned up dressed all in white with shades on inside a restaurant inside an airport we had to leave.  When we got up I loudly announced (in-front of the tossers next to us) that we should leave now before I started educating people on the beauty of manners.  You’re at an airport, not in a palace.  I’ve been on a plane 5 times in the last 2 months, it doesn't make me better than anyone else so pull your head out your ass and be polite.  It doesn't cost anything!  I’d bet my bottom dollar that at least half of the women there have never worked in their life either.  Marrying into money and success does not in my opinion give you any authority or importance.  Your husband may have earned those things with hard graft or maybe been lucky enough to have inherited it but you keep yourself in room and board just by opening your legs so wind it in.

I noticed 4 women in the restaurant with short hair, they’re the first I’ve seen.  Having short hair would mean regular appointments at the hairdresser which needs money so I’m guessing short hair is s a sign of wealth.

We headed round to security and the queue was huge.  Luckily women can’t be electrically wanded by a man (every passenger has to be metal detected and patted down which was causing the long waiting line) and there was a distinct lack of women travelling so I got to jump the queue and go straight through whilst Will waited in line.

By the time we got on the plane we’d shown our boarding cards to 5 different people, they also checked (twice) that we had a luggage tag on our hand luggage.  Will had decided not to use his and threw it on the floor.  By magic he’d ended up with another one on his bag for a completely different airline (we still don’t know how that happened) but they let him on with that anyway, which in all honestly just made the whole process pointless as it proved nothing except that he might be on the wrong plane! 

The flight was packed with annoying kids.  One in particular screamed and cried and winged for the entire flight.  It was that fake type of crying too, just wailing for no reason other than to make a noise.  Not once did I hear either parent trying to silence it.  I was going to offer the silencing powers of my grip around its neck.  Luckily for them the sound of a winging  spoilt little brat is so soothing to the ears of other passengers that obviously no one minded. 

I heard on TV that they’re thinking of doing child-free flights and I must admit I think that’s a brilliant idea.  Children get bored on flights and create a racket, I understand it’s not really fun for young kids to be on a plane but it doesn't stop it being teeth grindingly annoying to have to listen to it for hours with no escape.  All parents can just be sympathetic together in a cabin of wailing, screeching and nose picking whilst everyone else relaxes in peaceful tranquillity behind a thick, sound-proof door. 

Whilst on the plane I read an article in the local paper about a Dr in Chennai who was transgender.  ‘She’ was going to speak at a conference about how she had come to terms with who she was to raise awareness.  I found it interesting as she said she had been taking hormones (she originally got some online that reacted badly, a comforting thought that someone in the middle of a medical degree felt it a good idea to self-prescribe internet pills) and then she had been prescribed hormones properly and has since grown breasts, grown her hair long and was undergoing laser hair removal.  She followed that sentence by saying that as she still had a beard she still dressed as a man.  Now, in a country where transgender is far from accepted and understood I must disagree that the best person to highlight the normality of gender assignment disorder and the confusion it causes is a man with a beard and breasts.  How confusing must that look?!  She has changed her name to Sofia and is referred to as a woman yet apart from having long hair (which many men do although they really shouldn’t, it’s far from flattering as a hairstyle, get it cut boys) she is simply a man with breasts.  Surely with all the effort of hormone replacement ensuring you shave every day is a minor chore?  If she shaved she could dress as a woman and begin the process of really being accepted as a female. 

She said she was going to start dressing as a woman in 6 months time which is backwards to the way we do it in the UK.  You need to commit to the way of life of the opposite sex and dress appropriately for at least 12 months before any medication or procedures can be spoken about.  That way at least you look like a man/woman and hormonal or surgical changes or wouldn’t be so obvious.  This way seems the most disruptive way to do it in my opinion.  

I must admit it is an example of how much the country is developing in terms of their acceptance though.  I would have expected something like that to simply not be done.

On the flip side another article spoke about weight loss.  I am always interested in the next explanation as to how to lose weight the best way as I really do struggle to shift just 1lb.  I get enraged by women who can sit there on their lunch break blabbing on about how they’ve lost 6lb in a week because they just cut out crisps or stopped snacking and it just dropped off.  Eat my sh*t.  I have to heavily diet, no carbs after 5pm, no more than 1200 calories a day, no snacks and 4 lots of 1hr long cardio sessions where I have to sweat my tits off and go a really sexy shade of crimson before I can even drop 2lb in a week.  And that’s on a good week!

So this article caught my attention and I start to read it.  It turns out the editor of the newspaper felt it necessary to dedicate a quarter page to informing readers that eating more than your recommended daily allowance of calories (2000 for women, 2500 for men) will cause you to put on weight.  If you want to lose weight you need to burn off additional calories.  That was pretty much it.  How is this newsworthy?  Is this honestly new information?  Because on the same note I can inform the general public with confidence that water is wet, the earth is round and Elvis is dead. 

Getting off the plane they checked our boarding cards AGAIN and also our hand baggage tags, just incase we’d slipped through the previous 5.  I stopped at the toilet and ended up in an Indian style one.  (How these women use them whilst wearing sari’s without weeing on it is a miracle).  The toilet, or should I say, porcelain lined hole, was up on a pedestal so when you stood up you could see over the cubicle walls!  I felt like a dirty meercat trying to perv on other meercats having a wee. 

Will had booked us a hotel that morning but hadn’t saved the address so we were unable to get a taxi as we couldn’t tell it where to go.  After being looked at like a pubic hair in soup when asked if there was internet at the terminal we went to a tourist agency shop and they found us the address online.  The website had said it was 7km from the airport but when the taxi driver called them they were 18km away.  As we were literally just staying the night to leave again the next day for Sri Lanka there was no need to be so far away from the airport so we went back to the office to see if they could book us something a little closer.  The taxi driver we had been speaking to and his friend decided to follow us back to the shop and awkwardly wait next to us.  They have no sense of social awkwardness here, they ask for a tip and then  stand around and wait when you obviously don’t want to give one, they will stare at you in the street and not look away when they catch your eye and they never say please or thank you or even acknowledge your thank you’s.   

Whilst Will was speaking to the very helpful guys in the shop I went back inside the terminal to find the guy who had previously asked if we needed help and had offered a flyer for a nearby hotel that picked you up from the airport for free.  As I crossed the threshold a security man pounced on me wanting to see my boarding card.  I told him I had literally just arrived and only wanted to find this guy just inside.  He wouldn’t let me in without a boarding card and I firmly told him I was not walking back to root around in my bag when I only wanted to step about 4ft into the building.  At this point his mate with the gun stood up which annoyed me even more.  I’m stood there in a slim fitted dress with no pockets and no bags, what the hell do you think I’m going to do?!  Draw a sword out from between my legs and start lopping off limbs?  I told him I was walking to the next door and he should just walk with me and stand next to me there as I wasn’t going to go any further.  He kept asking me who I was looking for and I’d already explained that to him so he was really getting on my tits.  Annoyingly, after all that hassle none of the 3 men I’d previously seen with flyers for this hotel were anywhere in sight so I had to just leave. 

I feel sorry for any parting couples who can’t wait together, you’re not even allowed in the building without a ticket.  Clearly anyone with any strong terrorist ideas would find buying a budget domestic flight to get into the building too much hassle and would just turn and wander home defeated.

The guys in the shop found us a hotel 3km away with air con and internet (our 2 requests).  They also did free airport drop offs and he arranged late check out for us too for 1pm.  Perfect!  The taxi man was still lingering around like the smell of vomit on a carpet but was asking too much for the journey so the shop guys mugged him off and sent us to a taxi stall. 

We arrived at the hotel and checked in but the room doesn’t have internet, it doesn’t have a window (that’ll be great for waking up tomorrow) and none of the English language channels on the TV work.  Brilliant.  We called reception about the TV and a member of staff came to look at it and had the brainwave of just flicking through each Indian channel one by one.  Genius.  This man is wasted in his current role.  There’s over 800 channels and he was in the 400’s with no sign of stopping.  When the solid 6 minutes of flicking through channels didn’t return a magically fixed television he then called maintenance who came in and did exactly the same thing.  When he had flicked through enough channels without any of them springing into life he decided that they didn’t get any English language channels.  Congratulations buddy, you just justified your wage as ‘maintenance’.  I’ll be sure to call you if I think a broken window pane can be fixed by repeatedly opening and closing the curtains. 
The last hotel didn’t have satellite TV but it still had HBO and the Discovery channel yet we were now stuck with countless Bollywood channels in a dark hole of a room.  On top of that Will managed to block yet another toilet so our en-suite is out of action now aswell as our tv and our depleted vitamin D levels.

We went out for a walk to get some snacks and it’s clear Chennai is not a tourist place, the staring is back in full force!  They seem completely oblivious to the fact they’re in control of a vehicle and should really look where they’re going!
We picked up a couple of chocolate bars, some chocolate milk, water and an ice lolly from a shop.  The ice lolly was 1 month out of date and had turned to jelly (I’d been craving an ice lolly for days but they’re quite hard to come by), the chocolate milk was 2 months out of date and the chocolate was 6 months out of date.  What a successful snack run!  It’s a good job we weren’t looking for soft cheese and red meat with that kind of standard of produce.

Back in the room we found one movie channel that isn’t Indian or dubbed and luckily it’s playing The Return of The King so we at least have something to watch in bed and can chill out before the mental days ahead in Sri Lanka.  We were meant to be confirming our schedule with the driver tonight which was why we definitely needed internet.  Hopefully we can find somewhere tomorrow or else we’ll be a bit stranded when we arrive.

I’m really looking forward to waking up in a pitch black hole of a room tomorrow morning....