Today I miss:

• Being completely ignored by sales clerks in stores

6am comes way too early! I’ve a welcome morning call from Ginny and crew and have time to babble to Jared, Nessa, Nana, Walter and my sister. After speaking to them for over 30 minutes, I received a quick call from Drew.

A 7:15, I met up with the driver and headed to Bindu’s house. We headed to Iskon – a temple run by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness – and if you’re ever in Bangalore, I definitely recommend making the trip to see it. It’s a massive series of building of granite, marble and gold. As with the Palace in Mysore, cameras aren’t allowed on the premises and I’m certain I can’t describe it accurately.

After Iskon, I treated Bindu to breakfast and we headed to M.G. road for some shopping. Bindu twisted my rubber arm and I added a Ganesha pendant to the chain I purchased.

After dropping Bindu off at home, we headed back to the hotel. I’m starting to feel ill and beg off the trip to Brigade Road with Anand and Faisal in order to sleep.

What did I do today? I barely remember.. oh yeah, Anand and I went shopping. I was looking for a suit for Drew and Anand was acting as my model to help me find the perfect suit. We went to Kemp Fort – a large department store – and were promptly tagged with a sticker stating ‘preferred guest’. It’s my esteemed opinion that ‘preferred guest’ in this store translates into “we think you have a giant pocketbook filled with cash to spend” and we were followed around by sales clerks everywhere we went. While I did enjoy having Anand act as a runway model parading around in fancy Indian suits (have I mentioned what a good sport he has been during the trip?), I was a bit annoyed that no one other than Anand seemed to be listening to my requests.

Drew and I had agreed that we didn’t want to pick up a black or blue suit, since he already has one of each, and I repeatedly told the sales clerk of my desire for a tan or olive coloured suit. Despite my protestations, they paraded black, blue and cream coloured outfits out for us to look at. When the pile had reached 2 feet high, I’d had enough. Even Anand’s attempts to make them understand my wishes weren’t met with any more success. After spending an hour looking at suits, we were finally told that suits are not often made in the colours I was interested in. Why they couldn’t have told me this in the beginning is beyond me *sigh*.

Since I knew that Shopper’s Stop had a tan suit, we decided to go looking in other stores.

Of course, that meant we went back to Commercial Street. After wandering in and out of a number of stores, I finally had to admit that there is a lack of suits meeting my criteria in India. I will have to call Drew in order to find out what he’d like me to do.

During our wanders, Anand went on a shopping spree. He found a number of great looking shirts at one of the departmental (Indian for department) stores and Anand bought 5! With these new additions to his wardrobe, he’s all set to make a splash at the clubs in Bangalore and Winnipeg.

We were supposed to meet up with Faisal in the evening in order for Anand to purchase some Hindi music. When we reached him by mobile phone, we discovered that Faisal wasn’t available. No problem, we continued our wanders on Commercial Street. Anand and I entered Sri Krishna jewelers to look at the silver bracelets and chains and exited the store with lighter wallets. After much hemming and hawing, Anand picked out a ‘masculine’ silver bracelet that looks great. He needed to have the bracelet reduced in order to fit, and the sales clerk advised that it would take less than 10 minutes to complete. Gold and silver jewelry is sold by the gram in India. When the links were taken out, the bracelet was reweighed and Anand was provided with a refund for the missing links.

Finally finished on Commercial Street, we headed to the Taj Residency (another 5 star hotel in Bangalore) to partake in some Chinese food at their Memories of China restaurant. The food was heavenly.

Since we were meeting Bindu to visit Iskon on Sunday, we decided to call it an early night and head back to the hotel. I’m sure Anand could have stayed up for hours (I’m not sure how he’s managing it, but he’s getting a solid 7- 8 hours of sleep a night to my 4-5 hours), but I was ready to drop where I was standing. In the car, we gave Bindu and ring and set the time to head to Iskon. When Anand heard that he would have to be up for 7:15 am, he promptly declined the invitation and decided to see Iskon another day. Since I had made arrangements earlier in the evening for Gin and family to call me at 6am tomorrow, I didn’t think it was too much of an issue to be awake and heading out the door to Iskon at 7:15am.

I’m now entering the 7th inning stretch. I’ve 10 days left before I leave India and return to Canada. The time seems to be flying past this week – and while we didn’t do much that can be considered ‘exciting’ during the past week, I still don’t know where the time has gone.

I am officially sick of shopping and am glad that I will be avoiding the Christmas rush once I return home. However, I did tell Anand that I’m looking forward to entering a store back home just to be ignored by the sales clerks. Lately, I’ve been put off by the sales staff at many of the craft stores in town. Now that my shopping is completed, I’m in a wandering mood…there’s nothing worse than being chased around a store by an eager salesman when you have no interest in purchasing anything. It’s even worse when they refuse to accept no for an answer.

Commercial Street…again. Anand is picking up his Kurties and we immediately noticed that the streets seem empty in comparison with the weekend and evening crowds. I guess people don’t shop this area in the middle of the afternoon.

Anand tried on his altered Kurtis and I have to say, they do look great despite the modifications. I’m sure he’ll get more use out of them now. While we were there, we discovered that the store had received a shipment of short Kurtas with embroidery. These were what Anand was originally looking for and the store clerk was well aware of it. A short fashion show ensued and in the end, Anand had 2 new Kurtas to add to his collection.

From the clothing store, we headed across the street to a jewelry store. I picked up a few small pairs of earrings and we headed back to work.

— Break for work —

The mehndi is fading from my hand and is a sickly orange colour. Women here often wear mehndi designs and the resurgent interest in permanent tattoos doesn’t seem to have caught on here as it has in North America. Strangely enough, a white woman with mehndi applied on her hands garners more attention than a North American with tattoos – I guess it’s all relative to what you’re used to seeing…

It’s all Hallows Eve today and I’d like to wish everyone back home a Happy Halloween!

Today I miss:

• Decorating the house and yard for Halloween
• Carving a pumpkin
• Passing out Halloween candy
• Watching Fenris jump and hide when the the motion sensitive Halloween shield (decoration) screeches and laughs loudly