This Sunday we finally managed to explore part of south Bombay. We had a lot of fun, walking from Churchgate to Nariman Point, and then up to the by-then-closed Crawford Market. Of course I don’t have that many photos, as this was also the Sunday I forget to charge my camera battery. So someone remind me to steal some pictures from my wife when I have a chance. But for the curious, here’s a picture of the wife next to the Mahatma:

The verdict: south Bombay is pretty. And ugly. And utterly fascinating, kind of creepy, opulent, dirty, welcoming, and alienating. Sometimes all at once, but usually separated by a few yards.

Needless to say, we had a great time. We got home late, with filthy feet and sore legs. I’m anxious to do some more exploring, but we’re taking small bites at this point. Trying to do more would probably leave us, well…

Exhausted.

There’s a restaurant down the street from our apartment called Tavaa.  It’s not the fanciest place in the world — the decor is faux-rustic, with most of the seating outside on cane chairs, under ceiling fans.  We’ve been meaning to eat there for some time and finally made it over there tonight.

The food was pretty tasty, if a bit on the surprising side.  The menu was mostly Rajasthani/desert food — grilled meats, biriyani, warm flatbreads, that sort of thing.  The chicken biriyani was a bit spicy for the wife, but tasty, and very good with the fresh naan and rumali roti.  The grilled mutton had an interesting texture and was mildly spiced.  Dessert was mango in sweetened curd (aam rabdi), which I liked but the wife wasn’t 100% in love with.

While we were eating, auto rickshaws and various cars sped by, separated from us by a dark wood fence.  Workmen pushed wheeled carts.  The expensive jewelery store across the street closed around 8.  I drank mineral water out of a copper cup; she had a Coke.  We eventually realized that the mutton had a weird texture because when the waiter said “grilled mutton chest” he most likely meant “grilled mutton heart.”  Through the meal, the restaurant’s sound system was silent.  Then, right as we were enjoying dessert, someone put on some music, Mims’ “This is Why I’m Hot.“

This city is ridiculous.

One of the first things I did after we settled in was join a gym (I’m predictable). It’s a Gold’s (yes, there are Gold’s Gyms in India), and happily it is about a ten minute walk away, about as close as my gym was in DC. And like most Gold’s, it’s main clientele is, well…

India has recently, it seems, become fitness obsessed — and not with yoga. The most popular physical fitness export of India seems to enjoy about as much popularity in uber-cosmopolitan Bombay as it does in the US — or maybe even less. My gym’s single studio room is dedicated to spinning. Searches for actual yoga studios have revealed a few, none in our neighborhood. And we live in what is supposed to be the “queen of the suburbs”! (Really.)

Gymgoers here, for the most part, seem obsessed with beach muscles. I’ve seen three people (of both genders) performing squats at the gym. Two doing deadlifts. Three doing pullups. And the gym, like everywhere else in Greater Mumbai, is almost always crowded with people. Frankly, it’s a bit frustrating to see so many men doing tricep extensions, bicep curls, and shrugs — out of shape men, preening like roosters as they examine their (sometimes nonexistent) muscles in the mirror. The only folks I’ve ever seen sweating are the ones on the (numerous) treadmills and elliptical machines.

Then, there’s the music. If your eyes were closed, you could easily mistake the gym for a nightclub. There’s always an in-house DJ, playing music at max volume to (I guess) help motivate the members. Which makes listening to your own music difficult. When the music goes from banal to atrocious, my focus almost inevitably goes out the window.

I don’t mean to complain (that much). I have a gym, and it has a nice, small corner where I can set up for my own ridiculous needs. The location is great. The strange and somewhat dismissive looks I get there are frustrating, but they are tolerable. But the prevailing workout philosophy here feels so retrograde Ahnuld/80s, like I’m reading an old issue of Flex magazine. I can’t wait to see what happens when I show up carrying my kettlebell.

It’s official: the monsoons have begun. The wife and I were lucky — we arrived in Mumbai a full week before the rains came, just enough time to sweat buckets while familiarizing ourselves with the neighborhood. Now being sweat-drenched has been replaced by being rain-drenched, a mostly fair trade. However: these monsoon rains, in the last few days, have been a bit treacherous. A cab ride home Friday night took us through standing water that appeared to be about knee high, and a walk today involved more than a handful of flooded roads and sidewalks. The rains are pretty, and cool everything down nicely. But they are also not to be trifled with.

Of course, we’re both a bit timid, having read accounts in various media outlets of children being sucked down storm drains never to be seen again. The locals are a bit more brave:

That’s the Arabian Sea, in case you’re wondering.

We wandered in the rain for part of the afternoon, partly to do some shopping and partly to explore another part of our ‘hood.  There were the usual number of auto-rickshaws, taxis, oxcarts, pedestrians, street vendors, and begging children out, despite the intermittent downpours. Bully for them — it didn’t make being soaked, having your feet covered in silt, and having to find the least flooded path forward any more pleasant.  In my book, these rains are still a bit daunting. I think one local we saw had the right idea:

Around the corner from our apartment is a bit of grafitti I found myself using as a landmark for finding my particular street.

It was a foolproof plan — navigate via the Beanbag sign. But then I saw this:

(By saw, of course I mean “navigated by and got lost after seeing”.)

Later, I saw this…

… and later still, realized that the word “Beanbag,” along with the same phone number, is spray painted all over this city.

We discussed the mysterious “beanbag” on the work shuttle the other day. Theories on what the grafitti meant were bounced around: a trashbag delivery service (or “Bin Bag”)? Drugs or other contraband? A brothel? An officer braver than me decided to cut to the chase and called the number during our commute home. The confused receptionist on the other end of the call confirmed that the answer was disappointingly non-nefarious: they were vendors of beanbags. They gave us their website, which describes the company and the owner’s unconventional marketing methods.

In the interest of full disclosure: I am now sorely tempted to purchase one of these beanbags, if only to reward the company’s proprietor for his ingenuity.

Our U.S. Government-loaned water pitcher doesn’t fit in our U.S Government-issued refrigerator.  Solution?  Remove a shelf from the fridge and start looking for a store where one can purchase a pitcher.

Guess what!

We’re leaving for Mumbai, the Maximum City, in five hours.  Paperwork filed, boxes checked (and shipped).  This is actually happening.

More when we get to the other side.  Smell you later, blog!

Tomorrow (Monday) meri bivi and I were to be on a plane, on our way to Mumbai via Frankfurt. Unfortunately, that plan is looking unlikely at the moment: we’re currently without diplomatic visas to India. Kind of a bummer, as we’re now unsure just when we’ll be leaving for our next assignment. The bright side is that we’re doing this together, and now we’ve gone from a rate of three necessary errands per hour down to nearly zero. That loud exhalation you hear is one of our collective relief. Sure, the situation is a bit frustrating, but really? We’ve been through worse. And now we can hang out without asking each other the dreaded question “what do we have to do today?” every morning.

When our departure for Monday was looking probable, I went and made the irresponsible decision to register for the Capitol Hill Classic 10K. Intercontinental flight the next day be damned — a 10K through my neighborhood was not to be passed up. There was no substantial reason to let recent developments scuttle my race plans, so I did indeed run today. It was my first 10K (and race #2 overall). It felt like a good distance, a rational amount of time that left enough in my tank for a very fast final mile (or two). The roughest part was the eponymous final hill, which hit hard but not hard enough to quash my final sprint. I’m still not sure how I managed it, but according to my watch I managed a time of around 47′26″. That last sprint took me to about empty, and I’m definitely more sore tonight than I was after the Cherry Blossom. In fact, the moments after that race were fairly easy. After this one, I couldn’t see straight, and it took me a few minutes to remember how to tie my shoes. NB: I didn’t train nearly as hard or as much this time around.

But back to non-crazy-stupid-running news. My prettier half and I are here for a bit longer, and I intend on enjoying it as much as possible. So, America: we’re (probably) not leaving just yet. Do you have plans?

There have simply been too many things going on.  We’ve been running around like crazy for the last month.  First, we had three weeks of training — both substantive and functional for the wife, and mostly just functional for me.  Now we’re in the middle of traipsing between various offices to be briefed on issues large and small.  We’re also preparing for Packing Out, a task so onerous and unpleasant it warrants proper noun capitalization.  The movers come tomorrow.

If there are any prospective FSOs reading this, try to remember that though the week of consultations and packout seems far, far away, you are really best served doing as much preparation as possible ahead of time.  That really won’t save you any small amount of running around (I don’t know anyone who has ever had a relaxing Packout) but it will put you at a strategic advantage when the big day comes.

Here’s the part where I ask for Packout horror stories.  Me first!  As I am sitting here I just remembered that I’ve completely forgotten to buy some rather important and specific toiletries to go in my air shipment, items I could have bought for cheap but now must purchase at CVS.  Then again: if that’s the only thing I forget, I am pretty darn lucky.

Reunited with the wife, left my old job, currently in training, organizing our lives together, preparing to move to Mumbai for our new jobs, still getting used to collective pronouns, managed to take a week off from the gym and preserve my sanity, the Concept2 rower is an evil machine, rockfish and Ethiopian food remain delicious, constantly expecting to wake up and have to say goodbye but happily have not had that happen, the Radisson Lord Baltimore is a lovely hotel, did you know that in Mauritania the Arabic “bint” becomes “mint?”, Rosslyn will always be a wasteland, it feels strange to be together again but I’m loving it, how are you?