25 Things

It seems like there is an explosion of 25-things lists so I thought I’d go with that. Here are 25 things about my experience in Chennai so far.

1. Tender coconut
2. The 8PM rush at the neighborhood shrine: people, song and incense spilling out into the street
3. “Had your breakfast?” (morning greeting)
4. “Sit down”
5. “What did you pay for this?”
6. Yoga class commands: Relax! Stretch! Breathe! Focus! Concentrate!
7. Drinking from vessels without lip contact
8. Stares
9. Techniques auto drivers employ to solicit more money than the agreed sum
10. Girls with flowers in their hair
11. Bindi stickers
12. Bangles
13. The mysterious fluctuating availability status of various menu items over the course of a day
14. Household shrines
15. Creation, Maintenance and Destruction
16. “Is it not so?”
17. Billboards and placards advertising shops that no longer exist, or do not exist yet
18. The entire office staff sharing one email account
19. Nescafe, sugar and boiled milk
20. Locking the bathroom door closed when no one is in there
21. Hand washing after eating
22. Poop, crows and trash
23. Straight men embracing
24. Chai wallah, fruit-and-vegitable wallah, real-estate wallah, knife-sharpening wallah, tailoring wallah, ironing wallah, ear-wax-removal wallah, cotton-candy wallah, sugarcane-juice wallah, handyman wallah, fortune-teller wallah, spoken-english wallah, SAP-C++-JAVA-.NET-Oracle-CAD-training wallah
25.