Barsaat!

The monsoons have finally brought some relief to my AC-less ass. Temperatures are now topping about 30 during the day, with the addition of a pleasant breeze. Thanks to global warming, there not to much actual rain here, but still enough. And moreover the sky is now often blue instead of copper.  I've made some quite good friends here and you meet quite a few interesting folks around Delhi in general.

As hinted at by my lack of AC, my NGO still remains insolvent, hence I have not gotten paid and have instead received quite a bit of kindness from friends. I, however, am now thoroughly on board with the job search. I have learned that Monster and Jobster both suck. For Monster, I didn't exactly have a narrow search--about ten different kinds of proffessions in about 20 countries. Got back one result. I mean what the hell? I guess things have not changed much since the old Monster which would respect to my interest in, say, non-profits, by returning search results for IT workers for such companies. Jobster is also strange in that the social networking phenomenon doesn't apply well to job-searching in that most people are not in a state of constant search. When they find a job, they forget about their profiles. A better thing would be to offer these services with Facebook or Friendster, since people would still be logging in even when happily employed. Of course this would require more people to grow up and use social networking sites.

All of my experiences with my current NGO just encourage me ever more to get into my own business and simply run things myself. And India's a positive environment for that in that there are plenty of opportunities to be had here.

Another upshot of my insolvency is that it's led me to try eating at more cheap places here. One, an Andhra restaurant near where I live, produces a lamb-nugget that is awesome. Consisting of a manlier meat, it even beats the chicken nugget from the roadside dhaba in Tamilnadu. Crispy and batterfried in a spicy batter with all sort of chillies and garlic, these lamb-nuggets are mighty. Serve them with cheese sauce and white people would kill for them too. This Andhra restaurant also makes a fish curry that is no joke. Being good Andhra food it's the first properly spicy thing I've found during this stint in India. In general this country suffers from one pepper, the green/red chillie, which is often not that hot. The first step to good hot food is to supplement that heat with black pepper, which is different and complementary. But more importantly, more kinds of chillies could be used like in Mexico or the US. Of course I still haven't found a good Christian or Zoroastrian (Parsi) restaurant. Having brough the chili to India in the first place, Christians are the most reliable connoisseurs of spice in India.