blogging just plain fell off the list after i decided, mid-feb mid-crises, to leave home and go be a stranger somewhere. and which place did i choose to be new? a city i've visited every summer as a kid and one that is full of the kind of nostalgia that makes you gag. i remember once, when i was utterly spent in the heart area, walking brigade road and trying to keep up my end of some conversation.

i have no idea why i came back, but it doesn't matter because bangalore has been pleasant. not friendly, not kind, but pleasant. it leaves me alone and provides a hot cup of tea on my desk at sarkari intervals, 10am-2pm-5pm. it has the most gorgeous old tree giants to eat up whole stretches of road in cool gulps. and it has flowering trees, right now they are orange and feeling very strongly about the whole thing.

i also met an author who turned out not to be a jerk. i was so surprised i called him a sweetheart to his face. but the way he reacted you'd think he met gushing inarticulate women who haven't read any of his books calling him a sweetheart every other day. i'm reading his latest book right now, god's little soldier. i'm 70percent into it and feeling like an outsider. i can't feel anything for the main characters anymore, they are beginning to piss me off. and i have trouble reconciling the distractededly passionate voice in the book with the shy-contemptuous one i met.

i'm trying to learn kannada so i can mutter effective abuse at the horrible autowallahs here. they are totally unaffected by asshole but i'm shy to ask my landlady what the kannada equivalent is. i also met a tumble of golden retreivers and assorted beauties on my morning walk. people really love their dogs here and i miss mine so much that i lunge shamelessly at other people's pets. most of them are tolerant about it and this morning i was asked if i wanted to take the golden tumble for a walk. that was very brave of the guy, how can he know i'm going to bring them back? i also met angel, a smiling black lab who just walked into my arms and slobbered in a ladylike manner. when i got back home my t-shirt smelt of dog. it's the friendliest smell in the world.