I've arrived, though my bag hasn't!

So for those non-French speakers, I thought that I would give you the play-by-play of my initial adventures here in the business capital of India.

My 9 hour flight from London went really rather quickly, as I spent it chatting to the man sitting next to me. His name is Milid, he lives in Houston, Texas, and he's back in India for the first time in five years. We chatted first about spirituality, then about all of the pitfalls of Indian life and then... well other stuff. He missed his flight in Houston which meant that he had to wait for 2 days before he could catch the next one. His visit was therefore reduced from a week to 5 days - and he won't get to go to the temple he wanted to. But it's okay. Maybe god doesn't want him to go to the temple or to stay too long. Maybe god didn't want my bag to come or for me not to get into the specialisation that I wanted for my journalism programme.

So, yes, I arrived in Mumbai but my bag decided to spend an extra day in London -- checking out the sights and whatnot. So my Saturday was spent buying a few essentials that I needed; Sunday, I stayed in the apartment nearly all day to wait for it to be dropped off. But the rather rocky start has been followed by relatively smooth sailing.

I am working in the features department for the Indian Express. It's okay so far. The girls are nice and everyone has been really helpful. I don't really have a lot of work to do yet, so that's the down side. I wrote a piece yesterday about art markets.

I now have a sim card and an apartment. I've figured out the train system (that is responsible for 1000 deaths every year), and I now know that you have to put a MUG in the coffee machine - otherwise the coffee goes everywhere!

I say "but in Paris..." far more often than I would like... "in Paris, the cup drops down automatically", for instance. I'm trying to work on that.

Today is the first day that I haven't really felt very well. My stomach is a little bit upset and I didn't sleep very well. I shall pause for now. Maybe try to think of a story or two.