Live From Pathanamthitta

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 11:30 pm

Well gang I'm here at an Internet Cafe in my wife's village of Pathanamthitta. Wow... I didn't know they made Internet Explorer for windows 3.1

I won't be catching up on too many correspondants. This machine is something like a 14.4K The only reason we're here is because my wife needed to send an e-mail to the office. I thought I'd send you all a quick update.

We had completely scrapped and re-arranged out travel plans at the last minute because as I mentioned in another post my wife's mother was on her deathbed. The flight was hellish. 28 hours of straight travel to get here. About an hour after our plane touched down in Kochin, while we were driving to see my mother-in-law in the hospital we got a call on the cellphone telling us she had just passed away.

It was pretty depressing because we had really moved heaven and earth trying to get here in time and it was all for nothing.

I tried to comfort my wife as best as I could telling her it was probably forn the best as this way her last memories of her mother will be of her alive and well and not suffering in a hospital bed. Her relatives who were with her at the end agreed with me completely saying Beena would not have recognized her.

In anycase I'm keeping a travelogue on the Palm IIIc which I will upload when I return to Canada.

The funeral, in short, was long, oppressive, and miserable. My wife is Jacobite which is like this Indianized version of Catholicism and as the Catholic readers know, nobody does misery like the Catholics except perhaps the Jews. Very dour, very depressing and without the benefit of a lively wake like the Irish of my heritage do to compensate for having to suffer through the church cerimony. Add jet lag and illness to this (came down with Tonsilitis the day of the flight) and I was a pretty unhappy fellow.

It's my fourth day in India now and things are definetly looking much better. I've been out and about. My throat is much better. I'm rested. All in all it's beginning to become a lot more like a vacation.

I'm particularily enjoying my walks through the mountains around my wife's childhood home and even into the bustling centre of the village. As a saipur I've attained instant celebrity status here (it's not a tourist part of India so most of the people here have never actually seen an honest to goodness white guy (saipur is the mallayallum word for... well, white guy). The people are increadably friendly. It's amazing how much the scenery changes within just a few hundred yards. From the mountains near my wife's home it all looks like jungle. From the downtown of my wife's village it all looks like city. Take pictures of both and you'd never convince someone that they both existed in the same place. From the mountain tops the village seems to completely disappear and only the tops of the tallest buildings stick out through the trees.

My daughter enjoys walking with me through the mountains particularily since there are so many animals to see (like snakes and lizards and parrots and goats and chickens and cats... etc.).

Anyways, having fun. I think my wife may be almost finished doing her work now.

Enjoy the comics in the queue.

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 11:53 pm

My condolences on your mother-in-law Ghastly, on the other hand, rock on with your bad white guy self! How you manage to get a good vacation out of it. India is on my travel radar.

WhatMeWorry? · Post by **WhatMeWorry?** » Sat Mar 19, 2005 10:00 am

Yes condolences on the passing and with the near miss, almost would have been better if the call had come before boarding the flight, huh? Yeesh.

Wow, I remember internet explorer for Win3.1. That was back when it was an *option*... Wow. Takes me back. Almost makes me want to break out and dust off my oldest laptop, it's a 33MHz with a whopping 4M hard drive and I think 20k RAM. It still runs DOS4 & Win3.1.

DIDGIN · Post by **DIDGIN** » Sat Mar 19, 2005 10:32 am

I sorry to here about that, my condolences. nothing wise or witty to say, things like death take the words out of my mouth.

Irish Witch · Post by **Irish Witch** » Sat Mar 19, 2005 10:33 am

I was a step back from that. I never really used it but back in school I scavanged an old laptop that they were throwing out. It (when I god it) had only Dos 3.something and the windows on it was barebones 3.1, but I remember running 3.11 on my olf 386! Ah, those were the days when they were just thinking of multi-user and networking OS's.. And with a little inventiveness you could modify it to do practically anything because practically everything was stored in .ini files and all the dlls still had header information!

C_wire · Post by **C_wire** » Sat Mar 19, 2005 4:00 pm

My condolences on your wife's mother. Just remember that a traditional Hindu funeral is about as depressing as a Catholic one, and more depressing in many ways.

Just make sure that the word they are using to describe you isn't.... *cough* insulting. There are a few words in the Indian languages that are on the same level of insultingness as Gaijin.

At least you get to visit India. I still haven't made it my wife's ancestral stomping grounds.

MNsane · Post by **MNsane** » Sat Mar 19, 2005 5:26 pm

c_wire wrote:My condolences on your wife's mother. Just remember that a traditional Hindu funeral is about as depressing as a Catholic one, and more depressing in many ways.

Just make sure that the word they are using to describe you isn't.... *cough* insulting. There are a few words in the Indian languages that are on the same level of insultingness as Gaijin.

At least you get to visit India. I still haven't made it my wife's ancestral stomping grounds.

i'd have to INVADE my Gf's ancestral homeland (she's french, and i'm German)

Tellner · Post by **Tellner** » Sat Mar 19, 2005 8:15 pm

My condolences, Ghastly. It may be just as well that the Fates delayed you. It wouldn't have eased her passing. I hope that your time with the family will be a comfort to all of you.

C_wire · Post by **C_wire** » Sun Mar 20, 2005 12:23 am

MNsane wrote:i'd have to INVADE my Gf's ancestral homeland (she's french, and i'm German)

I'd have to invade my own ancestral homeland (part German, part Polish)

Jackalope · Post by **Jackalope** » Sun Mar 20, 2005 2:35 am

28 hours of straight travel to get here. About an hour after our plane touched down in Kochin, while we were driving to see my mother-in-law in the hospital we got a call on the cellphone telling us she had just passed away.

Ouch.
I am very, very sorry for your wife. Nothing said can touch something that. I've only dealt with the deaths of grandparents, but they all happened when I was too ill to travel. So while I saw my paternal grandmother in the nursing home maybe a week before she passed away (we'd moved her out here to be with us and I was her caretaker for a while before she needed more care than I could provide in my handicapped state), I couldn't attend the funeral. And my parents had just left town for the week when it happened, so it was almost like she waited for us all to go away before she let go. It was just after her 91st birthday.

I truly hope the rest of the trip goes better for all of your family.

Usagi-kun · Post by **Usagi-kun** » Sun Mar 20, 2005 3:04 am

My deepest condolances on your loss. But if there is one ray of sunshine for you, its seeing sights most folks who do not live in the region will in most cases get a chance to enjoy

WhatMeWorry? · Post by **WhatMeWorry?** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 11:52 am

Irish Witch wrote:I was a step back from that. I never really used it but back in school I scavanged an old laptop that they were throwing out. It (when I god it) had only Dos 3.something and the windows on it was barebones 3.1, but I remember running 3.11 on my olf 386! Ah, those were the days when they were just thinking of multi-user and networking OS's.. And with a little inventiveness you could modify it to do practically anything because practically everything was stored in .ini files and all the dlls still had header information!

Long live the 88086!!! (for those not showing their age, it's the predecessor to the 286. The 286 was the predecessor to the 386, the 386 was the predecessor to the 486 to the Pentium, to the Pentium II, etc, etc...) My first computer was a custom built 88086 and boy was it a monstrousity of size. For those who actually experienced floppys back when they were actually floppy (5 1/4"), just be grateful you didn't have to deal with the big floppys that came before the 5 1/4! Imagine trying not to bend your data into oblivion when you are carrying around a 12" floppy!!! 8) I have to say I am a big fan of CD's, DVD's and Mini-DVD's... that and flashdrives, I've been all over that since they first came out!

RantinAn · Post by **RantinAn** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 4:28 pm

pokes
actualy the 8088 was in most of the origional IBM pcs, due to the fact that they needed an underclocked 8086 in order to make the damn things work properly.

Ironic but true.

Irish Witch · Post by **Irish Witch** » Mon Mar 21, 2005 7:33 pm

I've used an old XT before. They weren't too bad for what they were!
And I'm used to 12" floppies cause that's what I used in my C64 that I grew up with!

Prettydragoon · Post by **Prettydragoon** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 3:29 am

Ghastly wrote:28 hours of straight travel to get here. About an hour after our plane touched down in Kochin, while we were driving to see my mother-in-law in the hospital we got a call on the cellphone telling us she had just passed away.

That is sad news, Ghastly. I have no words of wisdom, so I can only offer my condolences.

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