10th August

This morning I had a fantastic lecture on Swift from the 18^th century literature man. I need to remember his name! He was just brilliant, I was captivated by it all. I am so happy I have picked that course. I met him after the lecture and asked him about my assessments and hinted at the lengths I expect my essays to be. I asked him if he knew Colin Nicholson, as he has written loads of books on satire and finance and the rise of capitalism, but he told me he only knew him by name. He said he led a double life, as his son unfortunately is autistic, and he can’t keep up with the literary world as much as he could. I felt surprised at his openness, but I have noticed that a lot of people here have no embarrassment. He asked me about my family and I told him that my parents look set to come and visit me in October. He said the Himalayas were particularly beautiful at that time of year, so I think I will have to persuade dad to come with us. I went to the English Office today to pick up my term time calendar thing, and they pretended not to know me again. They told me there was no way I could get a calendar, and told me to go back to Professor Sandpathi as he would be able to direct me, straight back, to the office. I swear, if I was male, I would not have this problem. They hate me. They have asked me to verify my identity about five times, have several letters proving I am meant to be there and yet, every time I go in they have somehow completely erased me from memory. Bastards.

After this I went to meet Amanda and Lauren and we went to the foreign student office to get our forms signed. Got told there was no way they would be signed before 2pm, which was absolute balls. I swear, all this for the sake of a stamp and a signature! Twats.

We went to the foreign registration office instead. I unfortunately left the address in Coffee Day, but we found one auto driver who seemed to know where it was. But then when we got there, they firstly didn’t know what we wanted, and then told us it was only operational from 10am to 12. In absolute frustration, we went to Khan Market to calm ourselves down. We pottered around the shops, bought stationary and a Hawaiian style shirt. It is a bright blue with lurid pink flowers all over it and I love it not a little bit. We then sat in Barista for about three hours having various coffee concoctions (there is no such thing as a ‘coffee’ here. If it doesn’t come with ice cream and chocolate sauce, it isn’t a real drink here.) until we decided to up sticks and go to Fab India again. We also found a sari shop that had some beautiful saris for only 500 Rs. So we shall have to go back there for our saris when we get invited to anything formal.

We bought some tasty fruit again and went back to the hostel in time for dinner, which had chicken involved again. Most exciting. I managed about five minutes on the internet before it conked out on me again. The electricity is going off here every five minutes. Very annoying when you are trying to write or read, but we have got so used to it that we just stop and wait patiently for it to stagger back into life. We just seem to be chilling out now. I am glad the Norwegian girl is going to come with us to the ACTUAL registration office (we were incorrect it seems) so we should have more success tomorrow with that and the embassy hopefully. God this country and its infernal bureaucracy!!