pre-christmas excitement

12Nov08

you would think this has something to do with trees and bright baubles for the trees and presents to put under the tree, but there is really enough excitement in life without the ding-dong-ting-a-ling.

i saw a termite trail for the first time in my life today. i used to think a termite trail refers to a line of termites crawling around in single file, like ants, but it is really just holes in the woodworks. apparently, they drill these holes here and there, and link them up by gnawing through the wood from hole to hole. it reminds me of those kiddy exercises where you draw lines to link a series of dots to form a picture. anyhow, these termites are amazing. they are migrants from a building that is a five-minute human walk up the road, and have actually pushed their frontiers to at least five buildings down the road. when you think about how tiny these things are! our road is lined with old, wooden buildings, so the colony is really having an extended christmas fest at our expense.

we have entered the year-end monsoon here. the days are cooler and sometimes downright chilly, and we see major tropical downpours, complete with lightning and thunder, at least once a day. it is one of my favourite times of the year. i like being marooned, safe and cocooned indoors as i (usually) am, with a book and a cup of hot tea. and on those rare days of fine, indian sunshine, it is lovely to run outdoors to check out streets now decked with christmas trinkets and nativity sets.

i bought a new swimsuit yesterday on one of these random rambles. an extravagantly expensive swimsuit with flowers and sequins – something others would wear to a resort pool where they would then lounge around on deck chairs and get nary a drop of water on their bronzed skin… something i would wear to the public pool, where i would swim laps up and down and up and down, only to discover that all the sequins have fallen to the depths of the pool by the time i am done. but swimming is the one remaining sport in the world that i can do without wheezing and clawing for breath, so do it in style i will. there is, after all, less than a month to go before the big bridesmaid debut.

i have been surfing around rather enthusiastically (what with the lull in work and extreme boredom), and came across the orwell diaries today. i added it to my blogroll almost at once. the contents? self-explanatory, i suppose – george orwell’s diaries posted day after day, exactly seventy years after he had written each entry. i won’t go into the details, but don’t go in expecting fantasy novels or in-dept political analysis. still, it makes interesting reading – a great writer will always, i believe, be a great writer… even when he has an obsession with the number of eggs laid by the chicken every day.

so much excitement from day to day! who needs christmas?

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Tags: christmas, george orwell, monsoon, swimsuit, termites