Packing Tape Is Your Friend

Unbelievably, our time in India is almost at an end. I know I've thought that twice before, just before we were heading back in July 2006 and then in April 2007, but this time it looks as if it's really the case. I'll try to write up some sort of wordy summing-up (who doesn't love those?), but don't hold your breath.

The last week or so has been full of packing tape, buying stuff (mostly cloth), visits to the tailor to have that cloth hemmed, giving away books, eating too much at fancy places in town, listening to Christmas music, thinking about being unemployed, putting things in piles, and seeing friends. We have no idea how we're going to pack up everything, but I'm sure it'll all end up somewhere.

Meanwhile, the apartment is reacting to our imminent departure by falling apart, even more than usual. A couple weeks back the automatic door closer on the apartment door stopped doing its job and in fact stopped closing in midstream, so I had to unscrew it to close the door. And there's a periodic leak in one bathroom. It's brown and from the floor above and I've avoided it and haven't done anything about it beyond alert the owners of the apartment. And then the electrical outlet for the TV got pulled halfway off the wall because the screws don't go very far into the wall. I used some of that packing tape to fix that one, but maybe I'll try for a more permanent solution. Speaking of the TV, the cable channels are going in and out even more than usual. The end of the month always seems like an unstable time for cable -- maybe it's the bills that the cable operators are putting off paying? And just now we discovered that one of the pins came off the plug to the microwave and stuck in the outlet. Who would even think that such plugs could unscrew? Anyway, if this happens to you, just turn off the switch and extract the pin with a pencil and the screw it back into the plug. That's my handy tip of the day.