Is today going to be tomorrow?

Mike and I felt in need of a beer last night so I abandoned the veg.curry that was stewing on the stove (first remembering to switch off the gas) and we trudged down into town to hunt out the liquor store.  It's a strange little place, a sort of archway full of bottles and cans.  You have to stand outside the shop and tell the man behind the bars (yes, it looks like a prison or a cage) what you want and it's furtively passed out through the small gap in the bars.  I quickly hid the cans inside my rucksack as alcohol is not widely accepted here, especially for women.  I felt as though I'd visited a crack den as we sneaked back home with the beer sloshing around inside the rucksack.  I never thought that I would be so pleased to get hold of some Fosters lager - my normal tipple is wine or real ale but that's something I'll just have to look forward to on my return.

I'm gradually getting used to living here.  The cold showers are OK at the moment as it's still warm but may become less appealing when winter draws in and the temperature drops.  The squat toilet is fine although I'd prefer a flushing version rather than having to run water into a bucket to chuck down it.  We are working on one of the shops in town to get in supplies of toilet paper for us VSO volunteers - I'm sure there's a market that would be worth tapping there!  I visited that shop yesterday and he told me it would be in tomorrow.  We'll see.

I'm still dutifully filtering and boiling all my drinking water and only using filtered water for cooking.  The 2 ringed gas stove is fine for most things and toast can be made on a little griddle pan.  A small bird keeps visiting me inside the kitchen, hopping in through the grill on the window (no glass in my windows).  I think it's after my breakfast cereal and looking for fruit, nuts and helpfully rolled grains.  I try not to worry about what it might be bringing in on it's feet as it hops around the worktop.  Our resident house lizards are helpfully munching their way through mosquitoes, they seem to be thriving on the little blighters.  We seem to get power cuts most days, sometimes several of them.  I've given up trying to use the wireless router in the office, that doesn't work so well without power.  At least my laptop and portable modem keep on going for a while until the battery runs out.  We've visited a couple of Koraput's finest restaurants.  The new hotel food was OK and air-conditioning great although the toilet left something to be desired.  My favourite so far is the Jungle Restaurant, attached to the local tribal museum.  The food there is lovely and really cheap - I had a delicious paneer chilly for a mere 35 rupees.  I'll be back there again despite the incongruous looking plastic dinosaur outside.

But will tomorrow ever really come?  I visited the bank again yesterday in yet another attempt to open up a local Indian rupees account.  We'd been waiting to sort this out since we first arrived in Koraput as the manager thought he needed forms for foreirners accounts and had to wait for them to be sent from Bhubanewar.  We finally found out at the end of last week that he didn't need these forms so I hitched a ride on the back of Prasant's motorbike and had an exhilerating ride into town dodging dogs and cows en route to try to open my account.  Only to find that the manager was absent and noone else was able to deal with me.  "Come back tomorrow".  Let's see.