Author: Nic Olson

I don’t know how you are feeling about these lately, if you are getting sick of my blogs about India, or if you are getting sick about my blogs that aren’t about India, or if you wish I would stop altogether, but here is some great news. Best news I’ve heard in years, even.

And I’ve been crapping pancakes ever since.

Since it was Scott’s first weekend here, we both thought it would be good if I showed him around town, Show him my digs, if you will. You won’t? Oh, OK sorry.

After a short tour around where I walk every weekend, and all the ‘touristy’ spots, if there were such a thing here, we decided to head to the Mizoram Table Tennis Tournament a short drive away. We arrived at the Kulikawn Indoor Stadium, which sounds intense, but it is basically a gym, and there was one table in the middle with umpire chair, score keeper chair, those short green wall barriers to stop the ball from going everywhere, it was just like the good old days when I dominated Saskatchewan in the sport. There were almost 100 people watching when we walked in. We sat down and almost immediately the President of the Mizoram Table Tennis Association came up to me and asked me how I found the place (it was pretty much hiding) and why we came. After Scott made things awkward and told the guy I’m great at the game, he invited me to come play on a nightly basis with him and some old dudes, but he forgot to give me his number. I also talked with the Vice Prez too. We watched the Cadet (Under 12) boys final, and the Men’s final matches, both were pretty solid matches. They all coulda ripped me right apart, but I have seen better in my days, I think. Still, their skill was undeniable.

Before Jeremy goes and says something about my lacking table tennis skill, I’m going to say this. If Jeremy tells you he beat me 21-5 one time, it is a lie. Last time we played, I’ll admit, he beat me, but not easily. All I’m saying is that in my prime, that is my national level prime, I could take Jeremy in a second, in his White City School level prime. We’re talking table tennis prime here guys, because we all know, I have yet to hit my beauty prime.

When we made our way home, it turned out it was pancake night at the McMillans. Before explaining this, you need to know that when it comes to food, I have no self control. One time at India House, I ate so much, I literally couldn’t move. I couldn’t move my arms, or my legs, or my head. So pancake night usually turns out in a similar fashion. I love pancakes, and I just keep eating them as they are made. Bad thing is, pancakes are so sweet, that your body doesn’t realize what you have been doing until the last pancake of thirteen, and then all the sweetness and pancake batter moves and resides in your sinuses. So, I was feeling a bit awful after this pancake night, but boy, I love pancake night.

But if you are talking to Scott anytime soon, ask him about the white guy at the table tennis tournament. He was white, and that is the truth.

Things have been going good. Only about two months left until I make the day long journey home, get a job, and live the summer life once again. Each day here flies by, likely because each day is pretty full of things to do. Correcting exams, correcting math homework, correcting poor English, filling water tanks, waiting for the internet to work, preparing for class the upcoming week, reading for college class, trying to catch some Z’s, and still having time for hanging out and taking it easy every now and then; can become a day filler. I have a year calendar thing that I use to plan each day of school, and it says what day it is in the 365 days of the year. Today is the 82nd day in case you were wondering. I check at that number every now and then, and it seems that 20 days just drop off in an hour.

This past week Scott Landry of Yellowknife few in to India, and made his way here. After a pretty funny few happenings in Delhi, that is. It is good to have another big pale guy for people to stare at, and another guy to speak English with. It is good to have another person that laughs at Dumb and Dumber quotes and gets my pop culture laden humour. He also delivered a few goods for me. Special shout outs to Laura, Melissa, Tim, and who ever else made it possible for me to get the new Means. Their music is music to my ears…..(that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen) And another special shout out to Paul. The OC has never tasted so sweet, you are a life saver (I could go for a pack of sweet lifesavers, as opposed to the salty ones) Big shout out to Fruit of the Loom and Hanes. I haven’t yet decided which is better, but right now they are competing for my undercarriage comfort. And special mentions to Laura for the Riesens, Dayna and Cody for the flashlight, stickers and chocolate. I love all of those things. Espcially stickers of flashlights made of chocolate. Or chocolate stickers on flaslights.

I woke up the other day to a large moth crawling on my eyeball. I picked it off, went back to bed, and didn’t know what it was until I checked later. One night I was laying in bed and I thought I heard a friggin’ helicopter coming to land on the roof, but it turns out it was just a huge flying beetle that was flying around my head, ready to kill. I got my combat gear on, which consists of lucky red nut huggers, my headset flashlight and my flipflop to kill the bug, and seduced it and calmly put it do death, and put it in the squatter, the new insect graveyard. One night I was sitting on my bed with my computer on my lap working with the lights off. In the dim light of the computer screen, I saw a huge spider crawling on the wall next to me. After some exclamations between us, I put the computer down, took a few photos, and threw on the combat gear, sent him down the toilet. He was definitely big enough to be a bird eater. Or a human eater, who knows. And check out my pictures for shots of these guys, and this other 30-legged-something-opede. It was crazy, and gross. And huge. I ate it. But now I have a mosquito net, a beautiful invention. It is like you are tenting indoors every night. I love tenting.Remember those tents that you could attach to your bed when you were a kid? It is like that, only for grown up babies. Mine has stars on it.

Things are sweet.

It is amazing that it has taken me two months to devote a blog entirely to food, since it has been one of the most thrilling experiences I’ve ever encountered. The food here will take your tongue, get frisky with your tastebuds, get friendly with your tonsils, warm up everywhere from your mouth to your colon, your nose will run, your brow will sweat, and you will nearly pass out from flavour.

When I talk with the guys here, they sometimes ask me what I eat in Canada, and when I don’t say that I eat rice for every meal, they are confused. “What could you possibly eat every meal except rice?” They also often ask me if I, “have this kind of curry in Canada?” I just say no, not explaining that we don’t eat curry every meal either. What do we eat without rice or curry? McDonalds. That must be it.

The food here, there is anything from boiled mustard leaves, to boiled pumpkin leaves or pumpkin itself, to any random leaf or herb they can find in the jungle. One time one of he guys went into the bush, picked some random plant. I asked him what it was, he said he didn’t even know. He cooked it up with some chili and some other curries, and a magical chutney was born.

Tonight I chipped a tooth on a stone I found in the rice. At least it felt like a chip. I guess I chew too hard, and too fast. If I was chewing like a regular person and not like a hyena, maybe then I would have been fine.

There have been quite a few instances of stomach problems, here at the college, and likely it can be attributed to the wonder of the hot chili. I’m getting pretty good at these too, I have almost 2 every meal. But I should likely slow that down, so my colon doesn’t get inflamed or my stomach doesn’t get infected or so my new permenant home won’t be the toilet. I guess I’ll have to call off the Hunt for Red Hot-tober. Hahaha. Yes!

Hopefully before I leave, I will get Becky to teach me how to make each dish, so I never have to leave flavour behind. Because, I wanna live in flavour country forever.

Here is a provocative look at the ugly underbelly of the Education system, to advise you to avoid it as best you can.

Teaching is like a diseased fire breathing dragon. The dragon is the Education system, that breathes a carbon sulfur based fire (dad, is that even possible?), which is knowledge, onto the knight, which is the student. This carbo-sulfuric fire then creates a wart-like disease on the knight’s face and crotch area that does not go away, no matter what the doctor gives him. The warts are the lasting lifelong affect of the fire breath of knowledge. These warts caused from knowledge are spread through contact with other wenches in the kingdom, and knowledge, as well as more life changing effects are spread. Make sense? Everything these days can be related back to STD’s. Or STI’s if you are new to the scene.

Most of the day it is me combating Andrew head to head about numerous things. He always complains about not having fun, or that he doesn’t like any of the subjects I teach, or that he likes his old school better, or that his Grandma teaches better. Autumn always daydreams, sits and stares out the window or stares at her hands or something. I often have to throw chalk at them to get them to listen. When they don’t listen, a flick of the ear or a punch to the thigh usually sets them straight.

Andrew often complains that he is hungry and that he wants a piece of sliced bread. He comes up with the most off topic questions, it is truly amazing and hilarious. I really don’t know how his mind works, it is unbelievable. He can also remember the most useless things, but can’t remember that USA is not a province of Canada or how to multiply fractions. He just now asked me how deep my armpit was, in the middle of asking what the difference was between butter and margarine. Right after this he asked me if I ever threw up on a bus ride. He interrupts his own thoughts. The other day in Bible, he was supposed to come up with ways to honour God in an acrostic poem spelling the word Sacrifice. For the letter E he wrote ‘Eat your rice properly’ and then gave me a good long description of how this honours God. It included chewing the right ways so you didn’t die, because dieing doesn’t honour God. Gridblog anyone: Does dieing honour God? Inspired by Andrew.

I’d give you a subject for subject outline, but that is mostly just boring details. The blog is all the exciting details for you. If you really want to hear the boring details, just let me know, I’ll tell you in a few months. Only true friends care about boring details. Think about that. Are you my blog friend, or my true friend? I guess we’ll have to find out.

It hasn’t been all that bad. Hanging out everyday with two under 12 year olds will make you laugh every now and then, because really, I’m just a 10 year old boy in a 18 year old body.

If I went into Education however, I think my major would be Creative Thinking, or maybe in Finger Painting. My minor would definitely be the Proper Technique for making Check Marks.

Ok. I don’t really know what to say about this one, but I felt it needed to be shared.. I was at the tennis court, sitting and watching a match, and I saw a tube of something sitting next to me. I picked it up to see what it was. This is what it was.

DISCLAIMER: If you don’t like things, be aware. I don’t know what things you may or may not like, but I’m guessing that since this makes me want to give my rice a second chance at life, it might make the rest of the world feel sick too.

Sure, looks like a regular HIV free gel, right? If that isn’t weird enough, check out the ingredients.

In case you couldn’t read that, it says ‘0.1grams of fresh Human Placenta’. Now, I will be the first to admit that I don’t know much about this word, but I do know that it is gross, and that I wouldn’t want to rub it on my burns or bedsores. I am no doctor, or even close, that is why I am doing this blog, I just wanted to know, is this normal? Do we have products made of this ‘Fresh’ ingredient, in Canada?

Anyway, now I think I am going to go throw up for a few days, getting this thought out of my mind. Sorry about this. I’ve shared everything of my trip so far, why stop now?

‘I like the cut of your jib.’

What does that mean?

Since I write these things almost everyday, some people think that maybe I should become a journalist, or some sort of professional writer. Before laughing at you for a few hours and then shaking my head for another few hours, all I have to say to this is, ‘what is a verb?’ Who knows? Not me.
And further, this proves why I should not go into Education…

I write these things like the way I would talk. Since there is no one here that understands my teenage slang, I have got to unleash it on you. No newspaper would hire me, I’m a bum. I’m a math man; let us not even bother talking about my writing career. I’d bet there are nearly 100 grammar mistakes in this sentence alone. Words are not my cut of pork. Right there is an example. Cut of pork? What the heck?

And this trip has only further showed me how poor I am at teaching, and how much I should avoid the profession. I like children, but only the good ones. When you are a teacher you have to like all the children, even the crappy ones. My two students are right on the line of good and awful, and if I became a teacher, I would have to know that I am teaching students for the rest of my life.. That would be the worst way to wake up every morning. Except maybe a slap in the face, followed by boiling hot water being poured in my armpits, and a good swift punch to the gut. But even that sounds appealing compared to a lifetime of school. But thats just me.

Quite often, sitting in my room, listening to music, or while I’m in the midst of a boring devo, I begin to think of my Chemistry and Math classes, last semester, thinking about how fun that was, and how cool it was. I’m pumped about furthering this knowledge. Now, I am not looking forward to going back and reading romance novels for my next English class, and learning about the conjective conjunctions of the independent creative clause. Makes me shudder.

In a few weeks I’ll run out of witty and clever things to say, you’ll all stop reading my blog because I became so desperate for things to write about, that I began to update about the progress of my facial hair, which by the way, is progressing very nicely. I’m predicting a beard in late ’07. What do you think?

You know that one person in your life that is away from you, that you miss the most out of anyone else? Mine would be Angel Sombrutski. Few people know who she is, but for those who do, you know how much she means to me. She is the weather girl for CTV News Regina, and boy, is she something else. Not only is she beautiful beyond words, she has an enthusiasm and excitement that makes me want to learn about the weather too, and that is hard to find. You can’t buy that.

I walked by her once, in Starbucks, but once I realized it was her, I was too shocked to say anything, or get a phone number. But it was among the top three best days of my life, easily.

All the people here always ask if I’m homesick or if I’m lovesick, missing my non-existent girlfriend back home in Canada (I tell them everyday that I don’t have one, they just won’t believe me), and I always respond, ‘Nope. Only two more months, and that’s butter.’ Well, I don’t say those words exactly, because that would only make things more confusing than they already are. But there is something about missing people. There are too many people to miss and too many reasons to miss them, that if I did, I’d just be sitting in he corner crying about my disappointing situation everyday. No man is an island, baby, and I know that for a fact. I have a piece of all of you right here, right in my left back pocket, beside my snot filled hanky, and just as convenient.

This isn’t to say I don’t miss anyone, but I miss them in a way that just makes me happier. ‘Cause when I get back, it will be electric. Like fireworks. Or rootbeer floats. That good.

But man, do I ever miss Angel. If that isn’t lovesick, I don’t know what is.

Some awesome things I have done or noticed these past few weeks…Basically a list of things that didn’t make the cut for real blogs. But interesting nonetheless.

People in India rarely wash their hands after going to the bathroom. I didn’t think I’d fit in anywhere with this as a common occurrence. But, turns out, I’m as dirty as 1/6th of the world.. That’s right, if you wash your hands after you go to the bathroom, you are likely the minority.

I saw a lady putting a live chicken into a plastic grocery bag the other day. The bag was small, the chicken was squirming and clucking, and she managed to get it done. When she was done, the customer took the chicken in the bag, and the chicken’s head just stuck out of the bag like a small dog out of a girl’s purse.

The other day, a nun smiled at me. I’ve never seen one of those before. A nun, that is. Smiling nuns are everywhere, I bet.

I am planning on going to town soon for a dog eating party. Like dog meat. They said it is available here, so I better take advantage of that. Shitzu or Rotweiler?

Zoos can be a let down. I really enjoyed my time at the Aizawl Zoological Centre, however. It was pretty sweet, lots of cool animals, but as usual, the coolest animals were out for the day. The tiger and leopard weren’t hanging around, they were gone, but it was still a pretty cool zoo. Far better than Regina’s, that’s for sure.

February was fast. Superfast. Supersonic. March is going the same.

They have the most amazing dish soap here. It is like hard butter, and is in a tub. They take a fist of it (which isn’t much with their tiny hands) and put it into the hot dishwater. But, it is different than liquid dish soap. As time progresses, MORE bubbles and foam is created. It is a truly amazing invention. Like a time bomb of dish cleanliness. Yeah, I’ve been washing dishes too.

I had to pay 2 rupees to relieve myself at the mall. But if I didn’t, it would’ve been a messy day, and it was the nicest bathroom I’ve seen in India. Two urinals, two squatters, a real live toilet, and 2 sinks. Wow!

I met a guy named Mr. Supreme. Now, if that isn’t the perfect name for a Professional Wrestler, then I don’t know what is. I wouldn’t mess with Mr. Supreme, that’s for sure.