India part 1: The Visa

I got my Lonely Planet book of India for Christmas and have been looking at planning my holidays as they were due to be before I started teaching. Obviously as India is very big, I couldn't go too far south so had a look around the east and north of Delhi. I was a bit dismayed to find out that once I get to the north and in the mountains, even though there seem to be some interesting places to visit, the journey times are insane. It would take about 14 hours to travel 100km! I don't think it would take much longer to walk that distance...

But first of all, I needed to have my visa, of course.

I applied for it in the first week of December and it took them till after I came back from Porto until they told me they needed my passport, not just a photocopy of it and some normal photos, not printed out ones. So I had to go to the office on the 20^th. This was after I spent $9.95 getting two portrait photos from Jessops (go somewhere else if you have to get these). I handed all my stuff in and the woman said it should be back to me by the Friday or next Tuesday. I thought that was fine.

I waited and by the following Thursday, still nothing had arrived. I had to phone them even though it costs 95p a minute... They said I needed to submit my passport and photos... No, that was before went to the office. I've been there, now... Basically, they had done nothing with my stuff and if I hadn't contacted them, they wouldn't do anything at all...

I told them I was due to fly the next Tuesday and at the moment, due to their utter incompetence, this was looking very unlikely. I asked if it would be delivered before then, he said it might be. That doesn't help, does it? So I told him to mark it as urgent and to notify me whenever they had some information about the process.

I got an email on Friday saying they needed my references. I'd told him about that on the phone already but hey, it's fun talking to the dead sometimes...

So I emailed that information and am now waiting for it to arrive. It's not going to be here before I had to go so the only thing I could do was change my flight. Luckily, that was easy enough but it cost another £90. I have set it to Sunday the 8^th, five days later and it had better get here in the next week.

Of course, I'm not happy about any of this and if you need to apply for an Indian visa, do it as early as you can depending on your latest date for leaving India. The office workers are dreadful and you will need to keep asking them, even if it is only one or two days later than you were told. Otherwise, you may never get it. So, just to mention the institution by name for search engine results – Indian Visa Application Centre, UK – a very poor service.

I'll have to rethink where I am going to travel to now, with only five days available to me instead of ten.

More notes about Ecuador - part 2

This is my last post about Ecuador as I am now getting prepared to go to India and start my movement in England after that (see Our Own Future). There are just a couple of other things to tell you about regarding life in Ecuador, the first one them being:

Young mothers - It is very common indeed to see teenager mothers. In fact, on a number of occasions I have seen women who look no older than 20 who already have 3 children with them. However, from what I have seen and heard, unlike in the west, it is not seen so much as a problem as part of the culture. They start families young and that's just how it is. I'm sure they don't have children to get more money from the state as that is not really how things work there. It's just how life is and people get on with it.

Energy problems - I don't know enough about this in detail but briefly, Ecuador is trying to reduce its imported energy sources and use more hydroelectricity. There are problems of corruption and bureaucracy that make the transition very slow so in the meantime, it is quite common for there to be power cuts. These are actually planned more than spontaneous as there is sometimes not enough electricity available. During my time at the reserve, it happened quite a few times that we would have no electricity during the day until 5pm but they put it back on before it gets dark. We were usually working when this happened so it didn't always affect us. At other times, it did because it would go off at the weekends when we were there or in the evenings. But we learnt to deal with it, for what else can you do? We kept a supply of candles for these regular events and spent the evening in the common room, talking or playing cards or the guitar.

Anyway, this, along with many other experiences of living in a poorer country, makes you realise that some problems that we get in the western countries are usually quite trivial by comparison. It's now about 3 weeks until I go to India and I am expecting things to be more extreme there. I am not really thinking about it as I don't know exactly what to expect but I'm sure it's going to be another eye-opening experience. :)

Domination in Ecuador (a card game!)

Near the end of my time at the reserve, we'd been playing dfferent card games like Golf, President and so on and I wanted to see if I could come up with a new game. Golf is one where you have to get the lowest score over 18 rounds (and I usually came last in it...) so I wanted to make up a strategy game that was like Risk.
I got a basic idea and tried it with Kas and Jeanette and they helped me develop it. We got it to this and I think it works pretty well. So here are the full instructions if you want to try it.

Domination

3-5 players, all cards including jokers.

This is a cumulative points scoring game that takes place over a number of rounds e.g. 10 or until one player reaches, say, 100 points. It is inspired by the board game “Risk” where players attack each other to increase their units.

To begin with, each player is dealt three cards, face up. They will use these to start collecting cards in the same suits that they now have. If they are dealt more than one of the same suit, they are placed on top of the other so that everyone can see how many there are of that suit. The cards are then taken in turn from the remainder of the face-down pack, one card per player at a time. If the player takes a card that is of a suit that they are collecting, they will want to add it to their pile. No player can have more than three piles (of three different suits) but they may only collect cards of two suits if it is not worth their while starting a third one. The card are taken in turn until all they have all gone, which means the end of the round.

There are cards that have special powers, which are as follows:

King or Ace means the player can take any two cards (in total) from any of the other players.

Queen means the player can take two more cards from the face-down pile.

Joker means the player can take any complete pile from any other player. This is when the game gets really ruthless!

Jack can be placed on the same suit if the player is collecting it to protect all the cards that are underneath (e.g. if it is the jack of hearts and the player is collecting hearts). It should be placed perpendicular to make it clear that the cards are protected. Therefore, if another player wants to take the hearts but there is a Jack protecting some of them, only those on top of the Jack can be taken.

These power cards can also be added to the suits if required but they only have their power one time, so if another player takes someone's King, it doesn't have the power a second time.

If a player takes a card they don't want, they put it face up in the middle and only the next player can take it if they want. No other player can take the card in question when it is their turn.

If any of the power cards are dealt at the beginning, they have to be used as described above, in order of the players' turns.

Once all the face-down cards have been taken, points are awarded as follows:

The player with the most cards of each suit wins that suit and is given points to match the number of cards in that suit. So if they have 6 hearts, they get six points.

If two players have an equal highest number of one suit, they draw it and are given two points each.

Before beginning the next round, the outright suit winners get to keep three cards of that suit to start their next game at a (possible) advantage (as long as they are not stolen by another player!)

Players who drew a suit get to keep one card each from that suit.

They should only keep cards with numbers on to give them the chance to use the power cards in full in the next round.

All the other cards are put back into the pack and shuffled, then each player gets three more cards to start the next round, therefore those who dominated by winning a suit start with an advantage.

If a player now has cards of all four suits, when it is their turn to pick up a card, they will discard the one card that they don't want.

Each subsequent round happens in this way until it reaches the number of rounds or points set.

Due to the attacks on other players, there is a lot of strategy involved in deciding whether to take someone else's cards.

Notes about Ecuador - part 1

I wanted to give you more insights into life in Ecuador. On this blog, I have had to keep things short to make the posts readable but there are certainly some interesting things about life in this country that are worth sharing.

Toilets – It is standard that the toilet is only to receive the organic material that they are made for. The toilet paper does not go into the toilet, nor do any other things. You have to put your used paper into the bin. In the beginning of course, this is hard to get used to and it seems strange and unpleasant. The reason for this is that the pipes that go from the toilet are too narrow for too much to pass through them so paper causes blockages. As with anything, you can adapt to this and after a couple of weeks it becomes the norm for foreigners as well. :)

Taxis – There are millions of them! Or is seems like that. Even in small places, if you are near a road, you will see a taxi on it. Being a poor country, they are pretty cheap to use but the tip is to ask how much it will cost before you get in because of the obvious exploitation of tourists that can occur. The funny thing about taxis is that, whereas in the UK, I've found out it is now illegal to flag a taxi in the street, the taxis in Ecuador call you. :) It is because of the competition but you will hear the horns beep pretty much whenever a taxi goes past you, alerting you of its service. (Going back to the illegal in the UK thing, I will exercise Gandhi's 'passive resistance' tactic. If I need a taxi and I see one, I will call for it. If the police want to arrest me, go for it. If they try to fine me, I won't pay. Let's use reasoning here... I just want to take a taxi. End of story.)

Children – Probably the most distressing thing I saw in Ecuador was the amount of young children who work in the streets selling sweets, cigarettes, etc. At night, they go around the bars and busy areas and some of them are as young as five. Their parents make them do this to get money for their alcohol or drugs and even though the kids seem and confident about what they do, of course this is something that really shouldn't happen. I gave a dollar to a girl aged about 5 who was trying to sell roses in Guayaquil. She was so desperate to sell them that she tried to stop one man from walking past her. And she was so pretty that it almost made me cry. I just called her over and told her I didn't want a flower, but this dollar was for her.

Houses – A lot of the poor people's houses always look unfinished. They are small buildings made from concrete blocks that have been fixed together but they rarely have windows, and the tops of the walls are not cut to join the sloping roof so there are gaps between them. It looks like they must be cold or crawling with insects but I heard that some people leave them like this because they don't have to pay tax on an unfinished house. ;) Good thinking...

Avoiding being mugged - I managed to escape this completely and didn't have any problems from anyone in this respect. I heard quite a few stories of cameras and bags being stolen but Dan, one of the volunteers had a good idea for when you are out in the evening. Apart from only taking minimal things with you, keep paper money in your sock and small change in your pocket. That way, muggers would see that you do have some money but they wouldn't be able to get much, even if you have $20 in your sock. I did this but fortunately didn't have to deal with the issue.

My other tips for avoiding being mugged is to show confidence - don't look down when passing someone who look suspicious, look ahead or around like you have no troubles in the world. 

I'll put some more things on when I remember what I wanted to share with you! ;)