Slowly adapting

I was supposed to post a lot about my dog from time to time and keep a record of how things are progressing with her. And here I am even though I am a bit late 🙂

Rithu is doing well but there have been so many adjustments and changes and such. It was a pity that we had a holiday booked even before we adopted her. We did check with the rescue centre if it would be ok for her to be with them for a week after being at our place for a couple of weeks and they assured us that she will adapt well and not to worry. Can one really know if the dogs are ok with it? We dropped her off at the sanctuary this rescue centre has for animals which cannot be left back in the streets and which need care forever and they had a boarding place in there. It was heartbreaking to leave her there. She literally hugged us with her three paws and had this look in her eyes that she didn’t want to be there with all those boisterous and loud dogs and there were too many of them. But the folks over there assured us that she will be well taken care of and we came home with a very heavy heart.

After our holiday, when we went to pick her up, they told us that she was skittish and was quiet on her own and as usual was very picky with food. She was so happy to see us and couldn’t wait to get out of that place fast enough 😆 And there was a marked change in her after she was back. Mr M thought it was like she was grateful for the peace and quiet and the pampering she gets at home after being in that boarding place.

Slowly and steadily she started getting to her own nature. When she was in the rescue centre everyone adored her and she was quiet and on her own, all she used to do was sit under a table in the office and let people pet her and be happy. She had a safe place and she was happy, maybe (again, I am only assuming what she might have felt). But now that she is in a new place and is getting accustomed to totally different types of people around, animals and birds (there are a few stray cats in our society and they keep growing in leaps and bounds… ), a lot of different noises (drilling, hammering, thunders, firecrackers etc.) she is finding it a little bit difficult to adjust to all these. I am sure it takes a lot of time. She loses her head when she hears a bang… If she is outside she just runs blindly around the house shivering from top to bottom. All she wants then is to be hugged and held closely. When at home, it is the same, she needs to be on someone’s lap. She will claw her way on top of us. She wants to go in the car with us out for a drive, but after a few minutes starts to puke out of anxiety or car sickness (we don’t know which) and we are yet to find a way around it. She has her good days and her bad days. She ends up in a fight with Mr M for peeing on the sofa when she is afraid of something (mostly if she hears a bang and we aren’t nearby for her to jump on us). She is very good with potty training, she never does her business inside the house, she will wait for us to let her out or take her for a walk. It’s only on these occasions when she gets scared she ends up peeing on the sofa or the floor and Mr M gets in a tiff with her 😆

For the past month and a half, due to my ill health (will update you later about it) I have not been there for her and Mr M had to take care of her and they have grown quite close to each other. Although I am a teensy bit jealous, I am glad they have each other. He even successfully bathed her recently. It’s a pity she had a bit of a skin problem recently and Mr M was successful in getting her to the vet on his own in the car. They have given her some meds which she is taking very well (surprisingly because she spit the worming tablet back when we tried to give her 🙂 ) and hopefully is on the mend. She is good with the syrup they have given her and hopefully, the scabs will heal in time. We have also started to leave her on her own inside the house when we have to go elsewhere as she is more comfortable in her safe place rather than being outside where the environmental sounds cause her anxiety. When we come home, we can see her coming from the first floor to greet us and we would know that there was some sound that had spooked her. But we are all learning and getting used to what is good for everyone.

She is very camera shy, so it is a lot of effort to take a good photograph of her. I have to be very sneaky. When I am on the call with Mr M and try to talk to her she responds but doesn’t really see the phone to know where it is coming from. But she has got her own fan club in the society. There are a few kids (two sisters especially) who are very fond of her and they drop in every now and then to sit and play with her. She isn’t very great at playing but she lets them pet her to their heart’s content. I hope I am able to get back home soon and enjoy her company.

Prime Time Viewing

We got the Amazon Prime Free Trial and watched two movies. The first one was the Ponniyin Selvan Part 1 which I was so apprehensive about and the other one was No Time To Die, Daniel Craig’s last movie as James Bond.

Ponniyin Selvan Part 1

Translating a 5 book story into two movies is no small feat. Especially when it is historical fiction with loads of characters spanning two or three generations and loads and loads of plot twists. I knew that Vikram would do justice as Aadhitha Karikalan and he has. He made it look easy, maybe because he has done similar roles in the past with shades of grey. He does get a mention because he is one of my favourite actors 🙂 Jeyam Ravi as Ponniyin Selvan has done a decent job, which surprised me as I have seen him mostly in romance movies. Karthi is apt for Vandhiyathevan oozing trouble and charm and so is Jayaram as Aazhvaarkadiyaan. I don’t know why in my mind, Aazhvaarkadiyaan was someone shorter and fatter as described by Kalki but Jayaram fits too. Aishwarya Rai Bachhan as Nandhini and Trisha as Kundhavai has got the meaty role as the whole story revolves around them and with the surprise about Nandhini at the end of Part 1, we know Aishwarya landed a hefty one. They have all done their jobs very well. The songs are already popular and are good. But, I am not sure I want to hear so many of them while watching the movie. I wonder if there were fewer songs would there have been time for a bit more of the background story in its place? Mr M found the movie alright and interesting without knowing anything about the story (not for a lack of trying, mind).

Now to the story part. I am not entirely sure if I liked how the story is cut from many places and stitched in other places to get the essence in place. It works and they have done a good job but as a person who loves the books more than their movie adaptations, I think I preferred the elaborate thinking process that is involved in such a complicated drama. What was going on in Karikalan’s mind when he decided not to heed Nandini when she begged for the Pandya King’s life? What was the reason for Kundhavai’s move to bring back PS home? I also missed the romance between Vandhiyathevan and Kundhavai which in the book is very subtle, humourous, and cute. Vanathi’s role is reduced to a couple of scenes, sadly. It is hard to switch your inner critic while watching the movie especially when you love the book so much! I really really tried very hard but in the end, I decided to see it as another good movie and not bother to look at it as a translation of the book into its screen version. That is the only way I will be able to convince myself to watch Part 2 now. There is no pleasing some people I tell you 😀 Mr M thought I was being very harsh and I was or rather I am, but it is what it is. Over time I might forget it and be happy with my book. When I read it again though, I wouldn’t mind having Karthi take over as my Vandhiyanathan and Vikram as my Karikalan but I will replace others with my own representation.

No Time To Die

Daniel Craig’s last movie as Bond not necessarily 007. Now that was interesting. Here is a woman as 007. What does that mean for the next movie? Will there be one? Will be a Bond movie anymore given how this one ends? It was slightly bittersweet. I might have missed a lot of clues that they have used throughout the movie as a homage to Bond (like the song at the end, the one-liner that Bond says about having all the time etc.) if not for Mr M who remembers those old ones. This post is more about what I felt when I watched the movie rather than about the movie. While watching it, I realized how much the Bond movie changed when Daniel Craig became Bond. I got introduced to Bond movies when Pierce Brosnan was Bond and he is like our Rajnikanth, all style and full-on Hollywood masala and such, which called to me and I absolutely loved him as Bond. Over the past couple of years, I have watched the rest of the Bond movie and have got to notice each one’s style (I think Pierce Brosnan imitates Roger Moore a lot). But Daniel Craig’s style is unique and so is his Bond. They have more depth to them, more emotional, and have some continuity in their stories (not all, but some). There is still those small pieces of Bond charisma and the blowing up of places when they so please but beyond that there is something more human. May be it is the passage of time, the change in culture, the emphasis on diversity, equality etc. Honestly, I wasn’t too happy with Daniel Craig in his first Bond movie because I was having withdrawal symptoms from Pierce Brosnan, but as an actor I have come to appreciate him in Bond. It’s not an easy role to fill with so much expectations already set by his predecessors. I think if I ignore the fact that his movies are Bond movies I will enjoy them and with this one I thought I kind of miss the silliness of the story line, the blowing up of stuff, the fancy gadgets and Bond just taking those for granted, the mindless way Bond shrugs off the dust after the whole place is demolished and not just that he emerges without a single scrap on his self etc. It is like reading a romance novel because I know how it ends, I know that there will be a set formula and I don’t have to invest my brain power to think too much and I need that in between my intense murder mysteries and thrillers, which render me sleepless most of the times. I do miss the old Bond formula. But the ending was somewhat unexpected (I have managed to not read about it so far) and that left me with “what are they gonna do now? what were they thinking? why then were there so many news articles about a new bond?” etc. etc. Can’t wait to know more about what’s gonna come next.

Now that I have got my free trial, Amazon Prime has started bombarding me that I am missing out by not listening to their music, not watching their recommended shows etc. etc. I hate that part. Can you not just leave me alone. I will watch what I want to watch, when I want to watch it. If I got Amazon Prime only to watch two movies, that is my perogative isn’t it? Every single commerce site is now doing that. I just wish there is a way to turn them off (unless I unsubscribe which most of the times don’t really work) . If there is an option to turn off recommendations, kindly let me know. I will also have a nose around their website.

That’s it. Rant and opinion sharing time over 😉 It feels nice to let it all out rather than just whinging about it to all the time to Mr M. I missed writing about my whinging and sharing my unwanted and unwarranted opinions. I hope this year I will be able to do it at regular intervals.

All the chaos

This post talks about what happened with the move professionally and where I am now. It might come across as a rant and you might have guessed that things didn’t go as planned.

Accepting a job remotely just based on lots of interviews and solving question papers without having a first-hand experience of the place and the audience might have been a bad shout on my side. But hey, it takes two to tango. There was an element of trust that was involved. People who hired me as a teaching faculty for their school believed me to do my job and do it well and they did offer a very good package. And I trusted them to keep up to their word on what they said my roles and responsibilities were and how my growth would be. They needed a commitment of 2 years which I was willing to provide because this was part of a growing school (international syllabus) and I was happy to be part of that journey. This made us change our plans of relocating towards the end of 2022 and we made our move much ahead of our scheduled time.

In India, the school academic year starts in June. I got an email from the school that they had teacher inset days/training days planned in May so they were expecting me by the 2nd week of May if I was available by then. They also told me of their management decision to additional responsibilities to my role. I was to be a year 6 class teacher along with being an ICT faculty for GCSE and A levels and maybe do some maths. I have already done these combinations (apart from the class teacher) in my school in London and I know how to manage my work so I said yes to it. When I landed in India, there was a training schedule sent around which was for three-plus weeks, 6 days a week training for all teachers. WTH! Why would we need almost 22 days of training to start a year? and 6 days a week at that? Wouldn’t the teacher be exhausted even before they start the school year? For the first week, I went for half a day (as I still was setting up house and had so much other stuff to do having landed only 2 weeks by then). It definitely gave an insight into the school and their philosophy. They are huge into mindfulness and are very child-focused which is a good thing and which is what I expected. To be honest, all schools should have that as part of their day-to-day functioning and most actually do. They just do it in different ways and honestly, some schools just don’t bother with it. We as teachers did a lot of art, music, movements etc. etc. which was good for team bonding and may be getting some ideas for primary and kindergarten but I wasn’t very sure why I would do this instead of my planning for higher secondary and year 6.

Even on the first day, there was some confusion as to which part of the school I belonged to, middle school (because I am not a year 6 class teacher) or upper school (GCSE and A level teacher). I was classified as a middle school teacher by the coordinator. That was a warning bell for me. Because my primary role was for upper school and additional responsibilities were for middle school, here I am roped into learning activities for my year 6 students. And also as the training days went by and the roles and responsibilities were discussed I realised that the class teacher role goes above and beyond the school. I have to be with them *all* the time and do evening special sessions, night schools, trips, home visits (that was a strict no for me) etc. It involved a lot more than what is done within the framework of the school. I wasn’t comfortable with some of them because of the travel time. Ironically, when they told me that my travel and food will be recompensated, it wasn’t explained how. They provided food and snacks (which were great!) but the travel was a sticky point as there was no pick up from my place which was furthest (almost an hour from the school). In order to get to the school, I had to travel half an hour from my place, leave my vehicle with someone, then board the school bus and do the same in the evening. Except in the evening because of the traffic, by the time we reach the last bus stop it is already two hours into the journey. I felt that if I was given the money instead of just the bus available I could have got my own vehicle and done the hour-long travel myself. But that wasn’t an option.

Apart from all the responsibilities, they also added teaching science to my list which wasn’t discussed with me. I got to know when the timetable was published. Now my days were too full to have any time to think or take a breath. This didn’t sound very healthy both for my mental and physical sanity. When the second week of training rolled by, I decided to discuss this with the concerned folks (there was confusion about whom I should be talking to… middle school coordinator or upper school coordinator… ) but they kind of brushed me saying that between the move to India and setting up house and new job I am getting stressed out unnecessarily and once I am all sorted it would be a walk in the park and that I would have support from the management to help me out. It felt like they were making this my problem rather than a mistake in their management decision. No other middle school teacher was handling any other upper school subjects so there was a clear distinction of roles and responsibilities. I was the only one who got shunted between the two sections of the schools. When I went back to them after a few days of thinking about it, they were ready to take me off the GCSE ICT teaching responsibilities and get me to do that later in the term. I was shocked to hear that because that was why they hired me in the first place. But it looked like their priorities changed when they were doing their management planning in April. Now they wanted someone to be a year 6 class teacher and since I was already hired they decided that I would be able to do it and they decided that I would be ok with it.

To say I was livid is an understatement. I don’t like being taken for granted like this and in a way abusing my trust in them. The other issue that got on my nerves was that they did not have any IT lab at all and were in the process of setting it up. Two years of online teaching and teaching by part-time staff for ICT didn’t prepare them for in-person ICT teaching. That is bad management that is, given that they introduced ICT because of popular demand from students. As a school, their philosophy is to have as much less tech in school as possible which didn’t bode well for my subject now. They were also adding training sessions on an ad-hoc basis thereby wanting me to attend a training tailored to their philosophy for a whole week including the weekends after which we were supposed to attend a school retreat. There was literally a 1-day break between three weeks. I don’t know how the other teachers do it, but I was exhausted just after a week. All the training that they had could have been done in 1 week and let the teachers do their individual planning. But they spread the training for two hours per day over 6 days and the new teachers had to do more training over the weekends. This is totally uncalled for. It looked like they didn’t give any thought to the work-life balance of the teachers especially when the school hadn’t even started yet. I had a good long discussion with Mr M about how I felt and then Mr M suggested that I think twice before continuing because when the students come in then it would be very hard for me to leave the school. It would be unfair on the students especially year 6 ones as it might be difficult to hire a new teacher by then and I might be stuck in a very unhappy job.

When my concerns went to deaf ears again, I decided to ditch the week-long training and sent a very long email to the person who hired me and also the founder of the school highlighting my concerns and my decision to leave the school. I had refrained my signing the contract when it was given to me the first week. The package was very good, the school was in a very lovely place, and the physical environment was very good too, but there was an underlying current of slight dissatisfaction and when I spoke to the other teachers, not all were happy about what’s going on, but they were happy to continue. I wasn’t. The management accepted my resignation not because of any other concerns that I had put forward but because of my travel time. That was typical and made me laugh because that was the only thing on the list that wasn’t their problem. It was my personal decision to travel that far off even though it wasn’t sustainable in the long term and I was willing to do it if the school and my work were good.

So after three weeks of training and a week, before the students were about to start their academic year, I left the school and was back in the market looking for options. Given that most schools already had done their recruitment for the current academic year, I was left with no other option other than to take a break and try for alternatives. Finally, after a month of job-hunt, I have landed a part-time teaching job so I am set for this year at least, but this experience has taught me to be careful and not trust everyone at face value especially when it comes to career changes. I have never had a career break ever since I started working many moons ago but this one-month of break (forced) was a much-needed one especially, after the move and setting up the house. All this might have been a blessing in disguise but that one month of balancing everything else (getting the move sorted, house sorted) the chaos of the job was, in hindsight, something that could have been avoided. At least I have learned my lesson and made a few friends in the process.

I can never win!

A word of advice (if I may):

Never change countries while changing jobs while your house is still not fully complete. It is a nightmare! More on this in the upcoming posts (maybe some rants will be involved too). But in this one, I wanted to share some of the funnier things that have happened so far.

When we decided to move I did tell Mr M that he would be an odd man out in my city, especially in the place where we were planning to settle down as the influx of people from other countries is very minimal (read zero). You might find a handful in the city centre or in the malls, but out where we are close to the hills and almost 15 km away from the city centre, none. He had his share of incidents where he was asked to be part of a selfie, a group photo, etc. where they find him interesting and looking so different to everyone around. He has also had incidents where in shopping places, he has been given the royal treatment and I am ignored like a nobody 🙂 even in spite of being the person who is footing the bill for his purchases (he doesn’t have a bank account here as of yet). He has also had incidents where he has been ogled at or rather stared at and pointed at and whispered behind hands to the presence of a foreigner (for them) amidst them. This has put him off from time to time but he started coping by waving at people who stare at him. That takes them by surprise and they either smile and wave back or just turn away and don’t look at him anymore.

I am curious as to what the folks around here think when they see him. I grew up in this place and I can, to some extent, understand the curiosity of knowing why someone who isn’t from India wants to be in such a remote part of the country, but would I have stared at them wondering or would I have had the courage to say hi or at least respond to them if they had said hi to me? I think it would be the former. I am an introvert at heart (even though people who know me now might disagree but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t like initiating conversations).

The other day we were going for a walk when a car screeched to a halt next to Mr M and the fellow who was driving asked him where he was from and why was he walking (all the while totally ignoring me who was right beside Mr M, he did not even look at me for a second) around the area in the dust. Mr M was trying to convey that he was out for a walk and that he lived close by and that it was totally fine but that gentleman wouldn’t take no for an answer and insisted that he would be happy to drive Mr M to wherever he wanted to go 😀 (and nope, he still didn’t bother looking at me while having this conversation with Mr M) Mr M then had to explain to him very patiently that he has a vehicle (which he doesn’t drive by the way :P) but that he chose to walk to know the place etc. etc. and that fellow was so surprised that a foreigner would like to go for a walk whereas the locals wouldn’t even consider something like that at all (I am sure some of my neighbours who are out for a walk every single day would be very offended by that statement if they heard that gentleman). And then he turns to me and asks me where was I from and that is when I unleashed my weapon and spoke to him in Tamil and told him that this was my hometown. Boy was it fun to watch his surprise. He apologized to me (for what I don’t know) and then bid us farewell and went his way.

This wasn’t the first time that kind of incident happened. We have got a scooter and were out to fill petrol (or gas as you might call it on the other side of the world) and this young chap who was filling the petrol spoke to me in English (or what he knew of it) once he saw Mr M. I knew he was trying his best with his limited knowledge and so encouraged him by answering in English (questions ranged from where were we from, what is Mr M’s country etc. etc.) and then when he asked me about my place I didn’t have a choice but to tell him that this city was my hometown and he then started to chat in Tamil and chided me (in good fun) that I could have let him know about it and he would not have tried too hard in English. But I didn’t have the heart to crush his attempt at making an impression with Mr M.

It wasn’t just them. Even the folks in the school I joined (for a brief while at least) all thought that since I moved here from the UK and since my husband was Irish, I wouldn’t know Tamil. On what basis did they come to that conclusion I don’t know. I look like a proper Tamilian in my current surroundings. There is no mistaking me and my Tamil face. But by association (even though they haven’t seen my Irish husband) they all assumed me to speak only English. One day when I uttered a line from Vadivelu’s (a Tamil comedian) movie scenes, they were surprised. I had to tell them that I was in this country until recently.

You know what gets me though. When I moved to the UK, people in the UK thought that I wouldn’t know enough English because I came from a part of India which isn’t popular and there were surprised to hear me speak good English (and comment on that too). I had to explain to them that I studied in an English medium and worked in MNCs (multi-national companies) which had HQs (headquarters) in the Netherlands and San Francisco and have had to deal with clients from other countries for almost two decades. Now that I am back in India, people here think that because I have an Irish husband, I don’t know any other language other than English. The irony of it all heh. 😀 I can never win. I end up explaining to people no matter where I go…Is it because my face is so generic in nature that I can be categorized as Indian in the UK, European in India, and alien on Mars? Who knows, heh! At least Mr M’s presence in the community is getting normalized day by day and fewer people are staring at him unless they are new to the place or passing by. Now, this doesn’t mean that people here can understand him. That is a story for another time.

The journey to a pause…

This might seem like something different to what I usually post, but on account of what I have gone/am going through, I thought it might help someone else too or at least join me in my rant.

Menopause (if you don’t want to read about it anymore, might stop right now and move on 😉 )… First and foremost…why a “pause”. I don’t get it. What do they mean by “pause”. It is not going to come back later in life, is it? It is supposed to be the end of the menstrual cycle and it is still called menopause? OK…as usual I digressed. Back to the topic now.

For the past year and a half, I have been having the symptoms that are listed on NHS’s website for menopause (not all, mind, but at least half of them). When I told Mr M he was like “you are too young for menopause”. I was like “no…not really”. This was also the time when I have been doing a lot of yoga for my yoga teacher training and that does have an impact on your body. I can feel some sort of change happening but these hot flushes and night sweats were there even before I started my training. I had my doubts, but you know how it is with anything menstrual…it is never clear because it varies from one body to the other. What with the lockdown and all, I couldn’t have done anything about it even if I wanted to (apart from using AskMyGP which wasn’t how I wanted to discuss this because I had a lot of questions) and then slowly my periods kind of became too irregular. I wouldn’t have them for 45 days to 75 days and then have them for a day or two and then zilch. The only major impact I had because of that is my lower back pain and being grumpy for a day or two and then whooosh…it’s gone.

When the lockdown restrictions were lifted and my long-awaited cervical cancer screening which was postponed for a year got resumed, I took the opportunity to talk to my GP and they confirmed that it “could” be menopause. Mr M was like “really? at your age?”. I was like “why not? my body is tired of producing eggs when it kind of knows that nothing is ever gonna happen anymore…why bother producing it and go through all the cycle. Might as well just shut down the system and be done with it”. It might sound very callous to my body but it is the truth. Now I know that the menstrual cycle plays a very important role in a woman’s body because of all the hormones that get generated and how it is a natural cleansing process and once it is done, your body undergoes a lot of changes which may or may not be healthier for me. But having said that, I will also be happy to just let it go. I am acutely aware of the changes that go through my body and I kind of keep track of it and at the least be aware of any major changes so that I know what to look for and be prepared if I can be.

The topic of the menstrual cycle also became a forefront now because funnily enough, my parents were talking about preparing my niece who might soon be attaining her puberty. I wish I was prepared for it. I never was. And I am glad that things have changed from my times and I am very comfortable talking to her about it and letting her know that it is nothing to be afraid of. But there is not much I know myself apart from my personal experience, which was full of pain (courtesy of my mom’s genes which I have inherited in abundance and my occasional fainting episodes due to the pain). My sister on the other hand kind of breezes through it (and it annoys me to no extent). Recently I came across this podcast called 28-ish days later by India Rakusen which I stumbled upon in BBC Sounds. I am still on the 12th day of the 28-ish days, but so far I have enjoyed it because they not only go through the ins and outs of the menstrual cycle but also discuss various experiences and talk about it. It is also not a very long episode. It is short and sweet and very informative. It also helps to hear people talk about their experiences which are so similar to your own (I hated the event that happens when you attain puberty too…the drama of it all…urgh…). I hope I can use the information that I have gathered from that to help my nieces and anyone else who might need it (given that I will be dealing with girls of similar age in the school when I start teaching). If you are interested in this topic, I would suggest having a listen to that podcast.

I still don’t know for sure if I am going through a peri-menopause or just a menopause phase but either way, I don’t care so much now. The not knowing kind of irks me a bit but I guess I have come to accept that some things happen in their own time and as long as I am aware of that and keep myself as healthier as possible, it should be alright. I also know what works to help me alleviate any pain or discomfort and what symptoms I should be looking for to be prepared. But there are things that still surprise me and I am trying to be OK with it, to some extent. If I am not, I just rant about it and get over it. But what this ongoing experience and the podcast have helped me realize is that a woman’s body is a universe of its own. It is so mysterious and yet so wonderful and I can’t wait for my menstrual cycle to finish what it started and enter the menses-less phase.