Another Day Spent Working at Home

Thursday, November 1, 2018
Bombay

Another Day Spent Working at Home
     Namaste from Bombay!
     I paid dearly for the sins of consuming that fancy Hazelnut Granita Shake yesterday that I had so raved about.  It appears that the caffeine in the chocolate was lethal for it kept me awake half the night and gave me very limited slumber. I awoke at 6. 15 am having fallen asleep only in the wee hours! Such a bumber!
     Still, I did not allow this to trouble me unduly as I got on with my day.  I blogged, caught up with Twitter and then began working at my computer  I decided to skip the gym as well as any potential trips to the city as I needed to get a lot of items on my To-Do List ticked off.
      At 11.00 am, I left home to go to Dad's so that I could see Russel's physiotherapist in action. It is very heartening for us to note that Russel can now stand upright on his own by resting the weight of his body on his walker. Tomorrow, we shall go to see his orthopedist again with his x-ray reports--hopefully, his physiotherapist will be able to start making him take one step at a time with the walker.
     I returned home, an hour later, to take a shower and continue with the drafting of my October newsletter which will go out into the mail tomorrow.  Then I stopped to eat my lunch during which time I watched Come Dine With Me on You Tube--a British program that I used to enjoy when I lived in London. It is so amazing to me that any and everything is available between You Tube and Netflix--I seriously do not feel the lack of cable TV at all.
       Back to my laptop, I completed my newsletter and began revising the presentation I had made at a Global Faculty Conference at NYU-Florence as I have been requested by my colleagues at NYU to email it to them for publication on our Liberal Studies blog.  I spent about two hours revising it for publication, checking footnotes and annotations, adding some more bits to it to bring my information up to date, etc. I find that a lot of my time is spent responding to email that originates from NYU--even though I am ostensibly on research duty this year, there are still so many things to take care of as I am still a member of faculty.
     I stopped at tea-time for a cuppa and for cake--yes, delicious butterscotch cake that I spread with peanut butter and Nutella for a splendid snack. Then, I continued working again.
     At 6.00 pm, with my paper revised and ready to be sent to New York, I left my studio to walk to Dad's where I spent the evening chatting with Russel who is lonely and sorely lacks company. It is good to spend some time chatting with him as Dad takes a shower and gets ready for church. We both leave at 6.45 for the 7.00 pm Mass.  The church was packed today as it was All Saints Day--there were two readings as well.
     After Mass, I left Dad at his driveway and walked to my home. I did not waste too much time getting myself dinner (chicken curry, okra with potatoes and potato chops) with my superb Gianni's chocolate almond fudge ice-cream jazzed up with sprinkled roasted nuts for dessert.
     It was about 11.00pm--after I had finished watching the final episode of The Bodyguard which had much too prolonged a dramatic finish for me--that I fell asleep.  I must say that I was delighted to recognize Gordon Square that is just behind SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) that is adjoining Birkbeck College in London where I used to teach. The square had the last dramatic scene ("the long walk") filmed in it.  It was called Pope Square in the series, but it is clearly Gordon Square and SOAS was easily distinguishable.  This was the square and the garden that my classroom at Birkbeck overlooked when I taught there--and I have often spent time in this park (which has a very nice Green Man sculpture tucked away in a corner of it). It is astonishing to me how easily I am able to recognize locations through the British TV shows that I watch and how excited I get to know that I have actually walked through these locations myself.
     Until tomorrow...