Around the Horns of India - part 2

We have been having a wonderful time watching the flying things out of all our windows! However, these humans won't let us catch any of them! This really isn't fair. We let them go around swinging tennis rackets that go "pop" and "bang" at bugs that fly around! We hate that noise, but we let them have their fun, so why don't they let us catch some of those flying things? Or how about some of the smaller things that run around in the trees and on the walls out there? Or even the smaller little things that climb all around the walls by the kitchen? How come huh? They can try to explain, but we doubt it will be much of an excuse.
We (the humans here) don't think Ziggy and Zoe will accept our reasoning, as they have their own program to follow. However, we might clarify. They do seem to love to watch all the birds outside. Unfortunately, there are a lot of pigeons around too and some have taken up nesting in some nooks and crannies of the building, so the Z's get to see them a lot and wish they could chase them. Pigeons are somewhat cute, but very messy too. We see whole buildings that are quite a mess from all the droppings- it can't be very healthy for the people and pets either. We should add a picture sometime of an example or two. There are also some chipmunks and squirrels out on the trees and they like watching them a lot too. Janet had one balconey made into a place where the cats can go outside safely. It is away from where the monkeys come and it also houses the washing machine and cooking gas cylinder. They like to sit out there for hours at a time. At night Zoe loves to sit out there and watch the lizards run around on the walls. The little lizards, presumably, eat bugs, so they are probably good. As far as we know they seem to be wise enough to stay up high and away from Zoe.
A couple more observations on car and motor bike horns. Many motor bike shave rather meek sounding horns- proportional to their size. However, there seem to be a lot with louder horns. This might be to make sure they are heard as they squeeze through the traffic, but It seems more aimed at intimidation in the sense of making the other drivers Think there is a car or van there that they didn't see.
We also notice that when drivers toot their horns to warn pedestrians that they are coming, that a lot of pedestrians take the opportunity to step out in the road anyway. It seems as if they hear the horn as a signal that the driver sees them, so it is then OK to step out because the drivers will try to avoid hitting them. (As mentioned previously, people really try Not to hit anyone or anything else, though they seem to brush against our car a lot and leave scratches.)
One of the neighbors in the building does not like all the horn honking and tooting, so she tells her driver not to use the horn. The drivers consider this a real handicap. Our driver, who has Sundays off drove for her one Sunday to get extra money when her driver could not come. He said he felt handicapped by not being able to use the horn- like driving with one arm!
Using the horn does seem to help in many situations, but sometimes there are so many vehicles blooking the left turn or right turn lane, who are going straight, that it does not good, though maybe it helps make them realize that they are impeding the flow of other vehicles. More likely, they think that it is people who are just trying to get in front of them.
On the subject of queues... people generally do not see the purpose. It is not unusual to be standing in a line at a store checkout and someone will wlak right up to the cashier and start to hand them money for what they want to purchase. Often the cashiers will tell the person to wait, which is good. Some of the bigger stores have better organized lines and people seems to follow them rather than jump ahead. Jim once was second in line to buy some tickets to go into a museum when somone came up and put money in the window and told the person how many tickets he wanted. Since Jim is a big guy he gave the guy a nasty look and then moved to completely block him from the ticket window until we had our tickets. Fortunately, the guy did not have a gun or knife, or he realized it was not worth violence. We hope the message starts to make sense, but it seems unlikely that a few instances will change a few thousand years of custom.
In a post a few weeks ago we mention our experience with getting a yellow fever vaccination. Just this week we saw an article in the newspaper about a "scandal" over yellow fever vaccinations. It seems that some one reported their experience to the newspaper. They bought their own vaccine at a pharmacy ( we would have done that if we knew where to get the stuff) and took it to the Public Health office to get the injection. They are the only ones who can legally do the injection and stamp the booklet showing it was done. The person was charged a high price for the injection even though they brought their own vaccine and they were not happy. The newspaper story writer had trouble focusing on what might have been going on, but it mentioned that there was a shortage of vaccine now in Bangalore- for the past couple weeks or so- after we got our injections. They wonder where the vaccine went. A lot of people got injections to go to South Africa to see cricket matches, but they reported that some vaccine seemed to be missing. Probably little will come of the story, but the newspapers do seem to be doing their part in reporting these kinds of things freely. It does give one cause for optimism that somethings might change over time.
Janet's knee was giving her lots of pain, but she has been getting physical therapy that seems to be helping.