Things that make me go "bah"

OK, I've pretty much been in a bad mood for the last three days. Right now, all the daily irritations of life in Delhi, usually a source of wry amusement and material for this blog, seem to have been put there just to annoy me. The taxi and tuk tuk drivers are all getting lost on purpose, and quoting extra-high fares specifically aimed at me personally. The power cuts out just to piss me off. My internet connection spends all day whizzing with energy and then collapses just as I try to use it. The mosquitoes have set up a "get Chris" campaign. It's all aimed at me.

Actually my mood is really about the weather. After a lovely couple of days that saw temperatures beginning with a 2 and some really refreshing monsoon downpours, the Delhi climate has come back with a vengeance and bitten me on the bottom like you wouldn't believe. We are back up in the mid-30s, only now the humidity has risen into the 80-90 percent range. And it's putting me in a foul temper.

No matter where you go or how long you stay in the aircon, you can always feel a layer of sweat between your skin and your clothes. The perceived effort / task size ratio goes through the roof. Sleeping becomes patchy at best. I'm constantly sluggish, irritable and annoyed with myself for not dealing with it better.

However, what's really guaranteed to lead to a Grumpy Sims is combining these joyful conditions with the willful denial of my lunch. I was at an education conference today, where lunch was slated from 1 till 2. I was already hungry at 11.30, so concentrating on the presentations was getting more and more difficult (especially as there were ten of them...ouch). But then they over-ran.

Now, we Brits might be thought of generally as stand-on-ceremony types, but I venture to say that if you're at a conference in the UK and the pre-lunchtime session overruns even before questions, they'll cancel the questions, tell people to nobble the speakers over a vol-au-vent if they can, and release everyone to get some scran. This is because they know that if they don't, in most cases they have about 20 minutes before outright rebellion happens and people just start helping themselves to the food anyway.

It's different here. At 1.15 they had questions. And then they had more questions. And then some more, which predictably were less questions and more long-winded statements about particular bugbears (that's universal - never been to a conference without one of those). And then there were the concluding remarks to be made. And then the vote of thanks (where everyone must be thanked individually and have their esteemed and honoured status affirmed).

I have to admit that by this point my love for India was at a fairly low ebb. However, at five to two we were finally unleashed upon the buffet (which was right behind us just to torture us, and which was delicious). After stuffing our faces, my colleague and I managed to speak to a few useful people, which almost made up for the previous two hours of misery. However, my grumpiness was not going away any time soon. So I decided to skip the subsequent session, which was delayed by half an hour to allow for food, and snuck off with my laptop to the coffee shop, where in theory I could get any food I wanted, straight away.

And where the aircon was on the blink.

Bah.