Hello Rod Serling...

[kybearfuzz]

I knew when I opened the lunchroom freezer at work to get ice for my morning Diet Coke and thick syrup from a frozen can of A&W Root Beer dripped to the floor that today was going to be a Twilight Zone sort of day..

One of the brighter spots of the day was meeting with one of the bears at the company I'm inspecting. He's so cute... Work is going okay, I guess, but the driving every day is wearing on me. I'm still wondering about the drama unfolding at work, as I'm not there to see it every day. Part of me is also kind of relieved to be down in the trenches.

After I got back to the office, I checked my work email to find a request for volunteers to do drug inspections in India. It's not one of the more desirable locations. Apparently, my office is having trouble getting someone to do the trips. I'm not shocked. The email was forwarded from higher-ups (not in my office) who made sure management knew that they could essentially force someone to go if volunteers didn't appear.

This freaks me out a bit. India is not a place I'd care to visit. The email was sent to my whole office (and my region), but I'm one of only three people eligible to do this kind of work in my office. I don't like these odds. However, part of me almost wants to volunteer because I think I could use it as leverage for a promotion. Anyone been to India?

It took over an hour-and-a-half yesterday to get home from work. It made for a long miserable day yesterday and I thought that today would be better. I was wrong. Today the traffic nightmare was in Northern KY, which made getting home more of an insult as I was so close, yet so far away. Lots of cursing ensued. I'm so tired of idiot drivers.

I saw a debate on Court TV once home about pharmacists who are refusing to fill prescriptions of birth control pills because it goes against their personal religious beliefs. Have we really gone this far over the edge?? Who is the pharmacist to make that judgment for someone else? Does he or she not realize that this is part of the job? They are supposed to provide a service to the pharmacy's customer and their personal beliefs shouldn't enter into it. I'm sure many complaints will start if this gets to be widespread and possibly lawsuits.

How far will this go? Will librarians refuse to check out "The DaVinci Code" to someone because they think it's disparaging to their religion? Will CD shop clerks not sell you a CD because it contains explicit lyrics or themes they don't agree with? Ugh!!!

Comments

[bearfuz.livejournal.com]

I've actually been to India, though it was nearly 20 years ago, and it was with a college performing group from Brigham Young University... think "Up with People" but with a Mormon slant.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. It helped, of course, that I was in the protective cocoon of the group. When you go to India the rich folks in charge really want to shield you from seeing the poverty, but we managed to see it anyway. Calcutta was really depressing that way. The good news was that we quite by chance managed to get an appointment to visit Mother Teresa's convent, one of her orphanages, and a home for the destitute and dying. It was pretty inspiring, actually.

But the trip also included a visit to the Taj Mahal... Nepal where we almost got a glimpse of Everest through the clouds... Sri Lanka and its amazing tropical climate... Bombay and its schizophrenic combination of extreme wealth and extreme poverty... etc. etc.

I really enjoyed the food. It was often hard to find things that were not too spicy, but seeing how you pour the tabasco on your Skyline, I'm thinking you'd be all right with that. Water is a challenge; you should only drink bottled water, but in some restaurants they might bring you water in a bottle that has been refilled and not tell you. If that happens you may find yourself with the trots... all of us in the group (except for one kid) did. Take some Immodium and some Pepto-Bismol with you.

I'm sure a lot of things have changed in the last 20 years in India. Of course somewhere there are industrial parks filled with people on telephones providing customer support to Americans... ha! Other than that I wouldn't know.

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

I guess it could be an experience to try, but THREE weeks... ugh. The only saving grace would be that I'd be traveling with one other person for these inspections, so I wouldn't necessarily be there alone.

The idea of three weeks of diarrhea doesn't help....

[bearfuz.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't be three weeks of diarrhea! ;-) Our trip was SIX weeks. And the icky stuff didn't happen right away... as a matter of fact, those of us who had problems had them very close to the end. One of the young ladies on the tour had some Septra (I think that's what it's called), a sulfa drug, that really helped. Anyway, you could probably be more careful about your drinking water than we were, naive kids that we were.

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

LOL.. knowing my luck, I'd get the trots the first week. Happy happy .. joy joy... :)