Thursday, November 09, 2006
Fourth Day in Kerala
For today we went for the factory/company visits. It was a very, very hot day and everyone was feeling a little low due to the heat. First we stopped by 2 pottery, the first one being bigger than the other. I was complaining in my mind about the need to visit 2 potteries. However i found out that if you had more financial help, pots can be done faster and easier, the bigger pottery used the bigger, "pressure cooker" types of cooker to make their pots, which took only 8 hours while the other can take up to 7 days. We had a try at pot making after seeing the maker 'do magic' with the clay (quoted from Eliseus) and it actually isnt as easy as it looks as i broke the top of the pot... The maker is actually very expierence an dhas been doing it for 15 years!
After the pottery visits, we went to the mini zoos and to see the elephants. I initially thought elephants were very smelly and dirty. But their keepers kept them very clean and they did not even smell abit, except for the fact that they did their business alot... we went to the mini zoo and saw jungle cats, peacocks, antelopes and monkeys. After which we went for our elephant ride, it was scary at first and don was singing 'i believe', i think . Nice elephant, dont fufill my wish of flying in such a painful way. i was asking don to stop singing, if i were an elephant i wont want four boys to be on my back while one is singing. yeah. well the elephant was nice enough and we got off safely. WHEW. And on that they we did a good thing too, we persuaded and encouraged Mr Cheong to go onto the elephant :).
After the elephant rides we went to the silk factory. However most (or maybe all) of us sneaked into the offices and cramped under the little fan and i believe the boss was alittle pissed... Enough of the bad stuff. At the silk factory we saw what went behind a piece of silk and the all the work that has been done to produce this nice fabric. We saw the machinery involved. It was pretty enriching and things were heating up in there, well, between me and the heat...
We cramped into our little bus and i was hot in there! (literally and figuratively) Finally we got to the plantation and while we were there we saw many different types of plants and spices, some of which are medicine, some are used as spices in cooking. However you have got to cook them, most of them are bitter and hard to swallow, chenxing learnt that the hard way....
After the plantation i was dead beat, but still hot, yea... we went to preetha's house for dinner! before dinner we took the basketball and went to the court for a friendly game. i fell down twice and got quite dirty, so i had to bathe before dinner. We used our hands for the first time during dinner and i did not take much rice, but ate as slow as the others. it was very fun to eat with our hands. After dinner we played abit of carom before return back to our host families for a well deserved rest....
that's life.and it does not end here!
