Ci Defaid 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 🇮🇳

"Inconvenience regretted" is the standard apologetic text that appears on every road works sign here in Bombay. This one is placed close to our daughter's house, where the BMC are building a massive new bypass road that will speed up traffic a lot when it's completed, but is a mess right now. #india

Miss "no tail; no manners" Dee was pulled from the pound as a "rescue only" dog as she jumped 6ft fences. I brought her home and my wife **screamed** at me for bringing yet another foster dog home. Barely five minutes later, this is what I see; This girl was so happy to have human company again.

And it's Undhiyu season again. This is a classic Gujarati dish made from mixed winter vegetables smeared with a slightly sweet spice mixture and oil. The name comes from the original slow cooking method in which the earthenware pot was buried and fired from above. #undhiyu #gujarati #indianfood

My wife has been complaining about headaches and nausea for some time now, so finally our daughters and I managed to get her to a doctor (she's terrified of doctors), who said it was probably migraine, but sent her for an MRI just to be sure. Thankfully the results were OK. #health #MRI #migraine

Just a reminder from The Club that Halloween is just around the corner...

Went for swimming and when I was done found that my wife had come by rickshaw about 1 hour after me, so we had a breakfast "date" at the Waterside restaurant. Our daughters think that crazy, but that just who we are. I had spot idli and my wife had avocado and sautéed spinach on sourdough. #marriage

Keep it simple for breakfast; spot idli (sort of spicy pancake made from idli batter) and topped with a poached egg.

While all of India agrees to celebrate Dasera today, there is a split on the reason. Some celebrate Durga's victory over evil, other's celebrate Ram's defeating Ravana. No matter, it's an opportunity to have a party and folks here need little excuse.

I have no Bitcoins, nor ever had any, yet I received this email telling me that some fraudulent transactions are linked to my name. The email address they sent it to has been mine for many, many years. I checked the email headers very carefully and it looks legit. Is this some new scam?

It's the hint of duck poop that makes the lake water taste so good. Both Rhys bach and Senneca quench their thirst from the duck lake in the park close to where we lived.

Four young ladies meeting up for sports. Our grand daughter's school has a wide variety of sports activities including soccer.

We are in the middle of celebrating the the nine days of Navaratri, a major festival in India. Central to the festival is Shakti, which is the Universal power that is, in essence, feminine and is personified as the goddess Durga. #india #navaratri

When I grew up, the first time i heard of Halloween was through a Peanuts comic strip. These days, it's infected every corner of the world, including The Club here in Bombay. It looks like we'll be taking our youngest grand daughter and family to investigate the madness. #halloween

This notice has been circulating on social media, but oddly is not to be seen on on BMC's site. However, the information is correct; 10% domestic water restrictions, 20% business/industrial reduction. We're in for months of water shortage due to low monsoon rains.

The war on ants continues with a multi-prong approach. Outside I use a gel (but is too nasty to use inside). Indoors, we have ant bait and a neighbor gave us some of a herbal powder that he uses. As we go towards cooler, dryer weather I'm hoping for some respite.

I treated myself to paratha at The Club for breakfast as I felt too lazy to go home and make breakfast for myself today. I like the homely way they make them; a bit different from how I make them, but they still have that home-made touch. They tasted good after my morning swim.

Woke up this morning and reached for my glasses only to discover they weren't anywhere in sight. Spent two whole hours searching the bedroom until, sitting on the floor in deep frustration, I saw this. I'm still trying to reconstruct how they (presumably) fell and landed just there.

This border collie was with me for a year and a half. Smart, quirky, lovable, huge personality, but prone to panic for no known cause. The only dog I fostered where people would come and ask me for permission to throw his ball. Adopted and returned more than once before we found his final home.

Woke up this morning to no Internet. When I got back from swimming I fought with the ISP's service chat bot and then 1st level support until I finally got a tech on the line. She was very timid sounding, but thankfully was easy to work with and knew what to do to get me back online again.

And the monsoon recedes into the distance... The Club will be tearing down its temporary structures, the city reservoirs reached 98% capacity before draw down lowered it again and the state has declared a Trigger-1 drought conditions for agricultural reservoirs in certain areas.

When I learned physics, neutrinos were simple left-handed massless particles. Today, we puzzle over their mass (tiny, but not yet measured), wonder how they got their mass and debate whether they're majorana or dirac. Francis Halzen led the Ice Cube team to help learn more about them. #nobelprize

Well, I discovered a sourdough bakery close to me that has a seeded rye that is quite nice. Named "Rugbrod" [Rugbrõd], presumably from the Danish(?), it doen't have the character of, let's say, Estonian Must Leib or Russian Borodinski, but it's still an acceptable alternative to wheat.

As I was leaving for swimming this morning, I saw this cat who had made a bed of what appears to be a racquet cover that was lying on a table in the entrance.

When you travel, and particularly if you stay a while, you pick up little bits of the local culture. Kokopelli, the flute player, is a little bit of Arizona that has stuck to us even when we moved back to Bombay. Here depicted in the modern "sanitized" version that is used today.

I love the expression on the face of Tad (R) as Senneca takes him down in play. Tad was one of the smartest dogs I fostered. When his pack brother, Shadow, started to get seizures, Tad learned to predict the attacks and warn the lady of the house -- quite on his own; no training required.

Little bit of nostalgia. This was the park close to our home. Built as a flash flood catchment basin, it functioned as park with dog lake and amenities. My Houdini dog, Rudy, escaped his new home and ran straight here (!) -- twice, so it was clearly close to his heart. Many good memories from here.

For no particular reason, my wife and I ate dinner at The Club last night. The Oriental Wok restaurant is still closed for renovations, so we dined at the "By The Waterside" restaurant. As always the staff made us feel at home.

A nice Cabernet Sauvignon from Vallonné helps make the world a better place. This 2024 vintage was particularly good.

I finally received my replacement phone and, new to me, it came with "Unboxing service", where the delivery agent unboxed the phone and recorded its content. All was intact and correct -- I guess there is a lot of fraud going on, though. Spent the next couple of hours doing the install. All OK.

Rarely performed these days, Rienzi contains some beautiful music, of which Rienzi's prayer is perhaps my favourite. The opera has been described as "the best opera Meyerbeer never wrote" -- ie. not in the later "Wagnerian" style. Alas, Rienzi is tainted by being the favourite of Adolf Hitler.#music

This one was not my foster, but I just liked to see how relaxed he was on his foster dad's lap. Taken at an adoption event [where my own foster found his forever home] in the Phoenix area.

This little guy, Taff "Half-Ear", was one of the 140 something border collies pulled from a puppy mill gone horribly wrong. More a project dog than a foster, he was with me 6 months, and I loved to see him develop into a wonderful companion dog. Adopted by a good family.

My one phone has gone dead, so I am in deep trouble until I get a replacement. In the meanwhile this is a photo of Glyn, (big fluffy) Beau and Senneca (RIP) at our favourite park.

Today's floral arrangement -- The Club changes it every day.

The Club is renovating our favourite restaurant, The Oriental Wok. This board, is being filled with squares of a render of the new interior as a teaser.

I attended the birthday party of our eight year old grand daughter. It was a harrowing experience as the attendees seemed unable to communicate at any decibel level short of the threshold of pain, so I sorely need some days of peace and calm to recuperate.

This little girl was a stubborn as they come. She'd swim the dog park lake and head off so I had to run around to get her on leash to bring her back. I'm a border collie person, and Misty was definitely now a BC, so I struggled to understand her (and vise versa). I was glad she got a good home.

The lady who had co-ordinated his transport to rescue, said of him: "he's all sugar and spice". Border collies are often a bit reserved and take time to accept new people, but Rusty didn't get the memo. He loved everyone. He'd just go up to complete strangers and ask for affection. #bordercollie

The Club is updating their Ganesh Chaturthi display each day. This is today's beautiful floral arrangement.

At the wineries we visited, almost all of the wine was bottled by fancy modern automatic bottling machines. This was the only exception where one cheap wine (for people who want to taste alcohol, not grapes, I was told) was bottled on a manual bottling line.

Dinner was baked pasta with mushrooms, roasted peppers and scamorza cheese, paired with a beautiful Viogner reserve, from Soma, that features a floral aroma with notes of spice and nectarines. Just a little off-dry, it went beautifully with the pasta.

Today is Ganesh Chaturthi, which is a big festival in Bombay. There will be lots of noisy processions and modak sweets will offered around. The festival lasts for 10 days, during which time there will be significant traffic delays due to the processions.

After weeks of dry-ish weather with just the occasional shower, we're back to steady rain; non-stop through the night and morning.

Senneca, my companion for fourteen years, was about twelve when this photo was taken. The occasion was a photo shoot at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum.