Thursday 3 November 2011

Sick all round...

Today my blog is brought to you from the land of the poorly things. But don't worry, for once I am not poorly! (yet!) However, here is my list of things/people that are poorly...

1) The participants. 
The current participants, a group of mostly 16-19 year olds from Norfolk, arrived at Sangam after a weeks tour of India. They visited Delhi, Agra (and the Taj), and Jaipur. They saw a tiger on a safari, they shopped lots. Sounds like they had loads of fun. This also meant, however, that they arrived at Sangam absolutely exhausted. So we changed our schedule, and gave them an afternoon off to recover. Now whether they're over-tired, or whether they've been running on adrenalin, or whether they ate some dodgy plane food on their way from Delhi to here, I don't know, but they seem to be slowly dying. We've had at least 5 out of 18 be particularly ill so far, but the rate seems to be slowing, and they seem to be recovering. And give them their due, they have got on with it most of the time (particularly when there's shopping involved!) and they've been trying. 

2) The staff.
So lots of the staff also seem to be getting ill at the minute, in a completely different way to participants. Whereas the pax are throwing up, the staff have sore throats, bad heads, jaw aches, all those kind of exciting things. We've got at least 5 staff who haven't been feeling amazing, and I thought I was heading that way too, but I was just overtired, so I am 100% now after a good night's sleep!! 

3)The washing machine.
Last week, I was doing some washing (shocking I know). I went to collect my clothes from the machine,I opened the door, and out poured smoke. Yes. Smoke. Not steam. No. Burning type of smoke. Luckily, my clothes managed to not smell of smoke (I am not sure how), and I went and wrote the situation on Aruna's magic board. (you put broken things on the board, they get fixed. Aruna does not like things written on her board). The washing machine man says the machine is very broken, with a big crack on the inside. Sad times.

4) Hanif's sense of timing. 
So Hanif is the local Scout master here. Last night, he took a group of pax and Jessica to his house for dinner. He was told to arrive for 6pm, he arrived at 7pm. Even for Indian timing this is bad. Jessica was under strict instructions to make sure they left before 10pm, and to not let Hanif take them to his gardens, 45 minutes drive away. At 10.45pm they still had not returned home. Jessica says they left Hanif's house at 9.50pm. They just happened to take a detour via Hard Rock Cafe, and some out of town construction sites. Obviously the most direct route home!

5) The server.
It is with regret that I announce that Sangam's server is very poorly. The poorliest of all poorly things. The computer men have been looking at it for nearly 3 days now, and each day they walk away shaking their heads. We have no staff internet, only guest internet, and that is only desktop computers, as the wi-fi is broken. We have no X: drive, once again, and I'm sure you remember how traumatic it was last time we had no X: drive. We also have an event starting in 5 days. We miss you server. 

But despite all these ill things, we somehow seem to be surviving this event. Odd things keep happening, that mean we get by. Pure coincidences. Jessica needed the Rickshaw Skit video from the X: drive. The X: drive was broken. Claire had it on her memory stick. Philippa needed some videos, again from the X: drive. Christa had them on her computer. Someone had printed out the example Sangam Snapshot for the pax. We never do that normally, we just show them it on the computer. 

We are prepared for Poorly-Land!

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