My last 4 weeks in sentences

Since it has been about 4 weeks I've managed to forget pretty much everything I have done but there are a few moments which stick in the memory.

Nick emptying a glass of mango into his face
Being accepted as an honorary indian and given indian prices while everyone else got tourist prices
Deciding to take a shortcut over a fence home and discovering a man having a poo just behind
Nick flipping his omlette on the floor and then throwing it at Kate
Discovering the indian national sport is actually overtaking on blind corners and not cricket, as we had been lead to believe.
Being invited to stay in luxury resorts across india if I can find a PhD to do here
Nick throwing oopma on himself
Kate being involved in a brawl where the accountant went in to his car and came out with a wrench and chain
Getting charged by an elephant several times
Having a leopard in our garden
Nick being offered the chance to replace an old man's god if he supplied an electric fence
Being bitten by something, probably the spider in my bed and my ankle going purple and a bit manky
Playing table tennis with a lawyer for about 3 hours

I'm sure there's plenty more....

Today I was outwitted by monkeys (as was Kate)

Today NCBS contained: 2 Monkeys

I was sitting drinking the worlds sweetest cup of coffee (I'm pretty sure it was about ninety percent sugar) enjoying a break in the sun, bliss. This was obviously far too calm for me so two monkeys appeared in the ground, climbed the building and entered in an upper floor window. Kate and I grabbed our cameras and ran up the stairs to take photos. While we were climbing the stairs they jumped back out the window, to where we had been sitting, and started rummaging through bags, stealing my tasty dextrose tablets and Kate's Nalgene water bottle. We ran down as they ascended the building and watched as one of them opened the bottle but managed to poor the water on his own face (Nick took a photo of it playing with its testicles so it was definitely a boy). We were obviously not only conned by a monkey but conned by a stupid monkey. After drenching itself it dropped the bottle off the top of the building which Kate collected unscathed, lending credence to Nalgene's "unbreakable" reputation. There were only bite marks on the lid... (we've helpfully suggested she washes it. The monkeys then went back indoors to continue their reign of chaos and steal a woman's icecream. As we got closer to take photos it decided it was his icecream and chased us with fangs bared, so we scattered giggling (by this time it was me, Nick, Kate and two other guys who we didn't know (one Indian and one possibly dutch?). Escaped unscathed but a little over sunned due to the time chasing them about.

Going to a "banquet" this evening, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's probably going to contain curry (curried rice for breakfast this morning, tasty but still a little odd to be eating at 8am).

Monday

Bite Tally: 1

Today we started our workshop on Biodiversity at the most prestigious biological science department in the country - many cleverer people than I are taking part (who are actually biologists) including a couple of India's big name scientists (who I have read some books by). Interesting but hard work. Halfway through the afternoon a monkey decided to climb in through the window so someone hit it with a book. Spent the evening playing Uno with many people (Mexican rules) and played midnight table tennis (which is table tennis at midnight) but I only had half a bat.