John McGhee and Edgar Visit

I am gaining weight again, this time it's because I have been eating like a King for the last few days. On Saturday my new friend, John McGhee came home from church with me and we had a great couple of days. He is a great cook and we did a store visit to buy some staples since my bachelor kitchen looked more like a convenience food outlet. Then we had the best spaghetti I have had since leaving home, where Karen's spaghetti still lingers on my tastebud memory. Then, when we were settling in to a routine of food, exercise and prayer, Edgar, my pilot buddy from the company, came to stay and now we had three people in the apartment. This seemed to confuse my househelper to no end. She wasn't sure what was going on but fortunately we had John to talk Hindi with her and kind of let her know what was going on. Edgar just laughs every time that John talks Hindi. He hasn't seen a white man talk this language and he was always just asking John to please talk to the taxi driver or talk to the maid or talk to somebody so I can watch you speak Hindi. It was like he didn't believe that a white man could actually speak this language, but we always got the desired results so it must have been working.

I haven't flown this week because the company is still working on our pilot situation for both the Citations. The XLS has no co-pilot and the CJ has no captain so it is a strange situation for me since I haven't left home without my suitcase in tow for a couple of months. I just can't afford to be caught on the other side of Delhi or something without my bag since we are charter and it can pop up. Dhaka, my XLS copilot had a gall stone so he had surgery last weekend and now the DGCA has decided that we cannot hire a pilot just for 6 weeks to replace him. That means that the plane may not fly until either Dhaka gets back or we send one of our Indian pilots to Excell copilot school. Either way it may be a couple of weeks or more till it flies and it could be as long as 5 more weeks. We are interviewing CJ captains and I believe we are going to hire one of the ex-pats whose contract was expiring and who is headed for America unless he finds a job. I have been encouraging and he has been calling. I believe we are going to hire one, if not two, CJ captains in the next few weeks.

Mardi the cat has been settling in to her new home. She is nocturnal but the most interesting part is that she used to live in a house and it was on the ground floor so she was used to being let out at night to play. Now, when she doesn't get to go outside there is a lot of yowling. I am working to turn her into a day kitty but as you know, this training of cats is a bad idea. We had one cat in Pittsburgh that Karen trained on the leash and he would walk and go places with the leash. He even had an alternate personality when he was on the leash. But this female kitty is like the female we had in Pennsylvania and she doesn't train AT ALL. When you put the leash on her to possibly go outside, she just falls down and slides with attitude. The funniest thing she does, though, is to always sleep with the covers pulled over her head. Sometimes I can't even find her because she is either in her basket in the jacuzzi or even on the bed with the bedspread or pillow case pulled over her. She has a bell on her collar or sometimes I would never find her. She loves her little games of hide and seek.

Dr. John McGhee and I did a song at Delhi church and then he did a song service in the afternoon that set the kids on fire. Too fun! They are so used to just their old songs and stuff, they always enjoy someone new coming in and leading. Since I have no guitar, no piano or trumpet here, I have been hiding my musical skills and letting the kids go. Many said it was the first time they had seen me play the piano. I did manage to unplug the electronic piano half way through the song with my other foot but we got it going again and they sounded really good a capella, too.

Hope you are having a great week. Now I am back to one guest, Edgar, as John is starting his work with the incoming instructors for his new health education programs throughout Northern India. It was interesting watching him chase the challenges of trying to put together this program, which involves many volunteers from America plus the church administration in India and the travel challenges of visas, etc. Sometimes, I think it even challenges the Almighty to work with all the India stuff.

If you look carefully at my 3rd birthday pic, you will see the little metal airplane with fold up wings that I insisted to my father I HAD to have. It took him days to find the right one because the propeller had to spin and the wings and wheels folded up. I have had this aviation bug for a long, long time. Sometimes, it takes me to interesting places.