Ajeesh was still away and I wasn't allowed to even make tea for myself. I did have a go at trying to extract the Malayalam alphabet from Ajeesh's Malayalam-English dictionary. (The front-matter and end-matter are all in Malayalam so I couldn't directly crib it.) Jaya tried to help but I'm still finding learning new alphabets hard. Malayalam is like Devanagiri in having 6 or 7 vowels, then about 40 consonants and then modifying those to show the vowel-sounds that follow them or to show that there are two (or more?) successive consonants. This may show you what I mean.
Anyway, I gave up for the moment and read my way through Jaya's chemistry text-book. It was meant to be around A-level/SYS/Advanced Higher standard. I could cheerfully shoot the proofreader (was it proofread at all?) and the authors for allowing huge factual mistakes to get through. I suppose it's mean to fault the english language and writing style as well but they seemed extremely unhelpful too.
I was given an inhalation treatment: sticking my head under a blanket with a bowl of boiling water with some Vick's vapor-rub and tiger balm. I was also given three doses of the ayurvedic medicine - glasses of boiling water containing the ingredients I'd bought along with crushed pepper-corns. Despite the massive amount of sweetness from the karipatty, I could only sip this concoction slowly and through gritted teeth.
I seem to have slept well and the cold is almost gone - hoorah! So I think the treatments worked - huge thanks again to Jaya and Radhalaksmiamma.
I think today's photos were taken by Ajeesh.
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006