Good practice - crappy bank

Last night I went for dinner round Jake's, his mother is lovely and I ate very well. He russled up a stir fry of vegetables in a fresh lime and coriander sauce. Great stuff, the man can cook! It rained a lot yesterday evening and during the night, I need to buy an umbrella from somewhere.

I registered yesterday and it was easy and chilled. Pattabhi Jois handed me the form to complete, stuck my photo to it and did all this slowly. I told him I had injuries, he asked me where, and then he said "we do slowly slowly".

I could only give Rs10000 because the cash point caused me some problems and wouldn't give me anymore money than that. He was very understanding and said "Tomorrow". This is a good piece of advice before you come here, make sure you tell your bank at least 3 times that you are going away with your credit card to India. It turns out mine thinks my card has been stolen and so have blocked it, including access to my regular bank account. I TOLD them I was coming here before I left so I am very very angry with them. I'm going to call from Rishis at 2pm which is when the banks open in the UK. Apparently this has happened to lots of people here. The HSBC branch here in Mysore is useless, they have no idea what the problem is even though I told them I had plenty of credit so could they find out what was wrong. They kept repeating that I have to call the UK, so I asked to make the call and they sent me off to call from elsewhere. I am pretty unsatisfied to say the least, so much for the "worldwide bank". This happened to me when I was in China as well.

Today was my first practice. The shala was packed but quite calm. There weren't a lot of people waiting to go in when I arrived and it was all very stress free. "One more" and then you go to the ladies, leave your stuff, place your mat where you'd shown and start. The mats are close together so it's necessary to be conscious of those around you and modify to avoid slapping them. As I looked up in Prasarita Padottanasana B I found my nose directly in my neighbour's armpit. I didn't get an adjustment and I didn't actually get any direction or comments either. I just got on with it. When I got to Supta Kurmasana I waited for Sharath to come over and asked him if I should stop now because I couldn't do the pose. He said "Oh yes, you can stop now". So I went to the finishing room which is the ladies changing room to do the finishing postures. It is dimly light by the natural light through the window and quiet. There was someone chanting in the building which was beautiful, and someone quietly chanted the closing chant next to me. I sweated like a beast but it was good. The coconut afterwards was good too, and meeting/catching up with some people around the stand is a nice way to re-emerge into the real world.

I've come to Anu's to wait for 2pm and to have lunch. When I got here Ganesh said I was stressed and I could chillout here. He went off to get me a smoothies of banana, chocolate and peanut butter. It's delicious but it might have spolit my lunch now! Anu sells ghee jars of peanut butter which is great, I might bring some back.

I'm going to try and eat some lunch, and then go and call the bank. Hopefully it will be swiftly resolved. Then I'm going to go and pay the rest of my fees and go back to Shakti to read some papers and catch up on some sleep. I honestly don't think that I'll need dinner. It's very true that here you will eat so very much, and everything tastes fantastic. It's so friendly and you bump into many faces from different studios back home, everyone remembers you from one day to the next and everyone seems game for a chat.

Tune of the Day: "Passion" - Nightmares on Wax