Goa Trivia

• Ants can find any food you drop before you finish eating or cooking, and then carry it up a wall
• Papayas grow like weeds and smell like vomit
• Entire families can easily fit on mopeds

• No one has bug screens on windows and yet there are thousands of bugs out
• Cockroaches have a shrill squeak in the middle of the night
• Fishermen catch giant sting rays and then hit them on the heads with sticks
• Horns are for honking all the time
• Gypsys wear bright colors and recycle plastic and trash into all kinds of things to sell
• Coconut tree climbers climb trees by tying their feet together
• Wake up and smell the burning plastic and melting blue tarps
• Tobacco and formaldehyde in your toothpaste…mmm
• Everything is no problem…as in “Oh no, I lost my baggage!” “That is no problem madam.”
• Construction workers don’t own any tools and ask you for hammers or wrenches
• Pigs with big udders can run like the wind
• Marble floors and concrete walls painted in bright colors can collect mold very quickly
• Electrical outlets in the shower are a bad idea that someone forgot to tell Indian electricians
• News travels faster in a village than gossip on facebook
• Monsoons can really put a damper on things
• Sleeping on wet mattresses is a kind of torture
• Washing clothes in a bucket makes you really not want to wash clothes
• Delhi Belly can really cramp your style
• Rupees are often counterfeit and Indians won’t take them if they have even the tiniest rip on the edge
• You can cook literally hundreds of things using only onions, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes and 200 spices

• Electricity is something that comes and goes, and comes and goes
• A vendors’ best selling tactic is yelling at you. The louder the better.
• Cows have the right of way
• Gunpowder is an ingredient in some recipes (optional, I hope?)
• Standing in line is something that has not been invented. Just rush it.
• Toilet paper is a commodity, but you can’t flush it
• Traffic lights do not exist; traffic lanes and laws are a suggestion not a requirement
• If you are a vendor’s first customer of the day, you can really bargain with them since it is bad luck for them if you don’t buy anything. Don’t worry---they mark everything up 500%
• Shaking your head back and forth does not mean no
• Cricket is like weird baseball and Indians are fanatics about it
• Fireworks are for any occasion, really
• You can blast any cheesy music on repeat all day if you own a set of bad speakers
• Wells are where old men take baths, in front of our house
• The breadman rides his bicycle with a bread basket by twice a day honking a bozo the clown horn. Buns cost 2.5 rupees each, but he will try to get you to buy them for 4.
• Take off your shoes when you go into any store or stall, and don’t worry if a guy is welding over the entrance, just try to dodge the falling sparks and don’t look at the light
• Ants and other bugs float. Rocks don’t.
• Spiders come in all sizes, including the size of your hand
• Earth-moving equipment = guys with buckets on their heads
• It is good to name your taxi, laundrymat, breakfast cereals, and children after your favorite god