Men, we love em. Most of the time. But some take their admiration for the fairer sex just a little too far.

We caught the bus home from the movies. It was one of those truly outrageous Indian buses. Chrome-ceilinged, windows with swagged curtains, a television blasting old 70's Bollywood, marigolds hanging across the driver's view, little altars to Ganesh in the corners.

Long, too long had it been since a little personal maintenance had been carried out. As we are planning a trip to Goa, I put my bikini on, only to find that Shaft's Afro had somehow been crammed into my bottoms. Time for a wax.

There are 1.2 billion people in India. This is very hard to believe, not for lack of evidence on the overcrowded streets of Banglore but as Indians seem to have no idea about the practicalities of baby making.

Lord knows I love international travel as much as the next spoilt trophy wife, but it isn't easy.

Here I am living at the IIMB, or Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. the MBA programme here is the hardest to get into in the world, in 2008 over 260,000 people applied for just 1200 positions, so I am definitely the slowest water buffalo here.

Why would anyone want to preserve the mistakes of the past? Why would a person with even a shred of sense and at the least one or two brain enzymes firing declare in their last will and testament that they wanted their tattoos kept from cremation, removed and preserved for posterity?

Another year over and a new one begun, it's time to jack the plunger back, suck up a hypodermic full of truth serum and plunge that baby into a vein. 2009's blogs attracted posts from the great, the good and the downright woeful. This may sting a little.

Out on the field, vast hairy-backed men are heaving the Big Top's tent pegs out, packing up, elephants and all and trundling out of town - leaving naught but depressions in the grass, healing over time to faint discolorations and eventually, not so much as a blot on the landscape.

Antipodes: The Ingenious and Exhilarating Expedition of El Lider and La Campana. By Mark Price. Longacre Press.  RRP $34.99.