First things first, sorry about your fridge, Leigh. I had something similar happen in my apartment when a bunch of nasty termites got in through the apartment below mine and ruined my kitchen cupboards that housed my bone china set!

I think panic and shock was my first reaction after which I got into action and with the help of my parents to boost my morale, took active steps to refurbish and mercifully, the downstairs neighbor included my apartment in his bill for removing termites. Those awful termites have not dared to revisit since 2001.

I remember that Census, Leigh, and I also remember growling at the poor Census taker about questions related to caste because I felt that it was not relevant. In any case, the census did show that more development was required for rural areas and the anomalies were consistent between the richer and poorer states of India.  The picture painted for rural India which is a major vote bank was grim although for the first time paperless census conducted on hand-held electronic devices by the then government.

Coming back to grumbling, I remember during my Article days in London coming into the office one morning to discover that the floor's open spaces had been covered with cubicles allocated to specific employees while the rest of us had to sit in a small area. There was a lot of grumbling and insecurity but this was the first sign that the employer was planning cutbacks due to economic conditions. Not a savvy way to get the message across, I may add.

Those of us who were quick to pick up the message moved on to other jobs and got on with our careers and I guess the silver lining was that those who stayed got a chance to retain their jobs until they could make the move and the employer was saved making redundancy checks in thousands.