First off is tummy talk. I don’t think anyone reading this has ever been in a job or profession setting where everyone has talked so much about the state of their digestive tract. Not a day goes by that there isn’t a discussion about how heavy the dinner was the night before, or that so-and-so got food poisoning from some restaurant, or “Hit me if I eat anything but fruit at breakfast tomorrow,” or “I got some bran for breakfast… I hope it helps.” It’s all nice and euphemistic, but it’s still talking about stuff that normally doesn’t get talked about in an office. Two words… Delhi belly.
Speaking of which (and you’ll see why in a moment), there is a “river” next to the otherwise-fancy-pants Diamond District. If you can’t see the river, it looks nice… There are trees along the banks, and flowers, and birds. But that is the end of the niceness. Once you see the river, you see it is flowing with trash and debris. And the sight is nicer than the smell. If you’re lucky, you are upwind of it. We have dubbed it “Poo River.” It has got to be one of the worst smells that my nose has ever been subjected to. Especially in the afternoon. We are actually switching rooms today, which would be unfortunate, except that my old room overlooks Poo River, and the new one will be on the other side of the District.
Every once in a while they “fog” or fumigate the whole area to get rid of mosquitoes. This is nice in theory, but a) I’m not really sure it does anything, b) the fog is really nasty and they do it without warning. I’m pretty sure it will give my children an extra finger or two. Sorry guys, maybe you should consider playing piano. Aside from the chemical issue, it is quite difficult to breath when they’ve fogged, and one time especially I had a hard time stopping coughing. Good times. I guess it’s probably better than malaria and elephantitis.
The new room is actually quite nice, and I have a private balcony overlooking the distric
t. As I write this I’m not on it, but I plan to write future entries from it. However, it has taken two and a half days, and a number of broken promises for one of my roommates and I to get keys… so all three of us have had to coordinate. This may not sound that bad, but it has been multiple trips to the office to sit on their couch and wait for them to promise that in half an hour someone would be up with the keys. Well, now we have them anyway.All the water bottles here say “crush after use.” Why? Because otherwise people can refill them with tap water and sell it to you. Sure it will quench your thirst, but… (See above).
I know I talked about TWIndia Family Day 2008 in the last post, but what I failed to mention was that one of the songs played during the “family day” cultural program was “Back That A** Up.” Nice choice for family day.
Another leftover story from family day is that on a Saturday morning it took us an hour and a half to go about 23 kilometers (15 miles) by bus. Crazy city. Lots of traffic.
One of my favorite new drinks is called “fresh lime soda.” It is lime juice and sweetener in the bottom of a glass, and they bring it out to you with a bottle of seltzer. Yum!
One interesting thing over here is that people hold hands a lot, both women and men (not necessarily together). You especially often see a man with his arm on his friend’s shoulder just walking down the street. This is especially interesting because there are no gay people in India (well, according to the government anyway, wink wink).
Personal space is an interesting issue in a country of 1,100,000,000 people. The short version is that there is none. Back home, if someone enters a space you are in, but doesn’t know you, they tend to space themselves out evenly from the other people, as far as they can from everyone. They’ve done studies. Here, you can be standing somewhere, leaning on a fence, with nobody around you, and someone else, or a couple people come up and stand right next to you. Not because they want to talk, or because you are a funny-looking foreigner, just because that is the closest to where they want to be. You are not a factor in their decision. They are not invading your personal space, because you don’t have any.
Lots of the stores over here have foreign city names attached to them, like Pepe Jeans – London, and Arrow – USA. I guess foreign is trendy.
Oh, this one was nuts: We were sitting in class one day, and all of the sudden all 23 of the cell phones in the room started ringing at the exact same time. Being a properly trained paranoid American, I assumed that something really bad had happened. Turns out it was just tele-spam from the cell phone company. An automated call. Thanks. Other than being disruptive, the sound of it was quite amusing.
This is good too: So electricity over here is… how shall I call it… less than assured. To illustrate this, note that every apartment in this place has its own battery back-up. So does the hotel. And the office. Don’t you think it would make more sense for everyone to pay a little more for the electricity and have it be more reliable than to have a billion people with expensive and inefficient battery back-ups?
So what happens is every time the power goes down it automatically switches to the battery back-up. But it takes a second or two of darkness before it kicks in. So a few times a day we have a moment of darkness. But you’re never really sure it will come back on. Good times.
Three things for the Minneapolitans among the readers. One is that it has been about 85-90 degrees and sunny every day. The other is that the other day I saw a guy across the mall in a Twins jersey! Hunter, if I recall. I also heard “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” at the mall. Made me feel right at home. (Bobby McFerrin calls Minnesota home too).
Love this one: So what do we have in malls in the US, especially Minneapolis and Chicago? Palm trees. They are nice and green and fresh, and they make me feel good. What do they have here in malls in this tropical climate? Fake palm trees.
We were supposed to go to Mysore today, which is supposed to be a neat city with very interesting temples, palaces etc. Unfortunately, there is a general transportation strike in this state, so that trip went down. I’m hoping it doesn’t last until next weekend or the trip to Coorg will be out too!
Cricket. I’ve watched it. It’s been explained to me. It’s got some similarity to baseball. I just don’t get it. Did you know a match can go on for days? And I thought baseball can be boring! I hope I don’t get deported for saying that.
The other night we heard firecrackers, and then a little later my roommate and I were on our way out to pick up drinks for a little get together. On our way we heard more noise and what sounded like a band. Our eyes lit up and we knew a great cultural experience must be close at hand. So we eagerly went to investigate. We found the cause on the road behind the DD. It was a pre-wedding procession, almost like a little one-family parade! There was a band of maybe 15 pieces playing loudly and excitedly. There were people dancing. There were 6 people holding fluorescent li
ghts to shine the way, followed by two guys pushing an old generator on a cart (that was the funniest part to me). Then the whole thing was followed up by the groom decked out in very fancy-schmancy clothes riding atop a white horse (always female, I’ve been told), also decked out in fancy-schmancy clothes. They slowly made their way to the Royal Orchid Hotel, which is where we have our meetings and saw them setti
ng up for a wedding that day. We followed for a while, taking pictures and trying to soak it all in. At one point they had taken a pause, and I was scooting ahead so I could see the front of the procession again. Then I saw the fireworks in the middle of the street and had to backtrack behind an auto to keep a safe distance. Oops. In the end they stopped 3 or 4 times for a dose of fireworks. We left them as they crossed Poo River and the mosquitoes started to come out in force. It was a great experience!The other night we all went out bowling, which was a lot of fun. I was under some pressure, because I had made the mistake of mentioning that I once took a bowling class at Purdue, and in the interest of fun I put a candy bar up for the high score. Then people had high expectations for me, which I wasn’t so confident I could match. But we all had a good time. What struck me was how much something like bowling could be so similar here in most ways, and yet somehow also so different. I couldn’t even fully put my finger on it but here are a few things that came to mind: There were workers waiting for something to break so they could help fix it. I’m used to having to hunt down someone. They brought around soda to you at the lanes. The shoes were… less than ideal and I was extremely glad I had remembered to wear socks and not just my sandals. There was loud music, nothing new there, but they only had about 30 minutes of music before the songs started to recycle. And some of the songs were not so appropriate for the birthday party happening two lanes down.
Speaking of their being soda (pop) at the bowling alley (when what you really want is a cold beer), alcohol has a funny place in this country. It isn’t illegal, but it is not as prevalent as it is in other parts of the world, and there are some weird (to me) social stigmas about it. Most restaurants do not serve any, though they do often have “mocktails.” Not really sure what the
fun is in that. Also, there are bars, but you would never see a woman in them. When we want to buy some beer, we send men, no women. As far as I can tell, it’s considered somewhere between just frowned upon and immoral, and women are held to a higher standard in that department than men. In fact, when a family is expounding the virtues of a marriageable girl, one of the things they make sure to mention (whether or not it is true), is that she doesn’t drink.People are cheap. Or rather labor is cheap. In a country of a billion people, and an average income somewhere below $1,000 per year, if you have money, it’s easy to hire people. Not just directly, but every business has an abundance of people working there. I’ve been in many many many stores and restaurants where there are far more people working there than customers (even at busy times). We have a person that comes daily to clean. She spends quite a while here. She cleans, straightens, washes etc. There are also a plethora of security people in the DD. There is one at the bottom of every block of condos, which because of their placement means that there are usually two guards facing each other about 30 feet from one another. The whole force must be about 50 people. Not that they do much, I’ve never seen anyone get stopped before. The other day I also saw two people pushing a cart with two bags of garbage on it, and one person walking next to them (presumably for moral support). Another area you see this is in taxi rates. They are so cheap that it is often easier to hire one for the day, and have the drive wait while you do whatever it is you are doing, rather than try to find another one when you are ready to leave. How does that make sense? Lots of people.
OK, I think I’ll wrap up for now, but I’ll leave you with a joke that I wrote:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
It didn’t!
Nobody who crosses the road is a chicken!
Please feel free to leave comments saying hi and letting me know what I should write more about etc. I like comments!
Up next is Angel’s Orphanage…
