Writer's Blogk

I'm Back!

2011-06-09T14:40:00.003-04:00

It has been well over a year since I last posted anything here. So I figured I should start posting again.

I don't know what I will write about, or how often I will post updates, but I needed to start somewhere, and this post is it.

The Cold

2010-01-14T19:52:00.002-05:00

Allow me to talk about the cold.

I have always prided myself on my ability to deal with the cold. And I am glad to say that, although Vermont is testing my pride, I am holding up fairly well. That is not to say that my experiences with Vermont's idea of "cold" has not tested me. I have had a few mishaps with the climate here, which I will gladly share with you.

The baseboard heater in my room burst recently. Turns out when it gets really really cold (around -20) you need to take some precautions in my apartment, like making sure the heat is turned up fairly high. If not, because all the baseboards are on an outside wall, the pipes can freeze, and subsequently burst. My entire room was flooded, ruining my carpet (it really tied the room together), soaking my laundry (mesh hampers do nothing to keep water out), and even ruined a pillow that had been carelessly left next to my bed (no parenthetical comment on that one).

I work at a ski resort here in Vermont, and most of my day is spent outside. I was at work about a week before the pipe bursting incident and the wind was gusting at about 60 MPH, the temp (without windchill) was about 16 degrees, and it was snowing. I had all the proper gear to protect myself from the brutality of the outside world, except a face mask. See, while here in Vermont, I am allowing my facial hair to grow out, and I thought that it would be enough protection from the cold. Turns out, I was right! My face was plenty warm as far as I was concerned, however my coworkers were a little upset with me. See, I had a solid layer of ice clinging to my face-whiskers. They said that looking at me was making them feel colder, and demanded that I stop being stupid and put a face mask on. Grudgingly I went inside, chiseled my face free from its icy prison, and got a face mask.

That same day, coming home from work, I found out that the all-weather all-terrain tires was a great investment. If I happen to hit a slippery spot on the road, during a curve, with oncoming traffic, it is very nice to know that I can at least steer my cay toward the snowbank on MY side of the road. I didn't actually hit a snow bank, but there were a solid 1.5 seconds where I considered it a best plan B.

I suspect I will be writing about the cold more as I continue my life here in Vermont, but I will try not to bore you with mundane weather updates.

Google

2010-01-12T19:45:00.002-05:00

Recently I find myself never leaving a Google website whenever I go on the internet. I will give you an idea of what I mean.

I go to my computer and the first thing I do is check my email. So I head over to gmail.com. Reading my email I get invited to a party a week from now. I head over to google.com/calendar to see if I have anything planned for that day. Doesn't look like I have anything planned that day, so I check the weather at plain old google.com. The results for the weather are displayed right in my search, so I never need to even leave the results page.

Having completed all the humdrum tasks I set out to do, I go to youtube.com to kill some time watching videos. After exhausting the videos of pets doing silly things, it it time to catch up on all my Webcomics, blogs, and tech sites. I head over to Google.com/reader and everything I need is located (in a very organized manner) right there for me to read at my leisure.

After all that, I start to sort my pictures at Picasa.com, another google product. Then I check my voicemail at google voice. I head over to igoogle.com and read up on the headlines for today. Seeing something interesting on CNN (at the google homepage) I head over to google.com/news. Finally I accept the google wave invite and start toying around.

The kicker is... even this blog is written and posted at a google owned site. Google truly is my lord and master, and only now do I realize its awesome power over me. If IMDB.com and Wikipedia.org get taken over by google, about 90% of my internet interaction will take place through Google.

Sorry for not writing for so long, I am going to try to actually keep this blog active even though I am not struggling in some 3rd world country.

Nerdy Games Played by Non-Nerds

2009-06-15T00:00:00.003-04:00

So what happens when people who are decidedly not nerds start playing games that have historically been considered nerd games? The results vary, but for the most part people LOVE the games.

I have been attending major gaming conventions for the past 3 years. At every one of these conventions there is a possibility of running into the spouse, parent, or friend of a nerd who does not feel like they are, in fact, nerds. They are often dragged, convinced, or kidnapped and taken to these conventions where they will be subjected to hours of playing games, quirky and ironic t-shirts, and the various odors associated with any nerdy convention.

These people invariably end up playing some game at one of these conventions, and their transformation is horrific. Many have a tendency to become addicted or obsessed with the first thing they come into contact with. I have witnessed it first hand. Someone who was playing their FIRST EVER Role playing game, sat down at my table at one of these conventions, and for the next 4 days they were totally addicted to the game.

The point I am trying to make is that nerdy games are FUN. And people LIKE fun.

Give into your inner nerd.

The importance of stories

2009-05-28T19:48:00.003-04:00

Recently, I have come to understand that something can be important, without it being a fact. For me this applies primarily to my beliefs, understandings, and assumptions about what I actually believe.

For instance, I had been developing a problem with history. Growing up, I believed history was one of the easiest things to study and learn, based on the fact that it has all already happened, and all I had to do was remember it. But as I got older, and history started changing and the concept of different interpretations, and knowledge of how much influence the person actually writing the history had on what was passed forward to future generations, history became something to be wary of.

I became unable to turn my back on history for one minute without realizing that something I thought about history was in fact wrong, misleading, incomplete, or simply skewed a little off target. So I stopped trusting. I couldn't believe anything happened they way people said it happened.

After doing some reading, some soul searching, and spending a lot of time thinking about it, I now have a different approach. The stories that are told as history, while they may not be factual, ARE important. It is important to know that something happened. It is important to realize that it is part of what shaped your world. The way we THINK things happen shape the world just as much, if not more, than the way things ACTUALLY happen.

We humans need stories. We need it about the past, the present, the future, ourselves, the world around us, and things beyond our own world. And whether or not a thing actually happens does not take away from the historical and actual impact of something.

To sum it all up. Stories are important because we make them important.

Travel Sick

2009-05-23T10:15:00.002-04:00

So I have been home for 3 days now, and last night I got a serious case of Delhi Belly. I thought it was particularly unfair that I spent 3 months in Asia and managed to avoid getting sick, just to get a wicked case of stomach problems after getting back to America.

Someone suggested that this was just my body flushing India from my system. This morning, my system apparently is 100% flushed, so I hope I do not need to worry about this process any more.

I suppose the fact that I cam home and just kept going might have had something to do with what happened to me. I still haven't taken a day to just relax and unwind after traveling. There just isn't any time.

Adreno-travel

2009-05-21T09:19:00.002-04:00

I went to bed at 12:00 last night. It was the first real sleep I had had in 48 hours. It was the first time I have slept in MY bed. It was everything I hoped it would be and more.

It is amazing how easy it is to fall asleep when you have not slept for 48 hours, just got done traveling, and take a heavy dose of NyQuil. I only got 8 hours, but that seems to be all I am capable of.

When I travel, I have an incredibly high level of energy. Always being on the move gives me... momentum. However after I return home, I usually crash hard. This time, I came home to a full dance card. I have things planned, scheduled, and forced upon me for the next 5 days. The effect of this? I still feel like I am in travel mode. So, like a shark, I have to keep moving.

Monday. On Monday I have absolutely nothing to do. I think Monday I will crash harder than the Chinese Stock Market if they used real accounting practices.

Cars Scare me More Than Planes

2009-05-20T10:58:00.003-04:00

There is no easier way to frighten people at an Airport than to smile.

Walking around like there is nothing wrong in the world, or with a face that suggests that "today is a great day" really makes people look at you with their head cocked to the side. I believe it is because they don't trust anyone who looks like they enjoy flying. I can understand that. Flying is not exactly a pleasant experience, but it's not a bad one either.

The way I see it, there are 2 likely outcomes to any flight; Safe landing, or horrible horrible crash and death. If you are comfortable with both scenarios, flying is really really easy to handle.

Now getting into a car, where you are also just as likely to be permanently injured or crippled.... that scares me.

Coming Home

2009-05-19T05:50:00.002-04:00

I am getting on a plane in a few hours.

I am going to be leaving this world and returning to "my" world. The USA.

India and Nepal have given me a lot. I have new things to think about, new ways to think about them, and new reasons for what I do. I have had hard times, good times, and boring times. I worked, played, and slept. I have been teacher, student, and something in between/I have people who call me friend, some call me family, and one man in Nepal considers me his Mijyu. To sum it up, I have had a life here in Asia.

The amazing part to me, is it has only been 3 months. What is 3 months? Nothing. Back home, 3 months could have passed with nothing happening at all. I would have been in a routine, just doing what I always do. Why do I do that back home? What is it about America that pacifies me? Makes me just return to my normally scheduled programming?

Well, I am not gonna do it this time. I can't. I have reaped too many benefits to just be what I was. I am healthier, happier, and smarter than I left, and I want to continue all of those things. I am not a "new" William coming home. I am the same person who just realized that I have more potential than I gave myself credit for.

Time to achieve.

Service Deficit

2009-05-18T23:40:00.005-04:00

Today was spent running around Delhi with Biku, Govinda, and Michael. It is Biku's first trip to Delhi, and his first trip outside of Orissa. So we went to Connaught Place.

We did some shopping at the Khadi Shop. These shops were created by Gandhi to provide support to rural India by having the government purchase the "cottage" industry's goods. The government would then create shops, and sell the goods produced by rural Indians.

Imagine, for one moment, that you went to the Gap, or A&P, or any other retail store in the United States, and you were served by the exact same people who work at the Department of Motor Vehicles?

I do not have to imagine this, because I have experienced it first hand! The people working these shops do not care if ANYTHING gets sold. They are government employees, and therefore have extremely low job satisfaction, but high job security, seeing as how it is practically illegal to fire them. I shop there only because they really do have some very nice things, that you can only get there. But, if I could pay 3 times the amount and get the same item somewhere else, I would... in a heartbeat.

I Made It Safe and Sound

2009-05-17T23:28:00.002-04:00

Today was one helluva long day.

I spent 2 hours in the Taxi in Kathmandu because of the demonstrations. By the way the riots were not that bad. It was more like parades. A little pushing and shoving, but that was as far as it got from what I saw.

My plane was then delayed another 3 hours once I arrived at the airport. So I ended up sitting in an airport lounge for about 5 hours. It wasn't so bad, except this airport lounge was playing the news. In Kathmandu that means alot of angry politicians shouting... a man can't sleep while that is happening...

Arrived in Delhi, got my bags, got in a prepaid taxi, and he got lost.

I had to tell the cab driver where to go, and he is from Delhi!!! In his defense it is a big city, and most tourists never go to Subhash Nagar. But still...

I am exhausted from a long day of doing nothing but sitting in uncomfortable positions. Time to crash on the couch, my home away from home.

Every Time I Leave Nepal There is a Riot

2009-05-17T02:53:00.000-04:00

Ok.

I am leaving Nepal in the next few hours, and Alot of the roads are closed. I should be fine getting to the airport, but it is gonna take a while.

Wish me Luck!

Last Night at Namaste

2009-05-16T02:40:00.001-04:00

Tonight is my last night in Nepal. I spent all day wandering around to all my favorite spots and saying goodbye to all my favorite Nepalis. At 7pm I realized I hadn't eaten yet today, so I went for one last Falaffel at my favorite lunch spot.

After that it was off to Namaste Cafe to say bye to my Mijyu (Found out that is the proper spelling) and to say good bye to all the staff there. Had a few Min's Specials and some more Cough Syrup.

I know this is a very "what I did today" post, but it's the best I have right now.

I found out that there are going to be some riots tomorrow, and a few political demonstrations. It will make getting to the airport a little more... difficult than I anticipated, but should not present a major problem.

Taxi of DOOOOOM!

2009-05-15T10:52:00.002-04:00

I saw someone's life flash before my eyes today. It was not mine. It was the guy driving the cab I was taking back to Thamel from Bhaktipur. I thought, after watching his life before my eyes, that if he does not die in a horrible car accident while driving me back to my guest house, I am going to kill him.

I got out of his cab, mostly intact, and paid him. I then ran down the street shaking from the ordeal. My heart was pounding like I had just run the 15km from Bhaktipur to Thamel. The list of things he almost hit include:

6 Motorcycles
6 Other Taxis
5 Tuk Tuks(Nepali "Short Bus")
3 Civilian Vehicles
2 Children on Bikes
1 Large Transport Truck Filled with Chickens

The last one... I almost wanted him to hit. Cause it would have been classic "chase scene" gone wrong.

Can't have everything.

Miju

2009-05-14T22:03:00.000-04:00

I said goodbye to Sushila today. Sushila is the office administrator at Citta Nepal. She is fantastic at her job and she recently had a son, who is extremely cute. Her husband lives and works in Dubai, so her mother helps her raise the child.

These are my final days in Nepal, and I know I am really gonna miss this place. Tonight I went to Namaste Cafe and had more cough syrup with Min, who is my Miju. Miju in Nepal means something more than best friend. The way it was described to me by Min, Miju is the person who you must listen to when he gives you advice, Miju is the person who doesn't lie to you, and Miju is the person who will always back you up. So now in Nepal, I have a Miju! It is a really great honor for someone to call you their Miju.

So I am now good friends with another club owner and another bartender. I am noticing a trend.

Grandpa's Cough Syrup Results

2009-05-13T22:00:00.002-04:00

So I took Michael and Yeshe's advice and tried the whiskey. It worked like a charm!!! The tickle is gone. Of course I figured that because of my size, I would need to at least double the dose. I have to do that with aspirin, why not cough syrup? So I started with double the dose, then my current doctor (bartender) suggested alternative medicine. And he performed a very complex ritual which I had to participate in.

This ritual involved many medicines, which he then lit on fire. After burning the impurities from the medicine, I was then told to drink it. I did, and it also removed any tickle from my throat!

However like all cough syrups I now feel very sleepy and I think I will rest... very soundly tonight.

Grandpa's Cough Syrup

2009-05-13T15:14:00.000-04:00

I am sick. I woke up this morning with a wicked tickle in my throat. It's this damn Kathmandu air. It is so filled with smog and soot that every breath is like sucking on a tailpipe of a greyhound bus. I have been drinking herbal Tulsi tea. It is supposed to be a super remedy for this kind of thing.

I even went and got a massage. Hoping it would force whatever was in my system to run it's course. I have taken cold medicine. NOTHING IS WORKING!!! I called Dr. Yeshe and he gave me a prescription. 60ml Whiskey. "Grandpa's Cough Syrup."

Michael also once told me that whiskey was perfect for cleaning out the throat from Kathmandu junk. So I will take my medicine like a good boy tonight before bed.

100 Posts!

2009-05-12T20:00:00.000-04:00

Today I celebrate an arbitrary milestone in my blogging. Because of humanities obsession with 10 today I celebrate the 100th post of this blog!

Kathmandu does not lend itself to the same solitude that I experienced in Orissa. For example right now I am sitting in Java, a cafe in Thamel. There is a murmur of different languages and different types of conversations. There is the awkward "first date" discussion by some local Nepalis. I don't even need to speak their language to realize that they are definitely on a first date. In the corner there are 4 men with ties on. They are showing each other papers and different charts. It's business if I have ever seen it. There are a few of "us" NGO workers sitting by ourselves typing away on our laptops. Our addition to the noise is simply click-click.

The lights are low due to power shortages. Instead of ruining the atmosphere with florescent light, the staff have lit candles where everyone is sitting. I am hunkered down in a large leather chair with a thick, solid arm rest. My computer is to my right, and I have an iced blended coffee (no sugar) in front of me.

This environment is very starbucksian. However it is the perfect place to write my 100th post to this blog. I have successfully written a blog entry every day on my trip so far. Sometimes I post them late, but I have written every single day. I didn't think I could do it when I left the US. I thought I would do it for one week, and then forget about it. Well looks like I stuck it out.

Thanks everyone for reading and commenting. This blog has been, and will continue to be, a joy for me to write, even after I come home.

Random Encounters

2009-05-11T06:46:00.002-04:00

Most people you meet in your life will be introduced to you through someone or something. That is to say that very rarely do you interact with someone that you have no pre-existing connection. Most of the time the new people you encounter are found when you try a new activity, begin a new job, or you are introduced by a friend who already knows that person. Sometimes it is nice to meet someone just because you happened to.

Here in Kathmandu, I have had alot of opportunities to to just meet someone. Sitting in a cafe by myself, sitting at a bar, or just walking down the street every day I have the opportunity to be met. It is something I don't do in the US. Walking down the street I am in my own world experiencing my own reality. I don't stop and say, "Hi!" to someone just because they look interesting or lost. But here, I do.

These random encounters have led me to many strange and interesting places, and forced me to talk with people I never thought I would.

These people I have met have no notion of who I am. They do not know where I am coming from. The ONLY thing they know about me is that I am in Kathmandu and so are they, and that is enough for a connection. I chat with people, and move on. Meet someone, make a connection, and leave.

Happy Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T08:34:00.000-04:00

Every single meeting I had planned for today did not happen.

I was supposed to go to a few fashion colleges here in Nepal and talk to their career placement people, however when I got to each of the colleges, that person was unavailable, at a campus of the college, or in one case in the hospital due to an illness.

So I rescheduled these meetings for when they will be available, at this campus, and fully recovered.

So after a frustrating day I headed over to Namaste Cafe to see a few of my Nepali friends. Just as I got to Namaste, a huge hail storm started to pelt Kathmandu. The hail was only the size of dimes, but it hurt like hell nonetheless. The hail was followed by torrential rain. So, what I thought was going to be a few minutes in the Cafe turned into a few hours. I was also the only person in the Cafe apart from my friends, who happen to be the staff.

After that there was no power, so none of the Internet Cafes were open, so I was unable to call my Grandmothers/Mother to wish them a happy Mother's Day. Consider this an excuse/apology for my failure to report for grandson/son duty.

The People of Thamel

2009-05-09T22:16:00.002-04:00

Everyone is leaving me!

Michael is heading down to India, and Dr. Yeshe is heading back up to Humla, so I am on my own in Kathmandu again. Its great!

I have between 6 and 7 days left here in Kathmandu and I think I might actually be able to do something worthwhile with that time. I am running around from morning till night, and then at night I run around a little more.

Thamel kind of feels like a giant party. Actually it feels like a few thousand small parties all happening simultaneously, in the same place. Because of this atmosphere, it is really easy to meet people here. walking down the street, it is easy to strike up a conversation with someone you have nothing in common with, except for the fact that you are both in Kathmandu.

That is enough for a lot of people. Just being in Kathmandu must mean there is something about you. Instead of going to Aruba, or a resort, you came to Kathmandu. But what does it say about you? I dunno, but I will break down my observations for you.

There are a few different types of foreigners here in Kathmandu.

The Hippie Trekker:
The Hippie Trekker's have 2 kinds of hairstyles. One style is bald. The other is weird. They usually wear baggy attempts at traditional Asian Clothes, and are often found in the many many nightclubs in Thamel stoned out of their mind. They are a very nice bunch of people, and always smile. They have a tendency to glide through the streets of Thamel aimlessly walking into shops with pretty colors or shiny objects. These Hippie Trekkers tend to drift around Asia going through Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, India, and Nepal.

The Serious Trekker:
Covered head to toe in technical equipment, these trekkers wear the kind of shirts with mosquito repellent and sunscreen built into the weave of the fabric. They are wearing hiking boots, and possibly have a bandanna tied around their neck. Their look is usually somewhere between the Crocodile Hunter and business attire. They are usually found in large groups, and the leader does most of the talking whenever the group must interact with the outside world.

The Pure Tourist:
Possibly the most fun to observe is the pure tourist. They are easy prey for the predatory street vendors of Thamel. For the most part the pure tourist is easy to spot because there is either a camera around their neck, or a fanny pack around their waist. These tourists come from all over the world and represent many different cultures, which begs the question... how did all cultures develop something as awful as the fanny pack? The other thing to note about the pure tourist, the sometimes have their children along with them. This makes them visibly nervous, and very hesitant to wander away from the main roads of Thamel.

The NGO Worker/Volunteer:
Stage 1 NGO Worker is somewhat similar to the pure tourist, however after approximately 1 week in nepal the NGO worker transitions into Stage 2. If you see someone with a jaded vacant expression sitting in a coffee shop with a computer quietly muttering to him/herself, you have located a Stage 2 NGO worker. If you see someone walking down the streets with a purpose, ignoring all the street vendors and making jokes with the Rickshaw Drivers, you have located a Stage 2 NGO worker. Whenever Stage 2 NGO workers encounter another of their kind, there is a brief exchange of small slips of paper in an attempt to foster future communication. This almost never happens, and is merely a formality. However after the paper exchange there is a brief commiseration between the Stage 2 NGO worker and then finally they remember they really need to go and do whatever it was they were trying to do.

The Ex Pat:
These people have been living in Nepal, have possibly married Nepalis, and are indistinguishable from locals except for their appearance. They come in all shapes and sizes, and are excellent conversationalists in both Nepali and whatever their native tongue happens to be. They have a tendency to cluster around others of their kind and also tend to avoid the more touristy areas.

The Nepali:
There are alot of them...

So that pretty much sums up who I encounter here every day. In case you were wondering, I am a Stage 2 NGO Worker.

How Things are Different

2009-05-09T06:45:00.002-04:00

My life here in Thamel is the complete opposite of Orissa. In Orissa I would spend hours a day working on one project, sometimes for days at a time, trying to get everything to work. Here I run from thing to thing, constantly doing something new and interesting.

I am better suited for the latter.

On my last trip a talked alot about life here in Kathmandu, and not much has changed from then, so if you are interested you can head back through my archives and read all about the glue sniffing children.

Instead I want to talk about photographs.

Every time I take out my camera to take a picture of something, I used to feel removed from whatever was happening. It was as though all of a sudden blanket was thrown over me, and I could only see out of it through a 2 inch LCD screen. It made me very hesitant to take pictures of anything because I always felt... awkward.

Recently, I have found myself better able to take out a camera and still feel part of what is going on. I am not sure what changed in me, but I think it is because I started to figure out what kind of photo's I want to take. I used to just try to capture what it was I was seeing or experiencing in the photo. In essence I didn't want a picture, I wanted a record.

But now, I have been trying to compose my photographs. I am trying to make the photo interesting, instead of taking a photo of something that IS interesting and hoping for the best. That small little shift in the way I take pictures has given me the opportunity to actually take, well, more pictures. Most of them I delete and they will never see the light of day, but when I get the chance I will post them on my Picasa site.

Gimmie the Run Around

2009-05-07T06:33:00.000-04:00

Today there was a Bhon. It was kinda lackluster and depressing. We were on our way back from the CItta Nepal office and the road was blocked. This happens all the time in Nepal, but I have never seen it happen like this.

It was blocked by 3 old men and 4 children. They had dragged concrete pipes into the road and were sitting there not allowing traffic to pass. It had to be the most rag tag group of rioters I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. However, out of... something (I am not sure what) Our taxi driver said the road was closed and we would have to go around. Clearly we could just drive around these people blocking the road, but he looked at me like I had just told him the sky was blue.

It's not the size of your protest, it's how you use it.

Write

2009-05-06T04:39:00.000-04:00

Writing is an engaging creative process. Writing is a creative process. Writing is a process.

One of my teachers always said that the muscle you use to write is your butt. He demonstrated this by having us try to write while standing up. I must say he was mostly right. Everyone has something they need to do when they write. It can be as simple as turning on the part of their brain that they use to write, or it can be as complex as sacrificing a small, furry woodland creature to an ancient pagan god that has more eyes, legs, and unnamed appendages than is normally healthy. Writing is a process.

Letters. Words. Sentences. Paragraphs. Starting with the smallest atom of writing, the letter, you begin to string them together in such a way that they form words. These words are then maneuvered and carefully placed in such a manner so that they create sentences. Sentences are then lined up, hopefully in such a way that they follow each other in a proper and organized manner. Finally these sentences are grouped by common interests or theme into paragraphs. All this is possible because at some point in history humans decided that they would agree that certain shapes represented something that was in fact a representation of thought. Words are in fact a symbol something created and shared by each of us. Writing is a creative process.

We use our words to convey ideas, our very thoughts. Words allow us to tell other people what we mean. Words can be used to give someone access to the very core of our being. Words are also often difficult to tame. They are wild creatures that each human holds captive in their minds. When you use words to express yourself, you are hoping that what you say, or in this case, what you write will be understood. You distill and condense your feelings, your thoughts, into something that is accessible by others. Writing is an engaging creative process.

Safe in Kathmandu

2009-05-05T06:58:00.002-04:00

For all those who were worried, I am safe in Kathmandu. Now I need to find a place to sleep.

Long Cinco de Mayo

2009-05-05T04:38:00.000-04:00

6:00 AM – Wake Up, Shower, Head To Airport
7:00 AM – Reach Airport, Say my Goodbyes to Govinda, Biku, and Utkal
7:30 AM – Got through security at Bhubhaneswar Airport
8:30 AM – Plane takes off for Kolkata
9:15 AM – Food is served on the plane (inedible)
10:15 AM – Plane lands in Kolkata
11:00 AM – Finally get my bag off the conveyor belt
11:15 AM – Begin walking away from the domestic terminal in Kolkata
11:30 AM – Arrive at the international terminal in Kolkata
12:00 PM – Through Security Check, begin napping
1:35 PM – Plane begins boarding
2:00 PM – Plane takes off for Kathmandu
2:45 PM – Food is served on the plane (barely edibly)
3:30 PM – Plane lands in Kathmandu
4:00 PM – Get through Immigration and Customs, grab a taxi
4:30 PM – Arrive in Thamel, just avoiding a few riots
5:00 PM – Head to Java Café to meet Michael
5:05 PM – Watch the Riot outside Java
5:15 PM – Meet with Michael at Java
6:00 PM – Dinner at the Tibetan Restaurant that has great Enchiladas and Toungba
7:00 PM – Head to Reggae Club, find out that it was burnt down, and has relocated
7:30 PM – Leave the new Reggae Club and head to Namaste Café
7:45 PM – Thoroughly Celebrate Cinco de Mayo
10:30 PM – Thoroughly Pay the price for the celebration of Cinco de Mayo
11:00 PM – Sleep

Bad Charity

2009-05-04T04:36:00.000-04:00

This morning I said goodbye to the people of the Hospital and School and traveled to Bhubhaneswar, the capital of Orissa. Tomorrow morning I fly to Kolkata (Calcutta) and then head up to Kathmandu.

Turns out, Kathmandu is a little crazy right now. There has been some (new) political unrest in Nepal. The Prime Minister has resigned due to some problems with the military, people are rioting in the streets, roads are blocked by burning vehicles and pits of burning tires, and there is a gas shortage. So, really, Kathmandu is just how I left it.

I spent today running around and having meetings with the big charities here in Orissa. After these meetings, I immediately took a shower, brushed my teeth, and sat in the corner hugging my knees silently mumbling to myself. These charities LOVE to talk about how much money they are spending on helping to improve the situation of the people of Orissa. However, it turns out I asked the wrong types of questions. I wanted to know what these charities actually DID. It turns out that what they DO is be charities. Well After a few hours of meetings, I now know that the situation in Orissa deserves the attention of the entire world, and they are working very hard to improve the lives of the people of Orissa through Healthcare, Education, and Economic Development. I DO NOT KNOW exactly how the hell they are actually doing it.

I think that all they do is write reports about how crappy life in Orissa is. They love to talk about how much money they are spending, but they are unable to answer what they are spending that money on.

My head hurts. I need to sleep. I have a long travel day tomorrow.

Last Dance

2009-05-03T04:36:00.000-04:00

This is my final day here in Juanga. I have been here for over 50 days now. I have mixed emotions. I am happy to be leaving, because I have work to do up in Kathmandu, but sad because I didn’t get to finish everything I had to do here in Juanga.

Juanga has become… a home. It has a charm that I have difficulty expressing. When I leave this place I am going to be leaving a part of myself here. Hopefully it will be the part that talks to ceiling fans and stares at cows. But I know that Juanga has been good to me. It has been a wonderful place to think and reflect. It has sheltered me from the world, and given me the space I needed to work on myself as a person.

It has also taken a lot from me. Physically it has taken about 30 pounds of flesh, which I am happy to be rid of. It has taken a little bit of my sanity, but it was the kind of sanity that I can do without. It has taken my blood and sweat (lots more sweat than blood).

Juanga taught me how to think outside a box. Even though in Juanga, you can’t see the box, and there is a good chance the box does not exist. People here have a different approach to their problems, one that has helped me to realize a few things about my own approach. Here sometimes confronting things head on will only lead to your head being broken. I have learned to back into, change my angle, work around, get to the bottom of, and sometimes just plain ignore the difficulties that I face here. It has been a learning experience every moment of every day.

The Annual Function

2009-05-02T07:44:00.000-04:00

So, I found out why it is called the Annual Function... It FEELS like it lasts for a whole year.

I was told this morning, after breakfast, that I needed to give a speech at the annual function. I was told not to worry, because I could give it in English and no one would think less of me. Well forget that, If I am going to stand in front of a crowd and be unprepared to give a speech, I am going to stand in front of a crowd and be unprepared to give a speech in a language I don't know.

Then, as I was preparing a speech in a language I don't know, I was told that I had to sign a few certificates that would be handed out to the children. I was led to the office where a pile of 570 certificates loomed ominously on the desk. So, for the next 45 minutes I signed my name. I do not think I have signed my name 570 time in my entire life. But today I did it in 45 minutes

So I wrote my speech in Oriya.

It went pretty well actually, although my speech was the final speech of the night, and I followed 4 other speakers who each took a half an hour. From what I could gather, most of their speeches were political and kinda downers. My speech was well received, although people clapped at weird times. (Probably they clapped whenever I actually pronounced a word correctly)

After my speech, I thought I was done. Boy was I wrong. Remember those 570 certificates I had to sign? Well turns out it was also my job to hand them out (Something I found out when I was called upon to actually do it). The funny part was I am 6 feet tall standing on a 3 foot high stage. The stage has no stairs, so when the students would come up for their certificate (most of them being about 3 feet tall) I would need to kneel down to give them their certificate. Well after about 200 handouts in this manner, I jumped off the stage and just started handing them out from the ground level.

The Function started around 3PM and ended at 3:30AM. Indian know how to party LONG.

The Haircut

2009-05-01T07:16:00.000-04:00

Today was marked by a trip to Niali. It is only the second time I have spent any time in Naili, although I pass through it everytime I go anywhere away from the hospital.

My quest?

Epic.

I was going to get my haircut and a shave. Niali is, for lack of a better term, a city. It is an intersection of 2 decent sized roads, and wherever roads meet, there be commerce. So I went to the city to get a my haircut as tomorrow is going to be the Vivekananda Public School and Juanga High School of Juanga Juanga Annual Award Function, Dance Competition, and Drama. That is supposed to be said in one breath by the way.

I am the chief guest. I do not know what this means, other than I will be required to sit on a dais and smile at all the people. It is supposed to start at 2PM and end sometime just before Midnight. Although it looks like tomorrow will be a long day, I am looking forward to it!

Internet, BAM!

2009-04-30T03:37:00.001-04:00

Through no fault of my own, the internet is working at the hospital. That is to say that all the work and effort I put towards getting an internet connection at the hospital has finally not paid off, and now there is internet. That is not a contradiction. The local cell tower was finally repaired, and now it works.

I am counting this as a holistic win for me.

Only 4 days to go here at the hospital, and things are heating up. After months of work, projects are finally moving forward. My work is paying off. I just needed to be patient. Now the problem will be seeing how things operate when I am not here. Ugh I hope to God that everything that I have done keeps working in my absence.

I am really looking forward to going to Nepal.

Time, Time, Time

2009-04-29T02:33:00.000-04:00

So, it looks as though after 2 months of banging my head against the wall, the internet is finally working! The best part of it all is it was not due to any of my nearly constant efforts. Sure calling up and complaining to Airtel may have made them fix the tower faster, but all of the solutions I tried failed. I will still count this as a win in the grand scheme of things.

I am leaving in 6 days. That means that after 2 months of working on something that would have made my job exponentially easier, not to mention that a lot of what I was sent here to do involved working with the internet, and training the staff here how to communicate properly through the internet, I now have 6 days to do the work that I was sent with 2 months to do. 6 days does not equal 2 months. It doesn’t even equal one month. I have checked the math numerous times, and no matter how I try to make the numbers jump, it doesn’t change the fact that I do not have enough time to do everything I should do.

So instead I am prioritizing. I am picking the things that I can actually accomplish in my limited time. They are not the most important things I can do, because time will not allow me that. So I am instead choosing to do the possible.

Time. Ally or Enemy? I think both. It s crunch time, and I want results. I want measurable and quantifiable results. So I am using the little time I have to the best I can. I can whine about how much time I wasted here unable to really do anything that I had set out to do, or I can make the most of what I do have.

So, now that I have bored you with details of the work I am doing, I will leave you bored.

(Insert Title Here)

2009-04-28T02:31:00.000-04:00

Some people have asked me to describe a typical day here at the hospital. So here goes.

8:00 AM – Wake up, Exercise
8:30 AM – Toilet, Shower, Shave
9:00 AM – Breakfast
9:30 AM – Go to the office and do whatever work must be done for the day
11:30 AM – Break from work because it has become too hot
1:00 PM – Lunch
1:30 PM – Return to room and work or relax if it is too hot
3:30 PM – Return to office and hope someone is there to do some work
5:00 PM – Play some Frisbee or cricket
6:30 PM – Rinse off after Frisbee
7:00 PM – Make some phone calls/write my Blog/Play cards/Watch a movie
10:00 PM – Dinner
10:30 PM – Write my Blog/Watch a movie/Read a book
12:00 AM – Sleep

This is a typical day at the hospital. There is a little variation from this routine, but not much. I enjoy having a strict routine like this (for a while) because it adds an element of predictability to an otherwise unpredictable environment.

Here what you are able to do changes all the time. The electricity goes out, there is no water, or it is too hot to breathe are all common everyday challenges that you must meet. Not having electricity is not a problem for the most part because there is very little to do that requires electricity. If the water thanks are empty it is time to grab a bucket, and have a bucket shower by the well. When it is too hot to breathe, you just find a shady spot, grab a bottle of water, and think cool thoughts.

All the challenges that I faced my first time coming here are now just everyday occurrences. That doesn’t mean that I am running out of challenges. Overcoming these has just allowed me to tackle more difficult challenges, and to try to push further and harder. I like challenges. I like to be tested and prove myself worthy. It is a great feeling.

One thing India has taught me is to redefine success. Most of my efforts over here have met with failure (by my standards). And it is difficult to cope with what I view as near constant failure. I have had to define new success parameters, I have had to change the way I work and think, and I have had to learn to live with half-successes. I have learned to remove myself from what I am doing, and constantly reassess and re-evaluate. I am learning how to better adapt to conditions beyond my control. I am, essentially, getting better as I go along.

God I love a challenge.

Wind Down

2009-04-27T02:01:00.000-04:00

The heat has stopped getting to me. I wonder if that is a bad sign? I believe it is. I don't sweat as much. I still take the same amount of water, but I stopped sweating as much. Granted my trips to the bathroom have increased, so I know where the water is going at least.

Funny that after all this time, with barely 2 weeks left to go here, I am getting adjusted to the climate. Well as they say here Kauno Koribo? Or "What are you going to do?" In Nepal it is just Ke Garne. Either one works.

So much work to do and so little time to do it. I am confident that I will finish everything I need to in short order. I am now in crunch time, and like always that is when things really happen. Granted it is because now I am not accepting tomorrow as an appropriate time to do something.

I love the rush of work just before leaving here. It happens every time. This time there is going to be a party before I leave. Not for me, but for the school. They call it the Annual Function, and there will be food, dancing, music, and a drama! Well I will take pictures of it for everyone to see.

Game On

2009-04-26T08:59:00.000-04:00

Games.

I love to play. I am a very big kid at heart. Here in India I play games all the time. Card games, Frisbee, sometimes I even play a game of riddles with Biku (very difficult to translate riddles by the way.) Games are important to me.

I have learned a few new card games while I have been here in India. Most of them are a variation of Bridge or Spades. Because I have a solid background in Spades it was very easy to pick up most of the games they taught me. Even though I kept telling them that I have never played Margo before, they didn't believe me. The weird thing about card games here, they deal backwards. Um... that is to say that they deal starting with the person on the right instead of the left. It threw me for a while, but sadly I am getting used to it. That means I am going to have to get re-used to the way we deal in the US.

I have even been teaching the people here some of the games I learned from Baden Powell. Games of quickness of hands, balance, strength, and quick thinking. I am still winning all the time, but it is only because I have had a lot of practice. Or maybe it is because I am only teaching them games that I know I am good at. Or maybe I am just good at games.

I do not like to cheat. Not because of some high morals. I do not like to cheat because I like to beat the game within its own system. I find it a much more rewarding experience if I play by the rules and still win. I personally feel that cheating lessens my victory. Now that isn't to say I won't cheat, but I never cheat to win, I only cheat when it will make the actual game more fun.

Video games are a perfect example. If I have beaten a game numerous times, and I want to change the rules of the game by cheating, I will. In Munchkin, cheating is PART of the game, so I cheat. If a game is designed so that the only way to win is to cheat, I will cheat. I only cheat if it makes the game more fun for everyone involved.

I suppose I never saw "the win" as the most important part of a game. I always thought that just playing the game was where the pleasure was derived. Don't get me wrong, I am very competitive, and I play to win. But I want to win the right way.

Hi COW!

2009-04-25T09:56:00.000-04:00

I spent an half an hour staring at a cow today. I just stared into her eyes (the udders are a dead giveaway). I was searching for something. I wanted to find some kind of intelligence. What I found, however, was a profound stupidity.

The entire time I thought about all my interactions with cows, and what I know about cows from, well, mostly menus. I realized there is a symbiotic relationship between cows and humans. All across the world people have cultivated cows to be slow, stupid, and worth watching after.

Here in India the cows provide milk and even their dung is used (after being dried) as a source of fuel for light, heat, and cooking. Back home we use them for milk, food, and some rather crazy individuals get up on the back of the meanest bulls and try to hang on for dear life.

In return for all they provide for us, we make sure that we are their number 1 natural predator. We protect them from things that we have made them too stupid or slow to protect themselves from.

I thought about all this while staring at a cow for half an hour. These thoughts only took about 3 minutes. The rest of the time I stared at the cow I was worrying if I was going insane.

I decided that worrying about going insane was a good sign you weren’t, that is to say that as long as I don’t think of staring at a cow for too long as a perfectly normal thing, I may still be alright.

Perception

2009-04-24T09:55:00.000-04:00

The way you perceive things, the way your brain filters information through your own situation and experience, is important. It is something that we each cultivate. It is also something that can change.

An example I have always found easy to work with is that of driver and pedestrian. For most people there is an immediate perspective shift when they enter or exit a car. If you are crossing the street and a car almost hits you it is easy to think that obviously the driver needs to be more careful of pedestrians. Now you are the one driving the car and a pedestrian walks out into the street and you almost hit him you can easily find yourself thinking, that pedestrian needs to be more careful when crossing the street.

Our thoughts are not independent of our environment. Everything can have an effect on our thoughts. The odd thing is when you begin to become aware of the effect of external forces on your thoughts, it does not stop it from happening. I still change my opinion of the pedestrians right of way every time I enter a vehicle.

For some reason, most stories about enlightenment involve a journey of some type to a foreign land where the hero encounters things that challenge the way he views the world. Many time cultures that live in mountains will have the hero travel to the sea, and cultures that live in the lowlands will have the hero climb a mountain. This is because it is easier to change the way you think when you change the environment you are thinking in.

I find my trips to India so invigorating and interesting because they are an immersion in a totally different environment. It helps me to examine my own thoughts and reasoning. It is a vacation from “American Will.” Granted he comes with me to India, but he keeps quiet, he listens more, and he tries to learn something.

Election day!

2009-04-23T09:54:00.000-04:00

I am living in a ghost village right now. There are no patients at the Hospital, there are no people walking on the roads, the shops are closed. It is Election Day!

On any given day here in Orissa I have about 5 hours where I am alone in my room. These hours are usually right after I wake up, after lunch when it is too hot to do anything else, and after dinner before I go to bed. Sometimes I spend these hours outside talking with people, sometimes I just sit on the porch and enjoy a breeze, sometimes I read a book. All in all, I have a lot of free time here.

Today, I had the entire day to myself. I spent the entire day reading, writing, and thinking. These 3 things are possibly my favorite things to do when I have free time. They are like doing exercises for the brain.

Except the reading I did today. That is more like cotton candy for the brain. I read 2 books by Terry Pratchett Thud! and Making Money. They are both fantasy/satire books based in his insane Discworld. If ever you need to laugh at the world we live in, I strongly suggest picking up any of Mr. Pratchett’s works. They are all excellent.

I write everyday. That is to say, since coming to India I have been writing every day. It is not something I did everyday back home. I sort of used this trip as an excuse to exercise my writing muscle. And for that alone this trip has been worth it many times over. I now find it easier to translate my thoughts to paper… uhh… screen. Many people have commented that they enjoy my writing, and I would like to thank them all. And to those of you that do not enjoy my writing, and yet keep reading my blog, seek help.

I am a few thousand miles from home. Currently my thought processes are running parallel ways of thinking. There is the New Jersey way, and the India way. Everything I perceive, experience, or think about is run through 2 separate filters. This can sometimes lead to some very severe discrepancies in thought. There is something interesting about having one mental foot in New Jersey, and the other in India. It provides a wonderful perspective shift. It gives me the opportunity to think about my home with a new outlook.

Hammer, Meet Nail

2009-04-22T09:38:00.000-04:00

Today I head back to Juanga. It always sad leaving this place. This place having internet access, different food for each meal, and air conditioning. But I manage to do it every time. And every time I go back to he hospital I return to my lifestyle there.

I find that I adapt to situations, circumstances, and people easily. I don't know why. I just find it easy to get along. Not just with people. I find it easy to get along with anything.

It's my biggest weakness as a person I think. That isn't to say that I don't think it is an asset, but it is also a weakness. For a long time I had a hard time saying no, or admitting I couldn't do something. It was devastating to me to let anyone down (Except my family.) I needed to be able to do anything and everything that needed to be done. It made me a real prick sometimes. Very arrogant and always so sure of myself.

Over the years I have had many helpings of humble pie because of my attitude. And I really believe I am better for it.

But, I have retained my ability to just be what is needed. I like being useful, I derive pleasure from working hard, and I enjoy making people smile and laugh. I am not the best at anything really, but I am always trying, and I at least succeed as much as I fail.

Gotta Run

2009-04-21T01:19:00.000-04:00

I froze my butt of last night, and I loved it. With people here in Orissa it is feast of famine. So I found out that the Air Conditioner was set to 16 degrees celsius. This made for a cold, cold night.

I spent most of the day writing reports to be sent to Citta. I also bought my plane tickets to Nepal! So I am leaving Orissa on May 5th.

Too much work to do!

Complaining

2009-04-20T01:08:00.000-04:00

Came to Puri today, and I did something completely crazy. I found a hotel room with Air Conditioning.

It is splendid. I spent about an hour just sitting in the cold. Thats all I did. I didn't do anything but be cold. I am looking forward to a goodnight sleep tonight. I am sitting in my friends Surrot's internet cafe while I type this, and it is night time. I have so much work to do before I can leave Puri on Wednesday, that I don't know if I will be able to finish it all. Also, for the past few days I haven't been sleeping well. The power has been out during the night, and my room doesn't get a breeze. When the fan is off in my room the air becomes thick and heavy and it is difficult to get comfortable. So I have been a little sleep deprived.

I am stressed, tired, and soon to be cold again. You have no idea how happy this makes me! I love to be pushed and prodded like this. It excites me. It gives me something to do, and something to complain about. If there is one thing I love to do it is complain.

Odd thing about complaining. I only complain when whatever I have complaints about is nothing. I never complain about the stuff that really bothers me. I use complaining as a kind of humor, or defence mechanism. You can be assured, that if I complain about something, chances are it doesn't really matter to me, but if I am stoicly silent on a matter... That's when you know I care.

Writers Block... Kinda

2009-04-19T00:53:00.000-04:00

I have writers block. So I am going to write about it. Hopefully it will be embarrased by me talking about it, and it will shuffly away in a huff due to my rude behavior.

So what the hell is writers block? I will tell you what I am going through right now. I am sitting in my room, and I cannot concentrate on anything. Nothing is holding my interest, and I just don't feel like I have anything interesting to say. That is my current condition. So I am writing it out. Hoping that writing will act like a rolling start on an old car. If I just start typing, maybe I can get the ole' brain working again.

So far it is working, but unfortunately all I can think about now is not being able to write, and what effect that has on me. I thought I was just overloaded, that I had reached a saturation point in India. And to a degree I have. India has seeped into me slowly, and I find myself now pushing back against it. When I was first here in 2006 I kind of let India in. I was bright eyed and bushy tailed so to speak. Everything I saw was new and exciting. Everything I experinced I tried to let that experience sink deep into my soul and change and alter me in some way.

Now, after having travelled through India and Nepal a bit, I am developing callouses, or a filter. Now, India is becoming familiar. It is loosing the "mystery" that it once held for me. I find that I am slowly becoming disillusioned with this place. And I think that is what is happening with this writers block.

At home, I find it difficult to write in a blog or journal, because my experiences are so completely ordinary to me, that I do not find them extraordinary or interesting enough to document. And India is becoming more like home to me.

Bored

2009-04-18T00:15:00.000-04:00

I set fire to 37,000 bricks yesterday. So that was cool...

As a rule, I am not a fan of boredom. I suffer from type 2 boredom, which is the boredom that comes from doing something you don't want to do. I almost never suffer from type 1 boredom which is being bored because you have nothing to do. Here, even though I actually have very little to do, I am never bored. My theory on the whole thing?

You always have something to do.

Currently I occupy any time when there is absolutely nothing to do with anagrams. I love them.

I suppose that what I am saying is that boredom is the creation of an uncreative mind. One need never be bored as long as one can think.

Bad Day

2009-04-16T09:22:00.000-04:00

I had a bad day. The hospital has been without internet access the entire time I have been here. The hospital gets internet access via GPRS enabled cell phone that is tethered to the computer here. Well for about a month and a half now the local cell tower that provides the access has been broken, with no hope of repairs any time in the future. I have spent the past month calling up Airtel customer service and complaining, hoping enough complaints would get it working. Well it hasn’t.

So last week I decided to find alternative service providers. I did my research and found that there were at least 3 different service providers that had cell towers in range of the hospital and offered wireless internet solutions. So today I went to Bhubhaneswar with Govinda to see what we could find out about hiring out these services.

3 strikes and I am out. Each one of the services centers told me that what I wanted wasn’t possible. After I showed them on their own website that it was possible, they told me it wasn’t available in Orissa. After I showed them that their website said it was available in Orissa, they told me it wasn’t available in Bhubhaneswar at this particular address. After I showed them that their website pointed me to their particular address and told me it was available, they told me they didn’t have any in stock.

At the end of the day I had a headache and was extremely frustrated. But its always like that here. Everything you need to do is exponentially complicated by the amount of interaction with other people. If you need to do something by yourself it is completely manageable and possible. Once you need to get 4 or 5 people involved, you have just made your task nearly impossible.

But I am better now. I took some time to sit and think and reflect. I gathered myself, played some Frisbee, did some exercise, and now I am ready to ram my head into the brick wall again tomorrow.

The Po-Po

2009-04-15T09:17:00.000-04:00

I am going to preface this post by saying very clearly I respect and admire all the men and women who risk their lives every day to keep our cities safe from crime and danger. I find most police officers are noble people who truly want to make a difference in their communities and do a fantastic job.

That being said I never enjoy an interaction with a police officer. Police spend most of their time interacting with the worst society has to offer, and dealing with people generally at their lowest.

Today I had to go to the district commissioner of police in Cuttack. The instructions I received were… vague at best.

William Matthew Lanigan Purcell

Your presence is required at the District Police Headquarters in Cuttack District. Please treat this notice as urgent.

I received this notice on Good Friday, called and told them I wouldn’t be able to make it until Tuesday. So yesterday I went to the district police HQ and sat down in a hot room for an hour being asked questions.

Where are you from?
What are you doing in Orissa?
When did you arrive in Orissa?
When do you plan on leaving Orissa?
Would you like tea?
How much do you weigh?
Do you have a photocopy of your passport and visa?
Where are you staying in Orissa?
Is it too hot for you?

I answered all their questions. They made me write a letter for them to keep on file with all my answers. They took a copy of my passport and visa. They took their time.

It was then my turn to ask some questions. What was all this about? Does everyone who comes into Orissa need to do this? If I didn’t have a cell phone number here would I need to be here? Can this be avoided in the future? Shouldn’t the paperwork that I handed into the police station in Niali be sufficient (it being the exact same paperwork)?

Their answers were less than satisfactory. That means they really didn’t answer any of my questions. See… here in Orissa police are NOTORIOUSLY corrupt. I heard a little 7 year old boy once say that he wanted to be a police officer because you can make a lot of money taking bribes! I was in a restaurant once and a police officer walked in and started shouting because he found people drinking illegally in the back room, and then he just stuck his hand out and waited. Almost every time I have interacted with police here in Orissa I have left feeling like I needed a hot shower and anti-bacterial soap.

Pooja

2009-04-14T09:13:00.000-04:00

I don’t want to talk about politics any more.

Pooja (pooh jya)

If you happen to see a bunch of people singing in the streets and ask someone what is going on, they will answer Pooja.

If someone jumps in front of your car and starts begging for money and then smears some red or orange stuff on your head after you give it to them and you ask what that was all about. They will answer Pooja.

If you hear loud music being broadcast in the distance with someone chanting over a speaker system designed to deliver a message 5 miles and you ask what is going on. They will answer Pooja.

If there are 2 drunk people fighting in the streets with a large crowd of people surrounding them cheering them on and you ask what is going on. They will answer pooja.

If someone walks up to you and slaps you on the head with a hand that smells like it has been drenched in spices and you ask what just happened. They will answer pooja.

Pooja, when kind of literally translated, means prayer. But in reality Pooja is anything that is done with religious intention. And everything here in Orissa is done with their religion in mind. When they get into a car, they do a quick pooja. When they see someone they respect, they do a Pooja. When they drive by a temple (of which there are at least 3 every kilometer) they do a little Pooja.

After a while, I got tired of asking what was going on. I told them that pooja was starting to translate to “just some random thing happening” whenever I heard it. I told them that the answer pooja did not tell me anything more about what I was asking than not answering. And now you know what I found out? They really have no clue what is going on either. Oh, I am sure someone somewhere does, but they just do things because they have been done, are being done, or should be done. I am sure there is some Brahmin somewhere who understands why on the 12th Saturday after the 3rd full moon of a year ending in a multiple of 3 you are supposed to throw a party under a Banyan tree that has an entrance facing south east. But most of the people who I ask here just do it.

Pooja is my least favorite word in their language, because to me, it means nothing.

It's Politics as Usual Here

2009-04-13T09:08:00.000-04:00

Let us discuss politics. Not the kind you may be familiar with, unless you grew up in Hudson County, and even then… probably not. It is election time here in India and I found myself asking, “Exactly what does that mean?” Well after a month of discussing it, listening to it, and becoming utterly sick of it (that’s how I know it is politics) I am still no expert, but I want everyone who reads this blog to suffer with me.

Let me start off by saying that I constantly state that I am a political hater. That is to say that if its politics, it makes me feel faint, queasy, tired, excited, and angry. I know is sounds more like I am secretly in love with politics, which may or may not be true, for a given quantity of love.

A brief outline of the 2 major political parties in India are as follows:

BJP – The “Hindu” party. The BJP is the opposition party that is trying to fight the party that has been in power for the past 40 years. They are, from the information I have been able to access, a partly religious party. They center on traditional Hindu values, and they believe that the laws should apply across the board to each religious group. BJP believes in strong relationship with the USA and Israel.

Congress Party – The Congress Party is the secular party that has been in power for the last 40 years. They believe in better government, and bigger government. They have a close working relationship with Russia, and are not exactly pro-Israel.

As far as everyone I have spoken to is concerned the Congress Party is a bunch of rotten crooks who are so twisted they could walk through a corkscrew sideways, and the BJP is trying very hard to be just as corrupt just so they can keep up. It is hard to figure out what is true, but I can say that I have witnessed government corruption first hand many times here in India, so I do not doubt the accusations.

If I had my way, the “hot button” issues in this election would be corruption, security, India’s future as a world power, the Indian version of affirmative action, education, health care standards, exploiting India’s vast natural resources more efficiently, and India’s economic security in a time of global recession. These all seem like very important issues facing India today, and they are touched on by every politician… lightly. Instead what India has right now is a wonderful case of democracy inaction.

Most Indians are barely educated, poor farmers. A majority of the population’s occupation is farmer or laborer. This means that for the most part people are not worried about international politics or what is happening in their government apart from how much rice costs. And this population of poor is the focus off all political parties. What this means is that instead of two parties arguing about their differences of opinion on topics, the two parties only try to one up each other on the issues that face the majority of Indians. If the BJP says that it will reduce the price of rice to 2 rupees per Kg of rice, the Congress Party will promise it for 1 rupee per Kg.

The thing that I find truly interesting is how people can switch parties as easily as getting a haircut. In the past 2 months here in Orissa politicians have switched to opposing parties as easily as getting a haircut. The politicians here do not try to lead the people to vote for them, the politicians here follow the vote. If it seems that the opposing party is gaining strength in a district, the politician will switch parties. There is no “platform,” there is no “towing the party line.”

All the people I have spoken to about politics here have one thing in common. They are ALL disillusioned, they do not trust politicians, and they feel that the politicians never keep their promises. There is a general feeling that no politician will do anything to help anyone except themselves. Many people mutter about the only change will come with revolution. Some people here in India (especially Orissa) are actually trying to start that revolution. They are called Naxalites or Maoists. They live in the tribal regions and perform raids on government buildings and attack the infrastructure of the state. They are supplied with weapons coming south from the former Maoist rebels in Nepal.

In short Indian’s politicians are dirty, underhanded, two faced, slime balls who would sell their ideals for a nickel. You know… just like every other politician.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T03:10:00.003-04:00

To everyone who has been asking if they celebrate Easter over here the answer is complicated. The vast majority of the population does not celebrate Easter. However the people who are Christians do.

There are no egg hunts, no Easter Baskets, no chocolate bunnies, and no peeps to be sacrificed so that the upcoming year will have a bountiful harvest. I am going to try to change some of that. Today I bought a basket that I intend to fill with large amounts of chocolate and candy to bring back to the Hospital for Biku, Rinku, Chinku, and Babu. I couldn't find any of that silly plastic green straw stuff, so I am just going to use an acceptable alternative... straw.

I am also going to see about an Easter Egg hunt when I get back. The problem is it is going to be late in the day, and I think I might need to put the egg hunt off till tomorrow.

I went to Easter Service at 7:00 AM this morning. It was pleasant, not crowded, and short. The Priest looked tired (probably still recovering from the Easter Vigil the night before) and only half the Church was filled.

I really love Easter. I think it is one of my favorite holidays. It's a celebration of new life, redemption, and sacrifice. And it reminds us that everything is going to turn out alright. The winter (death) has been defeated by spring (life) and Jesus (life) has defeated death (death).

although I have already passed through spring right into summer. It feels odd to be celebrating Easter with the temp outside being 99 degrees. Stupid climate bias I have I suppose.

I actually had an opportunity to upload some pics from my trip. You can find them at:

My Trip In India (so far)

I really can't wait to get home.

Check out my new Haircut.

2009-04-11T12:58:00.004-04:00

So yeah I have resorted to taking of before/after pictures of the mess that is my head here in India.

You can go to:

http://picasaweb.google.com/willpurcell

Just click on the album titled My New Haircut.

Enjoy!

Puri Driving

2009-04-11T12:26:00.004-04:00

Today was a slow day for me. I spent most of the day in my room at the hotel, or just wandering around Puri without any aim or goal.

Puri is a city on the verge of becoming too... touristy. Right now the Rickshaw drivers only pester you once or twice, and every shopkeeper only tells you to enter his shop once. It is, dare I say it, a friendly place. The people here are all very used to foreigners, and do not really look at you oddly. (like they do in the villages)

It is also a very noisy city for its size. Hoboken has a much higher population than Puri, and the population density is also much higher there, but the noise from cars and horns here is almost a constant from sunrise till about midnight. It is just a different culture. Everyone here just blows their horns while they drive. I suppose it is necessary because EVERYONE WEAVES IN AND OUT OF TRAFFIC LIKE A MADMAN.

Sorry. Indian driving styles are finally getting to me. Everyone's mentality is ME FIRST! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME. Sorry... I will try to get a hold of myself.

I have seen traffic jams start just because one car was trying to make a left turn, blocked 2 lanes of traffic, and then was unable to complete the turn because people on motorcycles decided they had to weave around in front of him. Entire roadways are jammed because is there is one slow driver, people will pass him INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC.

Sorry again. It just... shocks me. We have this behavior in America. We call it bad driving. Here they simply call it driving.

Subscribe!

2009-04-11T12:18:00.003-04:00

So I finally set up email subscriptions for my blog. If you would prefer to have this blog emailed to you instead of coming here every day there is a place on the left of this page to put your email address, and you should receive an email every time I update.

Just input your email address to the left and follow the simple instructions!

Lingua Oriya

2009-04-10T12:00:00.000-04:00

I went to the Stations of the Cross in Puri today. It was all in Oriya, and they had 14 Stations instead of the 13 I am used to. They tacked on the Resurrection as the final station. I always thought that Churches that do that are a jumping 2 days ahead of themselves, but who am I to judge?

One thing I love to do here in India is to realize that the Indian mastery of the English language is just slightly off. They speak a different kind of English that we do, or for that matter anyone else does. The British cannot be blamed for all of the differences. Shops, advertisements, and even their English grammar books have a tendency to make minor errors in how they word things, or what words they choose to use. For instance:

1)In Delhi right by Shashi’s house there is a tailor shop called “Decent Tailor.” I don’t know about you but that name is telling me that this tailor is neither good, nor bad. He is merely mediocre.
2)I passed by a hotel on the beach today called “Krusty Hotel.” It took me seven tries to explain to Biku why I found this funny.
3)I was shown a 4th grade grammar workbook where a story was titled “The Little Pussy and the Monster Cock.” It was, of course, a story of an oppressive rooster and a small kitten.
4)I saw an underwear advertisement that showed a man in briefs. The man was pointing to his underwear, and the caption simply stated “All you need.”

This reminds me of a funny story that a friend of mine told me. See, here in Orissa they have a problem pronouncing the letter “V.” They make it sound like our letter “P.” A woman who works with our program here eventually got used to the difference. The reason this story is funny? Her name is Venice.

I Know What I am Eating

2009-04-09T10:48:00.000-04:00

I miss information. That is to say I miss the constant access to information I have back home in America. I suppose it is true that you don’t really know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. In America I enjoy access to the internet, television, books, newspapers, and even gossip. Here in Juanga my ability to access information is severely diminished.

The newspapers are primarily in Oriya, and the one paper that carries English news is only 4 pages. The books I read, I brought with me from the USA or Delhi. The one TV news channel I have access to only deals in headlines and sensational news. The gossip is all about local elections. And the internet is 75km away. I am not as cut off as Robinson Crusoe, but I wonder if that makes it better or worse?

Would it be better if I was completely cut off? Would I miss it less if what I did have was not a shade of what I am used to? I suppose I will never have an experience that will actually give me an answer to those questions. I do, however, know that one of my longest held fantasies is to be stranded. I dream of being completely cut off from the world, surviving only on my existing knowledge, and anything I learn I learn from doing it myself. Maybe the reason I feel this way is because I know one of my biggest fears is being cut off from information. It is my minds attempt to face a fear that deep down, I know I will probably never have to face. I suppose that is what makes it fantasy. Knowing it can never be. If it were a real possibility, would I romanticize about it so much? I do not know.

Growing up my favorite parts of books like Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson were always the building up. I was always fascinated by how they overcame the daily challenges they faced. I find it odd how the parts of the books I loved the most are now reduced to montages in the film adaptations. If I had my way with Robinson Crusoe, he would have never left the island. There would be no resolution to his situation. Every day would be another challenge, a new adventure.

Their everyday lives seemed to be filled with more meaning than my own day to day. Everything action and decision of theirs had a direct impact on their very survival. They needed to work the land, hunt, fish, and gather just to put food in their stomachs. We work hard every day to put money in our pockets to buy the food we put in our stomachs. I suppose I feel there are too many degrees of separation between what sustains me, and what I do to sustain myself. The food on my plate is a foreign thing, something I consume. I did not take part in the cultivation or harvest. I barely have any idea what part of the world the food I am putting into my body comes from. Here in India, it is a little different, but not much. I know the people who grow my food. I have met them. I know their names. It helps.

Perhaps food and information are linked in my mind. That is why I decided to transition from one topic to another. I do not know. I do know that now, I am hungry. And I know what I am going to have for dinner, and I know where that dinner came from. And right now that is all the information I need.

Is There A Doctor In The House?

2009-04-08T10:46:00.000-04:00

How many times in my life have I been required to interview a doctor for a job? Today brings the number up to 3.

What the heck am I doing interviewing a doctor you ask? What makes me qualified to check if a doctor is good at his job? What the hell is going on here? If I were to attempt to answer any of those questions I would be hurled Monty Python style into the Pit of Despair. I really do not know what I am doing when I have to interview these doctors. I have absolutely no qualification to check if a doctor is good at his job. I have no idea what is going on here.

What I do know is that It is my job to try to get a feel for the person I am interviewing. I am then to call the Executive Officer of Citta Michael Daube and tell him what I thought about the man. That is what my job is. I am essentially trying to figure out if this person is a good fit for the organization. Needless to say every time I go through one of these interviews I have a good laugh afterwards at how ridiculous the entire situation is.

If you have good taste, and you ever have a chance to watch an Oriya film called “Crazy Love” pass. Seriously. The film was bad. It was bad by my EXTREMELY low standards. I mean this is coming from a guy who has watched Turkish Star Wars, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, Dead Alive, Evil Aliens, and Battlefield Earth and enjoyed them somewhat. I have honed my bad movie watching into a finely tuned art. I am like a fricken ninja of watching bad movies.

I don’t really remember when I decided that I was going to watch all the world’s worst movies. All I know is that it has become somewhat a lifelong quest for me. I suppose I do owe the origins of my quest to Mystery Science Theater 3000. Without those brave men (an robots) trapped in space being forced to watch awful cinema, I may have never realized how important schlock is.

There are those of you I know are also on my quest. You know who you are, and I thank you because I do not think I would have the strength to watch all the world’s horrible movies by myself. It is the knowledge that there are people out there, like me, fighting the good fight against Z grade movies.

Snap Shot

2009-04-07T10:45:00.000-04:00

Today I made the rounds of all the worksites around the project. There are 2 major construction projects happening here.

One of the projects is an addition of a staff quarters to the hospital. Right now they are still making the bricks for the building and the foundation. So I went over to the large field set aside for the brick construction. 8 men are working on the production of the bricks. They gather the soil that is provided free of cost by local farmers who wish to have the level of their filed lowered for better irrigation. They haul sand from the river that is 4km away. And they pump water from a local well to produce copious amounts of mud. This mud mix is then poured into wooden brick molds. After that the brick-shaped-mud is set to dry in the sun for one day on each side. Doing all this by hand, they 8 men produce 5,000 – 6,000 bricks per day.

The other project is a public restroom. The local village of Juanga has less toilets than homes. Most people go to the bathroom right out in the fields. This toilet project will hopefully give them somewhere else to do their business.

After my rounds and pictures, I spent some time teaching Manu how to take a picture. I am not a photographic genius. I barely qualify as photographically inept. I am personally unable to tolerate the site of any photo I take. Still, the photos I take are of a western style, and the people who fund the project are from a western country, and they have certain expectations of what a picture should be, and that is what I am trying to teach Manu.

For the most part, all the people at the hospital have absolutely no clue what people in the western world would find interesting or engaging in a photograph. Most of the time when a friend of mine shows me some photos they have taken, or one of their friends have taken, it is 3 people standing shoulder to shoulder in front of… something. The “something” is usually a temple, ocean, or car. And the people are never smiling. It is rare to see someone smiling in a photograph here. Even when I want to take a picture I need to coax a smile out of my friends here. I have resorted to tickling.

Pink Floyd Never Made It Big In India

2009-04-06T10:44:00.000-04:00

Today I spent the morning at the beach. It was a cool 97 degrees with no wind, and the water was warmer than a bath. There was extremely rough surf with a wicked undertow that made swimming all but impossible. I did manage to get some time in the sandy murky water of the Bay of Bengal despite the surf conditions.

I have been staying at the Hotel Lotus. It is the same hotel that my brother Don smashed his head open in a few years back. After 2 nights in the hotel without any injury I believe I have proven the place safe for Purcell’s to stay in… Except Don… he can never go back.

I went to the ATM today to get some funds to last me the next few weeks. I was shocked to discover that the ATM was in an air conditioned room! This is the part of the story where I confess staying in the room with the ATM for much longer than my transaction required, just to catch a break from the heat.

Speaking of the heat, I have discovered myself complaining more and more in my blog, and less and less in my daily life. I believe I am becoming accustomed to it. I am now referring to 95 degrees as “a pleasant day,” and if it happens to drop below 90 it is “practically chilly.” While the nights are becoming hotter, I am finding it easier to sleep comfortably. What happens when I return to America and experience 70-80 degree weather? I can say one only this: I look forward to it.

A friend of mine in Puri gave me a CD to listen to on the way back to Juanga. It was his favorite songs by Pink Floyd. I do not know what I enjoyed more, they music, or the faces of my Indian compatriots as they tried to understand exactly what the hell was going on with the music. I thought about telling them they should try listening to it after a Bhang Lassi, but thought better of it.

Bhang Lassi, for those of you who are unaware, is a drink. A lassi is chilled curd that is blended into an almost yogurt like drink substance. Bhang is a narcotic leaf that is crushed and added to a lassi. If someone offers you a Bhang Lassi, just say no.

Missionaries of Charity

2009-04-05T09:48:00.002-04:00

So I totally chilled with some Missionaries of Charity today, and they invited me to their leper colony! I might just take them up on the offer next week, but for right now I have some work to do.

They are the sweetest, nicest, and shortest women I have ever met. They happened to be at the same Mass I was at today (that being no coincidence as there is only one Church and only one Mass at the one Church). After Church they cornered me at asked me all sorts of questions about what I was doing there, and where I was staying, and... come to think of it they grilled me worse than the police did...

Anyway, they grilled me in a nice way. The Church here is just called the Catholic Church of Puri, but after some wrangling of the Priest I found out that it is dedicated to The Blessed Mother. Yeah there was a HUGE carving of Mary on the outside, but you can never be too sure with these things.

Spent today working on some reports, and lunching at Govinda's place. His mom tried to over feed me again. Practically forcing food into my mouth. She is truly a wonderful woman, but do not trust here with a handful of cauliflower.

Hare Krishna!

2009-04-04T09:43:00.000-04:00

I hate that damn car trip.

I am in Puri today. For those of you who do not know Puri is a coastal city in Orissa. It contains the most holy of holy shrines to the Lord Jagganath, who happens to be an incarnation of Krishna. That means that the place is filthy with Hare Krishnas.

The locals really do not like the Hare Krishna. The view them all as low life smugglers who are way to whacked out on drugs to be any real benefit to society. Hare Krishnas are, for all intents and purposes, Hindus. But not according to the Hindus. See to BE a Hindu, you must be BORN a Hindu. There is no BECOMING a Hindu. So all the Hindus around here look at the Hare Krishna as some perversion of their faith.

I am just happy they keep the singing and dancing to the beach.

Happy Friday? Right? What is Today?

2009-04-03T09:39:00.000-04:00

It's Friday, and I would not have known that without a calendar. I have been very busy lately, and it pleases me so.

I spend most of my day teaching. Trying to help someone be a better employee for the hospital or school. I take photo's of current projects, and I write reports. It may seem boring to many of you, but here it is a breath of fresh air. To be doing something, and to be working is a great feeling. For a while I would spend each night thinking about what I failed to do today, now I am too busy thinking about what I need to do tomorrow.

Quickly to the Bat Cave!

2009-04-02T09:31:00.000-04:00

I have been watching soap operas... In Oriya. The are horrible, which is to say they are exactly on par with American soap operas. The acting is over the top, the camera angles are extreme, and the plots are so convoluted that the only thing less believable is the casts acting (which I have already mentioned is bad). The sad part is this. Even though I can now pick out a few words every now and then... I still know exactly what is going on in these damn shows.

Stories, and especially the kind you find on TV, are becoming less and less exciting for me. The way some people look at a math problem and just see an answer, I look at the plots of stories. I suppose it is because I read (too much), watch a few TV serials, and attend movies regularly. I will say that I am truly joyous when something is executed in a particularly brilliant or crafty manner. I view it as an opportunity to learn, and be entertained.

I have even gone as far as to try to write my own stories and plot lines. However they are nothing I am proud of. Actually they are nothing at all. I have started and stopped a dozen times, and I suppose I will continue to do so, until I surprise myself.

I Am Nobody's Fool

2009-04-01T10:32:00.000-04:00

Toady was April fools day, and it turns out they practice it here in Juanga. From the moment I woke up people were attempting to catch me unaware. Dr. Sarangi told me there was a spider on my head. Manu pointed out that my hair was all messed up. Biku tried to draw my attention to a large hole in my t-shirt. Everyone tried these simple pranks.

They were fooling no one. I was forced to educate them on a truly glorious April Fools prank. It involved tact, guile, and many other characters from Street Fighter. Unfortunately they do not have powdered milk here in Juanga. Nor do they have powdered sugar, creamed corn, a bottle of wine, a basket of figs, and 3 mice. So I was relegated to to the old classic of staring quietly with a frightened look on my face right behind someone. That one... that one never fails.

One Month Down

2009-03-31T10:27:00.000-04:00

Well even though 2 days ago was officially 30 days for me here in India, Today is the end of my first month. Due to abnormal time fluctuations I find myself feeling like it has been somewhere between one week, and one year since I last saw the United States.

I postulate that only one of 2 things can be true about my experiences with these feelings.

1) My perception of time is messed up due to heat, slow village life, brief periods of frenzied activity, calling people who are in another part of the day than I am, and general lack of interest in knowing what time it is.

-or-

2) Someone has created a machine that controls time and is hiding it in a small village in the middle-of-nowhere India.

I find one to be as likely as the other.

It's All Greek To Me

2009-03-30T10:25:00.000-04:00

Preparations are truly underway for the construction of the new staff quarters here. Every day tractors bring loads of dirt and sand to the large field in front of the school. Soon brick workers will be busy making bricks by hand. Five to six thousand per day! It is going to be my job to send occasional reports to Michael and the people who donated the money for this project. Things are starting to get busier here. That means that I am starting to have more energy. It is amazing how working will actually give you more energy.

I do however have a slight problem. I can’t turn my head to the left, or look up. I think this stiff neck was caused by the trip back from Puri io Juanga. The road is filled with bumps, holes, and even ditches. These ditches are large enough to have to drive a car into them, then out the other side. I am taking some medicine for my neck, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. It should be fine in a day or two.

There is another problem. I am reaching an impasse with Oriya. I have taken to start actually writing some of what I learn down, and when I ask for help in the spelling of certain words, 5 people tell me to spell it 6 different ways. The only solution I can see is that I must learn how to read and write in the Oriya alphabet. Learning a language is one thing, but a different alphabet… I am finding it difficult. They have many more letters and letter sounds than we do. It appears there are over 40 characters in their alphabet. I suppose I should just be happy it isn’t Chinese or Ancient Egyptian.

What was I thinking about?

2009-03-29T10:18:00.000-04:00

I jump topics too much in my blog. I always start out writing one thing, but by the end of a post, I am somewhere completely different from where I started. It all makes sense as I write, but whenever I read my posts, I wonder what the hell I was thinking.

It is because my brain wanders, and I allow it to do so. Every thought I have leads to something I think is related, and then that thought leads to something else until my original thought was about rice for lunch, and I end up thinking about The Stand by Steven King. It all makes sense when I am thinking it, and even writing it. When I read it, however, I find myself barely able to remember how or why I went from one topic to another. Even now it is taking all my concentration to remain on the topic of going off topic.

I will now demonstrate a moment in the mind of William:

William: My foot is asleep.
Will: Remember when your foot was asleep and you fell into grandma’s pool?
William: Yeah, I remember.
Will: Remember when grandma’s didn’t have a pool?
William: Yeah… seems like a while ago.
Will: Remember the sassafras tree in the backyard, and the swing set?
William: Yeah, of course I remember that!
Will: Remember how you used to swing on the swings and jump off and see how far you could get?
William: I remember that.
Will: Remember when you twisted you ankle doing that?
William: Kinda.
Will: What about when you tore you ACL dancing?
William: I have the scar to remind me.
Will: Pain heals, chicks dig scars, glory is forever. What is that from?
William: Keanu Reeves as Shane Falco in the movie The Replacements.
Will: Yeah… can you imagine Johnny Fav directed Iron Man?
William: He did a good job, I think Robert Downey Jr. was a fantastic choice for Tony Stark.
Will: Stark means strong in German.
William: I really like German.
Will: What is your favorite German word?
William: Entshuldigung. It means excuse me. I just like the way it sounds.
Will: No one here in India says excuse me… ever.
William: I know! But its not like they are doing it to be rude, they just don’t have that concept in their every day life.
Will: It’s hot.
William: Well I am in India, during their summer. What did you expect?

In case you were wondering… every time my brain wanders here in India, I am guaranteed to ALWAYS come back to “It’s hot.” I hope my dialogue with myself has entertained you as much as it always entertains me.

Indian Cell Phone

2009-03-27T00:55:00.002-04:00

For those of you who wanted my Indian Cell Phone number... I finally have it!!!

To call from the United States you need to dial as follows:

011 91 977 766 0706

I suggest getting one of those calling cards you can buy at most corner stores and using it to call me. It is much cheaper.

The other option is to use skype, which can be found at www.skype.com. You need to have a microphone and a highspeed internet connection to use it, but it is hands down the cheapest way to call me.

One Night in Puri and the World's Your Turtle

2009-03-26T00:44:00.000-04:00

Today I finally made it to Puri to get some time with the internet. What I have been doing is writing my posts every day, and now I am posting them! I find that I enjoy writing more and more every day. I only wish I had something interesting to say.

Puri is a small city on the Bay of Bengal. It is filled with Hari Krishnas. This is one of their high holy cities because of the Jagganath Temple. This is a temple dedicated to a facet of Lord Krishna. So everywhere you look there is some weird white dude with his head shaved except a little pony tail singing Hari Krishna.

I am staying in a hotel called the Pink House, and no it is not called that because it is a place of debauchery and sin. It is called that because it is pink. It is right on the beach, and my room opens to sand and waves. It is really nice... especially for $4 a night.

I defeated the pigeons in my little war. I cleaned out their nest before they decided to start a family, and bricked up the air vent so they could not build another one. It was my nuke option, because it means that the air flowing through that vent is now decreased. In war, sacrifices must be made.

I think that writing this is helping me keep up the practice of using proper english. Most of the time over here I must speak in deliberate and short sentences. Saying words slowly so that people who do speak english understand me. For instance instead of saying:

"Hey! How about you and I go for a walk around the fields?"

I need to say:

"Want to walk?"

After a while, the way I tailor my speech becomes habit, one that I must break before returning to the western world, where people would think I was just plain slow.

All Around Me Are Familiar Faces Part Two

2009-03-25T00:36:00.000-04:00

Babu is 19. He was unofficially adopted by the hospital when he showed up on the front steps with a broken leg that was not healing properly. He does have surviving family, but they let him live and stay at the hospital and go the the school that Citta sponsors because it is a better life for him. He is sly, and likes chasing the girls. He has an excellent frisbee arm, and is never far from his Bicycle. Lately he has started to grow a moustache, which just looks odd on him. He is an excellent spades partner.

Tapan is Babu's brother. He is about 12 years old. He recently came to the hospital and begged Govinda to let him stay there with his brother, and go to the school. He desperately wants to learn to read. Govinda of course agreed to it. He is great at cards, and is my favorite spades partner. He is helping with my Oriya lessons.

Utkal is Govinda's right hand man. He is in charge of the office and clerks. He is retired Air Force. He was a radar technician. His english is absolutely perfect, and is always quick with a joke. He has a wife and 2 children. Both are in college now, and both have very promising futures.

There are more people I hang out with, but if you want to know about them, ask me in person, I am tired of writing short biographies for now.

All Around Me are Familiar Faces

2009-03-24T00:24:00.000-04:00

I realize that there is only so much I can write about how hot it is here. I do want to stress the point, however, that it is not just hot... it is very hot, and very humid.

I took a nice long walk today with Biku and Babu. For those of you wondering who all these people I mention are, I realize I have been a bad host. I have neglected to actually introduce you to any of the people I interact with here on a daily basis.

Govinda is the managing trustee of the hospital and school, and is the top of the chain of command here. It is his responsibility to make sure everything is running smoothly. He is in his 50's and has 3 sons. His wife died many years ago. He likes Bob Marley music, singing songs he made up himself, and worrying. He is a smart man who hates corruption with a passion. He works hard to ensure that the hospital serves the community, and always looks out for those less fortunate than himself.

Biku is Govinda's eldest son. He is 19 years old and will soon be studying to be a doctor. He plans to become a doctor and work at the hospital in Juanga. He is smart and kind. People in the USA are raising funds to put him through medical college. He has already passed the entrance exam, now he is just waiting on the funding. He is alot like his father in many ways. He speaks english very well, and is an excellent Oriya teacher. He is a good friend.

More on the people here tomorrow.

When Pigeons Attack

2009-03-23T06:44:00.000-04:00

Day seven of my battle against the pigeons. I seem to be loosing this war. Every day the pigeons stranglehold on my room grows stronger. They have build a base in a vacant air vent in my room. This gives them a place to rest and regroup before going on more raids.

Making noise no longer scares them. I was foolish for making threats without immediately backign them up. They now think I am weak and unwilling to do what must be done to ensure victory in this war. I have begun sleeping with a weapon. I keep some five rupee coins in my bed with me to throw at them when they attack. I use the coins more as flak, something to discourage their bombing runs. If I fail to hold them off much longer, I will need to take extreme measures.

Yesterday during one of their raids they foolishly attacked my ceiling fan. There were feathers everywhere, but the pigeon somehow managed to get away. They coo ever so softly at me from the air vent above my desk, mocking me. I have tried shutting my windows, but all that does is make my room unbearably hot. They know I cannot keep the windows closed forever. So they sit, and they wait.

Every day, every hour brings me closer to attacking their base of operations. I have checked, so far no innocents would be harmed if I destroyed their construction project, but how long will that be true? If I wait too long, there will be "collateral damage," and I can't have that. I need to find a way to cut off their supply lines, or maybe block access to their base. I may be forced to call in a specialist on this one.

Shhh, I am Narrating.

2009-03-22T06:43:00.000-04:00

I think I have a problem, but I am not sure. I have begun to narrate. I am naratting my life. Plain and simple. Everything I do I begin to hear my own voice describing it to me. For instance, this morning as I sat and ate breakfast, I found myself describing in disturbing detail everything that I was experiencing. This narration has become common enough of an experience that I have noticed it.

On top of it all, I do not like my narrative style. I find myself noticing and describing things that I find boring and unnecessary. I have heard of "finding your voice" as a writer, but the voice that seems to be finding me is one I think I would not like to read. I will say this for my narrator, he is getting better slowly. The way I think is slowly coming around to the way I think I think. If that makes any sense to you, please help me make some sense of it.

Maybe it is because so little is happening at any given time here. I find myself with so much time to just sit and think, that I have begun to fill those moments in my own mind. Is it possible that I am internalizing my experiences? What am I getting from this practice of narration? I have no clue. All I know is this, my own personal story teller has a long way to go before I pick up any book he has written.

Learn Your Own Language First, Then Try Something Different

2009-03-21T06:43:00.000-04:00

My lessons with Biku are going well. I have learned more Oriya in the last week than I did the entire time I was here the last two trips. He has a solid understanding of English grammar, which makes it easy for him to describe Oriya grammar in a way I can understand.

I have always held the belief that the stronger you are in your native language, the easier it is to learn another. My knowledge of the parts of speech in english has made the transition to Oriya much easier than I could have hoped for If I had to learn the essentials of grammar AND another language.

I am still upset at Oriya for not having a form of "to be." I think it not having "to be" just means the language was too lazy to develop it. One of the other difficult parts of Oriya is conjugating the verbs. I suppose that is difficult in any language, but I am slowly learning the rhyme and reason to this language's particular ways. If only humans only existed in the here and now, without a concept of past and future, language would be alot easier.

To Be, or No To Be

2009-03-20T06:43:00.000-04:00

I am have discovered my problem with Oriya. Something about the language always frightened me, and now I know what. They do not have a verb that means to be. For those of you who love language as I do, I will repeat that for emphasis. In Oriya, there is no form of to be. That means there is no I am, we are, or they are not. They simply do not have a way to relate existence as a verb. No To Be.

I discovered this during my daily lesson with Biku. I was asking him to teach me the pronouns in Oriya, figuring I would start where I learned any other language I speak. I would start with the simple phrase "I am." He said he couldn't teach me that. After aa few minutes of discussion I he came to realize what I was asking and told me there simply is no to be in Oriya.

Now that I understand that small little fact about this language, everything else is coming quickly. I am learning the forms of verbs, and how to properly make sentences. It appears that my biggest roadblock was simple existence, but now that that is gone, I am ready to learn more!

Getting Busy

2009-03-19T06:42:00.000-04:00

I got busy today.

I spent a few hours in the office with the clerks seeing how things were going with the financial work that they were supposedly working on the 2 months I was gone. Turns out Quickbooks stopped working 2 weeks after I left last time. So absolutely nothing was happening. I checked on the calendar they were going to be using to keep track of important dates. Dates when information was supposed to be sent and the such. The calendar had never even been used. Oh well. back to the beginning.

In the afternoon I played frisbee with Chandu, Babu's younger brother, Biku, and some of the other village boys. It was bloody hot, and everyone was drenched with sweat by the end of our session. Maybe someday next week I can actually gather enough of them to play a game of ultimate frisbee. We will see.

I spent the evening talking to Manu about stories. about writing them, reading them, telling them, and any other kind of thing one does with stories. I truly love stories. The idea of it gives me pleasure. I like to listen to them as much as I love to tell them, and most of you know that I do love to tell stories.

I will hopefully have some interesting stories to tell when I return home.

Oriya Lessons

2009-03-18T06:43:00.000-04:00

My first day at the hospital was... uneventful as far as accomplishing any real work is concerned. I spent most of the day with Biku, Govinda's eldest son. We have decided that we can be of advantage to each other. Every day we will spend any hour teaching eachother our native languages. He will teach me Oriya, and I will teach him how to butcher the english language.

I also spent today going around saying hello to all the people here. I have a great many people here who I consider good friends. It is odd, but even though most of them speak not a word of english, and I speak only a few words of Oriya, we have cultivated a relationship.

There is Chandu. He runs the pharmacy that is next to the hospital. He speak english very well, and is adept at frisbee. these two things are easy ways to win my friendship it turns out. He is 27 and single and likes it that way. He is a devout Hindu, and does his Puja every day. His real name is Rohit, and he is from a village about 4 kilometers away. He is obsessed with Cricket and in school he was an excellent bowler. I know all this because he can tell me. Most of the other people who I know here, I am forced to extrapolate their stories from other people, or just plain guess as to their history.

That sickness I was suffering from turned out to be a sore throat, and I am recovering nicely due to some Ayurvedic losenges given to me by Chandu at the pharmacy. They taste awful, but do the trick. For that I am very thankful. They feel like sandpaper in your mouth, tast like old gym socks, and do not even feel soothing while they are in your mouth, but they make it easier to swallow.

I have settled into my room and I am waiting a day or so to start working. It is difficult to just jump into work in this village. People here want to take their time, and move at their own pace. If I immediately went to work trying to get them to help me accomplsh all that Michael has set out for me to do, I think they will stop thinking I understand their way of life. Which I don't. Here everything is done so slowly. I suppose it is the heat. Which by the way is HOT. I mean like 100 degrees in the shade. The humidity is through the roof. So I am now in the sauna portion of my time here in India.

Thank You For Flying Indian Airlines

2009-03-17T06:42:00.000-04:00

Today I travelled.

Traveling is a wondergul way to meet interesting people, people you would never meet in your everyday life. People you would never have a desire to meet in your everyday life. The woman sitting next to me on the plane did not stop talking. Ever. She is a dancer it turns out, in a classic religious style called Odessi. She is coming from Delhi for a dance festival in Bhubhaneswar. That is all I will tell you of her, no reason for you to hear 2 hours worth of life story from me.

This is how people in India travel, I have found out. People make friends on trains, planes, and busses. A very differnt style of travel from what I am used to in the US. There people tend to keep to themselves more often than not. Things are different here.

After arriving in Bhubhaneswar I was collected by Govinda and Utkal. We had lunch at a local restaraunt. Even the restarautns here serve Tali. Tali is what most people here eat every meal of every day of their entire lives. Rice, Dahl, and some other vegetable. The other vegetable is more often than not potato, especially this time of year. Here in Orissa their diets are not governed by taste, instead it is governed by the season. Some seasons Gobi (cauliflower) is the "other" vegetable. However during the spring and summer months, it is almost always potato. I will probably eat enouth potatoes in the next few months to turn even this irishman's stomach from them for a short while.

After lunch we stopped to do some shopping. I needed to pick up some essentials that would not be available in the village. Soap, shampoo, mosquito cream, mosquito coil, toilet paper, and water were the items on my list. With them safely in my possession we started for Juanga.

A few kilometers outside of Bhubhaneswar we hit traffic. I am talking Holland Tunnel traffic. Cars stretched before us for kilometers ahead. I settled in for what was going to be a long trip. The heat of the air mixed with the hot exhaust from the cars and busses surrounding us, making breathing unpleasant. I turned to Govinda and Utkal wondering if they had any idea as to how far the traffic stretched out in front of us, or how long we would be held captive in the belly of the monstrous snake composed of cars, busses, and motorbikes. their guess was as good as mine, so I sat in my seat quietly and remembered what someone once told me.

"Why stand when you can sit? Why sit when you can lay down? Why lay down when you can sleep?"

So I tried to sleep. Did not succeed, but I tried.

After a few hours of traffic, and a few hours of dusty broken village roads, we arrived at my destination at last. The Michael A. Daube Charitable Trust and Hospital greeted me with it's dull fading yellow in the hot sunset. I was shown to my room, on the second floor above the main entrance of the hospital. The room I always stay in when I am here. I am finally to my home away from home.

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

2009-03-16T09:19:00.004-04:00

So my Debit Card finally arrived this morning and I have booked a flight for tomorrow at noon. This would be great news, if I did not feel like I was coming down with something. Not a stomach thing either, this feels like aches, and dizziness.

Out of the frying pan into the fire I believe is the old expression. Well thankfully I am going to be staying and working at a hospital, so I won't have to travel far to see a doctor if it gets any worse than what it is right now.

My throat is sore too. Maybe it is just allergies? I will take something tonight to try to knock it out of my system.

Anyway, I am finally actually and really on my way! Govinda has taken to calling me, late and often, recently. He cannot wait to see me, and wants me to do many good works for him at the hospital. He is such an emotional person sometimes, that I just can't help but love him.

I will be getting a cellphone number down in Orissa. I will put the number in a post and for those of you who actually go to my blog to read it, it will be on the left hand side of the page. Be careful when calling me, if you do because phone charges from the US to India can be a bit expensive. Going to a corner store and purchasing one of those international calling cards is the best way to go about using a normal land line. Skype is my preferred method for making international calls. But it requires you having a microphone for your computer, and internet access.

Now begins the fun/hard part of my trip. I am comfortable enough in Orissa to go there and do what needs to be done, but am I capable enough to do it? Last few times I have accomplished some goals, and failed others. I do not expect this time to be any different. It will be a challenge. A challenge I look forward to!

Subway

2009-03-15T09:56:00.002-04:00

So Today I went to Connaught Place to pick up some more books. I am chewing through them due to an acute case of cabin fever. I have cabin fever in a city that covers approximately 90 square kilometers.

I walked the outer circle of CP today for something different, and to my surprise I found a Subway restaurant. I decided to give it a try as I had yet to have lunch and to tell you the truth I was oddly fascinated by the prospect of a Subway in India.

The differences were obvious from the start. There are 2 lines of people ordering sandwiches; One is labeled Veg. the Non Veg. I quickly stepped into the Non Veg. line because I was never one to pass up a chance to eat the flesh of a dead animal (Except veal and foi gras... a man needs to have moral standards after all). I decided on what I always get at Subway back home. An Italian B.M.T. For those who are uneducated in the ways of Subway lingo, B.M.T. is Big. Meaty. Tasty. One difference here in India however. The M. in B.M.T. has been replaced by Lamb Salami and Lamb Pepperoni. However after all my travels here I did not even blink at the difference. This is where the differences between American Subways and Indian Subways end.

The similarities are much more fun to point out. Just like in the US there is a Baskin Robbins attached or directly next to the Subway Restaurant. Just like in the US the Subway is staffed primarily by Indians. Just like in the US the sandwiches never live up to the expectations of anyone who has had a REAL Italian Sub.

Guest

2009-03-14T09:54:00.000-04:00

So Here I am, still in Delhi 2 weeks after I arrived, and 1 week after I thought I would be in Orissa. I fear I am abusing the hospitality of Shashi and Shammi, and I feel awful for that. One of my biggest pet peeves is being rude, and I find one of the most rude things anyone can do is abuse hospitality. I should be a week gone already. But Shashi and Shammi feel bad for me due to my stolen wallet, and they are truly good people.

Even though they tell me they do not mind, I can feel that I am disrupting their lives. I wish there was some way I could repay them for their kindness. I try to be helpful, but there is little to be helpful with. I try to stay out of their way as much as possible, but they each have busy lives to stay busy with, so I am not interfering with that at least. They go to work, and I either sit down to read a book, or head out to the streets for a walk. Someday I go to Connaught Place, some days I go somewhere else, others I just walk around the nieghborhood.

It is not a nice feeling, feeling as though you are unwillingly taking advantage of someone's kindness. Even if they do not feel I am taking advantage of them, I still feel like I am. I do not want to encroach on their lives a day longer than I must, and unfortunately it seems like I will remain their guest until Monday the earliest.

I Go Walking, Close to Midnight, in the Moonlight

2009-03-13T02:56:00.002-04:00

Every night Shammi and I go for a brisk walk around the neighborhood. He leads me through the twists and turns of Delhi's streets, and we talk. Every night the conversation is different, and always interesting. Some nights we tell jokes, some nights we talk politics, other nights sports. In all it is part of my day I greatly look forward to.

The streets at night are almost no different from the streets during the day. There are still plenty of people and plenty of cars and motorbikes. More often than not we pass a Hindi wedding. Except tonight. Tonight, there was not a single wedding happening. I asked Shammi about this and he said that today was a bad day for weddings.

I laughed and said it seemed that way. He then corrected himself. He said it was an inauspicious day for weddings.

Turns out Hindu culture is very, very superstitious. More so than I had thought. There are days of the year where not a single Hindu will get married. Simply because that day has been deemed inauspicious. Prime ministers will delay their inaugurations so that they take place on auspicious days. Government buildings have openings to the "4 directions." I am painting a very broad picture, but it is like feng shue to the extreme.

I want to finish with a joke Shammi told me. It is offensive... I think.

A man runs up to a Sikh and says "Hey!!! There is a house on fire!!!"
The Sikh shakes his head and replies, "Get the hell outta here, it is none of my business."
The man say "But it is YOUR house that is on fire!"
The Sikh replies, "Get the hell outta here, it is none of your business."

Holi-Day and Rememberances of the Water Wars

2009-03-11T12:03:00.003-04:00

Today was an Indian celebration of the arrival of spring. The festival is called Holi. And it is a festival of colors. And boy are there colors.

Families gather together and throw small packets of what they simply call "color" on each other. This color, from what I can tell, is just dehydrated dyes and pigments. They smear it all over their siblings, parents, cousins, and distant relatives faces. Their apparent joy is fun to watch, but more fun to participate in.

Yup I got colored today. Pictures will be posted. A good time was had by all.

The other element of Holi is water. Packs of children armed with water guns and water balloons roam the streets. They stalk building to building like well trained combatants dousing all those in their path. Ambush points are set up for the unwary street walker, and balloons filled with water rain down from rooftops accompanied by the sound of children's laughter.

Personally I had 5 water balloons thrown at me. And none of them hit. Seriously? I am a LARGE target here in India. Not a one found it's mark. The balloons exploded behind and in front of me, but none of their aqua ballistics found their mark. I began to become disappointed. Did these children know nothing of leading their target? Biding their time till you were sure your strike would land true? A pity they did not receive the same training I had as a 5 year old boy on the streets of my grandmother's house.

It is a lifetime and a world away, but I remember the water wars as if it was only yesterday. It was soak or be soaked back then. And even if you did soak the other guy first, he would probably soak you anyway. They were tough times. I didn't know who to trust. Alliances were made and broken in instants when water was involved. The only thing you could hope for was being better or faster than the other kids. Water fights are hell.

Anyway. I had a wonderful time with Shashi and Shammi's family. Took some pictures, and I will post them soon.

Hard to Write, Because I am Reading

2009-03-10T13:57:00.003-04:00

This post is hard to write.

Not because of any hardships I am suffering while traveling. Simply because nothing happened today. Me, Shashi, and Shammi stayed in all day watching TV, reading, and making idle chit chat.

I am currently reading 4 books simultaneously. I find it is the only way I know how to read at a pace where books will last a substantial time for me over here in India. I have hours a day where I am able to do just about whatever I want, and because i have none of the normal distractions of home, I spend those hours reading.

At every opportunity I put down the book to socialize with whomever and whatever I can, however over here there are just stretches of time when I am simply alone. Sometimes I write (mostly these posts), sometimes I play an old SNES game on my computer, sometimes I just sit and think, but mostly I read. Anything and everything I can get my hands on. Here is a list of the books I am currently reading:

The Hero With A Thousand Faces By Joseph Campbell
Le Mort de Arthur by Sir Thomas Malorey
The Wheel of Time By Robert Jordan
The Silmarillion Composited by Christopher Tolkien

The nice thing about bing over here is I have easy access to many other books, and I will keep you posted on what I am reading whenever something changes.

Confidence

2009-03-09T08:27:00.002-04:00

I have lost my confidence.

It is amazing how that can happen. One moment I was on the move, ready to attempt new challenges and solve new problems, the next moment my world stopped turning. It only stopped for a heartbeat, but it was long enough. I am different now.

Today I boarded the Metro heading for Connaught Place. The train ride felt different. My awareness had shifted from calm curiosity of my surroundings to vigilance. I felt as though I was guarding myself. Even as this was happening I was aware of it. I knew that the only thing that has changed in this world is me. The pickpockets had always been there, somewhere distant in my mind. They were always a threat lurking somewhere else. Today on the metro they were all around me. I hated it.

So I made a decision. I decided to control how I was going to change. I made the decision to not feel like a victim. I need my confidence. It is what allows me to travel and not feel overburdened. It helps me sleep in cheap motels with cheap fluorescent lights. It lets me hop into a taxi with a driver I do not know who speaks a language I do not know going to a place I have never been. I love my confidence.

So I am going to keep it. And I am going to make keeping it one of my daily decisions. I am going to wake up every day and remind myself to keep my cool, and remain confident until I don't have to remember it anymore. Soon it will just become a part of me. This incident will be a distant memory, just one more lesson I have learned while traveling. And as with everything else that happens to me, it is going to be one of my stories. Those stories I love to tell so much.

Today I Lost a Friend

2009-03-07T03:12:00.000-05:00

My wallet was stolen today.

It was 2 PM local time and I was in Rajiv Chowk Metro Station underneath Connaught Place waiting to board the yellow line with Shammi. Shammi was taking me to see the "real Delhi" before I left for Orissa. The crowds were oppressive and people pressed in on us from every side. My wallet was foolishly in my back pocket, a mistake I have never made in the past while traveling.

We boarded the train and there was one of those automated announcements that they play all the time on the Delhi Metro...

"Pick-pocketers have been identified in the stations and on the trains, please be careful of your personal belongings."

I reach my hand back and give my pocket a half-hearted pat. It is empty. All of a sudden I am hit with feelings of panic and disbelief. My heart races and I check my other pockets. Did I not have it in my back pocket? Did I leave it at Shashi's house? When did I have it last?

I experience what can only be called a poor-choice-by-the-director-flashback. Standing on the metro platform only 5 minutes ago I had reached back and patted my wallet in the pocket.

Being brought back to the present I turn to Shammi and tell him the news. He asks what I had in the wallet, and what I think we should do. I take a mental inventory of my wallet:

2,000 Rupees
My Drivers License
Insurance Card
Photocopy of Passport
Barnes and Noble Membership card
3 credit cards
1 debit card
1 emergency $20 dollar bill hidden in one of the compartments

We get off at the next stop and find an internet cafe. I proceed to call my bank and credit card company and cancel all the cards. Turns out the person who stole my wallet had tried to buy in total $5,000 dollars worth of stuff with my cards. Thankfully none of my credit cards work over here without me calling to authorize them. He did however manage to wrangle $400 bucks from my debit card. All this happened within 20 minutes.

I loved that wallet. I have had it for 7 years. I have lost it 2 times, and both times it has come back to me. It was my friend, and a companion that has traveled the world with me. The worst part of all of this is I never realized how much I cared for that wallet until it was gone. I never told it how I felt, how much it meant to me. And now I don't think I will ever get the chance.

Friday Night

2009-03-06T06:28:00.000-05:00

Today I started out by heading to a Barista. Barista is the Indian version of Starbucks. What this means is that their coffee is bitter and overpriced. However, it is the ONLY real coffee to be found in India. Ahh the things I will suffer for a cup of java every so often.

After Barista I met up with Shashi and we went to McDonalds. McDonalds is the Indian version of McDonalds. The menu is different, however you are still greeted by the same underpaid teenagers with English as a second language. I had the chicken sandwich and Shashi had some weird veggie burger. They have normal veggie burgers as well, but the one Shashi had was called some odd name that was a cross between western advertisement language and Hindi. My ears decided to block out the name of it because my gentle brain is not ready to behold the horrors of advertisement speak in another language.

After McDonalds, we saw Slumdog Millionaire. The movie was good and I recommend it to everyone. Good story, good music (no line dancing till the end credits), and good acting. It does show a darker side of India, but that is just context.

Gotta run, getting ready to leave tomorrow.

Leave me a voicemail!

2009-03-05T08:27:00.003-05:00

So I got my Skype number working again. It is a local NJ number that has voice mail that I can check every so often. If you want to call and harass me, entertain me, mock me, say hi to me, or simple prank call me I would appreciate it! The number is located over on the left.

I look forward to your calls!

I think someone is watching me....

2009-03-05T01:34:00.000-05:00

I am having troubles starting this post. I have decided to write about my physical appearance in relation to my location. I am a large white man in a country of small brown folk. That is about as boiled down a description of my situation in India that I can make.

Growing up in New Jersey and specifically Hudson County, I quickly grew accustomed to seeing people of all sizes, shapes, and colors. As a young child my best friend was a kid across the street of middle eastern ethnicity named Allah. Throughout grammar school my best friend was an odd mix of Irish and Guyanese. I grew up in a town where the majority of the population is Hispanic. I went to high school in a city where no one ethnic group can claim a majority. And I lived next to the most racially diverse city in the world.

I am not making the argument that India lacks diversity. There are dozens of ethnic groups located in India, and they are all represented in Delhi. It just so happens that none of those groups looks like me.

Everywhere I go I feel eyes on me. I cannot just blend in with the crowd or step to the background and fade away. As I walk down the street almost every single person will stop and look at me, at least for a second. Some children are so afraid of me they run away. Many people are very friendly and will walk right up to me, say something I cannot understand, and shake my hand. Every moment I am out in public feels like a moment I am on display.

I have mixed feeling about all the attention I get. On one hand their interest in me interests me. I take it as an opportunity to interact with people in a way I do not get to back home. I keep a smile on my face and wave to the people staring at me. I play a game with myself trying to keep count of all the people that wave back. Many people do wave back and most of them return my smile with one of their own. It is an odd and distant interaction, but I enjoy it.

On the other hand sometimes I just want to blend in. Sometimes I just want to be able to walk from point A to point B without people staring at me or whispering to each other. A perfect example of a time I wish I could just blend is on the Metro. The train is crowded and you are surrounded on all sides by people. It would be nice to just be one body amongst many. However the Metro is no safe haven. People are still staring and whispering.

It isn't really all that bad. It is just something that is always present. I have gotten used to it.

My plane leaves for Orissa on Saturday. Posts may come a little more sporadically after that as I am not sure when or where I will have internet access. When I get my cell phone number down in Orissa I will post it for people to call me. I would suggest using Skype to call me as international calling rates from the US are unnaturally high.

I am William Purcell

2009-03-04T02:59:00.000-05:00

So I am me again! Well my bank thinks I am me again, which is all that counts when you are trying to get your debit card to work overseas. I called my bank again today and this time they were able to verify that I am in fact William Purcell.

I fell asleep rather early yesterday. What I thought was only going to be a quick nap ended up with me waking up at 3 AM local time. I did not want to undo all my hard work of adjusting to the time difference by being up that early in the morning so I reached into my bag and cheated myself to sleep with a Benedryl. I passed out and woke up around 7 AM. I really needed the sleep it turns out.

Over the past few days there has been some de-construction going on in Shashi's neighborhood. 3 men with sledgehammers have completely reduced a 3 story building to rubble. 3 men. 3 sledgehammers. 3 story building. 3 days. Personally, I liked the idea of it. There is something satisfactory in watching something slowly crumble. I suppose it is because I subscribe to the boom-boom theory.

This theory (loosely) states that one of the reasons that we enjoy watching things destroyed or taken apart is because as humans there is part of us that resents living in an ordered and rule filled society. Man made structures are physical representations of the constraints that society places on us. When we see them destroyed it feels exhilarating and liberating because we associate these buildings and possessions as enslaving us in some way. It gives us hope to know that society can be deconstructed.

I finished a book today. Neil Gaimen's American Gods. This book is about all the gods we have imported, created, and forgotten over the years in America. According to the mythology of the book gods are created, and maintained by our belief in them. The Internet, Odin, and Johnny Appleseed are just some of the gods that this book deals with.

The idea that gods are man-made and man-sustained is a theme that is common in many writers I find myself drawn to. Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaimen, and Tom Robbins are just a few of my favorite authors that seem to share this approach to the divine. While I do not necessarily agree with them, I cannot help but see that people actually do create, worship, and abandon their own gods all the time. These authors simply take the human condition a step beyond the believable and manifest the things that we worship as actual gods.

I suppose I like to read these kinds of books because it reminds me to examine the gods I have created in my own life. Ironically enough one of those gods is books themselves. I have an addiction to reading. I will go on month long book binges where I will read everything I can get my hands on. Then I will get bored and not pick up a book for a month or two.

My trips to India have always been book binge times. Here I have a lot of free time, and none of the same distractions I have at home. I suppose it is a way in which I insulate myself from my surroundings, choosing to enter a world in my mind instead of dealing with the new world surrounding me.

I dunno.

Banks 1 William 0

2009-03-03T00:27:00.000-05:00

Today I was trying to book a plane or train down to Orissa. I had found some really great rates, had booked the flight, and was ready to pay. Easy as pie, right? Wrong.

My debit card was declined. I checked the account balance. Plenty of money to pay for the flight. So I figured there was some issue. I tried my credit card. Declined. My final option was my reserve credit card. That was also declined. At this point I am extremely frustrated. So I log into Skype and I am going to call my bank. My Skype account is empty. I try to use my debit card to top off the Skype balance. Declined. So I attempt to call my bank using my cell phone. Call failed. At this point I am out of options.

So I borrowed Shashi's cell phone and called my bank. Went through all the automated options and finally reached a customer service representative (an Indian lady). I told her my problem and she said she would help me fix it. But before she could she was going to need to ask me a few questions about myself.

Turns out. I don't know me. I discovered that I am merely someone who thinks he is William Purcell. She said that she would be unable to help me because I failed to answer the questions correctly. So with my new identity crisis I hung up the phone and began pondering how I was going to sort things out. Deciding that worrying about it was only paying interest to trouble I resigned myself to trying again tomorrow.

I spent the rest of the day getting everything else I needed ready for my trip down to Orissa.

At around 4pm Shashi came home and we both got into her car and headed out for lunch. The next part of this story would be fairly boring if not for the fact that I am in India.

We went to a Pizza Hut that was located in a mall.

It is here that I confess to all everyone that India is not actually a strange and beautiful land inhabited by a people whose culture is rich and vastly different from our own. The Pizza Hut was located in the food court of the mall. This food court also contained a Subway, a McDonalds, and a KFC. To top things off the mall was filled with teenagers. All the stores you expect to be in a mall were there. I had traveled 13 hours by plane and ended up in Garden State Plaza.

I would go off on a rant about how the world is becoming homogenized, except my brain has stopped functioning.

Came back from the mall and began writing this post. Right now I think the jet lag is finally really catching up with me. I am going to try to take a quick nap before dinner to see if that helps.

Alone In Delhi

2009-03-02T00:14:00.000-05:00

Today after breakfast I hopped on the Metro and went to the center of New Delhi. Shashi and Shammi both had work so I was, for the first time, alone in Delhi. At first I thought nothing of it. However after about an hour of wandering through Connaught Place it dawned on me that this was the first time I had wandered the streets of Delhi by myself. I liked it. A lot. Usually when I am here I am with familiar people all the time, and on some kind of schedule. Today, however, I was alone and had time to kill. So I wandered, meandered, and strolled through the center of Delhi like I had absolutely no purpose. I browsed bookstores, handicraft shops, and any other shop that caught my fancy. I took the time to stop and talk to the people who were trying to sell me something I did not want or would not buy. I sat and read a book in the City Center Park.

Connaught Place is the center of Delhi's ongoing commercialization and gentrification. It is here where you will find Levi's stores, a Sony shop, and even a KFC. Because it is such a high traffic area, there are many people on the streets trying to sell random junk. Maps of India, travel chess sets, and plastic bracelets are the most common items being forced on the heaps of tourists that frequent Connaught Place. The many tourists (and middle class Indians) have also encouraged a large population of beggars to take up their posts in Connaught Place.

I use the term beggar because that is what their profession is. They are not homeless like we are used to in the US. The people here are not exactly homeless. They may not have a roof over their head, but wherever they live IS their home. People here live in crude shacks or on the street, but even the people who live on the streets live in a constant place that almost, if not actually, belongs to them in some way or another. They may not have a lease or a deed, but they know where they live, and so do other people. I suppose that there are cases like that in America, but the difference is how the rest of the society views it. Here, it is perfectly acceptable for a man running a news stand to sleep on a cot next to the news stand. but that is enough about that.

Today I was approached by an Indian man with an Australian accent. He wanted me to come with him to see his gallery. I happened to have plenty of time, and plenty of patience, so I decided to allow him to drag me through Delhi and try to sell me something. It turns out he works in a carpet gallery. I told them right up front that I was not interested in buying anything, but they insisted that I at least sit down and look at what they had to offer. They assured me that once I saw their wares I would not be able to live without them. So I spent the next hour learning about different qualities, materials, and patterns of oriental carpets. I must say that I was impressed by the quality of some of the carpets this gentleman showed me. some of them were absolutely beautiful. In spite of their beauty I declined to purchase any of their carpets, we said our goodbyes, and I was on my way.

By this time I was ready for lunch. I was near a place that I had been before and decided that it was as good a spot as any to sit down, have a drink, eat some lunch, and read a book. So I went to Rodeo. Rodeo is a wild west themed restaurant in Delhi. The waiters and waitresses all wear cowboy outfits with order pads in gun holsters. The bar has saddles for seats. And old time country music is always playing. I absolutely love this place. I suppose I love it because they aren't trying to mock cowboy culture as we do with similarly themed restaurants back home. This restaurant is a genuine homage to the cowboy.

That was all the exciting or notable stuff that happened to me today.

Oooo. A bird pooped on my head. That was also notable. Just thought you should know.

Fun with a Family

2009-03-01T08:56:00.000-05:00

Today was spent with Shashi and Shammi at their Aunt's house. It was a family get together, and I was invited. For the most part I sat there and listened to their conversations. Well that is not true. I listened to their words, but had little to no understanding of their conversations. I did however take this as an opportunity to practice listening.

It is not that I think I am a bad listener. What I was practicing was being able to listen to individual words that are spoken in Hindi. See, I am learning Hindi right now. And I thought I was doing fairly well learning it. I was wrong. Simple sentences spoken by native Hindi speakers eluded me. This was because I was not used to listening to it.

I have had a similar experience in my own native language. When in the southern USA sometimes I can not understand a damn word some of the people claiming to speak a language of which I was fairly sure I had a solid grasp. So I spent today learning to listen to Hindi. I will get back to you when I have actually made progress.

In the evening We all piled into cars and went to see India gate. It is a huge monument similar to the Arch de Triumph in France. It commemorates all the Indian soldiers who lost their lives in the first world war. Surrounding this impressively large arch are wide open fields, where many citizens of Delhi gather in the evenings to sit and picnic. It was very pleasant to walk around the arch and see all the people just lounging around, sitting, chatting, and having fun. Very peaceful.

After India Gate we headed over to a canteen for dinner. This particular canteen was known for its excellent quality of food. What was not made known to me (immediately) was that it was also famous for being incredibly spicy food. Over the years I have developed a (mostly) respectable tolerance for spicy food. This place, however, made my eyes water and my nose run. That being said, the food really was excellent.

Came home, blogged, went to bed.

Missing:: One Day

2009-02-27T08:20:00.000-05:00

I am missing a day. It happens to me every time I travel here to India. I was on the plane for 12.5 hours, and the time difference is 11.5 hours ahead over here. What this means is that I arrived in Delhi at the same time I left Newark, just in the future. I feel odd whenever I think about that missing day. I understand that I still experienced the passage of time. I suppose the weird feeling is spending 12.5 hours traveling 24 hours into the future.

I don’t know what it is about packing, but I am really bad at doing it in a timely manner. I suppose I like to be under a deadline. My plane left was scheduled to leave at 8:40 PM of February 27, 2009. This meant that I had to be at the airport by 6:40 PM of the same day. My bag was 100% empty as on 6:01 PM. I did make it to the airport in plenty of time.

The plane was packed. All the seats were filled. The man sitting next to me kept sleeping on my shoulder. This made for a relatively uncomfortable trip, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I would complain about airline food, but everyone already knows it is terrible. I suppose I did just complain about airline food.

After working my way through customs and baggage claim, I went and got a prepaid taxi as usual. The taxi driver actually knew where he was going. This usually doesn’t happen. So now I am safe and sound at Shashi’s House.

This blog is not dead!

2009-01-21T22:09:00.002-05:00

After one month of rest, I am ready to travel again, and blog. I am going to be leaving the US of A mid February. While I am still here in the states I am going to be blogging about the things I need to do to prepare for this trip.

This time out I am going to be staying at the Hospital in Orissa for a much longer time, and therefore I am going to have different needs, and different preparations. Hopefully my misadventures in planning will be as entertaining for you as they are frustrating and educational for me.

Here are the immediate steps that I am aware I need to take.

1) Purchase actual plane ticket.
2) Find a few laptops to be donated to the project.
3) Get all my paperwork in order so that all my bills are taken care of in the US while I am away.
4) Go shopping for anything I need and do not have.

These are very generalized steps, but I will be going into more detail as I am working on the tasks.

I am a bringer of Rains

2008-12-13T18:33:00.002-05:00

I am here in Windsor. It is raining.

This is not a surprise I suppose. England is famous for its wet weather. However Cathy's house is as fun and friendly as ever, so I have no complaints about the weather. I am nearing the end of my 2 month long journey and I am finishing up with a quiet stay in Cathy's House.

The last few days in Jaipur and Delhi were fantastic. Shashi and Shammy are excellent hosts, and my nightly pan walks with Shammy were a great end to my stay in India. Shammy is a wonderful man to sit and talk with. He is educated, smart, funny, and has seen many parts of the world. This combination gives him an ability to provide me with insight into India, and other countries around the world. For instance he was recently working in the Indian Embassy in Cuba, and informed me that the country is absolutely wonderful. In mostly every regard. Everyone is educated, taken care of, and for the most part happy.

We had many reasons to praise Shashi this visit. Not only was she allowing Michael and myself to stay in her house, and cooking wonderful food for us, but some paperwork she submitted in Delhi appears to finally have kicked the government into getting the road to the hospital paved. This is particularly amazing due to the fact that Michael has been trying to get this road built for over a decade. This bit of paperwork that Shashi put in the right hands of the right office will benefit tens if not hundreds of thousands of villagers in Orissa. When the road is complete she will have made a difference in the lives of so many.

My flight over from India to England was very pleasant, except I could a cold on the plane. I did however have an opportunity to watch Lawrence of Arabia, which I have not seen for over a decade. This was particularly interesting because Michael Daube IS Lawrence of Arabia. It is uncanny. He works with the local population in order to help them improve themselves. He is compassionate, and energized. The people he works with on the grounds revere him as a saint, or an angel. He is educated, aloof, and quite wise.

Michael would never tell you he is a great man, or that he does great things. I believe he really has learned so much from his work and travels, that he really understands what it means to do small things with great compassion. I know I sound like I am worshiping him, but that is not the case. He is a good man and a great role model. I feel very lucky to have been able to spend 2 months traveling with him and picking his brain. I think I am better for it.

It is late here, and I am tired. I plan on continuing my blog after my travels are over. I do not know what I will write about, but I think the trick for me is going to be making sure I keep my life interesting enough so that I can keep material for this blog. I do not plan on changing the name of the blog, because I think William Abroad suits the way I think, and the way I want to think and act.

Indian Moment

2008-12-08T06:22:00.003-05:00

Today I had what Michael described as an "Indian Moment." I had a long day of Elephant riding and sight seeing at Amber Fort here is Jaipur. I had an overly spicy meal at a very good restaurant. I ate an extremely spicy chili pepper and burned my mouth. And after a few hours of walking through the markets, I kinda flipped out.

It was all internal. I maintained a huge grin on my face, but inside my mind I was screaming to myself to just get away from all these shopkeepers, rickshaws, tour guides, food vendors, and professional beggars. I just needed to get away from the markets, the noise, and the people. In case you are wondering I am better now. I got to my hotel room and recharged my emotional batteries. I am ready for round 2 out there in this strange and beautiful country.

One thing that really gets to me is what I call the white tax. Here in India there are many beautiful tourist attractions. If you are an Indian you can get into these attractions for 10-40 rupees. If you are from anywhere else in the world, you pay anywhere from 10-40 dollars. For those of you who are not up on current exchange rates that is 500-2000 rupees. If the price was low because they wanted to allow impoverished Indians access to historical or cultural works I would understand it. However even the Indian prices are prohibitive to the poor here. These prices are paid by middle and upper class Indians who make very good money. It is solely a price increase because of my status as a foreigner.

That is enough griping about India for today. The Pink City of Jaipur is beautiful. Many people here are very nice. I can't wait to come home and see snow.

That is all.

Jaipur

2008-12-07T12:09:00.002-05:00

Here I am in Jaipur in a very nice (cheap) hotel. Things are going great over here except one thing. Travel in India right now is tough. Due to the Bombay bombings airport and all other types of security are on highest alert.

So yesterday I had my haircut at a "gents" salon. So Michael and I are getting a shave and a haircut and there are a bunch of women sitting behind us waiting. After a while a few drunken indian men enter the salon and start haggling with the owner of the shop. They point to 3 of the women and go into a back room. At this point Michael and I realize that we are not in a place dedicated to the styling and cutting of hair. Needless to say the rest of the shave was quite uncomfortable.

Went to Sashi's last night and had some fun times with Shammy her brother. He is back from Cuba to stay for a while. He and I went over to a local Pan shop and had a few of the normal non-sweet pans. This was only the second time I have had normal Pan. It kinda knocked me for a loop. The Beetlenut and whatever else they put in that stuff is strong.

Today we headed out to the Pink City, Jaipur. I finally saw an Elephant here in India. So my checklist is officially done. I saw a snake charmer in Calcutta and an Elephant in Jaipur. That is all I need to see. The snake charmer's snakes were so underfed and malnourished that he had to slap them to get them to wake up.

More to come later as I now have an internet connection that isnt 75 miles away over rough and rocky road.

Bomb-Bay

2008-11-30T10:11:00.001-05:00

For all those that are curious, I am far away from Bombay and I am not being directly effected by the tragic events that occured there recently. I am leaving India on the 12th of December so I am not here for much longer. Please do not worry about me.

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving, and I look forward to seeing everyone around Christmas time!

Puri

2008-11-30T09:06:00.003-05:00

Here I am in Puri after a week at the hospital. Here in India it is difficult to feel like you accomplish anything, because everything you do, is going to be implemented after you leave. By you... I mean me. Everything I am working on here is going to be used in this nebulous future time that I am unable to participate in. It is very frustrating. Every time I feel like I am accomplishing something, I realize that I haven't actually done anything. For instance. One of my goals was to have better quality internet at the hospital. I had done alot of research and looked into alot of options. As far as I knew it was a done deal. However.... It turns out that the technology I was going to use is not available in this particular district of this particular state in India.

Very Frustrating.

However I am having a good time seeing all my old buds from the Hospital. Chandu is still playing frisbee. All the clerks are still insisting I teach them computer classes for a few hours every day. Govinda is still a great guy. Babu is doing well in school. The Mosquitos are still biting. Everything is going well at the hospital.

I have had some time for good thinking. India is a good place to clear your head of all the distractions of home. It is amazing how you can sit on the roof of the hospital and just stare at all the stars. There are A LOT of stars here. You can see the milky-way every night. It is so peaceful here.

Well I have to go and actually do some work other than sit on the beach getting a massage. Oh the hard life here in India...

Avoiding Riots, Kolkata, The Train, Puri

2008-11-22T10:22:00.003-05:00

So we got out of Kathmandu right before the SERIOUS rioting started. It turns out that those innocent schoolk children are starting their own little revolution. I will try to find out more from my friends.

After a few hours in the Kathmandu Airport and a 1.5 hour flight (We spent more time in the airport than on the plane) we arrived in Kolkata(Calcutta). This town is old. I dont mean like ancient archetecture or big monuments with triple digit dates old. I mean old like everything seems to age there. The people, the buildings, the whiskey, the attitude... everything. It is really kind of run down, and the kids on the street are relentless.

As a greeting one of the little kids on the streets decided to run up to me and slap my belly. Unfortunately she was too short to quite get to my stomach so instead she punched me a little lower. Note to all the children of Kolkata that read my blog... punching someone in the groin is NOT the ideal way to introduce yourself.

So we only spent one day in Kolkata at the Paragon Guest house. Nice place filled with hippy travellers. We had lunch at this one really out there place owned by a British lady that I am pretty sure was stuck in the heyday of the empire. She had enough makup on to start and stop traffic if she blinked.

That night we headed out to the Kolkata train station... which is a sight to behold. This trainstation is about 4 airplane hangers worth of crowded people. It is a city unto itself. The trainride was rather pleasant. It was only 9 hours and at night, so we just slept and woke up in Puri.

Since we weren't going to the hospital right away, and had to meet one doctro from spain called Marta, we decided to go to the beach. The sun was warm, the water was cool, and the people were all trying to sell you something... Just like I remember the Puri beaches! Got a little bit of a sunburn, but at least in December when I come home I will be the only one with a tan!

Tomorrow we head off to the hospital, so this should be my last blog post for about 1 or 2 weeks.

Motadaii out (Motadaii is my Oryian nickname... means the same thing, different dialect.)

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but riots can keep me from the airport.

2008-11-19T23:46:00.002-05:00

So I was going to India today. Probably still will be, but looks like I am going to be delayed. Today there are riots. As we were leaving our guest house, a group of 4 taxi's came down the street blaring their horns. We thought nothing of it until all the shops around us started shutting their heavy metal shutters.

Ahead in the distance we could hear a dull throbbing noise. We were on our way to the airport, and the only way to get there was to go to the Thamel taxi stand. As we approached it it was clear that stones were being thrown into shop windows, and students were chanting something in Nepali. The mob was disorganized, angry, and had weapons. They ignored the people in the streets and went directly for the businesses. Throwing rocks and any and all exposed glass. Finally one man stood on a soapbox and started issuing directions for the crowd. They throng of people began moving as one towards the center of Thamel. After they passed, the police began showing up in full riot gear marching methodically behind the crowd. The police did not appear to engage the rioters directly or try to provoke an attack.

This kind of stuff happens every day in Nepal. This was just the first time it happened close to me. They riot so often that the shopkeepers and restaurants have protocol that they follow. These bonds can happen over anything. Someone is hit and run and the driver won't come forward... Bond. There is a traffic accident and the two parties can't decide who is at fault... Bond. The students have a day off and are bored... Bond.

I was talking to Binod about these bonds, and he said he didn't mind them too much. He removed all the glass from all his shops, and as soon as the riot starts he closes his shutters and just waits it out. He told me that these organized destructive forces are the only way for anyone to be taken seriously in Nepal. He justified them as a necessary evil, and an extreme way to practice freedom of speech.

Hopefully the taxi's will return now that things have moved further away and Michael and I will be able to get to the airport on time.

Ke Garne?

Turkey Festorama

2008-11-19T21:20:00.002-05:00

This is what I have been really been doing in Nepal