Hello Bangkok!
Sawadi Krup! (namaste in Thai)
After 24 hours of bus, plane then bus, with lots of waiting in between, I have arrived in Bangkok, found a hotel, showered, shaved and am about to get some grub before I completely crash. I left Pune by bus yesterday at 9:30pm and arrived at the Mumbai airport at 1:30am ish. My flight was to go at 5:45, but due to fog over Dhaka (Bangladesh), it didn't leave until 8am. Ouch. Most of that time I was awake. Thinking, having chai, reading about Thailand and listing to the Hare Krishna (ISCON) westerners clap their hands and sing songs in Hindi while the locals looked on with mild curiosity at these strange foreigners. The whole trip was a story for the web log thought I. And now I am getting around to making it into one.
So we left Dhaka, and landed. I got off, weehoo! An early arrival in Bangkok! I got on a shuttle bus and a few minutes later, an official came and looked at my papers and said "This is Yangoon (also called Rangoon, the capital of Myanmar - formerly Burma). You must get back on the plane." Oh, I thought. Well, right, I better do that. And I did. Upon doing so, I noticed that I was one of the few that actually left the plane - and I thought I was really getting a jump on all of them :) So some smiled and snickered, I felt a bit sheepish, but
better to feel like a dufus than to be stuck in the wrong country and have to buy another plane ticket to leave right?
The street my hotel is on is ridiculous. Backpacker central. I have never seen anything like this. Quito times 5 and more concentrated. Its a complete people
zoo mostly of American/euro trash travelers, with some innocent bystanders like me loping a long. It really has a carnival feel and I will be very happy to meet Tim and his sister, see some sights and get the heck out of here. I just emailed them so I hope they reply and we meet soon.
It is strange being in a place where all I can now say is "Thank you." - and I just learned that. And I find I still wobble my head like an Indian. Have to change that before I get back to the states.
love you all,
Colin
A Merry Julian Christmas!, thoughts on things, and an up-to-date update
OKey Dokey,
Here we are in 2004. I have been here for 14 months and 3 days now. On Sunday I am off to Thailad for 3.5 weeks, then back here to India for 5 weeks, then home to Cali via Singapore. There is a small small chance that I will skip through Australia and visit my brother Jamie on the way home. My doing so depends on how much extra it will cost and whether or not Jamie is actually in Australia while i am there.
Christmas Eve is when Germans celebrate Christmas. So, some of my German friends cooked up a great meal, i contributed my own grean beans and onion dish, some apple pies and rolls (from the bakery of course) and we had a great time. Used the 12 inch tall xmas tree that Erica gave me last year, and we each had a present to open. It was very nice. And the mashed potatoes won my heart. On Christmas day, Sonal and I went out to dinner with Nalin and Leah and had veg sizzlers at a nice restarurant. For Xmas, Nalin and Leah bought me material for pants and a traditional Indian Kurta, and they took me to the tailors to get it stitched. It looks really good so i wore it out for dinner that night. I think i will wear this outfit at clubs in California when I speak.
Christmas time in India is nothing special. You don't feel the anticipation of the upcoming event of Christmas Eve and Day. You don't get to go home and be with your family and old friends. You probably won't have a typrical Christmas meal, and you just don't see any decorations around town except in commercial places like Sony World or Pulse: The happening supermarket. Churhes are here, but I am not a big church guy and though I was interested in going to a service to sing some traditional Christmas carols, I just didn't make it. So I have missed 2 Christmases in a row, and I am really looking forward to being in the States for the next one.
New Years Eve was nothing special. I was going to go to a party with Sonal, but we pooped out on the way there, hungry and tired, so we stopped for dinner at a nice Italian place and toasted in the new year with glasses of water whilst eating some kind of italian pasta dish that managed to include what must have been green chilies.
Ouch.
I've noticed, rather to my dismay, that Blog updates are distinctly different in nature fom the mass email updates i used to send out. Since i imagine much fewer people are reading this, I tend to put less effort and care into these blogs. Not knowing my exact audience, I am not so motivated to produce informationally dense, culturally descriptive emails that i feel represent the experiences I have had here. This to me is sad because I want to do my best to bring some of India to all of you as best as i can because it is such an amazing place. Probably the single largest factor that contributes to the loss of zeal in my updates, is the fact that I have been here for quite a long time - as far as trips go at least. Bullock carts blocking downtown traffic (I saw one of these yesterday), beggars tugging on my sleeves as i try to shrug them off, rich new indian foods that i discover each week, wonderful times that i spend with so many indian friends that I have made here, and new factoids i learn about the culture that would seem wild, weird or at the least, quite interesting to a foreigner, - all these sorts of thigns fly below the radar because if i allow them to excite me too much, I would have burnt out long ago from sensory overload. Just walking down the street I notice the difference. I dont gawk anymore. I cross the street like an India, step by step, with traffic zipping by me on both sides, just inches away. I drive the crazy roads, no longer with the wild eyes of a neophyte, but rather i feel a bit of stress because it is just so unsafe and I would rather be at my destination than on the same dangerous roads that i once found exhilarating.
All of this does not mean that I am no longer enjoying myself, that I have lost my edge or am somehow burnt out. This is just a natural process of the New becoming the Mundane and the Exciting becoming the Commonplace. It happens no matter where you go, and it takes an amount of time that is probably directly proportional to the degree of difference the new place is from your home. I do still oogle at the herds of water buffalo that cross the roads in the middle of this big city. I stare at the hard working laborers that toil all day building roads or chopping down huge banion tree stumps, chip by chip, day by day, week by week until they can finally burn the base of the stump and dig it out. (the heavy machinery is here actually, but it is much more cost effective to pay 50 rupeess to one of the needy, ubiquitous landless laborers, to break their backs doing the job). I still giggle at some of the Indian English and the way they nod there heads from side to side just kills me - and yes, i do this too.
I am still having such a great time. There are too many Indian families that have invited me to their homes for meals. Just yesterday I spend lunch, the entire afternoon, dinner, and up until midnight with my Rakhi sister Reema and her family. An experience like that is so full of food for thought... from Swati's talk about the proof of the existence of God being seen in the fantastic workings of the innerworld of microbiology, to the wonderul Bengali food we ate, to the hike up a local hill for sunset and the great advice of Reema's dad, Gopal, about how after meals, one should kneel on the floor and comb ones hair in order to ensure the hair stays healthy, nevey grays or falls out, and how if one closes the mouth and moves the tongue forcefully around in clockwise and anti-clockwise motions, wrinkles will never develop around the cheeks and corners of the mouth. Great to hear this kind of thing.
My brothers and I have started a new experiment this year.
We each have purchased Digital video cameras (sony camcorders) and we are going to each film 15 or 20 minutes of video diary per week for the whole year. IN addition to thoughts, ideas, expectations and reflection, we will film scenes from our lives, what is going on wherever we might be. This will be especially helpful because we are all in different places now and of the 4 of us, only Brian is in a fixed location, married to Mary Kay in Culver City with a little girl on the way. Jamie is back in the Netherlands playing basketball for a living and Kevin is in the Bay Area working.
So this diary will be pretty fun to make. There is not shortage of fascinating and eye-catching footage here in India and it will be great to look back on our thoughts and expections/predictions from some point in the future.
On the Rotary front:
The India-wide polio immunization day was this past Sunday, so I went around with my buddy Ravi on my motorcycle and we checked out a few of the immunization points. There were something like 950 booths set up in Pune City alone to undertake this task. We went to a public hospital and then to a couple of booths in the slums. Met some good people doing some great work and I got to spend the day bonding with my friend Ravi, a PhD physics student who i rarely get to see. I haven't been to any Rotary meetings lately, but I have been hanging out with some Rotarians and I just met with the past District Governor yesterday evening (he lives next door to Reema) and we are scheming to get come cooperative projects going between Merced and Pune.
Now I think it is time to do some work on the Rotary website.
Today is Christmas according to the Julian Calendar (used in Ethiopia) so I am not late in wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New year!
