Chennai in a few days

Let's start with the weekend. Saturday I told my housekeeper that I would take her mother to an asthma specialist recommended by a doctor I work with. The spinal (?!?) hospital that he was working out of that day was pretty far so we all packed into a taxi. Turns out Tenzing is from India and has never been to Tibet - her mother moved her about 36 years ago. The hospital was not bad (although it's always weird to see patients on stretchers hanging out in the waiting room). I had to push the doctor to detail side effects of drugs and how to properly take the inhaler but overall I thought he was pretty good. Tenzing's mom doesn't speak english but it was nice to spend some time with them. While it was very cheap in my world (like $20 for the visit and meds), there is no way they could have afforded it. Then hung out with friends the rest of the day and watched movies.

Just returned from a two day trip to Chennai (aka Madras), the capital of the Southeastern state of Tamil Nadu. It was crazy to see how much it's changed in the past 2 and half years. It's a huge city with no big center or buildings! The beach is totally empty now but I was glad to see that it didn't reduce in size after the tsunami. About a hundred people died in the city, the number is low mostly because the beach is so big that the nearest building are a half a mile off shore.

I went down to present some research findings to the team and see what their activities look like. We have a franchise of clinics, condom sales and communication activities like street theater shows and condom demonstrations. A few things I love about southern India:
1) the coffee, while Cafe Coffee Day has improved Delhi immenslely, south india still wins with actual filter coffee.
2) the food, the traditional meal is thali which is like a personal buffet - on a palm leaf. All these tiny bowls of various local flavors that you put on the rice in the center of the leaf. They also have amazing fruit, not the least of which is the tiny bananas and pineapple. The bananas are often sold right off the vine (which is no longer connected to the tree).
3) the weather, it is always hot in the south - but not that unbearable kind.
4) the men wearing skirts. Okay, they aren't actually skirts - they are lungis, one piece of cloth wrapped at the waist and maybe folded up to make walking easier. The picture here is of men watching our street theater. Most were barefoot working in a huge fruit market and I looked down and saw one guy with six toes!!


The first street theater performance we saw (oh, the purpose of these performances is to get people talking about STI and getting treatment from our clinics) was in a flower market. Just beautiful and one of the few places here that is both crowded and smells good!