Tidbits

Have been in delhi for an entire week and will be for another one! Will wonders never cease?

So not much adventure news then. My friend Dana and I and his girlfriend went out at 4:30am on Sunday to do a photo shoot near Old Delhi. I got into playing with different types of photos so most turned out pretty shoddy. What-ev. The pictures here are all from that. Dana and I have also started rollerblading in the big empty roads of Embassy part of Delhi on Sunday mornings. It's pretty surreal. Nothing like the Delhi I live in.

So the big news this week was that my driver, Satender's eldest daughter graduated from high school! Grades came out this week and while she didn't do well she did graduate. Not doing well however means no college. Her only option at this point are correspondence school. I was happy that Satender celebrated her success as some families put a lot of pressure on kids here. And he's obviously very progressive as he wanted to ask her what she wanted to do! But sadly he also said it doesn't really matter as she'll be married off in a few years and will stop working anyways. Sigh.

Did I mention here before that my house keeper's son also passed his first year of school? She brought me his report card, it was when my mom was here and it was mostly As but she didn't know if that was good or not. It also said he was very naughty! That's what she and everyone else keep saying too:)

Everyone else is doing fine - guard had a new baby girl and one of my direct reports' wife had a baby boy. Lots of excitement.

More experiences of contrast

I had another of those wonderful weekends of contrasts that so aptly define Delhi. Friday night a few of us went to a club in Noida (a suburb of Delhi that feels 8 hours away but is really only an hour or so) to see the techno DJ Paul Oakenfold. Not really my type of music but others wanted to go. Doug and I got there first and got these blue wristbands when we entered that I assumed meant we were over 21. And since we'd never been to this club, we sorta wandered around going up every staircase we saw until we were on the third floor and decided to see what was behind the big black doors. Well- they let us in and we ended up in these private-ish rooms overlooking the other dance floors with huge ornate plush chairs and people kept bringing us free drinks. So presumably we were in the VIP section, but I don't know why. Concert was okay - good people watching - the young, hip, rich Delhi crowd. I just kept hoping they would stop playing techno but that's like hoping mozart would play some 50 Cent - it ain't gonna happen.

Saturday was normal, except for watching my cat play with a pigeon all day. Kali 1, Pigeon 0.

Sunday I was feeling like exploring Delhi - as opposed to sitting in an air conditioned room watching TV like my normal Sundays. So we went exploring in Mehrauli again. This is the place I went a while back that had the crazy step wells and cute kids covered in mud. Well this time the big step well actually had water in it - green, gross, trash-covered water ...but water! And there were all these young men swimming in it - many in their underwear. Not sure how they felt about a white woman with a camera entering this scene. So they started running up the steps to me -I have to admit, that was a bit scary. Like 50 of these dripping wet, mostly naked, skinny boys running towards you yelling in a language you don't understand but I quickly realized that they wanted me to take pictures of them jumping off of various levels - and some of them were jumping at least 5 or 6 stories. Wicked scary to watch (see the guy jumping in top of pic)! Then we wandered around the rest of the "dense jungle" as it's labeled on maps - it's a bunch of trees. Ruins everywhere - some pretty cool - like the boathouse some British guy built to overlook his man-made lake (his estate also overlooked the qtub minar, pictured). Signs accompanying indian monuments are notoriously unhelpful - they say only what you could observe. "This tomb was probably for someone important, is octagonal in shape and has some blue inlay work still visible". The signs on the boathouse said it was built by this Charles guy in the 1850s but when I googled him he left India about 1845 so that's not even possible.

Anyways, after stopping somewhere air conditioned for lunch we went sofa shopping in the other suburb of Delhi, Gurgaon. I had actually somehow managed to never go into a Gurgaon mall, of which there are MANY! So the first mall we went into had what appeared to be a walmart type store with groceries and home goods all in neat, organized, clean aisles that weren't all that packed with people. So that seemed like a good omen for the rest of the day - but the next similar place we went to, in another mall, was like that one after they put a big "everything is free today" sign up. Everything was all over the place - on the floor, in the wrong bins. The people were everywhere, banging into you at every turn. We finally reached the furniture mall and it was good to see options but damn, nice western things can be expensive here!

Capped the evening off with a reunion with a friend who I met my first year in Delhi, Polly - who also happens to be the daughter of my grad school professor. We also ended up in DC together a few years ago. She's now doing yoga in Mysore (an indian town I still haven't been to even though we work there) after doing a tour in Cambodia. It's always great to meet up with old friends!

I am still taken aback at how each element of this seems so normal but it seems like they shouldn't all happen in the same city. Famous techno DJs and VIP lounges where everyone is too cool to have fun, sweaty morning walks around stunning ruins and accompanied by very smiley children who haven't had enough to eat and dry their laundry by draping them over bushes, and chaotic malls with $1000 sofas and caramel popcorn.

PS. Hey - mangoes are in season!

Malaysia, Truly Asia

Spent the last week in Malaysia. We had our company regional retreat on the island of Penang so I took the weekend before to visit with a friend from Delhi, Lu who now lives in Kuala Lumpur (KL). KL was what I expected (really all about the big buildings and shopping malls) but I didn't expect to be so excited by clean big roads, public transportation, driving within the lines, coffee shops and ... malls. It was great to see Lu and meet her boyfriend Eduardo. On Sunday night they headed off for some work in Dhaka so I stayed a day in KL by myself and explored the parks (really beautiful orchids) and bought everything in sight. I got a little carried away by the ice cream and good baked goods. In the afternoons, Malaysia has these wonderful thunder storms that soak you to the bone. And since it's incredibly hot/humid, it feels good.

Malaysia is interesting in that it is modern, and hard to label a "developing" country as it seems developed - Lu said she found it boring, and I can see that. Delhi may be chaotic, dirty and frustrating but it certainly has soul.

Then I went on to Penang. According to people living there Penang's beaches don't compare to the really nice ones in Malaysia and I think they are right - the beach was fine but not amazing. Which I guess didn't much matter as we were in a conference room the whole time. The retreat was actually really nice but the sun worshiper in me greatly missed the sun. We had one day off the Saturday after the retreat which ended up as a crazy random day. It started with parasailing. I had done it once before in Goa, and this wasn't quite as good as they dipped me in the water and then landed in the sand on my butt which is the magic formula for feeling gross and sticky. But unlike Goa, I didn't spend the whole time praying for the rope not to break! I then read
in the morning paper that there was a cheerleading competition in a mall so myself, my c0-worker in India, Krisila and two colleagues from Central Asia, Marty and Rob, went to the mall. The competition wasn't really cheerleading but small groups (3 or 4 people) of young girls - mostly - doing inappropriately sexy dances to the pussycat dolls and britney. This of course inspired us to learn a few stunts - my colleagues really missed their calling!

We then went into the main part of town, Georgetown, looking for a place for lunch and stumbled upon a good sports bar with wonderful hamburgers:) There was a NY Yankees/Red Sox game on the big screen TV - it really is a strange world. Krisila then wanted to hike up Penang Hill. We compromised by taking the 80 year old train up the 700m hill. It was a bizarre little place with fake lawn-type ornamental animals all around, including deer, lambs and dinosaurs. We get to the top which is totally built up with hotels and stands that do henna. The compromise was that we would walk down. The walk down was lovely with jungle-like trees. And monkeys! They appeared to be nice monkeys but I don't trust them further than I can throw them. Then the hill got really steep - to the point that I felt I had two choices; walking in tight s-curves as if I were skiing or walking backwards. We were lapped by a guy who did the hike up and down a few times a week and he was walking backwards so we surmised that was the best way. We had really underestimated the hill and it was dark by the time we got back.

The guy we met was in a band and recommended a place to go to see a jazz band his friends were in. It was in an old mansion that was stunning. And the band was really good. I regret that India doesn't have a better cover-band culture or at least karaoke! In contrast to the place, we were sweaty and backpacker looking. We had to stay until all the other customers had left so our attire wouldn't be noticed.

The following morning Krisila and I rented bikes and rode to see a fishing village. That part of the island was beautiful and did have more of a sense of a "developing" country. It started to pour rain. We saw a few four foot long lizard looking things sunning themselves on the rock (in the rain) which were totally prehistoric. And a family in the ocean holding an umbrella! But it was the relaxed pace of life, where cars would wait for each other to pull out instead of honking and racing around and everyone waved to us and each other. I guess it takes leaving india to remember how hard india can really be.