California Dreamin'

Okay - not really, sort of sad to be leaving Australia so soon. I'll add it to my growing list of places I'll have to come back to someday. Tomorrow morning I'm off to San Diego.

Since I don't have a lot of pictures of my last few days, I'll populate this post with picts from the earlier part of the trip.

So it was a typical large conference. Some of the sessions were actually pretty good but my interest in the topics is very narrow. A lot of it was on gene investigation to find new HIV treatment options. They did a summary of the conference today at the closing ceremony and I literally didn't understand the summaries! Interesting lessons: circumcision works in HIV prevention (already knew that, but very much reinforced), other things like microbiocides are promising but are already being disproven, condoms and needle exchange will always be our most effective prevention "technologies" - since effective means in the real world, abstinence doesn't hold up and finally too much science and scientists are divorced from the implementers and so don't realize how valuable their info could be if they just analyzed it in different ways.

Non-conference things I've accomplished:

• Ate Kangaroo (they were so cute I had to taste them!)
• Went to see a live band (I so needed that after the lack of them in Delhi)
• Saw Il Trovatore (verdi opera) at the Sydney Operahouse
• Had a different good beer about every 8 hours
• Practiced my aussie accent enough so that people almost think I'm from somewhere near here
• Constantly left Deepa in the dust when I forgot that it takes her 5 minutes to step onto an escalator as she's a bit afraid of them. I kept forgetting and would keep on talking only to realize she was now like 100ft behind.
• Walked so much I reached the point where my walking shoes proved uncomfortable. It's just been so long since I really walked, I couldn't stop!
  
• Successfully gained back all the weight I've lost over the last six months. Oh well, it was worth it.
  

First impressions of Australia

Greetings from Sydney!

This is my third day here - packed days! My colleague Deepa and I stayed in Bondi beach until last night. Australia is really growing on me - I can see why you all who have been here rave about it. It's not actually foreign - it's very familiar but with extra charm. So far Australia is fulfilling all the stereotypes about beer drinking, backpacking, rugby-loving, funny accented, beef lovers. But it's really cosmopolitan - in a sort of European way (sidewalk cafes, etc). What's really struck me is how friendly people are - I don't know why American's aren't as friendly. I haven't noticed if the toilet flushes backwards but the locks on doors are opposite - you don't turn the handles towards the lock but away from it. Weird aussies. And it's really expensive here (although that might be just in comparison with Delhi).

It's actually been really interesting to see Sydney through the eyes of an Indian. She's been to Singapore and Thailand, but never anywhere like this. Her observations so far:
-"The public buses are so wonderful - they're clean and efficient"
-"The malls don't have sand in them!"
-"There's only one lock on the door?"
-"The waves are so violent!"
-"Australians are so tall!"
-"Is this pure veg?"


So on Friday we walked around Bondi, great cafes and shops and obviously a beautiful beach (although it's too cold to spend much time by). On Saturday we decided to do a one day tour up to the blue mountains - it's a great time because as it's winter they do Christmas in July up there. I was hesitant to do the tour as I usually find organized tours annoying but this one was actually wonderful. (Oz Trails if anyone is heading here). The mountains were beautiful (the eucalyptus trees create a blue looking haze - hence the name). Waterfalls (pictured), rock formations, aboriginal drawings of kangaroos, actual roos in the wild (hee hee), a cute little town with great chocolate, the steepest inclining train in the world (how come everywhere I go they have something with a similar label to this?). Deepa was really hesitant about the sky train thing but loved it! She said the best part was the train though. And the roos were so crazy - I had a nice one on one talk with the roo in the picture with me. And two of them actually did a little boxing (see the very fuzzy picture)! The tour ended with a cruise into Darling Harbour (where the Opera House is).

We then transfered into our conference hotel (which is amazing - much better than the bunk beds at the backpacker's lodge in bondi). So last night Deepa was tired and I decided to go find beef and beer (mmmm...). Everything along the harbour seemed really swanky and way more fancy than I was looking for. Someone finally pointed me to an Irish pub and Australia was playing Japan in soccer asia world cup. I grabbed a table and these really nice guy and his wife totally included me in their evening and we had a great evening. Australia lost in free kicks but it was such a fun time.

Next onto the conference!

Around the world in 20 days

Hey all

I'm off to Australia tomorrow to present a poster at the IAS conference <http://www.ias2007.org/>. Then to San Diego for Kristin's wedding and then to Mass/Penn to visit the fam. Can't wait to see you all!

I'm sure I've done a bunch of interesting things over the past week but my head is to full of 'to-do' lists to remember them. My boss is leaving India and as her farewell party she requested that the whole office take a bus to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and Fatehpur Sikri. The picture is our group at Fatehpur. I hadn't been to Fatehpur Sikri in six years - I remember really liking it - especially the human parcheesi board. And it really was stunning and almost unrecognizable - they've done a lot of restoration work.

This is the kind of suitcase I would like to take with me!

Red tape in India

I just bought a new sofa set - which is very exciting and makes me feel old - but ultimately the process is as interesting as the end result.

Step 1: Go to shop area - everything you'd want to buy has an area. The flower market, the spice market, the furniture market, the cloth market, the upscale market, the spatula market, the lamp wiring market, the toilet market etc.

Step 2: find out where the market has now moved to - since the "sealing" drive in Delhi everything is closed and relocated. I think I've mentioned the sealing drive before but in a nutshell, most of the buildings in Delhi have some sort of business running out of them and apparently they are not zoned as such and people have been paying the authorities to look the other way. The other part of the sealing drive is encroachment - or buildings that have extended into the streets. So about a year ago Delhi started using a wrecking ball on all these illegally placed buildings including most good restaurants and many malls and markets. So while the high end furniture shops used to be on MG road, now they are in malls in the Gurgaon suburb.

Step 3: try to guess what you might be buying. So much of the stuff here is custom made that you are not so much purchasing something known as relying on other stuff they make to ascertain if they can make that as well. The sofas that are in the showrooms, for instance, are possibly the ugliest things I've ever seen. There's an odd affection for Knots Landing-styled designs and either very soft or very hard cushions. That's the cloth sofas - the other option is heavy wood with cushions which are more visually appealing, and traditionally indian - however, I'm a lounger and therefore want soft, comfy sofas that I can curl up on. "Yes madam, we can make that. Would you like to look at our catalogue of things that are not even close to what you want?"

This step requires extensive and exhausting trips all over town. It usually follows a nice emotional roller coaster where you get really excited at the prospects and then realize that if you have to see one more sofa or spatula or pepper grinder that just isn't quite right you're going to give up. So you take a break and then revive your energy (in my case about six months later) and try again.

Step 4: layout obscene amounts of money and wait - the amount of waiting time is unknown. The indian furniture here is cheap (as is custom-made wood stuff) but the more western stuff is not.

Step 5: get an email from someone leaving town selling exactly what you just bought for far less money.

Step 6: follow-up. The place you bought it from has estimated 3-6 weeks and will have forgotten about your order unless you call. The fact that you haven't paid yet doesn't influence this. I received my set 6 weeks and 6 days from the first payment which included about 7 phone calls and a visit to the factory on my part. And I think that was pretty timely given other experiences.

Step 7: Fall in love with whatever you've bought and refuse to listen to anyone who dares criticize it! Actually I'm really happy with the sofas. But I'm fully aware that I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance and will only process good information on them now.

Random Post Script: I emailed many of you this but it's just so classic that I want to document it. In an evaluation of the retreat I recently organized in Kodai, I received the following response:

“Trouser hunt really form a very good team building”

I think he meant treasure hunt. Or maybe I just missed the good part of the game.