Dave-A-Palooza

Dave’s Tips for Travelers #3: Find Where the “Hash House Harriers” are Running

2007-07-26T02:13:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, I think I may have joined a cult. I had always thought this would be something I would want to avoid. But then Saturday afternoon there I was roaming the rural hillsides of Kathmandu in a taxi with some friends looking for shreds of paper on the ground that would indicate where to take our next turn in order to find the groups rotating weekly meeting spot. Many, many wrong turns later I found myself standing in the middle of a dirt field surrounded by both foreigners and Nepalis, making a Rs.250 offering to participate in the days ceremonies. Immediately thereafter an old British man known as “the Grandmaster” ordered us all to form a large circle and began collectively berating us for all of our human faults. Fortunately, this public shaming did not last long because it was time to begin the “cult’s” two most central (and apparently only) sacraments: running and drinking beer.

The Hash House Harriers is an international organization commonly described as a “drinking club with a running problem.” It was apparently first started by British expatriates living in Malaysia in 1938 who would plan long runs through their exotic surroundings and has since spawned chapters all over the globe. As the club has evolved a series of elaborate secret signals and sacred rituals has evolved with it. In Nepal, the Himalayan Hash House Harriers formed in 1979 and has counted students, businessmen, development workers, diplomats, and even the former U.S. Ambassador among its members. Not really knowing what to expect, I had just begun my first run.

The route for the run is laid out that morning by the weeks run leaders (called “Hares”) and is marked by small piles of finely shredded paper left in various patterns to indicate checkpoints, dead-ends, false-trails or simply as an assurance that you are still on the right path despite the muddy earth that has just crumbled down the mountain beneath your feet. Throughout "the Hash", runners communicate with each other through shouting one of several coded commands (such as "on, on" and "are you?") to indicate when they have found a trail or a dead-end.

It was a truly incredible run in so many ways. Running along the edges of rice paddies and terraced fields, clambering up and sliding down steep and muddy hillsides, and fording small streams (while avoiding leeches) was all incredibly thrilling. And trying to keep pace running at such high altitudes up even higher hills was incredibly exhausting, but when you were able to focus on anything else but how to catch your next breath, the views you were treated to in exchange were indescribable.

It was also an incredible spectacle. If you think that a 6’6” white guy in Nepal is quite a sight on its own (I doubt Dr. Phil in drag would get so many stares on the streets of Los Angeles), now imagine that guy running amongst a pack of dozens of other similarly visually jarring foreigners ,covered in mud and sweat, through rural Nepali villages and mountaintop monasteries. Some bystanders must have thought a new strange colonial aerobic-apocalypse was upon them (fortunately, the HHHH has no such eschatology… that I know of).

Approaching the finish line I witnessed my first Hash House Harriers miracle – despite running who knows where for who knows how long we ended up right back where we had started. And after reaching the finish, I immediately experienced a second and even greater miracle as exhausted Hashers were greeted with a giant cooler filled to the brim with beer. Lots and lots of beer. And after what was nearly an hour and a half of clambering up and down mountains at 1800 meters, this appeared to be the Hash’s greatest doctrine yet. After all, isn’t rehydration critical after a run like that? So I quickly set out to fully replenish my fluids as other runners, and eventually the walkers trickled in.

When everybody had safely returned to the finish we were again brought into a circle by our fearless (and perhaps insane) "Grandmaster" who resumed berating Hashers as if he never stopped. The Grandmaster (who was actually a really nice guy when he is not putting on the show) then brought different individuals to the center of the circle and for various reasons singled them out for personalized berating and the flock would join the Grand Master in songs about these individuals (the Himalayan Hash House Harriers Hymn, if you will). Beer is obviously an integral part of this stage of the event as well. If you are new to the Hash (like I was) or are a “Hash Crasher,” meaning you fall down a lot on the steep muddy hills (like I obviously was) you too will be brought to the middle and yelled at. More secret songs will be sung about you (all slightly tailored variations on the same original song), and you will chug more beer (any beer you do not finish before the song is over is to be dumped on your head).

So perhaps all cults aren’t necessarily bad after all. This one seemed to combine all the cultish fun of a secret, ritualistic society helmed by a sadistic, egomaniacal leader without all the creepiness of eating human hearts and the weirdness of awkwardly waiting around for a spaceship. And until any of that weird stuff shows up, as a new and loyal wide-eyed follower, I will happily do my duty trying to recruit new followers to the Hash House Harriers. It's great exercise, a great way to see the countryside, a great way to meet fun people, and Nepali beer has never tasted quite so heavenly. If you find yourself pretty much anywhere in the world looking for something to do, find where the Hash House Harriers are running.

I Ate Goat Tail Last Night

2007-07-24T02:01:00.000-07:00

I really do not know what more there is to say about it. I was going to write something about my weekend, but this seems to take precedence over pretty much anything else I could possibly write. Why not goat brain, you may ask? Well, I had already tried that and the restaurant was out of their evening’s supply anyway. It is nice to know that nothing goes to waste...

And, no, goat tail does not taste like chicken.

I think that is the end of the issue.

Some Real Nepali News...

2007-07-05T04:32:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday in Nepal a fuel shortage basically brought all motorized transport in Kathmandu to a halt. The petrol pumps that people were already lining up for hours at a time to refuel from had now run completely dry. Agitating motorists blocked the roads to protest the governments handling of the situation. The police told the Kathmandu Post they had to make use of "light force" to clear the road.

The picture that ran with the article sheds a lot of light on Nepali police perceptions of "light force:"

I am off to (Royal) Chitwan National Park this weekend to ride elephants and spot rhinos, or ride rhinos and spot elephants... I am not really sure which. So if you read any news stories about Nepali tigers mauling a 6 foot 6 white man to death... it's a good bet that it is about me.

And Happy (belated) Fourth of July. America really is a wonderful land.

Celeb-ration: Happy for Paris. Embarrassed for Pretty Much Everybody Else

2007-07-04T03:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I was as relieved as everyone else to hear the good news that Paris Hilton’s long period of unjust incarceration (three weeks, with one vacation) had finally come to an end. Paris was a changed woman and she was once again free to resume her complicated dual societal identity of being a rich heiress by day and a famous party-girl by night. America’s long national nightmare (ok, three weeks with one vacation and one Barbara Walters phone interview) of having one of its dearest celebrities in captivity had finally ended.

I was not so happy though, to read this news on the top center of the front-page of one of Nepal’s major national English newspapers sandwiched neatly between news about how state-sanctioned torture remains rampant throughout the country despite the recent peace agreement and calls for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of the Nepali Supreme Court. I do not want to trivialize what Paris has gone through or even its undeniable newsworthiness in America. But seriously, there happen to be some important events going on in Nepal right now. The devastating ten year civil war may finally be at an end and a constituent assembly election looms that will either pave the way for a bright future or spell the doom of the nation. The monarchy may be abolished. The Maoists may abandon the peace agreement or splinter into even more violent factions. The military may seize power in the face of continued fighting and inept and corrupt politicians. Yet I am reading at the top of the Himalayan Times about Paris Hilton’s looming interview with Larry King?

Of course, I understand that what happens in America will often have ramifications in nations all over the world. American news is often legitimate front-page Nepali news. But somehow the skeptic in me is certain that Paris’ release from the Los Angeles County Jail for driving with a suspended license was not one of those news events.

So, first of all, I am a bit embarrassed for America. Is this really who we want to be choosing as America’s mascot? Couldn’t we at least choose a celebrity that has maybe some commercial success, critical acclaim, or ass-kicking credibility? Some of our celebrities exemplify all three. I mean, for Heaven’s sake, Bruce Willis just released a new Die Hard movie! America does some pretty great things at home and abroad, but in Nepal right now we are basically only known for two things right now: the War on Terror and Paris Hilton. This does not seem like the way to put our best feet forward…

I am also a bit embarrassed for Nepal. I understand the innate human need for diversion in the midst of the harder realities of life. And Nepalis have certainly had their share of tragic realities they should want diversion from. I know that being able to smile and laugh despite facing the world's ugliest horrors may sometimes be the best way to preserve some semblance of mental health. But couldn’t they have come up with a better diversion than Paris? I mean, I would settle for a Family Circus cartoon. Those at least pair laughter with tender lessons about life and family (especially these). And it is not like Nepal lacks their own hollow, good-for-little celebrities to fixate on. If all else fails, they still have a Royal Family.

But probably most of all, I am embarrassed for myself. Because with all the important things going on in the world my knowledge and love for celebrity gossip and pop-culture may rival that of the entire E! Television Network. That Paris Hilton article was the first thing I read in the paper and every morning I dutifully turn to the celebrity gossip section of the Kathmandu Post to find out what Angelina and Sir Paul McCartney have been up to. And it is not like this is even good celebrity gossip here. It is generally untimely, inaccurate and mixed in with a high percentage of Euro-gossip about “football stars,” Ronan Keating and other royal families I should not care about. And yet I cannot stay away. I cannot get enough of it. And I am a little embarrassed.

But seriously Paris, I really am happy for you.

Dave’s Tips for Travelers # 2: Bring Lots of Extra Underwear

2007-06-26T02:40:00.000-07:00

As we all know, whether you are traveling or not, one can never have too many spare undergarments. One never knows when having that one extra clean pair will come in handy. But this rule is more pronounced when it comes to traveling … where you do not know when your next laundry trip might occur; and even more so when it comes to traveling outside of the Western world where you are unfamiliar with the many things that might cause you to need a new pair. Yes, this may be an uncomfortable topic to write about but it is something that must be discussed. Because personally, I do not know if I have the nerves of steel and underoos aplenty that are necessary to survive in an unfamiliar country, and I want to make sure that others come prepared. Two incidents that occurred within my first forty-eight hours in the country serve to illustrate my point.

My second night in Nepal, I was searching for an ATM that would accept my American bank card. My search had been both fruitless and frustrating with bank machine after bank machine giving me nonsensical and/or insulting messages like “Your Bank is Too Busy, Try Again Later” (literally) or “We will not accept your card because we think you are a bad person, go away” (author’s paraphrase). So late in the evening I found myself stuffed into a hot, phone-booth style ATM with my back to the small, extremely-crowded touristy street. As yet another electronic machine began to tell me that my bank was unwilling to do business with me tonight and list the many things I could improve about my personal hygiene, I heard the sound of a car drive up the road and then an enormous explosion not more than a few feet behind me shook the glass in my small bank booth. Maoist attack? Gas main explosion? Building collapse? All were regular possibilities but I did not know what had occurred this time. But I do know I jumped so high the Himalayas nearly had some competition (rim shot). I slowly turned around (showcasing my uselessly lethargic reflexes) to see steam flowing out from the hood of the car and water pouring out from beneath it. The car’s radiator had exploded. And my radiator had just about exploded as well…

The next incident came the following day, in a much less dramatic fashion, as I was moving into my new apartment (virtual tour forthcoming…). I grabbed my backpack in my new bedroom to unpack it when I discovered a large spider guarding the front of the bag. It was “Arachnaphobia” big... if not bigger. In fact, I think I saw a movie where Godzilla battled a similar sized creature throughout the streets of Tokyo. I do not know a lot about spiders but I was pretty sure that this was the kind that could jump long distances, shoot its poison up to fifty meters, and start fires with its laser-heat vision. I would have taken pictures but as you could have guessed, my camera was in the backpack.

I jumped back (much less lethargically this time) and shuddered like my life depended on it. If I hadn’t been so dehydrated and jet-lagged, I would be down one more pair of Captain America collectibles (see below). A spider like this is no new thing in a country like Nepal, but I stood there paralyzed for 10 minutes before I even started to formulate a plan for how to reclaim my backpack. With the plan formed, the next ten minutes consisted of me standing over the backpack with tennis shoes on both of my hands trying to work up the courage to attack my nemesis. And the ten minutes after that (failed) attack were spent frantically searching for the creature after he got away and fretting about when he would return or where he would reappear. And to complete the picture for you, I spent the last ten minutes before I fell asleep curled up in the fetal position, crying and hoping he would not exact his revenge in the dead of the night. I still break out in a cold sweat just writing about the possibility.

So yes, in these first two incidents I narrowly escaped the need for fresh boxers but keep in mind I may just be too embarrassed to write about the times that my luck has run out. That is why I have an abundance of clean underwear with me. If you can relate to either of the above stories, I suggest that when you travel, you prepare in the same way.

This post has been brought to you by:

Here's a thought....

2007-06-20T04:27:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick thought: if you live in a country where using toilet paper in the bathroom is not the norm and blatantly picking your nose in public is, at least dry off your hand a little bit before trying to shake mine.

Just a (sadly not-so-random) thought.

Further in the Future

2007-06-16T04:19:00.000-07:00

So, it turns out I am much further in the future than I had first suspected. My first suspicions that I may be living in the future came my second day in the country when I examined the front page of that day’s “The Himalayan Times” which casually noted the year was 2064. Whaaa??!!! Was the frequent turbulence that I too carefully dismissed on my Qatar Airlines flight actually my plane passing through some sort of time warp or worm hole? Had my jet-lag actually sent me into some sort of 57 year Rip Van Winkle style deep-sleep? I did not know what had happened. But many signs over the next few days confirmed my suspicions I was living in the future. I walked through the crowded streets to see vendors selling DVDs of movies that had not even been released in U.S. theaters yet. I also saw vehicles line up for hours at a time to get fuel from the petrol pumps, confirming that the always feared worldwide gasoline shortage was now a reality.

Eventually I learned that my time travel was neither wormhole nor jetlag induced but rather a Nepali decision in 1958 for their nation to live in the future. It turns out that Nepal’s skewing of their time-zone fifteen minutes ahead of Indian Standard Time is not the only way they have cemented its' place as the South Asian country of the future. They have also jumped over half a century ahead of everyone else in the world by adopting an official calendar that is 56 years, 8 months, and seventeen days ahead of Gregorian, A.D. time. Thus by the Nepali calendar, it is 2064 B.S. (Bikram Sambat).

As a man living in the future I feel the duty to occasionally tell those in the past what they can expect in the years to come. So, here are a few useful things I have observed thus far.

Flying Cars

Unfortunately, cars still do not fly. But, you can often find chickens and goats riding on public transportation – a positive sign that humans and livestock will one day learn to coexist peacefully. While the goats are sometimes forced to ride on the roof of the buses, many humans will choose to ride on the roofs of buses as well.

Global Warming

Good news -- the global warming problem has been solved! I know this because the seeming complete lack of concern here for the massive amounts of pollution from factories, burning trash, and vehicle emissions indicates that by 2064 humanity has found another way to curb the dangerous problem of climate change. There can be no other explanation. So, worry no more about that whole “Inconvenient Truth” stuff (though it does rain a whole lot in the future…). But you may want to have a good surgical mask for that whole breathing thing…

Monkeys Everywhere!

But the best news of all may be that in the future, monkeys are everywhere. Ok, well, maybe not quite everywhere, but there are way more monkeys than there were back in the past. In fact, they even have an entire temple in the future known as "the Monkey Temple." I have not been there yet, but you better believe it is at the top of my to do list. And I would like to believe, that the monkeys there are those really smart super-monkeys.

Unfortunately, for fear of disrupting the space-time continuum, that is all I really feel I should say right now. Hopefully, in time, I will be able to reveal more.

Dave’s Tips for Travelers #1: Never Lose Your Passport Right before Your Trip

2007-06-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

Just before leaving for Nepal I had one of those unwelcome (yet all too frequent) opportunities to learn from my painful, stupid mistakes. It took me a while to figure out what I had actually learned from the process of losing my passport and then applying for a new one within ten days of leaving for Nepal. Certainly a good lesson was “don’t lose stuff,” but surely there must have been a bigger lesson here than that. After a month of reflection (and stewing in lament and anger), I have concluded that the best that could come out of all this would be to warn others not to make my mistake and in the tragic event that they do, to prepare them for the experience that they will have to go through. Those who do not understand their history are condemned to repeat it. So first I say, do not lose your passport. But if you do the following are the stages of Passport Loss Syndrome (PLS) that those finding themselves in a similar situation must go through.

Stage 1: Stress

The whole ordeal is stressful, believe it or not. The stress stage will not truly end until you are fully cured of PLS. I learned quickly that both the Nepali and United States governments are quite clear and rather rigid on their whole “must have a passport to enter or leave the country” rule, but the process for how one replaces a passport in case of an emergency is not similarly clear and comprehensible. The question of whether or not I would actually get a new passport in time for my scheduled flight on Qatar Airlines remained a stressful mystery throughout the process.

Stage 2: Unnecessary Catharsis
The process of sorting through every nick-knack, nook and cranny in search of your lost document might seem cathartic and in a way, productive because you are getting your room clean. It is not. You are only shuffling through piles of junk you should not have kept in the first place to find something that you should never have lost to begin with. Your room becomes no cleaner and your passport does not become any less lost. In fact you are only building up more rage at the situation (which will come in handy in stage 3) to go with the stress you have acquired from stage one.

Stage 3: Wasting Your Time
This stage also plays out throughout the process but is most acute on the day that you will spend at the passport agency. Your experience will begin with the false sense of efficiency you get from thinking that the hours you spent on the automated phone system scheduling a “fifteen minute appointment” for 9am will result in a quick and productive experience at the passport agency. It will not. Do not make any plans for that day. In fact, you may want to block off the next few days. Your appointment was only to give you permission to stand in a line winding out the building and around the block. The two hour wait time advertised for this line is only the time it will take you to get into the building. The next line is much shorter and is intended to give you both a number ticket establishing the order in which you will be seen and a false sense of hope about the process where you will stand in another line. And the final line is where your real waiting will begin. Bring a book, War and Peace and your favorite Civil Procedure treatise would be a good start.

Stage 4: Wasting Your Money
Passports are not cheap. Emergency passports are even less not cheap. And an unnecessary emergency passport is… well… you get the idea….

Stage 5: False Sense of Victory
Yes, the day you pick up your brand new passport from the agency will feel like an incredible, hard earned victory. But you are only experiencing the “False Sense of Victory” Stage. Remember, if you had not lost your passport in the first place, you would not have needed this new passport. You have simply returned to the status quo. Moreover, the next and final stage will completely obliterate what little sense of abstract victory you might be able to claim from some sort of hokey “journey is more important than the destination” rationale.

Stage 6: Intense Self-Loathing
This stage will likely begin, as it did with me, the following day, when you wake up in the morning for the first time with the stress of not having legal international travel documents finally lifted off your shoulders. This is the exact same time you will find your old passport. In a place where you quite obviously should have found it. For example, the laptop bag which you had been carrying with you every day for the last two weeks. In a pocket you did not check. And no, two passports are not better than one.

So, my concluding travel tip to you all is: do not lose your passport. But if you do, before you are on your way to being a happy traveler, prepare yourselves to experience the stages of Passport Loss Syndrome.

A Sad Day in Nepal

2007-06-07T03:14:00.001-07:00

Sad news greeted me today on the front page of “The Kathmandu Post.”
South Asia, the last great bastion of the mustache, is now asking itself the headline question:

“Where have all the mustaches gone?”

See for yourself.

My favorite line from the exposé comes midway through the piece, where the journalist discusses the mush’s traditionally close relationship to various religions. In spelling the 'stache's demise despite purported religious significance, the author notes:

“Modern males may follow religion - and they do - but they are also increasingly guided by reason.”

Well, if a mustache isn't reasonable, then I don't know what is.

I think the role of the mustache's last great defender now logically falls on the shoulder's of NYU Law's most famous, masked 'stache bearer. You know who I'm talking about. Now let's bring back the 'stache.

Above: A picture of Veerappan, the self-proclaimed (and now deceased) 'Robin Hood of India,' sporting some classic South Asian facial hair

The Grossest Sound/Feeling in the World

2007-06-06T21:24:00.000-07:00

I recently went to war on cockroaches. The one-room flat I am renting here seems to be crawling with them. I decided that after nearly two weeks of half-hearted attempts at peaceful co-existence, one of us would have to go (and I was the one paying rent). This became clear after the roaches broke our unwritten little peace accord which specified that they would remain unseen whenever possible. Since they no longer limited their swarming of the kitchen to times of darkness and began expanding their territory into my living room and bathroom, my blissful ignorance was shattered. I was also concerned that they seemed to be growing. Initially they were only about the size of a small mouse. Now they were becoming much more like the size of a large rat. It was time to fight.

So, I went to the store near my house and bought an unimaginably powerful spray that would most certainly be illegal in the United States. Nepal bug-poison apparently does not require the listing of active ingredients, but I am sure that one of them in the bottle I bought is probably some more potent form of Agent Orange or Anthrax. This stuff would kill a rock, any cockroach within a fifty kilometer radius, and probably about half my brain cells with every spray. But now was not the time to pull any punches. It was either them or me. So I thoroughly saturated my kitchen, bathroom, living room, and bedroom with the stuff. Yes I was concerned about ingesting the poison for the next few weeks, but that was fine with me as long as I would outlast the cockroaches.

And I did. I witnessed many flip over and die instantly while some scurried for cover then spent a long time twitching before making their final descent to Cockroach Hell (my theology does not allow for the possibility of a Cockroach Heaven). The next morning, as should have been expected, there was even more carnage. And to make a short story less long; I did not realize the cockroach carcasses would be so widespread when, in my still sleepy state, I stepped into my shower with bare feet and stepped on something.

Oh, the horror.

It somehow simultaneously crunched, popped, and squished under my feet – with all of the accompanying feelings and sounds. Nobody should have to experience such things. I have never felt the desire so strongly to cut off my own foot.

Yes, I had won the war. But at what price? At what price?

The Uniqueness of Nepal: Part One

2007-06-01T05:16:00.001-07:00

So, I have been in Nepal for a week now. Having lived in South Asia for a long time before, there are many things about this place that I am finding very familiar. But I am also loving the things about Nepal that set it apart from the rest of the world.

The Fifteen Minutes

When it came to time zones, India certainly was unique. The entire country of over a billion people spanning a massive distance was united under one single time zone, five and a half hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (to split the difference between those who would be five hours ahead and those that would be six or more). This obviously posed logistical problems for people living on either side of the country, especially when it came to nationwide events.

But Nepal has taken the unique temporal absurdity one step further. Though they are situated squarely in the center of Indian Standard Time, they wanted to symbolically distance themselves from India, so they chose to set their time zone fifteen minutes ahead of India (five hours and forty five minutes past GMT). Thus, they thoroughly distinguished themselves from the rest of the world in the time department and quite literally situated themselves fifteen minutes ahead of India. I think a helpful tourism slogan from Nepal to Indian clients might be: “Nepal: Travel fifteen minutes into the future!”

So, how does this strange time zone affect my daily life? Well, yes, there is the added complication of factoring in the quarter hour when trying to figure out what time it is in America when communicating back home. But where it actually cuts to the core of my very existence, and where I noticed its effects first, was of course in an area near and dear to my heart… television. Nepal only has a few television stations, but they receive a lot of satellite stations from India and a few other select countries, including stations featuring Western programming (such as CNN-Asia, where Wolf and Anderson still reign supreme; Voice of America, where CSPAN and old PBS documentaries stand strong; Star World, featuring mostly TV shows that were cancelled in America; and ESPN-Asia, all-cricket all the time). But in Nepal, all of this delightful programming starts fifteen minutes past the hour. I know, I know. It boggles the mind. I am amazed that I can keep up with it. I am considering setting up an elaborate series of personal alarms and post-it reminders to alert me whenever a new program is starting.

The Flag

You may remember from your “Flags of the World” unit in elementary school that one of the flags was distinctly different from the others. No, I am not talking about Libya's all green wonder. The title of this post should make it obvious that the flag I am talking about, of course, belongs to Nepal.

The flag sports that smart “double pennant design” that is all the rage in both baseball stadiums and Himalayan Mountain Kingdoms. The two pennants represent two branches of the Rana dynasty that were joined together as a flag in the 19^th Century and the remaining colors and symbols represent various aspects of Hinduism, Buddhism (two religions firmly rooted in the country) and of the Nepalese people in general. It is a fun flag.

The Himalayas

Being home to eight of the ten tallest mountains in the world certainly sets Nepal above most of the competition. While Kathmandu itself is in a valley not much more than a mile above sea level, it is surrounded with reminders of the giant company that it keeps. On a clear day (which is fairly rare, especially this time of year) the heights of the country can be seen all around. It is pretty impressive.

I do not have all that much more to say about Mt. Everest and his friends, having not yet experienced them for myself. But I would like to point out this article, about a blind man who just a few days ago completed the Mount Everest Marathon. Yes, you did read that right. I did use the words “Mount Everest” and “Marathon” in the same sentence. And yes, a blind man completed it in close to the amount of time it would take me to ‘run’ a mile on level ground. And yes, I have never felt so lazy. But I cannot worry about that at the moment, it is nearly 7:15 and some canceled American TV show should be coming on TV right about now....

Sun: 1. Dave: 0

2005-10-02T23:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I went to the beach this weekend and played out in the waves of the Bay of Bengal for about an hour and a half on Sunday morning. I think I have finally learned my lesson about not wearing sunscreen... even if I'm "just going out for a little bit" and even if "it’s pretty cloudy outside." (And maybe I'm also supposed to be learning a lesson about skipping church to go to the beach?) I am burnt to a crisp and in a great deal of pain... I went to a BBQ last night and was afraid that people would mistakenly think that I was the main course (ha, ha). But I guess I got what was coming to me.

I am very grateful for the solar eclipse today to shut that taunting sun up for a while. He won, I admitted it, but he still really knows how to rub things in.

And, by using the above picture, I don't mean to imply that I really am a Lobsterman or to make light of the plight that real life Lobstermen face everyday of their lives. Unlike the Lobsterman, I will just be red for a few short days and will probably never develop claws.

So here is a picture of a Lobsterman cursing me, and the rest of mankind, for our insensitivity.

Shame on us.

Kind-of-Bizarre

2005-09-30T11:51:00.000-07:00

Bizarre things happen here in Chennai everyday. Some things are probably bizarre just because I do not understand them, other things are bizarre because of the significant East-West cultural differences, and other things seem to be bizarre in a way that defy all explanation. Sometimes the bizarre things are so prevalent and constant that it almost dulls the senses and I unfortunately start to take it for granted. Other times I am able to open my eyes and really enjoy the ride.

Micro-Bizarre

For example, the other day I was eating lunch at a restaurant (called “Hotel Sangamam” -- all “Restaurants” are called “Hotels” here) down the street from my office. It is a restaurant I go to fairly often, notable for its generally decent South Indian food, close proximity to the office, remarkably slow service and extremely dark ambiance. (At first, I thought the darkness of the restaurant was attributable to a quest to save power – very few lights are turned on and the ones that are on are dimmed extremely low. But then I realized that there were large windows across the front of the building with blinds pulled tightly closed to shut out all natural light, and last I checked, using sunlight did not raise the energy bill. And I know it is not to create a romantic atmosphere. At least I hope not, because every time I have been in for lunch the clientele is always at least 90% male, and I hate to think that the guys I am going in there with are thinking of our lunch trip as a “date.” And to hypothesize that the dark atmosphere was to appeal to their many Vampire customers seemed a little outlandish… a little too “Buffy” to be convincing). In fact, many restaurants I have been to in Chennai have utilized this same “dungeon lighting” sort of theme. So I have chalked this bizarre little bad lighting quirk up to a combination of a ‘cultural difference’ that I do not understand. I am not willing to admit that it defies explanation. Especially when there are always much more fascinating things out there to try and explain...

The other day, I went to lunch at Hotel Sangamam and had another confrontation with the bizarre. We were seated at a table strategically placed by the door to catch rays of sunlight each time the door opened and new patrons came in. We placed our orders and were waiting for our food to arrive, but as explained elsewhere on this blog, ordering and eating your food is often only a small part of the Indian dining experience. Half of the event is observing the strange rituals of the restaurant staff.

The typical table setting dance took place – with plates, cups, silverware and a small plate in the middle containing a stack of napkins. Then another waiter came out to wipe down the table since it was still noticeably dirty from the last customers. We watched as he thoroughly wiped the table down with a small napkin. Then, as we stared on, he carefully smoothed out the napkin he had just used to clean up the filth on the table, folded it and placed it neatly on top of the pile of other napkins already on our table. What the heck? I wanted to laugh out loud while I bitterly wept inside. It’s like he spit in my food, but did it right in front of me.

I know it seems like such a little thing. But it is this conglomeration of dozens of little things a day that combine and often seemingly conspire to ensure that there is rarely a dull moment here.

Macro-Bizarre
And the bizarre takes place on both a micro and macro level. For example, yesterday there were two strikes going on in Chennai that seriously affected our daily life. The first strike involved a common mode of transport I use in the city – an auto rickshaw. An auto-rickshaw is a three-wheeler taxi ubiquitous throughout the city. In Chennai the ‘autos’ generally do not use their meters so drivers will set their own price and the passenger must try and haggle with them to try and get a price that is close to fair (and of course as a foreigner they often apply the White Man’s Discount, which means that they will try and at least double the actual rate). Well, as you have experienced in America, gas prices have recently increased significantly and in India they have increased even more. This has obviously been rough on the more-or-less self-employed auto drivers, who have fuel as one of their biggest expenses already. Well yesterday the Chennai auto-rickshaw drivers decided to take a stand and go on a one-day strike against these high gas prices. I suppose at the recent “Chennai Auto-Rickshaw Driver Union Meeting” they decided that if they stopped working for a day, that would convince OPEC to lower the Rupee per barrel price of oil. It reminded me of those frequent email forwards I receive where Hotmail subscribers across the world are supposed to unite and topple the entire oil industry by not buying gas for one day. I am all for sticking it to "The Man"… but seriously, what's that going to accomplish?

The second strike was actually an India-wide strike against (among other things) the privatization of government controlled industries, banks among them. India is a socialist country and people here in general have great faith in their government-controlled businesses and most banks are controlled by the State (of course the most successful banks are privately run). Recently there has been a move to privatize these banks and the government has been selling off their shares in these banks. As a logical reaction, these State banks went on strike across India on Thursday to protest this privatization. Makes sense. What does not make sense to me is that on the same day many privately owned banks also went on strike across India… also in protest of privatization. They might as well be spitting in their own food.

Let’s Talk About Ganesh...

2005-09-16T03:31:00.000-07:00

One of the more interesting and/or amusing things about the Hindu religion is that when you have a belief system with a million gods, there is no shortage of festivals and holidays to honor them. One of the most interesting of the celebrations is taking place right now in India, called Vinayaka Chaturthi, to honor the birth of Ganesh (aka Vinayaka, Ganessa, Ganessan, etc.). And if you are like me, then Ganesh is your favorite of the pantheon of Hindu gods.

Ganesh is one of the elite Hindu gods and also one used most frequently in the West when characterizing the religion. You may remember him from the classic episode of “The Simpsons” where Homer dressed up as Ganesh to try and stop Apu’s arranged wedding. Though Homer failed to stop the wedding, he succeeded in endearing Ganesh into the hearts of millions of Americans.

In India, Ganesh is everywhere. He is almost always one of the prominently featured gods at the many street side temples and altars. And in many souvenir shops catering to visiting Western tourists, often half of the items available are Ganesh statues of various sizes and various materials. So in terms of merchandising, he is clearly the most omnipresent of the Hindu pantheon (though Vishnu seems to have more celebrity endorsements... see photo below). And in terms of deity market penetration in India, he has probably surpassed that of Jesus at Christmastime in the States. But how much do you really know about the Hindu god of education, success, domestic harmony and “destroyer of obstacles?”

Here is a Ganesh "handicraft" (sporting a very fashionable parasol):

And here is a "Vishnu Approved" Laser Eye Clinic right around the corner from my house:

From being here in India I have managed to develop an understanding of Hindu mythology that goes slightly beyond the education in comparative religions I received from “The Simpsons.” Ganesh is the son of Parvathi, "the Mother Goddess," and Shiva, the God of Destruction. He was born (or begot, I suppose) from the suds created in Parvathi’s bath water. I imagine that the three of them started out with a fairly normal existence as far as Hindu deity families go – picnics in the park, camping trips, the occasional human smiting, and a trip to the temple once a week (and on Easter and Christmas). Ganesh started out with a quite normal, human head… but with a father known as "the god of destruction," it's a pretty safe bet that it is not going to stay that way.

The happy family... in puzzle form:

Well, one fine day, it seems that Shiva left his family to go on a trip somewhere and when he returned to the house he saw that another man was with his wife. Shiva was filled with a jealous rage at this man, whom he could only see from the back. Incensed and blinded with passion, Shiva drew his sword and immediately beheaded the man. As the man’s head fell to the ground and rolled over he discovered to his Oedipal horror that the man he had just decapitated was his beloved son, Ganesh! Ooops. That episode of Jerry Springer writes itself (if it hasn’t been filmed already). Shiva was probably acting a little panicky and thinking a little rashly since he had just accidentally cut off his only son's head after discovering him with his wife, but he was still ever the problem solver. So he immediately ordered his servants to go into the forest and bring back the head of the first creature that they saw to be a new head for his son. And as you may have guessed by now, the first creature they saw was an elephant. And that is how Ganesh came to have a human body and an elephant head.

So the festival began 10 days ago, last Wednesday (a government holiday). All observant Hindus constructed Ganesh idols (big and small) and held celebrations inviting the Ganesh into their homes. Food, incense and other items were offered to him to invoke his actual presence into the statue and over the next three days, Ganesh hung out in all South Indian Hindu homes. Then on the third day everybody took their Ganesh idols and join parades of other Ganesh worshippers that are held throughout the city. Then they march with their statues to the beach and promptly cast their beloved god into the sea. In Northern India the celebration lasts for ten days so today (Friday) is the day of the dumping.

A Ganesh parade in Chennai:

Here is a Ganesh beach party in Bombay:

A Ganesh statue in Chennai, so heavy a helicopter was required to ceremonially drown him at sea:

Nationwide, this is a huge event. The city schedules and publishes separate parade times and routes for each larger neighborhood so as not to completely clog every street in Chennai with a dangerous stampede to the ocean. And since all of these statues are being constructed to eventually be cast into the sea (or any body of water, for those not near the ocean), the government sets certain guidelines for the use of environmentally friendly building materials. Biodegradable materials are preferable and plaster of paris is a definite no-no (it is funny which issues the Indian government decides to care about in the interest of the environment).

It is a fascinating celebration because you see this god being revered and adored for three days (or ten days, for some) and then cast aside in elaborate fashion, though he stays ever present in their culture throughout the year. I cannot help but notice the slight parallel in my life to how I sometimes treat my relationship with the God I believe in.

Bye, bye, Ganesh:

Pirates – Breaking the Nightly Routine.

2005-08-29T01:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I have returned to India.

Here is one of 3 Jesus statues positioned around a church in my neighborhood, welcoming me back to Chennai with open arms:

I am back in the same city (Chennai), working at the same job (IJM) and living in the same room (Dave’s room). As soon as I landed at the Chennai airport it felt like in many ways, I had never left – and the ten things listed below had never left me either. America once again became a beautiful abstraction and India returned to being the ever-present reality. Back into the routine of a daily life that by description might seem anything but routine.

Part of that routine for me is walking home at night from the Burns’ apartment (in India we call it a "flat," but I’m trying to be culturally sensitive to my Western audience). I usually go over to the Burns’ house several nights a week for dinner and then usually some form of Western televised entertainment -- our latest indulgence has been a DVD set of “24” Season 2. So the adventures of Jack Bauer and his unbelievably stupid daughter Kim have kept us up late into the nights.

Since we live in the same neighborhood (called Anna Nagar) I will often leave their house between 11 and 12 at night and walk back to my house, which is about a 10 to 15 minute walk away. When I first came to India last year these walks were a steady source of adventure and interesting incidents. I was never sure what might happen on the next walk.

The first time I remember being fascinated at the massive number of sickly stray dogs that wandered the streets at night. Several dozen of these starved, deformed and diseased canines roamed the few blocks between my house and the Burns’. Many would dig through the piles of trash in a futile search for a morsel of food, others could be seen fighting with each other over territory that neither of them really wanted anyway, and many others would settle down right in the middle of the well-travelled road for a nap, in what I believe is a conscious effort to try and end their miserable existences as soon as possible.

The next time I remember being slightly unnerved as I saw some of these wretched creatures forming into packs on either side of me on the road. I had to quickly decide whether I should try and outrun them all to my house or stand my ground, fight, and hope for the best. In typically indecisive form, I wavered and then finally decided to combine the two options – I found a rock and the largest stick I could (which was still pathetically small) and then charged towards the group of vicious mongrels that were blocking my path. That was how I discovered how pathetic my opponents truly were. I think they would have turned and ran with their gnawed off tails between their legs if the wind turned against them. With a giant white man bearing down on them it was as if the gates of Hell and the entire pantheon of Hindu gods had opened up and poured out all of the fury therein against them. I never saw those particular mutts again and never hesitated again when I saw a group of canines blocking my path.

Bats, rats, frogs, and cockroaches were also ubiquitous on my midnight walks through the streets of Anna Nagar. Burning piles of trash, cars speeding down the road with no headlights on, families sleeping on the streets and drunken watchmen trying to engage me in conversation also became an expected part of my walks. On one occasion I was even stopped and questioned by a group of Policemen who I can only assume must have been extremely bored that night.

But all of these events had become commonplace and my nightly walks home had become very routine. Until last Tuesday night. I had navigated the packs of dogs, the swooping bats, the drunken watchmen, and rounded the corner to the street my house was on when I realized I was hearing a weird sound… the sound of metal repeatedly scraping against dirt and gravel. I thought nothing of it until I arrived at my gate (which I was getting ready to climb since the lock and chain are secured around it so elaborately as to not make it worth trying to remove the thing in the pitch dark of night) and then I turned and realized that all the way down my street, as far as the eye could see, there were groups of people digging holes on the side of the road. Large holes. Lots of holes. At midnight. What the heck?

The first thought that popped into my head was that scene from the Tom Hanks movie “The Burbs” where he discovers his creepy neighbors digging a hole in their backyard in the middle of the night, presumably to bury a body (incidentally, I also thought of the very similar plot device in a classic episode of ‘ALF’). But to think that all these people were out in the streets digging graves for bodies was a little far fetched. So I quickly moved on to the next logical explanation – pirates! Of course, these guys were out either hiding or retrieving their pirate gold! And I had stumbled onto their midnight mischief and had been standing there in an open mouth stare for the past 5 minutes. I had to get out of there before they realized I had discovered them.

So, I hopped the gate leading to my house and ascended the external staircase to the roof to try and observe these buccaneers from afar. Of course there was the more than inconvenient fact that going up to the roof tends to stir up the bats. And then it turned out that there were a lot of trees blocking the view from the roof. So in general, the roof idea was a disaster, but I could still hear the unmistakable sound of digging loud and clear… and the more I listened to it, the more I was convinced that it was unmistakably the sound of Pirate Digging.

So I moved back to the gate to try and observe from there. I also realized that I would need to take a picture of this. Such odd and nefarious activities needed to be documented (plus that way I would have a record of where the treasure was buried). The problem was that it was very, very dark outside and a flash would no doubt just arouse the pirate’s latent homicidal tendencies. So I tried to take a picture without a flash anyways, hoping that maybe the laws of photography would be temporarily suspended for my sake. They were not.

Here is that photo:

Since that didn't work I knew I was going to have to take a risk and take a flash picture. And having recently watched a BBC special on combat zone photography, I felt like it was a risk I was prepared to take. So my plan was to snap a quick picture, dive behind a pillar to hide myself and then dart into my house… fully preparing to barricade myself in my room to protect myself from the inevitable pirate attack. And I had seen Swiss Family Robinson enough times to know how to withstand a pirate siege. As long as they didn’t have immediate access to their cannons, I figured I would be ok. So I positioned myself, lined up the perfect picture in the viewfinder, took the snap, and immediately dove for cover.

I think I dove to soon:

I had botched the picture! But it was too late to worry about that now. I had to run for my life. So I darted inside the house.

Fortunately no attack took place and I went to bed to the sound of dozens of shovels, digging through the night… to hide pirate treasure.

Now of course, at the time, I didn’t really think anybody was hiding (or digging up) any pirate treasure. That would be silly. It was probably some sort of maintenance crew that needed to dig dozens of random holes for some yet to be identified purpose. In recent days I had been seeing holes here and there throughout the neighborhood in broad daylight. But when I came out from my house the next morning to head for work, I went out to inspect where the ‘workers’ had been digging, and though the dirt clearly looked like it had been disturbed, there were no holes. Anywhere. I should have been concerned, or at the very least curious. But I was neither. I was just happy to have had the nice break from the routine.

Here is a picture of the hole not being there the next morning:

And here is a drawing from a police sketch artist who I asked to recreate for me what it would have looked like when these pirates were going through their treasure chest:

And finally, here is a picture of the street sign for the street I live on (which is funny in its' own right), in case any of you want to search for the treasure on your own:

Back in the U.S.S.A, you don't know how lucky you are boy...

2005-06-12T22:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I am back in America. Please forgive the misappropriated Beatles paraphrase in my title. I just finished taking the LSAT last Monday. Now I am looking forward to spending the next month and a half just soaking up the glory of the USA. There are a lot of things I miss about living in India already. I miss the people a lot. I miss some of the sense of simplicity, focus, and purpose in my day to day life. I miss one of the coolest and more meaningful jobs I will ever have. And sometimes I even miss the food a little bit. But at the same time, there are definitely certain things that I am glad to be getting away from for a while and I am realizing how lucky I am to be back.

Here are ten of those things that I will not miss:

1. Traffic Patterns
To use the word “pattern” to describe any sort of motor vehicle movement that takes place in Chennai is generous, to say the least. To follow a pattern would imply that the cars adhere to some sort of organizing rules, and a few short minutes on the streets of Chennai would reveal that the opposite is true. To begin with, forget the notion of sidewalks, bike lanes, or any lanes in general. Even the idea of “one way streets” seems to be treated by drivers with about as much respect as I give to the comedic stylings of Carrot Top. And the streets are quite crowded. In a city of eleven million people, you have to learn to share. And in Chennai, the streets are shared by erratically driven cars; aimlessly wandering pedestrians; speedy little auto-rickshaws; bicycles used to transport mattresses, sheets of glass, and pieces of lumber; motorcycles loaded with sometimes up to eight people; and the occasional water-buffalo and cart combo. It can be an imposing variety and volume of players in the traffic system.

It is nice to know that the “red light, green light, yellow light” system of traffic management is used by other countries around the world to bring more consistency to international driving. While India uses the same trifecta of lights, they have greatly simplified the system by assigning only two meanings to the colored signals – in Chennai, the green and yellow lights both mean “go” and the red light means “proceed with caution” (and often for the sake of simplicity the driver does away with the seemingly superfluous modifier “with caution”). In doing this Chennai has done away with the overly absolutist, authoritarian and frankly annoying command to “stop” at intersections. It is actually quite liberating… and a bit terrifying.

2. Love that California smog!
I have never taken clean air for granted and I have always tried to live by the “give a hoot, don’t pollute” philosophy. But after spending a year in a city that really elevates pollution to an art form, I am happy to be in a place like Sacramento where the air seems to be drastically cleaner on even the smoggiest days. A place where I can go running in the neighborhood and not get nauseous from the burning piles of trash, but rather just from the painful joy of exercise, a place where when I swab my ears the q-tip doesn’t come out black and brown every morning.

3. Sweatman
Yes, of course I sweated before moving to India. And yes, I have sweated since returning to America. But I have never before sweated like I sweated in Chennai. It is one thing to walk out of your air conditioned house and be drenched by your own sweat within seconds. It is quite another thing to find sweat gushing out from pores that you previously didn’t even know existed. Having sweat pour out from the tops of my shoulders, the tips of my elbows, and the front of my chin was surprising. Having sweat then regularly start bursting forth from my fingernails and my front bicuspid teeth was just plain freaky. I felt like I was becoming an X-Men reject whose ineffectual mutant power is massive human saline production.

On the bright side, I think that this has given me an increased tolerance for the California summer heat since my return. While my family is uncomfortably sweating bullets and cranking up the air conditioning, I am usually hunting through my stuff for my winter jacket and scarf.

4. Do you have a staring problem? Yes? Oh, ok.
Yes, I enjoy being the center of attention as much as anybody. But I am glad to be back in a place where I am not the focus of constant, gaping mouthed stares. Young or old; Hindu or Muslim; men, women and children alike all found a 6’6” pale white man in Chennai to be infinitely fascinating. I have always adhered to the school of thought that if you are staring at somebody, you should try not to get caught staring – if the subject of your stares looks back at you, you should quickly look away or pretend you were looking at something else. In India this philosophy seemed to be unheard of and people generally made no effort to disguise their stares. In fact, when you look back at the person staring at you, it will only intensify their stares. Being fed off of a steady diet of infinite Law and Order and CSI spin-offs, my initial unsettling reaction when confronted with these unyielding stares was “serial killer.” Now, it is more than a little disconcerting to me that at a certain point this behavior went from being creepy to just being a normal part of my everyday life. I even invented a game to play when people would stare at me as I walked places around the neighborhood – usually by staring back at the person you could cause them to loose all track of themselves, get totally caught up in the intense “stare-back,” yet often still continue with whatever activity they were involved in “pre-stare.” In my game, you get one point for making a staring person lose track and walk into something, two points for causing a staring bicyclist to crash, and three points if you cause a staring motorist to get involved in some sort of minor car accident. Yes, it is a slightly subversive game. And no, I never actually scored any points. But many times I got hilariously close.

All that to say, I am happy to be in a place for a while where I am almost universally ignored.

5. Mmmm, is that chocolate milk?
Ok, so the tap water was not always brown, but it was never safe to drink. And it would often turn brown without a moments notice. There are few things more discouraging to the disciplines of dental hygiene then to all of a sudden find strange brown water pouring over your toothbrush.

6. Popping Pills
Without putting too fine of a descriptive point on the subject, lets just say that I regularly relied on certain medical remedies to keep things moving smoothly… or more often to keep them from moving too smoothly. Often my bottle of Pepto Bismol pills was my best ally and closest confidant in the constantly raging war for regularity. I am happy now to be in a place where ‘popping a Pepto’ is a special occasion and not an hourly necessity.

7. Can you spare a square?
I am also glad to be in a place where having toilet paper provided in a bathroom is an expectation and not an exception. My limited time in Cub Scouts taught me to be prepared in all situations, so I soon learned to always carry around ‘10 squares’ in my wallet for emergencies, but I am glad to now be able to walk around worry free and with a thinner wallet.

8. Let There Be Light!
My extensive experience inside Indian bathrooms has revealed to me a startlingly bizarre yet consistently present design feature — whether it was in an office building, an apartment, or my own home, I did not use a single bathroom in India that had a light switch on the inside of the bathroom. I cannot count the number of times I walked into a bathroom, shut the door and reached for the light switch only to find myself standing in the pitch black grasping for something that is not there. I then have to look outside the bathroom door to a panel of usually 8 different switches and proceed to test each one of them before I figure out which one actually controls the lights in the bathroom (invariably, the other seven on the panel seem to control absolutely nothing). So as if your feeling of vulnerability and discomfort in an Indian bathroom is not intense enough already, now you have to do your business just hoping somebody won’t come along and mistakenly (or maliciously) leave you in the dark. On the other hand, it is always a source of amusement to see somebody else unaccustomed to the bathrooms in India wander into one, shut the door, and several seconds later open the door with a look of confusion, exasperation, and no relief.

9. Where’s the Beef?
I am glad to be in a place where beef is worshipped for being tender and juicy, not just for being smelly and holy. My first meal off of the plane was a “Double-Double Burger from In ‘n Out which was shortly followed by steak at home as my next meal, and I intend for those to be my last meals before I board a plane to leave for India again.

Ok, so I only thought of nine things. Ten just seemed like such a nice little round number to promise to people that I have a hard time changing it now… even in the face of the harsh reality that I do not have ten things to list. Nine is the new ten.

Sting: A Sacred Love for the Indian Music Scene

2005-02-18T04:30:00.000-08:00

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key." - Winston Churchill

For a while here, I felt the same way about trying to understand what Western music was popular in India and why, as Churchill felt about forecasting the actions of Soviet Russia. It was truly an enigma.

Based on my observations, the most popular Western music style seemed to be heavy metal. The most common music t-shirts bear the marks of heavy metal bands (Megadeth, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, and among Christian circles - Stryper). And most of the live music I have had an opportunity to see has had a strong emphasis on heavy metal covers. And the western music hour on the "Southern Spice" music video channel also generally carried a heavy rotation of such music (pun intended).

And yet, if you asked anybody here who the most popular Western band or artist is in India, many would not even hesitate before replying "Bryan Adams"... not exactly a god of Thrash Rock. And then in most music stores there is a disproportionate emphasis on albums from the likes of Adams, Pink Floyd, Enrique Iglesias, Jethro Tull, and Baby Spice. And as I considered this discrepancy further, I started to notice that during my nightly hour of Western music video bliss, I was always bound to see a video from each of those artists. I could see Pink Floyd as a sort of godfather of Heavy Metal music and Jethro Tull as some sort of flute playing, long-bearded stepchild, but I had trouble figuring out where Enrique and Bryan fit into the mix. It is awfully hard to mosh to "Everything I Do I Do It For You" or "I Can Be Your Hero Baby".

Finally I figured out what the real common denominator was that had endeared each of these particular artists into the hearts of Indian music fans. Each of them had played concerts in India within the last decade or so. And Bryan Adams had toured the subcontinent twice, putting him clearly at the top of the heap.

On February 4th, while my family was gathering in America to celebrate the birth of my wonderful sister, I celebrated by watching Sting begin his rise to the pantheon of Indian musical icons when he brought his "Sacred Love" tour to Bangalore.

To review a Sting concert in India by talking about how he performed on stage does not do the Indian Concert experience justice (and I'm all about seeking justice). It's like trying to describe watching the Super Bowl without talking about the commercials. Yes Sting "rocked the house". Yes he's talented. Yes, he played "Message in a Bottle" and "Every Breath You Take". No, there was no surprise reunion with his other "Police"-men. But you could learn all of that from buying his "Sacred Love Tour" DVD. Seeing it in India was so much more than just watching a proto-punk-Brit-New-Age-Adult-Contemporary Rocker play some songs about love and revolution.

The most interesting thing to me about the whole thing was the way the concert handled merchandising. Trying to understand the profit strategy employed by the companies involved would probably make your head explode with the schizophrenia of it all. And this was sometimes a good thing.

For example, at a concert in America you would expect to pay about $300 more for a soda than it would cost in a grocery store. Yet at Sting-India, I was able to buy a can of Diet Pepsi for half of what it would cost at an Indian grocery store. When was the last time you went to a concert and thought: I should buy a bunch of soda here at these reasonable prices to stock up for home? With can of Pepsi in hand, standing in line to see one-third of "The Police" for under 20USD I thought I had stumbled into some sort of untouched concert paradise. A few steps later I got to the gate and realized the guards were making you turn over and throw away all food and drink before going inside, including the can of soda they had just sold to me. Perhaps they had caught on to the concept of shamelessly scamming concert-goers out of money after all. Or perhaps not -- I quickly guzzled the rest of my Pepsi and once inside the gates discovered that there were more booths selling Pepsis at the same low, low price. And once I had made certain that there were no more people to confiscate my precious blend of Cancerous NutraSweet and Caffeine, I bought another can.

After this I thought that if "The Man" is not going to gouge me on concessions, he must really be getting ready to nail me on the irresistible "Sting in India" commemorative concert t-shirts. Yet my search for overpriced concert paraphernalia was completely in vain. The paraphernalia did not exist! One of the easiest ways to turn a quick buck at a concert from suckers like me that want to forever commemorate their experience of rocking out with Sting in South Asia and I found nothing! No "Sting: India 2005" baseball caps. No t-shirt with a picture of Sting hugging Gandhi. No pictures of Sting waving (or wearing) the Indian national flag. Not even a traditional Indian sari with Sting's face emblazoned on it. Nothing. How will I COMMEMORATE??!! Especially when they already prohibited us from taking any cameras into the venue.

The closest I ever got to paraphernalia was a head band from a local cell phone company that was curiously emblazoned in large letters with the word "SING". But the company just gave those away to everybody, and anyway, I don't think it'd impress anybody if I told them that I went to a "Sing" Concert in India. Why has the market at Indian Concerts to make money off of suckers like me not emerged yet? There ARE more like me. I know it. I've met them. Most of them have more money then me ... and they enjoy t-shirts too. Now years from now if I want to prove to my friends that I saw Sting in India I can't just wear a shirt. I'll have to tell them... but with no concert apparel to offer as proof! Who is gonna believe that?

The location itself was also an interesting player in the concert experience, as you might expect. The venue was called the "Bangalore Palace Grounds", but a cursory glance at the facilities made it painfully obvious that the palace had crumbled and the monarchy had vacated long ago. Basically it was a large field with walls around it. I wish I could say they were "Fields of Gold", but I think that "Fields of Gravel and Weeds" would be a more apt description. Two iron rail fences had been set up at midway points across the length of the field to differentiate between the three different ticket prices, and dozens of policemen clad in riot gear patrolled the borders to guard against any possible breaches.

We arrived early enough to be able to situate ourselves right up against the fence at the very front of the back section. The only fence spot available was underneath a large tree and so we wedged ourselves into place. As we waited for the concert to start, I began considering the fence, the massive crowds, and the riot gear and determined that if anything got out of hand with the crowd this would be the exact spot where I would be crushed and/or trampled to death against the fence. So I made good use of my time by sending a text message to a friend back in Chennai notifying him of the precise place to look for my body.

Fortunately, Sting's "New Age" message of love, peace and harmony did not incite the crowd to any sort of riot but as I tried to hold my ground throughout the night and continuously felt the crush of people pressing against me, I still remained worried that the masses really didn't need Sting to give them a reason to crush me to death.

Nonetheless, I lived to type this update and the greatest malady we were inflicted with was because we situated ourselves directly underneath a tree that was infested with some of the largest ants I had ever seen. These proved to be only a minor (but constant) annoyance throughout the night that could usually be dealt with by relying on your vigilant neighbor to watch your back and brush them off when necessary.

By Sting's first encore, feeling random ants fall on you had become to feel relatively routine. Then all of a sudden a much larger and much more evil bug landed on my neck! By its weight, breadth, and generally evil aura I instantly recognized it as a threat much more imminent than an industrious ant and reached to rip it off my neck. But I was not able to get to the pest before it had gotten its chance to sting me. Still I grasped it, crushed it and flung it away into the night before it could do any further damage. Unfortunately, the speed with which I had to dispatch it also made it impossible for me to identify my assailant and I was only left to feel the wound on my neck and hope it didn't swell (it didn't).

Seeing me go from "rocking out" to "freaking out" my friends asked me what was wrong, and as I explained to them what had happened, the karmic profundity of the moment struck us. I had just been stung at a Sting concert! If you ask me, that's almost better than a t-shirt. Almost. Once the redness had gone away I still had nothing to commemorate. I wish I could have gotten Sting to sign my neck. Oh well.

It looks like Mark "Money for Nothing" Knopfler (former front-man of the Dire Straights) will be coming to Bangalore in March and the Eagles might be gracing the subcontinent sometime over the summer. Already you can see Knopfler's star rising throughout the country. These artists may not be at the peak of their career, but here you gotta take what you can get and just enjoy what washes up your way from the Bay of Bengal. And they still know how to rock. I'm just hoping the next time around there will be t-shirts.

The REAL Highlight of Sri Lanka

2005-02-02T06:06:00.000-08:00

Ok, so the rainforest was cool and all. Nature, adventure, wild animals, blah, blah, blah. But the real highlight of my trip to Sri Lanka came on my last day in the country. I woke up early that morning to travel to the capital city of Colombo, where I would catch my flight back to Chennai. For me, after a 6-hour bus ride through the jungle, the sight of golden arches was like the parched and weary desert traveler spotting an oasis. McDonalds is nowhere to be found in Southern India. And even in their northern locations you would be more likely to find a McAloo Burger (potato burger) than a big slab of ground beef on bread. To arrive at a McDonalds in a country where the cow is revered as a fine source of meat rather than a deity was almost a personal religious experience. Now that’s what I call a World Heritage Site! I ordered a Big Mac Extra Value Meal and then followed it up with a soft serve ice cream cone. Even though I was by myself, I thought it would be wrong not to try and take pictures. I will want to show this to my grandkids.

My first day there we also came across an amazing phenomenon that I am surprised has not swept the United States – a mobile KFC double-decker bus. Brilliant! We saw it pull up and park right along the beach, delivering fried goodness to whomever could pull themselves up from the sand and walk 30 feet. Why has this kind of fast food delivery device not come to America? It made me think of the term “developed country” in a whole new light. When will America catch up to the fast food technologies in place in Sri Lanka?

Jungle Adventures with Sri-LankaDave

2005-01-25T04:14:00.000-08:00

Well, I’m back from my Sri Lankan extravaganza and am now legally able to live in India for another 180 days. It was a nice trip. Relaxing. A nice time away.

There were a few highlights of the trip worth sharing. The first was the reward of a 6-hour bus ride inland from the beach – a trip through the Sinharaja Rainforest. In the native tongue “Sinharaja” literally means “Lion King”, but the name should not lead you to believe you will be seeing either lions or Elton John on a trek through the forest. Though the Sri Lankan lion is believed to have made its last stand in the Sinharaja Rainforest, it is now extinct. And Sir Elton John is an endangered species. He has frequently been spotted in both Los Angeles and London but there have been no verified sightings of the Rocket Man in Sri Lanka for decades (and scientists ominously predict that Sir Elton’s mating habits virtually guarantee he will be the last of his kind). If you don’t go into this particular rainforest expecting to see either of these creatures, you are in for a wonderful experience. It is unfortunate that all to many American tourists have been seen sulking out of the beautiful Rainforest muttering and whining about not seeing “Simba” or hearing “Crocodile Rock”.

The Rocket Man in His Natural Habitat:

Sir Elton Defends His Territory:

I found the Sinharaja Rainforest to be wonderful. UNESCO declared it to be a “World Heritage Site”. Up until my time in the forest I thought that just meant it was a place that ‘the World’ would one day tell its’ grandkids about. Apparently it also means that it’s a dang cool place that should make everyone proud to be an Earthling. There were three aspects of the forest that highlighted the experience for me: the beauty of the creation, the inherent danger in the adventure and… the birds.

The Birds

Okay. I never thought I would be into “bird watching”. Studying birds was never really that interesting to me (and the eternally traumatizing experience of having a seagull poop on my head during my freshman year of high school in the middle of a crowded lunch quad certainly didn’t help increase my passion). Yes, birds were cool and all, but only because they could fly. But I never saw any need to study different types through binoculars. Well, I now have a whole new respect for the avian kingdom: they’re beautiful, they sing… and they’re flying carnivores! What more could you want? The Sinharaja Rainforest has 147 different species of birds – 18 that are endemic to the forest (that means they’re native and you probably won’t find those birds anywhere else).

My newfound affinity for our flying friends would not have developed without a guide with me, who was able to spot them from a mile away and then painstakingly help me find them through my binoculars. Soon, I too began to realize that the birds were all over the place. And not just pigeons and seagulls… in fact I didn’t see any pigeons and seagulls. No rat-birds allowed in the rainforest. Just awesome birds. Colorful birds. The type that end up selling cereal on TV or giving advice to a pirate in a movie. Every one had a unique sound, a unique look… even a unique way of flapping their wings. And though I didn’t see it, I assume that each had a unique way of devouring their prey. They enhanced the tranquility of the rainforest and gave me more insight and awe into the diversity of creation.

I wanted to share this joy with you all, but those little things are pretty hard to photograph without a really good zoom lens on your camera. I still gave it a shot but the result was more like a “Where’s Waldo?” exercise than an up close and personal portrait of my fine-feathered friends.

This was my first attempt. You should be able to identify the grey bird on the tree. I forgot the Latin name, something like Birdius Flyicus:

I thought a better way to photograph a bird up close might be taking the picture through my binoculars … thus creating my own zoom lens. As you can see, I was wrong:

Finally, just outside of the rainforest, back at the Rest House where I was staying, I found a bird that was very large and I was able to get up close enough to. The mighty eagle. Unfortunately, the bird was fake:

Turns out the Internet has some pretty good pictures of birds. That “WWW” is a pretty amazing thing. So here are a couple of pictures from other people of one of the birds I saw most, and my personal favorite – the “White-throated Kingfisher”:

Danger

One of the things that of course drew me to the rainforest in the first place was the prospect for danger, adventure, and excitement in the midst of idyllic settings. I had watched enough movies and TV shows to know that rainforests are where I would most likely find technologically-advanced killer gorillas swinging from tree vines, evil talking snakes, and Latin American revolutionaries hiding buried treasure.

Here is one of those technologically-advanced killer gorillas showing off its' musical prowess:

And I knew for a fact that this rainforest held the very real possibility of encountering leeches, monkeys, leopards, poisonous snakes, and flamboyant pop-rockers. So I was glad to have an experienced guide with me (plus they don’t let you in the rainforest without one… something about ‘not coming out alive’). My guide was a friendly, passionate biologist who had been leading tours through Sinharaja for over 10 years. His name was Bandula, but I found it comforting throughout my journey to think of him as “Sri Lanka Dundee”.

Here I am at the end of the day with Bandula, in front of his jeep:

He immediately gained my confidence with his command over the Latin names of all the various flora and fauna we encountered. His eagle-eyed ability to spot birds that an ordinary man would need the Hubble telescope to see was also comforting – hopefully he would also be able to spot the mighty leopard well before it began tearing out my throat. And I knew I was in good hands when he poured table salt on my shoes and socks before we entered the forest to keep away the leeches.

I grew a little nervous when he pointed to a group of bright red flowers shaped like closed pine cones on the side of the trail and said “See those flowers. I don’t really know what those are.” Needless to say, my confidence began to waver – what if that flower would serve as the crucial anti-venom if a snake bites me? Can this guy fight off a leopard or a crocodile if he can’t even identify a simple flower? What else in this place was new to him? If things went bad and Sri Lanka Dundee didn’t come through for me, I was going to end up like a candle in the wind.

Fortunately, Bandula shined for the rest of the trip. Here he is staring death in the face as he plays with a “semi-poisonous” vine snake:

And here’s the vicious vine-snake from up close. It’s a little shaky because just as I was going to take a close up of the snake, Bandula dropped it and the snake made a dash towards me. It was a choice between a clear picture or a long, painful search in the forest for an anti-venom:

And the leeches did not disappoint. They were pretty much trying to crawl up our legs the whole time out there. They could be flicked away from my socks and shoes pretty easily but once they get to your skin it’s all over. Vigilance was the best tool to keep them away from my blood; long pants probably would have also helped. At one point two of them got the better of me and I didn’t discover they were attaching to me until it was to late. I would have taken a picture of the leeches on my skin, but at that point I had bigger things to worry about. But I did take a picture of the subsequent bloody leech aftermath, I put the pictures on another page for the sake of the squeemish (they're not that bad):

Not-For-The-Squeemish-1

Not-For-The-Squeemish-2

And for good measure, here is a large deadly spider:

God’s Creation

Beyond the birds and the danger it was just amazing to be in relatively unspoiled piece of the planet that showed off the diversity and the beauty of creation. It was peaceful yet powerful. Tranquil yet awe-inspiring. In my sentimental, slightly home-sick book, I’m not sure if the rainforest holds a candle to the California Redwoods, but it was still a pretty magnificent place.

Here are more pictures from Sinharaja and the surrounding area:

Great News!

2005-01-12T03:27:00.000-08:00

I completed my New Year's Resolution in record time! I know I was supposed to stick to the schedule but I just got so excited that I couldn’t contain myself. Apparently Baron von Rubik’s clever mystery was no match for my brilliance. You will see proof that the cube has been completed from the picture below. You also might notice the slight glow emanating from the cube – those are the magical powers slowly forming from the center of the cube and spreading outward. As the powers continue to increase, the glow will no doubt intensify as well. I fully expect the cube to be blazing with the light of a thousand suns when I return home from work tonight. And soon it will release its’ powers to me – Solver of the Cube.

Just kidding! Ha. Ha. Ha. I didn’t really finish the cube. What you see above is an elaborately staged camera trick. I couldn’t even begin to explain how I pulled that one off. Until then, I continue to labour to finish the cube fair and square.

The real reason I’m writing though is because I’m heading off to Sri Lanka tonight for the weekend. My Visa requires me to not stay in India the country for more than 180 consecutive days – thus I’m heading off to Sri Lanka. And since I’ll be there anyway, I’ll also be helping out with some work loosely related to the tsunami for the first day or so.

And I will bring Rubik with me.

New Year’s Resolution – Bring It On Rubik!

2005-01-06T02:02:00.000-08:00

Background:
I like to make New Year’s Resolutions. I think they can be a fun, constructive exercise. But I also think that if these resolutions are regarding any real change I should make in my life – I shouldn’t wait ‘till January to make the change. For example, if I think I should give up teasing large wild animals and playing in traffic and it is only July, I should not say, “I’ll give it up in the new year.” I should probably give it up almost immediately. Consequently, for New Year’s I generally like to make fun resolutions, goals or changes in my life that I probably wouldn’t make otherwise. The results of these resolutions vary between wildly successful changes and fizzled out fads.

For example, one year in college I resolved to become a “camera guy”. It had occurred to me around Christmas time that lots of people took pictures of things all the time and thus were left with boxes of memories. But I never took pictures! How would I remember my adventures?!!! How would I prove my existence to my grandchildren?!! What about posterity?!!! So I resolved to become one of those people that took pictures all the time. One of those people that was always telling friends to pose, asking strangers for picture taking assistance, and in all situations thinking to themselves…“that would make a great picture.” This resolution resulted in a lot of pictures from the month of January 2000 and then not much else. In fact, I think I finally finished off the roll from February 2000 last July before I left for India. Clearly the change didn’t really take hold.

But the other resolution I made that year was without a doubt my most successful to date. A crowning achievement in the realm of resolutions that will assure my place in the New Year’s Resolver’s Hall of Fame. It also reveals a key component in my New Year’s Resolution strategy – I call it the “Shotgun Approach to Change”. Just make so many resolutions every year that you can’t even remember them all. This maximizes your chances of succeeding with at least one of them and minimizes your chances of remembering and dwelling on your many other profound failures.

So, the same year I resolved to be a “camera guy” I also resolved to be a “hat guy”. You all know those guys who are always wearing hats. Those guys are so cool! Some would wear them so much that you probably couldn’t recall what their hair underneath actually looks like. Others could wear a hat one day and then get away with not wearing it the next just as easily. In some ways this seemed like a much easier goal to reach for because “hat guy” was a much more recognized figure in society than “camera guy”. But this fact also made the resolution all the more intimidating. It’s very difficult for a guy who never wears a hat to all of a sudden bust out a hat because then you’re met with comments like “I never thought you were a hat guy” by the throngs of people who subconsciously track such personal details. So on January 1st, I just had to jump in with “Total Hat Saturation” (THS, as it is more commonly known) – wearing hats every day until people got the idea that they were now dealing with a “hat guy”. After only six months the verdict was in, a cursory poll revealed that THS had been an incredible success – people considered me a “hat guy”.

This resolution was wildly successful and a change in my life I very much welcomed. I remained a “hat guy” for the next couple of years. Soon I was even able to get away with not wearing a hat on some days without worrying about losing my “hat guy” credentials. Unfortunately, my tenure as a hat guy ended abruptly with the Tragic BBQ of ’02, where I removed my UC Davis hat to play a cut-throat game of volleyball and then forgot to put it back on. When I returned to the site early the next morning, it was nowhere to be found. Calls to the City Parks Department, trips to the lost and found, and “Missing/Reward” posters throughout the park were futile, fruitless attempts to recapture a piece of me that had so quickly slipped away (And just between you and me, I still suspect one of my jealous friends of stealing my hat, the dirty rats. I’m just biding my time now, waiting for the day when they will slip up and wear that lovely hat to a social function and be caught in their crime. ). Regardless of the loss, I still remember that as my most successful New Year’s Resolution.

Present Day:
This year I have made a couple of genuine life-improvement “resolutions”, but I really expect most of them to fizzle out by mid to late January. The resolution that I’m really excited about though is my attempt to try and unravel one of the secrets that has haunted wise men and magicians for centuries. A block puzzle crafted in 14th Century Transylvania by the evil Baron von Rubik. Sculpted from metal melted in the fires of Mt. Fuji, prophets have said that solving the puzzle will unlock the mysteries of the universe and possibly turn common metals into gold. Yes, I am talking about the “Rubik’s Cube”.

An artist's rendering of Baron von Rubik

I hope by the end of the year to be able to decode this mystery – returning each side of the cube to one singular color. And perhaps by finally solving this age-old riddle I will be able to unlock it’s ancient powers and bring peace to the world. You can call me a dreamer. You can call me crazy. But then just don’t plan on calling me next year when you want me to use my new magic powers to help you out. Because Rubik is going down!

To successfully execute a New Year’s Resolution (as any self-help guru worth their weight in hot air would tell you) you need an effective plan with concrete goals. For becoming a “hat guy” this part was easy – “wear a hat every day, and take it off to sleep, shower and pray.” Tackling Rubik and his mysterious cube however will require a little more planning. After all, this is not a sprint – it’s a marathon. So, here is my tentative battle plan:

January-March: Scramble the Cube. Obviously this stage is vital, if the cube is not sufficiently scrambled before unlocking the solution, it will invalidate its’ magic powers. If I complete this phase early, I will use the extra time to watch TV.

April-June: Finger Exercises. The worst thing to happen to somebody tackling a Rubik’s cube is finger cramps. And dexterity cannot be overvalued. My rigorous exercise regimen will be vital to my success. The importance of this phase is heightened by the quality of the cube I purchased here… it was only 22 Rupees. At the time I thought: “great deal!” But now it’s kind of making me nervous.

July-September: Visualize Success. Mental exercise is a lost art. By spending three months visualizing solutions to the problem I will develop the right mental pathways to achieve success with a minimum of brain cramps. But this time of visualization won’t just be about ‘solutions’, it will be about visualizing the results of victory and the glory that will come with it. This will provide me motivation and inspiration during those inevitable dark times in the coming months when I start to think that all hope is lost.

October-December: Commence Solving. This will be a glorious time. I may invite “60 Minutes” and/or Oprah to come and film this portion so we will have video documentation of the event to inspire millions. Check your local listings for time and channel.

For adequate documentation of the feat I am attempting, I have taken a picture of cube, in the Baron’s original packaging followed by a picture of the cube in its’ initial stage of being scrambled. I could already tell in my initial twists of the cube that India’s plastic was not going to be quite as durable as melted metals from the fires of Mt. Fuji. But we all play the game with the cards that we’ve been dealt. So bring it on Rubik. BRING IT ON!!!

All Shook Up

2004-12-26T23:55:00.000-08:00

Hey all. This is the "I'm not dead" blog posting.

The earthquake and subsequent tsunamis and/or tidal waves that have wreaked havoc across the Bay of Bengal have done a lot of damage in India, and Chennai in particular. But most of this damage has been confined to the coastal areas. There has been a great loss of life, but graciously, I am safe and sound and so far relatively unaffected.

In fact, I literally slept through one of the biggest earthquakes of the last century, waking up just as it ended. You all will be glad to know I still have my priorities straight.

Some of my friends though, who live very close to me, report waking up at 6:45 in the morning to their building shaking for 15 minutes. But they live on the 3rd and 4th stories of apartment buildings that are basically built on stilts to allow for car parking... and they’re from Virginia so they aren’t really used to the ground shaking.

I did feel a bit of an aftershock this morning, and of course now, every time I see a crack in a building I wonder— was that crack there before? Well, as I was returning to my house last night I noticed the first real earthquake damage in my neighborhood. My room is on the second floor of the house (though in India they call the second floor the “first floor” and the first floor the “ground floor” . . . just to drive me crazy). In addition to the internal staircase there is a cement, spiral staircase outside of my house that I often use to go in and out. Here it is, in all its’ spirally glory:

I walked up the stairs, twisting and turning my way to the top, when I placed my weight and my trust upon a piece of concrete stairness only to find it split and shattered in 3 different directions and in no condition to take on my girth. Having developed quite a few investigative skills from my time here in India and from reading numerous Encyclopedia Brown novels as a kid, I realized that this step was not broken before and unless there was a malicious step breaker creeping around Chennai with a sledgehammer, it must have been broken by the earthquake. I promptly called both CNN and the BBC with my breaking news, but neither snobby station was very interested in my dramatic story. So, in the absence of a 24-hour news channel to promote my incredible story with the world, I share it here with those who are most important to me. Here is the shattered step, (and my lovely toes):

Chennai Homecoming

2004-12-19T20:37:00.000-08:00

So, last Friday night I was driving back from a town about 2 hours outside of Chennai. We had spent the whole day waiting in a government office for a procedure that should have taken less than an hour. At about 7:00 we started back to Chennai. I had vague hopes of making it back at a reasonable time so I would be able to go out and experience Chennai's unique and illustrious nightlife. But it was not to be.

The first obstacle to my timely return was expected. Traffic. When you live in a country that has over 1 billion people and just as many potholes on every road, I think it's pretty safe to assume you're going to run into traffic on any given road at any given time. And the phrase "rush hour" takes on a whole new meaning.

Midway through our journey home, after the sun had set and we were driving through another town, the next obstacle came. A Hindu religious festival was blocking a large part of the road. This was also not too surprising because in a land of a million gods, festivals can be just about as common as traffic.

This festival however, was stopping traffic. And it definitely caught my eye. Hundreds of young, single, Hindu women were walking down the side of the road carrying candles in a procession towards a temple. Following the gaggle of girls was what I can only best describe to you as a High School homecoming float . . . if your High School mascot was a 4-armed Hindu god with a humongously freaky head... and if instead of cheerleaders on your float your high school had a bunch of Hindu priests covered in ash... so maybe it wasn’t like your typical homecoming float.

At any rate, the scene caught my eye and so I asked my colleagues what this particular festival was in honor of and why it seemed to feature mostly just women (and many, young beautiful women, at that). They explained to me that it was a puja (an offering to the image of a deity) where unmarried women bring an offering of light (the candle) to a particular Hindu god so that god would then grant them a good life-partner.

I wanted to jump out of the car right there while I watched the procession pass by, throw out my arms and tell all the ladies that their prayers had been answered, but I just couldn’t justify it theologically.

Plus, I wanted to get home.

The Indian Dining Experience -- Part 1

2004-11-22T06:23:00.000-08:00

Eating in India is always fun. Well, sometimes fun... sometimes kind of weird. But it is always entertaining.

I pretty much always either eat out or eat at somebody else’s house. This usually happens because I don’t generally have time to cook and prepare meals here and because my landlady here is a vegetarian, which means NO meat in the kitchen – thus further limiting my options. And it’s sustainable because it is so cheap. So, many times after a long day, I end up eating out by myself. This sometimes heightens the entertainment of the experience because of the increased stares and it allows me to spend more time observing and developing my skills at restaurant taxonomy.

In my dining, I’ve found that there are 3 restaurants I frequent that seem to typify my Indian Dining Experience. I’ll share about the first restaurant now and maybe the other two later, as time allows.

Wang’s Kitchen – “The New Deal Restaurant”

I’ve noticed that most restaurants in India seem to employ about one million more people than you would think a restaurant would need. But in a generally poor nation of a billion people it is just nice to see so many people with jobs. It sort of has echoes of an FDR New Deal philosophy – getting people to work whether or not their jobs are necessarily of vital importance. Wang’s, a Chinese restaurant that serves some pretty delicious food, is no exception to this practice. And it really typifies what I categorize in India as “A New Deal Restaurant”. Of course, this makes for an over attentive wait staff... to say the least. If you come in on a slow night, as I often do, and you see the swarms of waiters hovering around the tables, you know you are in for a wild ride.

Some might affectionately call this experience “pampered service”. I like to call it micro-managed dining, which is typical to most restaurants here. A coddling school for adults, if you will. I think it’d be helpful to walk you all through this process, so you will know what to expect in case you find yourself eating in a South India New Deal Restaurant. And while the experience at every restaurant isn’t exactly the same, a similar experience will generally be found to varying degrees at any place you go.

First they will do all the typical things that you might expect a nice restaurant to do – they open doors, pull out your chair, open the menu for you, etc. But once you sit down – you’re locked in and that’s when the real game starts. The maneuver that begins immediately is an elaborate dance with your tableware that will proceed throughout the rest of the meal. Though I’ll give a breakdown of what this process generally looks like, one can never really predict what shape these random events will take each time. There are usually 4 different people involved in this process.

1. First they remove all extra place settings, around you, no matter the size of the table. I think they want to make it clear to you and anyone else in the area that yes, this man is eating alone. He is not meeting anybody else.

2. Next they shift all of the plates, cups and silverware directly in front of you according to some random, seemingly chaotic rules. Your cup may be moved to the other side of your plate or it may just be moved 2 inches to the left. But regardless of where it is moved, you can count on it being moved. And the next time you drink from that cup, you better aim to put it exactly back in the right place or somebody will be there to slightly shift it for you.

3. Once the tableware situation is seemingly settled, most of them will leave while you review the menu and decide your order. But you can rest assured that at least one person will always be left behind to stare at you from a distance or hover about you in circles and monitor the situation.

4. Once you order, something that may surprise and confuse the novice diner often occurs. The 4 waiters reappear and begin removing all of your once meticulously arranged tableware – plates, cup, bowl, silverware – everything. While this may seem frustrating, I’ve found that the best response is to just throw my hands up in the air and declare with all existential sincerity: I ♥ India.

5. Then shortly before your meal finally comes, your tableware will return from wherever it was.

6. Repeat step 2.

Don’t feel bad if this all seems strange to you at first. It still seems a bit odd to me. I do take some solace in the fact that many scientists believe that a similar seemingly random sequence of events eventually produced a Big Bang and later, intelligent life. And while I don’t expect a universe will appear on my table, I have to think that there’s some larger purpose to what is happening.

By the time your food comes out, you should already be prepared for what sort of service routine will follow. This is an agonizingly slow process where they scoop the food onto your plate from each separate serving dish and then shift it around on your plate until it is just right. Once you finish (or begin to finish) what is on your plate, if you reach for the serving dish to scoop yourself some food, prepare for one of the waiters to rush to the table and snatch it from your hands so they can serve it to you themselves.

A separate person is in charge of monitoring the water situation. If the night is still slow for the restaurant, and you value your personal space, then be afraid. Be very afraid. You can safely expect the man to come by and refill your water after every sip. On one unfortunate occasion, when I had ordered a Sprite, I was not on my New Deal Restaraunt “A Game”. After drinking nearly a third of the soda in my glass, the water guy rushed to my side to refill what he thought was my water, before I was able to warn him that I prefer not to mix my beverages. Perhaps I should probably just learn to develop a taste for diluted soda.

Of course, the remarkable thing about "The Great Sprite Disaster of ’04" was that even after the staff noticed the error, they still never missed a beat with the tableware dance. Just when I think I’ve figured out exactly where they wanted me to put my cup of diluted soda down, and I left it unattended for too long, a man will come by and move it an inch to the left.

Eventually, your meal will end. Now your task is to figure out how to get the bill in your hand so you can pay and leave. You might not think this would be as arduous a task as it really is. You would think that with one million waiters constantly hovering around you in an empty restaurant they could dedicate one or two of those individuals to preparing the bill. You would think that the bill would come quickly. But, this is not the case. And I’ve found that any time I have a thought in India that begins with “You would think that...” it’s actually a pretty safe bet that the opposite is going to be true.

Eventually though, the bill will come. You may think that now, the game is over – you can relax, pay your money and leave. Not so! This is actually the most nerve-wracking part. Now it is time to decide how much to tip – which follows some as of yet undeciphered rules that are not so simple as a percentage scale. Part of the problem for me is that I don’t know if I’m just tipping the traditional “waiter” who took my order and brought my food or if I’m tipping every person involved in the process – from the 2 guys who practically wiped my face to the guy who managed to move my cup a mile without it ever actually leaving the table.

So every ‘tip-time’ is a guessing game and I always seem to leave a different amount, usually based solely on my mood at the time and what kind of change they’ve given me. Meanwhile sweat pours down your brow and 2 million separate eyeballs zero in on your wallet waiting to see how much you love them. Actually, usually it’s just one or two waiters who stand very close and pretend not to look ... but they aren’t very good at pretending. The main trick to remember is that regardless of your tipping decision for the evening – resolve to make a quick escape. Leave the money and then find the quickest path to the door, bowling over as many people in the process as you have to.

The New Deal Restaurant Experience, while not available at every restaurant in India, is certainly common and certainly priceless. It is one that I have grown to enjoy and will probably miss in some sort of sick way when I return to America.

Next time, I will try to write about the dining experience in India that I will not miss by any means.

A Birthday Note

2004-11-08T03:25:00.000-08:00

Mom,

Happy Birthday!!!! I hope you have a wonderful 40th Birthday. I wish I could be there to celebrate with you. There’s a card in the mail, and this may be a shocker to you, but barring any miracle or postal time travel device, it will probably be there late. Sorry about that.

Other readers of Dave-A-Palooza,

You should be jealous, because I have the best mom in the world. Here’s a picture of her (and my Dad) with “flat Dave”, who you may be getting sick of by now. (She’s the one who isn’t made of cardboard and who doesn’t have a beard.)

When I grow up . . .

2004-11-05T19:42:00.000-08:00

So, a few weeks ago I was traveling out in some rural Indian villages. We were taking affidavits from the victims who I spoke of in my most recent e-mail. The previous day, our team was wildly successful, by the grace of God, and was able to collect and notarize 102 affidavits in about 9 hours.
The next day we found that completing only 2 affidavits in 10 hours was a far less triumphant feeling. But for spectacularly shallow reasons, I still considered the day to be a mighty victory.

We were sitting and waiting in one village when Blair and I saw a rooster wander by. We each agreed that it would be awesome if we saw a cock fight (as any reasonable person would). Awesome, but highly unlikely. A few minutes later, we saw a young girl walk by and that very same rooster charged towards her, leaping up at least 4 feet into the air to peck her eyes out!

Fortunately, the girl reacted in time and raised her hands up to save her face. This was fortunate for two reasons - it no doubt saved her fragile, poppable eyeballs from the razor sharp beak of the rooster, and more importantly because it's much harder to tell people about witnessing this "awesome" animal attack when it involves somebody getting permanently maimed, it just comes across as "insensitive". But we didn't just want to see an animal attack. We wanted to see a cock fight. A few minutes later, this same aggressively 'cocky' rooster more than delivered.

With his previous attack thwarted, his thirst for blood was not quenched so he strutted over to where another rooster was hanging out and attacked him. The fight appeared to be a bit dull and lackluster at first - but then a third and a fourth rooster joined! We didn't just have a cockfight - now we had a royal rumble!

Blair and I were both thrilled. Never in our wildest, childish dreams would we have expected this. A near maiming followed by a rooster gang fight!! I know you might think me a bit immature, but you all got a heated presidential election season -- we got a cock-fight. I have to think that in that comparison, I come out the winner It certainly made me feel like a kid again, and it got me reflecting about my childhood and where I've come to in life now. The typical day on the field we spend driving around rural
country roads of India and usually have no time to stop for lunch so we just eat crackers and candy and drink soda. It occurred to me that if when I was a kid, I told my teacher "when I grow up I want to ride on trains every week, then drive around the jungle watching cockfights and eating nothing but junk food all day", they would probably say -"that's not a valid career path". Yet here I am.

And to think - my career assessment test in Junior High said I should be either a Radio DJ or an accountant. Both intriguing options, but it's hard to beat this. I think if they included stuff like this in the "abolitionist" job description, more people would flock to the profession.

As if that wasn't enough, yesterday, to further enforce why this might be my dream job, I was driving up a mountainous road with one of our advocates and both sides were lined with groups of small monkeys! Monkeys eating, swinging from trees, carrying their babies, wrestling, picking bugs out of each others' fur and yes ... mating! I was really hoping to see monkeys while in India but didn't know if it would be possible. Now I know there are a couple districts where we frequently travel that are rife with them. But what I really want to see is a tiger. Which is probably far less likely to see in the wild while I'm in India (being endangered and all). And then what I REALLY want to see is a tiger eating a monkey. I know it's a long shot. And I'll certainly value and enjoy my time here even if I don't see it. But it really would be the icing on the cake.

I know this hasn't been a substantive update, and you may have been waiting to hear from me for a while. And I will hopefully have an e-mail out by the end of the weekend. Thanks for all your prayer and support.

An Indian Bathroom Wonderland

2004-10-27T05:30:00.000-07:00

Parents, this is another one of those entries where you might want to send the kids to bed or the other room before reading it. It’s still really only PG material, but like all of my other blog entries I’m going to officially rate it PG-13 in the hopes of generating maximum box-office receipts.

Many volumes could be written about the Indian bathroom experience. But naturally of course, I worry about the type of people who would read multiple volumes about people going to the bathroom. So I will try to limit myself to just one entry.

Before coming to India, many people warned me that “they don’t use toilet paper in India”, so I was well prepared for that situation. What I was not prepared for was the incredible variety of substitutes and the variety of different bathroom equipment/facilities in general -- from buckets to pitchers to faucets to kitchen sprayers and every combination thereof. Fortunately, with my 12 squares of TP safely tucked away in my wallet, I haven’t had to resort to using those implements on too many occasions. Still the bathrooms are a constant source of adventure.

Last night we were waiting at a district government office for a decision relating to initiating the prosecution of some slave owners. We were sitting in the “computer room” (def: one computer, a dot-matrix printer and a whole lot of mosquitoes) waiting, when nature called. At first I was content to ignore the call, but there was no telling how long we would be waiting there so finally I decided I should answer.

A man led me down a long hallway to retrieve a key and then back down that same hallway and down another longer, darker hallway to a pad-locked room marked “gents”. I wasn’t expecting anything pretty on the inside. My only hope was that once I entered, people would not forget about me and lock the door from the outside.

To my surprise and delight, I saw a wall lined with urinals! The urinals had obviously lost their white color and porcelain shine many decades ago and a couple of small albino lizards had decided to take residence near a couple of them . . . but still . . . a urinal was a sight for sore eyes!

Well, to make a long story short, I eventually stopped basking in the glory of the urinals and got down to business. I was both infinitely amused and infinitely confused to soon discover that though they were indeed urinals – the only thing were attached to was the wall. It was just the bowl, no pipes leading in, none leading out. So everything ended up just splashing to the ground anyway. It was awesome. I basked in the constant bewilderment and the constant entertainment that is a part of daily life in India.

Congratulations

2004-10-23T05:23:00.000-07:00

Well, congratulations to the new Mr. and Mrs. Miller!
Non-flat Dave is of course bummed that he couldn't be there, but he has it on good authority that flat Dave is a much better dancer anyway.

Pictures from the Miller Wedding.

2004-10-18T22:20:00.000-07:00

Flat Dave here. Last Saturday, I had the honor of attending the wedding of my good friends, Ryan and Sarah Miller. Here are some pictures:

Ross and Dave

Vicki and Dave

Dave with Steve, Ruth and Hope

Dave with Dad and Bekah

Dave and Joe

Dave with the Happy Couple

Who can resist a flat Dave?

Kyle and Bekah with Dave

Jessica, Joel, Ross, Melanie, Dave, Kristen and Dave Cox

Memories

2004-10-06T05:30:00.000-07:00

Monday night I got to smoke Filipino cigars on the beach at a resort a little ways outside of town. We saw a half moon rise over the Bay of Bengal. It was awesome. It was almost enough to make me completely forget that I live in a city of 10 million people where many use the rivers as one giant toilet. Almost.

I love India.

And in a few hours I'll be watching the American VP debates. As a nonpartisan website, I would like to officially declare moderator Jim Lehrer the winner of the first debate. His questions didn't seem like trick questions to me, but neither candidate seemed to be able to fully answer them. Plus I can't find any pictures of Jim throwing a ball like a girl. Congratulations Jim.
And thank you to everybody for not telling me that Jim was the one who won the debate before I was able to watch it here in India. That would have totally killed the suspense.

American Democracy

2004-09-30T05:38:00.000-07:00

Great News!

For those of you who have spent many a sleepless night worrying about whether Dave was going to be able to see the first Bush-Kerry debate in India, worry no more!

The Burns Family (Blair, Christina, and daughter Madeline) recently acquired Indian cable, and with it comes a little channel you may have heard of called "CNN: South Asia". And they will be showing America's first Presidential Debate . . . Live! Unfortunately, this means it will come on right around 6:30am on Friday morning. And those of you who know me well, know that the only thing that could come in the way of my love for participating in American democracy is my love of sleeping late.

Fortunately, we are mounting an elaborate operation to obtain a VCR in order to tape the debate in the morning and watch it at night. So Friday night in Chennai for us will be US Presidential Debate Night. Friday is also the day that Gandhi's birthday is observed (actual birthday is Saturday). We thought long and hard about ways to combine the two celebrations, but determined that the celebrations may be ideologically incompatible, and thus would be
destined to fail. So we decided to leave Friday as just debate night, and hopefully I'll be able to celebrate Gandhi somehow the next day. We will also be eating hamburgers, which I don't think Gandhi would ever join us for.

I write about all this because I know that most of you will be gathered around your TV sets watching the debates with your families at least 12 hours before I'll get to see them. And I plead with you to not ruin the ending by telling me who wins. I don't even want to know if anybody gets injured, if Bush gets ejected from the game, what the score is at halftime, anything. It would just take all the suspense out of a good debate.

Here is John Kerry trying to throw a football, brought to you by http://www.footballfansfortruth.us :

And because this blog prides itself in being nonpartisan, here is Bush trying to throw a baseball:

Breaking Out of a Christian Shrine -- A Holy Blog Entry

2004-09-30T00:18:00.000-07:00

On Sunday night I went with John and Blair (the two American attorneys) to hang out with one of their friends from Virginia (Todd) who would be traveling around India with a couple of other American guys for the next week or so. Because of their busy travel schedules, they were just available to hang out in Chennai for the night, so we arranged to meet up with Todd around 10pm and then follow him to their hostel.

They had arranged to stay the night at a hostel a little outside of the city limits, on St. Thomas Mount, the site where it is believed that Thomas (one of Jesus’ 12 disciples, of “doubting” fame) was shot by an arrow and eventually died. No doubt they were driven by a sense of Christian duty and that fundamental human desire to sleep in places where Apostles have been killed.

So we got there around 11, and Todd told the lady at the front office that he had brought some guests who would visit for a few hours and then leave (somehow we were confident that she understood, despite the fact that she spoke only a little English). Then we went to his room, met his other friends, they discussed the fine qualities of the South, we laughed, talked, and then prayed (I think it’s an unwritten rule that you have to pray when you’re in a place a disciple was killed – you don’t want Thomas’ ghost haunting you, right?). About 2:30 am or so we decided it was time to head back home so we left their room and headed towards the front door only to discover that it was padlocked shut. We looked around for other exits but found no other way out, a reality magnified by the fact that in India all windows seem to be blocked off with iron bars.

The sole exit to this hostel – where probably 150 people were sleeping – was locked shut and there was no telling where the person who had the key might be. In America, you might call this a “fire hazard” or something reactionary like that. Here it is just business as usual. In fact, we were feeling rather grateful that it wasn’t also bolted from the outside (which sometimes happens). Suddenly I identified less with Thomas doubting God and more with Paul trapped in a Roman prison. But without enough faith to pray that God would make the walls of our prison crumble, my companions and I set out to find our own way out.

After exploring a few other options, we soon determined that if we could remove the screws on the latch that the lock was on, our freedom would be secured. The trouble was finding a flat-head screwdriver or anything to turn the screws. After trying keys, metal rods, Indian coins of various widths, and a randomly discovered American dime, we found a “utility closet” we could get into and began our search in earnest for something we could use to remove those screws (I use the phrase “utility closet” loosely because most people would define a utility closet as something that contains something useful in it, like a screwdriver, but it did not). Finally, I found an old rusted utility saw blade at the bottom of a bucket that was a perfect fit for the screws and Blair set to work on removing each of the screws, as the blade dug into his hands. So after about 30 minutes, we had successfully removed the latch and secured our escape from St. Thomas Mount. And Todd dutifully reattached the latch behind us, safely resealing in the remaining hostel guests.

What better way to honor the Apostle’s memory, right?

(And Mom, if you’re reading this, please ignore the part where your son blindly reached into a bucket in India to pull out a rusty saw blade. And Blair’s mom, if you’re reading this, you might want to ignore the part where the rusty blade dug into his hands. . . we don’t think it broke the skin.)

Finally!!!

2004-09-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

Friends and Family,

You couldn't imagine my great pleasure and relief this morning when I opened up today's edition of "The Hindu" (India's national newspaper) and found out that Chennai was finally doing something about this long-standing problem.

See for yourself and share in my joy:

http://www.hindu.com/2004/09/20/stories/2004092009700300.htm

I know I will sleep better knowing that the police have made "curbing" this problem a priority. And maybe someday, we will live in a society where it is not just curbed, but eliminated entirely. "You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one . . ."

Prayer Request

2004-09-14T05:28:00.000-07:00

On a serious note, please pray today for LaShawn Montoya, somebody very important to me from California. She is the wife of my college pastor/former employer/friend from Davis (though they now live near Chico). She will be undergoing brain surgery today (Tuesday) for the removal of a very large, very tricky tumor. Pray for her, her husband (Dave) and for her 3 young kids (Ciara, Ryan, and Logan).

For more information, check out her update site at www.lashawn.org
(everybody's got a webpage now . . . where's yours?).

Indian TV: Life is Good

2004-09-11T04:01:00.000-07:00

There is no doubt that Indian TV is infinitely fascinating in its own right, with no end of entertaining music videos, musicals and cheesy soap operas to stimulate the brain. The trouble is that save the occasional news program and constant cricket coverage; very little of this is in English. It is in one of the dozen other major languages spoken in India. None of which I speak very well. I can watch “Captain Planet and the Planeteers” (remember the theme song? “Captain Planet, he’s our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero . . .”), but when he’s dubbed in Hindi it’s a little harder to get emotionally invested in his adventures. Despite being everybody’s favorite environmentally friendly cartoon superhero (sorry ‘Toxic Avenger’). There is even a channel that shows the 80's TV show “Small Wonder”, dubbed in Tamil (about Vicki, the precocious little girl who is actually a robot, built by her dad – “She’s a Small Wonder . . .”). And that’s nice to watch, but only for so long.

There is however a channel based in Australia called "Pogo" that frequently shows English language programming. Up until recently, this has been almost exclusively limited to episodes of Teletubbies and reruns of Wonder Woman. They also show this weird silent-movie style hidden camera show called “Just for Laughs Gags” and in honor of the Olympics they were showing “The Animal Games”. There you would see crudely computer-generated animals competing in different Olympic events against various phylum of the animal kingdom (e.g. bird vs. mammal vs. reptile vs. insect at weight lifting . . . then they show a computer generated beetle trying to lift a barbell, etc. Good fun). So that's been OK. But last week upon checking the TV listings, life in India just went from good to great.

At 10:30 PM from now on, “Pogo” will be showing “ALF” (the wisecracking, cat-eating, muppet from the planet Melmac who wreaked havoc in the lives of the Tanner family while endearing himself to the hearts of American TV viewers, laying the groundwork for his future career as a spokesman for 1-800-COLLECT). And as if that wasn't enough to propel me into a highest state of Nirvana, at 11:30 PM Pogo will be treating its viewers to reruns of “Gilligan's Island”. Featuring the wacky exploits of the cast of the S.S. Minnow as they try to get off that island, only to be set back time and time again by the bumbling but lovable mistakes of Gilligan (Bob Denver's career defining role in my opinion, sorry Maynard). Friday nights in Chennai for Dave just got a little crazier.

UPDATE:

So far I’ve only had time to tune into one episode of each show, but those times can only be described as near-religious experiences.

In the episode of ALF I saw, ALF was feeling guilty because the Tanner family takes care of him all the time and in return all he does is cause trouble, corrupt their children and try to eat their cat. So to try and help out, ALF gets a job selling cosmetics over the phone. Naturally chaos ensues. I can only assume you’ve seen the episode. If not I pity you and urge you to get in your car, drive to your local Blockbuster, head straight to their “ALF” section, and do not leave that store until you have that episode in your hand.

“Gilligan’s Island” was even better, if you can believe that. It seems the deposed leader of the Latin American country of Ecuarico (brilliant name) has been exiled to Gilligan’s Island. Making the most of the situation, El Presidente takes over the island and dubs himself the new dictator of “Ecuarico 2” (equally brilliant). When our castaways rise above him and then convince him of the merits of a democratic society he instead sets up a puppet government for the island led by Gilligan. Naturally power goes to Gilligan’s head until a dream sequence shows him the error of his ways. Then the Ecuarican loyalists return for El Presidente to reclaim power in his country. He promises to send a ship for the castaways, but naturally they soon hear on the radio that he is overthrown again and thrown in jail in another coup before he is able to make good on his promise. It looks like our castaways will be on the island for another week.

I found it to be a surprisingly intelligent, socially conscious episode (not that I don’t expect that from Gilligan’s Island every week). There were clever insights and jabs at politics of the developing world throughout the episode. I couldn’t help but think that if I were a High School teacher, I would probably show that episode during my unit on Latin America. It would make learning about one-party power politics come alive and be fun again. Then I would probably show that episode of ALF right after that. Just because ALF rocks and you need to fill up the hour anyway.

I guess that’s probably one reason why I’m not a High School teacher.

Dream Interpretation

2004-09-04T09:14:00.000-07:00

So, while in India I'm taking this fun anti-malarial drug once a week called mefloquine. One of the fun 'possible side effects' is crazy dreams and potentially hallucinations. So far no hallucinations this time around (those are for the weak minded) but I have had my share of wild, vivid dreams on certain nights. Last night was one of those nights. I enjoy trying to read hidden meaning into a dream that probably isn't really there. You can give it a shot as well, if you'd like.

Some friends and I (I forget which friends were there, so just assume it was you) were going to a wild party at Mike Bibby's house. We are hanging out down in his sort of lounge/living room sort of area and you know who walked in and joined us in our circle -- Bruce Willis! That's right Mr. John 'Freakin'Die Hard' McClane . . . Hudson Hawk Himself! He was wearing a wierd blond wig with some sort of fedora, glasses and a very large fake mustache but we knew it was him. He could have worn all the disguises in the world but as soon as he opened his mouth we'd have realized -- "Hey it's the voice of the baby from "Look Who's Talking" and "Look Who's Talking Too". So, seeing that his attempt at anonymity was in vain, Bruce reluctantly removed his mustache and glasses (but curiously kept the wig and hat in place). After heaping empty praises upon our new celebrity friend and trying to find a way to take a picture with him while still being 'cool', my friends one by one excused themselves until I was left alone with Bruce.

Several painfully long seconds of awkward silence followed as I tried to think of how one initiates small talk with somebody like Bruce (I mean c'mon! He's the famed frontman of rock group "Bruce Willis and the Accelerators"!). I finally came up with an ingenious line with an ironic twist that would ease the mood and soon have us both sharing a good chuckle and great conversation:

"So, Bruce . . . what do you do?"

Huh, huh. Get it? He didn't either. A diamond-studded chainsaw blade couldn't cut through his glare. And so more awkward silence and forced stammerings ensued until eventually, I started to fall asleep (in the dream). When I woke up, Bruce Willis had turned into a mysterious, hot woman. Who stood up, with her glass full of egg yolks and attempted to pour them over me.

Fortunately, I squirmed out of range of her attack and so she instead turned and poured about half of her glass on the cello player who was sitting right behind us.
That is unfortunately about the point that I woke up.

I'm not quite sure what it means, but if you want to give a crack at an interpretation – leave it in the comments section below. The author of the most favorable interpretation wins the grand prize of a dinner at the nicest restaurant in Chennai. *

*Contestants must come to Chennai to claim prize. Current residents ineligible.

The one decisive conclusion I can draw is that malaria pills are fun and next week I will double my dose, in the hopes that perhaps this week I will get to have a conversation with Steven "Under Siege 2" Seagal. The real question will be whether my general lack of respect for him will make the conversation go better or worse.

Here is a picture of Bruce Willis wearing a wig. In my dream, the wig was a bit different . . . and he wasn't wearing the women's undergarments.

And here's a picture of Stevie Seagal. I'm not sure why, but I think the fact that he's hugging a panda bear makes me dislike him even more.

Commercial Break

2004-09-03T05:24:00.000-07:00

We interrupt your regularly scheduled update for a brief word from our sponsor:

On Monday night we headed out on a train to a city about 9-10 hours south of Chennai. From there we launched off to a rural district further away, where we hoped to secure the official releases of up to 200 slaves. Without going into greater details at this point, I will just say that we ended up having to stay longer than we anticipated.

Throughout this often difficult time I found that I had one strong and true ally in this fight against forced labour (in addition to the Almighty God, of course). A friend that was literally with me the whole time and whom I knew would not let me down (again, in addition to God). That’s right, I’m talking about Dockers™ Wrinkle Free, Stain Repellant Slacks (available here or through your local American retail store). You’ve seen them advertised on TV, I’m sure, and looked at the commercials with the same healthy skepticism I once did – a man out for a night of wild partying with ‘the boys’ gets all manner of nasty slop flung at his pants (and what’s a night of partying without nasty slop?) then stumbles home the next morning to his wife and the only thing she can say about his night of foolish, adulterous revelry is “Nice Pants”. Well, I’m here to tell you that Dockers™ Wrinkle Free, Stain Repellant are all they are made out to be in the commercial . . .AND MORE!

Dockers ™ are the slacks of choice of both wild party boys AND abolitionists everywhere. I pulled my pair out of my backpack the morning we got into town and didn’t take them off for another 36 hours. And the morning of day three, when I went to put them on again, I did so with confidence that they looked almost as new as the day I bought them. (The smell factor; however, is probably an issue that Dockers™ will want to explore in a future innovation. By day 3 in their current model, that seems to be a losing battle.)

The point at which I think I was really sold on the pants was the night I had to sleep in them. I knew I was in for a great night’s sleep when I looked in the room I would stay in and found nothing but a double sized metal bed frame and a sheet. Then when I asked the man who showed me the room if there was any mattress, he just spread the sheet out over the metal. Part of me thinks he probably just didn’t understand me, but part of me knows he was just mocking me. At any rate, my colleague I shared the bed with and I managed through the short night. And those pants were key in keeping as much flesh as possible covered from the multitude of scientifically researchable insects that visited us throughout the night. And they are pretty darn comfortable too. I think I’ll have them washed now, but not ‘cause I need to. Because I want to. I’m as confident as ever that if I stumbled home to my (non-existent) wife right now, her only comment to me would be “Nice Pants”. Thank You So Much Dockers™ Wrinkle Free, Stain Repellant, Flesh-Eating Bug Resistant Slacks.

This public service blog entry has been brought to you by:

And now, back to your regularly scheduled updates . . .

American Relax Park

2004-08-29T21:01:00.000-07:00

Had to go out of town at the last minute on Thursday night. We heard some upsetting news and so about 8 of us piled on a bus at midnight and traveled 8 hours to go check out the situation. Anyway, God is sovereign and some real good things ended up coming out of a bad situation, but I'll write about that in a later e-mail.
But after spending about 4 hours at a village interviewing some people, on our way to the train station we were able to stop at a snack shop tucked off on the side of the road, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, called "American Relax Park". How could I not stop there? Especially if the name of the park is read as a command and not a name (e.g. American: Relax! Park!) American Relax Park also included a giant statue/altar of Mother Theresa, which I wish I had gotten a picture of, and a pretty decent playground. It was a nice place, we had tea. But a couple of things should be noted:

1) Though the name of the park may have you believe differently, I was the only American there. You would think it would attract Americans in droves. Maybe you all haven't received your invitations yet, but I hope to see the rest of you Americans there soon.

2) Not complaining, but when I think of relaxing, I don't normally think of flimsy plastic stools. My picture of relaxing usually includes a recliner. I should have left a suggestion in their "comments box" regarding this, but I fear it may have gone unheard. And also, I don't think they had a comments box.

2a) Of course my picture of relaxing also usually includes air conditioning and 3 hours of "Saved by the Bell" reruns.

3) The others who were with me didn't want to join me in the picture, that could have had something to do with # 4

4) I was trying to look "relaxed" in this picture, but I think I just came across looking kind of creepy ... or maybe even like I was using the bathroom (relaxed in a whole different sense).

So, real sorry about the creepy picture. But it's better than nothing. I'll try to get up a different picture of me soon, so this most recent picture of me isn’t forever burned into your memory.

Okay, okay - I love India!

2004-08-26T06:00:00.000-07:00

It hit me again last night, in a much more shallow way, during my ritual nightly search for food. I got home from work around 7:30 and then wandered out into the street looking for a new restaurant to try. I had wandered down the street for a good kilometer (I measure this by the number of motorcycles/cars that almost hit me -- about 1 for every .2 Km . . . it’s a slowly developing science) Then I saw across the street a bright blue, little hole in the wall restaurant called “Fresh Juice and Snacks” – sounded like the perfect light choice for a late night dinner.

So I made my mad dash through traffic and wandered in. I stepped into a very small room and realized that the sign on the building was the only thing that would be written in English, everything else was clearly written entirely in Tamil (usually there’s at least English translations) and so I knew there was no possible way I would be able to actually order what I wanted or even know what they were offering. But I wasn’t leaving. Pride got the best of me, as the staff had already seen me come in – I didn’t want them to think I wasn’t cool enough to eat there or not “down” with the Tamil. So I sat down and prepared to resign myself to whatever fresh juice they would bring me (please not ‘monkey brain juice’, I silently prayed).

The waiter came up and asked in broken English: “Chicken?... Rice?”

“Sure!” I replied.

For my own piece of mind I had to assume that we weren’t talking about fruit juice concoctions anymore. It sounded like I was going to eat a hearty dinner. I sat and waited to see what would come out – Chicken Briyani? Chicken Tikka? Chicken Juice? About 15 minutes later he came back with a giant helping of Chicken fried rice on a big banana leaf. I ordered myself a bottle of fresh lime soda to go with it and I was in heaven. It was delicious – best chicken fried rice I’ve had in a long time. I’m sure it helped that it was absolutely smothered in oil . . . and on a banana leaf (presentation is everything). I didn’t even know I wanted Chicken Fried Rice. I thought I wanted juice, but they knew better.

And the best part was when the man brought me the bill. The man could have charged me whatever and I’d have had no idea. But he said “28 Rupees.” 28 Rupees!!! For those of you not keeping track of current Indian exchange rates (probably most of you), we’re talking about $0.60. I was on top of the world. Where else can you wander into a strange restaurant, where you don’t understand a word, and walk out happy, with a full stomach – for under a dollar? Not even Taco Bell.

For that night I was king of India. AND THEN as I walked home, an Indian on his motor-scooter stopped and ASKED ME for directions. Do I look like I’m from around here? Does not every 78 pale, white inches of my lanky, awkward frame scream “foreigner”? I guess not, because he thought I would know where something was. Of course, I didn’t, which brought me back down to reality pretty quick. But regardless, the only thing that would have made that moment more precious would have been if he also automatically assumed I spoke Tamil. Wow.

Then I went inside my house, turned on the TV and saw a soap opera about a bunch of Indian ‘little people’. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but did it really matter? And could my day get any better? Maybe, but at that instant, I couldn’t possibly imagine how.

Shaving with Soda

2004-08-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, in my search to find a can of Shaving Cream I came across what will surely forever change my life -- "Gillette Lemon-Lime Shaving Foam". Though there were other types to choose from, how could I resist this tempting and until now hidden treasure? Does this exist in the states and I've just somehow never seen it? If so, I feel like a fool who had been living in a dark world of shadows and has now finally stumbled out of Plato's cave. I am enlightened. And after this morning, I have a face that is both smooth and refreshed. It was like shaving with a can of Sprite. How did I live without this joy before? As I scraped it from my face with the razor, part of me wanted to shovel it straight into my mouth to fully savor its goodness. This will no doubt be an ongoing but welcome temptation. I could just picture the marketing in America: "Obey Your Thirst . . . And Your Stubble". When I go back for more shaving cream I will check and see if they have "CocaCola Shaving Foam", or even better "Diet Cola Shaving Foam" (nothing gives me a smoother shave than NutraSweet). Jon and Kyle, if I can find it, I hope to bring home to each of you a can of "Root Beer Shaving Foam". Cross your fingers.

Chop Suey

2004-08-16T06:04:00.000-07:00

This post is not for the faint of heart. If you have children you might want to cover their eyes or send them to bed.
Friday night was a night of Deja Vu.
I went out to eat at a Chinese Food place and ordered "American Chop Suey". It was pretty good. But a little too sweet, and not like any Chinese Food I had eaten before.
Then we went to a hotel where there was an Indian rock band playing covers of American songs. I walked into an Indian Hotel hearing "Hotel California". Kind of cosmic. It was fun but it was also very loud, so after a few songs we left. Then on the way out, in another restauraunt we over heard another band doing an acoustic version of "Hotel California".
You're probably thinking -- "oh, that's what Dave meant by Deja Vu". No, actually the real Deja Vu came at about 2am that morning when I had the unpleasant experience of tasting the "American Chop Suey" over and over again. If you know what I mean.

I guess when you're in INDIA at a CHINESE restaraunt ordering food advertised as AMERICAN, you have to expect something's going to go wrong.

Singapore Airport -- Sunshine of My Life

2004-08-14T04:06:00.000-07:00

I just have to tell you all that the Singapore Airport is perhaps the best airport ever! After a 12 hour flight to Taiwan, followed by a 4 hour layover, then a stop in Hong Kong before my 5 hour layover in Singapore, some might think my travels would have been a nightmare. Upon arriving at the Singapore Airport however, I realized I was in a dreamworld.

Now certainly there are some negative things that can be said about totalitarian governments, such as the one existing in Singapore (the "no chewing gum" rule would have gotten to me). But one thing you can never take away from them is their dedication to making transferring flights a pleasant experience.

The transfer terminal offers travelers free internet computer terminals, comfortable TV lounges everywhere, a full size shopping mall, a gym, at least 2 hotels where you can take a shower or a nap at minimal cost, "Double Dare" style games for the kids, a pool, various fern and flower gardens, and I'm sure so much more.

My first priority was to go find one of their 2 free movie theaters. Because I love free stuff and I love movies, it seemed like the perfect combo. I was more than slightly disappointed to come and find that the theater was showing the tail end of an unrecognizable Alec Baldwin movie. And frankly, there's nothing free about having to watch an Alec Baldwin movie. But there was still plenty to do to kill time until the next movie came on. Unfortunately, the free boat and train tours of Singapore had stopped running for the day but I did find a fully reclining chair with a built in timer that I could take a nap in.

I came back to the theater for the next feature and was once again a little thrown off that the movie was "Daredevil" starring Ben Affleck. I soon came to realize that there is really nothing free about a Ben Affleck movie, either. But the chairs in the theater were more comfortable than in any movie theater I've ever seen. It wasn't like row seats, or "stadium seating" it was like 50 individual Lay-Z-Boy Chairs. Amazing.

So, I highly recommend that when you make your next travel plans, be sure to arrange for a layover in Singapore. Even if you're just flying from Sacramento to San Diego or San Francisco to New York it would be well worth your time to travel by way of Singapore. Discover the joys of traveling through a totalitarian state.

Below are a couple of pictures from their Koi Pond. They're not great pictures because I was a little rushed. I was paranoid because for all I knew there could have been a "no pictures of the Koi Pond" rule and that soon Singapore Police would run over, take my camera, throw it on the ground, smash it to pieces, and send me to jail for 30 years.

On My Way

2004-08-07T20:30:00.000-07:00

Well, today was the big going away party and tommorow I'm off. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone but it was also just a really encouraging time. I'll probably miss friends and family quite a bit, but I think they made it so that they won't really miss me. I guess they went to some sort of top secret government lab and had me cloned. They call him "flat Dave" . I'm already afraid it's going to become like one of those "evil twin" things where I come back in a year and he's taken over every aspect of my life. I already think they like him better because not only is he quieter and doesn't talk back, he also somehow seems considerably cuter. See for yourself . . .