Who Knew

I work for the Fellows,

2008-05-09T12:35:00.000-07:00

When people ask me about my job I say I work for the most amazing people in the world. Not my bosses or my colleagues, although they are pretty rad, but I work the Fellows, the people who I get to meet, read about, write about and know everyday how they are actually "changing the world."

Today I came across the profile of one of our Fellows who I know now lived just ten minutes away from me in Chennai. At 20 she is married off to a cousin who dies a month later. Family kicks her out of the house, she finds out she's contacted HIV from her former husband. What does she do? Become the first woman in India to publicly declare her status and and starts a country-wide organization for women living with the disease. What would I do or you do at 20 years old when faced with a reality like that?

I spent one night last week sitting in the grass with another (male) Fellow in Goa who could not stop talking for an hour and a half about the need to have sanitary pad options for poor girls in India and how it would improve health and school attendance. This man could not stop and would not stop until I promised to send him a list of all Fellows in the world working on the issue. How many men are there in India like that?

I spent days in meetings in Goa with a woman who was recently (last 2 months) kidnapped and returned for a ransom for her work which involves using micro-hydropower to not only electrify rural Indonesian villages, but create a sustainable, environmentally-friendly source of income for the villages at the same time. Countries all over Southeast Asia are now replicating her work.

These are three, three of over 2000 Fellows. People who are doing such important things in more creative ways than I could ever dream of. These are the people I get to work for and I'm probably one of the luckiest people in the world to have that opportunity.

Back From the Other Side of the World

2008-05-08T03:14:00.000-07:00

"Hell on a stick" was the verbage used by one of my good friends and colleagues when they briefly saw me in Mumbai en route to DC. This was after I had fallen asleep on the floor of the Goa aiport but before the officials in Mumbai asked if I was "fit to fly" and definitely before I almost missed my flight out of Paris because I passed out for 2 hours in front of the gate. I hope I am never this sick again ever.

So how was India? India was amazing, Mumbai is an amazing city. Working in India with a boss who tends to bulldoze through people and cultural contingencies without even noticing how little respect she is gaining and how many people are crying is a bit more stressful. Its going to be an interesting gig shielding the world from her will.

In other news, I miss Madison. I miss the people. I miss the way everyone suddenly turns up in shorts and skirts when the temperature goes above 60 degrees. I miss the terrace and my friends and the paths by the lakeshore. I miss grilling out on the porch of 543 Mifflin and of girl talk face-to-face with my favorite girlfriends. I miss some people more than I can say and everyone more than I ever thought I could. DC is a lovely place for sure, but it could sure use some Madisonians headed this way soon....

...Its 6:30 in the AM and the birds are chirping...time to head on into the office and pick up the pieces...

Crazy World

2008-04-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

At night I walk and look up into the trees.

Neon green buds spark against the dark blue sky. While dogwood flowers and cherry blossoms rain down as the wind blows. There is no time of the year to feel more alive than spring.

It makes the growing pains, the sorrow, the unknown all the more striking.

But it makes the days and the sunsets and the nights all the more glorious.

Here's to spring.

Work and Such

2008-04-16T17:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight I raced out of the office to the National Geographic Society on M and 17th to attend the 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize presentation and reception.

The building is gorgeous even though I felt less so as I ran in feeling off-balance after a day of confronting what may be my professional weaknesses. More on that later.

The presentation was lovely and brought up on the stage some of the most amazing people doing grassroots organization for environmental causes in the world. These people do insane things from taking Chevron to court in Equador to writing songs about "washing your hands" that make top music charts in the UK.

I may be biased, but despite how amazing these people were, how well they spoke and how obviously passionate they were, seeing them up on stage made me understand even more fully just how amazing the people we elect as Fellows are.

Sometimes in the day to day of the office you can forget what you are working for, who you are working for. Even when you have Fellows staying at your house and out to dinner, their amazing humility and down-to-earth character (albeit in some cases) can make you forget just how insane their accomplishments really are.

Yes I attended an event tonight honoring some really amazing environmentalists but I get to work everyday for people doing just as remarkable things, and in many cases even more remarkable, in so many different fields all over the world.

After especially long, challenging days its a good feeling to know why you are working and in spite of plenty of interesting challenges, I feel really lucky to be where I am.

Treading Water

2008-04-14T21:26:00.000-07:00

Today was a day of feeling scrappy. Of simultaneously wanting to throw caution to the wind and pout and cry and of on the other hand wanting to go for a run and buy groceries and retain some feeling of control over the crazy concoction of my current life.

I chose to eat pizza and watch Family Guy "Star Wars" instead with a damn good friend who was also in a shitty mood.

Tomorrow I'll go for a run (fingers crossed). Wednesday I'll work late going to the Goldman Environmental Prize reception and calling Indonesia. Thursday maybe we'll go out for Happy Hour (Booze and Blossoms according to Greg)

The rest of the days will probably pass quickly until at this time next Friday, I'll be landing in Mumbai. Minus the working weekend still coming off jet lag I can't wait.

Now if only I could get my zen together enough to go buy some damn groceries before then.

Broken Window Theory?

2008-03-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

On a fine Monday morning in DC I walked briskly down the street rocking out to my music in the sweet sunshine without a care in the world.

I then stepped into a cross-walk moments before the little man showed up on the "walk" sign and next thing I hear..."Mam!! Please show me your license!"

5 Minutes later I proceed again down the street again a little more cautiously having just received my first moving violation in years. A TICKET FOR JAY-WALKING!!! I am twenty dollars poorer for having stepped into a crosswalk 5 seconds too early.

Must be sort of the broken window theory for white-collar crime...they start with jaywalking and end up in tax evasion?? I don't know...

Spring Break!!

2008-03-20T18:09:00.001-07:00

I miss it...

But mostly I am just excited for spring :)

Back to India...for a little while at least

2008-03-19T17:55:00.000-07:00

New Job: Integrator for Asia/Knowledge Team of Ashoka

Role: Coordinating and facilitating communications between the Global Office and the Country Offices in:

India
Pakistan
Indonesia
Sri Lanka
Thailand
Singapore (coming soon)
Japan (coming soon)
China (coming soon)
Philippines
Malaysia

I'll be in Goa at the end of April and, with some luck, in Hong Kong in May

...If I could have to be in Malaysia at the end of May to check up on our programs there and partake in a little bit of Nomadfest that would be sweet too...

Women of the Working World

2008-03-13T18:11:00.000-07:00

Its unlikely that anyone who knows me could call me a feminist without laughing...I like women, I think we are great and I think there are issues but I'm not generally one to "get my panties in a twist" as they say.

But I've had some realizations today about how working in an office of predominantly women has changed a lot of unconcious stereotypes and expectations I may have had about the working world

While its true that there are more women in college than men, the idea of women in the working world always seemed like a source of mysticism and conflict to me. Maye because I know too many girls from high school going for the Mrs. degree, maybe I know too many people who hate their jobs, I don't know but in any case; I had no concept of what female leadership looked like outside of AIESEC and no concept of what working with a group of women more talented, successful and ambitious could be like. (AIESEC aside here)

Today as I power-walked to work (the buses were still not running due to an explosion...long story) I suddenly found myself hitting my stride among a group of five or six girls all just a few years older than me. Some were obviously corporate with flashy leather portfolios and fancy shoes, some were obviously non-profits with hemp bags and big rings, some were like me- probably indistinguishably social sector. It struck me that for the first time in my life I'm living in a place where almost all of the women around me have lives like mine or lives I aspire to.

Some are single and happy, some are married with kids while doing insanely brillant things at work, but no one is just working to work or pay the bills. These are girls with dreams, girls with careers, girls who want to go somewhere or who strive to be the most inspiring sorts of moms a kid could ever have.

Made me realize how much I've internalized over the years, how much I've associated men and work with power, leadership and success. This isn't a rap against dudes at all-I love dudes and I love how they work but at the same time I'm gaining a whole new appreciation for how women work and how kick ass they can be at it.

This whole post is making me feel a little cringy like I should throw in some sexist joke or something but I have to admit DC is rocking my world in more ways than one...

Next Post: The drugs, the 20% poverty rate and other such fun issues in the District

A Day in the Life

2008-03-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

Its been requested that I start providing some background to what I blog on the rare occasion I do. So here it is:

A Day in the Life of an Intern...

7:15- Wake up early because I share a bathroom with 3 boys all of whom are more metro than I am girlie...gotta be out by 7:30....

8:00 Walk to the bus stop or all the way to the metro station at McPherson's Square. The bus is usually full of cute little kids and their parents at this hour of the morning-a nice change from the night

9:00 Get to work say Hi to Francisco from Brazil who gets in when I do and to everyone else in the office, start in on all the emails that always pour in during the night due to both our workaholic-ness and the fact that we have fellows in over 60 countries around the world. Typical requests involve researching fellows, attempting to decipher espanol, etc

10:30 Make the rounds around the office to say hi to everyone and keep the channels of communication open, get coffee with Leah and whoever else is feeling the pain. Try to learn about what everyone else is doing so I know when to integrate them into our plans

11:00 Phone meeting? Updating the volunteer website I set up? Other random requests from people everywhere in the world? Research on fellows? Emailing country reps to find out what fellows are doing, updating our information and writing up documents for our volunteer writers

Noon: Work through lunch reading profiles of fellows to nominate for strategic awards

Afternoon: A combination of meetings, strategizing our volunteer program, emailing with fellow's whose visits I'm working on, emailing volunteers, writing, and playing with all the toys in Greg and I's office. Also eating all of the hershey's Kisses Greg keeps at his desk and bouncing on the posture ball in Leah's office...these are all integral parts of the day

5:00 Tiny break to say hi to people again and eat a cereal bar then back to writing and researching and emails as the other half of the world is waking up with questions and requests

7:00 Ten Hours after arriving at the office we start trying to kick each other out, or rather everyone tries to kick me out since I really am only interning and overtime is generally frowned upon

8:00 Get home or end up out to dinner or hanging out with co-workers putting off important laundry, grocery shopping and relaxing yet again...

10:30 Walk home past the drug deals on my corner and pretend I don't know what's going on...jump in the shower, catch up with people I miss and maybe check work email so its not such a shock in the morning

And by 11:30 I'm usually done for the day having yet to do my laundry, take my clothes to the dry cleaners or eat a real dinner...its a great life though...we'll just have to wait and see what comes next

Makin' This Place Home

2008-03-01T15:21:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the inaugural housewarming party for the most interesting bunch of roommates I think I could ever live with.

The tastes are a little different among this bunch than those I've lived with in the past (Grape Smirnoff Ice anyone?) and the concept of "its just flavored tobacco" doesn't translate quite as well as I thought it would across some cultures.

In any case, there will be people, there will be adult beverages and there will be music courtesy of files from the best dj I know. There's a hobohookah ready to be rocked with sheesha straight from Cairo and hopefully there will be plenty of jiving and flagrant gloriousness to be had by all...

Onward and Upward

2008-02-24T15:42:00.001-08:00

For some reason in India that became the phrase of choice for me, cliche but oddly satisfying. I usually said it as we hoisted heavy back packs on after night of too little sleep or a day of far too much bus-riding. I also said it a lot as a means of deflecting well-meant expressions of condolences when people I lived with asked how my day was going and were unlucky enough to hear about my latest misadventure.

Its a really silly and trite phrase in a lot of ways but it also seemed to get me through and past a lot of moments of self-pity and other stupid selfishness.

Tonight, coming off a hellish week, a crazy weekend of travel and too little time in the mile-high city I find myself using it again.

Onward and upward, for it only gets better, easier or more joyful the more I keep trudging on and learn to enjoy all the craziness and questions and stress and unknowns that come my way.

Its a hell of a lot longer journey than the 12 hour (with food poisening) bus journey to Delhi was that last inspired the use of my tired phrase but it sort of makes me happy in a way. Its not a phrase to be used when fate is known and things are standing still, only when there is still more adventure to be had, more things to learn and more things to endure for goals and hopes and dreams that are always worth the struggle.

In the District

2008-02-11T17:04:00.000-08:00

So a post on the new digs is probably a bit overdue.

Its strange starting over again, in my third new city in 6 months, this time without the same sense of immediate awesome company as the last two. To be fair, I think this is probably a city completely filled to the brim with awesome people, its just the first time in six months I'm not sharing a bed with said awesomeness. (a shortage of beds in India definitely made nightmares less scary-except I guess for my bedmate who I repeatedly jumped on unfortunately)

Starting over again, learning a lot of names and faces and hoping some of them will stick around long enough for coffee dates and late nights on the town and the amazing DC tradition that is brunch (You know you're probably in the right place when your favorite meal is the whole district's favorite meal)

Its an odd mix of amazingness in the day and longing in the night. Of wanting to find my new favorite corner coffee shop, my new favorite run, and at the same time, wanting to run back to the old ones. A mix of alluding to the ones I love with those I've just met and talking about the ones I've just met with the ones I love. Wanting to put down roots and put posters on the walls and simultaneously wondering where and when I'll be packing my stuff up to move next.

The bittersweet bits of great change I guess

2008-01-24T08:30:00.000-08:00

At this time next week I'll hopefully be waking up on the floor of my new residence in DC. I don't think I've ever been so excited to sleep on the floor. And the good company definitely makes it even sweeter. 6 days and counting...

2008-01-08T09:23:00.000-08:00

A little bit of mental/intellectual housecleaning is in order perhaps. Its the start of a New Year and for me, the start of pretty much a whole new life and I'm so far about 8 days behind on getting my shit together.

For the last 6 months I am pretty sure my brain has been running on auto-pilot. Sure part of that time was spent in Exercise, Health and Nutrition 100 which was obviously taxing and part of that time was spent in India doing all of that stuff but somewhere along the way I think I lost my inner compass for sharp new ideas and fresh analytical vantages. Brainstorming right now makes me feel like a heavy out of shape 40 year old in grey sweats huffing and puffing it up a flight of stairs. In conversations my tongue searches frantically for articulate phrasing I used to call upon effortlessly. Somewhere along the way I think I must have lost my mental mojo.

But its time to get it all back. I've been reading and reading and reading for months trying to coax my brain out of hibernation. I've been posing questions to which I have no capacity for answers. Now finally, with real employment (ok lets be honest, an internship but a 40 hour work week is something for me these days) just around the corner I think I'm finally starting to find my way out of this f-ing stupor.

Purpose I think is the key, or maybe it is just impetus, or maybe I've just been biding my time, who knows. In any case, its 2008, and I'm thinking by February I might be ready for it. Shout out to all of those who've kept me thinking, kept my positions in a state of useful flux, who've kept me challenged along the way. Here's to making it all into something for 2008.

Onward and Eastward

2007-12-23T09:50:00.000-08:00

I've got one month in Denver and then its on to DC. Cautiously excited. Still working out the kinks like where to live and how to find a part-time gig tending bar or serving so as to manage both the interning and eating/paying the rent. Should be a good time.

In other news after using blogger.com in India on an Italian computer for three months, blogger doesn't seem to get that I no longer use my Italian roommates computer. Thus I am currently "bacheca"-ing with the option of "salva adesso" or "pubblica" my post.

I think I'll "pubblica" for now and "esci" to go watch some of this crazy snowstorm that's keeping me from sojourning down to Madtown, still not quite used to this snow thang yet...

Back in the States

2007-12-18T05:13:00.000-08:00

Back almost four days now and still slapping imaginary mosquitoes. I forgot how blessedly wonderful the service industry in the US is. I will be tipping extravagantly in gratitude I think for at least the next year.

Sunday night was an awesome reunion night to celebrate Burb's bday and I can't even say how amazing it was to be back in the company of such legendary people. Sitting back and watching everyone laughing and talking and having a great night even with finals the next day made me so happy to be home, at least for the little bit of time I have around these Wisconsin parts.

Next stop Denver for awhile and then maybe, probably DC. The times they are a changin' and I'm just trying to keep up...

Bringin it in for the Real Thing

2007-12-12T21:31:00.000-08:00

Besides sharing beds, toothbrushes and wayward looks at camels and the drunken Jaipur boys trying to escort us around the city, Anna and I have spent the better part of the last month sharing hotel rooms, playing chess and discussing endlessly the poverty and misery and shit we see everywhere, no matter where on the Indian subcontinent we go.

I can't decide sometimes whether we discuss these things as a defense mechanism, as sympotom of the books we read and the things we care about or just because of the sheer scope of the suffering that we fly by in buses or struggle to wade through in brief village visits but we do it a lot. Laying on our backs, surrounded by our belongings, staring at the hotel ceiling, endlessly we circle around what actually horrifically exists, what our role in it is, how much to give away, how much to give, how to devote oneself to making it better, the fear of devoting oneself to making it better and getting lost in the mission.

In some ways the poverty in Chennai is more in your face. Its the slum at the end of the road, the dude laying on the street outside the grocery store. Its the crippled old ladies limping along the roads. In Rajasthan it was different. It was the poverty of people who could understand the wealth of white foreigners in a one dimensional way: wealth as unending and undeserved. Gifts and money begged at every stop. Hands reaching into my pockets to make sure they were as empty as I claimed them to be. Everything, from bobby pins to sunglasses to watches was wanted, needed in a way, as payment it seemed. "You have the audacity to come to our village and see our poverty and simply leave" everyones faces said to me "therefore your sunglasses, your only bottle of water, your everything is the least you can give"

They were right in. Yes I needed my water but my guide would never let me die of dehydration. Yes my sunglasses were convenient but not necessary, same with my hairtyes my lip balm, my ten rupee notes. They were so right and yet so wrong all at the same time and it was a misunderstanding that will never be made right and only made worse by the parade of tourists that both sustain and crush these villages.

There is something so perverse about the whole thing that it is almost unbearable and cringy to know that we were made a part of it. So Anna and I lie on our beds, stare at the ceiling and wonder how it is made right, how do we communicate, how do we clear out the rubble, the illiteracy, the pained look of desire on the faces of these villagers as they are shown off to tourists as "authentic India"

I just know we may have no right to feel better to feel less guilty until we can find a way to make it right.

They don't call them special for nothin...

2007-11-28T01:56:00.000-08:00

Currently recovering from the 18 hour journey that brought Anna and I back from Hampi to Chennai. Bullet points of an amazing weekend are as follows....

*Hampi is amazing. If you go to India, go to Hampi. Yes, its in the middle of nowwhere but there are giant boulders and ruins and lots of monkeys and puppies and babies and wonderful people and good food that is served in under a half hour! Oh and wonderful familes to hang out with when you get lost! What more could you want in India?

*There will always be something infinitely wonderful to me about getting to play outside and get dirty. Anna and me pulled ourselves up boulders, climbed over walls, shrieked at lizards and got closer to baby wild monekys than I think I ever will again. Oh yea and watching the sunset go down on top of a boulder overlooking a river and an anciet temple with no one around=awesome

*While I know they mean no harm there is something really annoyingly creepy about having 20 Indian men and boys surround pointing and leering and wanting pictures. Hello??? Do you do this to girls from your own country? What makes it ok to do it to me?

*Apparently I am sooo bad at driving a moped I can't even get one rented to me in India...not good man...not good

*Along with not being able to drive a moped apparently I am unfit to ride a bike in India as well (though they only provide man bikes which I think is saying something)

*Indian puppies are really cute. Indian babies are really cute. Indian babies sitting with you whilst playing with Indian puppies is a rediculously blissed-out combination

*Warning: Special Lassis are special because they are laced with marijuana, and lots of it...always an interesting evening when your travel companion gets stoned over diner...

Hampi, good place to visit I reckon.

For the Love of Chocolate

2007-11-20T05:36:00.000-08:00

I rode a bus for 7 hours this weekend to spend 3 hours in Pondicherry eating.

Real bread and pastries, real coffee, real chocolate and an attempt at real wine (it turns out all Indian wines taste like a mix of grape juice and nail varnish).

We literally spent hour entire trip to Pondicherry in a cafe.

Not much to see in Pondicherry, but there is plenty to eat...

Planes Trains and Automobiles

2007-11-18T21:53:00.000-08:00

I've been comtemplating a great deal recently the differences between living in India and touring India.

Lately I've been doing quite a bit of road-tripping across the subcontinent and the trend will only continue with a few more big trips before I leave. Coming off of Kerala, and trying to stay in Chennai only a for a few week days at a time it is interesting how my feelings towards this country change when I am on the road.

Sure there are the puke covered seats, the croweded buses, the creepy men on trains, the devastatingly poor villages that fly by the windows, the cold showers and dirty hotel rooms, the touts, the annoying white people who seem to have too much respect for their cameras and too little respect for the Indian poeple around them. There is all of this but still, there is something about traveling that makes the ugliness of Chennai seem to slip off my shoulders.

I meet shy girls and their moms who politely want to practice their English on me. I meet Indians, men and women, who are so gracious about my stay in their country that they want to hear all about what I think of it, I meet people who help me with my stupid questions and sew up clothes for me at a bargain because they "know I'm from around here." I see insanely beautiful countryside juxtaposed against impossibly thin women and men working in rice paddies.

I hold sleeping children on my lap when the bus is too full for their mothers to hold them up and marvel at how much Indians, men and women, adore their children with abandon. I pass whole families on scooters and fathers stopping buses and standing protectively over their young daughters for them to pee on the side of the road. I see old Indian men and women touring their country for the first time with wonder and feel better about my own tourism. I see young Indian couples shyly holding hands for the first time in public on their vacations and realize how much is changing here before my very eyes.

Chennai is still as frustrating and unfriendly of a city as ever and India won't become clean or egalitarian over nigh. In living here it is easy to get bogged down in the corruption of everyday life, the poverty, the pointlessness of my work but in traveling, in traveling it becomes easier to realize all of the little things that are so captivating about this place and easier to still to be enjoy it.

Kerala = Heaven

2007-11-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

Before leaving for Kerala I joked with messiah that maybe the incredible HDI indicators for the Indian state of Kerala would make it a great place to vacation in India. We both laughed but then I went to Kerala and saw for myself what a government that is actually accountable to the people can do.

People in Kerala seemed happy, healthy, well-educated. There was a pride and sense of dignity in work that I haven't seen yet in Chennai. Even though Kochin, Kerala's largest city is much smaller than Chennai it felt about 10 times more cosmopolitan with real lane markers in the road, trash bings and even signs telling people to make their cars more environmentally friendly. There were jute bags to buy in the market so as not to use as many plastic bags.

There were mountains, and jungle and peaceful back water communities and I even saw wild baby elephants. The people were friendly, hardly anyone begged and the older women looked healthy and happy, so unlike the women here in Chennai who walk around hunched over and so thin their skin hangs off their bones. The air smelled of wood smoke and cardamom, I am not kidding you.

If I could live in Kerala for the rest of my time in India I think I would, as a sign said on the road that wound up the mountains and crossed fresh water streams and falls it was "almost heaven"

Truckin' Along

2007-11-04T23:27:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it feels like India and I are engaged in a sort of cat and mouse game where "India" tries to do everything it can to piss me off short of giving me malaria while I run around and try to keep up.

Sick again and confused as to why I am unable to book any flights around India, my only direct link to the ngo I "work" for has quit leaving me wondering what I am supposed to be doing in India besides washing my flatmates dishes...

I'll figure something out I guess, I'm getting good at that here in India...

I'm Seeing Stars

2007-11-03T22:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I saw stars for the first time since I arrived in India

Peering out a bus window on the way back from Pondicherry I looked up and there they were. Wow.

I also realized yesterday that coming home might indeed involve a bit of "reverse culture-shock." In Pondichery I walked down a wide, clean road with almost no one on it and rather than enjoying it, I felt deeply uncomfortable. Where were the people? the smells? the garbage? the life? Have I really been here long enough to crave crowded dirty streets? Maybe it was just my being sick taking its toll (Chennai and India in general are soo bad for one's health, no one, not even people who live here are ever healthy for more than a week or so) or maybe not. In any case, I'm back in Chennai at least for a day and reveling in my strange relief at being back amidst the smog and dirt and noise and shit once again.

What's Going on In Chennai??

2007-11-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

So I think the events of the last few days deserve a synopsis, sort of like one of those bulleted "The Buzz" columns you might find in my grandpa's newspaper from the cosmopolitan metropolis of Phillips (population 775 all over the age of 75) Anyways maybe I'll call it "Chennai's Loose Change" or something, in any case, here goes:

Bulleted Point Number 1 (*) Last night I met a girl. From Italy. In India. In Chennai for one night sleeping in my room. She studied in my tiny hometown of Green Bay for six months our senior year. What the deuce?? This girl is in Chennai for one night, like less than 12 hours, she's from Italy, the only reason she is here is that my roommate is from her hometown and she studied in my hometown....woah....small world after all?

*I watched an Indian dude nearly get in a fistfight at the movie theater last night because a bunch of white kids accidently sat in his seats. There were 8 of the kids and the dude was only with his wife but he shouted at them until they moved across the theater and then continued shouting about how rude they were and how no one should tell him to calm down and how he was the polite and decent one...wow...ease off the testosterone buddy...he also pretty much hit his wife in front of all of us, really cool dude....

*We had a Halloween Party the other night that deteriorated (some might say unraveled in honor of the mummy at the table) when I happened to mention the extreme inequality of India to two (very annoying and creepy) Indian men who invited themselves to our party. I received in turn an earfull of shouting about how the poor are lazy and swindling the government and how they have boatloads of opportunities here but they just prefer to take advantage of the system

what system you might ask? I for one never heard any glowing reports of India's social welfare programs, it must be the same program that lets the man starve on the street to the point that he cannot move even though he is within feet of a grocery store, the system that lets kids sleep naked under the highway, the system that provides for all of the crippled old woman I see digging up shit in the streets...but yea why listen to me? After all I'm just a pair of boobs to these guys

*I have devolped a chronic case of the Chennai cough. There is also "Chennai eye" but that is another disease altogether (and much more disgusting). I'm glad I only have the cough...

*Auto driver last night asked us rs 150 for what should have been an rs 80 tops. This is pretty standard, what happened next was not. We low-balled him at rs 50 hoping to get a ride for rs 70 or 80 except then something really really strange happend. We said 50 and he said ok. He didn't even ask us for more when we got to our apartment...

I think that might have been my most surreal moment of all this week....20 seconds to go down rs 100 in price??? I sometimes spend 10 minutes arguing over 10 rupees...there must be something new in the water....maybe its getting cleaner?

Next stop: Pondicherry for the weekend and Kerala all of next week, I can't wait to hike in the jungle, stay on a houseboat, drink alcohol that is not made in Tamil Nadu, and see a bunch of new places with two of my favorite people here..stay tuned for more stories of trains, buses, boats and autorickshaws...