The Benefits of Manifest Destiny

Today I just thought that I'd write a bit about something that Eric mentioned in his last post: the crowds in Bangalore. WARNING: GEEK ALERT!!! I can't help it, I feel the need to bombard you with facts and figures so I just want you to be prepared, this is your last chance to stop reading before you actually learn something....





When Eric says that are a billion people here, that is not an exaggeration, India currently has a population of 1.1 billion (a whopping one-sixth of the total world's population), second only to China (1.3 billion). Now if you consider that China has a total land area 3,600,927 square miles while India only has a total land area of 1,147,949 square miles, you begin to get the feeling that it might be a little crowded here.





"So," you are asking yourself, "how does this compare to the United States?" Well, you are in luck, because it just so happens that I am going to tell you. The current U.S. population stands at a measly 300 million, under one-third of that of India. However, when you compare land mass, you can nearly fit three Indias in the United States (the U.S. has a total land mass of 3,537,418 sq mi)! So, when you begin to consider the population densities of these two countries, the disparity between the
two is quite vast. In the United States, the average population density (this is pretty much the number of people in a country divided by the total land mass of the country) is at around 17 people living per square mile. Not too crowded, right? Well, in India the average population density
is at 201 people living in every square mile. That is a bit more uncomfortable, wouldn't you agree? Now remember, that is just an average, so when you consider that there are two mountain ranges in India (the Western and Eastern Ghats) that are largely uninhabitable and additionally a large region that is underpopulated due to
instability in the region (Jammu and Kashmir), the total land mass number shrinks quite a bit. What this means is that certain regions of India are packed with people! Take, for instance, Kerala. Kerala is a small state that occupies the south-western most part of India. The state does not contain what are considered the major cities of India, but yet over 50% of all people in the state live at a population density of 558 people per square mile! Additionally, no person living
anywhere in Kerala lives at a density less than 124 persons per square mile. Finally, the population density in the major cities in India are over two times that of large U.S. cities like New York City, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angles.





So I guess the point of this lesson in demography is that first, Eric isn't over- exaggerating when he says that India is crowded, and second, that Americans owe a big thank you to John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and John L. O'Sullivan, all proponents and/or major participants in the expansion of the United States (oh, except for all of those Americans that were displaced by westward expansion, but hey, they did get gambling (and small-pox) in exchange, so what could they possibly have to complain about???).

It's a small world after all...

When you are living in a country literally halfway around the world from your home, you really don't expect to run into someone that you know. Well, I did, and I am still amazed. I met Dr. Paul Lasko at the European Drosophila Conference just over a year ago in Hungary, he is an American researcher with a lab at McGill University in Montreal, Canada who is friends with my former boss at Northwestern, Bob. As it turns out, some people at McGill University think that it is important to establish strong collaborations with Indian institutes (like the NCBS) and as such sent a delegation of researchers to India to meet with investigators and discuss the potential for exchange. Paul just happened to be one of the scientists that came to the NCBS to visit, and we had a chance to catch up yesterday afternoon. This has not been the first chance encounter, as a person who was working in my lab at Northwestern is a close friend with a person who was working in the lab that I am currently in at the NCBS. Additionally, a friend and colleague of mine (a grad student in the lab) has a brother who works for Motorola in Schaumburg! It just goes to show that the world is not as big as we may envision when just about any destination is just a flight away. I am going to keep my eyes peeled for anyone else that I may know that is wandering around Bangalore, you just never know!

SP Road experience and NOT building a HTPC

Hi All,



Suzi has been doing a good job in keeping everyone updated with what is going on. I thought I should atleast get my first post out of the way.



I decided before leaving for India that I would not take my computer because it was too damn heavy. I planned on building a HomeTheater/Gaming PC from scratch again when I arrived with the assumption that it would not be too much of a problem to get parts. Well, that was a very stupid idea. I have learned the hard way that people really do not build their own PCs over here or if they do then their needs might be a little simpler. This sucks for me because I have a specific need for certain components that the average user would not need or care about.



I was encouraged however by my friend here that if I needed any computer or electronic items then I need to travel to a place called SP Road. SP Road is located pretty far from where I am staying so I had to leave work early to go there. I can honestly say that I would have rather stayed at work. It is difficult to describe SP Road. Another blogger described it as a "Diagon Alley" for computer geeks. Those who do not get the Harry Potter reference might understand SP Road better if they are aware of a place in Chicago located in the old Jewish neighborhood/town called Maxwell Street Market. (Yeah I know it goes by another name.) If you take the image of Maxwell Street Market and mix in the crowds from the Taste of Chicago and add a dash of the utter chaos seen at stores on Black Friday or even the latest PS3 launch then you have SP Road in all of its glory. For my East coast friends I guess you can imagine if Quincy Market had been affected by the Big Dig.



So with a crudely written list of various items in hand and my friend as a guide we ventured into the heart of SP Road. I will not go into details because I have repressed most of the memories. I can safely say with absolutely no hyperbole that SP Road is the worst place on Earth. Okay, I am being a little unfair. It is actually the worst place in our known universe. First, I do not like to haggle over prices. I can easily use the internet (pricewatch.com or slickdeals.net) to get extremely low prices on any computer items all while sitting comfortably in my pajamas without opening my mouth unless I need to stuff Doritos in it. Speaking of which, someone out there might be tasked to ship an obnoxious amount of Doritos and Starburst here. Indian junk food is pure JUNK but I digress. NOTHING in any of the thousands of the shops on SP Road is marked with a price so everything must be haggled over. This blows big time since haggling requires speaking which requires knowing some Hindi or Kannada. They do speak some English but it is still difficult to explain some important things.



Second, I HATE crowds. I know most of you say "I hate crowds also" but I REALLY HATE CROWDS. I define crowd as anyone other than myself. My demophobia is even worse in India because there are a billion people here and for some reason it seems like the entire billion is always standing right next to me. Also there are no concepts of queues or lines. It is usually a mass of people pushing and yelling until they get serviced (kindof like the latest PS3 launch.)



Third, the language problem is annoying like I mentioned above. You would think that geek speak would be a common language but I found that it is not entirely the case here. Trying to repeatedly explain that I need a specific motherboard and processor for overclocking and having the store person try to force the same piece-of-skit components on me over and over again like I am an idiot is a very trying experience. At least in America I can curse the person out but here they would not understand any profanity that I would use. Nothing makes me angrier than wasting a good profanity riddled tirade and it falling on deaf ears.



Finally, since I stand out as a foreigner people automatically equate that with being a mark. So I get the special rate which is usually a 50 - 100% increase in price. If they find out that I am an American then I am screwed because "all of us Americans are rich and use money as toilet paper." So now and then I drop a couple of "ehs" and "zeds" around because Canadians are less threatening and have less international baggage.



Anyway, I understand why SP Road exists. It is the same reason for the appeal of the Maxwell Street Market. Before Ebay and e-commerce exploded in the states, Maxwell Street represented an affordable one stop shop for anything you could want if you looked hard enough. I did not find "exactly" what I was looking for on SP Road but I actually could have found viable alternatives from the various stores. I guess that is the rare beauty of an open market that brick and mortar stores lack. It can be fun to hunt and haggle for the absolute best deal and then walking away knowing you accomplished something. It may not be exactly what you want but usually you can make it work.



People here really do not buy much from the web and I have yet to see any big stores that have websites for buying goods in India. Everything is brick and mortar which is okay but it would be nice to have the option of just pointing and clicking my way to a sale. Maybe it is because internet access here sucks and the average Indian probably can't afford it anyway. Maybe one day soon I will be able to buy all the stuff from here off the net but dammit I need my Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 with 2 GB of Geil PC2-6400 DDR and a Biostar TForce 965PT motherboard now!

Delhi Belly

Well, I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later, despite all of the precautions that we have been taking. The dreaded Delhi Belly, or if you have traveled to Mexico, also known as Montezuma's Revenge. I am unsure of what the root cause of this misery is as I do not recall eating or drinking anything out of the ordinary, but I have been stricken nonetheless. I have read that 50-60% of travelers to countries like India and Mexico come down with this, so I guess I should not be surprised, but it still sucks none the less, the stomach cramping is the worst of it. It seems sort of unfair, I did not get to stuff myself on Thanksgiving (as the tradition dictates), and yet I got sick anyway! I am trying to treat myself now with over the counter remedies, but I have read that antibiotics may be in order. So a word of advice to anyone who might be traveling abroad, there is apparently a vaccine available that prevents most cases of infection, I would highly recommend it. That is all for now, I need to get to work so that I can hopefully go home early this afternoon and get some rest.

Work-out World

This e-mail was sent to my work out buddies back home to describe my initial experience with Indian fitness. It was sent on November 23 (Thankgiving).



Hope you are all doing well and enjoying Thanksgiving. Eric has today and tomorrow off since he is still working for the US, but I am here at work. The really funny thing is that at Northwestern I didn't regularly make it in early beacuse of my commute, but here since my commute is so short I am the first one in every day and I am ususally in a hour or more before the next person comes in. It is kind of nice. Anyway, I had my first Indian work-out last night and thought that I would let you know how it went. First of all, I stopped by the gym (which is right on my way home from work, so ultra-convenient) and asked about the classes and the costs. The guy told me it was 500 Rs (about $11) for membership, and then 1600 Rs ($36) a month for classes!!! Mind you, they only have 1 class a day, and no classes on weekends. I thought that the price was a bit much for what they are offering (considering I was only paying around $25 a month at Northwestern), but I asked if I could try a class out and think about it (I actually planned to try to negotiate a better price since you can barter for about anything here). Anyway, I spent all yesterday dreading the work out (which is at 6:30 PM) because I am really unaccustomed to standing out so much. As about the only Westerner around here, people notice me and stare which is a little uncomfortable. Additionally, no one wears shorts here, and I can not work out in pants, thus drawing more attention to myself. Anyway, I show up and change in a tiny little room and of course no one talks to me because I am a Westerner, whatever. So the class begins and the instructor is SO out of shape, and her teaching style is a mix of Marilyn (the militant kickboxer who yells) and Annie (who only demonstrates the move, then stops). The upside is that the class was a good workout, and was made even more intense due to the fact that the studio is in a third floor unairconditioned (no fans either) building in Bangalore, which is in India, which has a tropical climate. So I was sweating like a man, and my face was so red (which
also made me stand out as all the other participants were Indian and barely working). I was the fittest of all the people in the room, which made me feel great (dispite having not worked out in about three weeks), and was surprised that most of the other people in the class would just stop doing whatever they were doing and just sit on
the floor and take a break. I was thinking, "Gee, if you guys wore shorts maybe you wouldn't get so hot and might be able to keep going." It is really wierd. Anyway, after the class I asked the manager what the pricing was and he told me (this is a different guy than I had talked to previously about pricing) that the classes for three months are 2250 Rs (which turns out to be $13 a month instead of the $36 I was
quoted originally). I think that the price was so different because the second time I asked about the price at the same time as some of the Indian participants and was given the Indian price, not the Western, which happens pretty frequently here. So, I didn't love the class but it was a good workout and there are not many alternatives
here so I will join tonight and see how it goes over the next three months. They offer step, body sculpting, kick-boxing, and some other stuff so I think that it should be okay, it is a matter of them getting used to me and me getting used to the classes. But after the class was over a couple of the other participants came up to me who overheard me talking to the manager and said that they couldn't believe that this was my first class because I had done so well. I explained to them that I have been doing step in the US for about 6 years and that pretty much all step is alike, so they should hang in there and it will get easier. It was nice to talk to some of the other participants, most people here initially stare, but end up being very nice and engaging folks. Anyway, I don't know what class is tonight, the schedule is not set, and you don't know what it will be until you show up, which is also strange. Boy, who knew that I had so much to say about working out. So that's the story.

Turkeyless Thanksgiving

This e-mail was sent Novemeber 20, bemoaning my eating prospects for the upcoming Thanksgiving celebration...



I can't believe that Thurs. is already Thanksgiving. I am pretty sure that we will not be having any turkey... So sad. Food has probably been the hardest thing here. The things in the grocery stores (which are honestly the size of a convenient store in the US) are totally unfamiliar to me and it is impossible to get almost all of the things that we had at home. No more soy-milk for me!!! We eat almost no meat, I don't even think that I have met an Indian here who eats meat, so it is very hard to come by. I have cravings for my Mom's meat-balls and meatloaf, anything where the main ingredient is MEAT. Do you think that meatballs would make through the mail okay? Ha Ha. I also miss bread and rolls, since most people don't have ovens (isn't that just nuts???) yeast bread is not a big thing here though you can get it. Luckily this weekend we found a bakery who makes rolls, and I have bought some of those to snack on. That is the problem, no snack food, and certianly no healthy snack food. I have fantasies about coming back to the US and bringing back to India with us bags and bags full of fat-free potato chips, fat-free Ritz crackers, etc.



We have run into a problem getting high-speed internet at home, so we are not able to use our Vonage phone yet. Getting most things done here is much harder that at home, it is an excellent exercise in patience and self-control. There is just not the urgency associated with the tasks as we accustomed in the US. We did get mobile phones and a land-line (for our eventual internet access) so we are just waiting on high speed internet (the most important thing). We do have internet acces through a modem at home, so I guess that is better than nothing (though I would guess that Eric would disagree).

Our arrival and initial impressions...

This is an e-mail that I sent to friends and family about a week after arriving in Bangalore. It was while we were still living in the serviced apartment, just before we moved into our apartment (around Novemeber 9).



Things here are moving right along, we have rented a three-bedroom apartment, it is the second floor of a home in a nice (and quiet) neighborhood here in Banglalore. The place is completely furnished so we don't have to get anything (except a microwave, not everyone here has one) which a a relief. After going out and about for the past week, I really did not want to have to arrange to furnish an apartment, as there is no such thing as a one stop shop here. Every shop sells just a few things and stores the like of Target, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, etc. are unheard of here. Also to complicate things, when one rents an unfurnished apt. or house, it means that there is no refrigerator, no cook-top (people do not use ovens here, so I guess
that I won't be doing any baking), or washing machines. As most people still wash their clothes the very old fashioned way with a stick of detergent, a stone, and a brush, laundromats are not readily available so if you don't want to was your own clothes by that method or hire someone to do it, you have to buy the washing machine. It seems that drying clothes is almost always done outside so I have yet to see a dryer. And everything is so blessed small, the fridges, the washers only hold about half the amount of clothes as a standard washer in the US. Where we are staying now (since we are having an internet connection installed in our apartment and will likely not move in until this weekend as we can not bear to be without internet access) is also said to be nice (I have found that this a relative term depending on your standards) as the house that we are in is fine, but it is just off of a main road and it is quite noisy all through the day with dogs (there are a lot of dogs in the street) as well as nearly continuous honking, and the occasional train. I believe it must be a genetic trait of the Indian people to honk, toot, and blow whatever horn, bell, or whistle their particular mode of transportation is equipped with. I have honestly noticed people honking for no reason at all. It must be a consequence of the suicidal and homicidal way in which driving is approached in this city. There are absolutely no rules of the road besides survival of the fittest and looking out only for one's self. The result is that lanes are meaningless, street lights mean nothing, and the road is a very dangerous place to be. Added to this are the dogs, cows, oxen, and people (there are often either no sidewalks or they are crowded with people browsing at the shops that line them or they are a muddied mess) crossing and walking in the streets, and you have a recipe for impending disaster. In fact, I have been told that there are (not surprisingly) many accidents and due to the number of autorickshaws (auto for short here), motocycles, and bicycles, many of these are fatal. We have not been involved in an accident per say yet, though an auto we were in scraped a city bus that it was trying to squeeze past and on two other occasions were nearly hit in one case a dog, an in the other a motorcyclist. So getting around is exciting, to say the least.



Reading the previous section you may have got the impression that I do not like it here, but that could not be more untrue. There are so many nice things about Bangalore. The first is that there are some of the most helpful people (probably in the world) here. One of Eric's acquaintances has been so kind to us, she spent her entire weekend taking us around the city to look for a home and she even took part of Monday off to help us negotiate the contract. She has been invaluable to our adjustment here. Also the owner of the serviced apartments that we are staying at has been a wonderful source of information. Another nice thing about the city is also the cost of things. An auto ride into work for Eric is about $2 and a ride to MG road (like the Mag mile I guess) is also just $2. Food is also inexpensive, even at the Western restaurants (we have been to a KFC and Pizza Hut, we needed a break form curry and spices) where you would be hard-pressed to spend more than $10 altogether for three people to dine. Eric and I went to the NCBS to have lunch with Dr, Hasan and some of my other colleagues, and as it is subsidized there, the food is even cheaper. Eric and I spent $2 for both of our lunches with also included 2 1 liter bottle of water (we are trying to stay away from tap water). What a bargain. I think that after only a week we are doing quite well and I imagine that in another week's time we will be doing even better. We have been able begin the process of opening a banking account here, and as we have what is probably considered to be some money in the US, here we are treated like a different class, and at the bank we got the VIP treatment, which we would never have received back in the US. I still haven't decided about hiring servants, we of course have them at the serviced apartment, but I am not yet comfortable with the idea of someone doing my dishes or my laundry in my own home. Time will tell. Anyway, I have rambled on long enough about our lives in India, I could say so much more but I have probably bored you enough already, suffice it to say that it is DIFFERENT here, in almost every conceivable way, and in ways that are probably inconceivable as well.

Greetings from Bangalore

I have decided to try my hand at blogging as after just a few weeks here in Bangalore, I am finding it hard to remember what I have e-mailed and to whom, so I thought that this might be a better way to keep in touch with all of you in order to keep you informed as to what our life is like in India, and the most recent goings-on. I hope to post every few days or so, but I guess that we will see how I do on that prediction. Once I have the basics of blogging down, I will post a few of my initial e-mails to various friends and family describing some of the joys and pains of moving here. I can't wait to get started, and please always feel free to let me know what you think of the blog and any comments and suggestions will of course be appreciated.

Cheers!!!