The Gift That Keeps On Giving...

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. Eric and I celebrated by trying a new restaurant for lunch and a result I received a unforgettable Christmas gift; Delhi Belly v2.0, an upgrade from version 1.0! Lucky me, this version has features unheard of in version 1.0 and is much more action-packed than I could have believed. Try new Delhi Belly v2.0, now with stronger cramping, and introducing vomiting! Maybe version 3.0 will come out in time for Valentine's Day, I can only hope!

Merry Christmas!!!

Well, Christmas has arrived to our part of the world (in the U.S. right now, Santa is probably just beginning to make his rounds while certainly all of you are dreaming of dancing sugar plums or something like that). The Christmas decorations appeared suddenly last week in the tiny shops that line our street, it took me a while to figure out what they were as it is not uncommon for decorations to materialize instantly to celebrate any number of occasions here. Eric and I were at a little second-floor restaurant near our house that we frequent for dinner and I was looking out the busy street below and it hit me, "Oh, those are supposed to be Christmas decorations!" It helps to put me in the Christmas spirit to see those decorations as the spirit is otherwise pretty hard to capture as there are no other similarities to Christmas at home. Oh, except one, and in my opinion one of the crappiest holiday traditions, the dreaded fruitcake. How is it possible to make a cake that weighs more than the oven that it was baked in? Anyway, fruit cake is about the only holiday treat that is available, and I am not that hard up, yet. Of all of the tasty holiday cookies and candy that there is out there, India had to adopt the stupid fruitcake. Damn!



Christmas is a national holiday in India, meaning many people get the day off of work. In my lab at the NCBS nearly everyone (excluding myself and one other fellow) has taken a vacation to be with family and friends over the Christmas holiday. The irony is not lost on me that I happen to be the ONLY person in the lab who was raised Christian (notice the common root word in the religion and the holiday, that is not coincidence) and yet I am the ONLY person here in lab today. I am going to remember this during Diwali!!! But not to worry, I plan to leave early and celebrate in the traditional American way; Eric and I are going to stuff ourselves so full of food that we can barley move! Sadly there will be no turkey, no ham, no beef brisket, no mashed potatoes and gravy, no stuffing, no pie or candy, but there will certainly be Tandoori chicken and lots of other delicious Indian dishes!



We are not the only Christians around (though there aren't many) and are not the only ones celebrating more than just a day off. Our downstairs neighbors (and landlords I guess) are Christian and have decorated their house as well as a little tropical evergreen (I have posted a photo) and also were kind enough to give us.... a fruitcake. We will forgive them, eventually.



Well, Merry Christmas!

Respect the Queue!!!

So I am beginning to realize that major shopping in Bangalore is centralized to specific locations. If you want to buy clothing here then a good place to go is Commercial Road. Very similar to the SP Road that I spoke of before. However it did seem a little less hectic probably because I was not actually looking for anything to buy. The amount of stores is staggering. There are a variety of tiny shops no bigger than a one car garage next to larger department like stores. At night everything is decorated with bright lights that it almost resembles Michigan Ave at night. It was actually a cool experience and of course you can haggle over price at every single store.



Commercial Road is not the real reason of this post though. After we had finished shopping we decided to catch an auto-rickshaw (metered-fare motorized rickshaw) to go home. It was late and pretty busy so finding an empty auto was difficult. Thankfully there was a traffic cop that was managing a queue for people wanting to get an auto. The line was pretty long but enough autos started to appear and quickly the traffic cop placed the waiting people into autos. The Queue Nazi ... eh... traffic cop seemed to be very strict and efficient in maximizing the amount of people to ride in an auto. Also he was brutal, yes brutal, in his enforcement in regards to the sanctity of the queue. I will get to the brutal part in a sec.



I have found that people here really do not respect a well formed line where you wait your turn based on when you arrived. FIFO (First In First Out) has not really caught on much here. We were in a Citibank one of the first days of arriving in Bangalore and we were amazed to see a mass of people swarming a lone female bank representative. It was total chaos but she seemed to work it like triage. It was actually impressive. If you are not comfortable with being pushy and loud then chances are you will never get serviced at many places here. It is not really too bad once you get adjusted. I still, however, find myself being way too polite when it comes to getting service and people push their way past me. Obviously, these people are oblivious to the imaginary queue that I have formed. I think sometimes you just have to give people a quick shot to the kidney to get to the front if you want to be served. Well, maybe a kidney shot is a little harsh but a good kick to the shin or a goosing usually distracts them long enough to slip through.



Anyway, seeing an actual queue especially out in the open like this was like seeing Bigfoot or UFOs. I almost told Suzi to grab the camera and take a picture but I was afraid that as soon as I said that the queue would disappear. Maybe I could have sold the picture to Weekly World News to go next to the latest Bat Boy story. So now the brutal part...



For sake of the story and to shameless plug a ridiculously excellent TV show, I will from now on refer to the unknown traffic cop as Vic Mackey. So Vic spotted what appeared to be an auto-rickshaw driver soliciting some evil people to cut the queue. This was a double offense because not only were the passengers violating MY queue, which this time was not imaginary, but the auto driver was also cutting his own rickshaw queue. The rickshaw driver was about find out the penalty for disrespecting the queue and crossing Vic Mackey. Vic marched over to the auto and screamed for the passengers to get out. They quickly leapt out and faded to the background as if they knew something wicked was about to happen. Mackey then politely asked the rickshaw driver never to do that again and let the guy go on his way.
THE END...





Yeah right, Vic grabbed the driver and delivered three lightning fast blows to the head. At first I did not really realize what I just saw. It is not everyday that you see someone get beaten. I dismissed it as my imagination until Mackey emphatically said in Hindi or Kannada what I can only imagine was not so very kind words. All throughout the verbal abuse he inserted random slaps. Maybe Vic was using each slap as a replacement for punctuation.



Order was restored and the rickshaw driver waited his turn in his line to properly pick up the next available passenger. The integrity of the queue was preserved that day thanks to the tireless efforts of that rouge abusive traffic cop. Thanks to him maybe one day queues will be common place here or at least you will see people carrying video cameras. I wonder if I could hire him when I go to Citibank again?



And NO, I do not approve of police brutality in any form. It is a vile and disgusting abuse of authority... unless someone tries to jump my damn queue then it is a welcomed deterrent and punishment. RESPECT THE QUEUE!!!

A Long, Hard Bangalore Winter

Hello everyone,



I have been informed by my colleagues here in Bangalore that we are in the midst of winter, and that, like in the U.S., the decrease in temperatures is inversely proportional to the time taken to emerge from a nice, warm bed in the morning. So here we are, suffering through dismal average daily highs of 80 degrees and lows of 60 for the remainder of December. Sadly, we expect no better next month, and it is not until February that we anticipate the return of warm weather ( I have added a new link that graphs the average monthly temperatures in Bangalore if you are curious).



In all seriousness, the Indians that are native to the south of the country do, apparently, find this weather to be a bit on the cool side and when I said that I thought that it was warm out, I was told that nearly 80 degrees is not, in fact, warm at all. I guess it just goes to show that even the weather is subjective. Here I thought that the weather was beautiful, when it has actually been dismal by Bangalorean standards (okay, maybe dismal is a bit of an overstatement, more likely just miserable). I think that it is wonderful though, I have always thought that Christmas is better celebrated in flip-flops than in snow-shoes. If any of you agree, you are welcome to hop a flight to Bangalore to celebrate Christmas Indian-style with us (for an idea of what that entails, check out this link to a short video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owK5tHjL0aE), sorry to my Indian friends, this clip isn't exactly PC, but it is funny)!

Happy Anniversary

Hello, just a little note about not one anniversary this year, but two! Eric and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary yesterday, and today we are celebrating one full month living in India! It has been an exciting month, and we have learned a lot about living abroad. Most importantly, I think, is that things always work out in the end. We have not been faced yet with any problem that could not either be solved, or lived with. I have learned how to barter for an auto ride and simply walk away if I am being overcharged; I have learned to live with a couple of lizards and seemingly millions of ants and have concluded that; better lizards than mice! I have also begun to learn how to live without many of the luxuries that I had; dryer, dishwasher, car and many others. I certainly miss those luxuries at times, but I have learned that luxuries are exactly what the word implies, not necesseties. After just one month, we have already arranged for all of the things that are, in fact, necessary for life; a home, food, money, electricity, water, gas, telephone, cable and internet (yes, telephone and internet are necessary to sustain life in case you were wondering). If I were to give my feelings about our decision to come to India, to leave behind our home and make a new one, I would say that I think that it has been the best decision that I (with Eric) have ever made. The experiences that I have had in just one month couldn't be had in a year in the United States, it just wouldn't be possible. Despite having a GI bug and wanting Western food in the worst way possible, I love it here; it is so different and every day has the potential for surprise. I love where we live, it is peaceful and serene, I love where I work, my colleagues have been so kind and I am excited about my project. Finally, I am coming to appreciate the relative simplicity of this place; at times I am frustrated by it, but it also gives me an opportunity to reassess my priorities.



This is not to say that I do not miss home (though it is becoming easier as the temperatures drop and the snow falls in Chicago), because I do, sometimes desperately so, I miss my family, and I miss my friends. But, I guess that to gain something valuable often you have to exchange something of value, and this experience would not be possible without some sort of sacrifice.



A side note: We finally got our broadband connection yesterday, so if you wanted and/or needed to talk to us, you can call us on our old home number, just remember the time change!