2 weeks of just hanging out and working
2 weeks of monsoons
1 week of bs computer issues
_____________________________
5ish weeks without posting.
So, those first two weeks were spent, if I recall correctly, working as a chef and then as a member of the hygiene team. Each were week-long positions that gave me the chance to delve a bit into the workings of the place. Chefs are responsible for 1 meal a day for 6 days of the week, which means that they have to plan a 3 or so course meal (porridges, fruit salads, rice, dahl, vegetables, treats, etc) for between 30 and 75 volunteers and then tell the cooking team what to do and how and when. It's not exactly easy, but since all the volunteers understand how hard it is, everyone is quite forgiving when stuff gets burned or just comes out bland. I wish I could remember what my major successes were, but honestly my chef gig was so long ago that the only thing I remember coordinating was a fantastic batch of mashed potatoes with tahini.
As a member of the hygiene team, I was allowed the privilege of walking around each restroom (read: 2 potty holes in the ground, 1 pee hole in the ground, 1 barrel of sawdust, 1 barrel of water), sticking 4-foot long poo-stirring sticks into the potty hole, and stirring the shite for 2 or 3 minutes (to mash up any pesky maggots and mix the poo with sawdust for maximum drying/composting action), then going around and mopping off the platforms. Also, if one of the potty units is full, it has to be emptied, which means using a tray on a stick like you might have by your fireplace to empty a 500 liter underground barrel of poo.
I actually really enjoyed the hygiene work. Poo is apparently not so disgusting if you take a few simple steps. Sawdust immediately neutralizes the odor and sliminess, and if you stir and compost it for just a few weeks, it quickly becomes a rich mixture that you don't at all mind running your hands through to combine dirt for planting. Of course, if you are at the point where you don't mind cleaning your bum with your hand, then you probably won't worry about touching composted poo either.
After both of those experiences, I took a week-long job as a firestarter, which means that I aided the chef in keeping fires going during cooking times and did some other kitchen upkeep work. This was not quite so intense as cheffing, except for the fact that because I had already cheffed with moderate success, I wound up helping the new chefs more than I had planned.
Then things got tough. The beginning of the rainy season, when mosquitoes get crazy and clothes get moldy, coincided with the beginning of the permaculture course. This meant that the 20 or so volunteers who had agreed to stay at Sadhana for 3 years to develop expertise for themselves and decrease Sadhana's dependence on outside food sources, i.e. the 20 most informed people around, stopped doing work and started studying all the time. This left just a small group of medium-term volunteers (people like me who had been around for a month and would be around for one or two more to pick up the slack) to take on the "management positions." I was chosen to train with and then replace the hygiene head, meaning I would continue to clean and empty toilets daily, and also instruct the weekly hygiene team on maintaining the showers, laundry area, and hand-washing stations.
All was going smoothly and I was happy with and even proud of the way I had "moved up" to a position of some importance and responsibility. Then the rains came and soaked the soil, increasing its weight so much that it cracked several underground poo canisters, allowing water to soak in and ruin the dry-composting system. Emergency toilet emptying sessions ensued, as did excavation of the damaged clay pots and their replacement.
Then, just as I had played my part in averting a total poo crisis, the two people who had been picked to replace the kitchen manager (who trains and supervises the chefs and firestarters, approves the meal plans, makes the food orders, attempts to maintain good hygiene practice,and in general staves off total kitchen chaos) left, one to study yoga and one to study meditation. I was then asked to step up and perform what I have only now come to understand is the single most difficult task in Sadhana. I've been at it for about 10 days now, spending at least 4 hours in the kitchen every day, more when chefs or firestarters are sick and I actually have to get my hands dirty. It was terribly stressful at first, but I've since learned to trust my chefs a bit more and worry about the quality of the food a bit less, and now I'm actually sort of enjoying it. The course ends this week, though, which means I get to return the position (along with the stress) to its rightful owner.
What else...I'm really enjoying the super-international atmosphere at Sadhana. Two Italians have passed through (one from Padova, where I lived for a few months back in the day), so I've had a chance to practice my much beloved fourth language, as well as hordes of Koreans, including one with a moustache on par with mine in terms of fantasticity. They were part of a traveling school, where the kids (13-17 years old) take a year off from public school and spend it instead in Nepal and various cities in India, studying music and dance and martial arts and foreign languages and all sort of useful stuff. Probably not so great from a carbon point of view, but probably really good in terms of the well-being and development of the kids. We have also had volunteers from: Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, France, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Canada, USA, Ireland, Scotland, UK, Australia, Colombia, Tibet, Israel, Algeria, Ukraine, and maybe others. It is amazing how easily everyone gets along, and how well most of them speak English. Unfortunately, most Europeans and each and every Indian speaks more languages than I do.
The BS computer issues probably are not that interesting. They stem either from excess humidity or dead ants inside, and result in the inability to type certain letters (including some in my email passwords :-() and the inability to stop my computer from typing others. This makes blogging feasible only when I am out using computers that draw their energy from the repulsive public power grid. Now that I've again become conscious of this fact, I think it may be time to sign out. Sorry, world!
Random Korean Expression (refresh for a new one!)
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Carrying On The Discussion Which Began In The Comments Section Of The Previous Post
Because Dave, Chris, and Jeff have all brought up things that I'd like to discuss.
First, the environmental cost of travel:
I totally get where you (Snowleopard) are coming from about the plane stuff. Actually, the guy who's running this place is working on starting a second/daughter project in Morocco so that Europeans can do the same sort of stuff only by using buses and ferries, and it's a frequent topic of discussion amongst the staff and volunteers. Are we doing any net good by coming here? Do we do more good living almost zero-impact lives for a while but flying to do it, or would it be more effective for us to just stay home and try to live as low-impact as is possible in our high-impact societies. If you know a website that can help with these sort of calculations, I'd love to see a link. I just checked one site that put my flight impact at 1.38 tons of CO2. Another says that the average American is responsible for 20 tons of C02 a year, and I doubt Koreans are far behind. So if those numbers are to be trusted, the flight is equivalent to living in the USA for a month, and my emissions here are far lower than the average Indian's, who already consumes only about 1/16 of what an American does. Those numbers are a little more encouraging than the ones Chris came across, but who knows which to trust?
(For what it's worth, which isn't much, lots of us use only bicycles to get around while we're here. I'm seriously toying with the idea of trying to bike all or part of the way back home, but I have no idea how long it would take or how safe it would be.)
Actually, there's a similar logic behind why the community here eats vegan. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to plant a forest and then eat meals that depend on razing other forests to make space to raise crops to feed animals, just like it doesn't makes sense to do water conservation work from 6:30-8:30 in the morning and then take long showers out of taps. We're doing our best to be conscientious, both in terms of the work we do and the lifestyles we choose.
Also, I like to think of my time here as a sort of investment. It may have an immediate carbon cost, but it's conceivable that it will be paid off in the long run. There's no such chance or even intention as far as meat is concerned. It reminds me a bit of our solar panels in the sense that there's an immediate environmental cost in producing them but that after a few years said cost will have been recouped. Sitting at home, or rather wherever you are, even if it's not home, might be the best way to keep low emissions, but it's also not proactive in any way and doesn't lead to sustainable solutions.
Another thing to keep in mind is that lots of the people who are in Sadhana didn't get a flight to India with us in mind. They found out about us after arriving, and are deciding to stay with us in lieu of traveling elsewhere in India, and not in lieu of staying at home. In their cases, the plane argument isn't relevant. In my case, though, since I came largely with farming and low-impact life in mind, it definitely is.
I didn't understand the Soccer Mom metaphor because I don't picture them as having much cognitive dissonance due to the environmental externalities of their lifestyle. That's why I only picked up on the fatalistic sentiment in what you wrote. I do see what you mean, though, about how I may in this case be choosing to pursue my travelicious lifestyle despite what I know about how it affects the environment and others. I think I've addressed this, somewhat, above. Also, it's worth mentioning that traveling and not eating meat is better, environmentally, than traveling and eating meat.
One more thing, just for the sake of arguing. I don't think that refusing to fly is the single best thing we can do. The single best thing, I'm guessing, is probably not to have children. This, of course, may or not not be a palatable option and may be another of those SUV-driving-soccer-mom issues where our thoughts about what things in life are desirable override our concern for larger, less immediate and tangible matters. But just imagine how little of an impact we'd have if we didn't exist at all.
I'll make another post about the reasons for my vegetarianism/veganism shortly.
First, the environmental cost of travel:
I totally get where you (Snowleopard) are coming from about the plane stuff. Actually, the guy who's running this place is working on starting a second/daughter project in Morocco so that Europeans can do the same sort of stuff only by using buses and ferries, and it's a frequent topic of discussion amongst the staff and volunteers. Are we doing any net good by coming here? Do we do more good living almost zero-impact lives for a while but flying to do it, or would it be more effective for us to just stay home and try to live as low-impact as is possible in our high-impact societies. If you know a website that can help with these sort of calculations, I'd love to see a link. I just checked one site that put my flight impact at 1.38 tons of CO2. Another says that the average American is responsible for 20 tons of C02 a year, and I doubt Koreans are far behind. So if those numbers are to be trusted, the flight is equivalent to living in the USA for a month, and my emissions here are far lower than the average Indian's, who already consumes only about 1/16 of what an American does. Those numbers are a little more encouraging than the ones Chris came across, but who knows which to trust?
(For what it's worth, which isn't much, lots of us use only bicycles to get around while we're here. I'm seriously toying with the idea of trying to bike all or part of the way back home, but I have no idea how long it would take or how safe it would be.)
Actually, there's a similar logic behind why the community here eats vegan. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to plant a forest and then eat meals that depend on razing other forests to make space to raise crops to feed animals, just like it doesn't makes sense to do water conservation work from 6:30-8:30 in the morning and then take long showers out of taps. We're doing our best to be conscientious, both in terms of the work we do and the lifestyles we choose.
Also, I like to think of my time here as a sort of investment. It may have an immediate carbon cost, but it's conceivable that it will be paid off in the long run. There's no such chance or even intention as far as meat is concerned. It reminds me a bit of our solar panels in the sense that there's an immediate environmental cost in producing them but that after a few years said cost will have been recouped. Sitting at home, or rather wherever you are, even if it's not home, might be the best way to keep low emissions, but it's also not proactive in any way and doesn't lead to sustainable solutions.
Another thing to keep in mind is that lots of the people who are in Sadhana didn't get a flight to India with us in mind. They found out about us after arriving, and are deciding to stay with us in lieu of traveling elsewhere in India, and not in lieu of staying at home. In their cases, the plane argument isn't relevant. In my case, though, since I came largely with farming and low-impact life in mind, it definitely is.
I didn't understand the Soccer Mom metaphor because I don't picture them as having much cognitive dissonance due to the environmental externalities of their lifestyle. That's why I only picked up on the fatalistic sentiment in what you wrote. I do see what you mean, though, about how I may in this case be choosing to pursue my travelicious lifestyle despite what I know about how it affects the environment and others. I think I've addressed this, somewhat, above. Also, it's worth mentioning that traveling and not eating meat is better, environmentally, than traveling and eating meat.
One more thing, just for the sake of arguing. I don't think that refusing to fly is the single best thing we can do. The single best thing, I'm guessing, is probably not to have children. This, of course, may or not not be a palatable option and may be another of those SUV-driving-soccer-mom issues where our thoughts about what things in life are desirable override our concern for larger, less immediate and tangible matters. But just imagine how little of an impact we'd have if we didn't exist at all.
I'll make another post about the reasons for my vegetarianism/veganism shortly.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Jonathan Safran Foer on Vegetarianism
A guy whose seemingly awesome works I have only read excerpts of has submitted an article to NYT about vegetarianism. It's called "Against Meat," but its tone is much less strident than its title. It is nice to read and fairly compelling without being stuck-up or aggressive. I heartily recommend it.
But, in case you don't feel like reading it, let me just pull out one quotation. I've heard arguments in this vein, but never put quite so clearly:
"...taste, the crudest of our senses, has been exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses. Why? Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to confining, killing and eating it? It’s easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it. Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals."
By the way, I've been eating about 95% vegan-style for the past two weeks (I had some Indian goat cheese on a pizza a while back, and there's milk in the awesome 9-cent chai tea on the street) and am not any scrawnier, weaker, or tired-er than usual. Try it one day a week! I may try to post a recipe or two, like mashed potatoes with tahini or Tzatziki with tofu or birthday treats made from bananas, dates, shaved coconut, palm sugar, cocoa powder, and spices. Not to mention pumpkin and dahl soup. It is indeed possible to be considerate and well-fed at the same time!
But, in case you don't feel like reading it, let me just pull out one quotation. I've heard arguments in this vein, but never put quite so clearly:
"...taste, the crudest of our senses, has been exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other senses. Why? Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to confining, killing and eating it? It’s easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it. Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals."
By the way, I've been eating about 95% vegan-style for the past two weeks (I had some Indian goat cheese on a pizza a while back, and there's milk in the awesome 9-cent chai tea on the street) and am not any scrawnier, weaker, or tired-er than usual. Try it one day a week! I may try to post a recipe or two, like mashed potatoes with tahini or Tzatziki with tofu or birthday treats made from bananas, dates, shaved coconut, palm sugar, cocoa powder, and spices. Not to mention pumpkin and dahl soup. It is indeed possible to be considerate and well-fed at the same time!
Sunday, October 11, 2009
What Sadhana Forest is like
Well, I have been here at Sadhana (stress on the Sa, schwa on the da n na) for going on two weeks now, and have yet to write a word about it. There is a reason for this.
The first is that there's a website, http://sadhanaforest.org, which has a lot of stuff about the layout and the mission and the methods.
The second is that I'm extremely skeptical of my ability to write anything useful about this place, whether that means "India" or "Tamil Nadu" (the province) or "Sadhana Forest." I have lately been reading a book called Shantaram, which is the kind of "must-read" international best seller that lets you know what it's really like to be in (insert name of exotic place here). There are several copies lying around the main hut here, and quite a few of the volunteers have read the book and told me that it's good. I find, though, that the author mostly skips all the banal junk that you have to put up with no matter what country you're in, describes things with the old philosophical-sounding-adjective-I-found-in-my-thesaurus + abstract noun combo (e.g. peripatetic comprehension, soporific slump). Also, characters speak in paragraph-long discourses filled with unnatural, impossible word play and italicized zingers. All of this is quite unfortunate, because the author has led a pretty wild life, including robbing banks with toy guns, breaking out of a maximum-security prison, and living and hiding in Bombay for 8 years, living in a slum and working for the mafia and fighting in an army and establishing a charity and lots of other amazing stuff.
The result is that I am feeling a real need for objectivity and honesty in writing and am not sure that I can deliver anything that's any less trite or self-serving or loath-inducing than Shantaram. Of course, I'm also thinking that any endeavor to cover all the banal details of just about any experience will probably be pretty terrible to read. Unless you're a fan of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Which you should be. For the record.
But, anyway, feel free to ignore all that stuff. Here are a few facts about this place.
There are two groups of people here: long-term volunteers and short-term ones. Long-term ones have signed on to stay for three years, the idea being that after that much time here they'll be able to write a manual and also start a similar community in Morocco. The short-term volunteers stay a minimum of two weeks and a maximum of as long as they want. There are 16 long-term volunteers, plus the two founders, their two daughters (ages 8 and 1.5), and one Indian couple with a 4ish year-old daughter. The number of short-term volunteers varies, but since I've been here it's been about 30, plus or minus 5.
We cook and eat vegan meals together. No meat, no eggs, no dairy, no honey. We also don't purchase any processed food. We get lots of fruits (bananas, papayas, pomegranates, mandarins, sweet lemons, pineapples, "chicos") vegetables (cukes, carrots, red onions, garlic, eggplants, potatoes, tomatoes, "chow chows," squash, pumpkins, celery, cabbage, chinese cabbage), nuts, rice, dhal, soybeans, chickpeas, seeds, and various powdered grains. Most of it's local and organic, but not all of it. Now that there are some long-term staff, they're also trying to grow their own food. We're working now on bananas, pomegranates, jackfruit, papaya, mango, and various herbs, all inside the village. We compost all of the skins, shavings, and leftovers, except for the heads of pineapples, which we plant, and the husks of coconuts, which we save for some project that will later sequester lots of carbon. Or so someone has heard.
We live in huts made of biodegradable, natural materials like leaves, bamboo, and twine, which I think is made from coconut fibers. No nails. The huts don't have electricity.
We have a pooing system that seems intricate at first but in actuality is much simpler than a flush toilet. We poo into ceramic chambers which are buried into the ground. When pooing, we catch our pee in a little pail. We empty the pail into a (sealed) container, dump sawdust all over our poo, rinse our left hands and both bums, then go to a hand-washing station and wash off with all-natural soap that won't pollute our drinking water. Later, we collect the humanure, compost it, and then use it to fertilize our fruit trees and reforestation trees. The pee can also be used as fertilizer. None of it goes anywhere useless or harmful.
What electricity we do use is solar. We have 2 big panels, each the size of 2 single beds, and maybe one other, smaller one. They generate excess power from 10AM to 5PM, which is when we can charge our laptops and ipods and other stuff. We have lights in the kitchen, two of the bathroom stalls, and the main hut.
There's no running water. There's one pump, which we use to fill buckets for showers, for washing dishes, and for filling the hand-washing stations. The H-WS's consist of a big vat of water, a small pot with a hole in the bottom, a cup, and some natural liquid soap in a bottle. You pop the lid off the big vat, pour some water into the pot, let it stream out of the hole, and wash your hands in it. The runoff goes into a banana pit and feeds the trees. Same with the showers. Dishes are dunked in a bucket of water, scrubbed with loofas which grow on trees and ash collected from our kitchen fires, then dunked three in three more buckets, sprayed with vinegar, and left on racks to dry.
I suppose I'll limit this post to the immediate physical environment, and I'll try to describe the reforestation effort (which is not immediate) and the vibe (which is not physical) in later posts.
I only want to add that it feels great to know that my current lifestyle is not harming anybody in my vicinity, or anywhere else, or anytime else. I don't feel like I have to ignore the ramifications of what I do or the processes that led to making what I'm doing possible. In the First World, no matter how hard you try, you can't avoid products of unknown provenance, advertised with attractive but dubious claims, and entire systems and institutions and habits that make it impossible to live fairly and responsibly. It's not perfect here - as I mentioned, we're not self-sufficient as far as food is concerned, and we have not choice but to support some non-organic farms, and we still produce medical trash from time to time - but it's hard to imagine that it's better anywhere else.
The first is that there's a website, http://sadhanaforest.org, which has a lot of stuff about the layout and the mission and the methods.
The second is that I'm extremely skeptical of my ability to write anything useful about this place, whether that means "India" or "Tamil Nadu" (the province) or "Sadhana Forest." I have lately been reading a book called Shantaram, which is the kind of "must-read" international best seller that lets you know what it's really like to be in (insert name of exotic place here). There are several copies lying around the main hut here, and quite a few of the volunteers have read the book and told me that it's good. I find, though, that the author mostly skips all the banal junk that you have to put up with no matter what country you're in, describes things with the old philosophical-sounding-adjective-I-found-in-my-thesaurus + abstract noun combo (e.g. peripatetic comprehension, soporific slump). Also, characters speak in paragraph-long discourses filled with unnatural, impossible word play and italicized zingers. All of this is quite unfortunate, because the author has led a pretty wild life, including robbing banks with toy guns, breaking out of a maximum-security prison, and living and hiding in Bombay for 8 years, living in a slum and working for the mafia and fighting in an army and establishing a charity and lots of other amazing stuff.
The result is that I am feeling a real need for objectivity and honesty in writing and am not sure that I can deliver anything that's any less trite or self-serving or loath-inducing than Shantaram. Of course, I'm also thinking that any endeavor to cover all the banal details of just about any experience will probably be pretty terrible to read. Unless you're a fan of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Which you should be. For the record.
But, anyway, feel free to ignore all that stuff. Here are a few facts about this place.
There are two groups of people here: long-term volunteers and short-term ones. Long-term ones have signed on to stay for three years, the idea being that after that much time here they'll be able to write a manual and also start a similar community in Morocco. The short-term volunteers stay a minimum of two weeks and a maximum of as long as they want. There are 16 long-term volunteers, plus the two founders, their two daughters (ages 8 and 1.5), and one Indian couple with a 4ish year-old daughter. The number of short-term volunteers varies, but since I've been here it's been about 30, plus or minus 5.
We cook and eat vegan meals together. No meat, no eggs, no dairy, no honey. We also don't purchase any processed food. We get lots of fruits (bananas, papayas, pomegranates, mandarins, sweet lemons, pineapples, "chicos") vegetables (cukes, carrots, red onions, garlic, eggplants, potatoes, tomatoes, "chow chows," squash, pumpkins, celery, cabbage, chinese cabbage), nuts, rice, dhal, soybeans, chickpeas, seeds, and various powdered grains. Most of it's local and organic, but not all of it. Now that there are some long-term staff, they're also trying to grow their own food. We're working now on bananas, pomegranates, jackfruit, papaya, mango, and various herbs, all inside the village. We compost all of the skins, shavings, and leftovers, except for the heads of pineapples, which we plant, and the husks of coconuts, which we save for some project that will later sequester lots of carbon. Or so someone has heard.
We live in huts made of biodegradable, natural materials like leaves, bamboo, and twine, which I think is made from coconut fibers. No nails. The huts don't have electricity.
We have a pooing system that seems intricate at first but in actuality is much simpler than a flush toilet. We poo into ceramic chambers which are buried into the ground. When pooing, we catch our pee in a little pail. We empty the pail into a (sealed) container, dump sawdust all over our poo, rinse our left hands and both bums, then go to a hand-washing station and wash off with all-natural soap that won't pollute our drinking water. Later, we collect the humanure, compost it, and then use it to fertilize our fruit trees and reforestation trees. The pee can also be used as fertilizer. None of it goes anywhere useless or harmful.
What electricity we do use is solar. We have 2 big panels, each the size of 2 single beds, and maybe one other, smaller one. They generate excess power from 10AM to 5PM, which is when we can charge our laptops and ipods and other stuff. We have lights in the kitchen, two of the bathroom stalls, and the main hut.
There's no running water. There's one pump, which we use to fill buckets for showers, for washing dishes, and for filling the hand-washing stations. The H-WS's consist of a big vat of water, a small pot with a hole in the bottom, a cup, and some natural liquid soap in a bottle. You pop the lid off the big vat, pour some water into the pot, let it stream out of the hole, and wash your hands in it. The runoff goes into a banana pit and feeds the trees. Same with the showers. Dishes are dunked in a bucket of water, scrubbed with loofas which grow on trees and ash collected from our kitchen fires, then dunked three in three more buckets, sprayed with vinegar, and left on racks to dry.
I suppose I'll limit this post to the immediate physical environment, and I'll try to describe the reforestation effort (which is not immediate) and the vibe (which is not physical) in later posts.
I only want to add that it feels great to know that my current lifestyle is not harming anybody in my vicinity, or anywhere else, or anytime else. I don't feel like I have to ignore the ramifications of what I do or the processes that led to making what I'm doing possible. In the First World, no matter how hard you try, you can't avoid products of unknown provenance, advertised with attractive but dubious claims, and entire systems and institutions and habits that make it impossible to live fairly and responsibly. It's not perfect here - as I mentioned, we're not self-sufficient as far as food is concerned, and we have not choice but to support some non-organic farms, and we still produce medical trash from time to time - but it's hard to imagine that it's better anywhere else.
Monday, September 28, 2009
There's another post below this one, and it's better, so don't miss it!
I spent yesterday taking a hop-on hop-off bus tour from Chennai to Mamallapuram (it took me 2 days to be able to consistently say that word), and have spent most of today, so far, on a bus from Chennai to Pondicherry. It's hot outside and I'm stuffed from a giant $2.20 plate of cauliflower masala that I just had for a late lunch, so I'm going to go ahead and start typing up another post. Actually, the one I just put up was from a whole 2 days ago, so it's about time for an update anyway.
So, here are some things recently added to the list of Things I Have Seen:
- A huge bus running over a mid-sized watermelon, causing it to blow up awesomely.
- A guy trying to contain a mass of chickens between his legs while driving on a scooter. Of course, a few fall out, land between his wheels, and he runs them over, then picks them back up and puts them back where they were.
- A healthy-if-old looking guy who takes a spit. It comes out a dirty orange. He was not carrying any sort of fruit or drink, and I don't think he came out of a restaurant.
- A pretty old man blows a snotrocket. It's deep red/brown and cakier than the mud it lands in.
- A little kid (2 years oldish) on his father's lap combing his father's hair and moustache.
- A completely unnecessary police officer acting as the middleman at a toll booth. He stands in between the driver and the toll booth operator, tells the driver the total, takes the money, turns around, gives it to the operator, waits for change, turns around, and gives it back. WHY, MAN? Actually there is probably a very good reason. I hope so, anyway.
- A Nissan SUV cruises by blasting some impressively loud Hindi (or other language, I have no way of discerning them at this point) hip-hop. They park (at the crocodile farm). 3 guys get out of the front, 3 out of the middle, and 4 out of the trunk.
- A guy with a sweet arm-pedal bike. You can put flowers or fruits or whatever on the platform in back.
- People having picnics in awesome forests under awesome trees between the East Coast Road and the Bay of Bengal. The trees are seriously perfectly shaped for picnics, with big thick leaves that extend 10 or 15 feet out but don't droop down too low.
- Also, trash (bags, bottles, wrappers, etc) spread out pretty evenly, covering about 25% of the ground of the forest.
- The front gate to a government-run "School of Management." Moss and such had grown all over the sign, the paint was peeling, and the gate was rusty and locked shut.
- Watermelons for sale at roadside stands with cute little vampirey-faces painted onto them.
- Cows crossing the alley. Cows crossing the highway. Buses stopping for cows. Cows pulling hay on carts. Why don't they just turn around and eat it?. Cows eating trash. A dead cow on the side of the road.
- A lady seated on the concrete island that formed the barrier for a triangle-rotary intersection. Kept on grabbing her head, twisting it, slapping the ground, rocking back and forth, splaying her arms out, stretching and trying to scratch her back, then pausing and staring blankly in one direction or another.
Sorry to end on that note. There's one more thing on my list (there are all things I jotted down while on the bus or at bus stops or just meandering), but I can't read it. Looks like "Bob's picnic."
News-wise, I left the crushing poverty of Chennai (families, including children, sleeping on flooded streets with trash floating around) and am making my way towards the farm. I'm in Pondicherry now, which used to be a French colony, but haven't gone snooping around yet. It's way calmer, cleaner, and less intimidating. Unforunately, it's hotter. Will report back.
So, here are some things recently added to the list of Things I Have Seen:
- A huge bus running over a mid-sized watermelon, causing it to blow up awesomely.
- A guy trying to contain a mass of chickens between his legs while driving on a scooter. Of course, a few fall out, land between his wheels, and he runs them over, then picks them back up and puts them back where they were.
- A healthy-if-old looking guy who takes a spit. It comes out a dirty orange. He was not carrying any sort of fruit or drink, and I don't think he came out of a restaurant.
- A pretty old man blows a snotrocket. It's deep red/brown and cakier than the mud it lands in.
- A little kid (2 years oldish) on his father's lap combing his father's hair and moustache.
- A completely unnecessary police officer acting as the middleman at a toll booth. He stands in between the driver and the toll booth operator, tells the driver the total, takes the money, turns around, gives it to the operator, waits for change, turns around, and gives it back. WHY, MAN? Actually there is probably a very good reason. I hope so, anyway.
- A Nissan SUV cruises by blasting some impressively loud Hindi (or other language, I have no way of discerning them at this point) hip-hop. They park (at the crocodile farm). 3 guys get out of the front, 3 out of the middle, and 4 out of the trunk.
- A guy with a sweet arm-pedal bike. You can put flowers or fruits or whatever on the platform in back.
- People having picnics in awesome forests under awesome trees between the East Coast Road and the Bay of Bengal. The trees are seriously perfectly shaped for picnics, with big thick leaves that extend 10 or 15 feet out but don't droop down too low.
- Also, trash (bags, bottles, wrappers, etc) spread out pretty evenly, covering about 25% of the ground of the forest.
- The front gate to a government-run "School of Management." Moss and such had grown all over the sign, the paint was peeling, and the gate was rusty and locked shut.
- Watermelons for sale at roadside stands with cute little vampirey-faces painted onto them.
- Cows crossing the alley. Cows crossing the highway. Buses stopping for cows. Cows pulling hay on carts. Why don't they just turn around and eat it?. Cows eating trash. A dead cow on the side of the road.
- A lady seated on the concrete island that formed the barrier for a triangle-rotary intersection. Kept on grabbing her head, twisting it, slapping the ground, rocking back and forth, splaying her arms out, stretching and trying to scratch her back, then pausing and staring blankly in one direction or another.
Sorry to end on that note. There's one more thing on my list (there are all things I jotted down while on the bus or at bus stops or just meandering), but I can't read it. Looks like "Bob's picnic."
News-wise, I left the crushing poverty of Chennai (families, including children, sleeping on flooded streets with trash floating around) and am making my way towards the farm. I'm in Pondicherry now, which used to be a French colony, but haven't gone snooping around yet. It's way calmer, cleaner, and less intimidating. Unforunately, it's hotter. Will report back.
The Morning After (my arrival)
Wake up. My big(ger) backpack and small(er) backpack are on the (single) bed with me, just as I left them. Good. My adventure bag/man purse is under my head, being used as a pillow. I am probably squishing the last Ferrero Rocher chocolate from the plane last night. Double good. My feet are also on a pillow. I must not have noticed it when I was ushered into the room at who-knows-when. There were no lights and I couldn't even tell how many people or beds were in the room. Now I know that there were 3 and 7, respectively. I have been sleeping in the same jeans, shirt, and socks that I was wearing on the plane. Also like on the plane, I've got my sweater/jacket on backwards, arms through the wrong sleeves, the hood over my face, though this time I'm not trying to block out the light and jets of cold air. Rather, I'm trying to muffle the sound of the dark lump next to me scratching himself. It's worse than and totally out of proportion with the buzzing and biting of the mosquitoes. I can only think of long, thick, leper fingernails picking on crumbling scaly flesh. Somehow I fall asleep anyway.
Check my mp3 player clock. It's 9:15. Checkout time was 9. Crud. Quick shower (cool), check out, decide to walk, cave and take an "auto rickshaw", which looks like a bike with some sort of yellow shell around it so 2 people can ride behind the driver), realize I was going in the wrong direction, and use Chris's guideboook to explain that I want to switch to another guesthouse closer to the center of town. The sun is up, the heat is still bearable, and there are people everywhere. Women are walking with their daughters in nice silky-looking attire, and some men are wearing long, thin skirts that look like sarongs. Most dudes, though, are wearing jeans or khakis and collared or button-down shirts. Some people are busy carrying things, serving food, or chopping coconuts, but most seem to be just loitering, milling, and chatting, uninterested in the buses and taxis and bikes that are zipping around. I wonder how many will spend the whole day like that. The driver is friendly and tells me to call him again if I want a tour. He apologizes for speaking bad English but explains that he is "uneducated" and so he can't really read or write. I give him credit for being a decent driver, though, since he managed to avoid the cow sauntering around the middle of the road and got me to my new hotel pretty quickly.
I check into the hotel. "Paradise Hotel." 7 bucks isn't bad, though the book said 4. I assumed Paradise to have toilent paper, but no such luck. Maybe those who make it to paradise are liberated from the shackles of defecation? After some Aquinas-style reflection I decide that defecation can actually be a pleasant experience and that I'd still like to be able to do it in heaven. That decided, there was still no toilet paper. Like my previous hostel (run by the Salvation Army) there are no other foreigners here. I'm confused. The guidebook says these are popular spots. Ah well. The man at the front desk writes my arrival time down in the ledger - 7:45 AM. Huh? I wonder why he would fudge the arrival time. Is he going to charge me for an extra day? So far I've managed 2 taxi rides and one hotel check-in and check-out without extortions. I point it out and ask why he wrote the time wrong. He says it's the time. I look at the digital clock behind him. It says 7:42. What? I think back to the clock on the wall of the salvation army, which said something like 7:10 when I checked out, and which of course must have been off, because who do I trust, my portable media player or India?. Is it possible that I am wrong? Come to think of it, yeah. It was 9:15 in Kuala Lumpur. Duh. Someone forgot to change the time on my gizmo. I am awake way too early after a few days of sleeping too little, and fitfully at that. I am also slightly terrified of going back outside, what with the heat and the unmarked roads and the food of ill-repute and that feeling of "hrm, welcome to the next five months." The best course of action is clearly to sleep and lounge until I'm so stir-crazy that I have no choice but to force myself out. After all, I have time. It's still 20 minutes before I woke up.
Check my mp3 player clock. It's 9:15. Checkout time was 9. Crud. Quick shower (cool), check out, decide to walk, cave and take an "auto rickshaw", which looks like a bike with some sort of yellow shell around it so 2 people can ride behind the driver), realize I was going in the wrong direction, and use Chris's guideboook to explain that I want to switch to another guesthouse closer to the center of town. The sun is up, the heat is still bearable, and there are people everywhere. Women are walking with their daughters in nice silky-looking attire, and some men are wearing long, thin skirts that look like sarongs. Most dudes, though, are wearing jeans or khakis and collared or button-down shirts. Some people are busy carrying things, serving food, or chopping coconuts, but most seem to be just loitering, milling, and chatting, uninterested in the buses and taxis and bikes that are zipping around. I wonder how many will spend the whole day like that. The driver is friendly and tells me to call him again if I want a tour. He apologizes for speaking bad English but explains that he is "uneducated" and so he can't really read or write. I give him credit for being a decent driver, though, since he managed to avoid the cow sauntering around the middle of the road and got me to my new hotel pretty quickly.
I check into the hotel. "Paradise Hotel." 7 bucks isn't bad, though the book said 4. I assumed Paradise to have toilent paper, but no such luck. Maybe those who make it to paradise are liberated from the shackles of defecation? After some Aquinas-style reflection I decide that defecation can actually be a pleasant experience and that I'd still like to be able to do it in heaven. That decided, there was still no toilet paper. Like my previous hostel (run by the Salvation Army) there are no other foreigners here. I'm confused. The guidebook says these are popular spots. Ah well. The man at the front desk writes my arrival time down in the ledger - 7:45 AM. Huh? I wonder why he would fudge the arrival time. Is he going to charge me for an extra day? So far I've managed 2 taxi rides and one hotel check-in and check-out without extortions. I point it out and ask why he wrote the time wrong. He says it's the time. I look at the digital clock behind him. It says 7:42. What? I think back to the clock on the wall of the salvation army, which said something like 7:10 when I checked out, and which of course must have been off, because who do I trust, my portable media player or India?. Is it possible that I am wrong? Come to think of it, yeah. It was 9:15 in Kuala Lumpur. Duh. Someone forgot to change the time on my gizmo. I am awake way too early after a few days of sleeping too little, and fitfully at that. I am also slightly terrified of going back outside, what with the heat and the unmarked roads and the food of ill-repute and that feeling of "hrm, welcome to the next five months." The best course of action is clearly to sleep and lounge until I'm so stir-crazy that I have no choice but to force myself out. After all, I have time. It's still 20 minutes before I woke up.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Not the last post from Korea, not the first from India
But rather the first and last (until next February, presumably) from Kuala Lumpur. My layover here lasts another 3 hours (16 hours on the way back!), and then a short hop to India which will put me in just around 11pm. I very much anticipate the first night, what with leaving the airport after midnight and trying to get a hotel in town, to be the most stressful and hassly part of the trip. This probably means that I'm incredibly naive and ignoring the peskiness of touts, stomach bugs, mosquitoes, bumpy roads, and broken-down buses. Nonetheless, it's nice to think that I'll be able to get the hard stuff done with pretty quickly. Anyhow, I managed to get some money from the exchange bank in Daegu and I have Chris's travel guide, so all should be good.
The last few days have been somewhat ridiculous. I did my best to see most of my friends one more time before leaving Daegu and Seoul, which led to several busy days involving lots of busing and subwaying back and forth to various places. This culminated yesterday when I woke up, went to the Korean medicine clinic to get some heating pad, acupuncture, suction cup, and electric massage action on my lower back. This was necessary because of my and Chris's capers involving a motorcycle, a helmet, and 3 wigs.
The point I want to make is that the suction cup therapy (부항 Bu-hang, I believe it's called) is really freaky, though unfortunately, as it was done on my lower back, I couldn't see it directly and I can only report on what I surmise must have happened giving all the weird sensations. First, they prick your skin with a relatively thick needle or something, enough to pierce you and get you bleeding. Then they stick a little cup, the rim of which is coated with some cold jelly lubricant substance, probably to prevent skin abrasion, over the wound. They turn on the suction and at this point, all I can say is that my skin felt all floppy and slimy and the sensation made me think of blowing bubbles underwater or an octopus hopping around, and I am pretty sure a bunch of blood rushes up into the cup and into a tube. A chilly, sloppy, bubbly skin eruption is how I'd have to describe it. If I ever do it again, I'll try to give a more helpful account.
I spent the afternoon with my friend Dylan/Seokjune at Seoul National Univeristy (he's a lackey in a genetics lab), had lunch at one of the school cafeterias, hung out in the computer lounge printing out insurance documents, and chilled out at a campus picnic table. Then I headed back to my hostel, chatted for a while with the staff, and headed out again for a joint goodbye party with Belinda, one of my roommates/coworkers from the summer camp that ended 5 weeks ago. We happened to both be leaving today, her for Shanghai and me for, as you all have heard a million times by now, India. We invited some of our friends from around town and a few of the Korean co-teachers from the camp, and then we managed to do exactly what I knew I should have avoided, namely, staying out until 4AM on the night before a long day of flying. We went to an allegedly famous Japanese noodle restaurant, which, in all fairness, did serve some pretty awesome noodles. There was even a Korean celebrity in the shop (at 3AM), but nobody could remember what she was famous for, so I didn't even bother trying to talk to her or ask for an autograph.
I headed back to the hostel, napped on the couch for about 90 minutes (I am pretty sure they changed the keycode for my room), then got up at 6, cleaned up, ate some of the granola that Chris made me as a goodbye present, and got on the airport bus. The next several hours were a daze and I pretty much only remember using all of my remaining change to purchase a bottle of organic brown rice green tea, eating some airplane food including a nice celery, corn, lettuce, and kidney bean salad(and thinking about how airplane food, at least on trans-continental Asian flights, is generally fairly delicious) and waking up in Malaysia.
All in all, given the blood suction and lack of sleep and hectic last few days and long, disorienting flight, I am in remarkably good shape and may actually manage to survive my first night in Madras.
Did I mention the current temperature there is 38 celsius?
The last few days have been somewhat ridiculous. I did my best to see most of my friends one more time before leaving Daegu and Seoul, which led to several busy days involving lots of busing and subwaying back and forth to various places. This culminated yesterday when I woke up, went to the Korean medicine clinic to get some heating pad, acupuncture, suction cup, and electric massage action on my lower back. This was necessary because of my and Chris's capers involving a motorcycle, a helmet, and 3 wigs.
The point I want to make is that the suction cup therapy (부항 Bu-hang, I believe it's called) is really freaky, though unfortunately, as it was done on my lower back, I couldn't see it directly and I can only report on what I surmise must have happened giving all the weird sensations. First, they prick your skin with a relatively thick needle or something, enough to pierce you and get you bleeding. Then they stick a little cup, the rim of which is coated with some cold jelly lubricant substance, probably to prevent skin abrasion, over the wound. They turn on the suction and at this point, all I can say is that my skin felt all floppy and slimy and the sensation made me think of blowing bubbles underwater or an octopus hopping around, and I am pretty sure a bunch of blood rushes up into the cup and into a tube. A chilly, sloppy, bubbly skin eruption is how I'd have to describe it. If I ever do it again, I'll try to give a more helpful account.
I spent the afternoon with my friend Dylan/Seokjune at Seoul National Univeristy (he's a lackey in a genetics lab), had lunch at one of the school cafeterias, hung out in the computer lounge printing out insurance documents, and chilled out at a campus picnic table. Then I headed back to my hostel, chatted for a while with the staff, and headed out again for a joint goodbye party with Belinda, one of my roommates/coworkers from the summer camp that ended 5 weeks ago. We happened to both be leaving today, her for Shanghai and me for, as you all have heard a million times by now, India. We invited some of our friends from around town and a few of the Korean co-teachers from the camp, and then we managed to do exactly what I knew I should have avoided, namely, staying out until 4AM on the night before a long day of flying. We went to an allegedly famous Japanese noodle restaurant, which, in all fairness, did serve some pretty awesome noodles. There was even a Korean celebrity in the shop (at 3AM), but nobody could remember what she was famous for, so I didn't even bother trying to talk to her or ask for an autograph.
I headed back to the hostel, napped on the couch for about 90 minutes (I am pretty sure they changed the keycode for my room), then got up at 6, cleaned up, ate some of the granola that Chris made me as a goodbye present, and got on the airport bus. The next several hours were a daze and I pretty much only remember using all of my remaining change to purchase a bottle of organic brown rice green tea, eating some airplane food including a nice celery, corn, lettuce, and kidney bean salad(and thinking about how airplane food, at least on trans-continental Asian flights, is generally fairly delicious) and waking up in Malaysia.
All in all, given the blood suction and lack of sleep and hectic last few days and long, disorienting flight, I am in remarkably good shape and may actually manage to survive my first night in Madras.
Did I mention the current temperature there is 38 celsius?
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