Train, Shenzhen to Beijing

I'm on a train to Beijing. Their long national day holiday has just begun. Almost all Chinese are on vacation. Like I mentioned in a much earlier post, it's a twenty four hour journey. I enjoy that aspect because it lets me unplug for a little while. And by 'unplug' I mean 'write mobile photo-enabled blog posts'. So as you can see, these trains are reasonably comfortable. The mattresses are soft. There's a restaurant car, but it's considered relatively expensive, so a minority of passengers go there to eat, bringing their own food instead. One photo from the restaurant car shows the ubiquitous green tea containers. I've found these are popular everywhere, and essentially indispensable among folks in the factories.
By the way, I decided I like this form of communication, so if you currently get email notifications of updates, I'll end them soon so email boxes don't get cluttered. If you don't mind a cluttered inbox, let me know and I'll keep you on.

Dong Guan

This is a bird's eye view of a landscape in Dong Guan just north of Shenzhen. Dong Guan is developing quickly, rapidly resembling it's SEZ neighbor to the south. I'm also experimenting with this kind of on the fly post as a different medium for communicating than the standard blog post.
To recap the last post on milk, I've talked to some more locals, and it seems Chinese around here are reasonably hip to the propensity for corporate greed, but place less blame on government culpability in the problem than Western newspapers. One person understood my tack in questioning, and in turn was convincing me that people have a lot of freedom of speech in general even on political topics, certainly much more than in the past. Looking from their eyes, if the large American milk company Lucerne started giving people food poisoning, I would much sooner blame the company than draw the conclusion that the multi party system had to be overhauled, essentially the analog of some Western newspapers' arguments on the recent scandal. It's easy for me to realize, however, that such a scandal in the US would become easy fodder for political mud slinging in an election based on multiple parties, and would probably result in some positive action to improve food regulation. Personally, I think it would be nice if we had more than two parties to choose between every election cycle. Maybe some problems result from a strictly two party system that, just as with the Chinese, aren't so obvious to us either. Like them, I don't think we'll soon see commentary in our popular press on the topic. I don't know why.

Milk

Commenting on the latest media frenzy on China isn't my style because it feels like grandstanding. I'm not a Sinophile, so I'm not always paying attention to all the political dimensions at play, usually leaving me at a disadvantage to contribute to the conversation. But this business with the milk powder deserves some thoughts.
You don't have to be an expert in Chinese characters to be able to glean that the internal news coverage is being glossed over. Go to www.xinhua.net, the government's online news site. I've been visiting the past few days. This character, 奶, means "milk". Copy and paste the character into your browser's text search utility, and you'll find that coverage is far removed from the main headlines. Instead, headlines of China's space mission currently in progress reign supreme. In general I've picked up that China's internal news coverage is about instilling pride in the country and its place in the world. It's fun to follow this kind of coverage (usually through imagery for me for obvious reasons, but many Chinese article translations are also accessible), because I feel like I'm observing an important transition for a developing country. But if it happens at the expense of themes like the following excerpt, from an article by a Beijinger Cui Weiping, then it's not fair. This was accessed via the Washington Post, dated Sunday, September 28.

"What could I do after I heard something like this? Where could I go to report the problem? I can't think of any official in this vast country who would patiently listen to me and try to address the problem. Most officials would probably regard me as insane if I went to talk to them. They would glance at me arrogantly from behind their desks. I don't think I could stand the humiliation for even a few minutes. Why should I seek this disgrace?

"There are all kinds of things like this happening in the country. There's nothing I can do about it," I said to myself, trying to appease my conscience.

How pitiful I am. I already know that my effort will be useless even before I take any action. Is there a devil who lives in our hearts and sneers at our actions all the time? His mission is to deprive us of the ability to respond, to smother our enthusiasm, and to paralyze our will to take action. I am caught in the same situation as my imaginary, impassive official. Both of us are controlled by a curse and have lost the ability to take appropriate action . . .

However, my humanity has been hurt. The damage is immeasurable. Trapped in this kind of silence and not able to do anything about it, I feel bad about myself. I almost feel that I've become a pile of [dung], or a slave who only knows work but not how to speak. I chat and joke with people around me, but I am not able to talk about the biggest bewilderment on my mind.

To speak, or not to speak, this is the question. This is a question that is hard for our judgment. But what we've lost is the ability to make basic moral judgment.

-- Cui Weiping

(End quote)

At least one of the following links should allow you to easily access the full article in question.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/26/AR2008092603451.html
http://wordpress.com/tag/baby-milk-powder-scandal/

This excerpt reflects themes I've come across before, but mostly in reading about China in Western media. To the extent that Chinese news organizations still cover the tainted milk issue, I've been able to glean from poor automated translations that coverage focuses on blaming one company. There's little discussion of reexamining the regulation process at a higher level. And contrary to the excerpt, local Chinese folks I talk to as part of the everyday don't seem to be itching to get these kinds of thoughts off their chest. They know which milk to avoid, and that's all I hear from them about it. If they wanted to they would have no problem voicing such concerns since face-to-face conversations naturally aren't monitored.

Onward

With my last post, I signaled the close of this blog. But a lot's happened since then, and so it's time to start writing it up. I'll also reframe the scope of the blog. It's no longer a travel blog, but its focus is on expatriate (expat) life, particularly with regards to China.

About that: Yes, I'm back in China, in Shenzhen. In July, in and around France, I visited Brittany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Strasbourg, and finally, Marseille with my dear mother. After her return home, I used the time in Marseille to determine the next step in my career, intending to do extended volunteer oriented work, where I could preferably apply engineering skills. That last condition narrows down the list *a lot*. However, towards the beginning of travels, I had made some inroads with a particularly appropriate socially oriented technology company. And so I remain in the profit-seeking world.

In looking over the blog history for references to Shenzhen, I realized I didn't write it up much. (By the way, kudos to the post-Olympics government for letting me proof my own blog, unlike before!) This was because I spent less than two days here. It's for the better anyways, as now I have the opportunity to talk a lot more about it. Shenzhen is not a travelling destination, it's a bit of a business hub, but with a very very low concentration of expats compared to, say, it's big brother Hong Kong to the south. Shenzhen is a wealthy place. To look out over the city is to walk through an excessively caffeinated architectural firm's display room. convention centers, government centers, major hotels, together look like a futuristic city from a space opera. The funny thing is, getting in at ground level, if you look hard enough, you can still find typical Chinese style hutongs sprinkled about. I should know, I live in one, and it's quite interesting (not to mention convenient - almost anything I want from rice cookers to barber shops at rock bottom prices). By contrast, the designer highrise apartment complexes that make up much of the residential space of downtown Shenzhen have a much lower local density of retail businesses, and even then only in the marble palaces that comprise your average Chinese shopping mall. It occurred to me one day as I was chowing away on semi-identifiable food in the hutong, that you can't eat marble. Anyways, before you think I'm slumming it Eastern-style all the time, I'm only there when I want a cultural dip. As I write, I'm in a starbucks.

Alas, life is not all bai cai and chicken feet, nor is it ventis and raspberry scones. Guangdong, the province Shenzhen is located in, particularly specialized in electronics manufacturing. With the help of local partners, I source and coordinate manufacturing for a consumer lighting product. The work scratches my itch for development oriented work, as the target customer is a low income consumer without reliable electrical access : e.g. much of India, rural China.

The earlier Chinese language study is starting to pay off - I can get through most of a day's work in the engineering areas without calling our bilingual OEM, who's often busy. You can teach each other technical words on the spot. Maybe one day I'll tell local engineers that the English word for 'resistor' is actually "lollipop". Can't wait to have them source 10,000 lollipops. Well, I like the sound of their term "dian zou" better. I keep up the studies, but only at 4 hours a week instead of 20+ like in Beijing. Character assimilation is slow, especially with such crutches as the fact that all non-elderly Chinese read my pinyin with no problem. Good computer input method editors make it far too easy to look like I know all kinds of characters. Here goes one: 中秋节快乐 means, "happy mid-autumn festival", an important holiday taking place this Sunday, which also gives everyone a day off on Monday. (People work they're behinds off around here, they deserve this holiday and more).

Another aspect of the work, which I probably more adopted than was assigned, is interfacing with venture capitalists. Socially oriented entrepreneurship is all the rage these days. And Asia has no shortage of heaping sums of money flowing around, as evidenced by the aforementioned monuments to modernisation of Gehry pedigree. Especially with close proximity to Hong Kong, networking with potential investors is exciting. And, to folks from the Sili Valley, don't worry, Sand Hill Road is well in our sights too.

To whet your appetites for the next post (god only knows when that will be), I'll write a heavily redacted description of the social aspects of expat life. (hey, an audience of wide scope reads this, you don't think everyone wants the sordid details, do you?)

One last note: When it comes to talking about business, I try to maintain some discretion - this is a startup, and like many startups with viable business plans, we have competitors. To the extent that you may glean details about our operations from my writings, do please be discrete as well. I've come to learn, mostly for the better, it's a very connected world after all. Sounds like the theme song for an up-revved Disneyland boat ride.

Reminder: comments are anonymous

End in sight

Since my last post, I finished up my time in Thailand in the island of Phuket. I got better at surfing, (finally managing to catch the open face of waves!), and learned a new sport called paddle upright surfing.
The wind during my time there wasn’t sufficient for picking up kite-surfing, instead I was very happy to have progressed to the extent that I did with conventional surfing. Thailand was fun, but I don’t know if it deserves the nostalgic sense of ecstasy people seem to go into when they talk about their experiences there. Maybe I’m not young enough to enjoy it as a complete party animal, and not old enough to enjoy it for the idyllic sense of relaxation available in so many parts of the country. The Indonesian island Bali has both of these in a smaller area, so if you ever consider an exotic getaway, give this one due consideration as well.

Now I’m in France, the last stop on my itinerary. The first week I stayed in an apartment in Montmartre. I was gratified to be able to “cook” and store my own food in the apartment since, with the dollar-euro conversion being what it is these days, eating out daily was becoming an expensive prospect. I’m glad to be joined now by one close family member, and we’re visiting Paris, northeastern France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and northwestern France around Strasbourg together.

After getting to practice yapping on so many itinerant French in recent travels, communicating in the language has become easy here. Today I found myself missing the adventure in China of communicating over the course of daily activities, trying to form sentences in poorly-toned Chinese, like in the grocery store: Wo yao na ge dong xi, yong chi chi fan. (lit. I need that thing, used for eating food) spoken while I make a pinching motion. And so I get led to chopsticks, and I learn, kuai zi. And then to make it easier to eat rice, Yao ying guo de kuai zi (I need ‘English chopsticks’) and now I have a fork! As far as languages go, Chinese is definitely my next focus, especially for business. Although I think I’ll be learning characters for the rest of my life . . .

With the end of travels in sight, I find myself spending most of my time moving forward with the next steps of my life and career. Soon, this blog (being a travel blog after all) will by all rights come to an end. Going forward though, I will treat it as a medium to update folks, wherever I am, (even home!), in order to describe new experiences and my reflections. If you don’t already get “push” notifications by email or otherwise of updates to the blog, email me and I’ll add you to the update list. Should you choose to tune out completely (and who could blame, given the frequency of updates!), it’s been very fulfilling to post my experiences and thoughts. Perhaps you’ve been enticed to wonder about the world some more, or just to hit the beach. Either would justify my purpose in posting. The travels have been meaningful to me on approximately twenty thousand different levels, and I hope some of that has rubbed off. If via this medium you’ve been accompanying me, I thank you.

Thailand

One goal I had with coming to Thailand was to see what all the fuss was about with
people who've come here reporting that it shouldn't be missed. So I'm here, finally
not-missing it, and . . . well it's a very pretty place. White sandy beaches are mildly
developed, providing a happy balance between seclusion and access to services and
activities. Addressing the fuss, I'm afraid I can provide no nutshell response on whether Thailand should or shouldn't be visited except through the anecdotes that follow. I will preface that Thailand's
seemingly magical effect on most visitors seems to have only mildly affected me. Like I told at least one person before I left, I'm a very bad tourist, so I can only enjoy
pure uninterrupted recreation and relaxation for so long, an inconvenient character flaw
in a place like this.

First, I completed my 18-meter depth dive certification in the waters off Ko Tao, which was so much fun! The water was as clear as any postcard picture you've seen of diving in a tropical resort region. The instructor, comfortable with my classmate's and my level of relaxation, took us into some narrow caves, making for a real lesson in buoyancy control

I've spent the past week and a half on Ko Pha-Ngan island off Thailand's east coast. My bungalow is very inexpensive, so I've spent a lot of time using it as a base to explore different parts of the island, finding beaches each with their own traveler culture. And that's the funny thing about much of Thailand that I've seen. The culture of common tourist locations is more driven by travelers than by locals. To hazard a guess, I imagine that in busy times the island's transient foreign population swells to at least match the local population in size. So touring here is like touring the populations of the developed countries, if vastly overrepresented by the British.

Ko Pha-Ngan's culture and economy is centered on the Full Moon event. Some would call this event a festival, others would call it a party, and still others would call it a 10,000 person beach rave complete with trance techno, florescent paint, drinks with dangerously unidentifiable ingredients, and more unabashed hedonists than you can shake
a glowstick at (and who could say if I wasn't one of them?). I could describe it as a one-night Burning Man minus the sense of responsibility to selves and environment. And the average age is about ten years younger than Burning Man's (the British pre-university gap year hordes strike again). If you don't know what Burning Man is, you'll have to do a few minutes of web searching to understand this as a reference point for the Full Moon Party. And if you're not familiar with what Gap Year is, well I think I'll touch on
it next post, or you can search on your own.

What follows is a moderately stream of conscious listing of things I've been up to around here. If you're looking for a post that is well tied together, I'm afraid you'll have to wait until I've exited the Thailand mindset. At least I didn't write in pidgin.

-I recently finished reading The Beach by Alex Garland, a book about backpackers finding a secret lagoon community in a nearby island to Ko Pha-Ngan. It follows the popular trouble-in-paradise plot line, except like Lord of the Flies, it's a real downer of a novel, so it's put me in a sour mood.

-I took a Thai cooking class, making coconut soup with chicken, Pad Thai,
green curry chicken, and for dessert, coconut-milk fried bananas. I served the
food to some Thai I live near, and they didn't retch, so I felt good.

-Unfortunately for a still growing tourism industry, the islands are floating liabilities
when it comes to the likelihood of many kinds of injuries. Roads are in deplorable condition, compounded by unfenced ditches by the roadsides, frequent rains, and drunken tourists on two wheels. On the flip side, wound dressing is big business so it’s justifiably pervasively advertised. Sometimes more frequently than I can believe, I see travelers with glass cuts from walking on the beach (even wearing sandals), motorcycle accidents, and rock cuts from vaulting between cliffs (under the influence of some narcotic). Also, in the local hot, moist climate, the threat of infection is always looming. For all this, unlike in India, I'm avoiding motorcycles like the plague here, which by no means absolves me from the odd cut or scrape. I've gone into my med kit at least twice as frequently as in India, though thankfully through much more mundane causes than described above.

-I'm trying to manually remove a virus from my laptop again. I first got rid of it while
I was in China, but it looks like it's been hibernating on my memory cards in the meantime. Here's hoping it's not on my phone's memory itself. Not a very good use of time in the islands, but I'm getting some work done as well on the computer so I need it clean. Otherwise my computer gets too hot, and risks getting damaged.

Now I'm itching to see a different part of Thailand. I'm planning my escape by air to the island of Phuket for more surf lessons, and then back to Bangkok with plenty of margin of time to fly for France.

China recap - and don't forget the subsequent recent post!

As I was arriving in Hong Kong they were only just running news
stories of protests by parents of students killed in the Sichuan
earthquake. Apparently many of the schools that fell were the only
structures in their respective areas to suffer such catastrophic
damage. Since schools are the kinds of things that get built en masse
via government contract, it immediately pointed to the potential for
corruption in the construction planning process.
It bothered me in the wake of the earthquake that the news coverage
focused only on the heroic efforts of rescuers, and not on critical
questions such as why the building codes weren't up to the task of
withstanding a high magnitude earthquake such as many important
structures in San Francisco are designed to handle. A semi-analogous
US disaster in recent memory was Hurricane Katrina. There was much
more anger as to why the levees didn't hold water through the storm
than similar coverage for the China quake. To get an idea of how the
Chinese media responded to the disaster, consider this: Imagine if for
one night s

hortly after Hurricane Katrina, a PBS-on-steroids goverment
television network wiped away all other broadcasted programming in
favor of airing the same telethon benefit event identically on all
channels, where the theme of the event was an emphatically displayed
and repeatedly exclaimed, 'I am American!', presented amid
sensational images of the disaster and rescue attempts. This the
evening of the day that every car driver in every US city was required
to simultaneously stop completely while maintaining a constant honk on
their horn for three minutes straight in memory of the disaster. To me
this sounds fanciful, or just plain strange, but it's what took place
in China after the earthquake.
Turns out, as Western papers reported, local Chinese media
establishments were being instructed by the government's media arm not
to air coverage critical of why buildings weren't constructed to
withstand earthquakes. Instead, only themes promoting unity got
through.

In Thailand

Hong Kong from the Peak tram
At two am this morning I arrived in Thailand after about a week in
Hong Kong and Shenzhen. A friend from school put me up and helped me
sample expat life in the Asian business hub. Most expats I met must
have been spending every other week in a different East or Southeast
Asian city on work.
One of HK's first tourist stops is a mountain sitting on top of the
city's downtown called the Peak: take San Francisco's Telegraph Hill,
make it three times as tall and wide, and relocate it to the middle of
downtown at Powell and Market streets, and you get the idea of how
closely HK's developed areas have had to squeeze against and around
it's sharp geographic features. Walking around the Peak I could get
the lay of the land. I think Hong Kong's most recognizable features
are its ubiquitous residential towers which for their narrow girth
look unnaturally tall.
I arrived in Thailand early this morning. I'm on a bus now making my
way to one of Thailand's islands. I'm gratified to have made good on
a recent friend's advice to 'get out of Bangkok as soon as possible'.
For a while it seemed like I was going to be stuck in an urban
backpacker district that looks like the first stop in Southeast Asia
for every British gap year student looking for quick and dirty
partying on arrival. For the next week I'm taking a diving course in
Ko Tao, finishing it in plenty of time to reach the storied full moon
festival in Ko Pha Ngan. Everyone I've ever met while traveling has
always had only glowing things to say about Thailand, so I decided to
invest all of my three weeks before France in this country,
particularly around its islands. In the interest of moving around
like a true backpacker, I've left all of my business and metropolitan
clothing behind in a hotel's left luggage area. Everything except . .
. my laptop. One must have principles after all.

Bliss in Beijing

Note: Just got lucky with this shot! At the cafe at the bottom of the Yuan Guang 100 apartments in ChaoYang district.
I am on a train in the Beijing railway station, at the beginning of a
twenty three hour journey from the capital to Shenzhen, Hong Kong's
manufacturing hub. It's my last stop before reaching HK. The train,
by the way, is very plush, considering I booked the lowest class.
Compared to Indian trains' jail-cell sleeper class, I feel like I'm at
the Hilton for how clean and comfortable it is . . . Maybe I'm getting
soft these days.
I'm sad to be leaving Beijing. Like anyone I get addicted to routine
all too easily: get up, eat cereal, hit the starbucks on the way to
the four hour morning class, one hour lunch of gai-fan (deliciously
cheap meat- and vegetable-covered steamed rice) , then one hour of
private tutoring before either returning home to take a much-needed
nap or else linguistically force-feed myself by bargaining the
afternoon away in a knock-off goods market. (jia-de meaning 'fake' is
important vocabulary to know in these situations, although at the end
of the day neither vendor nor customer have any illusion about the
authenticity of the goods. Authenticity matters little here - if
knock-off goods do the job, then they're goods, regardless of what
brand has been slapped on them). Speaking of routine, seeing the same
students and teachers every day for a month definitely caused me to
form attachments, so leaving some of those behind made me feel kind of
down.
Beijing is a great city. It has so much energy running up to the
Olympics. There's a sense of anxiousness about the event and wanting
to present Beijing's image on the right foot that permeates
everywhere. I feel fortunate to have been here during precisely this
time.
On the other hand, I can anticipate sensing the opposite feeling in
people when the Games are through, something like, 'the party's over,
now what do we do?'. Also, between the Games and the sensationally
televised government's response to the quake, locals will be so hiked
up on national pride by August 8th that I'm afraid they'll have
withdrawal symptoms come September!

What does 'mouth mouth mouth mouth mouth' mean?

Well my historically trusty laptop has given up the ghost for the time
being. I'm posting from my phone, so my posts will be a little more
rough until I can get the computer fixed. Just another week and a half
in Beijing, then time for Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Feeling
particularly cut off from the world outside China these days - somehow
the powers that be decided that a good tribute to the earthquake
victims would be to cut off all foreign television programming for
three days. (to be fair, this was an extremely grave event - the
ever increasing official death toll numbers speak for themselves, and
unfortunately a lot of sad, gruesome, and heartstring tugging
anecdotes have emerged from the event. It's been unpleasant going
about 'business as usual' in the city feeling unable to do anything
about something happening not to far away apart from the odd donation)
So don't be afraid to send a message my way so i feel in touch. By
the way, one benefit to posting via phone is easy access to a chinese
script interface - 我想学习汉语在北京! Two points to the first person with a
translation. If you only see a bunch of squares, don't sweat it,
your browser doesn't support chinese. Or, maybe i just felt like
writing the character for 'mouth' several times.

Retrospective: Elephant vs. Dragon in a Developing World Free-for-All

I decided there was enough temporal distance between me and the subcontinent to post a little retrospective in light of what I’m seeing in China. Also it gives me the opportunity to blow the electronic dust off some photos to post. To kick things off, I hereby curse so many newspapers in the media back home for using the phrase “developing countries such as India and China” (I found 40,000 instances of the phrase in the English-language web on Google) . The phrase isn’t inaccurate, but the proximity of the two names in the sentence makes me imagine that the countries are in similar states of development. This is very very far from the reality that I got to sample.

I’ll talk about what I’ve observed about development and my thoughts comparing the two countries - I’ll leave it to others to debate whether and how development should take place in any country. Let me post a caveat before going further – in India I saw large cities, tiny towns, and the more easily reached of non-agrarian villages situated along my journey’s path. In China however, I’ve only seen its two most important metropolises, its favorite domestic vacation destination city, and what suburbia I could make out over the course of a two hour train ride, all in the months preceding the Olympics. Leading up to the Games, the government has made it its utmost priority to look good in front of the world, and, stoked or not with nationalism by the powers that be, the public imagination is completely consumed by this international spectacle. I frequently hear the phrase, “Will it be ready?” referring to the tying up and spit-polishing of construction in Beijing and environs. In other words, I’m seeing China firmly stomp its best foot forward, without sight of the rest of the beast.

To the photos. The first picture showing an oxcart with an om symbol, is probably the clearest one I have to illustrate the chaos and ramshackle feel of an Indian market street in just one shot. It’s from Bombay. Calcutta’s streets were actually much more chaotic with bootstrap commerce and myriad transportation means, but alas, no photos, since it was always so dark while I was in the middle of it. The one shown suffices to give an idea.

The second shot is a street in central Calcutta. The road’s been torn up to be repaved. When it’s finished with paving, it will probably look like those sections that weren’t torn up, and overall won’t be up to a good standard. Old bricks are used for filler. Neighborhood locals, as likely children as adults, do the work.

The third shot is from Kerala, still my favorite state (you think I'm excluding American states, don't you ;) ). Depending on your standards, these people aren’t poor. They are working to enable their livelihood, and they have no need or desire to ask you for money. But they probably can't afford quality goods and services.

The last (and unfortunately blurry) Indian shot is from along the beach in Chennai. Most Tamil girls in the city also wear saris everywhere.

To the China shots next.

First: Here go the Shanghai skyscrapers, taken from the Pearl Tower.

Second: This is a Shanghai street bordered by a mix of local Shanghainese, domestic tourists, and some international tourists.

Third: This is an Audi parked outside of Beihai park next to the Beijing's Forbidden City. It’s license plate has four “8”s on it which is why I took the photo. Mandarin for 8 is ‘ba’, rhyming with 'fa', one word for money. Therefore 8 is lucky, making phone numbers, addresses, and yes, license plates with 8 in them desirable and expensive. The souped up Audi probably ran upwards of $60,000 USD. For it’s lucky number 8’s, one local put the license plate cost at $125,000 USD. Unlike my Keralan friend on the canal banks, the owner of this vehicle did not present him/herself to be pictured. He or she could probably afford quality goods and services.

Last: A deliberately preserved Beijing hutong neighborhood. A really typical hutong should come off as a little bit slummy, but some, especially in central Beijing, perpetuate centuries-old historical traditions especially in architecture, and are themselves tourist attractions.

(I wonder if in future decades some of the bigger slums in India will be preserved and become tourist attractions like in Beijing. Dharavi slum in Bombay already hosts off-beat tours (development tourism). Except that the streets there still stink of human waste, and it’s really not intended as a tourist attraction that some people have as their chosen occupation to beat burlap bags containing scraped-off paint chips into a powder so they can be recycled into paint).

I’ll let the photos provide the study in contrasts for the most part. Let me speak to the potential for editorial bias. Far afield of major cities, and especially outside eastern China, I probably could take photos better resembling the first Indian shot suggesting street chaos, the third shot representing otherwise solvent people who lead a simpler lifestyle, and the last Indian shot representing the perpetuation of tradition irrespective of inconveniences incurred. But taking the reverse approach I promise there are no huge skyscrapers in Bombay, Chennai, or Kolkata. Newly-fabled Bangalore has only two real *highrises* in this IT powerhouse’s downtown, and no metro. (I challenge readers to do an image search for skyscraper plus any of these cities and see what comes up).

Referring to the third photo from each country, I freely admit deliberate, gross and profane editorial bias in juxtaposing the two. I really wanted the contrast.

I also promise that most cities in India will not soon have streets as clean or orderly as those of its neighbor’s to the East. Check out the third, fairly mundane China shot. The hordes of people packed on either side of the street, by Bombay standards, should have long since crowded onto the asphalt to make a traffic-pedestrian curry masala. Moreover the cars stay in their lanes, a practice which avoids gridlock and accidents.

This comparison is as much an indictment of government practice as it is of collective will. India teems with universally cursed yet universally tolerated corruption that the public actively participates in to accomplish much of their mundane legal needs (bribes for stamps on important documents, bribes for paying property tax). When streets are torn up to be repaved, it’s a local politician serving a powerfully large albeit poor constituency, who facilitated the construction contract at their behest. The same street could have been similarly torn up less than two years prior. Also, enforcement of quaint concepts such as traffic laws is a joke, certainly nothing that a palm padded with rupee notes couldn't handle.

The norms of daily life in the bigger cities cause anything that’s publicly owned or publicly shared to quickly become either a waste receptacle or a sitting duck for decay. By contrast, the insides of homes and businesses are strikingly well cared for. Therefore, all this isn't to say I didn't enjoy my time there, actually, I loved most of the conscious hours I spent there for the sense of discovery they afforded. And Kerala . . . ah

PS Need to remind especially to new folks to the blog, this is an *anonymous* blog, so please consider comments accordingly.

Now that's a stadium!

(reposted unmodified)

I've arrived in Beijing and I've begun taking a one month intensive Mandarin language course that I signed up for while in India. It's nice also to be able to settle down for a little while as a change from moving from place to place every two or three days. Some friends in Beijing set up an apartment for me before I arrived. I am for a long time in their debt. Attached you can see pictures of the place. I'm particularly proud of the kitchen, pictured. It's simple, I know, but I've cooked a lot since I arrived, so I've enjoyed just having the facilities for it. The building shown is one of the iconic structures that represent "The New Beijing" . This one is the Olympic stadium shaped like a bird's nest, definitely an architectural wonder. Because of security surrounding the Olympic construction site, it was hard to get a clear shot. I managed to find a hotel near the grounds, the far side of which had a clear shot of the structure.
Mandarin is a very very very difficult language to learn. Gone are the friendly cognates, pronunciation, tonality, and alphabet of more easily accessed languages such as French and Spanish. Learning this is like starting *completely* from scratch. In a (successful) effort to keep ourselves entertained and motivated, I organized a private lesson among my fellow students with my tutor to learn some of the more colorful Mandarin turns-of-phrase, not to mention useful sentences for the more, er, practical situations of daily (and evening-ly) life here. There was a lot of beer involved in the lesson.
Beijing is a huge city, development is everywhere. The capital has its towers and architectural wonders, but compared to Shanghai it has traded off such a large volume of towers for sprawling yet still somehow tasteful apartment blocks.

Shanghai'd

I spent the week in Shanghai, meeting up with a friend from the States. The sites were grand enough that I decided it was worth putting up a few photos, the first the blog has had! I hope you like them, their selection reflects how I perceive the Shanghai lifestyle and economy. I'm off to Beijing now to begin a language course! I'll be there for a month, having booked a stylish apartment to boot! I publish photos of it next post.

Automated update notifying

To loyal readers: If you want to get automated update notifications of this blog by email, just send me an email since you know me. If you're missing my email address, then just put up a comment in the blog containing your own email address, and I'll add you to the update list and (in the interest of preserving anonymity) delete the comment.

I bet those mountains look fantastic behind all that fog . . .

About two weeks ago, I arrived in K

olkata. For many travelers, Kolkata is the first port of call on arrival in India, just like Bombay was for me nearly three months ago. Kolkata earns its reputation for rampant overt poverty, but that doesn't distinguish it from other Indian cities. Newly arrived foreigners can't hide the fish-out-of-water expression on their faces. While I find the presence of children on the streets shocking, I've built a wall around my natural reaction to seeing deformed, grotesquely handicapped people on the sidewalks, or kids lathering and washing themselves at the street water-pump, and most disappointingly, mothers carrying babies tugging at my shirt growling out "baba" (friend) for rupees. For the latter, long ago I decided it was wrong to give money in those situations, as I'm as likely to incentivize them to have another baby to increase the shock factor, which they're well aware of. Stories abound in many cities of "begging syndicates" which transport the destitute to a tourist location for the day, then return them to their street after taking the bulk of the day's reap.
For all this, elusive New India is still out there, just primarily in the suburbs, (residences, offices and all) save for cultural islands in the dense urban areas.

Kolkata's been hot, so after some requisite sightseeing, I boarded a train for Darjeeling.
Darjeeling is a foggy mountain town in the same state, West Bengal, as Kolkata. It's a hill station - one of 50-100 high altitude townships throughout India chartered under the British Raj as a cooler refuge for British servicemen from the energy-draining heat of the lowlands. Walking into this town, it's like stepping out of India completely. For starters, the bulk of locals are of Nepali descent (actually Ghurka), with smatterings of Tibetan. Prices are much lower for all manner of food, lodging, and clothing, and yet the residents enjoy a standard of living far above the Indian average I perceive in the cities. Deservedly there are a lot of foreigners soaking in Darjeeling and environs, and more Americans than I've encountered elsewhere in India altogether (this means I met at least three there).

One thoughtful British traveling companion convinced me to visit the nearby mountainous but tiny state of Sikkim with him. Like the Darjeeling area, Sikkim is also completely distinct from the rest of India. It's composed mostly of, well, Sikkimese who have more east asiatic look, but also Nepali, and Bhutanese. Seeing so much greenery around me, I joined a trek here in the foothills of the Himalayas. In two days of hiking, I had justified every piece of warm weather clothing and outdoor equipment I had been lugging around with me all this time, including a sleeping bag, an inflatable mat, two sweaters, a (fantastic) North Face jacket from a good friend back home, a water filter, and . . . socks. (Elsewhere, you just don't need socks when you're gallivanting around such a warm country in sandals). All in all, I spent most of two weeks in the mountains trekking, sightseeing, or just plain hanging out. I didn't leave loaded with tea leaves - I actually don't like pure Darjeeling tea for being either too bitter or too bland. It's better mixed with other flavors and spices which I leave to the good folks at Unilever (Lipton) in Sri Lanka and Twinings and Bigelow in London to accomplish.

One thing I learned about the residents of the mountain areas, they like to go on strike a lot. Often this is couched in a protest for autonomy from India or to create a new Indian state. But my read was that they just like to collectively bring the entire local economy to a halt, going so far as to stage a hundred-plus person sit-in in the middle of the only street traversing town, deranging everyone's travel plans and overall costing a lot of people a lot of money. Depending on how you do the accounting, the strikes have cost me anywhere from $100-200 US for the alternative plans I had to come up with. (In retrospect, I think I understand now why the residents enjoy such a high standard of living amid otherwise low prices . . . ) I encountered strikes in Sikkim, Darjeeling, and Silguri, an important waystation to reach Darjeeling.

My time in India is coming to a close. I'm back in Kolkata, and tonight I'm flying for Shanghai, followed by Beijing a week and a half later. Time is getting on, and I have to go to the airport soon, so I will sign off. To my resident and foreigner friends who I met while traveling in the country who follow the blog, our discussions and shared experiences have made my time here thoroughly meaningful, and I know I will be keeping in touch with you going forward. I will hope always that we can make our paths cross again. Cover photo: These are advanced level engineering book. In the US you'd find them at a technical bookstore in a university town like Palo Alto or Cambridge, MA. You would be hard pressed to find them to this technical depth in your local Borders / Barnes & Noble. Yet I took this photo in a small bookstore in Siliguri, a small stopover town on the way from Calcutta to Darjeeling. I could have taken this photo throughout many parts of India, so I'm only doing homage to West Bengal's (the Bengali's)literary culture by highlighting the books here. The books may or may not be counterfeit, but only as facsimiles, not errors of ommission or commission.

Tamil Nadu

Outside India, Kanyakumari is rightly known for its beautiful sunsets. (Within India, Hindus come from all over the country to worship at a famous temple here, and Tamils celebrate the memory of a famed ancient poet immortalized in a colossus-like statue emerging from the water). For its location on India’s southern tip, the town probably should be equally renowned for its sunrises over the water. Of course, being the generally nocturnal person that I am, I couldn't be bothered to catch the sunrise, but the sunset was out of this world. Having made my way around this land's end, I'm now making my way up India's east coast.

North of Kanyakumari, Pondicherry was India’s only formerly French colony. So let’s do some math here: During the Raj, Britain controlled some 1.3 million square miles of India. With Pondicherry, the French managed to squeeze out a little less than 200 subcontinental square miles. I think it’s clear who won that particular game. What was the deciding factor? My theory: Cuisine. Have you ever tried British food? They’ve needed all the spices they could get from the East, and so were keen to get an early advantage in colonization. Meanwhile, the French were only too happy to continue farming their fertile home landscape to achieve their vaunted regional tastes. Like I said, it’s a theory, but I’ve found that much of the French psyche can be traced through their stomach.

Pondicherry is one of just a few cities in India that is laid out like a grid. The French quarter of the city has a very European feel to it, and is quite pretty and inviting. Historically, under French rule the Tamils were not even allowed into this neighborhood! Elements of French culture are only sporadically manifested: For example on the one hand, social welfare offices and other government bureaus proliferate throughout. However, French speakers, whether ethnically Tamil or otherwise, are mildly prevalent even in this quarter. At least the continental food in the trendy, posh restaurants is fantastic and authentic. While I’ve been sticking to vegetarian food for health reasons since leaving Bangalore, I made an exception in Pondicherry when I noticed my drool on the menu listing for coq au vin.

A stone’s throw from Pondicherry is the small utopian venture called Auroville. Auroville’s history dating from its founding in1968 is tied to a famous local ashram that is still very active today. The founders wanted to create a settlement that was independent of any nation’s sovereignty. Today, Auroville is a pioneer in alternative energy technologies including solar water heating, photovoltaic system deployments, water filtration, and wind power for electric and mechanical applications. The specialized cooperatives engaged in manufacturing these systems, which together contribute an important part of Auroville’s small export economy, count both small villages and urban homeowners throughout India as their customers. A busy greybeard engineer I talked to leads one of the cooperatives, drawing from thirty years of experience developing wind and water systems. The original intent of these systems was to sustain the settlement before they became a source of commercial gain for the community. He arrived in town when he was twenty.

Auroville’s technical prowess has a funny way of mixing with the village’s spiritual identity – for example, in water filtration, the final processing step (after a series of conventional steps such as reverse osmosis, UV and ozone treatment) resembles, as best as I could ascertain, a spiritual pep-talk for the water. No complaints here – the water was delicious.

The Auroville excursion also marked my first rental of a geared motorcycle (i.e. not scooter). A new local acquaintance in Kanyakumari showed me how to ride his brand spankin’ new Hero Honda bike (with Yamaha-style paint schemes and all). It’s a lot like driving a manual car – clutch, neutral, gears one through five . . . but no reverse =) . As I was riding back to central Pondicherry from rural Auroville, I wound up in the middle of rush hour Indian traffic (this kind of traffic is truly its own phenomenon). And so with my dilettante motoring skills I had to dodge oxcarts, rickshaws, cargo lorries, family-bearing scooters, and most importantly, buses whose rash drivers must in fact be closet philosophers; having clearly pondered the Hindu sense of fatalism to its extreme, they have absolutely no fear of death. During one close encounter with a few tons of mobile steel, it occurred to me that my trusty laminated medical insurance card, while eminently useful both logistically and financially when unfortunate circumstances befall (a comfort which in turn enables me to rent motorcycles in the first place), doesn't actually repel these hulking vehicles from merging into the modest square meter of road that I occupy.

Further north still on the way to Chennai, I reached Mahabalipuram, a town with temples and carvings in excess of one millennium old. The carving skills remain with the inhabitants today, many of whom make a living selling small statues of gods made of green granite and marble. My favorite: Ganesh, the god with the elephant’s head, kicking back and tapping away on his laptop.

Now I’m in Chennai, formerly Madras. The city is far from tourism-focused, and from a budget-traveling point of view, costly to get around, so after visiting the century-old markets of Georgetown and hitting some of the widest beaches in the world, I’ve decided to hunker down to do errands in preparation for the upcoming leg of the trip (in two weeks!) to Shanghai via Hong Kong. The highlight of my stay here was actually an evening spent with the local family of a friend living in California, particularly the impromptu course in cooking and Hinduism they gave me!

Tomorrow I’m headed to West Bengal starting in Kolkata. Looking forward to lots of fish – shortly after it will be time to justify all of the warm clothes I’ve been carrying around with a visit to Darjeeling!

Tying up Kerala

Kovalam's beachfront boardwalk.

Since the backwater trip, I’ve now seen the beach towns of Varkala and Kovalam. Varkala is mostly a backpacker and long-term stay hangout. Kovalam is more of a (small) package tourist resort with mostly older folks from Britain.

Earlier in Cochin, I had taken an Ayurvedic massage – I came out of it feeling quite pummeled. Not knowing whether I had a sufficiently authentic experience, I was naturally left with no choice but to take a second Ayurvedic treatment! This time I took it in Varkala, and the provider came highly recommended. Well, the second massage beat the pants off the first, what with the masseur walking on the back and all. Also, in this case there were often two masseurs working synchronously on either side of me.

In Kovalam, I was gratified to discover actual, intact surf boards! As far as I can tell, these are the only surf boards, rented out by the only surf instructors, in all of India. (With any luck I can prove myself wrong in coastal Madras). The waves in Kovalam are ideal for learning - for example, it's hard not to catch a whitewater wave. As of yesterday I've graduated from long boards to midsize boards. And I even managed to get up on a short board! I'm really working on catching the open face of a wave instead of whitewater now. Among other things, it requires my weight to be centered further back on the board. If I didn't have the itinerary clock ticking, I would stay in Kovalam for a week to continue practicing, since it's cheap living here. ($4 a night plus $3 x 3 meals on average.

Now I’m making my way to Kanyakumari by bus. This town is located at the southernmost tip of the country, where three seas – the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal, meet by convention at one point. Shortly after, the formerly French colony of Pondicherry is begging to be visited.

Maybe if I disable this ship's propulsion, we can maroon ourselves here for a long time . . .

I'm writing from the Keralan backwaters. The waters are a network of navigable freshwater canals, running up and down the Kerala coast just a few miles inland from the ocean. The guidebook Lonely Planet calls a houseboat trip along the canals “one of the top 10 things to do before you die”. Looking out over the palm trees lining the banks, after having sipped coconut juice (and looking forward to a coconut-coke-rum I’ve dreamt up) I find it hard to disagree.

I’ve rented a two bedroom houseboat on behalf of myself and two British I befriended since arriving in the state. The vessel includes a kitchen with chef, captain, and engineer. For our funds, we’re served excellent local style meals plus tea, coffee, and water as we like throughout the day. It’s been outfit as an eco-friendly boat, boasting twice the fuel efficiency of its competitors, with all on board amenities plus sewage treatment to boot. In other words, guilt-free, pleasant-as-hell travel.

(…)

It is night now – I’ve just come from seeing one of those sights that make me wish I had a $1000 camera. I’m on the upper balcony deck with the Brits sipping our coconut-coke-rum under a near full moon. Mist is climbing over the water, and looking down the canal, the rows of palms that line it seem to point the way forward, towards an unforeseeable but desirable destination.

Earlier in the evening as our boat was docked, we walked along rice-paddy fields. I saw simple but effective irrigation pump stations in action, maintaining the water level for optimal growing conditions. Like many Keralites (Malayali), the locals were very friendly and warm, and after having spent the better part of a week in the state, I’ve learned to respond to their overtures with genuine affection and not distrust. At this time two kids treated me to an impromptu tour of the rice-reaping and threshing operations. Of all things they could ask in return, they wanted pens – simple, functioning, ballpoint pens. It’s not that they don’t have access to cheap pens of decent quality – those are readily available in most markets today. Instead, in recent decades the Malayali government began putting an extraordinary stress on education and literacy, but the young people often lacked quality pens with which to practice their language,
Malayalam. (If you had 56 letters in your alphabet, you’d need to practice them a lot too). With the tourism through the backwaters, the kids along the banks years ago learned to ask for pens of foreign (quality) origin from the travelers, who were only too happy to oblige. In recent years, locals now have relatively easy access to these kinds of amenities. But the cultural valuation of pens stuck, and so the kids continue to ask for them, still perceiving a stronger sense of quality (or maybe just style?) with foreign-made pens. I was only too happy returning to my boat to forage through my luggage for the ballpoints I was never using, continuing a tradition nearly two-decades old.

For their trouble, the Malayali boast a 97% literacy rate, which pretty well smokes the competition in every other Indian state. If I ever felt a sense of despair for peoples’ livelihoods driving past the most wretched slums of Mumbai, then here instead I see unabashed aspiration and sustainability. It’s refreshing for someone who needed to see it.

Tomorrow morning the captain will drop me at a highway that crosses the canals, where I will catch a bus to Varkala beach. More upcoming destinations that are likely before next post are Trivandrum and Kovalam.

First distilled ruminations . . .

I wanted to post some lingering thoughts I've been able to distill through recent conversations with folks back home.
First, on Bangalore, since I've recently closed up shop there, and catering to the engineers among you - The city's got a lot in common with Silicon Valley, venture capitalists and all. However as an economy they still rely on innovation, direction, and income from places like the valley. The startups I've encountered are engineering services oriented, not making IP from scratch. It's true that I've read that new technology / web app startups of the type that proliferate Silicon Valley exist in some quantity in Bangalore, but the engineers that I meet and articles I read in the everyday reflect the former (services) variety much more, so I have to believe that it's the more important sector. The eagle-eyed among you may imagine there's a selection bias in the locales of the city that I've seen. This is possible, but I think it unlikely.
Then regarding social observations: I find it educational to see what life is really like on the ground, since all I ever really knew about India is through the lens and pen of media (both Western and . . . Bollywood), and through friends who are originally from the subcontinent, but who can only realistically represent a small fraction of the population, speaking either of economic or demographic backgrounds.
I've come to realize is that India is not one country in the sense that the US is one country. It's better compared to Europe for the sense of disunity in place between people from different states of the country. It would be hard to blame anyone for this - If folks in Oregon and Nevada spoke and wrote in a completely unrecognizable language to us in California, we'd have a hard time relating to neighboring states as well. (Except given India's geography, it would be more accurate to use states like New York and Pennsylvania to highlight the contrast of culture vs. distance in comparing the US and India; the density of Indian states resembles more New England than the spread out West Coast.)
As a general travel update, I've visited my first palace! It was in Mysore, and it was . . . big. I'm afraid I don't have much to add on that. Whatever you can imagine when you hear the word "palace", is probably not far off. At least rely on your vivid imaginations until I can post photos.

Back to Backpacking

I've just concluded my (first) stay in Bangalore. The city's ubiquitous technical industry and cosmopolitan attitude have hit close enough to home that it's not hard to imagine returning in the future. Feeling comfortable with the number of inroads I made into the engineering community, I decided it was time to move further south.
I'm in Mysore now, three hours southwest of Bangalore by bus, which means I covered all of 70 miles. This is about the number of miles between San Francisco and Morgan Hill, a drive which normally takes as many minutes to complete. Distances mean a lot more in India than in the States. Naturally, urban distances are doubly more difficult to traverse. In traffic-clogged Bangalore, even if you have twenty minutes to make it to a meeting just 2 miles away, God help you.
As I write I'm in a budget hotel near Mysore's palace, on the Internet through my phone's crawling data connection. I watch as the mosquitoes in the room stealthily grow fatter at my expense. It's time to invest in a mosquito net, as soon as I can find one. In the meantime, I'm applying liberal amounts of the dwindling supply of bug repellent.
After so much time spent in cities, I'm trying hard to see the more remote palaces and temples. It's a challenge for someone who would much rather visit the local museum of industrial history. I'll scratch a few must-see religious sites off my to-do list before heading to Kerala for a week of surf lessons followed by lazy houseboat rides down the network of backwater 'highways'.

Of Baked Beans

Bangalore must be the most livable town in India I've seen; certainly the most familiar to a Californian.
Maybe it feels that way because of the foreigners in the area coordinating IT work. But in fact
it's the thousands of young professionals with regal-sounding British/Indian accents running
around making the city hum, who you could otherwise not distinguish by look or by attitude from the yuppie population of any major US city. It's cool to make contact with the engineering and business community here in roundabout ways, getting to know the kinds of projects that people do and what small organizations are capable of. People are naturally busy, but when you catch them in their free time they are eager to get to know a foreign soul with a different kind of story than the typical.
The hard deadline for Bangalore nightspots is 11:00pm vs. Goa's 10pm, but I'm holding out for more secret late night events.
The post title refers to Bangalore's new official name, Bengaluru, which translates to "Baked beans". Old habits die hard, especially given locals' own reinforcement of the deprecated name, hence its appearance throughout the post.

Clandestine Gatherings

After my last few days in Goa, I decided it deserves a little more credit than I gave it during the previous post - the missing parties after 10:00pm turn out to flourish incognito. As is true with many things in life, you just have to meet the right people. I decided to post a primer on how to find late night parties in Goa.

1. Get out of the touristy areas: Whether you're in Baga or Calangut, however enticing the nightspots are for staying open late, you need to get out of there. The real party's elsewhere, and those partiers *hate* everything having to do with these two developed beach towns . . .
2. At around 8:00pm, hop on your motorscooter, friend in tow, and drive around secluded and dusty Anjuna and Vagator aimlessly (these are areas where the long term foreign population staying from anywhere between 3 month and 30 years reside, often in remote ramshackle guest stays that rent barely in excess of $1 a day): When you hear the music blaring over the hilltops, stop the bike and wander on foot till you find the clearing where the rave is taking place.
3. Meet as many people as you can: Not everybody knows where the post-10pm party is, and this way you're more likely to meet the owner or organizer of the next rave that night. It helps if you've dressed like you're going to Burning Man - it breaks the ice a lot more easily. No, I will not post action shots.

The first outcome of following this primer found my friend and me in an abandoned church converted to a home stay / club venue. I felt fortunate that the guests were only 50% Russian instead of the typical 90%, so I could converse much more easily.
Consequently the last few days (read nights) in Goa were much more entertaining, and it wasn't with just a little fast-onset nostalgia that I boarded the Kingfisher jet to India's mini-Silicon Valley.

Let's see, I'll take a polio with a side of typhoid

So some of you might be wondering what it takes to prepare for a trip like this. Preparation is an ongoing endeavour, because every few days to a week you're hitting the Lonely Planet to call ahead to book the next budget accomodation (with wi-fi, preferably), along with other minutiae like making photocopies of your passport/visa/driver's license or getting flimsy but important documents laminated. I'll work tidbits about preparation in between future posts, but there's one important one I'll talk about here, which is medical prep.
The first step I took was to go to the local Department of Public Health clinic. They run a non-profit office staffed with travel nurses, and offer a smorgasboard of vaccines for varying prices. A single administration of one vaccine might run anywhere between $30 and $200. Polio's cheap, Rabies is expensive, and the rest fall somewhere in between. They ask you the list of countries you will likely be visiting, and generate a printout describing the risk level of any diseases of concern in each country. Since the printout is in prose and not itemized, you have to sift through and put together your own list. At the same time you consult with a travel nurse. Mine was very good at helping me assess the risk level, such as whether you'll be in a rural or metropolitan area (rural = higher risk for most diseases). That's an important point about assessing risk - you don't *have* to get all the vaccines you're supposed to. You don't even have to get any at all, and many people don't and are fine. But you want to leave home with a sense of security about where you're going, and most people are willing to put down a few benjamins for that achieve that.
So you put together your list of vaccines, and when you refer to the vaccine price menu, you balk and decide to call your (shudder) HMO instead. My HMO wouldn't be able to provide any shots until after a phone consultation, which wouldn't take place for another two weeks. But free's free in the face of a ~$1000 vaccine regimen, so I decided to hold out. To justify the travel nurse's consultation time (which they charge you for anyway if you don't get any shots), I took my first adminstration of HepA/B which is called Twinrix.
Long story short, over the course of the next month and half (three further visits to the HMO) I got in addition to the childhood/high school/college shots,
HepA/B, DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis), Typhoid, Polio (booster), Rabies (3 shots over 1 month) and Japanese Encephalitis (3 shots over 1 month). I also got 300 days worth of doxycycline medication to protect against Malaria. Since this medicine makes me sick, I'm looking to get my hands on some Proguanil before I get to the Keralan backwaters.
Luckily, there is little need for concern over malaria in metropolitan Bangalore, which I'll cover next post . . .

Goa Post-Mortem

I'm tying up about a week in Goa, staying just a little longer until I depart for my next destination. So far I've seen beautiful empty beaches and bustling tourist-filled beaches. For me the charm in Goa is hearing every shop, restaurant, and bar whether day or night playing trance techno. You don't see this anywhere else in the world that I am familiar with (not much right now, but I am working to change this), although I imagine Spain's Ibiza would be similar. The unfortunate difference between Goa and Ibiza is that Goa is no longer the party center that it once was. This is due less to the fickleness of European, Russian, and Israeli ravers, and more to ordinances passed by the local government banning "amplified music" after 10:00pm, citing the bad influence on local youth. Some popular hangouts get around this with bribes, but the majority of places have had to follow this rule or close, effectively killing nightlife throughout Goa. Maybe the local youth would benefit better from serious education supported by taxes on cover charges/drinks at the otherwise banned parties.
As a result of the government's crackdown, in walking around Baga or Anjuna beach even before the mandated closing time, you see a huge overcapacity of bars and clubs, which is another way of saying that they're mostly empty, and that they were built under conditions of much larger crowds. In the busy season of Christmas and the three weeks following, they get their crowds (even from America, which is shocking from my experience of not meeting a single American here). But in this, the 'shoulder' season between February and May, my understanding is that traffic is far below what it was historically.
I convinced an American buddy from Bombay to fly down for half a week to hang out until we go on to our next respective ports of call. He's been thoughtful enough to show me the nuts and bolts of running a business remotely, something I've been keenly interested in. Speaking of business instruction, specifically, negotiation skill, I got the firmest accolades from a local vendor from whom I was purchasing towels along with my friend. As my friend was stammering to negotiate prices, I took control of the situation, coming in with a laughably low price of 50 rupees a towel ($1.25) against her asking price of 600 rupees ($15). Over the next few iterations of bargaining we each shaved margin from our respective positions, but I wasn't satisfied (even though I would have no problem purchasing a towel for $15). I pulled my friend and walked out the door knowing the magic trick that makes vendors start playing fair. It didn't take long after for her to meet my price. The kicker is that after the transaction was complete, she called me a very bad man, and my friend a very good man for originally considering her original pricing scheme. So I guess I'm a bad man, but it never felt so good. (For those sympathetic to the poor vendor's situation, you may console yourself that she is doing fine for having a storefront on the main drag of the main tourist city of Goa, and that she sells many towels to many foreigners in excess of $15, and further that she wouldn't have made the sale if she wasn't making money on the deal. I dare say she was probably still making 50-100% margin off our transaction).
And finally, my verdict on Goa: Without the trance-fuelled nightlife that made Goa so popular for over a decade, all it has left are its beaches, which exist in better quantity and quality elsewhere in the world. My advice to Americans looking for an exotic locale to relax in for awhile-- lie back in Cancun, sip pina coladas in Puerto Vallarta, or when you've got some more time, go surfing in Bali.
Next stop: Bangalore, center of the "New India"; Recent experiences are telling me to expect supermalls next to slums. We'll see soon if this plays out . . .