It’s awesome that a brilliant dude like this is willing to come to Woodland Hills and work so hard to turn it around, and it’s equally interesting to me that he was able to find a community that was essentially a blank canvas to implement his public-policy ideals. Did he go through a search process of some sort? The whole thing makes most of our efforts seem puny in comparison, and he seems to be having some success.
And as my friend Todd pointed out, “I also know that I would not fight the Braddock mayor or challenge him in a Billy Madison style IQ test.”
The other day I was avoiding a decrepit bus and stepping between four auto-rickshaws when I thought, “Stepping between four auto-rickshaws and avoiding a decrepit bus isn’t an everyday occurrence in the United States. I think there may be some material here. Hey, that dog understands traffic patterns.”
For those who want the quick version, here’s a video that encapsulates things nicely:
Much like the rest of India, Indian driving is centered around filling a vacuum — if there’s even a sliver of space to fill, it will be filled by someone or something. In this instance, the something is a car, truck, auto-rickshaw, bus, bicycle, motorcycle or pedestrian. Lanes be damned — there’s a two-foot-wide space along the side of that cement truck that will fit a motorcycle with four people on it, so into the space that motorcycle goes. This is true whether the vehicular pack is stopped at an intersection or moving down the highway at 30 miles per hour — the crowding is the constant.
There is also the honking. I thought I was used to constant honking from my time in New York, but as with every night, I can hear the horns outside now, and they’re averaging a beep about every .8 seconds. Fortunately we’re about 100 feet off the main road and I rock the earplugs every night, so the din isn’t such a big deal. (Earplugs also work with snoring MAP team members, FYI. Though for the sake of fairness and disclosure, I too should probably gift my teammates a spare pair.)
The horn is actually a pretty useful implement in this part of the world — roll up into that two-foot space, and the horn is a great way to signal to the truck driver, “Hey, I’m here on my bike with my totally sweet standard-issue mustache, please don’t squash me and deprive me of many future years of mustache-growing.”
I’d wish to myself that there were more order in the road system here, but experiencing it is a great way to accede to the crazy paradox of India — it’s pretty close to chaos, and yet everyone ultimately gets where they need to go. Plus, you learn quickly that it’s time to cross when the auto-rickshaws switch off their engines. The ever-dishonest rickshaw driver is our nemesis, but admittedly he does function as an effective crosswalk signal.
This Twitter blogging is way easier than actual blogging, but here are some notes anyway.
Food here is really cheap. Beer, strangely, is not so much. Tonight my teammates and I went out for dinner. Total cost for three people’s dinner and drinks: $11. Beer portion of that: $4 for two beers. It’s a little weird, because it’s definitely possible to find $2 beers in the U.S., but forget about finding a $3.75 dinner.
Monkeys here are not cute. In fact, they are fairly scary. Four of them came around the office today, and we had to lock the door to stop them coming in and stealing our lunch. Those dudes are not cool, I’m sorry.
The array of smells here is fairly surreal. A lot of people have discussed how India smells; it’s true, you can’t really describe it. Definitely a lot of urine and foul-smelling things, but then mixed with a smoky smell and lots of other stuff I can’t figure out. I wouldn’t describe it as pleasant at all, but I’m still getting used to it anyway.
To save time and update more often while I’m in India, you can probably see that I’m repping the Twitter feed in the right sidebar of the page. Check it out here as well.
I’ve been here now for 2.5 (sorta) days, so time to catch everyone up on what’s gone down with some phat platitudes:
Flying to India takes a long time. The other three Peek India MAPpers and I counted things up and realized it took us 36 hours to go from door to door — Ann Arbor apartments to our Bangalore guest house. Before I left I had planned to do a diary of my extended time on three flights, but afterwards I’m glad I forgot, because after I got to my Chicago layover and had a nice chance to hang with The Wife for a few hours, this is pretty much the extent of it:
First four hours from O’Hare to Frankfurt: Try and fail to sleep, then briefly succeed.
Next two hours: continue reading Freedom at Midnight.
Final 1.5 hours: Watch Bridge on the River Kwai; get mad when it’s interrupted by landing.
First 5.5 hours of flight to Mumbai after 1.5 hours in Frankfurt: Finish Bridge; watch The Longest Day to continue random WWII movie marathon.
Next 2.5 hours: Try and fail to sleep; land in Mumbai at 5 a.m. local time.
Next 3 hours: Deal with Mumbai airport bureaucracy; get waved through security for no apparent reason while other teammates get scanned; eat samosas with ketchup for breakfast; board flight to Bangalore.
36 hours from start: Get to Bangalore house at noon local time; eat food in jet-lagged daze.
Traffic in India is something else. Nobody really respects lanes here and honking is constant, but somehow everyone seems to get to their destination. Crossing the street though is like playing Frogger with your life. Fun! My secret is finding some Indian person going where I want to go, then letting them play fullback-in-a-sari as I run for a TD to the other side of the street.
Still getting used to eating Indian food three times per day. I haven’t had the traveler’s curse, although I will euphemistically say that my system is a little confused.
The apartment is nice, but I look forward to getting out more. We’re still getting settled and starting our project work, so so far there hasn’t been much touring around. But I’ll have more interesting stuff to say soon, for real.
Though this will say posted at 11:20 p.m., in reality here it’s 9:50 a.m. 10.5 hours from EST — you’re ending your day while I’m starting mine.
While it’s not so dramatic in our modern, travel-friendly age, tomorrow marks my departure for India. On a personal level, it’s going to be strange to be leaving my classmates, my Ann Arbor experience, and most of all, my wife. Regardless, I’m still very excited for a once-in-a-lifetime rare opportunity to travel halfway around the world and live my life in India for a full five weeks.
It’s a crazy opportunistic time we live in, yo. Think back to what your grandparents could do in their day and age and it’s obvious: Take nothing for granted!
Keep reading the blog for updates — I promise to keep you all posted on the next five weeks via patrickstack.com. This blog isn’t as fun as the old one, but it’s still good for something!
