Passage to Bangalore

We’re leaving Chennai today and driving to Bangalore which is around a 7 hour drive.  Vivek has a couple of work meetings lined up there so hence the reason for the trip.  Vidya’s family is from Bangalore so she’s taking a few days off work and making it a 5 day weekend.  Thursday, October 2 is Gandhi’s birthday and a national holiday.  It’s a dry holiday too which means no drinking is allowed.  Isn’t that the whole point of having holidays so you can day drink on a week day? 

The Rough Guide to India (yes, I’ve converted from Lonely Planet) says there isn’t much to see in Chennai and that most people just use it as a travel hub to get somewhere else. 

At Marina Beach. Can you find me?

Before arriving here I figured I’d prove them wrong and find a way to enjoy it here.  But after 4 days I can say I’m not too torn up about leaving.  There’s just nothing to do.  Usually no matter where I go I like to explore the city by walking around and just seeing where I end up.  The problem here is I don’t want to walk around.  The day time temp is a sticky, humid 100+ F.  There are no sidewalks to walk on so you’re basically walking in the street with cars and scooters riding 5 wide in a 2 lane road, and on top of that you’ve got these stray dogs eyeing you wherever you go.  And there’s no where to walk to, like a park, or something, anything touristy.  And there is trash all over the place, in the bushes, on the side of the road, everywhere. 

There is minimal infrastructure here.  There are no public trash cans since there is no city trash pick up, only residential trash pick up.  I get the sense that people are not motivated to be proactive in improving their neighborhood because there is just so much to do.  It’s overwhelming.  And people don’t seem to expect miracles from their government anytime soon as corruption is ingrained in the politics here.  For example, in a recent election, in order to get more votes, one of the parties released 1,400 convicts from prison who had been serving life sentences.  Just so they could get their votes.  And most of these guys were then hired to be part of what is known as the ‘intimidation network’.  Think of the strong arm guys doing the dirty work for the Mafia. 

Another perhaps more humorous example is in another election one of the parties promised televisions to anyone who voted for them!  They supposedly gave out 10 million tv’s!  I should have asked if they won.  Vivek and Vidya’s house cleaner said she went this route but is still waiting for her tv and no longer expects to receive it.  But she did get a silver bowl which is given out to people who convert to Christianity.  No kidding.  Local priests over here are on a bonus payment structure where the more people they can sign up, the more money they get.  And the people paying them are churches from other countries.  This is nuts!  I’ve seen at least a handful of good sized churches in my few days here. 

But given all that, I’m glad and very thankful to have started my trip here.  It’s been great having a comfortable home to help get acclimated in my first week. 

The local pharmacy

 I got super-congested my second day here from the allergies and a/c and humidity and I couldn’t imagine having had to deal with all that in a dinky hotel room somewhere.  And it made for a great trip to the pharmacy, if you can call it that.  It’s basically a road side shop with a ’Medicals’ sign posted in the dirt.  And where the ‘pharmacist’ opens up a shoebox and starts shuffling through it to find my allergy medicine.  But it’s way cheap.  $1 for a whole bunch of pills that would have been over $20 at least back home.  Recoveries aside, I’ve looked forward to every dinner Vidya has made.  Last night she finally had enough of me telling her to make the food more spicy, that I could handle it.  And wow was it spicy.  But I think I handled it better than Vivek who kept going back for more yogurt to cool off.

So there you have it.  I’m leaving the land of free tv’s and silver bowls.  I really should probably wait around for the next election and stock up on those essentials but I’ve got a ride to Bangalore that I need to take.

Wachovia irony

If you go to Marketwatch.com right now you may still see a Wachovia ad that I thought was pretty ironic given the recent events in the financial markets.  As you probably already know, Wachovia just sold its banking division to Citigroup once word came out that the government bailout was rejected.  Apparently it had been counting on that passing for it to have any chance of surviving.  So chalk up another bank that has fallen by the wayside.

So what is the irony?  The irony is that in the ad Wachovia Securities wants to sell you investment advice with “Six Strategies For Weathering Market Volatility”.  Really?  Your entire banking division just collapsed and you’re claiming to have sound investment advice for me?  Please explain that.  Or did you just not happen to send your banking division a copy of this report?  You could have even used inter-company mail and saved on the postage fees.  Now there is some sound advice and I’m giving it for free.

I love that I come all the way to India to blog about our financial markets.

In Chennai

Greetings from my friend Vivek’s home office. I’m choosing to sleep here tonight since it has A/C and the guest bedroom where I slept last night only has a ceiling fan. And it is HOT today. Over 90 most of the day, and humid and sticky. Plus this morning there was a rolling blackout from 6-8 a.m. and the ceiling fan just shut off which turned the room into an instant sauna. Turns out these blackouts are an everyday thing. I guess you just get used to it.

We’re on the outskirts of Chennai, formerly known as Madras. Vivek’s house is about a mile off of the main road down a ridiculously uneven, bumpy dirt road. One of these things the government says they’re going to fix but just haven’t quite gotten around to doing it. Vivek says it’s because the right politician hasn’t been greased yet. It did make for a fun scooter ride today as I took his wife Vidya’s scooter and he took his motorcycle and we took a ride around the ‘hood. We are near the “IT Highway” right now, which is a long stretch of road where a lot of technology offshoring goes on. And wouldn’t you know it, there is a mini-real estate bubble happening right now with lots of office buildings going up but now a few of them are beginning to have troubles renting them out. Maybe the U.S. can bail them out too.

I’ve seen probably over a hundred stray dogs in my first day here. They are everywhere. I just found one hiding under this computer desk I’m sitting at. And lots of cows too. They’ll just be hanging out in the middle of the road, between the lanes, and since they don’t kill any cows over here, most male cows end up just doing this their whole life. Some unfortunate few will get put to work hauling stuff around but otherwise they’ll get castrated and just set free. What a life. Except for the castration part.

It’s common for people to have a cow at home that they keep around for milk. Vivek wants to get a cow for this reason, says it saves money in the long run. And you outsource the maintenance of it. Someone comes over, takes care of the cow and milks it. And for payment they take half of the cow’s output. Sounds like a good deal to me. I’m trying to convince Vivek to get the cow this week while I’m here so I can check it out. Vidya on the other hand wants nothing to do with a cow. I’m interested to see how this one plays out.

On the health front, so far so good. I have gotten about 10 mosquito bites so far. There’s just no avoiding them. Vivek has a mosquito zapper shaped like a tennis racket that you literally swing at the bugs and they get zapped. You can see them light up and hear the crackle as they burn to death. It’s actually quite fun if you manage to kill them and not get bit.

From the HK

I’m at the Hong Kong airport waiting for my connecting flight to Chennai which is a 6 hour flight. Ugh. I just got done surviving a 13 hour marathon. I couldn’t even keep my eyes open by the end. But I did watch Bank Job and Iron Man which were both pretty good. I think Iron Man may be my favorite super hero, with Batman a close second.

The biggest motvator for me to blog right now is because I’m doing it from m iPhone with the free wifi in the airport. And I even got to call home using a Skype-type app called Truphone for pennies a minute. I love technology.

The airport itself is pretty sweet. Super modern, wide open and clean and with heart-bumping techno music blaring from the duty free shops. Feels more like a shopping mall than an airport. And the train station is right here too. If the directors of The Fast and The Furious were commissioned to architect an airport, this would be it.

Goodbye SF, for now

I’m winding down my last week living in San Francisco (at least for the time being).  I moved here in 1999 excited about living in sunny, warm California and driving my Integra down the Californian highways with the windows down and the sun roof open.  I have since sold my Integra and am still waiting for the sun and warm weather to arrive in San Francisco.

I’m going to miss the city and the city life.  I’m going to miss my great apartment in Russian Hill that I’ve called home for over 5 years, the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere.  I’ll miss rocking out to the radio in my bathroom, basking in the warmth of my ancient-but-still-very-functional heater for those cold SF nights (and days), and laying out on my super comfy leather couch and watching football on my flatscreen LCD.

One of the things I’ll miss the most is tying on my helmet, getting on my scooter and riding all over the city.  You can be sure I have not owned my last scooter.  Most of all though I will miss the many friends I have made in my 9 years here.  I came out knowing only Dylan and Adam and through them and their friends and my co-workers I have met so many great people.  I almost expect to run into someone I know everytime I wander around the city and that’s kinda cool.

So the question is with all this great stuff why am I leaving?  That my friend is a very good question.  The simple answer is that it’s all become just a bit too comfortable.  I want and need to shake things up a bit, to live out of my comfort zone for a while.  As Natali so graciously put it once, I have become a “squatter”.  I like the image; me with an over-sized belly hanging over my belt, sitting down plumply on my couch with a shit-eating grin, slow to move or do anything too hurriedly.  We always hear about the need to live a balanced life; well, for me, achieving balance has always seemed to be living at the extremes and then finding the happy middle. I won’t exercise for a long time and then I’ll start training for a marathon.  I’ll run the marathon and then buy a pack of cigarettes that same night (thanks for joining me on this one Kerwar).  I’ll smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and then I’ll quit for a couple of months.  I’ve squatted for a while, and now I’m going to be homeless for a while.  I don’t think either extreme is sustainable or healthy but I do think it’ll be good for me to experience both.

When I came back from my two months in Spain and Morocco this summer I just wanted to continue traveling, with the same small backpack and two changes of clothes I had.  It was a lifestyle I had never experienced where each day I decided what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go.  Everything I owned I was carrying on my back which made me very free and mobile.  Now that I’ve been back (and squatting) for a few months the urge to live like that has waned quite a bit.  But there’s still a part of me that wants to get back on that trail and really live on the edge of life a while longer before settling down in my next city.

While I’m traveling I realize I will not have a warm shower every morning or a warm bed every night, especially when I go trekking in the Himalayas where you can go days without taking a shower.  There will be a day (I just know there will be) where I’ll be stuck in a dinky, dirty bathroom engaged in heated stomach warfare and at that moment I’ll really miss my apartment back in SF and wonder wtf am I doing here?  And that’s a good thing.  It’s times like that that help me appreciate the comforts I have in my “normal” life and that help me learn to not take things for granted.

And wouldn’t you know it, the sun is starting to shine through today.  Of course it would happen just as I’m getting ready to leave.  It’s like it’s tempting me to squat just a bit longer.