My Old Blog

I have been home less than a month….and it seems like I was never there. It is a very distant memory, outside af any timeline. I don’t think I’ve ever disconnected from a place quite so quickly.

I talked to Peter the other day about how disjointed my life feels….since Holland it has become a set of non-linear events…like pulling cards from a deck and trying to make a story out of them.

They are all compartmentalized in my head “6 months here”…”a year there”…”a bit of this”…and “a bit of that”….always different places, always different people. I could shuffle them if I like, changing people, tasks, and places….and it wouldn’t turn out much different really. Does it matter if it is study in Spain and work in India, or work in Spain and study in Turkey? Not really…after a while its the same. I could’ve just watched a TV show about it….or robbed a bank and sailed to the Seychelles.

I’ve always claimed that I am a good friend to have…loyal and trustworthy. I think that is true, but maybe the reason is that so little in my life has been constant that perhaps I am just reaching out for something. Of course, that does not cheapen the value of a good friend…whatever the motivations.

Anyway, I’ve done a lot of thinking lately about myself…moreso than usual, and for me it is a tired, beat subject to begin with since I’ve been doing just that and little else for the better part of a decade. I think its because I am “dating” someone I really like for the first time in…..well….a long time. I usually just think about myself….not myself and someone else. I am finding that I am not so well equipped to handle the pair.

So far I give myself like an “D+” maybe…at least based on what I would like. Based on my past behavior I think I’m doing ok….but as I am quick to tell people: no one should get credit for stuff they are supposed to do in the first place.

I think the only thing I can say for sure is that we are never too old to act like children, and that sometimes being an adult is simply the ability to detach yourself from something so as to put off those childish tendencies.

I guess I am in a plaintive mood tonight. I haven’t been home much since I got back and tonight I am alone in my room drinking Sam Adams by myself….writing and surfing the Internet for stuff that I am convinced will one day deliver me from myself. Oh well…the Internet is a big place. I’ll keep looking.

I shouldn’t admit that I am writing from work. After all, they are paying me to be here. On the flip side, they say they pay me to do WORK and not to sit in the office, so I should be able to use my time however I like as long as I still get everything done. We all know that is wishful thinking.

Being back is much like never being gone. I still eat eggs and drink coffee in the morning. I still struggle with deadlines and to keep my focus during the day so I don’t have to stay till 8pm. I eat at the same places. Thus far I haven’t been playing any sports, so I guess that is different.

I weigh within one pound of what I did when I left for India. I am always amazed how the body can maintain weight even when everything in my life changes. I slept at different times in India. Breakfast became my largest meal of the day. I drank more alcohol. I didn’t exercise nearly as much. I ate different kinds of food…..and yet in 5 months I didn’t gain or lose hardly a pound. That is amazing.

1 pound is about 3,500 calories. That is approximately one day of meals for the average person. For 5 months of ordering room service and eating at 5 star restaurants I didn’t rack up more than a day’s difference in calories from what I normally ate…..and I ate when I felt like it…sometimes just for the hell of it. That is almost unbelievable that the body can self-regulate that well.

Ok….I might finish this later. I have to go meet Pete for dinner. I’m outta here.

Ok…now is later. I did meet Peter out for dinner. We ate at La Fonda on Ponce. I didn’t think it was that great. The chips and salsa were good. That is all I wanted anyway.

I don’t even know why I am wasting my time writing. Even though I cannot say I am significantly less happy in Atlanta than I was in India, and in fact in some ways it is nice to be home…..it certainly doesn’t lend itself as well to amusement. India was like a 5 month comedy routine.

I should make some more entries about India. After all, I never talked about the Rat Temple, or the Lake Palace Hotel, or the death train to Bikaner. I never mentioned our awful behavior at the Orient Express, the last week at work, or my two week long bill fiasco with the Taj. I will miss using the words “fiasco” and “debacle”. I got a lot of mileage out of them in India.

My first time driving after I got back to the US two cars ran into each other right in front of me going 70 miles per hour. It was a pretty vicious accident. “Welcome home,” I thought. I found it ironic that I’d spent 5 months in the worst traffic I’d ever seen in Delhi and hadn’t gotten nearly so close to a wreck.

Yesterday was my first back at the office. My work area was exactly how I left it….papers still on the floor and stuff all over my desk. Nothing at all had moved, and I even had someone work from my cube temporarly for a few weeks. I also found it ironic how much effort I’d spent in India to keep their cleaners from moving my stuff (which failed misreably), while I succeeded in the US without even trying.

I was immediately impressed on arrival in Atlanta with the efficiency of the US. It strikes me everytime I come back home at passport control. People stand in lines…and the lines move, and there are an adequate number of them. They have signs in multiple languages all over the place telling you where to go and reminding you to have your passport and papers ready in an effort to save time and increase efficiency.

India is a free-for-all….a melange of ambiguity….all things at once, excelling at nothing, forever smiling….never efficient. If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, India is surely the longest.

I have fond memories of India. I don’t want anyone to think I don’t love and respect it. Brian Allex told me his in-laws (who are from India) read the website, even the “not so complimentary” things. He said they enjoyed it and laughed and said it really does happen like that.

So here I am back in Atlanta. My first week back hasn’t been the best, I will admit. Sarah has been nice, and I saw my mom, and work hasn’t been too busy yet….so I guess I should count my blessings….even though I no longer have a laundry service, a chauffeur, live in a 5 star hotel, have more money than I can spend, and an amazing, constantly entertaining country to keep me amused.

My life has been so strange.

So I leave India in 3 days to go back to the US.

I have no idea how long you have to be somewhere before it begins to feel like home, but as I walked through the lobby of the hotel, wandered around the market, watched TV, and ordered room service today…I realize that India is home….and part of me will be sad to leave it.

The Taj Palace has become one oversized apartment….albeit with restaurants, bars, gyms, laundry, and concierge available 24/7. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like a home though…..its just bigger and with more amenities than most.

I likely know more of Delhi than I do of Atlanta. I know how much a taxi fare is to almost anywhere in the city. When the cabbies don’t know the way, I can direct them. I know how to get anything I need…whether it be medicine, movies, food, alcohol, trinkets, entertainment, etc. In India that is a great feat….there are markets for almost every need spread across the whole city: spice markets, gold markets, car parts markets, leather markets, textile markets, household goods markets…anything you can think of….except Wal Mart. You’ve got to know where things are and what you can trust though or even the simplest tasks can drive you nuts.

And certain things about India are irreplaceable in the US. I will never be able to afford laundry and cleaning service like this again. I will never be able to hire drivers to take me around a city all day and wait for like 15 bucks. I will never have so much free time again. I will never live so close to my friends again. The number of folks I know living at the Taj has dwindled to just a few now, but for most of my trip there were 10 or more of us here….no car needed. Even small things….like living in a hotel it is impossible to lock yourself out of your room or lose your keys. They’ll just give you a new one and let you in.

India is charming even in its disarray. It is always in your face, and it makes it harder to feel disconnected than back home where everything can seem so transactional. India’s extreme poverty is living right on top of its blistering progress. There are people living in tents right beside my high rise office….living under bridges right outside 5 star hotels. There is almost no where in the city that you can escape it….and some parts where it is so overwhelming it makes you embarrassed.

That’s one of the things that always strikes me about traveling: everything becomes normal after a while. The illogic of India comes to have a reassuring consistency to it; the begging children become the backdrop of traffic lights; cows are the city scenary; time is a vague quantity not to be counted.

India offers everything I have ever seen. It is beautiful and large, spritual and crass, old, naive, childlike, proud, hopeful, sad, and disordered. It is not my favorite place I have ever been, but it is the most complex.

I am happy to go back to the US. It is time. India can drive you crazy. It is amazing how similar the stories are that expats tell about the madness of trying to do anything here. I have often thought that if I stayed longer or had a more open mind that I would cease to get so frustrated by it….but having spoken to others that have been living and doing business here for decades I see that India is an immoveable force that will thwart your every effort. It will charm you and defeat you at the same time.

So I will be back in the US next week. For those of you who know me, my phone number will be the same and I will be home for the holidays if you happen to be in Easley.

Ok…this is a slightly edited version of a story that was an edited version of the original story, but it is still very, very funny:

We ate Thanksgiving dinner at the Marriott. There was a special foreigner section of the buffet with flat tasteless turkey and yummy garlic mashed potatoes along with several unidentified gravies that didn’t taste anything at all like Thanksgiving. I had mostly pasta, prawns, and cheese.

The girl that came with us said she was itching to do a little partying so after dinner we went up to the Marriott lounge and had free drinks (one of the advantages of being on a long term assignment).

There were lots of shots and beers and merriment….and then it was time to go home with a good buzz and a full stomach. Overall, a nice night. The chick (hereafter known as Carolyn to protect the innocent) seemed fine on the way out. I wasn’t that drunk and neither was Sarah (which is also a fake name).

A few minutes into the taxi ride Carolyn reaches over and starts holding my hand. I was like, “Shit, this chick is nuts…but whatever.” Then a minute or so later she puts her head on my shoulder. Then I was thinking, “Ok. She is just drunk. Let her sleep.”

Then she started making these gurgling noises every once in a while, but I was talking to Sarah so I didn’t pay it much attention except to say, “This fucking chick is going to throw up on me….that would be so funny.”

But when it really happened it wasn’t so funny.

Carolyn didn’t just puke in the car…she puked on me. Remember her head was lying on my shoulder so it went all the way down my shirt and pants. I distinctly remember thinking, “Wow. Vomit is very warm….and it smells bad too.” I also remember thinking, “I can’t believe this bitch threw up on me.”

So by this time we are back at the Taj Palace. There is nothing that screams “I’ve got class” like pulling into a 5 star hotel with vomit all over your clothes. The taxi driver wasn’t so happy either.

I figured it was over though….that Carolyn would apologize, I would take a shower and send my dry cleaning bill to her when she sobered up….but no: She was too drunk to get out of the car. And she had kept throwing up after I propped her up, so now she is sitting in a pool of stinky warm vomit in the cab and can’t hold her head up.

Then I started laughing because the hotel staff brings out a wheel chair to carry this chick to her room. They have to pick her up out of the taxi and sit her and her vomit down in the wheelchair to take her upstairs. The lobby of the Taj Palace is all marble with chandelier lighting, fresh flowers, and an army of staff to greet you (or take care of drunk foreigners as the case may be).

So we get upstairs and the staff dumps her out of the wheelchair onto the bed….which is now covered in puke. The staff didn’t know what else to do so we said we would just take care of her ourselves.

I immediately head to her mini-bar and crack open an over-priced beer. There has to be some kind of compensation right?

My first thought was just tuck her in and let her sleep it off…..but then we realized she was on her back and might puke again and choke on her own vomit in the night…..so Sarah suggested we put her in the shower and maybe it would sober her up enough to do something with her. At this point she is like an invalid. She doesn’t even know she is wallowing around on her bed in her own vomit, which is now all in her hair.

It quickly became apparent that a shower required her to stand up, so we ran a bath instead. I had little desire to see Carolyn naked, but it seemed pointless to put her in the bath covered in puke…so we decided to strip her down to her bra and panties.

We took off her shirt. She had no idea what planet she was on. I could’ve shaved her eyebrow and she wouldn’t have known. Then we took off her pants. She had on a nice pair of grey cotton granny panties with a large wet spot in the crotch area: She’d fucking peed in her pants.

I took a swig of beer and laughed my ass off. It just keeps getting better and better. I was still wearing the same clothes….puke and all.

Sarah and I together could not get this girl into the bathtub no matter what we did. She was like a wet towel….totally incontinent, unaware….didn’t respond to anything we said.

After we laughed for good long while we decided to put her back on the bed face down and hopefully she wouldn’t roll over. We went back an hour later to check on her, getting security to let us in. As expected, she hadn’t moved. Just lying in her own vomit face down. The look on the security guys’ faces was priceless.

I called her the next day to ask how she was. She said she’d thrown up all morning and still didn’t feel well. She didn’t even remember throwing up on me…..said she was really confused when she woke up in her bra and panties in a pool of vomit with a bunch of open beers and a wheelchair in her room.

“I bet,” I said.

Oh yeah….we did happen to snap a picture:

Notice the puke on my pants and the wheelchair in the background.

I haven’t been around to write anything. I saw some really cool stuff on my trip through Rajisthan and had an interesting time to say the least. I will post some pics over the next few days and figure out something to say about it all.

Work is very slow this week because it is Thanksgiving in the US and all my coachees are in training. I am writing this and waiting on a cab and trying to find some music to buy on iTunes. My trip is drawing to a close more or less…surely I will talk more about that later.

No matter how old you get it seems we are still capable of acting like a bunch of drunk teenagers even when there are good intentions and a realization that it is happening. I admit I do not always understand.

KOLKATA, India – A woman receiving treatment for diabetes at a state-run hospital in eastern India lost one of her eyes after ants nibbled away at it, officials said on Tuesday.

These are two of my favorite stories about India. India is a strange and beautiful place that contains everything we have to offer, the best and the worst, the highest and the lowest….just not the fastest or most logical. India makes me question whether rationality is just a point of view.

Cows in S. Delhi:

A few months back the government decided there were too many cows in the streets of South Delhi. So the government masterminds came up with a very sound, very Indian policy: Offer a $50 reward for every cow rounded-up in S. Delhi.

Well, 50 bucks is a shitload of money in India where every street is lined with families living in tents….if they even have a tent. Sensing an opportunity to make a small fortune, Indians simply rounded-up cows from N. Delhi, W. Delhi, E. Delhi, the outskirts, and the villages…and brought them all to S. Delhi looking for their $50.

The government realized this and refused to pay unless you could prove that your cow is actually from S. Delhi. Since there is no way to prove it, the people just turned around and went home empty handed….leaving the cows in S. Delhi.

That is about as India as it gets: Create a policy to remove cows and you get a policy that brings in more cows.

Guest of the Week:

At the hotel I have learned there is “Guest of the Week” program. When you are Guest of the Week you have your picture posted in several employee locations, and all staff know who you are. For the entire week the door is opened for you with double the effort and diligence. Special attention is paid to your comings and goings. Your requests are ignored and side stepped with twice the regret as usual.

The only problem is that you, as the Guest of the Week, are completely ignorant of your status. Apparently I have been guest of the week twice and I am told it is a great honor. I wonder if they posted a new picture of me behind the bell desk or if it is the same one from when I checked in?

What kind of guest recognition program does not tell the guest they are being recognized? What good is a guest benefit that has no recognizable benefit for the guest???

Its like being Employee of the Month and not knowing it, not getting anything extra. Its just the same as not being Employee of the Month.

I admit I do not understand why these things happen with such frequency here. I think when I come to understand the mind of India, I will have lost my own.

So everyone knows that Delhi got bombed. They blew up 3 markets and my inside connections at the embassy told me that they averted 1 other one (which didn’t make the news). The bomb squad guys staying at the Taj have been very edgy lately.

The markets they blew up actually weren’t particularly frequented by foreigners. These nuts weren’t targeting any group. They were looking for shock value. It is Diwali in India, which is the Indian equivalent to Christmas, so everyone on the planet was out at these markets shopping for presents.

I get confused by these terrorists because I don’t understand what they want. In Latin America it is common for the children of rich folks to be kidnapped for ransom. Ok….I get that. The kidnappers want money. But the terrorists don’t want anything. They don’t have any demands. How do you deal with that??

I’m not sure if it made the news in the US, but the president (or whatever you call him) of Iran made the comment that Israel should be “wiped off the map”. And the comment was made at a “World without Zionism” conference….which to me is the most bizarre part of it.

“World without Zionism”?? Substitute “Blacks” for “Zionism” and you’ve got the fucking KKK. The Iranian president spoke at a KKK rally??? I can’t even compute that. Should we get him a white hood?

So let’s envision that they get their way….that the US and Israel are wiped off the map. What then? Iran is still a minor backwards ass country filled with sand, a bunch of oil, and crazy sex-starved Arabs. They will not suddenly rise to prominence if we disappear.

That’s what I don’t get. Destroying us will gain them nothing. The standard of living for Iranians will not suddently rise to Israeli or US standards if we are destroyred. This is not a zero sum game. They will be saddled with the same poverty, the same insanity, the same reliance on oil, the same poor humanitarian record.

I simply do not understand other than to say these people are crazy and that the Crusades ended 800 years ago….get over it.

Nothing particularly funny or interesting has happened in the past few days. If I were feeling creative I’m sure I could come up with something I could write about, but I think I’ll pass.

It strikes me right now that I haven’t spoken to anyone all day, other than room service for food and the guy who stepped into the steam room while I was leaving. I slept till noon almost and took a nap by the pool for an hour this afternoon.

I watched Castaway with Tom Hanks, or at least most of it. I watched the Aviator too….what a crappy movie that is. I tried to make some phone calls to the States as it feels weird to talk to no one, but no one is answering.

Whereas at home I would’ve had things to do that I was blowing off to do nothing on a Sunday….here I just do nothing and it seems fine.