Kolkata

Never uploaded the stuff from the India trip last year. Oops. Better late than never though I suppose. Unfortunately I wrote nothing in Hyderabad, below are my writings from Kolkata though..

October 14 2010: Morning after Arrival

Arrived in Kolkata last night. Twas about 18 hours of flight time with a two hours layover in Frankfurt. I knew that I was in Asia from the moment that I stepped of of the plane. Was that same feeling that I have grown to love, where mundane things are just different enough to be noticeable. The stairs from the plane to the tarmac; metallic with treads of a pattern that I haven't seen before. The bus from the plane to immigration, simple, without the criss-crossed benches that maximize seating surface are in the buses that I am used to. Immigration, my first interaction with India was in a large tiled room containing informational signs that made little sense and lines of people organized by ethnic group. I got in line with the white folks (officially entitled 'Foreign Passport Holders') and waited for about an hour to get my stamp of approval to enter the country. This was eventually done without too much hassle.

Next task was to procure my luggage. No big deal, just had to find a way to muscle up to the conveyer belt through a barricade of people and luggage carts. I would make a wrongheaded comment here about how Indians can be ruthless in their positioning at baggage claim, but I have now travelled to the American East Coast enough to know that this is not an especially Indian trait. While offensive to my polite-to-a-fault Seattle seinsibilities, I know now that most people are as outwardly pushy as we Seattle folks are in our own minds. My bag was out pretty early on. If I were going to stoop to such barbarity, I figured I should at least act like a good guest, so I made a point to climb over Europeans (probably Germans) to fetch it. Get some Hilga. Customs were non-existant. I signed a small slip of paper that said that I had nothing to declare and headed for the door.

In Kalkota you are not allowed in the airport unless you actually have a ticket. Also there is to driveway like you see in most American airports. There is just a single door that opens up to a huge open parking lot. It's at this door that everyone (including Deena in this case) waits for the passenger that they are there to pick up. The result for a jet-lagged growing-culture-shock traveler like me was a massive wall of Indian faces peering into the door in anticipation of being reunited with loved ones just in time for the holidays. I could see this wall from a few yards inside the door and my heart jumped. That's India out there. My instructions were to walk outside and find Deena. I moved through the crowd, with what I'm sure was an overwhelmed look on my face. I was looking for a sign made by Deena's driver calling for 'Mr. Ledger' but spotted her first. Wasn't so tough. She was the white person.

It was about mid-night by this time. We were driven into the city to our hotel. Took about 45 minutes. I love that first impression of a new (to me) country from the inside of a car. India was zipping past. The lights, honking traffic, groups of people, and dogs all seemed so new. It's puja time here in Kolkata, what I am referring to in my mind as 'Kokata Xmas', so there are stings of lights everywhere, adding additional texture to an already colorful landscape.

Not going to say anything about the hotel other than that it's a British-build colonial piece of crap. Had a nice mixed western/Indian breakfast.

Now it's time to head out for my first real exposure. Can't. Wait.

October 14 2010: First Impression

Holy cow. (Funny joke.) Just got back to the hotel after a walk through the streets around here. Honestly I don't know what to say. A whirlwind of human activity. Vendors line the streets and alleys selling clothes, watches, packaged goods, cooked and raw foods, cigarettes, picture frames, etc. etc. etc.

It's hot. Not to everyone else but to me. I came back covered in sweat.

India reminds me of China only in the scale of the humanity and in the fact that I am an obvious mark for vendors trying to lure foreign money into their shops. No thank you no thank you no thank you.

October 15: The Swirling Mass

It is the end of day 2. Here's how our time in Kolkata goes. Leave room, elevator plays sleepy chamber music, empty lobby is of clean white tile, hotel employees greet with 'sir' and 'madame', out through the security gates, thousands of people on the sidewalk, merchants line the streets and shout, cars lean on their horns, I begin to sweat, beggars single me out, push our way to our destination, eat something delicious, push back toward our hotel, still surrounded by thousands of people, back through the security gates, volume and commotion drops by 95%, back up to the room, peel off sweat-soaked clothes, deep breathe, watch bad American movie on TV, repeat.

Our hotel (Little Britain) is a little refuge from India. I must say, with the jet lag and the need for some relaxation It's nice to be able to turn off the swirling mass. It's not that I don't love Kolkata. I do. But it's a lot. A. Lot.

We made two excursions from the LB today. First was a walk to a cluster of restaurants on Park Street. This was more of a recon mission. We weren't really that hungry. We pushed through about a mile of vendors selling mostly clothing and hung a left onto Park. Park Street is a broader side street than I have see so far, with wide sidewalks. Many shops here were closed for the holiday, but there was still a decent amount of activity. In an attempt to prevent total soakage, we ducked into a coffe/pastry shop that had AC. We had tea, bottled water, and lime soda. I also ended up with some British-style cucumber sandwiches. (white bread, cucumbers, butter, no crust, gross) We were totally ignored by the waiter, but had a blast anyway. On the way back we stopped for the real shit. A Kolkata-style 'egg roll' purchased from a booth hanging off of a larger restaurant. An eg roll here is a doughey shell with an egg fried onto it with raw sliced onion, spices, and two kinds of spicy red sauces. So. Awesome. My favorite Indian food so far.

Second excursion was for lunch/dinner. We identified a place that was relatively close, on the ninth floor of an Indian-style hotel. The pitch was that it was rooftop dining with a unique view of New Market. We walked into the lobby-less hotel to find one of the smallest (and sketchies elevators that I have ever seen. We went for it, pressed 9, and waited to see where we ended up. We found ourselves in a very small restaurant, occupied by equal parts tourists and locals. They wouldn't let us eat on the patio for some unclear reason, but we did have a great view of the city out of the large window next to our table. Deena ordered for us, some seasoned potatoes and very spicy paneer. I also ordered a King Fisher, which came out as a 22 instead of the 12oz bottle that I was expecting. The food was great, and we stepped out onto the patio before we left to get a view of the city. No point in describing the view. Pictures are attached. After taking a few photos from the rooftop dining area occupied only by an older chain-smaking American couple, we started back. By this time the crowd was in full swing. We decided to grab a masala tea and some Bengali sweets before going back to the hotel. Even in this heat, we are loving our regular stops for tea. It's served hot in small clay cups. You stand on the sidewalk and sip it, then throw away the cups when you're done. By this time I was hitting a wall in the jet lag dept. The loop to the sweets shop and back to the hotel was reminiscent of 30 minutes on LSD. I was sleep deprived, culture shocked, a bit drunk, on a sugar+caffeine rush from the tea, recovering from a crazy-spicy dinner, and surrounded by what seemed like millions of shouting Indians. Hence the title, Swirling Mass. What a great vacation.

October 17, 2010: Durga Puja

One of the most important holidays of the year for Kolkata has been going on this week. The Durga Puja is a five day festival where locals construct temporary temples around the city in order to house an idol that portrays Shiva. They dress up in new clothes and spend nights going from temple to temple to worship and enjoy each other's company. These temples can be huge and elaborate, and the government hands out awards for skill in construction. The week culminates on the last night of the festival where everybody loads there idol into a truck and puts it into the river.

Deena and I ventured out at about 5pm to witness this event. We had a general idea as to the direction in which the idol-into-the-river event would take place so we just started walking. After a few blocks it became evident the we were on the right track, as we found ourselves in a huge flow of foot traffic all moving in one direction. We followed the crowd, passing makeshift stalls of street food along busy streets and muddy footpaths through the Maidan (an open park.) Large trucks packed with people shouting and playing drums began to sped passed us toward the river with increasing frequency, their neighborhood Shiva idols displayed prominently behind the cab. Every so often one was parked at the side of the road for a quick dancing break. As we approached the Hooghley river, there was clearly method to the madness, although it was not clear based our lack of puja experience. Dozens of trucks sat in line waiting for their turn to soak their idol, and all were still overflowing happy-dancing people, shouting and singing. It was quite a party. We found our way onto a footpath right against the river and tried to position ourselves in a such a way to actually witness idols going into the river. This is where the fact that there were 1 million+ people in attendance began to work against us. Wended up not so close to the actual dunking, but I was fine conceding the good seats to the locals who actually knew what was going on.

We were worried that without the massive crowd to follow it may be a bit tough to find our way back, so we left a little early. I got the impression that we were leaving with the women and children, and that the men would be staying for some time to come. The crowd (mostly young men at this point) was still pouring in as we were leaving. There was one point in particular where we were crossing a street at one of the few respected walk/don't walk signs that I have seen here, where we found ourselves facing a wall of people at the other end of the crosswalk. Deena grabbed my arm as to not be swept away by this giant wave of several hundred people with ear-to-ear smiles. It was an amazing energy.

We made it back to the hotel, our only problem that I was once again soaked in sweat from the humidity, and took a deep breath. I feel like every time I leave the Western compound that is the Oberei Grand, it's an intense experience of sight, smell and sound. This little walk was the most intense yet.

On to Hyderabad.

Izakaya in Tokyo

I just got back from a few days in Japan. I highly reccomend everyone to visit as it's a fascinating country with great food, sights, and people. We spent a couple of days in Tokyo and then headed down to Kyoto, which is the country's cultural capital. Kyoto was nice. You can't throw a rock there without hitting some sort of temple or shrine. We had a great time just walking around the city visiting temples and castles. It was a great way to get a taste of traditional Japan. I'm a city person though. I'm most interested in seeing the big cities of Asia and interacting with locals, so for me Tokyo was the best.

A significant part of my mission on exchange is to establish contacts in Asia, so I checked in with a Japanese classmate from the UW to see if he knew anyone in Tokyo who would be interested in eating/drinking with a random gaijin. It just so happened that a few of his co-workers were interested in such an encounter, and so we arranged to meet for izakaya.

Our hosts sat us down in a restaurant that we never would have found as tourists, and began to review a menu that looked as though it may have had about a thousand items on it. I was instructed by Sakuto-san that we first were to order nama-chu, or a medium-sized beer which didn't seem so medium-sized to me, as our hosts took care of ordering food.

The first of the many small dishes of food that came out to the table was a platter of raw horse meat. I'd eaten horse before on my trip to China, so I was not so taken aback, but the expression on the face of the Canadian guy from Pepperdine who was traveling with me was absolutely priceless. Our hosts laughed at the pause we took when the horse arrived and we had a few pieces. It was quite delicious actually. After that there were probably another 15 dishes that came out, all delicious, along with bottles of sake and shochu. By the end of the two hour parade of food and drink I felt like I had great friends in Tokyo.

After izakaya it was time for the second party. We left the restaurant and walked a few happy blocks to a place called Kennedy House. By this time it felt like the language barrier that was clearly present at the beginning of the night had faded away. It's very interesting how this happens after a few drinks; I've experienced it a couple of times now. We arrived at Kennedy House to find an awesome 60's (or 6T's as the sign said) cover band. I was blown away by their Beatles renditions, and when they played the Beach Boys' Kokomo I almost jumped out of my chair. The finale was a well-known Japanese song called Cherry Blossom, which was sung with sign language by a women with an incredible voice. It was so beautiful. Seriously. I almost cried.

And that was the night.

Eating and drinking with colleagues and business partners is extremely important in Asia. No business takes place without first establishing relationships. I take experiences like this lessons in international business, and this sort of real cultural exchange is 100x more authentic (and interesting) than anything we experience back home in a classroom. Having been through this a couple times now it was very interesting to be able to pick up on the tradition and structure that is embedded into these sorts of events. For example, we were seated around the table according to our positions as guests and hosts, and then by rank. The younger Japanese at the table, who were referred to by the others as freshmen, never took a bit of food or drink for themselves without first offering to their seniors. When we exchanged business cards I knew to give and take with two hands while bowing, and to examine the card for a moment before placing it into my front (never back!) pocket. Watching my Canadian friend attempt to go through the whole process out of context really helped to show me just how much I have learned over the past year about Asian business cultures.

Maccau

Okay two posts in a day is totally cheating. Sorry.

Last week we went to Maccau for a day. The city is known for gambling and prostitution, but I think it gets a bad rap. It was actually a very beautiful place with tons of stuff to take pictures of. We took a self guided walking tour out of the Lonely Planet which took us on about a three mile walk around a bunch of cool Portuguese architecture. We saw some amazing churches, a cool fort (complete with canons) that overlooks the city, the ruins of an old cathedral, and ended up in a Portuguese restaurant that was absolutely amazing.

After dinner we stopped in a casino for ninety minutes of gambling. I won $1000 HK on a slot machine in about twenty minutes and then cashed out. My jackpot more than paid for the day. It was only about $125 US, but there's something very gratifying about walking out of a casino with a crisp thousand dollar bill.

Pics are on Picasso.

Follow the Rock

This week was the last week of classes for the first Fall term. Most of us who are on the quarter system back home are now pretty much finished, as we arranged our classes so that all of them were crammed into eight weeks. This intense academic schedule has led to sort of a work-hard-play-hard type of situation for the exchange students who are all trying to get as much as possible out of school while still taking advantage of Hong Kong.

So when classes are out for the week, a tradition has developed to go straight from our downtown classroom to our favorite bars in the Wan Chai neighborhood, which is a 2$HK cable car ride away.

Wan Chai is a crazy place that often offends Western sensibilities. The watering holes vary greatly from raunchy strip club to sports bar to French, so you really have to be careful about which door you go through. Our system for avoiding awkward situations is simple: Follow the rock.

Several weeks ago we met up with a few friends at our normal starting position in a place called Heat. We start there because the guy from Anderson has befriended Heat's Aussie owner and somehow got the 2-for-1 drink specials expanded to the top shelf. (China bottom shelf is bad news.) Our wonderful friend from Irvine had been out walking around as she waited for us to get out of class and reported that there was classic rock being played around the corner at a place called Amazonia. After a rousing game of never have i ever, (where I learned that I am quite a normal guy) we left in pursuit of the Rock. What we found was quite possibly the most kick-ass cover band ever. Six Chinese guys, horns in the air, belted out songs that every American knows by heart in twenty minute sets. We sang along to Queen, Bon Jovi, GNR, AC/DC, and Neil Diamond to name a few. Before we knew it it was 5am, although I don't know who discovered this as the band was playing as though the night were still young.

Rituals and Context

Last week was Mid-Autumn Festival. This is a traditional Chinese holiday based on the lunar calendar that has been largely given up on the mainland but is still a big deal here in HK as well as in Taiwan.

On Monday there was a Mid-Autumn party hosted by the MBA office. It was your typical MBA gathering with future business leaders milling about with beer and plastic plates of food. I had interesting conversations with a finance guy from Germany, a women interested in ops and logistics from the mainland, and an American guy from non-profits. The food was fabulous as usual.

At some point during the party it was decided that it was time to light the lanterns, which is a traditional part of the mid-autumn festivities. I followed the crowd out onto the patio and observed while the Chinese students lit their disposable paper lanterns and walked around holding them on sticks. Everybody was so happy. People were smiling, laughing, and taking pictures of themselves holding lanterns. This was totally over my head. Don't get me wrong, lanterns are cool and all, but with absolutely no cultural context I had no connection to the emotional side of the ritual.

The following night we skipped class (mistake) and went to find the fire dragon ceremony. We'd heard that this was a famous performance that was culturally significant, and it sounded really cool. Every student on campus was going home for the holiday so the queues to get on the buses were incredibly long. We decided to take a cab into the city instead. We piled 5 deep into a cab and set out for Tin Hau, where we knew the fire dragon to be. We rode for about 15 minutes before hitting the gridlock. It was like Seattle x 2. We sat there for a long time. The driver sort of laughed at us when we tried to ask him about alternate routes that may not take as long. Everybody in HK was out, and the tiny size of the city was very apparent.

We finally made it to Tin Hau an hour later and stumbled into a carnival. In typical HK style there were thousands of people there. Again it was over my head. I'm not really sure what kind of carnival doesn't have rides or games or candy. A Chinese mid-autumn carnival apparently. Thousands of people were just milling about gathered around several stages with guys giving speeches or something. I assume they were speeches because there were no singers or magic tricks. There were also hundreds of lanterns hung overhead and a few very large lanternesque sculptures that were lit up. Every so often the full moon would peek out from behind the clouds and people would point and say stuff.

Eventually we realized that this was not the fire dragon ceremony. We asked someone where it was and he happened to be going there so we followed him. The fire dragon was made of what looked like very coarse rope. It was probably the length of a city block and was carried on poles by dozens of young men. The head also appeared to be made of some kind of rope and was very elaborate but not colorful at all. It wasn't actually on fire, which was too bad. It did, however, have thousands of lit insence sticks attached to it's head, back, and tail. To the sound of drum beats and a guy yelling into a megaphone, the fire dragon came running through an alley into a small square, and then circled and danced about. The huge crowd responded with cheers to the guy on the megaphone. I wish I could give a better description here but I have absolutely no idea what was going on. To me, the scene just looked like a bunch of happy people doing something odd.

On a physical level, I guess this is what rituals are. Lighting lanterns and eating cakes with your friends and family is in fact much less odd than bringing a tree into your home and covering it with bits of plastic and decorations that you normally keep in a box in your basement. This is what my mom has been trying to tell me when I poo-poo customs. (head scarf anyone?) It's not about the act. The act can be in fact silly. And that's just fine I guess.. If your into that sort of thing.

After the fire dragon we went to an awesome Hunan restaurant and the English guy paid the French guy $12 to eat a really hot Chinese pepper. The French aren't accustomed to such things. It was very funny.

Not Fog

Every year in the Fall, the winds shift direction. They change from blowing warm tropical air up into HK from the South China Sea to blowing slightly cooler air down from the mainland.

Surrounding HK a few hundred miles to the north are a few Special Economic Zones (SEZs) which are very favorable to foreign direct investment. It is in these zones where many multi-national firms have set up in order to take advantage of the Chinese labor market. This region is often referred to as the "world's factory floor" as these SEZ's are where a large amount of China's exports are produced.

The winds shifted last week and are now blowing down from the north. Along with the cooler air (which I appreciate a great deal) the northerly winds bring with them some pollution, a by-product of the intense manufacturing taking place close to here. To see the discreet change in the air that has occurred only over the course of the last few days has been a pretty profound experience for me. I've been to Beijing, so I've seen pollution before, but this pollution is different. It's not a result of millions of people driving cars and burning coal to cook and keep warm. It's not the result of massive construction efforts or a huge metropolis sustaining itself. This pollution is a result of the cheap manufacturing of goods mostly headed for the West.

Below are two pictures of the same little group of islands that can be seen from campus. They were taken about two weeks apart, both in the middle of the day. See if you can tell which was taken before the winds shifted and which was taken after.

(not fog.)

1408

Bumped into a couple of exchange students today who were on their way out to see a movie. I had just got out of 7 hours of class so decided that some mindless entertainment would be fine.

They had already decided to see 1408, a crappy horror movie where John Cusak does his normal thing as a cynical yet brilliant underachiever and Sam Jackson does his normal thing as piamp. The movie proceeds according to your standard locked-in-a-haunted-place-and-can't-get-out formula with a lot of really sudden noises to make you jump. I absolutely hate movies like this.

It was worth my fare though and I'll tell you why. (Stop reading here if you plan to see this piece of shit.) John Cusak is holding a representation of his daughter, who had died previously of leukemia or some other tragic disease. The ghosts are of course messing with his mind at this point and she dissolves into dust after saying a few creepy things. On his knees amidst her ashes, Mr. Cusak passionately cries out something like: "NOOOOO... I CAN'T LOSE YOU TWICE!!" It was the tear jerking line of the movie, a cheap emotional trick, (come on.. dead children?) and the absolutely predictable point where the protagonist decides that he's mad as hell and sure as beans will find a way out of this mess.

To our surprise, the audience erupted into laughter. We Americans looked at each other and shrugged. It was meant to be the saddest thing Hollywood could think of. One of those cases of cultural ships passing in the night.. I guess that's why you go abroad.