I’ve been using Windows 7 a lot lately. In fact, I’ve taken to bringing my dual boot MacBook from home to work every day as I find myself hunched over the small thing most of the time doing work. It has a smaller keyboard, wireless network (as opposed to 1 Gbps ethernet), and a 13” screen as opposed to my desktop’s huge 24” Dell.
I’m a proud Mac fanboy. When it works, it works well. Things have a very high value of JustWork, and more or less I’ve been very pleased with it.
My problem comes into being with trying to interact a lot with more of the outside world. Office 2008 for the Mac manages to snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory. It’s slow and buggy. The PDFs that Apple products create (such as from Pages) tend to be incorrect when viewed from Adobe products. For better or worse, ESRI’s ArcGIS consumes enough resources that it cannot be run in a virtual machine on my mac.
All of these issues were still “put-up-able” enough while the choice was XP or Vista versus MacOS. I like how Apple has set up the user interface. That plus a couple of free programs (like Blacktree’s excellent Quicksilver launcher application) mean that I can really focus on doing things without having to think about how I’m doing it.
Now it seems that Microsoft has managed to figure out most of what’s wrong with using Windows with Windows 7. The interface for most everything I’m using is regular and normal. Its search functionality is as good as Apple’s Spotlight (which admittedly was a Vista feature), and all in all it has a very high value of JustWork. It moves the major annoyances of computer use from the OS (to which MacOS was the cure), to the applications I’m using.
I haven’t updated in a while. Originally, I was going to say that the
guest house internet rather sucks, but then I could blog like I did
from the plane- just blog into a text file, and then copy and paste it
like a good boy when I get to internet (in the office).
Honestly? I’m lazy. I’ve been working hard, and generally the time
where I think abstractly enough for blogging tends to be at awkward
times, like in an auto or while walking across campus. However, I
need to write this down. Not only will my Aunt Donna be upset if I
don’t update, but this is for me as well; life here has
changed the way I see the world, really for the better. The result is
that as I blogged like crazy at the start of my trip, so too will I
blog at the end, starting here.
Since my last posting, there’s been a world of things I’ve done. I
can drink tap water now, for starters. I don’t make a habit of it,
but if it’s all that’s available, it’s all that’s available. That’s a
big one, honestly.
A friend of mine and I were talking today, and I brought up that in
coming to India, I steeled myself for The Big Things. I haven’t
really felt any major culture shock, and that is due in large
part for me mentally preparing myself for going from Champaign, IL to
Bangalore, India. However, there’s a million and one small things,
the type that doesn’t rear its head and make itself noticed. For
example, there is something off about India for the first
couple of weeks I was here. I couldn’t tell what it was, but
something felt wrong on a basic, fundamental level.
“What was it?”, asks the audience.
Stairs. Holes. Ledges, bumps, all manner of things that would get
any business or government in the US in large amounts of trouble with
regards to handicap accessibility. India is not the
place for the wheelchair-bound. As a walking person, it’s something
you don’t notice, but for us Americans, our world is typically flat.
Sidewalks are smooth, there are generally smooth(ish) inclines
anywhere you need to get to with minor elevation changes, and public
places either have complex ramps or an elevator for large elevation
changes. It’s really a small thing for me, but it was bugging the
hell out of me until I figured it out. It’s one of a million things
that have struck me about this city.
This city is very much organic; I don’t see any reasonable way that
anyone regulates, taxes, or does much of anything with at least 75% of
the individuals and businesses here. Better question: I don’t know if
there’s any authority that knows that 75% of the individuals and
businesses here even exist. Sure, they know there’s a lot of
people here and it’s a big city, but beyond that, what then? After
much of the touristing I’ve done here over the weekend (more on that
later), I imagine the proper question is: do I know the identity of
every cell in my body?
…I’d have a lot of butterflies. Or something like that.
I’ve discovered why you don’t drink the tap water in India. Last Friday, I got back to the guest house rather late, so the night shift was there. They’re not quite as on the ball as the day shift. I asked for a bottle of water, as my Friday Night Adventures had left me quite parched. Normally, what they do is they go in the kitchen, and run the filter into a recycled 1 liter bottle. This time, he went back, and came out with a bottle of water, like what normally happens. It was warmer than what usually comes from the filter, but it was water, so I didn’t complain. I got back to my room and immediately chugged at least a quarter of that water…
…and noticed an odd smell about the water. Much like the odd smell of the water that comes from any given tap around here. Crap.
Over the weekend, I was sick enough to make it quite the effort to go out and eat at the guest house dining service, but I was well enough so that even after catching up on some work and some movies I brought with, I was going stir-crazy. I suppose it could have been worse; I’ve been slowly working my way up on street-vendor food here. The food at the guest house and the nicer restaurants I’ve eaten at are all pretty clean; if I haven’t been having the street vendor food, I most likely would have been completely unprepared for the tap water. That would have been Very Bad.
Other than that, I rather like it here. I believe myself to be the only white American here; I’ve made friends with an Englishman, a Frenchman, several Indians, an Argentinean, a Sri-Lankan Australian, an Israeli, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few. It’s exciting to feel like I’m very clearly the dumbest one here; dinner conversation has gone from advanced pure mathematics, to the economy, to climate change, to applications of nano-scale fuel cells (and the design problems going into them), to effects of climate change on India’s hydrological cycle, and, as usual, lots of hypothesis of how various factors (climate change, phase of the moon, etc) effect the results of cricket matches. “Your favorite team sucking” is very clearly out of bounds here. I feel safer in India than I do back home, but I think an Indian would rather you disparage his/her mother instead of their national cricket team.
India is an interesting country. If I were from an earlier time, I think “queer” would be a great word for it. The woman who tends the garden outside my window makes about 70 Rs./day. I’ve so far averaged to be spending about 100-120 Rs./day, and I think I’m spending a lot until I notice a wallet stuffed to the gills with 500 and 1000 Rs. notes. (Note to the reader: 1 rupee (Rs) is about 2 cents). The place I’m staying at would be likely costing me 500-1000 Rs/night, or more if I were to be paying all my own way. It makes me feel funny to think about not just that I’m making more than someone, but just how crazy well-off I am.
Alex told me to “live like a pimp.” I probably will… once I’m not in neighborhoods where I’m stepping over cow dung in the street while children play on a pile of trash piled up so high against their house they can roll a wheel up to the roof. On the flip side, I can get a samosa and an orange Fanta for 26 rupees. If you’re paying attention to the titles of my previous posts, the Fanta is 20 Rs., thus leaving a very tasty samosa for 6 Rs. (12 cents, for those keeping score). Final verdict: In the slums, I’m going to take advantage of my relative wealth while not being an ass about it. They need the rupees more than I would like a Fanta, so everyone wins there. Once I get out to the better off bar district, I can do as Alex requests
Leaving by the main, south entrance to the institute takes me out onto a busy street lined with barbed-wire concrete walls for miles. However, this morning I discovered The Back Entrance, to the north. Walking out there, I managed to discover the fore mentioned street poo and the children with the trash heap. I also discovered a busy many blocks of little shops, including the one I got my Fanta and samosa from. There’s also a few Airtel and Vodafone shops there I’ll probably get a cheap (1200 Rs) pay-as-I-go phone to use around town.
The IIS campus (a.k.a. “The Tata Institute” to local cabbies) is almost something out of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The crew beams down to a planet, where everyone speaks decent-enough to flawless English, and everything’s the same as Back Home, But Different. Where they bother with landscaping, it’s lovely. Where they don’t, it’s native jungle that hasn’t been cleared away (their “quad” is a thick forest with some walking paths through it). All the women here are wearing saris. All the women. Sometimes it feels like a restored university in the Fallout universe- almost everything’s rusty, and there are Random Concrete Things just off the beaten path through the forest that suggest there might have been a building or something large there. There are other walking paths that trail off into nothing, with a set of broken-down stone stairs set into a small hillside… simply in the middle of nowhere. It’s as if the institute simply picked its battles with time and budget… and Time here is not one to be trifled with lightly.
I’ve been outside of the airport for an hour now, and it’s
been amazingly interesting already. To begin, I found the
cab arranged for me from the airport. It’s some little 4-door
hatchback Tata, proudly proclaiming it’s V-2 engine on the side
fender. This is where I learned How Indians Drive. Did you know that
two of these size cars will fit side-by-side in the same lane? Or
that you can more or less get two auto-rickshaws and my cab
in the same lane? Or that you only need approximately one meter of
clearance between two trucks carrying OMG HUGE SLABS OF STONE to cut
between them at 100 kph? Upon learning this, I tried finding my
seatbelt. While the belt is there, it was lacking a buckle. Figures.
Anyway, once we got up to speed, traffic is a bit more calm and
orderly; you’re only sharing a lane with one other car at a time.
This gave me the chance to look around. As we were leaving the
airport, everything was under construction. Not in the Chicago
“everything’s under construction Just Because”, but
because everything is being created where there once was
nothing. Vast expanses of red clay, palm trees, and half-built
things with their attendant cranes and other construction gear. As we
got into the city, things stopped being built, and more like some
force had given up on tearing it down. I honestly don’t know how to
describe it, and something tells me I haven’t seen the worst by a long
shot.
It’s now 10:55 am, March 26th, 2009 (Indian Standard Time), and I
just took my shoes off. The last time I took them off, it was around
3pm on the 23rd at O’Hare Airport. I was tempted on trying an
international call to my parents, but I just checked my world clock,
and it’s past midnight where they are. Weird. It
doesn’t feel like I’ve just come completely around to the far
side of the world. I’d try getting online about now, but the power
died to the building just as I was about to connect. Welcome to the
3rd World!
I’m very happy you didn’t say ‘Borat’ when I said I am from Kazakhstan.
The above quote is from a fellow traveler, waiting here in the New
Delhi airport for the guards to open the domestic terminal at one in
the morning local time. The rest of the in the air was exceedingly
uneventful; I had some paneer for breakfast on the plane, and got into
the airport around 8:30 Delhi time. The first thing that struck me?
AK-47’s. Everywhere. American cops have handguns. Indian
cops carry AKs. There’s also a couple of pintle-mounted machine guns
on jeeps around the airport. They also don’t look too handy with
them, either- in a firefight, I’d be just as worried about the cops
shooting me with them as The Bad Guys. Scary. I’d have taken
pictures, but picture taking at the airport is Highly Prohibited.
Other than that, there really hasn’t been much of a problem. I got
my baggage alright, I got my dollars exchanged for rupees alright, and
I had a couple of samosas from a “Café Coffee Day” stand, which
appears to be a chain similar to perhaps Caribou Coffee, or something
else of that nature. I’ve met up with a few other travelers stuck
here for the night- a project management consultant from Austin, TX
who’s visiting family here, and a recent Soc PhD grad from Ithaca, NY,
who is touristing and visiting his girlfriend in Hyderabad, along with
my new Kazhak friends. I’m sitting in the old terminal of the
airport, which really isn’t all too bad; it’s very similar to lots of
places I’ve been in back home. The new terminal is very
shiny. Lots of marble, steel, and glass. Too bad the airline I’m
taking out isn’t using that terminal.
I also came across a hot dog stand at the airport. It’s
interesting, as an American who is used to seeing the American take on
other ethnicity’s foods, to have that reversed. First thing? The
dogs themselves contain neither beef nor pork, are Halal-certified,
and produced in an ISO 9001-2000 certified facility. The most
directly “American” is the “classic” hot dog, which uses relish,
ketchup, and mustard. Given the rest of the menu, I think I could
forgive them the ketchup. The “Chicago” style dog… replaces
the ketchup for BBQ sauce. Oh, the humanity!. Perhaps
on my way out, though, I’ll be trying one of their very Indian-style
dogs that are more down on the menu.
So far the only downer on the trip has been that my ebook reader
got accidentally turned on in my bag, and a key was held down on it,
so the battery got nicely drained. I think I might have to re-train
the battery before the trip is over.
Now I’m sitting here on an American Airlines 777, somewhere over Michigan. On my way to India. INDIA. I’m going to be there for a month. It’s my first time out of the country, and I’m just as terrified as I am excited. It’s not like I’m even going to Western Europe, but freaking India. The in-flight informational movies in the seat back are displaying twice: once in English, once in Hindi. It’s slightly surreal that this is all happening to begin with. CORRECTION: it’s incredibly surreal that I get to go.
I suppose I should start now at the beginning of my trip then, if I wish to blog my travels. My parents took me to O’Hare airport in Chicago today, where they treated me to a marvelous lunch at the Hilton, before seeing me off at the security checkpoint. I managed to put in a couple hours of productivity at the gate while waiting, and then boarded the aircraft. Upon boarding, I discovered I had my part of the row to myself: the isle and the window seats are both mine, all mine!. The headrests have video-on-demand services that are pretty clever; I have a pull-out remote in my armrest that is:
An airphone
A remote control for the audio/video system
Controls for my reading light, flight attendant requests, etc.
A game console controller, looking like an attempt to fake an SNES controller with the layout.
Yes, that’s right, the in-flight entertainment includes a personal video game console system. Cool.
This has all been going disturbingly well; my flight from Champaign
to Temple, TX last year was much more eventful (in the bad
way): the flight from Champaign to Chicago was plenty late enough to
make Atul and I miss our flight by seconds. However, here, everything
was… smooth. It took me as much time to go through O’Hare security
into the American Airlines terminal as it took me to go through
security at both Champaign and the Killeen, TX airfields (where I spent
more time putting my shoes back on than any other part of the
process). I’m rather impressed with everything so far.
Now I’m somewhere over Ontario. This is the first time I’ve
ever crossed an international border in my life. The map says the
Great Circle for this trip will be taking me through Russia. I’ve
always wanted to go to Russia. Perhaps sometime I’ll take a plane
that will land there, instead of keeping me 33,000 feet above it.
A while back, I blogged while taking the Amtrak from Champaign to
Chicago, the City of New Orleans. It’s one of my all-time favorite
songs, and it’s simply about his journey, real or imagined, on a
train. I’m not aware of anyone having written anything with such
feeling and romance for an airplane. Perhaps the starving artists who
are most capable of such things don’t have the money to take long-haul
international flights like the one I’m on enough to get any
feeling. The rumble of the engines and the sound of this giant
aluminum tube cutting through the air at hundreds of miles per hour
don’t feel as… “organic” as the gentle nock-nock of the train car.
Humans understand Big Strong Things pulling Heavy Stuff distances over
land. However, right now… I’m flying It’s a wonderful
thing, but it’s one of the single most unnatural things a human can
do. I’ve been thinking about making an indie rock album for some time now. I suppose a song on airline flight should be on there.
Now I’m over Quebec, after having my first in-flight meal. It’s
both exactly as and better than I expected. While the details of it are very interesting to me, I suspect you, dear reader, do not wish to read a 5-page essay on the particularities of my meal.
I’m now nearing the Arctic Circle, and I’m beginning to tire of having a laptop here, so I’m going to curl up with my movie. More updates and pictures as they come!
I’ve always liked the song Beds Are Burning by the Australian rock band Midnight Oil. The Oils have a unique sound that caught me early on, listening to Chicago’s WXRT radio that my dad has running whenever there’s a stereo with power.
Right, then. Let’s start with the original.
Now, in 2004, a europop group covered it:
This is a nice cover from an English South African band- the song is very apropos.
A “French Hardcore Band” called Black Bomb A also did a cover. I think they pull it together nicely by the end of the start, but at the very beginning, if they’re wrong, I most certainly want to be right.
Antiflag does a sweet acoustic version at an Aussie radio station; skip ahead to 1:30 if you don’t want to hear radio banter beforehand:
And from later in the day, the event that Antiflag was talking about:
