Big Company vs. Small Company

Recently a bunch of new trainees joined Tieto in India, fresh out of college. They go through a three month training period where they get to experience a variety of technologies (.NET, Java, etc), tools and software development roles (programmer, QA, etc.). Towards the end of the three month period this time someone must've had them all write a post in a company blog. This one caught my interest:

I joined Tieto on 15 Dec 2009. I always dreamed to work in a big company like Tieto. The most important thing I had seen here is respect for all employess, all the senior level people are really supportive and helpful. One more thing I like most is the open culture concept which I never seen before. We enjoyed the first month of training which is most interactive with the seniors. They shared their experience and thoughts. They gave us the confidence that you are lucky because you are at right place at right time. In Tieto sky is the limit to our growth….

Not long before reading that we had some training on the new HR tool for annual performance reviews and personal goal setting and what-not and that had me thinking about my own career growth, and how I'm glad I spent my younger, junior years in smaller companies before joining a big company, like Tieto.

Tieto has around 16,000-17,000 employees, and more employees alone in the Weikfield office here in Pune than all my previous employers put together. My first company, Maynard Rigby & Associates had as many as 8 people when I worked there, followed by PC-Kwik that had around 60-70 when I first started and shrank down to around 10 before going out of business and then my previous employer, First Insight, which had 13 or 14 when I started and up to 150 at the height of the dot-com boom (and I never knew what all the people did, I think some were just filling job titles to satisfy the venture capitalists).

At the smaller companies I had a lot more opportunities to try different job roles, different responsibilities and to learn more about what I enjoyed, what I was good at and what I was terrible at. Whereas at a bigger company I don't see as much chance for skipping all around to explore.

At Maynard Rigby, I was a junior software engineer, and I worked on C and BASIC coding, I talked to customers almost every day. As the youngest, least experienced programmer, I was doing the least critical programming tasks so that meant I was also given responsibility for most of the IT work, I maintained the Novell Netware network, I ran the fax computer, I fixed everyone else's computers when they didn't work right, wrote documentation for our customers and got to experiment with any new technology to evaluate if we could use it.

MRA also gave me a chance to be a receptionist and answer the phone, take packages to a nearby post office, meet whoever came in the door, sign for packages and write big checks for C.O.D. deliveries (the biggest was for an expensive software suite at over $100,000).

On the really downside, though, at Maynard Rigby we had a strict dress code. The guys all had to wear suits and ties on a daily basis. The loophole I found was the dress code didn't specify shoes, so I wore my Converse high-tops with my suit (although I did keep dress shoes in the office so the others wouldn't be too terribly embarrassed if we all went out for lunch...). The boss said "you can't write accounting software unless you look like an accountant." The only one who didn't have a dress code was Angie, and that was because the boss said he didn't need to tell her how to dress, she knew better than the rest of us.

Then at PC-Kwik I was hired as a technical support guy for our system software. It didn't take long for QA tasks to be given to the tech support team to do "between calls". And as we shrank I picked up responsibility for the Novell Netware network (including getting filthy and covered in fiberglass insulation carrying cables through the ceiling...) and maintaining almost all of the office's computers. That includes physically carrying them wherever they needed to go, instead of a laborer to do that.

Shrinking further I picked up more formal QA and started doing development on non-core parts of our products, mainly based on my directly talking to customers and knowing what their main problems were. Eventually when we came out with a new product, the ill-fated CD-ROM Express, I also got involved with writing the manual.

After PC-Kwik went out of business I joined First Insight, also as a technical support specialist. And it didn't take long before I was doing custom programming for customers and doing development on the product that was mostly what the engineers said couldn't be done, editing technical manuals and documents and naturally, network administration before finally burning out with tech support and moving full-time to the engineering department and volunteering to pick up the data modeling and SQL development. Over the ten years at First Insight I got to work on many, many modules and almost all of the products we made, with a variety of tools and languages (well, ok, I used C and C# when I was told over and over again to use the company standard Visual Basic, but hey, that's some of the variety).

Of course, now at Tieto, within our own Origination Suite project we're all Agile, part of which involves all developers owning all parts of the application and all the code, which gives some variety. I really, really enjoy this project, but it's a big company, there's no way I could easily switch over to .NET if I wanted to try it, or get involved with the network administration without having to give up work on Origination. Very few people actually do multiple roles at once, everything is segmented.

And a big company has much more bureaucracy than small ones. Getting anything is a pain in the butt at Tieto. Our team determined the developers could be more productive with two computers each, and it took over a month to get the IT department to get them to us. Lots of paperwork, follow-ups with the IT department, with 20 digit ticket numbers, multiple managers having to sign off on it.

Compared with at First Insight when one day I told my boss, "Nitin, I could be more productive if I had a 17-inch monitor." After work he drove to a nearby computer store, bought one and the next morning I carried it up from his car to my desk.

Looking back on my career so far, I think PC-Kwik and the Origination Suite project at Tieto have been the most fun. First Insight might've been, except I stayed till I reached the burn-out point, which overshadowed the years I enjoyed. Working at Maynard Rigby was an experience I'm glad I had, but glad it's over and glad none of my other employers have been quite like that.

On the other hand, quite a number of the people I worked with in tech support at PC-Kwik are dead, from cancer and vehicular accidents. The odds don't look good for me.

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As an aside... Of all the trainees' blog posts, the one that really stuck out the most was this one:

When I started playing the game it was just 6 plots of land with some strawberries and eggplant and 2 plots left unsowed…. Since then my farm has grow in all directions.With trees, buildings, animals, decorations spread all across my farm…

Not a single day goes by without visiting my farm…

Day and night logging in and out to check if there’s something posted on the wall,any animal to be adopted , any bonus shared , any help needed by the neighbours…(even though I don’t know that person in real life!!! :) )

Its all about reaching to the next level,earning XP’s,coins and staying ahead of all.The addiction reaches to the next level when there’s free access to the internet at work !!! :) .All I can say that i am loving it here!!!(“Its too goood :) ”)

Actually, I wrote back to that young woman and suggested that while I'm not suggesting she not play and enjoy FarmVille, and that I'm not her manager, this post might not be the best, the most professional way of "introducing" herself to the full 16,000+ people around the world who may be readers of the blog... And that in my opinion, the office internet isn't "free access" it's earned by getting work done.

Fire Alarms and Broken Teeth

Thursday around noon there was a fire drill. First the siren started blaring, then some guy got on the office loudspeaker and sounded like he was panicking, "there is an emergency, leave the building, this is not a drill, this is a real emergency, you must leave the building immediately.".

Then the members of the Emergency Response Team (ERT) started running all over in their fluorescent orange hats to get everyone out and to unlock the padlocks on the emergency exits (naturally, this is India, they're padlocked for security…). The exit for my part of the office is the central stairwell behind the elevators, so I went that way where around 500 people from both wings of the office had to merge through the door that's only barely wide enough for two people at once and eight floors down the stairs that are such polished smooth stone, covered in dust and having hardly more friction than ice, so no one can very fast and safe down them, all while people on other floors, uninvolved in our drill were working their way upwards…

Outside it was high noon without a cloud in the sky and they kept us at the assembly point for around 20 minutes. Whoever the guy was who was in charge of the drill he had a bullhorn and berated us for the whole time about how slow and how bad we were exiting the building. He said we took eight minutes, and in a real emergency anyone not out in two would be dead. Then he asked us to look for the person who sits to our right, and the person who sits to our left and if we didn't see both of them to let a member of the ERT know.

He said "I watched you come out, many of you were on your mobile phones coming down the stairs, if this was a real fire and you slowed down to talk on your phones the only thing you should've been telling your friends is good bye".

And he said "I don't see any coffee cups this year" followed by a number of people raising theirs, to which he said "how can you bring your coffee cups? If you slow down in a fire to bring your coffee cups you'll never need your coffee again, you'll be dead!"

He started yelling about ladies not taking off their high heeled shoes and slowing the whole group down on the steps, and then somehow segued into something about motorcycle helmets and car seatbelts, which I didn't quite understand.

When we were finally finished then we had to get all the people back up to the 8th floor… After twenty minutes in the hot sunshine, with no shade at all, I started getting a pounding migraine so I didn't think the stairs would be an option, or it would just much, much worse. A friend and I waited at the elevator bank till five or six elevators came and went before the one we stood next to finally opened and we got in.

Then being hot, tired and with a headache it took a while before I could get back on track with my work. I'd sort of begun a major refactoring Thursday before the fire drill with a lot of details to remember, only to come in Friday morning to realize all the details that slipped my mind due to the interruption.

For some reason it reminded me of an incident at at my last company, First Insight at our Hillsboro, Oregon office. In September 1999 there was a lot of tension as the then main network administrator was on his way out, with me the next in line for the responsibilities. The owners of the company said "there's been a security breach" so they were getting rid of the network admin. The network admin said they paid him a lot of money to leave and not say anything, but he hinted that if I knew what he knew about the owners I'd be able to blackmail them very well, too... I never found out what it was, of course and I have only speculation with no proof of anything.

That aside, on one of the admin's last days, shortly after I left the office around 3pm (6am to 3pm shift...) there was a fire alarm. A little while after I got home the boss called me and asked if he could bring the company's file server to my house because it's been damaged and he suspected the network admin, who wasn't fully out of the company then, had done it so he didn't trust him.

He brought the computer to my apartment where I set it up on the pool table. I got an explanation of what happened...

Intel was preparing the office below us for one of their groups to move in, and the construction workers drilled, with the dust setting off the smoke detectors. With a potential fire, not a drill, the boss asked several of the guys in the office to take the file server out to his car to keep it safe. However, several of the guys, and the big dent on the server's case, say that they accidentally dropped it in the parking lot.

When it was determined that there was no fire, just dust, and the building was clear for everyone to go back in, they brought the server up, but it wouldn't boot anymore. That was when the boss called me up and brought the computer over. I did a quick check and it wasn't going to be a quick, instant fix, and I estimated it would take me hours to get it going again.

Later in the evening another coworker popped by to help. For a snack we brought out the bag of Laxminarayan chiwda that I'd picked up in India on a vacation earlier in the year. We worked on the computer, speculated on the "security breach" and munched on the snacks.

Until I was chewing and chewing and found a much harder piece of chiwda than all the others. I mentioned it to him and then spit out a small, black rock. To this day two molars on the left side of my mouth, an upper and a lower one, are chipped, with the chips in the two lined up from chewing the rock I didn't expect in my food...

Macintosh Hardware Problems

Over the past few years I've had not one, but two, Macintosh laptops lose their LCD displays here in the home office during the hot, summer months. I don't know why, I sort of suspect a combination of heat and dust (I mean, just look on the wall above the lights and fan regulators, there's scorch marks all over). Both of these two laptops have the same hinge type, whereas the oldest PowerBook, with a different type of hinge has been fine...

The very last day of the 1 year warranty on the almost-new MacBook I managed to buy an AppleCare extended warranty, with the intention of getting it fixed in the U.S. sometime later this year or next year.

However, in December Leena found out about a Apple dealer near her family's house, PT for short. I knew it was there for several years, in the small office building on the same side street as her family, in fact, one of my close friends from my previous job said he used to work at an office in the same building and take his smoke breaks on a park bench across the street from my in-laws' house (that was before we ever met).

When the first Mac screen broke a couple of years ago (I joke that it was caused by my playing Diablo II, roaming through a mountain top castle as a Druid and raining flaming meteors down on demons when one of them bounced out of the game) I suggested we take it for repair to PT, but Leena said no way. She said PT owed her family money for years and never paid it, so we couldn't go there. At the time we found another, new Apple dealer in a new shopping mall in Kalyani Nagar and the price of fixing the broken screen was way too high so we bought a 20" external monitor instead (that I'm looking at now, as I type this).

But then earlier this year Leena again noticed PT and said we should take the newest broken Mac there. I mentioned the story she told a couple of years ago and she checked with her brother. She says she was mistaken about the incident and her brother says PT is a perfectly respectable business... She remembers her brother was going to buy their family business a new computer, from PT, some years ago and she would get the old one for herself. Her mistake is she only remember not getting her own computer and always blamed it on PT, when actually it was her brother who decided they didn't really need a new one and canceled the purchase...

We took the 13" MacBook to PT and the woman who owns it, Rajan, had their technician do a quick check to make sure that it was obviously damaged, like throwing something at it, and they determined that the broken screen was fully covered by the AppleCare extended warranty I'd purchased. They said they needed a week to order the part and then we could bring it in for replacement.

That went smooth and we decided to have them look at the 17" PowerBook with the broken screen that was not under any warranty (I bought it in 2005). She said it would be Rs. 42,000 to replace the screen, but then a little more checking and she said there was some kind of replacement where they would purchase the old, damaged screen for Rs. 17,000 and we'd only pay Rs. 25,000 for the replacement.

At that price we agreed to get it fixed, so Leena could have the 17" PowerBook for her own usage. Rajan ordered the part and about two weeks later we brought it to them for replacement. And that went fine.

I spent a weekend moving Leena's data from the older 15" titanium PowerBook to the newly repaired 17" one and got it ready to synch with Leena's iPhone without losing any contacts or videos.

Then after she used it for a day or two she asked me to get the sound working. Sound working? I looked and neither of the speakers worked on it. I tried various songs and videos and they were all silent. I verified that headphones worked, but the speakers were broken.

We called Rajan who asked her technician who said he didn't touch the speakers when he replaced the screen, they must've been broken before we brought it to them. I wasn't sure, but I hadn't used it in long enough to really be sure when the last time I heard sound from them was, maybe a year earlier? Rajan checked the price and it was only Rs. 1,000 to replace the speakers and we figured since we already spent a huge chunk of change on the screen, what was another Rs. 1,000 to get the sound fixed for Leena, so we agreed to that...

All went well again, the speakers got replace and we popped over to PT's shop to check it out. I played a QuickTime version of Apple's 1984 Superbowl advertisement for the Macintosh and Rajan liked it so much that she asked one of their techs to copy it to a USB thumb drive for them. They tried a couple of thumb drives but they were both bad and didn't work, so we said we'd bring it by another time for her to copy when they got a working drive, as we were late for lunch with Leena's family.

The next night we set the computer up for Leena to browse the web and she complained that she couldn't get the Bluetooth mouse to work, which had worked only two days earlier. I came and looked and there was no Bluetooth icon in the menu bar. I checked the System Preferences and Bluetooth wasn't listed there at all. I searched the System Preferences and it found Bluetooth items but choosing any of them and it warned me that there was no Bluetooth hardware attached. That's very odd, since Bluetooth is completely build in and is not removable.

Leena called Rajan who said she'd check with the technician who told her he didn't change any Bluetooth settings when he replaced the speakers so it had to be that way before we brought it. We knew it wasn't and Rajan said to bring it in the next day, then she left the office for home, since it was late in the evening.

In the meantime I figured I'd hook up a USB mouse for Leena, except when I did that, none of them worked. The red LED didn't light up in the mice and the computer didn't recognize them. I hooked up an iPhone and a USB thumb drive, and no luck, none of them worked.

Friday we took the computer back to PT for the technician to look at. By the end of the day Saturday he still didn't have it working. They got one of the two USB ports to work, but couldn't get the Bluetooth interface working unless the keyboard was lifted off the computer, or held down very hard. Sounds to me like he may have bent the motherboard while replacing the speakers and broken one of the contacts inside it or something...

We're not sure what they'll do now. It's long, long out of warranty, so we don't have any coverage there for it. I'm hoping they'll get a new logic board from somewhere and reuse the CPU that's in it. At their expense, of course, not ours...

We'll see...

Two Week Vacation to do Nothing

So it's Thursday night of the second week of my two week vacation and now the end feels so near. The first week seemed to last forever and this second week is going so fast, and I don't want it to end.

Not that I've done anything or gone anywhere… For the month or so before I took it I was missing more work than I ever have before with sick days because of the wretched headache that wouldn't go away. And since I hadn't taken a vacation in well over a year I figured I could get two weeks off.

I didn't really want to do anything. I didn't want to go anywhere. Since at the beginning I had a pretty nasty headache I certainly couldn't imagine flying anywhere, and what the plane trips would do to my head, and neither do I have any wish at all to travel within India at this point (I need to get out of India for a couple of years before I consider seeing more, as all I'd notice now are beggars, dirt, litter, trash and I'm so burnt out on spicy food I wouldn't appreciate anything in other regions).

The last week I was at work was the first week I was on the medication from the neurophysician for the headache (he said it was "just a migraine" even though I insisted it felt different than the migraines I've had on a regular basis since I was a teenager), two pills a night, small doses of a beta blocker and an antidepressant, which I looked up online and are standard treatment for migraines.

But the first week of those was a nightmare, I was tired, sleepy, dopey and worst of all, depressed. That week at work I felt so defeated and low I wasn't sure I could even last out the week taking them. Fortunately that didn't last too long, and by the end of the week those side effects eased off.

Unfortunately, when they eased off, the headache was back, but much lower in intensity. It was there a few days during the first week of my vacation, too, but by the end of the week was gone.

So, this vacation I mainly just wanted to laze about, relax, sleep when I was tired, stay awake when I wasn't, read a lot, eat a little, and eat for me instead of eating because Leena felt I should eat. I did that…

Sure, Leena makes a small face and is obviously disappointed every time she asks "are you hungry?" and I say "no". But I actually feel a lot better for not eating when I'm really not hungry.

I've read a 1200 page novel, and I've downloaded and watched a lot of movies. Granted, I deleted a lot, too, because the Torrent downloads turned out to be unwatchable quality or not in English. But it's easy to search for a torrent, leave the computer downloading overnight and then have one or two new movies to watch the next night.

I realized I fell way behind on the usual web comics I read, but I'm catching up this evening.

I did my 2006-2008 tax forms and mailed them off. I moved the Learning Rails book on top of the Real World Haskell book, so I'm one step closer to trying to learn Ruby on Rails programming…

We got an air conditioner installed in the room where I sleep so hopefully I can be more comfortable at night. We got a new one for Leena's room, but the first unit was defective so we still need the installers to come back and install the replacement unit.

We've been to Leena's family's house for lunch a couple of times. Her mother took us to the Royal Connaught Boat Club for lunch last Monday.

And yesterday we went to follow up with the neurophysician. And waiting at Jehangir Hospital in the OPD waiting room was the first headache I had in almost a week… I guess it was the noise, the crowds, the chaos, the fluorescent lights and the tension of waiting and waiting and waiting and worried that patients more aggressive will jump their turn in line to see the doctor.

But I think that may have answered the question Leena asked me earlier in the day, whether the lack of headaches was because of the medication or the vacation. I'm leaning towards the vacation and the less stressful days. But the real test will be next week when I return to work.

So, all in all, it's been a relaxing couple of weeks. I've always heard other people say they have to work, or can't imagine life without working, but me? I need an income, but I feel no great compulsion to have to work. If the money could come in (and we're not talking about being rich, just enough to be comfortable) and I didn't have to work, I'd be happy not working...

Green tea brewing should be like lingerie...

...Brief.

About 30 seconds or so seems ideal for green tea.

I've been drinking green tea heavily for four or five years now, after my mother recommended it as a healthy drink. I found green teas work much better unsweetened than black tea, or any other caffeinated drink. During that time I've tried quite a number of brands and flavors, most of which I quite like.

When I first started I brewed it till the tea was nice and dark, so it looked thick, since I've always liked my hot chocolate rich and thick, and the little coffee I drink is loaded with sugar and milk. But then the green tea tasted bad, and I slugged it down because it was supposed to be healthy.

Eventually, I came to realize that less brewing time was better. Most packages say 2-3 minutes, but in my experience that's way, way too long. Less than a minute and an unflavored green tea will have a pleasant, grassy flavor.

The worst is the one I drink the most of, Golden Tips pure Darjeeling, which is the only one here that comes in bargain boxes of 100 teabags. I begin most work days with two cups of this one, and then maybe a couple more during the day. However, I rarely drink it at home...

Brewing for more than a minute or two and it's bitter, sometimes even giving me a nauseas stomach ache. In fact, all of the women I've known who've tried it have gotten really sick from it. Leena tried it when I was in the U.K. and thought for sure she was going to die after drinking it.

Ah, but brew it for about 30 seconds, the time it takes me to walk from the office hot water dispenser back to my desk, and it's just right.

The one unflavored green tea with the absolute richest flavor of all is Dilmah's Ceylon green tea. It's a little darker than Golden Tips, but has a much stronger grass-like taste. It's delicious. It easily stands alone without flavor.

My current favorite flavored tea is Dilmah's Moroccan Mint green tea. A freshly brewed cup of that has a delicate mint taste and is easy to drink without sweetening. It takes a little longer to brew to get the mint strong, so it's a balancing act between stronger mint with bitter green tea or lighter green tea with weaker mint.

Until a few weeks ago, my previous favorite flavored green tea was Twinings Green Tea and Orange. It's still nice, but since the massive, persistent headache started a few weeks it's been giving me bad acid reflux for some reason. It's orange flavor is easily overpowered by the tea if it brews too long. The worst is sometimes the orange bits get oily and the sides of bag stick together, then tear while making it, so the bits of tea leak out and really stay in the hot water way too long...

The Twinings Apple flavor is good, but the apple is even more subtle than the orange and must be brewed very short or it's lost altogether.

One other I drink periodically, is Dilmah's Cinnamon flavored green tea. It's good, too, but is best loaded with honey. That's why I've cut back, I'm trying to reduce the sweets and sugar, and this tea simply needs honey to really enhance it. Then it's like a a baked good with lots of cinnamon, not like a cinnamon hot candy.

The last green tea worth mentioning is Ten-Ren, a green tea sold by Costco in the U.S. My mother used to recommend that one and once a friend brought a box of 100 of them for me here in India, but 99 of them were gone years ago. I found one late last year in a box of other teas, that must've been left over from my days at First Insight when I packed my personal things at the end of my career there. Ten-Ren is fantastic tasting, but too difficult to get here... And it survives longer brewing times, since back then I didn't know about doing it quickly.

The main problem with the short brewing times is the feeling that after spending the money to get teabags, I only use them for 30 seconds. It feels like I'm not getting my money's worth, despite being fully aware that the end result is best short.

In this way, it's not unlike fancy lingerie, expensive for very little material...

Both are effective by being brief, and both lead to a delicious *sluurrrrp*!

Exercise Plan

So, the first two days of my new exercise plan have worked out pretty well... While the doctor didn't pinpoint my being fat and lazy (he has before, but of course, used more professional, medical terminology, but hey, let's be honest, I'm fat and lazy) for the multi-week headache that just won't quit, and my blood pressure didn't stay up there at 145/100 for more than a day or so, I decided I'd better try to get into a little better shape.

Most workdays I can't sleep very late because I begin waking up by midnight panicking about being late and usually just give up around 3am anyway, since I'm not at all relaxed.

With that in mind, the last two mornings I've gotten up around then, then browsed Facebook and email for a few minutes, drank my morning nariyal pani (coconut water), put on my dirty clothes from the day before and gone out about 4am.

At 4am Kalyani Nagar is at its most pleasant for a stroll around the block. The sun's not yet up so the temperature merely hovers around 1,000 degrees, instead of the usually daytime million degrees. This way there's still a few small patches of my clothing that aren't soaked through with sweat.

Best of all, there's very little traffic. At that hour I might only pass a couple of dozen cars vehicles going one direction or another on the street. All the sidewalk vendors have packed up for the night and not yet started for the morning so on East Avenue I can actually walk on the sidewalk instead of in the middle of traffic, which helps me feel a little safer. Even where there are no sidewalks the traffic is much lighter, the vehicles fewer and farther in between and it's easier for me to hear them individually so none surprise me by coming out of "nowhere".

The dogs are a little frightening, however. Mostly they're paying more attention to one another than to me, but some of them follow me or head my direction a little before getting distracted by another one. Still, I'm a bit nervous about them.

It takes me about 35-40 minutes to walk, not fast, not slow, down Road 10, then a full loop around the center of Kalyani Nagar, East Avenue, Central Avenue, North Avenue and back up Road 10.

Then when I get back I jump in the shower, cool off, eat breakfast and take a nap before it's time to go to work.

Hopefully once I get into the routine more, and get further into cutting out junk food and greasy food some of this gut will go and I'll get back to being less unhealthy. This actually worked about five years ago when my doctor recommended it.

Then again... Leena's now got a gastrointestinal infection (from an out-of-date hamburger she left in the fridge too long before eating). But this happens consistently whenever I do a little bit of exercise and get in shape. I finally get so I'm not really, really out of shape, losing my breath just bending down to tie my shoes, then she picks up a 3-4 month sinus infection, a stomach infection, things like that.

But then again, if I'm still not gonna get laid, what's the point?

An Apple a Day...

Well, we didn't end up going to the doctor on Friday night to follow up from Thursday's visit. I got ready to go, had a quick apple, brushed my teeth, got all dressed up (e.g. jeans, polo shirt, socks and Birkenstocks instead of sweat pants, polo shirt and flip flops), but then Leena called to confirm and the doctor said he was involved in something urgent and would not be free for his regular office hours. We fixed up for 12:30pm this afternoon.

This morning I got up, but the power went out between greeting Leena "good morning" and going to get my breakfast coconut out of the fridge. I was afraid we'd end up being late because the power was out so long I didn't know if I'd get a shower or not.

In any case, I skipped the apple, and we got ready to go and Leena called the doctor who said "come on over" and we did.

There you have it, an apple a day keeps the doctor away!

Anyway, he checked my blood pressure and pronounced it "normal". He checked it four times and said it was normal every time, just a day and a half after it was so high he was concerned. We discussed my previous experience with American doctors always making sure my sleeves are rolled up compared with Indian doctors always measuring blood pressure over the top of my sleeves. He said it shouldn't make any difference at all in the readings.

Based on my blood pressure being normal today, when my headache was barely there, nowhere near as bad as it was on Thursday, just hardly noticeable, that my headaches probably aren't caused by high blood pressure, though they make my blood pressure go up, as evidenced. He mentioned "cluster headaches" but now that I'm looking at the Wikipedia article, that doesn't fit at all. He also mentioned migraines, which I've had for years, and what I've had the last three weeks are very, very different (and as I found out on Wednesday, not mutually exclusive, either, but I could tell the difference in the two simultaneous headaches).

He also noticed my squinting. I've done that since I was a little kid, with my father the first to notice it years ago. That's the lazy eye thing and I squint in my left eye to avoid seeing doubles. I told the doctor that and how I used to do exercises then wore glasses for a year in high school, at which time my frequent migraines started. But it must've been worse than normal if he noticed it today but never noticed it before.

He recommended that we go see a well-known neurophsyiologist (or neurophysician or whatever the proper title was) who has more of a specialty in headaches and nervous system issues. He said that while Leena's family has been pushing us to go right away, no delays, we should take time, prepare a history of my health so we go with all the facts that'll help him diagnose the problem better, not just show up with try to remember all the issues off hand and out of order.

Leena's family may not agree with that, "see him today" but it doesn't matter, that doctor is out of town for the weekend anyway.

As we were saying our good byes to the doctor the alert from his building's elevator made its high pitched screeching, that even through two closed doors made me cringe in pain, and he noticed that and said "if the noise does that, you must see the neurophysician".

So, we'll go later in the week.

Long Lasting Headache

So, I've had this headache for three weeks now, with quite a few ups and downs. It's survived through three trips to two different doctors and two courses of medication. What the fuck?

I think it started around January 30th, when I got a ride home from my in-laws' house on my nephew's scooter. No helmet, and going over the Yerewada Bridge some minivan behind us just kept honking incessantly. It hurt my ears like hell, and in fact, they haven't stopped ringing loudly since then.

That coming Monday my pair programming "pair" Vishwas came to work late. He said he was violently ill on the way to work and had to pull over, too sick to even type a message on his phone. We worked for about half an hour, during which I noticed he wasn't able to work well, making lots and lots of mistakes he doesn't normally. When I suggested he go home he said he was too sick, too dizzy to safely drive home, so I sent him to the office infirmary where he slept and drank Electrol for a few hours. Later he was obviously not well, but we worked together for another hour or two before he went home early.

The next couple of days he was out sick with a fever and unable to come to work. But that was when my own headache was getting its start, and I was feeling bad. Every morning I woke up as usually, head hurting, then I'd finish breakfast and nap again, like usual, only to wake up with a worse headache, and struggle to work. No amount of Crocin was doing anything for it.

Oddly, Thursday that week, we had a couple of meetings at work and by the end of the video conference, something that usually gives me a headache, my head actually felt a lot better, though not completely gone. Very weird.

Before the meeting I'd messaged Leena that I was feeling horribly, totally rotten and we might see the doctor after work. Leena called the doctor, and talked me into staying home on Friday, as the headache was going on too long.

Friday morning, February 15th, we went to the doctor who said there was a mild throat infection, but my blood pressure was normal. He prescribed five days of antibiotics and we went home. The headache, while not disappearing completely eased off until Sunday afternoon, when it was back with a vengeance.

Back to work Monday, with some relief in sight as the upcoming Friday was a national holiday and a day off work. Since the doctor didn't prescribe Crocin or anything I thought it's a good time to get off it and didn't take any.

Then on Wednesday afternoon I was clearly making a lot more mistakes at work, dumb things, really dumb things I wouldn't normally do.

Thursday, Feburary 11th, I work up feeling horrible. I ate breakfast, felt like it was uncomfortable and took my nap. When I woke up from that and started getting dressed for work, I got one sock on, then felt sick and went to the bathroom. Nothing. Put the sock on again, then got up and heaved up my breakfast. I felt a little better so I started getting dressed again, got that one sock on, but sat on the chair feeling like "can I really work like this?" and eventually answered "no" and got undressed and went back to bed.

Leena called the doctor, but he was out of town for a few days. I was quite feverish, and the pain and discomfort from the fever only made the headache 100 times worse. It was so bad that I was practically panicking about not surviving it, it was something fatal, and all that. After sleeping on and off, unable to keep down even gentle foods, I took a long shower, till i felt sleepy again. After that I was relaxed and slept well for a few hours.

That evening we went to the nearby doctor, one my in-laws thing is the best doctor in the world, but whom I dislike (at least, as a doctor). I was feeling more calm and not as bad as in the morning. He asked what was bothering me, and as I started listing the various things, headache, fever, ears ringing and narrowed it down to "what's bothering you the most?". He checked my blood pressure, said it was normal, and examined my nose and throat and eyes and what-not.

Then he said he could give me a shot, and "don't ask a second question, just take the shot and feel better in an hour, or go home without it". I accepted, feeling desperate. Then he gave his usual, four different pills to be taken twice a day for two days, no labels, no descriptions and no answer about what they were. We went home and within an hour or so the fever was mostly gone, but the headache remained.

Throughout the long weekend the headache slowly reduced, but never quite went away completely, bringing us to this week...

Monday, when I woke up the headache was nasty again. I struggled through the work week, not feeling well, feeling kind of uneasy, kind of unmotivated to work, and doing a less than stellar job of my work, until yesterday.

Yesterday, February 18th, I felt sick. I spent most of the morning sitting at my desk, having trouble really focusing on my screen, rubbing my temples from the pain, and waiting for the day and the week to finish. Early in the afternoon I helped my teammates try and solve a problem, but sitting over there, talking and working, I began to feel nauseas, and my throat burned with acid reflux and eventually I said "well, why don't you guys go for lunch and I'm going home sick."

Our new scrum master offered to drive me home but I said I'd get a rickshaw, however, he accompanied me downstairs to make sure I got one. It was the first time in many, many months I took an elevator down as I usually take the stairs in the afternoon, and felt pretty dizzy in it, even more sick. The rickshaw had some mechanical problem and I was afraid we'd have to get out and push, it kept slipping gears or out of gear and slowing, then the driver would do something and it would speed forward. But we got there…

It was the doctor's lunch break, so I just slept and slept till later. Leena and I left around 5pm and hit the doctor's office.

He did the usual checks, then the blood pressure. Which he repeated, then still puzzled he put away the electronic sphygmomanometer and took out a manual one, which he used twice and said it was odd that after a couple of weeks of it being normal now it was dangerously high, 140/100.

He didn't know what to say about that. He said maybe it was so high because I was tense about being sick, agitated from going home early from work and what-not. He didn't want to make any diagnosis based on that, because it had been normal just two weeks earlier. He prescribed an anti-anxiety medicine so that I'd relax and sleep all night, then be relaxed today so we could go back in the evening for another check and he'll try to make a better diagnosis from that.

For the headache he said if my blood pressure is as high as it read, it could be the cause, in which we'll need to work out a plan for bringing it down. If my blood pressure is back to normal tonight and my head still hurts, then he'll probably recommend I go to a neurophysician to see if there's something wrong with my brain or nervous system. Otherwise, we'll see.

Me? I think it's going to be the first one. I think the difference in blood pressure readings is the previous two times I wore long sleeved shirts and neither doctor made me roll up my sleep, but last night I wore a short sleeved shirt and he did the reading directly against my skin. I don't recall any time I ever had my blood pressure checked in the U.S. that the doctor didn't ask me to roll up my sleeves or remove my shirt, but no doctor I've been to in India has ever asked for that. I suspect it makes a difference (in fact, the Wikipedia article states, "The BP cuff should always be against bare skin, as readings taken over a shirt sleeve are less accurate").

So, my guess is what's going to come up is that my blood pressure is high from being overweight and not exercising. And I'm going to have to watch my diet a little more and exercise to bring it down. Of course, I need Leena to hear the first part from the doctor. I've known I've been overweight for a while, but even though I keep asking her not to bring such greasy or sweet foods home she does anyway, and then if I don't gobble them up, it's the guilt trip, "but I got it for you…".

Some will probably require lifestyle changes. I know our location causes some trouble for me, increases my stress and tension from all the noise. I have little doubt part of my stress yesterday was because there was no running water in the apartment all day as well. And of course, offices in India use far, far worse lighting than most offices in the U.S. that I always find extremely uncomfortable.

And exercise... The doctor previously recommended walking around the block for half an hour a day. And a few years ago it worked, but traffic has gotten a lot worse and nowadays I'm scared to walk here, it's just too nerve wracking. Plus with the ringing ears, the honking from cars is far, far more painful than it used to be.

Probably my expected move to the U.S. later in the year will have a good effect, but I need to get by until then.

We'll see in a few hours. In the meantime, I think I'll go lie down, my head hurts.

Healthy Bread Allergy

Between Steve's post about fast, healthy breads and this rip roaring headache I've had continuously for over a week with the only let up being a couple of days I didn't eat rice. I'm wondering if I'm allergic to rice, the rice is contaminated, or it's just coincidence. But it got me thinking about how I became allergic to whole wheat…

I guess it was around 1995 (or maybe it was 1996, who can remember?) that I became allergic to whole wheat. It was just out of the blue one day.

As a kid I hated whole wheat, I thought it was disgusting and only wanted to eat Wonder Bread. Then in high school my mother made me eat two slices of whole wheat toast with butter for breakfast every morning. Disgusting, gross, usually soggy and cold by the time she'd yelled enough to get me out of bed and to the breakfast.

Finally once I hit college I no longer had to bother with the horrible stuff… Not till i was on my own after that and started eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on thick, whole wheat toast for breakfast every day (made my own way, fresh out of the toaster, gooey peanut butter and no sogginess!).

I did that for a few years until I got sick. It just happened one week, every day I felt sick, kind of a fever, with my fingers and toes aching, then my arms shaking and a headache with a little nausea. Then on the weekend after not eating my workday breakfast I felt better.

The next week, by Tuesday it occurred to me that I woke up every morning feeling fine, it was only after breakfast that I started to feel sick, so I figured it was something I was eating.

I'd heard of peanut allergies, so that seemed like a logical place to begin finding out what was causing it, by skipping the peanut butter. But no go. The next morning I cut out the raw eggs in my chocolate milk, but still got sick.

Then I skipped the peanut butter and jelly sandwich altogether and felt fine, so I decided it must be the bread.

For the next few years I ate my morning PB & J's with mainly oat bread, and the occasional potato bread and didn't have any trouble (except the time I tried even healthier oat bread with oat bran and holy shit did that knock me for a loop, even worse than regular whole wheat).

Every now and then I eat some whole wheat, never on purpose and it usually doesn't take long for me to feel it. Just a few bites and my tongue gets an uncomfortable tingling, followed by my fingers, toes and then my arms and a headache and all that.

On the other hand, after all the years of my aunt trying to get my mother to get me to eat whole wheat and my resisting, now I have an excuse not to eat it.

For tomorrow morning I'll try breakfast without rice as I usually have here in India (e.g. dal chaval (well, okay, I quite this a couple of years ago, I simply can't stand it anymore), chicken curry in rice, dhansak with rice, mutton koftas in rice, etc.). I'll have mutton frankies in maida parathas...

How to Talk to Girls

One thing I've noticed lately, especially on Facebook, where it's mostly in English, is young Indian men don't seem to know how to talk to young women...

I see women, like my coworkers, posting photos of themselves, and young men posting comments like:

• o so big
• u way a tun
• so ugly

One young lady posted a photo of her birthday cake with the candles 2 & 3 on it, with a guy commented "Btw, its "28" na???". And another posted a picture of two not-at-all fat or unattractive women on a sculpture of a turtle with a young man posting the comment "Poor tortoise!!!!".

A few years ago when a small group of us traveled on business and a young, single man shared an apartment with the lone woman in the group, telling her throughout the trip that she was getting fatter and fatter and he knew she needed to keep clothes shopping for bigger sizes (which by the way, was not true at all...).

So, what's the deal?

Are arranged marriages here in India so common because young men simply can't talk to young women and need their parents to get them through "the dating game" that they'd fail if it was up to them?

Or are they so rude and insulting because they know their parents are going to arrange their marriage anyway so it doesn't matter?

Domesticity and Gender Roles Then and Now

Last week I read an Op-Ed piece by Sandra Tsing Loh in the New York Times that struck a chord with me and really made me think a little about me and my wife's roles here in the early 21st century...

I am stricken with the peculiar curse of being a 21st-century woman who makes more than the man she’s living with

Now I have to wonder where I fit in with this… Unlike the author, I am the husband and sole breadwinner of the family (which is just me and my wife, no kids).

I don’t know how it’s going for my sisters, but as my 40s and Verizon bills and mortgage payments roll on, I seem to have an ever more recurring 1950s housewife fantasy. In this magical Technicolor world, the breadwinner husband, Brad, leaves home (where his duties are limited to mowing the lawn and various minor home repairs) at 7 a.m. When he returns from work at 6 p.m., aside from a savory roast with mashed potatoes, his homemaker wife, Nancy, has pipe, slippers and a tray of Manhattans ready.

The couple sink into easy chairs and get pleasantly soused while Brad recounts his workday battles. Through a dreamy mixed-bourbon haze, Nancy makes gentle cooing sounds like “Ah!” and “Oh!” and “Did the central manager really say that in the meeting? They don’t appreciate all the hard work you do! Oh, Brad!”

This is different than my parents. From the early 80's till the early 2000's, when my Mom retired, she was the breadwinner of the family, and my father was the primary housekeeper. He took care of most of the cleaning and cooking, grocery shopping and all that stuff. My father also did stained glass crafting professionally, but more to trade with other artists and craftsmen for luxuries in the house than for money.

My wife, who's Indian and a bit more conservative (but liberal by Indian standards, or she wouldn't have married a foreigner like me!) has no problem telling me that my parents were plain, flat wrong. Her opinion is the husband has to be the main breadwinner, or he's not worthy to be a man.

On the other hand, she respects and admires all of the women I work with for being more empowered, for building careers and for showing the world that women are equal to men. She points out the women on Sex and the City for their independence and their ability to work as equals.

So she's somehow torn between the old and the new.

In some respects she does take on some of the tasks more associated with men, dealing with the plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, tax office and so forth, but that's more because we're in India and I haven't successfully learned how to communicate in Hindi or Marathi. I think this bothers her somewhat, because these are the tasks her father or brother does in their household, never her mother.

She tells me when we move to the U.S. I'd better be prepared for all of that. Though it's less of a problem because in the U.S. we won't need any of those nearly as often.

She does think I should contribute to closer to 50% of the household tasks. As it is she takes care of all the food, from shopping for ingredients to overseeing the servants prepare it and making sure there's snacks and things for me to take to work. She oversees the servants cleaning the apartment as well, while I stay out of the way. I probably do more dish cleaning, however, since I like to do that (and neither her nor the servants can clean dishes to my high standards (let's face it, I like 'em clean enough to eat off of!)). She does all the shopping for household items and clothing, while my only shopping is for books and CDs, things she considers luxuries.

But when we talk about things, she insists that I don't contribute to the household. Pointing that I get up by 4am every morning and work 45-50 hours a week so we can afford our lifestyle results in her opinion that life isn't all about money, so that's not a significant contribution.

When he returns from work at 6 p.m., aside from a savory roast with mashed potatoes, his homemaker wife, Nancy, has pipe, slippers and a tray of Manhattans ready.

Fortunately for me, when I return home she does have a bowl of cut melon or destemmed grapes ready for me after I finish my chicken soup and am ready to sit at the computer.

The point is that Nancy arrives at the end of her day so fully socialized with, she is ready to glaze over amiably during her husband’s evening Work Monologue

Of course, this is quite different... As a more modern woman, she's not ready to listen to my "Work Monologue" unless I can complete it in about 30 seconds, the time between when she wants to tell me about her day and when the phone rings and the doorbell rings or she wants to get the watchman to clean the car... Besides, the work I do is fairly technical and she has no understanding or interest in it.

Fast forward to 2010. When husbands and wives not only co-work but try to co-homemake, as post-feminist and well-intentioned as it is, out goes the clear delineation of spheres, out goes the calm of unquestioned authority, and of course out goes the gratitude

So, I'm caught, as well between the old and the modern... I'm the old-style, sole breadwinner, but expected, yet failing, co-homemaker. I'm not looking to win, it's a marriage and we should be equals, but can't I at least break even?

A Boring Day in 2005

The summer when I was 12 my parents told me that since they bought me a lot of toys and took me on a long vacation to visit friends and family across the country, that there was no reason I should ever be bored.  To make sure of that, they forbade me to be bored, and said if I ever uttered "I'm bored" again they'd teach me what boredom really is, locking me in my room 24 hours a day for the rest of the summer, except for bathroom breaks.

I've only uttered the phrase "I'm bored" once since then, one day late in August, 2005, shortly after returning to India from a trip abroad.

And, I sure had a boring day when I missed work that day.  Things went fine in the morning, till just after noon.

Leena left for the day to go run errands and visit her father in the hospital (heart troubles, he had a bypass surgery the next week (his second one)).  I finished my lunch and decided to take a quick shower before the van came to pick me up.

So far, so good...

Until I toweled off and turned the handle on the bathroom door and it didn't open.  I cursed and tried again and the door still wouldn't open.

I inspected the crack between the door and the doorjamb and it looked like the latch was moving all the way and not blocking anything, but the metal around there was slightly bent, though that didn't seem to be the issue.

Eventually I decided it was a screw sticking up from the metal plate attached to the doorjamb.  I tried converting some of the few things in the bathroom, the narrow end of a toothpaste tube, the heater elements of my steam inhaler, and a toothbrush into some sorts of tools to try and press it back into the doorjamb, but nothing worked, nothing was both thin enough and strong enough to do anything.  Similarly I tried to get the pins out of the hinges, but without anything strong enough to use as a hammer,  to pound from below, and nothing string enough to try and pry them out from above, that wasn't successful, either.

I yanked on the door in different directions hoping to pull it just enough somewhere to get around the screw, but no luck.  Most of those just ended up with me hurting my hand, the cheap, sharp metal of the door handle digging into the skin of my fingers.  I gave up with that since it seemed more likely I'd hurt myself instead of the door opening.

At various times I kept getting the brilliant idea of try and squeeze through the window and climb down the pipes, then remembering there's bars on the window for security.  And in any case, without any clothes or keys, that wouldn't be a much better situation to be in...

Around 1:30pm I heard the doorbell ringing and my cell phone ringing and figured it was the driver.  But the bathroom I was trapped in was so far from the front door they couldn't hear me.  Then when the ringing stopped I hoped I could yell out the window to get the watchman to bring the driver over to ask him to call Leena on his cell phone (I figured I could at least get the number across...).  But they couldn't hear me (the bathroom is on the side of the apartment away from where the driver parks to wait for me).  Once they were gone I felt lonely, not knowing when the next opportunity would come.

So, I spent the next eight hours in there all by myself.  I usually dress and undress in the bedroom outside the bathroom, so I was in there without any clothes, just a wet towel I'd used and two tiny, dry washcloths...  I spread the towel out to lay on it and keep me at least a little insulated from the cold tiles and used the washcloths as a pillow.  Other times I sat up, hung the towel from the rack to lean against it.  On the whole, it was pretty boring without much to do but periodically check the lengths of the shadows outside to see how far the sun had moved.

When the shadows were getting long both my cell phone and the apartment phone started ringing away.  Some I could tell were Leena, some weren't.  Lots of SMS's coming in, too, but what could I do?

Finally about 8pm Leena got home in a total panicked state, fearing the worst.  I heard her park and unlock the door so I yelled for her and she rushed to the bathroom door, asking "are you okay?" to which I answered, "I'm bored".  She tried to open the door from the outside but couldn't, it simply wouldn't budge.  She had a screwdriver but that didn't help, so she called Kalesh, the guy who does the building maintenance at her brother's shop and told him to come over, "abhi, jaldi an emergency…"  ("now, fast")

When Kalesh got there it took him nearly an hour with a hammer and chisel to break part of the door to get around that screw sticking up and get me out...  I wrapped myself in the towel first, though.  He had to smash up part of the door and it completely ripped apart the mechanical stuff for the handles, but no big deal, it got me out.

Leena was still shaken up and told me how her day went.  She said by 6:30pm she was worrying a little that she hadn't heard from me and I hadn't replied to her messages, but thought there was a chance I was in a long, long meeting or something.  By then, too, at work my close friends and colleagues Anuj, Renu and Cyndi were getting worried that I didn't show up, didn't answer the door when the driver rang the bell,  and didn't call or message to let anyone know I would be out of the office, which is very unlike me.  Anuj, though knew the situation with Leena's father and was reluctant to call in case I was just at the hospital with Leena's family or something and didn't want to be disturbed...

Eventually Cyndi talked him into calling Leena and when neither of them knew where I was and I wasn't where either of them thought then they started to panic, but unfortunately Anuj was at the office without his car and couldn't dash out to find me.  That's when Leena tried to rush home but got stuck in traffic, and what was usually a fifteen minute drive from her family's house took her two hours, of mostly waiting without any cars moving.

And all the while I was just bored laying on the bathroom floor.  I never panicked, figuring eventually she'd come home...  No worries...  Just boredom and daydreams...

Now I know my lesson, always bring a good book into the bathroom...  On the other hand, it could've been worse, I could've been stuck in a room unable to relieve myself without making a major mess...

Since then we've had several other bathroom door mechanisms break on us, twice while people were inside and unable to get out, but both of those times someone else was in the apartment to open the doors without difficulty.

Odissi Dance Performance, Sunday Night

Last night I was out late, at an Indian classical dance performance.  The first one I've actually been to in nearly nine years here in India.  When I first came over, a couple of my friends at the time said "don't worry, we'll see lots of Indian classical shows" for both dance and music.  But well, none of the plans ever worked out…  Sometimes there'd be one and Prasad would say "it's from 9pm to 1am, and I won't be going to Aundh afterwards so you'll have to get back on your own" which didn't seem like a good idea.  Or other reasons we just never went.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this one.  It was an Odissi style performance.  The dancer was a disciple of a famous Odissi dance guru, who later became the master's daughter-in-law.  It was an annual performance put on for the anniversary of his death.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to keep the notecard sized "program" with their names...

My sister-in-law, Sonal, was the master of ceremonies, explaining the performance at the beginning and then giving an overview of each individual piece before it began.

The evening began with Sonal's cousin, Nitu, who is also a former coworker of mine at Tieto, and her sister and brother-in-law picking me up down at the end of the lane.  We went to my in-laws' house to meet up with my brother-in-law, Vinesh and niece, Shraddha, who went in a separate car.  We got to Symbiosis in Deccan at just about 5:30pm, and it was scheduled to start at 5:45pm.  After the parking we all went in and found seats just behind the "reserved" sign blocking the front few rows.

But things didn't start right away…  The hostess was waiting to see if more people would show up, since most years the auditorium is packed for this show, but this year it was little more than half full.

Once it started Sonal came out and explained what we were going to expect and introduced the dancer.  And shortly the dance began.

There were six (or was it seven?) numbers.  The opening and closing ones were more the dancer's prayer to a god, and while they were graceful and elegant I didn't really understand them.

The ones in between were more stories from Indian mythology and while I didn't know some of the stories, such as the one Nitu explained involved casting dice and gambling, I could recognize a number of movements as representing activities, and sounds that were clearly rain.  It helped, too, that Sonal introduced each one.

The one about the rain was the clearest, with the music and the dancer's movements most obvious, beginning with light rain and great, crashing booming of the deluge that washed everything away.

Even when I didn't quite understand it, I still thoroughly enjoyed watching.

At one point, though, I found if I sat with my feet crossed at the ankles I yawned and yawned and yawned, but if I kept my feet flat then I wasn't tired at all.  Shraddha, next to me, however, was a different story.  She was obviously bored and fidgeting horribly, completely unable to sit still.  The wooden armrest between us was a little loose and sometimes in her thrashing about she'd bash it into my side, not on purpose, I know she wouldn't do that.

At the beginning Sonal announced it would be about 90 minutes.  About 90 minutes into it she introduced one as "in the next piece" and Shraddha's reaction was a mumbled exclamation "shit!".  Nitu said this wasn't the most exciting or interesting classical dance performance and she's seen better.

But I really liked it.  I didn't have any other expectation so it was fascinating to me.

After it was finished Nitu and her family wanted to stop for dinner, but it was getting on to my bedtime so I went with Vinesh, Sonal and Shraddah.  Sonal invited some of her dance classmates, a couple of teenage girls, to join us since they had to go to Kalyani Nagar as well, and we squeezed all of us into the car.

On the way back the three of them discussed how perfect the dancer was, how exact she did "flips" and "frames" and other technical dance terms I wasn't at all familiar with, and how well her facial expressions went along with each movement and story, which was something I understood...

Afterwards, looking at the Wikipedia article, the repertoire listed was a very close match to what we saw, including the story of Radha.

So, if there's more of these on Sunday afternoons, not too late, and not too early, I'd be happy to go.

Well, here's a couple of pictures from Wikipedia...  This performance last night was strictly "no photography" and without a clear invitation, even if I'd brought a camera I don't think I'd be comfortable taking photos of a live performer who might be trying to concentrate...

The Green Lizard Ate a Tennis Ball

Our fifteen year old niece asks a lot of questions. That in itself isn't so bad. The annoying aspect is that she asks the same ones over and over and over. She's not dumb, she's quite intelligent, speaks five or six different languages, reads a lot, so it's not like she's incapable of understanding or remembering the answers. I think she asks more to hear herself talk and to be the center of attention than anything else...

She likes to get started with "have you ever been to ?" and then ask one place after another until someone loses patience and tells her stop. But I'm not sure she can think of a variety of place names as fast as she can talk, so it's always the same places, even in the same conversation. And in the years I've known her, only one answer has ever changed, after my first trip to London (but she doesn't have to ask, I told her I was going there, and I told her about it afterwards...)

They say there are no stupid questions, but maybe sometimes asking the question is stupid...

I'm trying to get Leena to start answering our niece's questions with nonsensical answers, or at least, ones that don't have anything to do with the question...

Q. Have you ever been to Egypt? (let's face it, she'd know if I took a trip to Egypt between any of the many times she's asked this question...)

A. The green lizard ate a tennis ball.

Q. Does Kevin really get up at 4am? (how many times does this need to be answered?)

A. The elevator shoes don't stop at the 13th floor.

Q. Do you speak Jewish? (I tell her at least ten times a year, often on successive weekends that the language is Hebrew, and that I don't speak it...)

A. The owl hunts at midnight.

Q. Have you ever been to Paris? (asked and answered numerous times...)

A. We'll be trialling a new, updated, paradigm of non-fact based information disbursal, in acknowledgement of valueless queries.

Q. Have ever read Mary Kate and Ashley?

A. Rising runner missed by endless sender...

Q. Have you ever been to Orlando? (yes, I've told her numerous times I've been to Orlando!)

A. A box without hinges, key or lid, yet golden treasure, inside is hid.

Q. Have you read Twilight?  (We usually talk about books, I'd tell her if I was reading her favorite book series...)
A. Performing on a stool, we've a sight to make you drool, seven virgins and a mule, keep it cool.

Wait! Hold The Door!

One of the things at the office here in India that's been really bugging me for a while now is how people don't hold the doors for others outside their own small group.

In many situations where I'd expect an American to hold the door it just doesn't happen in India, and in many cases when I hold the door, I don't get a nod or quick smile as I'd expect in an American.

Even if I'm right behind someone going out the office door, if I'm not part of their group they just let the door fly shut behind them, making me try to catch it.  I know sometimes they see me, they look right behind, and I'm not wearing good "office camouflage" to make it hard to see me, but then they just let go of the door anyway, whether I'm right behind them or even just a little distance away.

And once in the hallways people in India don't have the same manners I'm used to when sharing the space.  What I miss from the U.S. is people yielding and moving aside to let others pass, while usually nodding or smiling or saying "excuse me" to acknowledge the others.  Mostly in the Indian office it doesn't happen so much, groups of people going the opposite direction are less likely to group closer to make a little room for a single person, and if they're people I don't know, far, far less likely to give any indication they saw me.

Somewhat related is here in the office so many people just walk up and down the hallway talking on their cell phones.  Usually when they're on their phones they don't seem to pay any attention to others in the hall, don't move if they're blocking doors and slowly walk in a direction they're not even looking.  Once in a while I say "excuse me" and if I get any response it's "I'm on my mobile".  Which, yes, I can see, but to me that's not a good excuse for not paying attention in a public location.

I also realized why it's only recently started bothering me. At my last company, First Insight, here in India, in our first office we only had two rooms with doors, and only six people in a room, so it was rare that people were coming and going, unless the whole group was going off for a break. Then when we moved to our second office, it was one huge room, except for the conference rooms and washrooms, and for most of the time I worked there the front door was open with the watchmen facing it.

It was when I first began at Tieto, that I started noticing, and being annoyed with people simply not holding the door open for people not far behind or people coming.

Oh well, it's not nearly as intense as when I tried to buy some malai barfi last year at the sweet shop in Kalyani Nagar...  There I completely failed to return to the car with the sweets altogether...  Instead of the American way of standing in an orderly queue, or taking a number and waiting your turn, it was a total scrum up at the counter.  I had the name of what I was supposed to get written on a slip of paper and kept flashing it or saying whenever one of the people behind the counter made even a little eye contact.  But other guys just kept jostling and forcing their way to the front and yelling their order, over and over at the tops of their lungs and the clerks just kept serving them, while I kept waiting to make eye contact and say my order...  I gave up after about ten minutes of watching other people get their orders even if they showed up after me.  I couldn't make myself yell.

On the other hand, some years ago in Florida I ran into that sort of thing.  It was my cousin, Elise's Bat Mitzvah, and after the ceremony, dressed in a suit and tie, clean shaven and looking oddly respectable (as that was back in my scruffier days), my mother sent me to the grocery store's bakery counter to pick up the cake.  Despite having taken a number, a couple of older, retired people (southern Florida being full of elderly, retired New Yorkers and New Jersyites, possibly the rudest people in America) tried to get their orders first.  One woman, an old lady in her 80's or 90's, wouldn't stand for it, she yelled "fuck you!  I'm old and fuck you if I'm going to wait in line behind a young man!"  Fortunately the bakery clerk wasn't having any of that and told her to wait her turn while she was getting my cake...  Ah well, that's Florida grocery stores for you...

Foods I Miss from America

I recently offered some American candies, Good & Plenty, (sent by a close buddy who's now in Chicago but remembered they're one of my favorite candies) to a friend at work who asked what food I miss the most from the U.S. Well, there's quite a lot, and "the most" can depend on my mood...

A list like this will probably barely scratch the surface, since it's hard to just sit down and think of everything... But I'm imagining all the great things I've eaten at various times...

• Cereals - There are a few cereals here in India (although certainly not the mile long aisles of them like in American grocery stores!), but they're not the same, they're harder, more abrasive and hurt the inside of my mouth when I eat them.
• Cheerios - Cheerios rank up there pretty high, actually. One of my favorite breakfast and snack foods. I just love shoveling it in my mouth when I'm reading or watching movies or any time. Sure, I had Cheerios in the U.K. on my trips, but they're highly sweetened and not as soft and light as plain American Cheerios. I might have to eat four bowls of Cheerios to equal the nutrition in one bowl of Total, but you know what, I can eat four bowls with breakfast without a problem, except maybe stopping at four...
• Lucky Charms - Sometimes I just get the urge for some kind of cereal with those marshmallows and this ranks up there pretty high. I don't mind the generic ones...
• Bagels - Bagels, bagels, bagels.... India seems to be a bagel-free country.
• Beef - It's not that there isn't beef in India, but I've been told over and over again not to buy any to cook at home, only trust the quality from a few select restaurants, mostly Parsi or Muslim owned, that are tied in with a farm. Any retail beef is supposedly not necessarily fresh and not good quality.
• Roast Beef - I just love roasting a nice chunk of beef. I'm not adventurous in trying it different ways, I just like to rub some butter on it, toss it in the oven for a couple of hours, take it out and eat slices while it's still hot and steaming...
• Hamburgers - I don't even need the buns (which are available in India!) since usually I only use that as a handle to hold the meat when I'm in public. Sometimes I eat some of it, sometimes not, rarely all of the bun...
• Steak
• Fresh salad - While lots of vegetables are available here in India, generally in the market place they're a lot less consistently fresh and good than in the U.S. The variance is probably because vegetables are rarely eaten raw in India, the way they are in the U.S., they're almost always cooked with a lot of spices that really cover up the flavor, so bad ones are less noticeable.
• Spinach - It's very, very rare that the spinach I've eaten in India has tasted good raw. In the U.S. I just like to take fresh spinach out of the fridge, run them under warm water in the sink to clean them and shove them in my mouth.
• Chocolate Silk soy milk - Actually we get single serving cartons here in India, but I miss half gallon jugs that I can just pour glass after glass without worrying about "oops, only one left". And the single serving ones just don't seem right for adding in a ground up Oreo cookie...
• Chips - While there's no doubt the fresh Budhani potato chips here in Pune are absolutely fantastic, and Kur-Kure is delicious, there's ones I miss a lot from the U.S. that I'd like to eat:
• Doritos - Yeah, we can get small packs of imported ones, but the prices are so high Leena refuses to entertain my requests for them.
• Fritos
• Funyuns
• Diane's Nacho Cheese Tortilla Chips - Let's face it, they're the official chip of the Waldport High School Games Club!
• Cheetos - I like the puffed ones, not the crispy ones.
• Oat bread - Being allergic to whole wheat, oat bread is my favorite kind of packaged bread, much better than white bread. But here in India I've only seen white and whole wheat.
• Pretzels - Only once did I find a bag of pretzels here in India, and after eating a few they turned out to be terrible, and whole wheat. Pretzel rods, pretzel sticks, soft, hot pretzels, those pretzel rolls with peanut butter... Mmm.....
• Pepperoni Pizza - Yeah, I know it's on the menus of several restaurants, Smokin' Joe's and Pizza Hut, for instance, but often they don't actually have it. But the Smokin' Joe's menu says flat out that it's pork and not fresh, and the few times we've ordered it at their restaurants the waiters have tried to dissuade us from getting it.
• Persimmons - Not a common fruit, but I like 'em when they're good and ripe, super sweet!
• Soda Pops
• Dr. Pepper - My favorite of the big sodas.
• Root Beer
• Ginger Ale
• Cream Soda
• Lactose intolerant milk - Since I have a lactose intolerance problem, but I like chocolate milk, I miss being able to buy milk that won't cause such a problem...
• Twinkies - Okay, these may not be good foods, and I didn't eat them often in America, but now that I can't get one, I sure miss them. Even more when I read or see something about deep fried Twinkies, which I'd like to try.
• Ice Cream Sandwiches - Good quality? Bad quality? I really like all kinds of ice cream sandwiches, from the cheap grocery store branded ones with plain vanilla ice cream between the cookie pieces to fancy Dove ones and all the ones in between...
• Pocky - Mmm.... Pocky!
• Flavored Oatmeals - I like all those various flavored oatmeals that just need hot water added. I've tried with plain, unflavored oatmeal but I have no idea how to add flavors so it doesn't just taste like boring, sticky oatmeal, and most of my attempts to make it end up inedible.
• Smoked salmon - Ah, I really miss those plastic packages of smoked salmon from the grocery store. They go with spinach as a great breakfast, just open the package and rip chunks off to eat...
• Fake Crab - Yeah, I know it's cheap, garbage fish with some added flavor, not real crab, but I like it anyway, especially the flakes, more than the sticks...
• Yogurt - I don't like plain yogurt, I only like fruity flavored, sweetened yogurts. They're starting to turn up in India now, but the variety and quality aren't up there with the U.S. yet, and about 25% of the packages are definitely sour, with the package puffed almost to the bursting point, before the expiration date...
• Tea - As funny as it sounds, living in the world's largest tea producing country, but American grocery stores simply have a wider variety of teas available to consumers, and a wider variety of qualities of black tea and a wider variety of flavored teas.
• Beer - I'm not much of a beer drinker (in fact, I had more fun brewing my own than drinking it...), but I like a half-pint glass of a nice, rich stout, porter or a fruity ale every now and then. Unfortunately, the beer in India is all pretty lousy lagers.

Undoubtedly I'm missing something from my mental trip down the grocery store aisles...

While a few other long-term expatriates I've known all say when they return to America McDonald's is the first place they go for a "taste of home" I don't see myself doing that. I'd rather start with something good rather than fast food. Admittedly, on my last vacation back I did hit A & W in the terminal at Newark Airport during my layover, and I was extremely disappointed with the burger and fries, but the root beer was heavenly after a few years without...

Plus shopping for groceries in the U.S. is just a lot easier. There's always more variety in one place, better inventory control so what you want is more likely to be there, and far, far more helpful staff at the grocery stores. Here in India any question like "do you have X?" almost always results in a negative answer, even the worker is standing in front of a shelf with several feet of the item, compared with an American grocer who will usually do what they can to help find things in the store.

In an American grocery store if I need help picking a ripe cantaloup, I can almost always count on the produce person to help make a good choice, but my experiences in India buying fruits the seller usually seems to try to offload the worst on me and quote a higher price, or I'm just not argumentative enough to bargain for both quality and price or something... Buying fruits has generally not been a pleasant experience for me in India, though fortunately Leena's the one who's been doing it for the last few years.

And I'm more accustomed to the behavior of other customers in American grocery stores, the neat, orderly queues where most people wait patiently for their turn, or impatiently, but still wait, and give some breathing room. Compared with Indian grocery stores where the checkers are usually incompetent and going slow, many more items ring up at wrong prices (and unlike American stores, the Indian ones don't let you get away with a lower price when it's their own mistake, so you have to wait while they fix it) and lots of people try to jump ahead in line. I have to be defensive, stand closer to the person in front of me than I'm comfortable and try to maintain my place or if I leave enough space for someone to fit in front of me, someone will try it. It's worst when people send their servants to pick something up, they have the least respect for the line.

Related to food, I miss baking tremendously (I'm not much of a cook, just a baker). In India, before getting married I had an oven, a cheap German one that scared the hell out of me whenever I had to turn on the gas and then lean deep inside it to light it with a match to the hole near the back of it...

But after we moved into our own apartment, there's no space in the kitchen for it. We've been on the waiting list for a second gas cylinder for a few years, but the gas company never has spares to give us a second one. If we do get one, maybe I can set the oven up in the servant's bathroom (since we have no servants). Then I can try baking bagels or pretzels.

On the other hand, with any luck we'll be moving to America faster than the gas company...

2009 Holiday Photo

This past two weeks' office photo club challenge had the overall general theme "holidays" and the organizer said upfront it was open to a lot of different interpretations

I thought about it for a while and couldn't come up with anything for a holiday theme.  Partly because these winter holidays are ones that have always made me feel uncomfortable.  Growing up in a small town where my family was the only non-Christian one and I the only kid in school who didn't celebrate Christmas this time of the year was one of my least favorite.  New Year's Eve might not be religious, but due to proximity it's always lumped in with Christmas, with much of the symbolism mixed and matched between them, adding it to the holidays I wish to black out.

To be clear, I don't mind that my friends and others celebrate Christmas, that's their holiday, and I respect that and hope they all have a fantastic holiday.  What I don't like are people who know I'm Jewish wishing me a merry Christmas or random strangers (e.g. in the office bathroom) wishing me that, too, on the assumption that I celebrate it.  To me, Christmas is merely a day off work, and if I'm in Portland, a fantastic day to go shopping at my favorite store, Powell's Books.

This year was particularly frustrating as I'm in touch with so many more people from school and college, and a much wider range of liberal and conservative, non-religious and very religious friends.  The frustration came from those conservative, highly religious friends who simply had no conception that some people might not celebrate Christmas.  The overall consensus amongst them, even those who never met each other, was that those of us who don't celebrate this holiday are the ones who are wrong and one specifically said those of us who prefer not to be wished "Merry Christmas" can just "go fuck off".

Another actually posted "A very politically incorrect MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY CHUNNAKKA, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!" on the evening of December 24th...  While maybe politically incorrect, I had to point out that it was overshadowed by ignorance.  People don't usually wish a happy holiday to others after the holiday is over, and by the time he posted this, Chanukah was almost a week finished.

Not that I I don't like any of those people, I have fond memories in school and college hanging around, some of them have been my friends since the 4th grade!  But I just hate it when these late-in-the-year holidays come around, they're just that one bone of contention, and I just want to shut my eyes and sleep till they're finished and things return to "normal".

So, this picture represents my feelings on the holidays.  I took it by making as fast an exposure as my camera would do, with the narrowest aperture the lens allowed, and most importantly, leaving the lens cap on.

Canon EOS 400D, 24-85mm zoom

24mm, 1/4000 second, f/24

Manual focus

Post processing: cropped some of the black around the edges and rescaled to a smaller size...

One funny aspect...  I took several shots, and the slower the shutter and wider the aperture, the larger the resulting JPEG was.