A year abroad

If you have a credit card, you probably got a claim form for a class-action lawsuit wherein MasterCard & Visa owe lots of people money for fees charged for international purchases.

I like money as much as the next gal, so a couple of days ago, I started filling out the claim form. To fill out the claim form, I needed to estimate the number of days I'd spent abroad from 1996 - 2006.

And I wound up with 334 days.

This prompted the question, how much total time have I spent out of the US? If I include travel before 1996 (my first trip to England with my mom; my high school musical's exchange program with other schools in Europe; last spring's business trip to Hyderabad; this past summer's trip to France for a friend's wedding), I get to over 400 days.

In case it wasn't obvious, that's more than a year.

Huh. A year abroad. I have spent more than a year abroad. I don't know why I'm surprised - after all, I knew I spent six months in the UK during college, I was there - but I am. Isn't a year abroad supposed to be the sort of thing that one works toward and dreams about, rather than a side-effect of other experiences?

The Portuguese are impressive

I've been in Portugal for the past couple of weeks (hence the lack of posts). I don't speak Portuguese (much), but that is largely irrelevant to travel in Portugal: most people there, at least those who work or interact with the tourism industry speak English.

And French.

And German.

In one hotel in Evora, the woman behind the reception desk easily greeted me in English, provided directions to the hotel over the phone in French, and then switched over to Portuguese again to ask a coworker about the breakfast setup. Wow. I've never seen anyone do anything like that. My own brain is far more sluggish: after just reading Portuguese for a couple of days, it refused to call up even the word for "thanks" in Spanish.

And oh, yeah, it was an awesome trip :)

India redux

Note: photos with captions here - no, I am not including every photo in this blog post.

What do I actually know about India?

Very little; a two-week trip, largely spent in an office building, isn't long. But the flip side of business travel is that, though I didn't see as many places as I would as a tourist, I did talk to far more people than I would if I'd arrived without a corporate-sponsored goal.

This is going to be a very long post.

March 20: arrival in Hydrabad, after a 22+ hour flight from San Francisco. Photos: my room in the guesthouse (where all "expats" live, about 100 feet from the office building, and behind the same security gates), plus view from my window:



Notice the tent city in the last one, right next to the brand-spanking-new highrise.

Mar 20: office; sleep.

Mar 21: office; dinner at Sahib Sindh Sultan, a restaurant done up to look like a train car on the Orient Express. Food: amazing, and as you might expect, not like Indian food in the US. The power went out for a substantial amount of time, so the waiter brought us a saucer with birthday candles stuck onto it. This appears to be standard practice.

After dinner, I tried "paan," a kind of digestiv which is eaten, not drunk, made of betel nut leaves wrapped around something crunchy and powdery and sweet. It's based on roses - whole thing tasted interestingly of soap and/or hand lotion. Apparently the savory version of paan, as opposed to the sweet version I tried, is strong enough with betel (?) that it can actually get you high.

Expat cultural note: if you go out to dinner, you go in a car with a driver. The driver waits for you, but you bring him your leftovers - making sure to be sensitive to whether he is "veg" or "non-veg." Most restaurant menus are broken down the same way.

Mar 22: I finally get out of the office, and head to the local outdoor craft market, Shilparamam:

thanks to which, I finally felt like I was in India. It was beautiful, and I got there at a just-late-enough to be relaxed time of evening. A few sellers still had their stalls open, so I could see the woodcarvings and the embroidery. Something flowering in the trees smelled sweet, and there was a wide grassy lawn where people were just hanging out, relaxing at the end of the day.

Mar 23: office.

Mar 24-25 (weekend): up at 4:30am to catch the flight to Jaipur, along with my coworker J & his cousin M who was visiting from Taiwan. Saw the Hawa Mahal, with my first snake-charmer outside, as well as my first camels in traffic. I am amazed by the women in bright sarees, riding post on motorcycles with their husbands (?) driving and one or more children tucked in between the adults. The women always ride facing to the left, away from traffic. Woman+saree+children+man+motorcycle sums up India for me, but I never succeeded in taking a decent photo of this so-common form of travel.

A note on travel: everywhere I went, I went with a driver. In Jaipur, our driver was arranged for us by the company's head driver in Hyderabad. In India, this isn't a particularly luxurious thing to do - it's the only obvious solution to India's traffic, which is crazy enough that no non-local has any business driving in it (do a YouTube search for 'Hyderabad traffic').



On the way to Amber Fort we saw elephants returning from their morning tourist-bearing treks up to it:



And Amber Fort itself, which like the other forts I visited inspired many jokes about multiple wives from our guide:



A note on guides: in Europe and the US, I usually avoid guides as much as possible. In India, even the locals hire guides. Guidebooks, by contrast, are rare, and signs at monuments are non-existant. Unexpected side effect of my having spent two weeks travelling around with drivers and/or guides: I am now much better than I used to be at not being bossed around by people I've hired - as well as sightseeing at my own pace even when the guide has an agenda he's expecting me to follow.

The photo below shows the ceiling hooks in a room at Amber Fort. The hooks exactly match the hooks in the guesthouse's living room in downtown Hyderabad. The fort is hundreds of years old, but hanging-from-the-ceiling sofa technology obviously hasn't changed. I love this.



We then drove five plus hours to Agra, so we could get up early the next morning and visit the Taj Mahal:



which was cool. I know that's an understatement, but I suspect whatever else there is to say, someone else has already said. This is my "I was here" photo of the Taj's sparkling marble:



and the Taj reflected:



and the first women I saw in burkas:



(...the anti-feminist aspects of which I hadn't truly understood in my gut until I saw them, at which point it became so amazingly obvious that I have no good way to explain it - I mean, how do you explain why a particular word is spelled the way it is, or how you know what season we're about to have? It just is, that's how.).

After the Taj, we went to Fatahpur Sikri:



which is a deserted fort near the city of Agra & the Taj Mahal. It's at least as pretty, in a different way, as the Taj, and arguably more interesting: it was the seat of a ruler who took over a heck of a lot of territory, but also promoted religious tolerance to a degree the locals are still boasting about (he took wives equally from the Hindu, Christian, and Islamic faiths, and then decorated their rooms in motifs that mixed the three - also, he dispensed justice even-handedly, but that gets a lot less time talked about than the wives). It was eventually abandoned due to lack of water.

In another area of the site is a shrine to a holy man:



which is made of white marble, similar to the Taj. Hundreds of years later people still come here to pray - the shrine was packed. Like most religious sites in India, this one could only be visited without shoes. The temperature was over 100; after this, I carried socks with me to avoid burning my feet.

Then we drove back to Jaipur for our flight back to Hyderabad. On the way, I took this picture of a camel out the back window of our car:



Camels were everywhere, mostly hauling long logs, on the road between Jaipur and Agra.

March 26: back in Hyderabad. This is the pool for our apartment complex; note the contrast with the world beyond the wall:



March 26-30: days in the office, nights out, including an evening trip the India School of Business, shopping for Indian clothes with two of the women in the office, and dinner with one of the sub-teams, at a super-nice restaurant (Celebrations) in Bangalore Hills. This was the only time I ate outside in India (that's not a window, it's an opening in the wall, and there was no ceiling):



Cultural differences: this is the remote control for the air conditioner in my room. I didn't have one for the TV:



March 31: part of the team took me out to see Hyderabad itself. The view from Charminar of the street where "bangles" (bangle bracelets which Charminar is famous for in India) are sold:



and a cafe where we drank chai from tiny cups, with pastry on the side. People sit for hours here - sometimes two people over one cup of chai.



I also drank sugar cane juice and ate some kind of fruit whose name I don't remember, both delicious, both from street vendors - which resulted in one of the India team member's telling someone else, "she'll try anything!" about me. Which felt good, but really, with half a prescription left of Cipro and all the things that I so bravely (!) tried being vegetarian, how far wrong could I go?

Or maybe I just got lucky.

We finished the day with Golconda Fort, which was started in the 13th century and added to over the years:



and then dinner at Angeethi, where we entertained ourselves before our table was ready by pretending to push each other into this fake well:



and I had a hell of a hard time saying goodbye to people. I haven't written about the team much here, but they were amazing. Imagine meeting several dozen people who are all extremely glad you've come, who emphatically want you to like their country, and who are also some of the most sincere people you've ever met. In email, I resorted to saying, over and over, "thank you for making me feel so welcome," and I meant it every time - but it never seemed like quite enough.

April 1: my only day sightseeing on my own (well, ok, with driver, but he stayed in the car). I went to Birla Temple (Hindu), which I have no photos of because they don't let you take any, the Qtub Shai (sp?) tombs:



which were the bleakest thing I saw - dry death, unfiltered and unameliorated, and back to Golconda, since the day before we got there just in time for the evening "sound and light show" and so I hadn't been able to climb to the top:



From there, I headed back to the guesthouse, took a swim (my first and only) in the pool, finished up some work, went out to dinner with a few other expats at Peshawri (my favorite restaurant of the trip - why, why did I only make it there on my last day?!), and then to the airport and that 22+ hour flight home.

Favorite things: people. Never have I felt so welcome.

Least favorite things: lack of solitude. Between drivers, guides, the people who made us dinner at the guesthouse, and the expat culture (imagine perpetual backpackers, but as adults with laptops and quarterly corporate goals), the only time I spent alone was in my room at night. Would this be enough to keep me from going back? No, but I'm glad I spent as much time with the locals as I did - they were a lot easier to take than the expats. Somewhere in all the travelling I've done, I've gotten what you might call "eccentric" if you're a friend, or "cranky" if you're not. I travel for a lot of different reasons, but to the extent that I travel to "find myself" (what a silly phrase), I get real irritated real fast by people lurking in a servant role. For better or worse, that means I find solitude and self when I find anonymity: big cities, paired up with solitary treks in an urban or a national-park-type landscape. When I need to straighten out my soul it'll be the American West, or Europe.

All of which means I had a fascinating time. If or when I go back, I'll try to get work to pay for a business-class flight - and I'll spend the weekends on the places that looked so tempting this time around: the Golden Temple, Varanasi, Chennai....

Meantime, photos!

My own (link now fixed!): here

Plus Navin's from our evening at the India School of Business

Plus Haritha's from dinner with the R team

And Navin's from our day out in Hyderabad

If that quantity of imagery doesn't cover it, I don't know what would!

Reflection on "Expat"

I got home last Monday. Looking back at India, the difference between this trip and all others I've taken really stands out: I still haven't really wrapped my head around what it means to spend time in another country not as a student, a tourist, or a local, but something in-between & off to one: a business traveller.



When I showed up at the airport, there was someone to meet me. When I wanted to see the city, some of my coworkers set up a trip to show me around. And when I wondered what exactly my role in this country might be, I realized I already had a label: "expat."

Before India, "expat" to me meant disaffected Americans lounging languidly around the Left Bank in Paris. In India, "expat" meant pre-trip tips on how not to "act like a manager," expense reports (virtually unlimited as far I could tell), an extreme level of respect from the team, very very long hours, and an unexpected social division between "expats" and "locals."

Of course, the trip was also a lot of fun - but it's the parts I was uncomfortable with that I think are the most interesting. And to avoid a crazy-long blog post, I'll put those up in the next entry :)

What I did last night

Everything that's built in Hyderabad is new: new buildings, new construction, new roads, new highways.

So for contrast, here is a photo of me eating chat ("north Indian spicy snacks") at the India School of Business. This particular snack was a sort of ball of fried dough, hollow, which you dunk in a sort of cilantro-mint broth so it fills up, and then try to get the whole thing in your mouth before it breaks. Lots of fun. I also got a full tour of the ISB by invitation of a woman on the team here whose husband is a current student - the campus size in the US would probably support 6,000 students. Here they've got about 450.

And to finish off with, another photo, this time of all the folks who took me out last night:



Thanks guys - it was a ton of fun.

Lessons in business travel

I have learned a number of interesting things in the past week (people in India think it is just really damn weird to put hard boiled egg on your salad, for example, and they will look at you funny and ask "really?" in a doubtful voice if you do it - never mind that the salad in question consists solely of soft peanuts in oil, garbanzo beans, and sprouted peas), but the thing I have learned that I will take with me on my next business trip is far simpler: bring your camera cable. Yes, that's right - the one that connects your digital camera to your computer.

Why? Because last weekend I took a photograph of a traffic jam caused entirely by a camel. I had never seen such a thing before, I admit, and so I took the photo with the express purpose of blogging about it. And yet without that oh-so-missed camera cable, getting that photo anywhere near my blog is downright impossible....

That's what I get for this being the first time I've travelled with both a laptop and a digital camera. And here I thought I was packing too much electronic equipment....

Travel 2007

Last Sunday I sat at gate 100 at SFO, waiting for the Lufthansa flight that would take me first to Frankfurt, then on to Hyderabad.

Over the loudspeaker I heard an announcement: something about a US-government mandated survey. "Not more idiotic, ineffective security paperwork," I thought, but I finished up the email I was writing, downloaded a few last documents to work on on the plane, packed up my computer and headed up to the check-in desk to get the survey.

The attendant pointed me to a small stack of blank surveys and a drop box to leave mine in when I finished it. I fished a pen out of my shoulder bag and wrote my name on the outside of the survey, thinking how amazing it is that any security agency imagines that voluntary reporting of last, middle, and first name will envelop the world in virtual bubble-wrap.

Then I unfolded the survey to fill out the inside. Airport security is easier to go along with than to bother trying to understand.

Contrary to my expectations, the inside of the survey asked for just 3 pieces of information: whether I wish to designate an emergency contact, and if so, that person's name & phone number. The small print assured me that all completed surveys would be destroyed up on my flight's safe arrival.

I paused. I checked the "yes" box. I filled in my husband's cellphone number, and as an extra precaution, his email address. I dropped the completed survey in the box, stepped back, and waited for my seat row to be called to board the plane.

Road trips kick *!&@!!!

My guy has just left his Horrible Lawfirm Job and taken an in-house position at yet another of the Valley's Big Tech Companies. To celebrate, we went back to our roots & took a roadtrip - which I happily announced to co-workers as "I'm driving to Canada!"

Isn't the Oregon high desert just the coolest thing you've ever seen?

From Pacific North...

Check out how you can see our car's shadow in the photo - yes, this was shot out the window on highway 97, a few miles off I-5 heading north to Klamath Falls.

Road trip poetry means 297 miles to the border, a semi dipping its headlights at you at 2 am as you pass at 90 miles an hour, the sudden shock of dark volcanic rocks through the headlining clouds. The telephone poles blur and the lanes narrow from eight to two at the turnoff in the aptly named town of Weed. I remember driving I-5 with chains last New Year's, and I'm grateful for the October heat and fall leaves this time instead.

You've been where?

Peru smells of dust and diesel and the leftovers of crops burning in the fields and incense and cedar and good things cooking. I gorge myself on fresh squeezed pineapple juice and say "no" and "no" and "no" to all of the dozens of small children trying to sell me postcards and shine my hiking boots. On the train out of Cusco I marvel at the fact that I can now afford a seat with a view (so unlike that previous anguished trip six years ago, but still containing brief flashes of vivid memory: last time I sat on this side of the train, last time I ate breakfast at this bakery).

I chat with cabdrivers and the women who keep the hotel desks running. I say, "so much new construction!" and they tell me yes, the Lima airport has been privatized and is now run by a German, see the new hotel? Be careful after dark, don't call attention to yourself or buy from street vendors. Enjoy the torn-up, graceful beauty of the slivered, shadowy, squatter-filled mansions in the center of the city and be sure to visit the mall on the edge of the sea - it's amazing. If you like you can take a bus up to the peak and see the city - 10 million and growing - spread out below you.

They ask: Have you been to Cusco? Did you like it? Will you come back? Have you seen the fortress at Ollantaytambo?

I take a photo of three doorways: one Inca, one Spanish, one modern. The doorways are lined up on a street that was first laid out over six hundred years ago by people I can barely imagine, but whose profiles I encounter daily behind a shop counter, above a business suit, mortaring a wall with modern mud. Behind the Inca doorway a dog barks, and I hear the smack of a soccer ball against the wall.

I walk for hours every day.

I am here for a week but it feels longer, and when I return to work I can no longer remember the combination for the cable that secures my laptop computer to my desk.