Stuff I'll Never Understand

I had two major head scratches this weekend.  First, S and I went to the mall for dinner and a movie, specifically Pizza Hut pizza and the new Iron Man movie.  We couldn’t eat but half of what we ordered, so got it packaged and were on our way to the 4^th floor to see the movie. Then I remembered that I was harassed last time we went to the movies because I had an apple in my purse.  I gave S the pizza and told him it was his turn to shout them down.  As we went into our separate metal detectors and security pat-down lines (women and men) I heard S.’s voice getting louder, telling the person he “…bought the pizza, it belongs to me, I’m not going to eat it now, “.  Then I couldn’t hear because the woman was complaining to me about my camera in my purse, which I dismissed as too bad and moved on, mostly because I had 2 oranges and an apple in my purse that were hidden that I didn’t want her to confiscate.  I told S to ask for the manager, who appeared, calmly took our seat numbers (oh yes, we have assigned seats), and told us our pizza would be delivered to us in our seats.  We went in, totally perplexed, and sure enough, in about 5 minutes an usher walked up to us with our pizza now out of its bag, and on a plastic tray for our eating convenience.  What exactly did that accomplish, we wondered….. The lights went down and we put our pizza back in the box to take home.

Second, I’m in Ajmer and Jodphur this week watching Master Trainers with their trainees, and in Ajmer there is a big-deal tomb of a Muslim saint by the name of Chiste or something like that and the Hindus are keen on this saint as well.  Anyway, everyone said it wasn’t to be missed, so I thought I would take it in before my afternoon meeting to set up for the training.  When we arrived in Ajmer, my driver went to a parking lot (of sorts) and a tuk-tuk driver agreed to take me to the tomb and redeliver me to this same spot. We took a painfully bumpy ride to close to the entrance of the tomb, where I had to surrender my shoes to a friend of his, and get a prayer cap so I could enter the holy area.  Fine.  I had to walk about 2 more blocks before I got inside the huge edifice, and the streets were very hot, even though it was marble.  I wondered if I would burn my feet before I even got there, but I made it inside, and there were areas inside of areas inside of areas.  There were hundreds of people in each area who were making a pilgrimage to this holy site, many buying flowers to offer, or souvenirs of their visit.  I kept walking, looking for the occasional gunny sack on the floor to get some heat relief, and finally I came to the actual tomb entrance.  At the entrance there was a young man with a collection of peacock feathers taped together that he used like a giant fly swatter, only he was swatting people, or rapping them on the head as they passed through the entrance.  I thought it was part of the experience so I stood in line to get my peck, but when he saw me he motioned for me to get out of line.  Perplexed, I did what he said, because there was quite a line in front and in back.  At first I thought he wouldn’t admit me because I was a woman, but other women were walking in.  Next I thought perhaps he wanted me to make a donation to his partner just outside the door, so I went over there, where this fellow was writing out receipts for people making donations (?) but he said something to the fellow at the door and the doorman looked at me and shook his head no and said something.  The receipt guy motioned that he was sorry but I wasn’t getting in.  I stood there a second, wondering if there were another way in, but my feet were still burning so I decided there would be no tomb viewing for me.  My shoulders were covered, my head was covered, and I had on long pants, so I think I wasn’t wearing offensive clothing. Of all the things I didn’t understand, I wish I had understood why people were getting the feather-bonk on the head.  S and Abba went in February and S reported tapping was not a part of his experience.  Hmmmm.  Clueless. 

A Day in the Life of a Senior English Language Fellow

Some days I look back on the events of the day and ask myself “What the hell just happened?” or "How would I ever describe this chaos to my friends and colleagues?" or “Am I getting too used to the way things are done in India?” or “Is living in another culture getting to me?”.  I can usually answer YES to at least a couple of the questions, so I think it’s a good idea for my readers to get a little context to the head shaking that accompanies many a day’s reflection.

 Today was the first day of a 5-day workshop outside of my city, outside of my territory as it were.  I was not in charge of executing all the preplanning we had done, but I was assured that the cite coordinator had everything arranged: tables, chairs, whiteboards, adequate space, projector, housing arrangements.  Maybe in another universe that happened.

 Upon arrival I was ushered into a huge ampli-theatre with one stationary continuous oval-shaped desk with microphones at each fixed chair, much like the general assembly at the United Nations, and about that size.  In the middle of the room were 30 lawn chairs placed around child-sized tables, about 20” by 20”, which was supposed to be adequate for 4 people’s materials and space to write. No one thought it was odd at all that only one notebook would fit on it.

When I explained this wasn’t going to work because the cavernous space, which was NOT air conditioned,  (Yes, it was 100 degrees today) had about a dozen noisy whirling fans moving the dust and heat around and making it impossible to hear anyone more than 5 feet away.  The master teachers thought it would work out, somehow, but I stood fast and asked to see other rooms.  One man literally took off running and asked me to follow him, which I did.  I was shown some awful rooms, which he knew wouldn’t work but I thought he figured he would wear me out. Finally, I was shown another room about half the size of the first, but it had no projector, which we needed.  I asked if we couldn’t get a portable projector from someone (this was a college campus) but I got 3 answers in this order:  1.  We only have 2 projectors on the entire campus, and they are fixed to the ceilings and in the physics labs (I'd just seen on in the lecture hall!), 2.  We have lots of portable projectors, but they have to be commissioned for use in writing at least a week before use, and 3.  There was no telling how many projectors were on the campus, but they had no authority to get one.  That’s when I cornered the fellow most likely to do something  (the  runner) and told him I would take this less-than-perfect room if he could bring me a projector in 5 minutes.  He quickly agreed, and took off running to fetch it, because most rooms were full to capacity because it is that most hallowed and elongated times in the Indian education system, “Exam period”.  This illusive beast has been the source of many of my curses over the last few months, because it seems that India tests its students for even longer than it actually teaches them.  Again, it’s a tricky concept because everyone gives different answers when I ask exactly when is this period?  Some say it really starts in Feb, when students no longer attend their college lectures but prefer to start “mugging”  [cramming].  Others say it starts the first week of March, but everyone agrees that nothing useful will happen in April because of exams, nor the first week in May.  Then they go on vacation.

Anyway, back to the battle at hand. I secured the projector, then asked the woman in charge of bringing the laptop to set it up.  She didn’t know how, so I took it and was connecting it when I noticed the wallpaper image for her laptop:  it was of a buxom woman in a revealing camouflage halter top, shorts too short for her bum by half, and a large grin and even larger automatic rifle in her hands which was pointed directly at me.  Something straight out of an Iowa Truck-stop greeting card. After I turned around and looked at this meek, retiring, conservative older woman and wondered how in God’s earth that got on her laptop, I explained I couldn’t have that showing between our Powerpoint presentations so she needed to change it.  She didn’t know how, so I showed her and she was quite happy to discover that tulips can also greet a person opening her computer.

Next came the balancing act of trying to make the portable whiteboard high enough that we could write on it, and not have to be on hands and knees to do it.  During the course of this trial and error, at least 7 people got involved, and had at least that many opinions and shouting voices.  After about 5 minutes I called that to a halt and turned it on its side.

Now people were arriving and I found out that the coordinator had not put the materials I had so painstakingly made and had reproduced into the 3 ring binders, but just shoved the papers (about 45 pages per packet times 35 packets) in a large plastic sack and just hoped they would somehow magically stay in order.  That’s when I walked outside to take a minute to roll my eyes and curse a lot to myself.  That seemed to help, so I went back in.  I asked 3 of the master trainers to start sorting out the pages and tried to get a system organized so they could have an assembly line, but it was like trying to make a drill team out of cats; they simply refused to have order take over their chaos.  They seemed to all have a screwy system and everyone refused to listen to each other.  I had to walk away from that one because I couldn’t get a word in edgewise and was no match for the expert level opinion-givers. It took them about 2 hours in the afternoon to sort out the hundreds of extra sets.

I asked if there was such a thing as a projector screen, and one magically appeared, but when the 3 men  attempted to open it, we were greeted by a loud ripping sound, so that one was discarded and they went to get another.  No one was very impressed by the rip except me, so I just shrugged and stepped over it. [I should add that a university I did a workshop at in January had a projector screen that was filled with equations because someone had used a permanent marker on it.  And it was still up on the wall two months later when I came back for another workshop.  True story.]

During this mayhem, the site coordinator, who was supposed to have arranged all this long before today, was unsurprisingly unable to be reached.  When she did show up, about an hour late, she was carrying bouquets of flowers which she wanted to use for an opening ceremony I had already put the kaybosh on when asked about it earlier in the week.  The woman doesn’t do anything that was on the list we sent, but she gets flowers for an induction ceremony we didn’t want.  Oh, and she forgot to order breakfast for the master trainers who were staying at the hostel on campus, so they hadn’t eaten anything. 

We started 30 minutes late, and even before we had taught a minute I was in a deep sweat, thoroughly disheveled, filthy from cleaning dust off of chairs, and exhausted. Somehow, I sucked in a large breath and greeted everyone and we were off! No one seemed to think perhaps we should reflect on what a **** show the 90 minutes of set-up were and take a pledge to never go through that again.  That’s the part that really bothered me, because I knew that next Monday I’d be dancing the same Chaos Tango, only in another dance hall with a different set of partners.  Incredible India indeed.

One point of levity was the huge portraits of some of the Maharajas of Udaipur (city I'm in) which covered the walls around our teaching area.  These men in large skirts with odd facial hair and battle gear did make me smile a little.  

Oh, and this blog seems a good one to remind my readers that these opinions are just mine, and don't belong to Dept of State or anyone else but me.

Making our Country Safe

Ted Talks + Animations

If you like Ted Talks, you've going to love the Royal Society Animate project.  www.thersa.org

These individuals have taken people's lectures on various subjects, and used them as a voice-over for their animations/drawings for the words.  It's highly entertaining.  I showed one to my classroom this week on motivation and they loved it.  It's a great teaching tool, but it's also just great fun to watch, and brings humor to many serious subjects.  It's always good to find a reason to laugh in my world.  I can see J.C. of Seattle creating one of these with his nimble mind and fingers.  [Not Jesus Christ!]

A Photo Essay: A Week in Pictures

Beach # 1

Beach #2, and Lighthouse #3


A week ago we were still in the southern state of Kerala, specifically  in Trivandrum, the capital, then Kovalum, the beach on the Arabian Sea about 20 minutes outside of our future hometown, then we took the train to Thrissur, where I was a presenter at an English conference.  The big news, however, was that Sashi Tharoor, Union Minister for Education and Development at the national level, gave a keynote. He's India's equivalent of Arne Duncan, but a whole lot smarter. I asked the day before if I would give some "remarks" after his address, doing an extemporaneous jazzy kind of talk.  YIKES. That's not how I like to roll when I'm in front of others at a conference, but I did fine, or according to loyal S., even more than fine!  It was exciting to hear him in person after seeing him appear on American TV nerd shows such as Fareed Zackaria's GLobal Pubic Square.  S. came along to hear him because he's a fan.  For an article (and me in a photo talking with the man of the hours, go to:   http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/kerala-should-not-treat-english-as-an-elitist-language-tharoor/article4566325.ece?css=print

This week and next I'm conducting a Madrassa teacher training, so there are a couple of clicks of my studeets in action. They are wonderful to work with.

Finally, last but not least there are some food pics, including my new breakfast routine, yogurt, fresh pomegranate seeds, and a mango puree that features some of the best flavored mango I've had the pleasure to put in my mouth.  Check out the rich orange color;  there is still nothing quite so wonderful as sun-kissed fruit in the tropics.  

FIsh in Coconut Curry

Tiger Shrimp and GIGANTIC shrimp

Some of the head coverings of Muslim men in India

Students Singing their Rendition of "This Land is Your Land"

Not so great picture of me on the dais with S. Tharoor

Mango Wallahs

My Morning AMBROSIA

Southern Thali

Students in Action

Pappad, Thali, and Mango Lassi: Triple Goodness

Presentation in Stifling Heat and Sari

Fresh from the Arabian Sea

Pappad, the Roti (bread staple) of the South

The Week in Reviews

2 Movie Reviews:  The Good, and the Ugly.   A Late Quartet, and Les Miserables

First the good…. A Late Quartet has a lot going for it from the outstart:  great actors (Kathleen Keener, Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman, to name a few ), great soundtrack (the Beethoven late quartets and a gorgeous piece by Korngold),  the city of New York (always a perfect character in any movie) and a compelling, believable storyline. It tells the story of a string quartet who has been together 25 years, and is now tested by an event that threatens them all and forces many below-the-surface emotions to boil over big time.  There were a couple of plot twists which S. and I didn’t find very believable, but all I had to do was to hum the hilarious line from Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George “Artists are so crazy, artists are so peculiar.” and I could swallow about anything.  Besides the swoon-inducing music, the cinematographer begins many of the scenes with an almost still-photo tableau in various spots around Manhattan.  There’s high drama and lots of turns of events, but it was also thought provoking and the 3 actors I mentioned above all gave excellent performances.  Not an upper, however soul-washing the music can be.

Les Miserables:  It was quite miserable.  From the opening scene, which onstage is a loud, avalanche of Brechtian-like bite, we knew we were in for trouble.  Hugh Jackman made me convinced to watch the film, but he was kept on a leash of half-singing for the entire first half.  Anne Hathaway, stick to Get Smart and Devil Wears Prada. I can’t even address the fact that she got an Oscar for that performance.  Maybe it was based on # of tears shed in close-up shots?  The only saving grace of this experience was asking one of our progeny if she’d seen it.  She set off on a tangent of vitriol second to none.  It’s so good to know you’ve raised your children to have standards, and opinions, although I wasn’t really worried about either from either child. For further rantings on this ill-considered exercise in torture, please see S.’s blog at http://sngthoughts.blogspot.in/2013/03/les-miserables-movie-review.html