When India isn't foreign enough...

Since January our office director, Matthew, and one of our staff architects, Ivy, who happens to be his wife, have been on sabbatical in Hong Kong, Ivy's home.  Just today, Matthew and Ivy sent us a box of mystery bags full of things that sort of resembled food.  In the enclosed note he stated that he clearly didn't label the bags so that they would remain mysterious as we all went around and tried them.  There were about 8 or 9 bags and we deduced that one of them was a thousand year old and another one was fried scorpions but as to the rest, it's still up in the air.  Although I don't have pictures of the actual food (unfortunately), our graphic designer, Susan, put together quite a nice montage of our reactions to send to Matthew and Ivy. 

Four year old Hudson in the bottom left corner after eating a piece of the thousand year old egg (the absolute worst of the lot) clearly wins. 

Addendum 1

I totally meant to link this in the post, so I'll just put it here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Premier_League

The IPL is basically what the NFL would be if it were the only sport in all of America. Just imagine an entire country's enthusiasm for sports funneled into one sport and then essentially funneled into one 6 week period. It's all anyone talked about while it was going on, and it was awesome that we actually got tickets to see a game in Delhi. And as the wikipedia article will convey, it's a gigantic money making machine. (first sporting event to be broadcast live on youtube?, yea it's that big)

The Horizon Is In Sight

Wow.  Life can be fickle. 

As some of you have noticed, I’ve been quite neglectful of this blog this past month.  Although this has been by far the busiest month since I’ve been here, that is only part of the story.  As some of you know I’ve had work in Nepal, gone to Delhi for an IPL game, and started an epic war with monkeys that insist on coming into our kitchen to steal loafs of bread and bunches of bananas.  On top of that, work has been frantic, with computer problems, generator problems, and the looming shadow of my eventual departure pushing me to finish all I can before I leave.  This is the first Saturday I’ve generally had to myself in about 5 weeks or so and I took the afternoon to not really summarize all that has happened as much as to talk about how what is to come is affecting me now.  As I finished the last sentence, reread for spelling mistakes, I truly leaned back and believed it to be one of my finest blog posts yet – a true, beautiful expression of life as I know it.  Then quite tragically, and maybe predictably, wordpad crashed and a little part of me died.  As we’ve all inevitably experienced this before we are then faced with two choices – through shear will, try miserably and painfully to recount everything you wrote, vainly trying to regrasp the magic you once had or, the alternative, move on, create again.  When phrased like that it’s hard to imagine why anyone would ever choose to reproduce what we had.  It can never be as good as it once was.  Yet if we allow ourselves to let go and create again, regardless of whether it’s better or not, at least it won’t be a miserable attempt to retake what we once had.  With that in mind, let me approach this whole thing anew.

I’m at the point now where my weeks are laid out carefully in front of me.  Every single week from now until I return home I know where I’ll be and most likely what I’ll be doing.  That makes it really easy to look past the 2 and a half months I have left.  There is no uncertainty left.  It’s all right there for me to look at, to live out.  For that reason, it’s been hard to keep my mind here.  Sure when I’m working, trying to finish up as many drawings and projects as I can before I leave, I’m here.  But in those down moments, I can feel my mind wandering.  I can feel myself thinking about eating nachos and watching an afternoon Cubs game.  I can imagine what it would be like to take a shower again, drive a car, or wash my clothes in a washing machine.  You know, I imagine a lot of things.  So most of the time, I’m not really here anymore.  I’m just biding my time, riding out my schedule.  That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? 

Actually I think there is something else going on here.  You’d imagine that in my last couple of months I would have this ravenous zeal for activity, trying to take advantage of as much as possible, making sure every last moment was worth it.  I don’t feel any of that.  There is no desire to go on some Indian adventure, see parts of India I haven’t seen yet.  In fact, I feel quite the opposite.  I’m quite relaxed.  I feel quite settled, quite at home.  Really, that was one of the main purposes of this year long endeavor.  I’d grown up in a land that wasn’t my parents, only ever hearing about India or visiting it, but I never had any idea what it was like to exist there.  It was still a place that existed only in theory.  This year was about making it real.  Surely, I could have picked a more “real” place than Mussoorie, a mystical hill station with temperate climates and a sparse (ish) population, but let’s not get picky.  This year, India became more than my place of ancestry it became a country and a people that I was able to understand more intimately through service.  Not only has this year shed light on who my parents and relatives are but it has shed light on who I am, thereby fundamentally changing me.    

For that reason, I can’t help but imagine what it will be like to be home. 

The State of Ultimate

A little taste of my recent trip to southern India to play for New Delhi's ultimate -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyjJK3iJx34&feature=related

More later.

My trip to Punjab

As some of you know - I was in Punjab for two weeks recently.  The purpose of the trip was a standard EMI project trip that consists of visiting the owner's site, sitting with the owner and hearing his vision, surveying the site, and then working with client, coming up with conceptual civil and architectural plans that encompass the entirety of his vision and purpose.  That's the short of it.  Since there is never much structural work to do on the physical project trip and there were already 3 civil engineers, I was in charge of surveying the site.  This particular project is a children's home and school that is intended for village kids in this particular region of Punjab that is primarily Sikh.  The children's home will eventually house around 200 to 250 orphans while the day school will provide an education for countless more.  When we arrived the ground floor of the chilren's home had actually been started.  It was after a couple bad encounters with others that the client decided to contact EMI and ask for their guidance.  There were crazy things going on for sure - like a 20ft deep septic tank that was 56x times bigger than it should have been. 

Leading the survey team and constantly being out on the site allowed me to interact a lot with the contractor and the different construction workers.  My Hindi is rudimentary at best, but it was enough to communicate with them.  Plus they thought it was hilarious to see an Indian that didn't speak Hindi well.  I had to explain to them that there are lots of Indians that don't speak Hindi, including many people in Tamil Nadu.  Also, without a doubt, within 2 minutes of beginning a conversation with me they would ask - "Have you finished your marriage?"  As individual upon individual kept asking, I eventually would just start laughing at the question, knowing that it was coming.  Do I look like I should be married already?  Am I in that desperate of a situation? 

All in all, the couple of weeks went very smoothly.  It wasn't as exciting as my trip last term to the orphanage (where the kids were actually there) but this particular trip is much more representative of what EMI does.  We come in at the beginning stages, before things get too exciting, and partner with ministry using our knowledge to make sure they're making wise decisions.  They're the ones on the frontlines, we're just here in whatever capacity they need.  Coming back to the office, I'll be working on the structural assessment for the building that's currently under construction plus a water tower (that the clients wants to also contain prayer rooms) design that should be built as soon as I turn over the drawings. 

We also had the opportunity to see a couple of the more exciting things Punjab has to offer - the India-Pakistan border closing ceremony and the Golden Temple.  The Golden Temple was the Golden Temple.  I thought it was beautiful and enjoyed it but I wouldn't say it affected me in any significant way.  However, the border closing ceremony was a completely different affair.  A lot of people have been talking it up for a while now (including some of you reading this).  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I suggest you jump on youtube really quick and find a video of it.  (I'd give you a link but the internet connection here makes using youtube completely impossible)  It's a cultural experience that is culturally unique to India/Pakistan.  Thousands upon thousands (I mean tens of thousands) of people come to this one point on the border between India and Pakistan.  Grandstands, gigantic arches, ornate gates, heavy security lie on either side of the line.  There is a single paved road that passes through these gates and on either side are people dances with flags, a man with a microphone pushing the crowds to chant louder and louder.  Border guards come out and undergo a passionate, lively ceremony as they open the gates, allow the last bus to cross the border and then lower their flags for the day, trying to keep their flag up just a fraction of a second longer than the other.  Each crowd passionately shouts, yelling, jeers as they try and drown out the opposing side.  Over the barbed wire, the armed guards, the large walls, you can just see the tops of the other grandstands, the people that inhabit this other land.  While it's very easy to get caught up in the electric atmosphere of it all there is something deeply saddening about all of this.  If you were to stand on the wall separating the two countries the differences would seem pretty shallow while the similarities would seem much more significant.  You have two sets of guards doing the exact same things.  One group dressed in brown, the other in black.  You have the same amount of noise, the same kind of cheers - one in Hindi, one in Urdu.  You have one ornate gate that slides open, another that opens like a double door.  Where else in the world could you get two different people groups from two different nations to buy into something as crazy and as outrageous as something like this?  Probably nowhere.  That's essentially because these were never intended to be two separate nations in the first place.  The line between Pakistan and India was arbitrarily drawn, leaving families stuck on either side.  Permanently split up fearing the consequences of trying to cross the border during Partition or even now.  Sitting there, listening to people yell 'Jai India' at Pakistan, it forces you to reflect on the non-silly aspects of Indo-Pakistan relations - the millions of lives lost, the families ruined, the blood split over this conflict.  It shouldn't be this way.  I'm not trying to argue for the merging of Pakistan into India.  I'm not talking about political borders here.  Whether or not they are one country or two separate countries is really irrelevant in the face of what I'm talking about.  This isn't like the US and Mexico, these are the same people that have a similar cultural and ethnic background.  It's no accident that India's muslim population is the 3rd largest in the world, just under Pakistan.  Really, it's just tragic.  It's tragic that it couldn't have been different from the very beginning.  If this precedent of rivalry and hatred was never established, if boys and girls weren't brought up learning about this tradition of intolerance.  Because after all, these are the same people. 

Resolute Aging

Tonight, our chokedar (basically the guy that takes care of our house and property) told me all about his dream motorcycle trip around India.  We stood in front of a map of India as his finger ran from road to road, tracing the border of the entire sub-continent.  He talked about how long each stint would take, where he would stay, the people he would meet, the food he would eat.  He talked about the equipment he would bring.  All the details, even the details that only come to mind after years and years of thinking were already worked out in his head.  He told me about his dream to reach Rajastan (India’s desert state) during the peak of summer when temperatures will easily reach 50C (120F).   I laughed because that may literally be impossible.  Undaunted, he simply responded with, “Impossible is good.  If it wasn’t impossible, everyone would do it.” 

I think I had slowly started to believe that youth had a monopoly on dreaming.  Certainly most people would reinforce that, telling me how my high school ideals or childhood longings would eventually fade as I stepped into the ‘real world’.  Most people I think do lose this insatiable desire.  But for those that keep dreaming, for those that keeping hoping and still see life full of possibilities – it’s even more encouraging to me.  For that reason, it’s always been very encouraging whenever I’ve meet someone older that myself that truly has a dream, no matter how big or small.  Although I’m not sure I have my dream motorcycle trip yet, this encourages me not to be afraid to find it.  

In a couple of hours, I will be leaving for my two week project trip to Amritsar, Punjab for two weeks.  I'll be doing the survey and civil work for a girl's school/home there.  Hopefully, I'll have something to say when I get back.  

Also as an addition to my last post - 


Today Tim Duncan became the longest tenured player on any single team in the NBA.  Just another piece of evidence to support the consistent output of greatness.