Moodiness and More Minutiae

I keep thinking of more things to write about Mumbai and then I forget before I get to my blog.  I've also been having a rough time lately just being here and feeling both the desire to take refuge in my air conditioned bedroom and some pretty severe loneliness.  I want to be out, absorbing everything around me and feeling adventurous, but when I'm out I'm just hot and at least a little confused and it saps my will pretty quickly.  I am missing springtime, Chicago, my friends.  And because I am so often trying to make sense of where I am in a broader sense (career, travel, love, family), I end up with some seriously funky moods.  Ironically, though I've just transplanted myself on the other side of the world by my own choice, I feel stuck.  I don't know how to get it all aligned.  For instance, career and love are in two very different places right now, and I feel like I can really only deal with one while the other suffers.  I'm not sure how to fix that, if sticking it out will be worth it and it will all come together in the end, or if I'll have to make a tough choice at some point.

On a lighter note, there's always more minutiae to note to flesh out the context I'm in more:

One general area is vocabulary -- even though people here speak English, word choice is often different.  Some examples:  intersection --> junction, green pepper --> capsicum, line --> queue, sandal --> chappal, moving to a new house --> shifting...and there are lots more that I don't remember right now.

Corn is a common pizza topping here, which I actually like -- but I find it odd that this is called "American", since to my knowledge corn is a topping here and in Europe but not in the US -- except at the European style pizza place I used to order from.

It costs me the same to take a cab to work as it costs to take the train in Chicago.  If I took a bus it would cost amazingly little.

I wrote before about there being people employed to do things that make me feel helpless.  I sense that people here prefer to have a person help them, rather than to do things themselves -- and that it's a sense of status.

I don't have a washing machine, and my maid washes my clothes 3 times a week by hand in a bucket, which is totally normal.  I find this fascinating and awesome and a little guilt-inducing all at once.  I actually hand washed my own stuff once, and it was kind of a nice feeling, learning to do something a machine has long ago taught me that I don't need to know.  It's another life skill, one I won't need much probably, but still kind of nice to have.

People don't tip here.  Cab drivers don't get tips generally, and restaurant servers get 10%.  This is one thing I actually like about the US -- I think service is better when there's some incentive to get a good tip, and I think people being served are more appreciative of the service they receive because they can express it through a variable tip level.  I had a realization the other day that people here seem so much less polite and courteous of other people, likely because there are so many other people around, and so many of them are paid to do something specific, and it stops being a big deal after a while. 

Guy movies

There is a genre of movie that I really hate that I classify simply as "guy movies".  I generally avoid these movies, because the common themes are guys being wildly irresponsible, drinking, doing drugs, getting involved in violence, and sleeping with some hot, no-personality women.  I hate sounding like a prude, but it actually just depresses me to think of the degree of selfishness and recklessness being basically celebrated as an ideal for manhood.  All of this comes up now because I just saw The Hangover 2 today, and I hated it (and I sort of expected to going in, but I thought I'd try it anyway).  The movie wasn't really all that clever, but it had everything I don't like about guy movies -- and the worst of it for me is the way most of the women (or in many cases, transgendered women) involved were strippers & prostitutes, and it was somehow cool and exciting for the main characters to get involved with them (even though one was married and another on the eve of his wedding).  I guess there's just this part of me that revolts against all of the debauchery, because I don't think it's how people are supposed to treat each other.  No regard for other people's humanity or background or experience, no thinking about the causes or effects, just indulgence.  It grosses me out, makes me feel worse about the world we live in because it's kind of celebrating the things that I wish could cease to exist.

Stop Helping Me

This place seems designed to prevent self sufficiency. To get an apartment, you have to have a broker instead of searching ads online yourself. To get a notebook in the office, I was told to ask the office admin (in Chicago there is a supply room where I can go grab what I need). People don’t clean their own apartments, they have a maid. Those with a little more money don’t drive their own cars, they hire drivers. If you plan a vacation, you don’t just go research the place online and book it, you talk to everyone you know who’s been there or is from there (and there will often be many), and they will offer you access to a travel agent they know or a place to stay with a friend or family member. People don’t raise their kids in a nuclear family, they often live with parents who help and have maids who also help with childcare. I went to the grocery store across the street from my apartment, and the shopkeeper told me to give him a call and he’ll deliver so I don’t have to come. Another time, I was painting my toenails and my friend told me I didn’t have to do that myself, I could go and pay and have someone else do it for cheap – but I opted to paint my own toenails. I feel like I must seem anti-social or controlling or even ungrateful, because I want to do things myself, or at least be able to. It feels like micro-delegation here at times, to a point that I can proceed only so far before I have to ask someone for help. Sometimes I want people to not notice me, not offer to help, to leave me alone and not be nice or helpful. I guess I want them to be Chicagoans – I can ask them for help if there’s something I truly can’t do myself, but otherwise I’m left to my own devices.

A couple of more minute things:

Oreos are labeled as a Cadbury product here, instead of Nabisco like they are in the US. Kraft owns both, and Cadbury is huge here, so it just makes more sense that way.

I miss my coffee shop. I wish there were one here that was half as good. On the bright side beverage-wise, fresh lime soda is really refreshing, and mango milkshakes are also delicious (it’s mango season).

Groceries, etc.

I'm in my new place now, and I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable here -- it always takes a few days to get the hang of the layout and switches and knobs in a new place, and this is only day 2.  Last night I was feeling a little pathetic and sorry for myself because I wished I could be somewhere familiar (i.e. Chicago), somewhere I could just go out and walk around and not feel sort of lost and out of place.  It doesn't help that I feel the curious eyes of everyone on me, some of which comes from the reality that a lot of people really do stare at me, and some of which stems from my being extra self conscious since a lot of the time I don't know exactly what I'm doing and don't really want an audience for my cluelessness.

For example, I went to get groceries last night, which I was a little anxious about even though it's really not hard.  I got the address of the store, glanced at the Google map of my area to see the route, and set off...

Walking in Mumbai is always a little nerve-wracking for me, because there is rarely sidewalk (there are stretches, but they are inconsistent and sometimes not worth the trouble to use) and you're generally sticking to the sliver of road between the parked cars and the cabs, cars, motorcyles, bikes, buses, guys pushing/pulling carts of stuff, and other people on foot who are out and about.  There's always a lot of honking happening, and you generally cross the road whenever there's a reasonable clearing in the traffic (or the next car coming can slow down or swerve around you a bit).  My neighborhood isn't too hectic relatively speaking, thankfully, but it still doesn't make for a serene stroll.

Also, directions and addresses are difficult for me here.  I've been spoiled with a very nice grid system in Chicago, complete with numeric coordinates and almost all perpendicular streets.  Nothing is perpendicular here, and addresses are relational (near such and such landmark).  And for some reason, whatever the landmark is supposed to be never stands out the way I think it should.  For instance, I've had people point out a train station before, and I never would have seen it because it doesn't look like a train station in the US with a big, fat obvious entrance that is clearly labeled and trains and tracks that you can see as you approach.  And right now, I'm living in a place where the nearest landmark is the Colaba Post Office, and I don't actually know which building around me is the post office.  I haven't really looked, admittedly, but it seems like it should be glaringly obvious.  I have a sort of contextual blindness here that I think is getting a little better, but it's still there.

So that brings me back to my grocery excursion to the world foods market last night (which carries exotic things like peanut butter).  I set out on a route that was semi-familiar because I'd walked in the same general direction before, but at one point I kept looking for a left turn that didn't materialize.  I knew at some point I'd have to hit a left, and I eventually did, and it took me in a slightly roundabout way to the place I was looking for: the World Trade Center.  The grocery store address online said there was a shopping area at the bottom, through gate 4, where the grocery store would be.  When I got to gate 4, it had a metal detector and a security guard and didn't look like a grocery store at all, but like some kind of official entrance to an important building -- but I thought, okay, this is how things are so often here, I'm just going to walk through this metal detector and see if there's a grocery store somewhere on the other side.  And there was, in, around the corner and to the left - which felt like a triumph because if it had been my first time in Mumbai, there's no way I would have assumed that there would be a grocery store in such a strange place with no sign whatsoever out at the street.  That's how I feel about everything here -- it's not at all obvious, and so the first time doing anything is always the hardest by far.  Maybe because of my feeling of success, I decided to try a different route home that I'd spotted on the Google map...but that didn't work out so well and I had to retrace my steps a little bit to get back.  In the end, I got food, though I was disappointed because I forgot the ice cream bar I'd been planning to reward myself with.  It's the little things. :-P

A few other random things just to flesh out my experience here a little bit more...

Today I felt sweat drip down my inner thigh to my calf.  It's HOT.  But it's amazing how much good ceiling fans do -- we definitely overuse AC in the US.

I have a maid, which is totally normal here, and it's absurd how little I have to pay her.  The amount she gets per month for an hour a day every day would get me a maid for an hour, once, in Chicago.  It makes me feel confused...I know this is how the economy here works, but it still feels wrong.

Speaking of employment, it's amazing how it works here.  In stores, I always feel like there are 3-5 times the number of people it actually takes to get a task accomplished -- which I won't argue against since there are a lot of people here to employ, but I also think it's funny.  At the grocery store, there are two guys in a small produce section who just weigh and label stuff for checkout as you pick it out.  I was offered help finding stuff by at least 2 guys (and the store is fairly small, I think it has 4 short aisles or something).  A guy rings everything up and checks to make sure the price of each item shows up correctly in the computer, another couple of guys bag it, and another guy stands by the door, checks your receipt as you leave, and then opens the door for you.  I once stopped at duty free at the airport here and had four or five people help me purchase two bottles of whiskey.  And on construction sites here, there always seem to be a bunch of guys just hanging around, and this is only compounded by the lack of safety gear worn by these guys (something that makes me feel a little worried for them).

I despise crows.  They are big, ugly, and loud.  Replace all the songbirds in the trees near you with these giant cawing things and that's what happens outside my bathroom and kitchen windows.  At least the trees are pretty and have bright orangey-red flowers.

I guess that's all for now...til I think of more minutiae to share!

Home

The past few days have been pretty rough for me, because I don't currently have a space of my own.  For the last two weeks and for the next one to come, I'm staying with people while I wait for the day when I can be in my own place.  I didn't expect to feel this way, especially so quickly.  It's made me a little crazy (okay, more than a little), because sometimes I just want the feeling of being at home and relaxing, but there is no such place right now.  I don't have a kitchen filled with food I picked out, I don't have a closet to hang my clothes, I don't have my own bed and bedside table to keep the book I'm reading.  It's hot, so afternoon exploratory walks aren't super appealing right now.  I am dependent on other people to help me get by in even the most basic ways, and I don't enjoy it.  I really can't wait to get to my own apartment and be able to be cluttered and laze around and read and look out at the sea, or go to a store and get some food to cook, or work from home, or walk to a random museum and check it out and then come home.  The morning walk may get revived if it's not too hot or rainy.  One more week...

Amazing things

In less than two weeks, I will live in an apartment with a sea view.  Amazing.  You can Google "Colaba Post Office, Mumbai" and it will give you an approximate location.  And for the record, I'm not living at the post office, just near the post office -- landmarks are key to addresses here.  If you tried to get in a cab and tell them an address, they'd likely have no idea what you were talking about.  You have to know the name of the neighborhood, major roads, key landmarks, and you'll get there.

Also, I am addicted to Kerala style food.  I have gone from feeling a little weird about ordering fish and having it look like a fish (how American am I anyway?), to picking the fish up by the tail and flipping it over and rip off more of its delicious flesh with my bare hand.  Also amazing.

Final point of amazement for the evening: It is 10:21 pm, and I am neither asleep nor drowsy.  I am on a Mumbai schedule now, which means I haven't gone to bed before midnight in a while, and I need an alarm to wake me up for work in the morning.  I went to an 11:20 movie the other night (sadly, we arrived late, so I missed the national anthem at the beginning, but I witnessed the intermission -- they literally cut in the middle of the reel and bring up the house lights so people will go get snacks, playing ads & previews meanwhile), and went to bed at 2 am, only to be awoken by my phone ringing close to 10 am.  This is quite a departure from my Chicago schedule, which is a 9 hour sleep pattern that starts sometime during the 9 pm hour and ends in the 6 am hour without the use of an alarm.  I feel healthy and happy, though; it's just odd to look at the clock sometimes.

So far so good

Week one in Mumbai has flown by, but I think I'm now settled into a local sleep schedule (I'm going to be trying to be a night owl instead of a early bird for the next few months...eating dinner at 9 pm or even later already feels normal).

I've looked at some apartments, which is an interesting process here.  In Chicago, I'd just go on Craigslist and find a few places that look good, call or email the landlord, and arrange to see them.  Easy and very do-it-yourself.  Here, everything is done through brokers, which on the upside means you have someone showing you a bunch of places with your specifications; but on the downside it means a lot of salesmanship, pressuring, and an extra month's rent to pay to the broker for their help.  At one point this week while looking, there was a place I really liked, so we went to talk to the landlord -- and "we" means three brokers, my friend Reema, and me.  And I did very little talking -- it was mainly the brokers and the landlord discussing the financials (rent, deposit, length of stay), Reema speaking up when need be, and me sitting there fascinated that renting a place for 4-5 months could be so complicated.  In the end, I didn't get the place because the landlord didn't want a short term tenant.  But fortunately, I have since found a great place for exactly the right length of time, so in the next couple of days I'll hopefully have the details sorted out and be able to move in a couple of weeks.

Aside from the adjustment and logistics of apartment shopping, now that I'm emerging from the jet lag stupor, I'm really happy to be here.  I'm very, very happy right now, and some of you who read this know exactly why. I'm looking forward to more of that, picking up more Hindi (maybe I'll blog with some of my phrases when I have a respectable amount), being more self sufficient, and getting settled into a little bit of a routine.  More to come soon...