First few days in India

(written in Word on Jan 31, 2010, BESUS)

So here it is, my attempt at what is known as “blogging,” what the ancient civilizations called writing a diary and letting the universe read it, or expounding your thoughts into the internets, pipes, etc etc. Since I’m writing this in word, I’ll have to make sure I don’t read over it before posting it online, since I don’t have wifi in my room; if I do read it before making it “live”, I’m bound to delete it and send it to the digital limbo where everything I delete goes to wait in hiding until it can get its revenge and embarrass me at some later time. So please, kick back while I gather my thoughts from the past week or so as I swat mosquitoes away.

I really don’t think I’m all that good a writing long narratives (or maybe I’m lazy, yes i'm lazy) so maybe I’ll post short snippets of my thoughts as if I was “twittering,” which I think is the trendy thing to do but I’m known to join trends wayyyyy late so I’ll just be a twitter poser for now. Or maybe I’ll think of it as a collection of facebook statuses. And actually these are not in chronological order so I’m just going to write as I remember specific thoughts.

So I wasn’t imagining the “meowing” coming from row 30 in the plane, there really was a cat and not a human baby making cat sounds.

Sunrise at Frankfurt airport at 730am! Weird. US$13.00 for a to-go sandwich and water bottle. Not so weird I guess. Profiteroles at McDonalds?! Awesome.

Highlights of Frankfurt to Kolkatta flight: personal touchscreen tv, 500 days of summer (googly-eyed over Joseph Gorden Levitt, and a cool story), practicing my Spanish with a group of ladies from Spain, one of whom lives in Kolkatta.

Get to Kolkata by 230 am and get pushed into tipping someone I didn’t even ask for help. I mean really, I’m supposed to tip you for you imposing your unwanted services on me? And I thought you were just being nice.

Luckily, as I walk out of the airport I see someone holding a sign with my name on it. Whew. Get to campus and my room at the guest house. My phone doesn’t work so I can’t text the rents that I landed.

Omi Vaidya is pretty much a celebrity around here. I already saw two newspaper articles mentioning him and a tv commercial. It’s fun to tell people that I know him!

Background: I’m part of a newly formed research collaboration between my previous advisor and a professor at the Bengal Engineering and Science University Shibpur (BESUS from now on), Materials Science and Engineering department. They hope to continue it even after I’m done here. Its funded through the INDO-US Forum on Science and Technology for 3 months. I’ll be learning how to use new equipment (SEM, spectroscopy) and also helping them out with their equipment (AFM). At least that’s the plan on paper. The research will not be the same as what I did for my dissertation, its actually completely different in terms of fabrication and characterization but for the purposes of explaining it, its basically nanotechnology related.

I met with the group on Thursday afternoon (yes the same day I landed at 230am), there’s a few PhD students. We plan to meet on Friday and I offer to do a presentation. Luckily, its only about 1/3 of my dissertation defense so I already knew it by heart, so just had to re arrange some ppt slides. I learned about their work and some possibilities for what I can do. I’ll feel a lot better (and less bored) when I have actual goals and dive into the work.

Shibpur is a small town across the river from Kolkatta, and right outside the gated campus (which is pretty small but nice, with ponds and small gardens) there’s a few small shops, eateries etc. Nothing as chaotic as the main city, but a lot more chaotic than the actual campus. I miss my bike, but wouldn’t dare ride it around here. Especially with the stray dogs. The dogs here are pretty calm and I haven’t seen them chase any bicyclists, but it still makes me nervous. I have a pretty basic room with private bathroom in the guest house, and there’s a small dining hall that gives me all 3 meals and gets pretty packed at lunch and dinner.

I called up my mom’s school friend Nandita Auntie on Saturday and she was free so she picked me up for the weekend. It was great to get out of here and finally see the city! And stay at someone’s home. We caught up (it was my first time meeting her), shared pictures and stories about my mom, and she took me shopping to get a phone and an electric kettle for my room (I was equally excited about both!).

As we drove around the city, I was craving living there in the mix of it all, but also not enjoying the smog, pollution and traffic. In that way, the campus I’m at is completely calm (besides that loud music the undergrads were playing on Friday night). I need to find a gym or dance class or something, and I’m not much of a runner/jogger so I don’t see myself running around campus. I should have got some P90X dvd’s! that would be perfect in my room. Next, I’ll call up some of Reema’s family. Eventually I’ll make a trip out to Maharashtra to see my grandfather and mom’s family.

I’ll feel a lot more accomplished once I can get to the city by myself and go exploring by myself. Would love to see some tourists and walk around with my lonely planet as well. The Hindi I learned in 5^th grade when I lived in Maharashtra with my grandparents is coming to great use! I would not feel comfortable only being able to speak English, even though people say you can “get by” with just English. At first, all my Hindi was in the “Spanish” file cabinets in my brain, so I kept saying “si” or “y” . . but now I think I have the file cabinets organized pretty well. I’ll be doing some mental exercises to practice switching between Hindi, Marathi and Spanish and should probably buy some elementary school books to practice the script and gain some vocab.

The one thing that is a bit frustrating is the internet. My mac is having trouble and I’m supposed to get wifi in my room but no one seems to believe me when I say it doesn’t work. I don’t think they understand that I physically need someone on my computer in the guest house to see what the problem is.