Alive and Doing Well

This is a pretty long post, with no editing, so there will probably be quite a few errors. I wrote it pretty quickly, but I just wanted to get something up to let everyone know what I was up to. Yes, I am still alive and doing very well over here in India. I apologize for not posting as frequently in the past week and a half; things have been pretty busy over here. So many things have happened that I don’t know where to start.

Work has been great. I actually enjoy working every single day, even though I’m probably working between 40-45 hours a week as an intern, including Saturdays. Most of the other interns get their Saturdays off so they can travel on weekends, but I don’t. I really don’t mind because I have a huge air conditioned office, my boss bought me a wireless data internet card so I can get on the internet anywhere in India, he bought me a calling card, and paid for me to go up to Delhi last weekend, which none of the other trainees have, so I’m really lucky at my job. It makes me work harder though and hopefully I can help BMIT build up some big global partners or relationships. Last week, I traveled with my boss to one of the most prestigious universities in Jaipur to make a presentation for a new university he is trying to build in Jaipur or Jodphur. The presentation was to a committee appointed by government officials, so it was a really big deal and worth quite a bit of money since the proposal included the new buildings, land, etc. He asked me to make a Power Point presentation about my project, which I was supposed to present to this committee. I did a lot of research around Second Life and other platforms for virtual collaboration. If you haven’t read about these types of programs, go online and start looking into them. It is probably the future of education in the United States and developed countries. My boss is a forward thinker and trying to apply this kind of technology to his universities and colleges in India, which would be groundbreaking, but the committee didn’t really like it. They were more traditionalists and thought that teaching should be done the old-fashioned way with text books and in the classrooms.

The actual presentation was a great learning experience for me, especially around doing business in India. I have already mentioned in my blog how Indians don’t use the traditional head nods to communicate yes and no. When the director would be stating some of his ideas, the officials would shake their head no, but it was really in agreement and then made some facial expressions, which I thought looked like they were disgusted, but really they were approving. This presentation was especially crazy. Since this committee was compromised of high government officials, they wanted to basically let us know that they were powerful and had the authority to do whatever they wanted. In the room at the time of the presentation, it was the Director, the Registrar for the University (Sandeep), me, and then the 4 government officials. During the Director’s presentation, the members of the committee would talk amongst each other and pick up their cell phones in the middle of the presentation! I have never seen anything like it! In the United States, it doesn’t matter who you are (normally), but you would never pick up a cell phone call in the middle of a presentation unless it was an emergency. These government officials seemed like they were just having casual conversations on their cell phones almost the entire time he was presenting his proposal for the new university! It was a great learning experience nonetheless. If I do ever come back, I’ll know what to expect when I’m making these types of proposals in front of government officials or big time business people. All in all, the presentation went really well. I never got to present because the officials cut us off and we ran out of time, but it was still a great learning opportunity for me. I’m sure I will get another opportunity to do something like that in the near future.

After the presentation, my boss took me and Sandeep out to the Comfort Inn and Suites, which is a really nice hotel here in Jaipur for a couple beers and then we ate dinner at this great Chinese restaurant in the hotel. It was a really short work day and it was nice to relax with my boss outside of the working environment.

Outside of that presentation, last week was pretty miserable because I was sick almost the whole week. The stationary bicycle that I work out on every morning broke, so now I don’t have any cardio in the mornings and I’m still waiting on the Singhs to get it fixed. This past weekend was really nice though. On Friday morning, my boss offered to send me up to Jaipur with three of my co-workers for this college fair. He told me I could go see the city while they work at the fair all day Saturday and Sunday. I thought it would be a great opportunity to get to know my co-workers and also go see the city for free!

Too good to be true? Well, a little. I had to wake up at 2:30 AM on Saturday morning to catch a ride with them in one of their cars. It is about a 5.5 hour drive to Delhi from Jaipur by car. Ravi, who also drives me home everyday from work, told me that he would pick me up at the gas station where he drops me off everyday on Tonk Road. The gas station is about a 20 minute walk from my house. I didn’t really think anything of it until I told Mrs. Singh that I was going to walk there around 3:30 AM. She said that it was a terrible idea and that it wasn’t safe. So when Ravi called the next morning to tell me he was on his way, I asked him if he could pick me up at home instead of at the gas station. He said that he would, but that didn’t think he would be able to find his way there because everything was dark and closed. Keep in mind there are not really any street signs, to my knowledge, so there was no way for me to tell him how to get to my house. I ended up walking. Scared out of my mind all of the way to the gas station at 3:30 AM in the dark with my 200 lb bookbag. The first street I turned on outside of my house, I could see an older man walking towards me on the street. Didn’t really bother me until I got about 75 yards away from him and noticed that he was carrying a long pole with a silver blade on the end of it! I almost turned around and started running the other way, but I just kept going. I’m alive, so everyone knows what happened, but walking past, I was basically reading to run for my life at any given second. I called home right after that and talked to the whole family at the lakehouse for the next 15 minutes. It was definitely one of the scariest moments of my life. There are a bunch of stray dogs and homeless people just kind of lying around and you never know what they are going to do, that is what makes it so scary that late at night. But I survived, couldn’t stop sweating (mix of fear and heat) in the car for the first hour of the trip, so that sucked. Finally cooled off and was able to sleep for a couple hours the rest of the way up to Delhi.

Luckily, the rest of the trip was great. We arrived in Delhi around 9:30 AM, ate breakfast, and then they all dropped me off at the India Gate and told me to meet them back there around 6 pm. It is a very famous site in Delhi, so it was not a hard place to get back to at the end of the day. I was on my own in Delhi, so I basically just stuck to the biggest and main tourist places. Delhi is a huge city with a population of nearly 14 million. I think it is the biggest city I have ever been to in terms of population. The main sites that I visited on Saturday were the India Gate, The President’s Place, Connaught Place, and the Red Fort. Connaught Place is a big circle area with a bunch of shopping. I didn’t buy any clothes, but I did buy a book called Common Wealth by Jeffrey Sachs. An appropriate to read while in India and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in globalization, poverty, and learning about the growing gap between the rich and the poor across the world. I’ll post pictures of all of these places soon so everyone can see what I’m talking about.

I went back to the India Gate around 5:15, waited on my three co-workers until around 7:30, so I just sat at the India gate and read my new book. I also watched a few games of cricket, even thought I still do not entirely understand how to play the game. We went to Jawaharlal Nehru University, which is where we stayed and another top notch university in India. Then we went out to eat in the diplomatic area of Delhi, which was a lot of fun. I slept really well that night, probably the best I have slept since I have been here. I had two twin beds pushed together, air conditioning, and a nice shower. It was great and free! Everything was paid for there except for my lunches!

Sunday I ended up going to the fair with everyone because I needed to get some homework done for my online class. After I finished that, I decided to treat myself and indulge a little bit since I was traveling and not spending any money. I decided to go to the Hyatt, a 5 Star Hotel in Delhi, and had a pepperoni pizza with a couple drinks. It was really relaxing and really expensive! I immediately regretted my decision after I saw the bill, but it was worth it. I probably won’t get anything like it the rest of the time I am in India. It rained all day, so I stayed at the Hyatt most of the day and then just headed back to the fair where I helped them clean up. We left Delhi around 7:30 pm and got back to Jaipur around midnight. It was a pretty intense weekend traveling, but a lot of fun. On the way home, my co-workers tried to start teaching me Hindi. This week I’m also supposed to start doing Hindi lessons with Mrs. Singh. She said she will teach me Hindi if I teach her English, so I think we will probably start tomorrow. It will help me so much to know the basics so I can get around here in Jaipur and communicate more with all of the local people.

If you are still reading this, I’m impressed. I’m not even sure what I’m talking about. I think I have been writing now for hours! Just kidding. I guess here would be a good place to slip in the fact that I have had 4 Pepsi’s now, but still no Mt. Dews. I had to have some kind of caffeine and carbonation last week because of my stomach, so in a sense, I have failed, but I had limited options. I thought by now giving up the Mt. Dew would be easy, but it is actually getting harder every day. Hopefully I can make it. Oh, and they don’t have any pretzels over here at all. That has been pretty rough too.

I have new roommates!! Steve (Manchester, UK), Fleur (Netherlands), Vicki (Shanghai, China), and Monique (Netherlands). They all arrived last Saturday when I was in Delhi. Most nights now, we all sit up on the rooftop and talk about so many different things. All of them know everything about American culture and I feel so dumb because I know nothing about their movie stars, movies, music, etc. They know everyone over in the States! It is unbelievable how popular American movies and music are all over the world! Two nights ago, we even talked with Vicki about her opinions regarding China and Tibet. She admitted that she thought what China was doing was okay, but that she could only access information provided by the Chinese government. Monique and Vicki both work together, so at work the next day, I guess Monique showed Vicki other international media sites to let her read about the rest of the world’s opinions. I’m really looking forward to learning about their cultures and way of life, it is so much different than back home. Last night (Wednesday), we had the trainee dinner and there are probably about 45 interns in Jaipur now from all over the world. We are having a lot of fun and everyone seems to get along so well. It is nothing like the Real World (TV show on MTV) or anything. Haha.

I’ll post some pictures later, but I think that is all for now. Say hello with some comments, it is always the first thing I check when I get to work! If you made it this far down, I’m sure you will post something! Love you all and miss you!