Nepal, Nepal.

Wondering if I should leave the Kathmandu valley ever to return to the dusty southern town of Bangalore.

Nepal Himalayan Escape

Just arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal, typng away on a broken keybord circa 1994 in an overcroweded back room at this backpacker haven. The backspace key and lettering on 3/4 of the keys faded into oblivion years ago, making writing coherent sentances quite an endeavor. This will be short.

Highlight of today- crusing through the clouds... thousands of miles up in the atmosphere... when the himalayas jump into clear view out of nowhere. LIterally the largest most massive chunk of "thing" ever. Seeing enormous snow-capped mountains out of our window at ridiculous altitudes is a mindtrip.

Nepal is fresh, beautiful, and a crossroads for people from all over the world. Never before have I seen such a cultural - socio economic mix of people-- from weathered athletic Triathalon-esque 50 year olds hauling worn backpacks straight out of the 70's, to "bobo" aka bohemian bourgeosie kids from Amsterdam to California running around in neo-hippy wear clad in hemp and yak fur, to shrunken leather skinned men from the Himalayan foothills balancing plastics bags stuffed full of village handicrafts, to throngs of chattering Korean girls trotting around the back alleys in white leather heels. its a constant parade. Even had dinner at a pseudo Mexican food joint run by Austrians.

Leaving the capitol in a couple days then exploring the rest Nepal for a week, catching a glimpse of Everest and attempting to back drive off the worlds highest bungy jump. Relaxing Diwali holiday from work.

The Fungus Freak Out

The tales from the long weekend vacation will be related in exacerbating detail another day as there is a different issue of much greater interest running my life at the moment – entitled the Mold Saga.

Northern India was great, from the countless lively streets of Dehli to the eerily quiet desert plains of Rajasthan. But as I was gallivanting around the country - unbeknownst to me back in Bangalore - the beginning of a mold invasion was stealthily unfolding underneath my floor mats and on my top of my nightstand. Upon my return on Sunday night (due to the 13 hours of traveling and general grogginess that comes after schlepping around the desert for days with congested sinuses and hacking cough) my tired eyes only managed to focus on the fluffy white featherbed and its promise of deep sleep - and not the fluffy white spores next to it and their promise to wreck havoc in my life.

The next morning, after awaking with a pounding headache, shuffling about my room frantically searching for my keys in a post-long weekend daze, I was shocked to discover odd shampoo lather-like foam coagulating on the exterior of a large straw box on my nightstand. Filled with a distinct nervous fear that upon closer inspection I will most definitely be thoroughly repulsed, disgusted, and nauseated at what I find… I touch the sticky, soggy powder and within 0.297 seconds realize that what I’m rubbing between my thumb and index fingers is in fact a clump of fungus, releasing billions of spores into my airspace.

With only a couple minutes to catch the bus, in a state of shock and utter revulsion, I washed my hands and dashed off, too confused and grossed out to begin considering the implications of letting a colony of mold rapidly propagate without restraint throughout my bedroom for an entire week in my absence.

I bravely marched straight to my room when I got home from work, after secretly hoping all day that the mold sighting/touching could easily be attributed to a minor hallucination and that all was well and perfectly right in my fungus-free world. But as the gods of under-bed dust bunnies, shower curtain mildew, and mold infestation would have it… my worst suspicions became reality.

1. Sprawled out across my bed was the moldy box, oozing its fungus grossness all over my newly cleaned lavender sheets. Apparently the “house boys” (the politically correct word for male maids in my building) decided it would be a fantastic idea to redecorate my room, starting with throwing my fungus diseased straw box onto my goose-down pillow thus dusting my bed with billions of infectious mold spores.

2. The smaller straw box now had a thick coating of congealed white paste, with some was touching my hairbrush.

3. The colorful mats I recently purchased to cover up the drab grey linoleum flooring were now the massive, floor-wide prime breeding grounds for a gooey fungus mess.

It was one disturbingly nauseating scene of supreme ickyness.

After a couple minutes of frantic, out of mind despairing cries of horror to my flatmate, I sat crouched in a little ball in the middle of my apartment - strategically equidistant from my mold infested bedroom and the dark corner of mysterious dead-animal smell – and with my eyes tightly shut tried desperately to pretend I wasn’t living in a sea of icky dirty germs.. but I was surrounded with no escape. The mold had taken over my life, as my puzzling 2-week long, resistant-to-all-medication cold, my flatmate Winnie’s hacking cough, general feeling of illness and the funky smell in dark corners were all readily explained. (A Google search helped explain to us the dire situation we were faced with http://healthandenergy.com/mold_dangers_&_remedies.htm) And now it dared to invade and conquer the walls, floors and beds in our apartment!

Paralyzed in a state of germ/fungus fear, I immediately called a sane, rational “I’m not afraid of dirty things” boy to come to our rescue. Scott, who lives in a dry, fungus free apartment on the 5th floor, calmly removed all obviously fungus infested items and politely indulged a few of my juvenile freakout rants. We called Prem, the company’s outsourced caretaker of the apartments they owned, so he could witness the hazardous conditions firsthand.

He said he’d send the pesticide people over the next day, but I scoffed. What do bug people know about crazy mold invasions? I began to miss my previous life of convenience in the US, where there is a 24 hour 1-800 number for any and every emergency. Had an out-of-control party, trashed the house while your parents were out of town and are going out of your mind cleaning before they arrive in 5 hours? 1-800-Dial a Maid. Did your sewage line backup in your 150 year old Georgetown house and is currently flooding out the basement aka bedroom of your 2 best girlfriends? 1-800-Plumber. (Unfortunately, I can attest to the latter.)

Slumping into the couch, I realized I had no idea who to call to remedy this problem, or even if there was anybody to call. Despair set in. Mulling over the obtrusive dankness and soggy atmosphere of our ground level apartment, Winnie and I soon agreed that this fungus problem would never be completely resolved. The only solution would be to relocate.

So, after a flurry of emails between us and the housing management personnel, in which we briskly rebutted their claim that if pesticide people went ‘spritz spritz’ here and there with some toxic chemical cocktail (which is probably illegal in the US) the mold problem would be erradicated forever. The conclusion - this weekend we’re moving up a couple floors to another apartment(hopefully with a fabulous palm tree/city vista.)

Have to run off now to the launch of a microfinance joint venture downtown – delving into the excitement of the non profit world with jolly British folk. Cheers!

Back from the Desert

Good News - Have a camel-leather Indiana Jones safari hat and desert sand in my shoes.

Bad News - Returned to find apartment rank with dead animal smell and bedroom is now the breeding grounds for a peculiar white powdery mold. And both my flatmate Winnie and I are definitely sick. Attack of the spores!

"I'm living where??" A Recount of First Impressions.

As much as I love to claim how great of a traveler I am and can handle any situation, I must now admit I was definitely experiencing full-on culture shock the first weeks in India. Of course, this is immensely easier to recognize and admit in retrospect than in real time.

As I’m feeling more at home here in Bangalore, it’s amazing to look back on my first impressions of the city. In understanding what was so glaringly disturbing then- and yet barely recognize now - my western tendencies and expectations are perfectly outlined.

Oddly, the most frustrating obstacle began before I even began my misadventures in south Asia. The lack of coherent, correct representation Bangalore received in the international press rendered me lost on what to make of Bangalore before our first baffling encounter. The press, friends abroad, everybody either loved it or hated it.

Luckily I had a suspicion that remembering my observations when I first got here would be helpful down the road… so after spending the initial hectic 10 days exploring everything from grimy gridlocked traffic to fashionable 5 star hotels to getting lost in the neighborhoods on the outskirts of town, I had seen reasonable amount of the city. And fusing the detached experiences together in this new hometown of mine was a confusing challenge.

Thus, I was totally clueless, and recorded the subsequent confusion:

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A fragment from the first few weeks - "Meeting Stupefaction, Disorientation, and Chaos. Welcome to your new life in India.”

Where is the real Bangalore? On the dusty streets of this city’s scattered slums, on the immaculate, manicured gardens, of info tech companies, or stuck between crumpled government forms in a mountain of paperwork on a corrupt official’s desk?

After scouring through most of the media commentary on Bangalore wondering what the rest of the world thinks of this place, I’ve concluded that nobody actually has it right.

Not that I do either, but most pieces seem to be completely one-sided. Either a western journalist comes to Bangalore, visits the gorgeous IT companies expensive, lush campuses, has a personal army of attendants including chef, butler, driver, and is whisked in a A/C sedan from swanky hotel room to corporate board room but never takes the time to step out onto the crumbing sidewalk, getting that ubiquitous Bangalore dust/sand all over Kenneth Cole loafers, just to a glimpse of what real life is here.

Of course, this journalist sees the incredible promise of a nation filled with intelligent twenty-somethings hungry to use their vast knowledge in the global labor market, large IT consulting firms built up from nothing who are now securing multi-million dollar deals with American MNC’s, and a workforce asking for a fraction of the costs of industrialized nation’s labor. This writer will also make sure to mention the glittery, fully air-conditioned malls which sell Versace perfume next to a vast selection of international weekly news magazines, the preponderance of amenities catering to a westerner’s expat salary (as he recalls those ritzy bars in which he’s been enjoying a 2 buck top shelf whisky). He will then conclude that Bangalore is on the verge of greatness, wonderfully poised to take the world by storm.

The next day, I’ll read another article which takes the opposite stance, written by a journalist who cannot see past the underdevelopment of the city. Semi-exposed sewage drains, mangled dogs staggering across the streets, crowded rows of buildings with dangerously exposed electrical wiring are painfully blatant to the western eye. He’ll proclaim the city doesn’t stand a chance if the government is unable to efficiently upgrade the lagging road system and enforce pollution controls.

Then, as he jumps out of his 20 rupee (50 cent) auto-rickshaw ride through downtown Bangalore, glad to still be alive after a harrowing jaunt dangerously careening through hundreds of motorcycles and gargantuan city buses, he’ll question the safety standards and wonder aloud how people live past the age of 20. Then he’ll scribble in his notebook how there is no “downtown” with pretty buildings and new sidewalks, but instead just another typical sandy street crammed full of coffee shops and little storefronts, teeming with window shoppers nudging each other about while horns blare deafeningly over their chatter. He’ll finally declare Bangalore is simply a large village, not worthy of the title “city” and dither on about what changes he thinks should occur.

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Having to reconcile these opposing views can be extremely aggravating, especially when you're actually trying to fit your life into the equation as well. I’ve gotten beyond most of the frustration, and now appreciate all the sides to the city while not getting caught up in one extreme viewpoint. The longer you stay here it begins to make sense, as hidden understandings are revealed as you learn the landscape.

Although... there are still moments where my eyes end up transfixed on extraordinary scenes, such as a posse of young urchins screaming/dancing/yelling/waving wildly to onlookers as they run with a multicolored rickety wooden cart of a neon Ganesha idol (a popular Hindi god resembling an elephant), throwing flowers and beating drums all over the street. Simultaneously, the glaringly emaciated cow who hangs outside my apartment complex munching on corn husks and newspaper no longer fazes me in the morning as I sprint across the street in high heels to catch the bus.

No doubt, in another month from now I’ll have completely new revelations and declare “Really, I’ve got it all figured out now!”… but until then... its good.

(Side Note. Last week a journalist and photographer from the San Jose Mercury News spent time with me and the other kids here - listening to our tales of how we all ended up here, played poker with us, and checked out out living quarters and work life. They seemed to want to dig deeper than other journalists in finding out what Bangalore is all about, and spent 2 exhausting weeks traversing the entire city, interviewing and meeting as many people as they could from all walks of life. Apparently, they got enough material for a 6-segment story, mainly focusing on NRI's (Non-Resident Indians) and Expats choosing to live in Bangalore. Should be interesting to read....)


Off to northern India for the long weekend – Dehli, Rajasthan and Jaisalmer. Exploring a big Indian city, catching a midnight train, then camel riding and folk dancing in the desert close to the Pakistan border. Be back with stories.

Revisiting American Movies

One vital move before departing the United States: raiding Best Buy in search of hard to find titles I knew I couldn't possibly discover in the black market dvd/electronics markets in China and India despite my highly refined back-alley hunting skills. (A few of the gems from Best Buy spree - Neverending Story, Primer -- sweetest sci-fi movie of all time-- Logan's Run, AquaTeen Hunger Force Seasons 1-3, Black Stallion, Little Monsters... all classics and virtually impossible to procure here.)

Combined with extensive black market dvd shopping in Hong Kong and India last month, (equal parts shady and exciting) I've amassed a collection of supremely random/obscure/wonderful titles and can usually find a movie to fit whatever mood I may find myself caught in, but still... something was lacking.

Then I realized, I haven't set foot in a movie theatre in months. 3 months, to be exact.

There's only so long black market grainy dvds obviously taped from the back row of a theatre by a dude with a wobbly hand can tie you over.

So tonight we're going all out, invading the plush 35-seater in Bangalore's shiny new mall which luckily plays American movies (although 2 at a time, ~6 months after the US release.) Apparently a wide array of food and drink is served, complete with an intermission to get up to strech your legs and scratch your belly. A movie I don't even recognize is playing, Transporter 2? It has fast cars and American movie stars, which is enough of a temptation for me.