Just for fun, I’ll let you all hitch a ride for a few minutes in the little white Indica shuttle cab I took back and forth to work every day when I was in Hyderabad. Believe it or not, this was a very tame ride in comparison to most days.
My husband loved watching it. He said, “It’s poetry. So many juxtapositions of wealth and utter poverty. From within the insulations of the car you also feel a tinge of motion sickness. It’s almost hypnotic.”
Enjoy!
Last night, my colleagues and I hired a driver named Mohammed to take us to do a bit of shopping and out to Angeethi, a restaurant specializing in tasty Punjabi food in Banjara Hills, which is on the other side of Hyderabad from where we are staying. Mohammed has been a driver for the firm for at least the past five years, so he has gotten to know numerous ex-pats and people like myself who are in India on short-term visits.
On our way home from dinner, he quickly drove past the cab office in order to pick up something he wanted to show us. It was a business card album and it was chock-full of cards he’s received from all the people he’s driven. Mohammed also showed us photos he’s had taken of himself with some of these people too. He was really proud of his album and the connections he’s made. He had gotten to know some of these people quite well over the course of driving them back and forth to the office each day. (My favorite anecdote was his description of the female partner who sometimes would “self-drive” to work. It’s somewhat incomprehensible to the male drivers that women would actually want to drive themselves anywhere.)
We were tickled by this, of course, but it made me realize that the ways in which we connect to each other and establish relationships is less important than the fact that it happens and how we benefit somehow from these connections. He got to know three more employees of a company he is proud to serve, and we received excellent service from a driver whom we will recommend to others (and call upon again for ourselves on subsequent visits.) We’re shaking hands and sharing something that creates an impression, whether it’s with a business card or via a Tweet. I regret that I didn’t have any business cards with me to give him, but at least I’m in the photo.
Namaste from India! I’m a little bit behind on my blog posts but I have been keeping my tweets relatively up to date.
You can say “efficient” and “airport” in the same sentence
I arrived in Hyderabad around 11p.m. Friday night. This is my fifth trip here (which frankly, amazes me.) For years, I’ve been flying into the rickety and dingy Rajiv Ghandi International Airport, which has recently been replaced with the bright, shiny, brand-new Rajiv Ghandi International Airport nowhere near the former one. Transfers and transactions of any type usually take an indeterminate period of time in India, but I got through customs within five minutes, all the while marveling at the clean expanses of white walls, white and grey-flecked marble and recessed lighting. When I got to the baggage carousel, the luggage was already spilling onto the conveyor belt. That is a benchmark Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport can only dream of replicating.
It wasn’t anything like what I experienced when I happened to arrive at the same time as several planeloads of pilgrims returning from the Hajj. That was both a circus and cultural serendipity: the hordes of weary Muslims, jumbled cargo piling up everywhere (often boxes or burlap sacks secured with twine and duct tape) and the maw of family waiting outside to welcome them with flower garlands and gifts.
This time, the airport was all so clean, orderly and quiet, I was actually kind of let down.
Indulgences and diversions
First thing on Saturday morning, after enjoying a tasty masala omelette (onions, tomatoes and hot chillies – not for the faint of heart) I headed straight for the hotel spa and had some foot reflexology done. Our bodies are not meant to travel through space and across multiple time zones at 500 mph. I have learned that it is a necessity to do things that are beneficial to helping your body get settled once back on the ground. Lots of water, lots of daylight and lots of bodywork. (Chilies are optional.)
In the afternoon, I visited Golconda Fort with my co-workers. Golconda Fort is amazing, just breathtaking in its size and overall preservation. It also has terrific views of Hyderabad. The men who were vying to be our paid guides were indignant that I didn’t want to hire them. “Well, madam, how are you going to know where to go?” They were disappointed and somewhat suspicious when I said I’d been there before.
Check out my photostream on Flickr on this page – I’ve posted a bunch of photos from the fort, including a spectacular and rather fearsome-looking shot of the goddess Kali Ma (Mother Kali) painted on a large boulder at a shrine located near the top. Those things that are often terrifying in one way can also be seen as liberating in another.
For me, the best part about these excursions are the Indian families who ask you to be in their family pictures. They walk up, shyly, holding their camera and before you know it, you’re posing with a bunch of people you’ll never see again – but you’re in their family album for life. I have to wonder at this point how many families in Hyderabad and Delhi have my grinning face in their collection of “snaps.” It’s like being a very, very, very minor celebrity.
Ma Bell is not the ill communication…but Skype is
Somehow the international calling feature on my cell phone was never activated, and I’ve had difficulty getting hold of AT&T to get it switched on. Making a landline call in India is like putting a wastepaper basket in the middle of a dark room, standing in one corner of that dark room with your dominant hand tied behind our back and trying to toss a small rubber ball into said basket. That’s why everyone here has cell phones.
Apparently, AT&T customer service doesn’t answer emails either. (I know, I know. They’re a phone company.) But that’s OK. In another year or so, they’ll be known as something else with the same lousy customer service and life will go on. You can change your name, but that doesn’t mean you can just change what you are. I say this with the authority of someone who is on their fourth last name.
Anyway, thanks to my co-worker, I have discovered Skype. I used earlier this evening and was really pleased at the quality. I don’t have a webcam on my computer, so they couldn’t see me (jet lagged and haggard) but I got to see my daughter toddling around, laughing, babbling, getting into things, squirming on Daddy’s lap and blowing kisses to me. I also got to see my dog’s tail and ears bobbing as she skittered through the room (happy birthday, Jazz!) My husband and I have sent some emails back and forth for the past day, but it was so unsatisfying. He’s not chatty on email like I am. Skype gave me the next best thing to actually being at home – and we talked for an HOUR for free!
I deployed a new intranet portal this morning. This was my first time taking a portal from concept to production and although I’m happy that it went successfully, deployments always leave me feeling somewhat anticlimatic once the site goes live. No time to rest on my laurels – there’s at least one more percolating as I type this and more to come over the next few months.
I went to the travel clinic today to update my immunizations and get prescriptions for Malarone and Cipro before I head off to India tomorrow evening. I had to get a typhoid and second dose of hepatitis B vaccines this time. Because I do energy healing (Reiki), I feel the effects of these vaccines on my body very quickly. Within a couple of minutes of the injection, I could feel my body begin to respond to the vaccines. I wouldn’t call it a reaction the way physicians have defined it, but I must have looked really “off” because the nurse asked me if I was OK.
After months of resisting, I started a Flickr account. You can see images from my Photostream further down the page. Frankly, I don’t get what’s so great about Flickr. Its interface is not intuitive at all and it takes a while to set up sets and organize photos.
I much prefer Photobucket, particularly since I can quickly share individual photos, videos or albums by copying and pasting the URLs, which are formatted for several different applications: email/IM, direct link, HTML code and IMG code. I don’t necessarily want to inundate everyone with my Photostream; I may just want to show them a couple of pictures or video from an album. Setting up albums is really easy too. Flickr has a slick interface and photos take on an almost luminous quality, but Photobucket’s is more user-friendly.
Now, what did impress me about Flickr is the EXIF data stats it captures from your photo files. It’s hard not to be awed by that much information, which may or may not ever be of any use to the average person shooting snapshots.
The taxonomist in me couldn’t help but get excited about the organization of so much information! Of course I was curious and checked out their advanced search functionality to see if it was possible to search on this wealth of metadata, but alas, those fields do not seem searchable, at least not without significant effort. (If someone has figured it out, I’m sure they will let me know. It’s a good challenge for my SLA colleagues.) Still, that was one of those serendipituous finds that will help me learn more about how my camera works and what conditions to replicate if I want a similar look for future photos.
Well, time to stop procrastinating and start packing. Thursday will not end for me until sometime after midnight on Saturday morning India Standard Time when I touch down in Hyderabad.
See you on the other side of the world!
I understand the issues in the New York Times article quite well. It’s why I was left feeling conflicted. My husband Seth and I have been working out our own parental balancing act since our daughter Ahleia was born last year. Seth also has a son from a previous marriage and had very intentionally chosen to be actively involved in River’s daily life and upbringing through his own version of equally-shared parenting with his ex-wife. Yet, things shifted a bit more radically once Ahleia was born.
My mothering began with fathering
They actually began shifting within 24 hours of Ahleia’s birth. I had a massive post-partum hemmorhage and am fortunate to be here, writing about it now. I was in the hospital for about a week after she was born, and for a while could not do much other than hold her from time to time. For the first two weeks of her life, I did not change a single diaper. It was her father who took care of her – changed her diapers, soothed her and helped feed her. All while simultaneously tending to me, chasing down the lactation consultants and updating our families on my progress. Once I was home, my friend Sharon, my mother and mother-in-law all spent time helping out until I could take care of Ahleia without assistance.
But in the beginning, Seth did it all.
Yay for FWA!
I took four months of maternity leave and prior to my return, my manager called me to discuss how we would restructure my work schedule. I was easily able to negotiate a four day full-time work week. I go into the office three days and work from home one day per week. Seth retained his normal five day schedule. No one at his job asked him if he wanted to pursue a flexible-work arrangement. I’m sure it never even occurred to them.
Most companies just don’t get that productivity and results do not always result from five days in the office right under the boss’s nose. I’ve also been telecommuting at least part of the work week for the past 8 years, as part of a virtual team based in several offices in the U.S. and India.
However, the article tends to give corporate America a bad rap. Granted, many companies need to get a reality check, but don’t assume you will always have to battle it out with The Man in order to have quality time with your family. I think a lot of it has to do with the size of the company you work for, their acceptance of diversity and how clued in management is about how technology can make people work smarter and more efficiently.
Flex time = free time, right?
Ironically, there is a lingering perception that I have more flexibility in my schedule because of my “flexible work arrangement.” There was an interesting point mentioned in the article – that women’s jobs are always perceived as being more flexible than men’s, regardless of their job title or responsibilities. That perception was challenged recently when our nanny was bed-ridden after a nasty case of gastroenteritis and I could not just take two days off to watch Ahleia. Ultimately, Seth and I had to find ways to modify our schedules so that one of us could watch her while the other one worked. I won’t say it went smoothly or easily, but we got through it.
Tie one on (the apron, that is)
I travel for my job. My husband does not. Sometimes the travel is infrequent, but during certain times of the year, I may be on a plane two or three times a month. When I do go out of town, he takes on the responsibility of caring for two children, in addition to his full-time job and all of the normal household tasks. It’s like being a temporary single parent, but he doesn’t complain and he actively supports my career.
On Thursday, I’m leaving for India for 9 days, which is a long time to be away from my family. It’s also a long time for him to assume total responsibility for the kids, the house, the dog…everything. I’m sure he’ll return the favor one day. 
Happy Father’s Day!
