The Routine

A couple weeks without the Internet, but I'm back up and wired. I'm learning patience though. Now that I have the Internet, of course my power cord to my laptop needs to be replaced.

I have received some inquiries into what my daily life is like over here in India and while it is easy to begin to think, “Well, it’s not that exciting”, I do realize that by living in a developing country, one’s daily routine is naturally going to be a little different than back in America.

Like a cow challenging your route to the market.

So from January 3-29^th, as many of you know, I stayed at a guest house in Gurgaon, one of Delhi’s major suburbs. I work from roughly 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. every day. While at the guest house, I arose at about 7:30 a.m. and hoped that I had 1) hot water in the shower, and 2) water pressure. There is a switch to warm the water, but it didn’t always work and my guest house’s water tank was out of water occasionally so the pressure wasn’t always there either. The guest house then called a taxi to pick me up and take me to work, which cost around $5. Depending on traffic it usually took 15-25 minutes to get to work.

At CII, I work in a corner with four desks. I lucked out and have one of the desks next to the window and we’re on the non-sun side of the building, which I think will be nice once it starts to heat up. Lunch is a little different here than back at home. Lunch is at a specific time, 1-1:30 p.m., and there is a cafeteria where everyone eats together. Lunch is available for 30 Rps. (appx. 70 cents) and for that you receive a full tray of an assortment of foods (it’s always vegetarian and usually includes rice, some type of paneer [sauce you put on top of rice, there are many types], a side of a cooked veggie dish, raita [a cold, sweet “liquidy” dish], salad [no lettuce, just cut up veggies] and a dessert [I like them, not every one does, different consistencies, very sweet]). During the day, there is always tea and coffee available. There are hired staff that do everything from collect tea and coffee cups, photocopy for you, and collect the garbages. There is a lot of bureaucracy that I’m learning to work through. Some of it drives me crazy (“We’ve always done it this way”) and some of it is just me adjusting to an organization with 800 employees from one that had eight.

If I was heading back to the guest house at the end of the day, they would call a cab to pick me up from work. If I was going to Delhi after work or during the day, CII’s Gurgaon office has vans that drive to their two Delhi offices five times a day and I could catch a ride with one of them.

My guest house provided food when I wanted to pay for it and it was very good. As for laundry, I did it in my room, either washing the clothes in the sink or shower with me and hanging them to dry. There are also local people who will iron your clothes (although they always come back folded in a plastic bag for transport). I have had lots of time to read; something I knew would be the case and excited me about my trip. I finished The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I’m now on to The Castle by Franz Kafka, the Czech novelist who wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and just finished The Shade of Swords by M. J. Akbar, which gives an incredibly thorough history of Islam and examines its relationship with Christianity over the past 1300+ years. If you’ve ever thought, “Why does this conflict persist? Why can't they make peace?”, this book provides some insight into why that is so incredibly difficult and complicated.

Outside of that, and I’m sure you are all waiting impatiently to hear about Indian cable TV, well it almost always has some American movie, TV show, or cricket match on to pass the time :)