this one is for the linguists

Long Distance Scrambling and the Typology of WTF-questions: A Minimalist Approach to Life in India

Tonight Gina and I were discussing the Chomskyan grammar of life at the Asia Pacific office and at points I was laughing so hard I almost thought I would die. Think "SPEC of AP" and "Long Distance Passive" and "Blocking Effects" and "The Last Resort Principle" and "Dependent on the Syntax of Local Processes" and "Local Binding" and "Long Distance Head Movement" and so on.

OK, you probably (1) had to be there and (b) had to have spent at least four years of your life immersed in X-bar theory and (iii) have I mentioned the copious amounts of alcohol? Gina just dragged her jet-lagged ass to bed, but seriously, I am still laughing.

india: entertainment capital of the world

Gina and I just polished off a bottle of wine and now we're flipping through the available TV offerings. This guy has been talking for the last 15 minutes:




Updated to add: OMG we just cruised by that channel again and now he's SINGING!!

Jesus tapdancing christ! It only gets better (different channel)!:



Do we think YOG SCIENCE CAMP is anything like band camp?

bendy

Gina arrived this afternoon, which means my remaining two days will be a lot more fun, in addition to a lot more likely to involve alcohol consumption.

She was just looking through the kitchen cabinets and found a package of straws that she purchased almost a year ago back in the old neighborhood of the original corporate apartment. I had noticed the package before but never looked at it, since I don't use straws. Gina just pointed out to me why she bought them:



BENDY STRAWS PVT. LTD.!!!! NEW WAY TO ENJOY DRINKS!!!

Pvt. Ltd. (Private Limited) is the Indian equivalent of "inc." in the U.S., by the way.

Now I am instructing her on the Mysterious Ways of The Corporate Apartment, including what to do when the lights go out, how to get filtered water, how to use a pen to wiggle the washing machine latch, what that crazy chirping sound is (doorbell), what to do if you hear running water (INVESTIGATE IMMEDIATELY), etc. It's a lot to learn, but Gina is a smart cookie and I'm sure she will survive the 5 or 6 days here without me starting Saturday.

bada bing bada bombay

By the time the plane touched down in Bombay last night I'd already been called "sir" THREE TIMES. Once by the gate agent at JFK and twice by a flight attendant. Awesome.

Many things about India make me crazy, as you probably have gathered. One of those things is people's inability to behave like civilized human beings at the airport. At the baggage claim I actually had occasion to say to someone, out loud, "Are you fuckin' KIDDING me? Jesus Christ!" Which I guess doesn't speak much for my own ability to act civilized, but I'd just had an 80-pound suitcase heaved into my legs with no room to recapture my balance. Here's a tip for my fellow travelers: if y'all would leave your damned luggage carts off to the side instead of lining them up directly against the baggage conveyor belt, we'd all have room to actually pick up our bags and go the hell home without injury or use of the word 'fuck.'

Fernando is here, so that's nice, but he will be gone after tomorrow night. So we only get 48 hours of pretending to hate each other.

bombay bound

I'm off to Bombay again tomorrow, for just three weeks this time. That little jackass Fernando is still over there, and the lovely Cathy will be overlapping with my trip for the final few days, so the whole thing seems like it might in fact be bearable. And I hear there is a new fridge at the apartment that actually gets below 62 degrees Fahrenheit. And I am taking along my 12-year-old ironing board cover to donate to the apartment because it is in better shape than the twice-used one we bought at Hypercity.

Last night a few jerks people came over and we drank beer and insanely high-alcohol zinfandel and ordered in pizza from Little Star around the corner. If you have never had Little Star pizza, please drop whatever you are doing and go get some. Really, it's OK--I'll wait.

I spent last weekend with my friend (and fellow MEOW member) Claudia. Claudia's dog Reilly is hilarious and also very cute. To wit, the Stuffed Monkey Massacre series:





Claudia collects whisks and she'd recently decided they needed cleaning, so her kitchen resembled...um, I guess it resembled a place where there are a whole lot of clean whisks:



Claudia is evil and she forced me to buy out some beautiful clearance yarn (merino and cashmere) at Stonemountain & Daughter, which is primarily a fabric store but which also carries a small selection of some damn fine yarn. I also got more Noro Silk Garden to make another one of those stripes-within-stripes scarves. We spent a lot of the weekend either at knitters' gatherings or planted in front of the TV watching the final season of The Wire from start to finish, so I finished the scarf by Sunday evening.



Speaking of knitting, if you are in the market for an ass-kicking knitting guide, order yourself a copy of my friend (and yet another MEOW member) Vickie's new book, Knit Aid. And by the way, Vickie is 800,000 times hotter even than she looks in the drawing on the book cover, as evidenced by this (or any other) photo of her:



Hot, smart, and crafty...just the way I like 'em.

meet 'n' eat

We have our weekly Linguistic Technology Group all-hands meetings here on Thursdays at 1:00, just as we do in the San Francisco office--because if you expect me to give up any of the thirty or forty functioning brain cells I have left just to remember two different meeting times depending on what country I'm in, you are going to have to pry them out of my cold, dead hands. Today in a shameless bid for the hearts and minds of my employees, I ordered fancy cake to be brought in for the meeting, since this is the last Thursday I will be here for a while. When I say this was a bid for the hearts and minds of my employees, I am of course joking ha ha. In truth, given the smallish nature of our group at the moment (13 people plus me plus Big Anil minus Ksheeroda who is out on leave and minus Kulajit who is out with chicken pox), it was an excellent way for me to present myself as a thoughtful and generous manager while simultaneously near-guaranteeing that I would have leftover cake to take home. And so has it come to pass that my dinner tonight was coated with chocolate ganache, and now I have a headache and am in a sugar coma, possibly exacerbated by the fact that my lunch also consisted entirely of pastry (see above reference to 1:00 meeting time).

All this is just further proof that it was wise of me to join the gym near my apartment today. Near my apartment in San Francisco, I mean. Now, I am as technologically savvy as the next girl (provided that the next girl regularly discovers that the "problem" with her computer is that it is not plugged in), but still it delights me to no end that thanks to the Magic of the Internet, I am able to sit 10,000 miles away from the Club One at Fillmore Center and yet still take advantage of their current "Join in February and Get March Free!" offer without so much as lifting a phone or faxing a document. Now I am eagerly awaiting the day when the Internet can also do my workout for me, because it is on that day that I will know we have truly achieved utopia, and presumably by then I will also be able to get my cake via a personal Star Trek-style replicator while simultaneously enjoying a bergamot oil scented foot rub from Patrick Stewart.

Speaking of Star Trek, earlier this week I was cc'd on an email of which one of the only four other recipients was Adam Nimoy, son of Leonard, and that made me feel either extremely cool or extremely dorky, I'm not sure which. The reason for my tangential brush with Hollywood royalty involves my providing "notes" on a friend's screenplay-in-progress that shall remain nameless for now, but which involves the use of paintball as a metaphor for...well, I don't want to ruin the surprise.

Alert readers may have noticed that it is Thursday, and may recall that the latest promise extracted from the charlatan gypsy flimflam artist person from whom I recently ordered multiple salwar kameez sets was that they would be couriered to me on Wednesday. Guess what remains uncouriered? I finally managed to get her on the phone today after an embarrassing scene involving our office manager reminding me about that time a few weeks ago when he asked whether I needed the local line on my desk phone and I said no, just the VOIP line was fine, and also the throwing of my hands skyward while exclaiming "Punit, your country's technology baffles me!" and also a short tutorial on How To Use Your Indian Cellphone (You Moron). So after all that, I learned that it is allegedly a single custom dyed dupatta (shawl-y thing) that is holding up the order, and swear-to-ganesh it will be ready by Monday. To which I replied "Sujata, beeyotch, do not go playin' me like that." Actually no I didn't.

Meanwhile, today I wore yet another new ethnic outfit and it was the source of many delighted comments. Anuja, our lead HR admin person, stopped in her tracks and exclaimed, "You look *totally* Indian!" "It's the blond hair, isn't it?" I said, delicately primping my locks. I am seriously considering wearing only salwar kameez here from now on, because Casual Friday is nothing, my friends, compared to Wear Your Elaborately Embroidered Pajamas To Work Day.

new kidz on the block

I present to you the new DAs:



Richa, Deepa, Shyamesh, Ksheeroda, Hidam, and Devahoti.

true concessions

You might not know it from some of my posts, but there are some things about this country that I really like. My Indian colleagues are great, for starters. When people ask me what I like best about India, that is always what comes to mind.

But I also like how so many of the trucks and buses are painted with colorful designs, and lovingly kept clean--in Bombay, a Sisyphean challenge if ever there was one. Here's a good example:



I also love people's names. Here is a sampling of the first names (in India this is called your "good name") of people in our office: Devahoti, Manasi, Kulajit, Anuradha, Siddhant, Neeraj, Sumit, Vinay, Anuja, Anilkumar, Shyamesh, Punit, Sneha, Ksheeroda, Pinkey, Sudarshan, Deepa, Jasbinder, Chandni, Puja, Chhaya, Shikha, Vishal, Irfan, and Sushmita. And that's just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

baumer's index*

Number of round trips to India since late June: 3
Total number of miles flown: 61,316
Number of those miles seated in coach: 59,730
Frequent flier miles earned: 119,735
Approximate number of hours spent traveling: 180
Number of those hours in business class: 6
Number of standard work days represented by 180 hours of travel: 22.5
Total number of days spent in India: 110
Number of those days sick with traveler's illness: 0
Number of Indian linguists hired for last month's start date at the Mumbai office: 7
Number of linguist job offers accepted so far for January 2008 start date: 6
Target of new hires for January : 8-10
Percentage of DA Team expats who kick ass and without whom I'd have been lost: 100

*pace Harper's Index

linguists on the loose

Today we took the new linguists out to lunch at a place called Kobe Sizzlers. Sizzlers are an odd Indian food phenomenon--they are like those sizzling dishes you get sometimes at Thai or Chinese restaurants, but with way more weird crap. Like, there will be the main protein, such as lamb or chicken or fish or paneer, and then a boatload of rice underneath and a ton of vegetables all around (cabbage, spinach, carrots, beans, tomato, peas, baby corn, onions, and cauliflower), and then some french fries for good measure, all with some kind of gravy and served on a sizzling platter.



Here's Lon enjoying the sizzling smoky goodness:



And here are our new (and a couple of old) colleagues:



Kneeling, left to right: Alex, Robin, Abdul
Standing, left to right: Lon, Anil S., Anil K., Sneha, Anuradha, Manasi, Kulajit, Pinkey

all washed up and comin' at ya

People, I swear to you that there has not been a SINGLE day since June 22, when we arrived, that the Mumbai 5-day forecast has been for anything other than "Scattered T-Storms" across the board. The only thing that has changed is that for the past couple of weeks the temps have been about 5-10 degrees lower than before.

Seriously, why do they even bother updating this thing between June and October?

It has been pouring for the last three days; I hope our flight isn't delayed or canceled. Urrrrggggggggh. San Franciscans, we'll see you at the office on Monday! I know y'all just saw me a few weeks ago, but this time Mr. Alex will be with me. Yay.

I haven't seen Casey in well over a month. Not that I care, because he is a jack@ss. Still, I'm just sayin'. Maybe I miss him a little.

cheese...y

It is possible to make a pretty damn good vegan version of mac 'n' cheese, even without resorting to using soy cheese (which they don't seem to have here anyway; I can't even find vegan margarine):



One out of one Alex agrees that this dish is deliciously edible even if you are not vegan:



In fact, he just walked past me to get seconds.

I am excited about having lunch leftovers, although unfortunately they won't last long enough to take to work on Monday. A friend of mine reminded me this week that we used to take funny Polaroids of ourselves and stick them on our lunches with admonishing messages in the work fridge back at Educational Testing Service. This is a cell phone photo of a photo; I think you can still read the message, but unfortunately you can't really feel the intensity of our collective monitorial glare:



And check it out! I had hair once.

I might actually have a life

Normally I have a pretty subdued social life (primarily because I can't stand any of my colleagues--you guys knew that, right?), but since I'm only back in SF for a couple of weeks it has been non-stop action so far as I try to squeeze in as much as possible. Last night I went with a friend to Cafe du Nord to see Peter Case. I saw him about 20 years ago at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica and then about 10 years ago at Tin Angel in Philadelphia, so it was fun to see him in yet another cool venue at yet another stage of his career. And he referred to Bob Dylan at least four times last night, so you know he's cool.

Special note to Other Karen/Miss Karen/Riggy/killerlouise: Cafe du Nord is just a few doors from Lucky 13. Ahh, memories.

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I already really miss Alex and Casey. The jerks.

partily heartily

Last night was the first annual [mumble-nameofcompany-mumble] Asia Pacific Big Ol' Party with Dancing and Food and Booze. It was so much fun!! It took place at a hotel down the street from work. Traffic was so bad at 6:00 that the people who decided to walk arrived faster than those who left earlier in cars. However, it being monsoon season and all, the ones who drove arrived much less, how you say, totally drenched. Gina was thinking of having a wet tee shirt contest, but only because she was a shoo-in for first place:


Our colleagues over here are a hoot. Some of them seem pretty demure in the office and then you get them on a dance floor and LOOK OUT. I was enlisted for some prolonged swing dancing moves by Godwin, our office manager (the Daniel T. of AP, as we refer to him). These photos aren't from the swing dance interlude, but you get the idea:




I sooooo do not know how to swing dance, incidentally, but it turns out that apparently only one member of the couple needs to know what he or she is doing.

Extensive hypothesis testing throughout the course of yesterday evening allows me confidently to assert that paneer tikka is nature's perfect food. (Because in nature the cheese comes straight out of the cow and directly into a bath of tasty spices and then falls into a tandoori oven and is served with coriander chutney...do I have this right? I don't leave the city much.)

Apropos of, um, well OK nothing (unless maybe he also loves paneer tikka!?), I will also report that I have a major crush on someone:


I watched The Namesake on the plane the other day (along with 17 other movies...damn that's a long flight from JFK to BOM) and I fell in lurrrrve with a certain Irrfan Khan. The double R is for Rrrrrrroww! I like to think of him as the Indian Jeff Goldblum. Casey says he has bug eyes, to which I say (a) what's your point, and (ii) you are just jealous now leave me alone with my screen saver please.

Oh, and speaking of people who are "the (other nationality) (so-and-so)," meet Vikram, our party emcee, a.k.a. the Asia Pacific counterpart to SF's T-Todd:


Vikram's nickname around the office is Big Trouble. And there's Priya with her gorgeous naturally curly hair in the foreground. (I am on a campaign to convince her that her curls are a major feature, not a bug. Seriously, people: girlfriend has some sexy hair.)

Oh! And also yesterday we had our first Hindi lesson. Poor Don and Priya had to be in a class with three linguists who kept turning to each other and saying things like "So Hindi is SOV, then?" and "Ah, it's a flap," and "Cool, postpositions!" and "I got yer velar fricative right here."

Hum khush karmchari hain! (We are happy employees!)

thursday update

First and foremost, Casey is doing much better. In fact, we think he will live. And check this out: the doctor made a house call at 3:30 a.m., gave Casey medicine (including an injection), then came by again this morning (unasked) to check on him and bring him some rehydration tablets to mix with water. The total bill for all this? Six hundred rupees. That's what Americans call, wait for it, $14.83.

Apparently the doctor "sent the bellboy to the chemist" to get some of the medicine. I really like how Indian English maintains a lot of British-ish elements. We're all ladies and gents here, for example, even when we're just getting our hair cut or going to the bathroom.

We are hiring a Hindi tutor to come to the office twice a week and we are very excited about it. I predict we will soon discover that the mysterious script on the back of the auto-rickshaws says "Horn OK Please."

Since much of the Mumbai office is still empty, upon arrival we naturally grabbed three prime pieces of window real estate, which have not only incessant car honking and street noise speaking for them, but also an A/C profile that has exactly two settings: Icelandic Thermal Hot Spring and Icelandic Glacier In January When You're Naked. Anyhoo, you do get a great deal of mesmerizing amusement value any time you stand up and look outside. We three can often be spotted in a row, leaning and looking down the five floors to the major road outside, cameras at the ready, and saying "Oh man, did you see THAT?" Some cases in point from today:





Yes, people, we are in the middle of a megacity. And it's hard to beat a couple of cattle and a wooden cart when you really need to maneuver those crowded urban thoroughfares; I think we can all agree on that. Unless you've got an elephant you can ride, of course, but now I'm just stating the obvious.

Also, I looked up from my chair at some point to encounter this:



The rigging on this guy's gear was seriously scary. And it involved a long metal chain (the kind of chain you use to, say, lock up your bike, or to keep your little brother in his high chair while you go roller skating), which occasionally would slam against the glass next to my head. Alex and I both decided that meant it was time for a coffee break. They're big windows, though, so India's answer to Cirque du Soleil was still in full swing when we got back. The glass is mirrored outside, so I don't think the guy even noticed us staring and pointing at him in terror.

I'll leave you with a photo from our farewell dinner the other night for our colleague Brian. Priya had a knot in her back and upon hearing this Lan helpfully jumped up in the middle of a supremely elegant restaurant in one of the city's grandest hotels and started elbowing Priya in the back with the kind of unbridled enthusiasm usually not witnessed outside of hot dog eating contests and all-girls' junior high school pep rallies:



I [heart] my colleagues!