October 15, 2006

back home

i didn't get to venture out of the city to see the the great, rock-carved seaside temples of mahabalipuram. but, i wet my feet at the beach where a few rows of houses were washed out to sea by the tsunami, threw myself at the feet of a statue of the saint sriramakrishna, and raced through chennai blasting bollywood beats. it's okay. i'm starting to get a handle on this place.

bonus fact: the tamil people have officially only had first names for decades now, and it is a contentious, flammable topic, fit to to be discussed very delicately, never in the company of strangers.

Posted by matti at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2006

yay

you know those text messages you get abroad welcoming you to various networks, like you give two shits? last night I received the best one so far from Airtel, who are trying to be cleverer than they are and apparently didn't recognize my Finnish phone number..

Dear Dummy Customer, Airtel wishes you a pleasant stay in Airtel Chennai. For assistance please call 121. The embassy number for Unknown is

Posted by matti at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)

the nature of history

Had breakfast at the smaller buffet this morning, the one where you sit next to massive windows for a nicer view. This is election day. A colleague told me after lunch he will take me to see Chennai sights for the rest of the day. No idea what it will be like.

Many more people on the streets than is usual for a weekday, and large queues at the polling stations. An air of excitement in the whole town, and a very large law enforcement presence. The local newspaper The Hindu said people could vote without fear, and that about 1,100 of a total of 66,000 voting stations had been certified "sensitive in all respects, gender, class and religion" (i may paraphrase a little).

Posted by matti at 08:43 AM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2006

aside

I believe it is becoming accepted mainstream science that there has been some coevolution between psychoactives, from nicotine to alcohol to thc and human societies, quite possibly even the human race.

sometimes this entanglement takes perverse forms, though. one recent, and by recent i mean "kids these days weren't even born when it happened", incident is recounted from personal experience by kanikoski here. so but india, 15 years later, oneups and outweirds the bulgarian one day no-drink rule. there is a local election here tomorrow, small-scale, in the words of my local main contact dude, "if this was helsinki, it would be like the kapteeninkatu regional election". so in india I guess we're talking a million people, tops. and the level of excitement is palpaby not there. so, to make sure the area, full of religious, socially conservative vegetarian teetotallers doesn't fall further into chaos, there is a strict rule in force: HOTEL MINIBARS SHALL NOT BE RESTOCKED FOR A WEEK BEFORE THE ELECTION.

why do i end up travelling to places like this?

Posted by matti at 07:53 PM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2006

two clichés that turned out true

ONE.

traffic in India is anarchy. well known fact. noted. however, what turns my crank is the use of the horn. as far as I've managed to figure, a honk can mean many things, including the following:

"coming through"

"thank you"

"fuck off!"

"obliged, sir!"

"watch out for that bus!"

"yeah! that's me, I'm the bus!"

"yo, Murugesh! brother! long time."

"can i squeeze in here?"

"this is a lot of traffic. isn't this a lot of traffic, guys?"

"i can't believe there's no one else on this road!"

"wait, did i honk a second ago?"

"truth is one, paths are many"

this is a lot of expression for one sound only, so novelty horns are a craze. with the right composition blaring, you can add such subtleties to your tata sedan's highway vocabulary as "when you ride with me, you ride with the bumblebees."

TWO.

i'm just trying to be somebody I can talk to in the morning with a smile

the water AIN'T SAFE. this is well known. however, there is a genuine dilemma here I can't figure out.

I stepped into the shower this morning. gross thing one, as an aside, was that the bottom of the tub had leaked inside, and by shifting your weight some ancient waters under the near-rigid plastic would shift accordingly, gurgling. a part of me wanted to see what it looks under the tub, but that part came off with a good vigorous scrape and I flushed it.

but back to the water. i yanked the tap handle (which, if you're wondering, is not the name of a dance) and the stuff LOOKED clear enough, but it smelled like, well, so much rotting shit. almost threw up right there. I'd had a completely satisfactory shower the night before, but I suppose this happens every once in a while here. what are you supposed to do? I moseyed to the office unkempt as i'm wont, but I felt like I should have made some sort of excuse. "yeah.. you probably notice I haven't shaved.. it's because your country's infrastructure is a joke."

so yeah.. the work side of things was pleasant today; amazingly enough, after shaking the jetlag funk (which does deserve to be a dance), it's been way easier to relate to my local temporary colleagues. there's still a mite of spattered awkwardness about, borne out of the wide mindgap in subtle affairs like humor, but that's ok: i've been accepted, either as an ok guy or an amusing zoo animal, I don't care.

also, forget about having comments open. hundreds of spam messages a day. rather, drop me a line at keltanen at gmail dot com.

Posted by matti at 09:24 PM | Comments (0)

morning.

you know how sometimes when you wake up from really deep sleep, it takes you a second to remember not only where but also who you are.

this morning i woke up in a very dark room from pathologically heavy (i.e. awesome) sleep, and something in the faintest outline of a room or something surrounding me made me think i was in my bed in my childhood home in imatra, finland. i had to fast-forward 10 years to remember how i ended up here.

btw, i re-enabled comments here. especially: if you can think of something i should definitely do or experience in chennai, drop a note there, i would appreciate any tips.

Posted by matti at 07:57 AM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2006

on food and equality

the price of a small beer in the hotel's bar is equal to 200 samosas from the old local guy at the office canteen.

so far i've slept way too little, overeaten, starved, lost appetite for long stretches of time, had a very weird half-day bout of intense stomach-ache, but mostly been tired, cranky and down. and this is day 3 of the trip. now it's looking brighter though, the project i'm here on is looking ok and i got my first chance to walk around and smell the air, and decided to remedy my nutrition & sleep situation by a regime of lassi, naan, vindaloo, paan and antihistamines. i ended up blowing, like, over 5 euros on dinner. i had punjabi food, even if it can make you sikh. *rimshot* but how does one have fun in a conservative place like chennai, as an outsider? (any ideas?) besides people relate to you in really weird ways. i mean, let's face it, the retail price of the clothes i wear would buy a family food for a year. kind of puts a damper on the point-and-laugh instinct.

then again, dude who services my hotel room is the indian version of kramer.

it's the little things:

Posted by matti at 07:10 PM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2006

monday.

a series of pointless observations.

dengue fever epidemic spreads with increasing velocity in delhi. that is awesome news for an uninoculated traveller in india. then again, north korea just tested a nuke, which prolly makes it safer to be here than in the west. i find myself hoping delhi is bff with pyongyang.

best thing so far today: great hotel breakfast starring onion, coconut and coriander chutneys with south indian fried bread type things. AND kickass bacon. mental note: request doggy sack.

worst thing so far today: office coffee was so intense that it remained black with its volume of cream poured into it. well, that's the good part. the bad part is it was Kill Kill Kill Stupid Foreigner Jape #1: the cream curdled solid on impact. well, the little pot of coffee did have a sticker on it that said "decauction". was that a warning?

and i guess if that is the worst thing today, that's still pretty good.

everyone's friendly and helpful, and nobody's gotten (visibly) upset about my gaffes. i mean, there's the I Make You Repeat Business friendly of taxi drivers, and then there's The World Makes A Bit More Sense If We're Cool With Each Other type friendliness. generally the vibe with people is great, apart from how i decided to fire my driver (aka get someone else next time) as i got sick of his trying to arrange all sorts of trips with him for "little extra cost".

also, he just took me shopping without me asking. fucking sheraton appointed driver swerved to (prolly his friend's) shop going "oh! seasonal sale!", i was like "you want to go check something out? go, knock yourself out" and then dude just stood by car. i checked out the shop (carpets and sofas, basically) and came out empty-handed, which worried him. he was all, "what happened, sir?" ... and yet, i can't start reprimanding my driver. i should, but that'd make me feel too much like, i don't know, england?

but yeah this feels like I'm back somewhere I've already been. maybe it's because all foreign countries, you know, look the same for a boy from the boons. or, maybe it's because it's because...

appendix A. table of déjà vu elements.

	Kuwait city	Chennai
Temperature	Hot as all hell	Hot as most of hell
Station	Cubicle(!) on the 8th floor in archetypal technology company	Cubicle(!!) on the 8th floor in archetypal technology company
Coffee acquisition	Someone brings you almost what you want, when they want	Someone brings you almost what you want, when they want*
I am surrounded by	Indian techies	Indian techies
Quality of hotel	Disproportionate	Ludicrous
Best food around	Awesome Indian, cheap	Awesome Indian, cheap

* but luckily, the coffee dude here has this sense of togetherness. i mean, dude just looks like he's doing his job. in fact i think one of the guys here was just being helpful. maybe he's the CEO. meanwhile last year, the gentleman in charge of coffee logistics in my arabic control group had a heartbreaking air of having been repeatedly whacked over the head over his life, hard. then again, the milk in the coffee he brought was never off. ok, call that a tie.

so, as as everyone tells me (and a few people have shouted from a passing bus) the chennai beach is the 2nd longest in asia, which i'll want to see then. but my hotel driver tried to pull Kill Kill Kill Stupid Foreigner Jape #2: they say it has special sand, special silicone sand, that filters the seawater and makes the ground moisture drinkable 10 meters inland from where the waves stop. suuuuure.

also in the learn-something-every-day column, me and my mega-helpful liaison officer got mutually baffled over lunch: he tried to figure out how to explain to a foreigner that chennai does not have a 'downtown' really, and i was trying to wrap my european brain around the idea that a city somehow does not have a heat-focus point / high street / CBD next to the square with the church.

in finnish traffic, everything works most of the time because people observe rules. in indian traffic, everything works most of the time because people observe people. WAY too much, even. i am actually typing this in the back of a gridlocked cab, and people shuttling past in packed rickshaws (usually hundreds at a time) all look at me and grin.

something about this trip is doing my head in.

Posted by matti at 05:37 PM | Comments (0)

quick! learn the local language!

excerpts from a hindi phrasebook:

hello = NA-MA-SKAR
goodbye = ACH-HA [people reply with "bless you"—how sweet! -m.]
doctor = DOCTOR
police = PU-LIS
pharmacy = CHEM-IST
taxi = TAXI
train = TRAIN
subway = SUB-WAY
bus = BUS
beef = (forbidden)
chicken = CHIC-KEN
lamb = LAMB
fish = MACH-LI
pork = PORK
veal = (forbidden)
ham = HAM
soup = SOUP
chocolate = CHOCOLATE
coffee = COFFEE
tea = CHAI
milk = DOODH ["how do you want your coffee, sir?" "doodh! sweet!"]
beer = BEER

this is great! hindi is 95% like english, only REAL-LY SLOW AND LOUD, and some words are forbidden.

Posted by matti at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)

jetlag dump

room 2408, itc park sheraton & towers, chennai, india. 3am. freshly arrived.

bet this is the first thing everyone says on their first trip to india, but: this country is almost entirely unpopulated.

outside the airtport i saw no one but about 5 homeless guys and one stray dog. during the 15-minute drive to the hotel, i took a census of everyone i saw: 8 rickshaws and one stray horse. at the hotel, lounges and lobbies and shops and restaurants galore, all shut, unlit. i wandered around the hotel a little bit cos it had this desolate feeling to it.. it's very odd. there was but one security guard kicking back in a recliner in the dark (when he too thought, reasonably, there was no one else around).

also, so far the whole "5 star deluxe", "best hotel in the state" thing is letting me down like a mofo. my room smells of old people, and the only food i could get after midnight in the rather run-of-the-mill 24-hour coffee shop was a chicken tikka burger, and honestly it drew a tie with the food i'd had on the plane. which by the way, frequent flyer tip #17: you never know if your german airline's steward/ess' grandparents were nazis so you should always demand a kosher meal, and then slowly pick at it and frown at them. but i digress. the ultimate test for any hotel is of course breakfast. i mean, aside from hygiene maybe, what else really matters? if i haven't caught any evil bugs yet, i will check it out tomorrow and report if there's anything interesting about it at all. but so far, i am ranking this hotel 3 units of goodness below a nice, big, well furnished krakovian hostel room (which costs 1/10 of this).

on the gastrointestinal side, my minimal background research on india recommended mortal fear of everything remotely comestible. and i do have to admit that it is gloomy to just basically wait for the inevitable first-time traveller's dysentery, malaria and, who knows, st. vitus dance maybe. if the rest of the event of the journey prove as successful as it has been — o, let it not be so — i will come back with something really exotic and uncomfortable, like a rare deadly strain of tourette's.

p.s. congratulations to the perky little folks on LH 758 from Frankfurt who partook in the impromptu World's Loudest Baby competition, you little winners you. fuckers. I hope you grow up to be tech support.

Posted by matti at 03:06 AM | Comments (0)