due, wo de zhongwen bu hao... (yeah my mandarin is not good)

Stuck.. dammit,

Another mei guo ren (foreigner) stuck in the small town of Jiantuan, south china after missing a connecting bus. The advise from lonely planet is so true, "When in Yunnan, multiply durations of your plans by two... everything is slower in Yunnan". Well well... things can't be so bad, theres a market and I spotted a muslim restaurant somewhere. It's kind of nice being a foreigner in China sometimes, people leave you to yourself and you are allowed to do stupid things and ask silly questions about the weather, directions, food, internet, etc. Speaking a bit of mandarin is a huge boon, people totally love you if you can speak some. 50 working phrases and you are on your way.

It turns out that the town is pretty nice, reasonable hotel, the prices in markets are reasonable and the shopkeepers don't treat you like a business opportunity. By 11 pm, the roads are deserted and shops closed, bad timing ... no food. Being used to eating a late night snack, I head to the single food joint that seems open. A one-shack affair run by a husband and wife duo, mostly selling boxes of instant ramen.. or "la mian" as chinese would call it. You pick a box, and the lady would pour in boiling water and hand it over in a couple of minutes once it's done. Pretty neat. Then came the intersting observation that they were otherwise totally engrossed in an Indian soap... on CCTV8 the national channel. Atleast it didn't look like the stuff churned out by Ekta kapoor as the characters seemed to be reasonably sane, and didn't turn their heads 3 times accompanied by sound effects whenever they wanted to make a point. Women are quite forthcoming in China, she quickly figured that I was Indian and resembled the characters in the soap. Good for her...

I tried to tell her the particular flavour I wanted by pointing towards the box, but ended up confusing her, attempts to tell her made the situation worse. People in Yunnan have their own distinct "Yunnanese" accent to mandarin, which made my broken mandarin sound like white noise to her. This continued for a short while when she paused, put her hands on her waist and turned around to me. This is what she had to say... (in translation)

woman: You are indian ?

me: Yes.

woman: I understand everything people say in this soap, no problems.

me: (Ahh woman... but that's a dubbed soap).. Yes

woman: But I don't understand what you are telling.

me: Hmm...true, but...

woman: I don't even have to read the sub-titles !

me: (Ahh... woman, a chinese doesn't need to read mandarin subtitles when the dialogues are in mandarin) .. due due. (yes yes, i can see that)

At this point I don't see where she's taking this converstaion to, what's the point in comparing my hard earned.. quite broken.. but still hard earned mandarin. Against, a dubbed dialogue on TV ? Then she comes up with the stunner.

woman: I understand everything they say, but you don't make any sense to me ! Why don't you speak normal mandarin like rest of your countrymen ?

me: (Whattt ! woman... come'on) In a second or two it sinks in that the couple don't realise that the serial is dubbed into mandarin.

As I realise the hilarious situation, and consider making them understand about dubbing, etc. Then a second thought if they are being sarcastic, but a look on their faces tells that they are totally genuine. Wow ! I just feel that I've no business changing their happy notion that Indians speak excellent chinese and that i'm just a stray "Yindu ren" who ended up with mediocre language skills. Also noting her rather compassionate expression...

me: due due.. wo de zhongwen bu hao

The woman turns around to her husband and together they get engrossed into the soap again where the army officer Vivek is speaking eloquent about nature to Sulekha and trying to hold a normal conversation, while being love-sick to the core inside. By now one or two customers who had been there all the while, also lose interest in me and get engrossed in the soap and their noodles. I finish mine and move on too wondering if what the lady said is a sign of things to come, Indians speaking mandarin...Chinese speaking hindi.. well, why not.

Back from post conference, china-vietnam backpacking trip

Hi,

It's been one interesting trip and a great learning experience doing a Beijing, Yunnan, Hanoi land trip. Single, Indian, speaking broken chinese.. travelling around was anything from curious to hilarious for people whom I met :). The decision to travel by land paid off, as I got to see lot of the countryside, landscape and lifestyle of people off-beat towns and cities as well. Still not accounted for money spent, finished my paid leave and ran into red in my bank account for a while. But it's all been worth it. Wo shi huan zhongwen ren. :) Will post some interesting photos along with comments along with other bloggers here...

harish

to be or not to be ...

An interesting comment from a friend sparked off this line of thought about god. Should you assume that there is God if you want to seek ? Or should you start by assuming that God doesn't exist. The latter might sound weird, as you can't find what you think doesn't exist. On thinking further though, the advantages are evident. You are not bound to a religion, not bound to what god can or cannot do, god's form, duality and non-duality...Everything can be thrown out of the window. Tricky.. tricky. What if God is just chaos ?

Why not ??...omni-present, within and without us, mystical, impossible to model or predict, making things even in the long run, something to which one can easily surrender and something that can be both the cause and the affect. Everything fits with chaos, think about it, the Gods have always manifested attributes in us or nature that significantly influence us, shape each moment of our life. God of health, rain, anger, fire, compassion, wind, austerity, light, within, without, within, without. Each chaotic and unpredictable on its own. Even down to trinity, the creator, preservor or destroyer for hindus...when does the creation, preservation or destruction happen... randomness prevails.

What !! I feel depressed now, I'd started from the other side with a God within and around me and just striving to realise it. The earlier thoughts could just be drivel from my limited capacities of observation, but i'm sure it makes some sense. Also, the next logical progression from realising heaven and hell are but in one's mind. There can't be room for a seperate muslim hell, hindu hell, christian and buddhist hells in the universe ... go on pelt me with stones and smelly stuff, but it's a point to think about.

The idea of samadhi or deep contemplation leading to the realisation of oneness stands this hail of doubts though. Even though my feeble attempts to combat the attacks of emotions, memories, desires and ego during meditation leave me far behind in the league contemplators and helpless most of the time. But then... there is hope, most enlightened masters who are somebody somewhere have said that human birth is exalted and is ideal for self-realisation.

An accident back home ...

Came to know today that parents had a fall from their two wheeler a couple of days ago and luckily nothing happened. Also that a small boy ran in front of my father's scooter some other time, and got injured as he got confused and fell. Both unfortunate incidents.. the first left mother shaken up at the state of roads, and the second read to harrassment by the boy's family .. first his uncle, then mother and finally father showing up and trying to get money out of my father.

This has left me quite disturbed, not that i've not seen such things. It's the usual case of people putting the motorist at fault by default, and definitely so if the injured is a woman or child. Luckily the constable who was brought with by the family realised that they were trying to pull a cheap one and set them straight. This didn't stop the boy's father talking rudely to my mother in the guise of enquiring about father ... Another case of people taking lone woman of the house for granted. Sad to see this done to people who went out of their way to help a neighbouring lady facing domestic abuse by her grown up son & family and on the verge of being driven out of the only shelter he had.. Feel sad that indian women lose all status and protection once they lose the husband. I wonder if this is the case in other societies as well.

To add to all this, the news was kept from me as i'm far away and couldn't really help much in the situation. Feeling quite sad about the turn of events last week ... Also about what kind of security we offer to grown ups. Feels like i'm in a different world full of young people in a comfortable and secure environment. Lot of admiration for my dad in taking all these things in his stride. Though i'm sure it has left my mother shaken up...

The LEGO RCX and Lejos java programming environment

Tuesday, at home today. Have been trying the LEGO RCX robot working for my teaching assistantship course. It's quite fun. I've been exploring java for it using the LEJOS http://lejos.sourceforge.net/rcx-downloads.php JVM and programming SDK. It's amazing how much effort people put in things they are interested and make them available for others. Really nice and inspiring, I hope at the end of this TAship i'll also make good information available for people who want to program on the RCX.

on logmein .. a remote desktop software

  Has made administering the computer at our home in Belgaum, karnataka really simple as i can see it through a web browser and make changes and updates in real time https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp?lang=en. Yesterday, spent close to an hour with mother viewing some recent photos she had taken around the house. I miss my parents and it's nice to have such tools that make connectivity easier. The first round of ice-breaking was done with skype, yahoo messenger video earlier. Now it's other connectivity tools.  I could see the photos she was browsing and showing me without having to wait and download them here. Very simple installation too and we did that talking over phone earlier with mom installing the client at the home computer and i installing one in singapore. From then on it's been really easy to administer the home PC over the internet.

Happy valentine's day

Valentine's this year was interesting for me, simple but beautiful. Lady-in-my-life and me both working in the department till late and spending time together in between.  We'd agreed mutually that since we are hard pressed with time, we'll skip the niceties and gifts this time around. Much obliged to her for being a different sort of girl. Saint valentine could have hardly imagined what his name would be associated with in centuries to come :) Apperently the original festival had nothing to do with love and couples. There was news of a crazy politician Mutalik back home in belgaum, India who decided that he'll marry couples together on the spot if he sees them on valentines day.. another extreme right-wing hindutva politician. Agreed that valentine's has just become a reason for all sorts of companies to cash in and make money, but who gives the license to these self-styled messiaha's to tell people how to live ?

    Some progress in work and time spent reading an article on china on the move and different aspects of the hurtling development in the country going at 9% GDP. Countries of similar size, very different cultures, ideologies, progress paths. Have to see how things go with India and China assuming bigger roles in world economics and politics.

harish

The world seems to be such a different place than what i thought it to be sometimes

       On watching http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/ , another documentary about china on the rise from a western point of view. Takes a lot to discount for western bias ... but still has some points to ponder. Huge gap between urban and rural areas, which is growing.  Tiananmen square, whose memory the governmetn wants to forget, cheap labour which the world wants to use, government cleaning the slate of history in young people's minds. State is not able to support education & healthcare, which is hitting the rural areas. The last problem is common to india as is the availability of cheap labour.

"from ashwin, who sent the link: It sounds similar, but the scene in China is quite different. They were a Communist egalitarian society  which is now moving towards a pseudo-Communist capitalist one, whereas India is moving from a democratic socialist nation to a democratic capitalist one. Both these shifts are huge (due to the size and pace of change) and is sure to bring forth a lot of class struggles in the coming years. India's problems are of course compounded due to religious/caste/state divisions.

"

         Yes, there will be class struggle in India and i'm sure there is already mass migration happening from village-> town and town to tier-two cities, tier-two to metro. I hope the genetic & cultural diversity, religion and democracy in india help in taking in this mass change more gracefully. I hope the evils within the caste system is done away with in a couple of generations in this process too, though that's a tough one. 

      I also wonder if there can ever be an egalitarian state, as humans will be humans, some more capable than others. Has there been one which could sustain gracefully and leave a good legacy ? The roman and greek city states come to my mind, but they were so small. 

     I also doubt if wiping away memories of bad things in a nations history is a good policy, when in germany too i was warned not to talk about Nazism and related events, I doubt if current germans know much about it. On the other hand we hold on and talk about our Noakhali, partition, punjab riots, bombay riots, emergency, godhra and debating and discussing about it. Many times its breast beating and useless, but better than denying i suppose. Government tries to censure in india too, but not effective as people know what happened most of the time. Won't the chinese people have a sense of confusion, guilt and betrayal when they know about the cost of the revolutions and the current surge. There is the great revolution, cultural revolution, economic revolution. All of them involved questioning and revolting against one thing or another including family system, religion, societal structures, education. 

the world seems to be such a different place than what i thought it to be sometimes,

harish