December 31st, 2008
I’m thinking of moving to India for 6 months.
I called my friend Tina Su to discuss it. We talked about pros and cons.
In the end, I asked, “Is there any reason NOT to go?”
She thought deeply then said, “Yes. Don’t go if you think it’s going to make you happy.”
Brilliant.
September 9th, 2008
I just spent a few weeks in Iceland, and here’s what I found interesting:
If I had to describe the landscape in only two words: “mossy lava”.
Much of the country looks like the lava had just recently dried, cracked open, and grew some moss. Endlessly fascinating. This little video doesn’t show it well enough:
This is a phrase I heard often: “Everyone under 30 is in a band,” or is doing something creative and artistic in some way.
I never found out why it has such a creative culture, though if you’ve got any good explanations, please let me know, because I think it’s fascinating how this became the norm.
A few musicians I met with said peer pressure challenges you to do something unique, like being in art school. Nothing really felt like it was being done for commerical gain. Just creativity for its own sake.
Though Iceland is about the same size as Britain, it has only 320,000 people, as compared to Britain’s 58 million people. People kept saying, “Everyone knows everyone here,” or, “It’s a small-town life.”
Iceland is one of the safest places you’ll ever go. My first day, in a crowded bar, I saw 5 guys leave their table to step outside for a smoke, and one of them left his expensive iPhone in the middle of the table, unattended for 15 minutes. When I mentioned this to my friend, he said, “Oh that’s how you show that you’re coming back to that table.” When I said, “But someone might steal it,” he laughed and said, “This is Iceland!”
I heard many stories from people who had never locked their car or door. Someone told me that in the town he grew up in, they’ve asked people to stop leaving their keys in the ignition, only because a drunk teen recently took someone’s car out for a joy-ride and got pretty hurt.
According to the Human Development Index, Iceland has the highest level of economic and civil freedom and is the “most developed country in the world”.
Everywhere you go, little holes in the ground are steaming or bubbling. A constant reminder how volcanically and geologically active this island is.
See this video for an extreme example. (The geysir hits me at the end, and it’s damn hot!)
When my ex from Sweden heard someone speaking Icelandic, she was fascinated. She said it was “the ancient tongue”, like a 1000-year-old precursor to Swedish. She could make out some words. Turns out this is because Icelandic is a mostly-unchanged version of ancient Norse language, since they were isolated on this distant island, whereas Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian all came from Old Norse but changed over the years.
Even now, they develop new vocabulary based on native roots instead of borrowing from English.
Icelandic also uses some ancient letters no longer used in any other language:
, called “thorn” (þorn, really), looks like a p, but it’s pronounced “th” as in “thing”.
, called “eth”, a d with a line through it, is pronounced “th” as in “the”.
These aren’t rare, they’re everywhere, as you can see here if you have the fonts installed, or read more on Wikipedia.
Everyone in Iceland speaks English with a gorgeous accent with rolling “r”s. Many also speak basic Danish in a way that’s understood by Swedes and Norwegians.
Remember in Lord of the Rings, how everyone would introduce themselves like, “I am Gimley, son of Gloin” or “I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn”. Well in Iceland, that’s what their names really say!
If your name is Sarah and your dad’s name is Eric, your name would be “Sarah Erics-daughter” and your brother Jeff would be “Jeff Erics-son”. Get it? (The actual spelling would be Ericsdóttir and Ericsson.)
Since there are no family names, you do not have the same last name as your parents or even other-sex siblings. Because of this, everyone is called by their first name, even politicians.
An interesting contrast from Japanese and many other cultures where people are known by their family name. Read more at Wikipedia.
My friend’s wife told me about her 5-year-old son with a previous boyfriend, current daughter with current husband, and she said she has two siblings each with different fathers, concluding, “This is very Icelandic.” Sure enough, my friend told me his family’s story is about the same.
I had read a New York Times article about this last year, so I was prepared for it. Single mothers are very normal. Many women have a baby with a boyfriend, with no pressure to get married, then may often have another baby later in life with a longer-lasting relationship.
That said, it felt like such a family-friendly place. Maybe it’s the safe-and-cozy feeling the whole country gives, but it feels like a great place to raise a kid.
Of course with so many glaciers, there are waterfalls everywhere. Here are a few I saw in one single day. Of course I’d always run to the bottom to see how close I could get, and always got completely soaked from the mist.
The water that comes out of the faucet in any building is some of the best spring water in the world.
Tourists over the last 10 years started asking for bottled water, to which the Icelanders would have to explain that tap water is cleaner than bottled water : putting that perfect water into a plasic bottle would make it worse! Eventually they relented and started putting the tap water into plastic bottles for the tourists at a huge markup and hopefully a good laugh.
Most of the hot water for Reykjavík (the biggest city) comes from the big lake an hour away, where the water is heated with geothermal/volcanic help, and piped into everyone’s homes, already hot. Instead of a water-heater in the home, like most of us are used to, they have a water-combining device that combines the super-hot incoming water with the separate pipe of cold water, to make usefully-hot water for showering and washing.
Now when I saw that lake, the water was so freakishly clear that you could see 20 meters down just standing by it, so I knew I had to go in….
The American continental plate and the Eurasian continental plate meet in that clear lake, and you can go scuba diving in the 20-meter (60-feet) deep fissure between the plates.
Though the water is an icy 2-4 degrees C, and I didn’t know how to scuba dive, I knew I wanted to go in, so I took lessons for a week (also in icy water!), and did my very first dive in this fissure.
At one point, it’s so narrow I could put one hand on America and one hand on Eurasia. Very cool. A little video of the before-and-after of my first dive is here:
Finishing with the most breath-taking thing, Jökulsárlón is the name of the place where the biggest glacier reaches the ocean. The water makes huge icebergs break off the glacier, but they’re trapped in a lagoon with a narrow entrance out to sea, so you can take a little boat through hundreds of these amazing blue-white icebergs.
Click here to watch this video in high-definition for full effect, or watch the lo-fi version below:
June 9th, 2008
After only a few hours’ sleep, I get up natually at 6am to tie up loose ends online, and pack.
Vietnam airlines required those old-fashioned paper tickets, so they’re sitting uncomfortably in my pocket.
Kaitlin drives me to the airport, and as we’re almost there I realize my passport and tickets are not there. She calls her apartment front desk and they say they’ve found my passport, but not my ticket. We drive back, and I retrace my steps to find my ticket on the ground in the parking lot. Phew!
At the airport, even after all that, I’m still a good hour early. That “get there 2-3 hours early for international flights” stuff is bullshit. My theory is that the airport shops of the world are the ones that lobbied for that rule.
I’ve got a good aisle seat in the very last row of the plane. I read Richard Branson’s autobiography for the entire flight, and spend the last couple hours writing about lessons learned from it.
9-hour flight lands at 2pm Tokyo time.
There’s always that great moment when you’re first let out of the airport and you think, “Wow! I’m in __(foreign country)__!” Just out in the open and able to do anything you want.
I barely get feeling that while transferring to the domestic terminal, and there’s not much time before my connection to Fukuoka.
The flight was a little late, and my connection (through Nagoya) was so tight that there’s an employee waiting for me in Nagoya to run me to the gate as fast as possible.
While running, my backpack strap snaps off, and it crashes to the ground. I find out later this permanently bent my laptop.
Land in Fukuoka at 6pm, use an ATM at the airport (it works!) and take a subway into city-center.
Walking out of the train station downtown, now I’m finally hit with, “Wow! I’m in Japan again!”
Walk a few blocks to my hotel, stop at a 7-11 first to buy a couple sushi triangles and Pocky, then check into my room, sweaty and beat, awake 22 hours, eat my food, take a quick shower, and collapse.
Wide awake at 4am, I write for a while, then at 6am decide I’m ready to go.
No specific plans yet, but a few options from my guide book, so I go to the train station and buy a rail pass, good for the whole island for 5 days.
There’s a town called Kurokawa Onsen in the middle of the island that is up in the mountains and is an entire village of onsen (“onsen” means “hot springs bath”).
The guide book says there are a few busses a day that leave from the mountain town of Aso.
I take the next train to Kumamoto, then the next train to Aso, both no more than 20 minutes’ wait, but when I get to Aso at 11:20am, I find out the next bus to Kurokawa isn’t until 2:20pm.
That means 3 hours at a little train station in the middle of nowhere like one of those 1800’s American southwest train stations. Hmm….
In the long wait, I start listening to “Eat Pray Love” on the iPod. The author is reading it wonderfully.
Since it’s a 3 hour wait, I kill some time by taking a tourist bus to the top of the volcanic Aso crater and back, 40 minutes each way with a 20 minute wait a the top.
Most people stay up there for a few hours, and it’s a gorgeous hiking place up there, with helicopters that take you into the steaming crater cone and such, but I catch the same bus back, then get my bus to Kurokawa Onsen.
It’s now 3pm and I have no reservation, so I’m hoping there will be availability at one of the ryokan (“ryokan” is an old-fashioned inn).
The bus drops off by the side of the road, but before it does I see a sign I recognize as one of the recommended ryokan from the guide book. I walk 15 minutes alongside the highway back to it, and walk in to see if they’ve got a room. They do, and show me around, then I check in.
It’s amazing. Looks like Spirited Away. Bridge over a big river connects the lobby building with the real ryokan building.
My room is a wonderful very traditional Japanese ryokan room. 12 tatami. (the straw mats on the floor, also used to measure the size of rooms instead of counting square-feet).
No bed, someone comes into your room while you’re at dinner to take the futon out of the closet and lay it in the middle of the floor.
They’ve got 8 private hot-spring baths downstairs, where you can go in to any open one, lock the door, and be alone in a natural rock hot springs alongside the rushing river. They’ve got a big outdoor one the size of a swimming pool, so after checking in I go into that one, and I’m the only one there.
It’s amazing, hot, and the water smells too-sweet, like sugar water. That’s its natural smell, apparently. Weird. Since I’ve been in the hot sun for a few hours, and still sweaty, it’s too hot for me after a while, and not as relaxing as I thought since my heart beats so fast when I’m in it. But I cool off a few times with a cold-water hose next to it, then get back in a few times.
Back in my room, I collapse on the floor to de-sweat. (Remember: no bed yet.) 2 hours to chill while listening to the audiobook.
Dinner is in a special private room (one per guest-room) downstairs and they’ve got a huge elaborate traditional Japanese meal for me, in 10 small courses. The first few are already laid-out and for the next hour or so, a woman comes by every 10 minutes with the remaining parts. Since I’ve had nothing but 7-11 rice triangles for the last 24 hours, it’s amazing.
It’s only 7pm but that’s 3am California time. Dead tired, I head back to my room after dinner, bed is all made on the floor, and fall asleep immediately to a massive rolling army of frogs croaking. (I say “rolling” because they seem to sync up their croaks so it’s like dozens of them pulsing all at once, about at the tempo of someone raking leaves.) The sound of the river is always in the background.
A few times in the night I wake to odd sounds, thin walls, cats fighting outside, but all in all it’s wonderfully refreshing.
At 6am I take a walk through this little town dedicated to hot springs. It’s adorable and I should have brought my camera.
I go to a private bath which is way better than the big open sweet-smelling shared bath from the day before. A little door you walk in then lock, and you’re in a private 30-square-foot area right by the river, with your own private hot tub, about the size of a health club jacuzzi. Either it’s a better tempurature, or I am, but I stay in for a long time.
Afterwards, I realize I haven’t even been in Japan for 36 hours yet, and there has been no sitting still.
I decide I’d like to stay in this little town for at least another day, maybe three.
Passing the front desk on the way to breakfast, I say I’d like to stay another night, but they tell me it’s full! Damn. Oh well.
I check the bus schedule and decide to catch an 11am bus, take another private hot tub after breakfast, pack, and go.
No long waits today. Everything is an immediate connection. Bus to train to train to train, I’ve decided to head as far south as I can go, to Kagoshima, which seems like a good-sized city, and is right next to a recently-active volcano island called Sakurajima.
At the Kagoshima train station is an English-speaking tourist center, so I ask if they can call the beautiful onsen hotel that the book recommends on the south of that volcano island. She does, and it’s available for tonight, so she books it, and guides me to the train to the ferry to the island, where a shuttle bus takes me to the hotel.
This island is like an itty bitty Hawaiian island, palm trees and all, but it’s really just one huge volcano in the middle with a single road around the outside.
At the hotel, I see a photo of their hot tub, and it’s the amazing one I saw on Flickr online last week before coming here, thinking, “I wonder if I’ll find that place!” Found it!
“Eat Pray Love” finishes in the iPod just as the shuttle bus is arriving at the hotel. Wow. I get that slightly-empty “now what?” feeling you get right after finishing a great book.
Check into a normal room with an amazing right-on-the-ocean view. Another 10-course traditional Japanese dinner.
7pm. I’ve now been in Japan for only 48 hours. Phew.
I go to that outdoor hot springs at sundown and it’s even more amazing than I expected. Right next to the ocean, little buddhist/shinto idols under the tree, and I’m the only one there.
This is officially one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been in my life.
This is a moment where I really would have loved to had my video camera. It was up in the room but I was all wet. Oh well. (Update: I did get go video it the next morning. See the video of it, here.)
Up at 3am, writing, getting restless. After breakfast I decide I’m going to go back to Fukuoka, to Dukes Hotel, where they had internet access and no traditional food, no fussing over me. Spent 2 days in my room just reading, writing, working. Booked some CD Baby meet-ups for the next three cities.
Effortless flight into Tokyo. Easy train to downtown. Nice how comfortable this country feels to me now after 4 visits.
Staying at a tiny traditional inn near Tokyo station, I’ve barely arrived when Keiji (who I know from a previous visit, and who has been working with CD Baby) meets me here, and we go out for a walk and talk.
Amazing to note that in Tokyo you are not allowed to smoke even outside on the street! Only in very designated smoking areas. $500 fine if caught. Amazing for what struck me as such a chain-smoking city on my first two visits.
We have a CD Baby meet-up, about 15 people come, half from outside Japan. Nice conversation. One couple was an English man and Japanese woman who brought their teenage daughter who looked completely western/American/Brit, just slightly Asian, so of course I spoke comfortable English to her, and was surprised that she was a total giggling Japanese schoolgirl that barely spoke English! It was so weird to see those stereotypical personality traits on a white/Western girl. Maybe it’s just as weird for them to see someone with Japanese parents who grew up in America acting completely American.
Flew into Saigon, has been called Ho Chi Minh City since 1975 when the communist government took over, but everyone there still calls it Saigon.
First impression, it reminds me of India! Very rickety and scrappy, everyone on little scooters, dirt and rubble everywhere. People crouched on sidewalks selling things.
Overwhelmingly humid and hot, I can’t walk a block without sweating buckets.
I go to the Park Hyatt to see my friend Kat Parsons play and meet with Tuan the jazz saxophonist who brings me to his jazz club afterwards.
Since all of my clothes are now nasty, I go into a crowded market to find laundry detergent and buy a nice new white shirt for $5. Wash my clothes in the sink, though they take two days to dry in the humidity.
Rest of the 30-piece band arrives from Chicago late at night.
Mostly empty day with band rehearsal during the day and concert performance at night. Hung out with Kat Parsons a bit, who’s in Saigon for 3 months, but doesn’t simplify her English for people who don’t speak English. She very cheerily but earnestly said to the woman at the cellphone store, (who already made it clear she doesn’t speak English), “I just need to get another cellphone, y’know like a Nokia or something, but maybe one that’s like white or cream colored so my road manager doesn’t notice I lost my last one! Do you have something kinda light colored? You know… white?”
Flying into Hue, it’s already amazing before we land. Out the window we see real countryside, little traditional huts and cemetaries buried in the woods, everything looks so exotic and authentic. Even on the drive from the airport, we pass amazing crumbling shops, brightly painted decades ago, now gorgeously decayed.
It’s a small city, barely a city, maybe only 2-3 tall buildings. The Park View Hotel is amazing. (Highly recommended.)
Because of this, it’s so inviting to walk around. I immediately take the video camera on a 3-hour walk all around town, so ecstatically happy, capturing amazing moments on film. (See here.)
That night, we go to a massive opening ceremony with thousands of people outside the grand palace.
Walking back, the only way to cross the street on foot across hundreds of scooters is to just go for it - just start walking and trust that they’ll stop. I raised the video camera in the air, pointed towards traffic, hit record, and went for it, walking into a moving sea of scooters and making it to the other side just fine. Classic moment. Unfortunately found out later I didn’t hit record fast enough, so there’s no video of it.
I was planning to sit in the room and work all day, but while passing through the lobby, a dozen people from the band were all going to rent scooters for only $5 on a guided tour out to some tombs. I said OK.
What you’re about to read next is one of the most amazing times in my life.
As soon as we were on the scooters, driving through the streets, it made all the difference in the world. Instead of just observing, we were participating in a way that walking doesn’t satisfy. Maybe the rush of driving the moped just increases the endorphins, but it was so much fun we couldn’t stop smiling, waving to amused onlookers. Heading out through the burbs then countryside, the scenery was so amazing, going over little wooden bridges, really felt, “Wow - now I’m in Vietnam!” I didn’t want it to end, but black clouds loomed and our hour rental was up.
Kimo’s big concert was that night, outdoors.
After the show, we met at the river and took two guided boats for 45 minutes or so, with musicians performing traditional Vietnamese music in traditional dress.
But coming back to the hotel, it’s 1am, and enough of us are wide awake that I ask some guys if they want to rent scooters again. 5 said “hell yeah!” and we got 6 scooters for $5 each, at 1am on a Wednesday night in the town of Hue.
First we had to find gas, since all the employees seem to leave their bikes on empty. We’re driving the dark empty streets, looking for a gas station, and find 6 20-something guys and girls sitting at some tables on a lighted part of the sidewalk by a cart, having some drinks. We tried to ask them where to get gas, but they spoke no English at all. We tried for a few minutes through lots of misunderstanding. Finally the (best looking) girl comes over to my bike as I point to the gas guage and show her it’s empty. She thinks this is hilarious and calls to the old woman by the cart, who pulls out a 1-liter bottle of gas and a funnel. We point to all 6 bikes and they fill us all up, one by one, laughing the whole time. As we’re leaving, one of the drinking guys tries to push the (best-looking) girl on me, as if for money. They’re all laughing, as we ride off into the night.
Now the 6 of us are laughing and whooping at how fun this is, riding our motorcycles through the empty dark streets. We go through the palace grounds, then I lead us back to the busier streets where we pass a gathering place, about 50 people eating and drinking at small plastic tables by the side of the road, served by an old man in a cart. First we pass it, then I call to the guys, “You hungry?” Enough say yes that we turn around and park our bikes by this place, and become such a local spectacle that little kids are coming over to gawk at us. (Yes, little kids at 2am on a Wednesday.) We sit in baby plastic chairs at a baby plastic table on a gravelly sidewalk and order 6 beers and 6 pho beef soups. We’re all just laughing at how amazing this is and how great it feels. We stay about an hour, cracking eachother up, having another round of beer, talking with the kids, and giving them our beer caps since I guess there is an occasional prize inside.
Once we leave, Scott who had been there before took us through some cool deserted backstreets, with countless closed decaying shops. Dreamlike in the dim light, occasionally passing an old woman in a straw hat carrying bushels of something.
Then we get to a railroad bridge that has an extremely narrow 2-foot-wide bike path on each side. Since I’m last in line at this point, all 5 guys are stopped at it, having come to the conclusion that “no way we’re crossing that - too dangerous - this is where we turn back”, but I didn’t even slow down, gave a “hell yeah! come on!” and rode across the bridge. Exhilarating and actually quite safe. We gather on the other side for a group pee, as a couple locals join us for the same, laughing, and we ride off into the night again. Jim, the road manager says “I could do this all night!” I think we all felt the same. After another 30 minutes of riding around, including the main central roundabout of the whole city where we went around it 3 times in circles, laughing, we headed back to the hotel, thrilled. 4am.
Rented a motorbike by myself, this time with the video camera and a blank tape. Went off into the countryside the same way we had gone to the tombs, and started recording the whole thing. Took sidestreets and forks, and kept heading one direction so as to get further out from the city, knowing someone would point me the way back. Amazing trip and glad I caught it all on tape. Right near the end, heading back into the city, I realized I had 5 minutes left on the tape, but hadn’t gone through the busiest parts yet (the “sea of hundreds of motorcycles” described earlier). I headed right into the middle of it, tape running the whole time. Awesome. (Video here.)
When I got back, Jim was in the lobby and wanted to go out again. So did Jason the trombonist, so we rented 2 more bikes, and I took them off into the countryside again. This time we went further, into woods, right next to cows, through dirt roads, stopped at an old decayed house to take pictures with the permission of a smiling grunting woman with cows who then asked for money afterwards. We each gave 10,000 dong, which is about 60 cents. She was thrilled.
We stopped at a little restaurant made of bamboo huts over a pond and had 3 beers that were warm but they put them on ice for us for a minute.
This is where I think I accidently drank the tiniest sip of that icewater that destroyed me the next day.
We flew back to Saigon, checked in at 9pm, had some spring rolls (other possible culprit) and I went straight to bed.
Woke feeling fine, drank a whole 2-liter bottle of water (some before bed, some after waking). Had a chicken sandwich at the airport (other possible culprit) and got on the plane.
Once on the plane, my stomach really started hurting. I hit the tiny airplane bathroom and let’s just say it started shooting out both ends at once. I filled(!) an entire barf bag, and half of the next. I did this again 5 more times on that 2-hour flight, including another barf bag while in my seat as we were landing.
In Hong Kong, the immigration line took 40 minutes. Imagine standing in line for 40 minutes while needing to explode from both ends, but knowing I’d be better off just getting through the line so I could get to my hotel instead of staying in the airport. I got fevery sweats. I couldn’t stand and had to crouch. I really thought I might faint. I finally made it through and ran for the bathroom. Found my way to the express train to downtown and puked into a paper bag fished from the garbage as soon as I arrived.
Caught a taxi to my hotel (everything seemed to take forever) and made it up to my room, and collapsed in pain in what felt like an artic cold bed, teeth chattering, moaning and writhing.
A few hours later I woke feeling a little better, but still my skin hurt. A few hours later woke again soaked in sweat, with no more flu feeling, but a terrible pain in my gut.
I was supposed to have two meetings today that had been scheduled weeks in advance with the bank and incorporation company - that’s the whole reason I came to Hong Kong, but because Friday was now gone I missed my chance.
Watched some Family Guy on the iPod and fell back asleep.
Woke to smashing lightning storm at 6am, rain so hard I couldn’t see the ground from my hotel window. I was told later this is called “black rain” in Chinese and it’s so strong the news warns everyone not to go outside at all, not even walking. All flights grounded at the airport. I stayed in and watched movies in bed all day, gut still killing me.
Changed my flight to leave tomorrow morning instead of Monday night as planned.
Ventured out at 8pm for a CD Baby meetup at a club in the party part of town. Cool group of people - about 20 showed up. Hong Kong is one of those cities like New York where almost everyone is from somewhere else and has great stories to tell.
United told me it wouldn’t cost anything to change my flight, since I had already paid a $350 change fee the first time (to go to Japan early) but after 45(!) minutes of the very nice customer service woman at the airport typing into her computer, quite confused, and checking with various managers, she came back and said, “I’m sorry but it will cost an extra $750 to fly on the next plane. If you wait until tonight (8 hours from now) there will be no change fee.” She clearly saw the pained look on my face as I said, “No no no… PLEASE no. I CAN’T sit here for 8 hours. United already said it was confirmed to fly this morning. They said no fee. I already checked out of my hotel. PLEASE let me get on the plane!” Just 1 minute later she came back and handed me the boarding pass and said, “Run! It leaves soon!”
Definitely ready to go home.
May 28th, 2008
The southern-most big island in Japan is Kyushu. At the southern tip of that is a city called Kagoshima, which overlooks a huge active volcano in the water called Sakurajima, accessible by a 15-minute ferry ride.
One road leads around the base of the volcano. At the southern-most part of the volcano is a hot springs, right on the ocean, with a little hotel called Furusato Kanko. And that’s where I’ve been the last couple days, soaking in the mineral water, right where that guy is in the photo, below. (Just 10 feet behind the camera is the Pacific ocean.)
Of course I’m SO relaxed now, that I’m DONE relaxing, and damn ready to start a new business to help musicians. But more on that later. For now I just had to post an “I am here” as a bookmark reminder of one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been.
May 17th, 2008
Last February (2008) I went to India for a whole month with nothing but a little backpack.
Since returning, everyone has asked the same three-word question : “How was India?”
Impossible to sum up in a few sentences, so my smart-ass answer has been “scrappy”.
Here I’ll try to explain my real thoughts about India (so far).
This was my first visit to India, and I’m going to return many times, so this time I went only to meet with some companies, in the cities of Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. No tourist sights or countryside. Just meetings and cities. So of course I saw India from a business and urban point of view. Everything I say, below, is just my observation from visiting these 3 cities.
In India, there is rubble and garbage everywhere.
Rubble right in front of stores:
Rubble in front of multi-million-dollar buildings:
Rubble in every available space:
I found myself thinking, “They’re so often announcing how many billions of people are here. I see hundreds just standing around right now. Couldn’t someone just pick up that rubble/garbage and be done in a couple hours?”. Then it reminded me of British teeth….
In England, I asked a good friend who grew up there why the Brits have a reputation for bad teeth. She said, “Really? We do? From our point of view, we wonder why Americans are so fanatic about having unreasonably perfect teeth.”
Aha! Just as the casual dresser might look at the ultra-primped over-perfect hours-to-get-ready type and think, “What a freak!” - maybe all the rubble and garbage is just the norm to someone growing up in India. It’s not a problem to be solved any more than my wrinkled t-shirt and day-old jeans are a clothing problem I should solve.
Someone posted these photos on their blog, intending to show how disgusting the beaches of India are:
But when I see those photos, I smile nostalgic, thinking, “Yeah - that’s India!” I miss that garbage smell, a bit.
The sound of the city is the sound of hundreds of drivers honking constantly, every few seconds, all the time. Watch my videos from India to hear what I mean.
It’s just considered safe driving. To honk your horn is to say, “I’m here”, which you’re supposed to tell everyone every few seconds, partially because of the way they drive, which I’ll explain later.
A 25-year-old programmer from Bangalore just went to the U.S. for his first time, to Chicago, and I asked his impression. His eyes got wide and he said, “It’s SO quiet! Many people but so strangely silent. It was hard for me to sleep, at first.”
Again, like the rubbble : no right and wrong. They’re not messy - we’re just neat-freaks. They’re not noisy - we’re just strangely silent. A great reminder no matter what cultures you’re comparing.
The dictionary defines “scrappy” as both “consisting of disorganized, untidy, or incomplete parts” and “determined, argumentative, or pugnacious”. Exactly! It’s the combination of both definitions that struck me about India.
It’s most obvious in the driving. I don’t know if you can tell from my videos, but everyone fills every available space. The little vehicles wind in the gaps between the bigger ones. All lanes are ignored. My friend Steve, who lives there now, described it as, “This is their ad-hoc solution to fitting twice as many people onto the road.” It makes a lot of sense!
Watch this video of a typical intersection. It’s self-organizing in a very effective way. (Watch for the white car near the end that goes the wrong way down the street, from the top of the screen to the bottom.)
Someone sent me this photo of phone wires as an example of how disorganized India is:
But to me, that’s a great example of the scrappy, opportunistic, self-organizing that I love about India. It reminds me of the movies that portray New York City in the post-depression 1930s.
Everybody seems to be using whatever they’ve got to do what they need to do, which really inspired me in a very purely entrepreneuristic way.
That’s all I have to say for now, but I’m sure I’ll go back again later this year and have an entirely different perspective on it.
