Best pictures so far - Part 2

Pic. 1: View of ricefields by the Karla caves in Maharashtra

Pic. 2: Waiting for police registration by an old banyan tree

Pic. 3: Anju walking up the stairs at a temple on Parvati Hill, Pune

Pic. 4: Another funny sign for a doctor's surgery

Best pictures so far - Part 1

Pic. 1: Waiting for the bus by the ACM office

Pic. 2: Vishrambaugh Palace in the Old Town district of Pune - the former residence of Shivaji

Pic. 3: Colorful textiles at the Tulsibaugh market

Pic. 4: Landon prefers the bandit attire for rickshaw rides

The Pronoun Penguin

This guy was standing outside the ancient Bhaja caves in Maharashtra. Looks like he's into some really intense philosophy of personhood and totality.

The Kitchen Asymmetry

In an upper-middle class urban Indonesian family, the parents and the children probably won’t do the dishes, since they are likely to have a housemaid living in the house who would be up for the task. In an upper-middle class (sub)urban American family, the parents and the children would probably take turns loading and unloading the dishwasher.

So far, it’s either outsourcing dishwashing or distributing the amount of work equally, however, there’s a different story in India!

In an upper-middle class Indian family, a mother would do the dishes late at night when everybody else is asleep, and she is happy to do so, since that’s a task she has been doing for the household since a very long time ago. I’ve never seen a person who so willingly enjoys doing chores for others, without any payment.

Indianized Signs

These are words and symbols that already mean something to me, but it's so fascinating to see them in a different context, in a different spelling, and in the middle of different colors.

And of course it's so hard to resist the picture of a really cool cat.

Numpang di rumah orang, or, my way of travelling

Numpang di rumah orang is the Indonesian phrase for simply crashing at someone else's house. For the past five years, I've trotted cities around the globe thanks to the the countless wonderful people who've offered me a bed, a meal, and a roof over my head at the very least. Here's where they live:

An investment portfolio executive's house on the Eastside suburbs of Seattle

A retired economist's row house in Leidschendam, south of the Hague

A graduate student's attic apartment in the Hague

A veterinarian's row house on the northern side of Rotterdam

A computer engineer's house in Nagano, Japan

A small-town doctor's sprawling ranch in Wessington Hills, South Dakota

A restauranteur's farm house in Brookings, South Dakota

A professor's split-level house, built in the 1950s, in Northfield, Minnesota

A world bank researcher's Victorian row house apartment in downtown Washington D.C.

An undergraduate student's NYU dorm room in Manhattan

A journalist's red-brick house in a leafy Washington D.C. neighborhood

A sales executive's low-rise in suburban Maryand

And, soon, an Indian family in Pune.

Man I'm probably the most indebted person in the entire world!

T minus 4 hours

It's four hours before my flight leaves for Mumbai, or, more specifically, before I enter fourteen hours of being in the Twilight zone. Some things I've learned from the last few days at "home" (well, at Carleton):

1. The hardest part about choosing a topic for the independent study project is about building enough self-confidence. It took me so long to convince myself that my ideas do matter!

2. Fast internet connection definitely slashes your productivity. JSTOR surfing is something that will last many, many hours...

3. Americans are so generous about giving hugs. And more hugs. This applies to both males and females and is such a comforting experience when you're 10 000 miles away from home.

Anyway, I'll be doing a project on the folkloric and contemporary forms of the Mahabharata, an ancient Hindu epic of the "eternal battle between good and evil." Something I grew up with in Indonesia too!