Wanderlust Heaven!

I know that I’m still in Asia, but there is a lot to this continent. India just doesn’t have that much in common with countries like the Philippines or Laos. I was reminded of that the other day, when I went around the back of Bean Me Up and saw the kitchen staff having their midday meal. They were not using chopsticks to shovel rice into their mouths…instead, they were using their hands to mix their rice and curried vegetables together into a lump, then shoveling it into their mouths with their hands or small pieces of roti (bread). I tend to think of this style of eating as Middle Eastern/African, and people in those regions do eat like this…which leads me to perceive India as far more than its admittedly prominent place as a subcontinent. India, to me, is Asian, but also the gateway to the Middle East and Africa. Being in Mumbai often feels like being in a large African hypercity (think Lagos) or a Middle Eastern city that hasn’t been paved with gold from oil riches (think Cairo or Amman). I know, I know, Cairo is in Africa, but let’s not get hung up on niceties.

That’s my profound observation of the week. Less profound observations and statements to follow.

Got an email from an old colleague in Tokyo – informing me that an old client of mine from Oz just got promoted to head his company’s Japanese subsidiary. I did tons of work for said subsidiary and my old colleague wanted an introduction to the Aussie. I was happy to get the news (I think it’s a positive step for the Japanese gang), and happy to make the intro. With any luck the two gents will get on well and some business will get done. A former manager of mine once told me that if you’re around long enough, you’ll see nearly everything, and he’s been proved correct over the years. Back in 2000 I worked with this Aussie on a project in Sydney – he was just a national sales manager back then, and a fairly quiet fellow. Never would have guessed he’d rise so far so fast, but he did it, and now he’s running Japan for the company – simply amazing. I imagine when he has time to sit back and think about it, he’d agree.

Other funny things came in over the transom. I logged onto LinkedIn and was able to get the email address of a former girlfriend of mine in India. We went out back in ’92 in Mumbai…we ran into each other on a Bronx-bound train from Manhattan back in ’96…we then lost touch until now. Sent her a note, she called me in Goa, and we talked for an hour. She’s back in India, back in her home state of Nagaland, and we’ll probably meet up there or in Goa sometime before April. She’s one of my few remaining links to that incredible summer in Mumbai; as much as I find social networks a time-sink, and hesitate to get onto sites like Facebook, there are some real nuggets if you look for ‘em.

Things are starting to heat up in Goa. The infamous Ingo’s Saturday Night Bazaar got going again, it had been closed down for a month or so while bribes were being negotiated. Those have presumably been settled and now the fair is back. It’s a crazed affair complete with fire-jugglers and musicians from all over the world, and hundreds of market-stalls run by locals and foreigners. Bean Me Up has a stall there, and it’s a good meeting place for my friends and I.

I’ve been asked for a few shots of Bean Me Up – I posted quite a few last year, but here are some fresh shots, including waiter Vinod (Bini), the grounds, and surroundings – it’s a beautiful spot:

I’ll try to get some pics of cows on the beach and other iconic Goa images. Once friends Ken and Carmen get here, the camera will be out and about with some regularity…

Have been getting into yoga more and more. I was pretty half-assed about attending over the past few weeks, but I have a couple friends coming from London over the holidays, and want to make sure I can get them into my class, which is already packed. So I’ve been a good boy lately and have been going to class…and I think Gaby, the instructor, is becoming less annoyed with my mercurial patterns (and poses). I continue to serve as class dunce, although there are a couple others who aren’t much more adept than I. And I am making some progress, although some poses will always be out of my grasp. But at the end of the day, I know that I can beat up any guy in the class, that I can outrun any girl, and that I probably have more money than anyone else in the class. And isn’t that what yoga is really all about??

Was reading a copy of The New Yorker and noticed my cousin Richard Brandt was mentioned in the Shouts & Murmurs section. He’s a retired NYU physics professor and occasional guest on David Letterman – stuff like ‘Stupid Human Tricks.’ He’s got a super-dry sense of humor and is, needless to say, the smartest member of our family. That’s truly damning him with faint praise.

I’ve not been doing much writing, sad to say – I just seem too damn busy with everything else. A typical day for me lately looks like this:

8:30 -get up, have coffee/tea
9:15-11:30-go to yoga class
11:30-13:00-shower/eat lunch/read papers
13:00-14:00-check email etc.
14:00-15:00-go to beach or do errands
15:00-17:00-read and listen to podcasts (language lessons, etc.)
17:30-19:30-gym
20:00-dinner, go out, phone calls, etc.

If you think about it, there’s typically not a huge amount of fat in the day, if you try to get a full night’s sleep, you take the time to have proper meals, and you try to stay in shape. Of course, it’s all about priorities, and right now I’m spending 4 hours/day on yoga and running/etc. I think I’m going to have to dial some of that back in the New Year and focus more on my writing – it would be a lost opportunity to be here, spending 4 months in one spot, and not use that stability of situation to make some progress there…

But I can’t blame everything on my demanding workout sked – on Sunday there’s no class, and I simply spent my day on Little Vagator Beach, eating and reading at Fishtail beach shack. Worked my way through a couple New Yorkers, had some nice Goan fish curry rice, swam a few times, had a few very cold Kingfisher beers (the coldest I’ve had in Goa – I savored every drop), and next thing I knew it was late afternoon and I was too blissed to bother firing up the laptop. So it goes…

And on Monday morning I skipped yoga class so that I could join Richard from BMU in his daily trip to the Mapusa market. Richard handles the behind-the-scenes operations at BMU (Lisa is the ‘front office’ and impresario), and he has to go to Mapusa every day to shop for food and get parts for the restaurant and hotel. Fairly thankless work, to be sure – but Richard seldom complains and has in fact had his fun with the chores. I went with him to see him in action, and to see a part of Mapusa that isn’t easy to access.

We must have visited 30 stalls and stores in 90 minutes. Richard drove his little beater Maruti car around like a madman (he installed a truck air horn and that works well in getting others to shake their tail feathers). I had ventured into the Mapusa market before, but this was an entirely different story. Richard speaks nearly every subcontinental language and has a good time insulting the vendors, and they him. I heard a bit of Hindi, Marati, Konkani, Arabic, Urdu, and who knows what else. Common insults, rendered into English, centered on ‘butt pirate’ and ‘sister fucker.’ I considered jumping into the fray but decided to let Richard hold the fort. It goes without saying that I was quite impressed by Richard’s savoire faire and ability to navigate the shoals of shopping in Indian markets – he got what he needed and got out with his humor intact. And I felt that I had seen a deeper aspect of BMU and was grateful for that.

A few photos of Sir Richard the Frenchman in action – notice flying watermelon in final pics:

The market visit was surprisingly good exercise, but I did go to the gym that night. As I was doing a few abdominal exercises (does anyone know any of these that aren’t so fucking joyless?), two foreign tourists came into the gym and asked the attendant if they could borrow the scale. I’ve seen this before – hotel guests wanting to borrow the crappy little scale. I don’t get it – why don’t they just weigh themselves on the spot? One of the two girls was impressively obese, and she may have wanted to weigh herself in the privacy of her room…if I were her, I would have forgone the scale and spent the evening on the treadmill.

Went with Lisa to Panjim to see the new movie ‘I Am Legend.’ This was based on a short story written a while ago, I believe by Neil Gaiman. I read the story when I was in the Philippines earlier this year, and found it compelling. I won’t spoil the plot, but I did find the movie radically different from the short story – but that was perfectly fine. It’s been set in the near future, in Manhattan, and the shots of the city in an abandoned and crumbling state are brilliantly rendered. You can see individual stores (e.g., the old Tower Records in the East Village). I would love to spend a day in a studio watching them create these scenes – I have no idea how it’s done, but suspect heavy use of computer images.

Afterward we went to take a look at Lisa’s new BMU menus, which are being designed by a computer shop. It’s taken months longer than anticipated – welcome to India – but the new menus will be beautiful and a huge improvement from the current versions, which are fine but getting long in the tooth. Hopefully the new ones will be here by Xmas…but I wouldn’t bet good money on it.

They’re finally fixing the roads around Vagator – a week before Xmas. Timing is a problem in India – when you go out to eat, the roti often comes a few minutes after the mains, and you’re sitting there helpless and waiting for the waiter. Similarly, the infrastructure work is performed too late, and haphazardly too – instead of using real asphalt and repaving the roads, they’re using tons of out-of-state laborers to crush rocks, plug the holes with them, and pour a bit of tar over the rocks. Right now they have only reached the ‘rocks in the holes’ stage and driving on the stuff is not easy. But watching the work can be fascinating and a real education. The laborers are often women, working in Stone Age conditions and techniques. At night, they sleep at the side of the road, on piles of rocks and dirt – seriously. When I first saw this, I just assumed they were a) too exhausted to go anywhere else or b) drunk and down, and both may have been true, but the reality is that they have nowhere to sleep, very little cash, and they make do.

Goans drive by and harass them – explicitly. One poor woman was reduced to tears the other day; some locals had driven by and asked her (and presumably her female co-workers) if ‘their pussies were for sale.’ This woman finally snapped and was screaming the Hindi word for ‘pussy’ non-stop until she was trundled away. It was not quite a moment of truth in life, but moving nonetheless. Indians often treat each other like shit – I’ve seen my own friends in Mumbai give waiters a hard time and flaunt their affluence. People treat those less fortunate like crap in every country, but in Asia it’s often disgusting.

Today, December 20th 2007, is the two-year anniversary of my final day of work at Monitor Group. I officially left in mid-January 2006, after my unused vacation time cycled through, but December 20th 2005 is certainly a red-letter date in my calendar. Seems like yesterday that I had my final meeting (with the Jewish Sales VP of my old client), rode back to Monitor’s Tokyo office with my colleague, got my bags, and said goodbye to the entire Tokyo office – who waited outside my elevator and bowed as the doors closed. I had a tear in my eye as the elevator descended…in fact, I forgot to push a floor button for a few seconds, I was so moved. Then I got in the car and was driven through downtown Tokyo en route to the airport – I swear I looked out the car window for the entire hour or so, taking it all in. That night I landed in Hong Kong, went to my flat, unpacked my bags, and packed another bag. And the next morning I flew to Bangkok for two weeks of holidays in Thailand.

So many roads since then…I have been busy seeing this world of ours. I’ve run into quite a few others who are doing it too, in their own special way. To paraphrase my old friend Ray George, I think I can be happy almost anywhere there’s an ‘edge’ – which excludes Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city Ray visited for a job interview and found decidedly lacking in edge. It’s truly incredible how many places have an edge, and I hope that when I’ve come across these places my writing has highlighted this. I’m excited to carry on and continue seeking the universal truths – sprinkled with the down-and-dirty elements that power my pen. Have a good holiday season and see you in a week for my final 2007 posting, one which will probably have some sort of list of observations and experiences from the year. Over and out.

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