Wanderlust Heaven!

So it’s back to work for me.  Probably about time…although I will miss the rigors of the road.  One lesson I think I’ve learned well over the past three years is the need to keep smiling, remain patient, and to try to have fun, even in the most trying of circumstances.  If I can keep that in mind, my transition back to work should be relatively painless.  If I instead get back to pressing and feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders, that’ll be a different story altogether.  It’s not a crime to enjoy yourself, even in a supposedly serious situation.  Lots of people in non-Western cultures seem to get that a lot better than we do, and they seem a lot happier as a result.  Sometimes you have to lose the smile and get down to business, but your default position should be one of happiness (which does not mean that you should walk around with a smile on your face at all times).I realize that I’ve had a unique experience…and even if my return to work has been precipitated/ provoked by an insane drop in the equity markets, I consider myself pretty fortunate.  I’ve seen places and things that boggle the mind…and I’ve had quiet little experiences that I can’t help but laugh and wonder about.  I think my destiny is all about having unusual experiences in odd places – I realized that much over the past 3 years, and suspected it well before I undertook my journey.  A challenge for me will be to continue having those sorts of experiences while in a more defined structure; being in India does set a good foundation, given the colorful and idiosyncratic nature of this country.  And the group I’ve joined seems friendly and smart – I think this is the right way for me to re-enter ‘reality.’

I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to say on this in coming weeks.  In the meantime, back to the past…my top 20 memories from my time wandering much of the planet.  These are in no particular order, I just jotted them down over the course of a few days:

-Getting pulled with old friend Iain in the middle of the Australian outback by a cop who breathalyzed Iain – later, having the Feral Mixed Grill platter at the Prairie Hotel and dancing all night in the desert air

-Hanging out with Iain’s wife Stephanie in the Barossa Valley, laughing at a random woman who was consumed with the gourmet products and airs of Maggie Beers

-Driving like mad as the sun set to get to the Clifton Springs truckers’ overnight camp near Ayers Rock, dodging feral camels and huge black wedge-tailed eagles

-Jogging nightly around Rizal Park in Manila, trying to hold my breath around one particular urine-soaked stretch

-The unfriendly barman in Lviv who clearly didn’t like foreigners hanging out in his bar

-Cleaning up my vodka vomit in my rented room in Cholpon-Ata, near Lake Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan

-Getting close to a young Israeli lass on an overnight bus from Manali to Dharamsala

-Searching for the lost tomb of Alexander the Great in Alexandria

-Taking the world’s highest motorable pass, Khardung-La, in Ladakh, with driver Angdu

-Snorkeling with the giant whalesharks, the butanding, in Dolsol, Philippines

-Having a Cebu taxi driver, who didn’t speak much English, ask me if Tom Jones was still alive (‘It’s Not Unusual’ had just started playing on his radio)

-Arriving on a redeye train into Moscow and watching a cop train a powerful waterhose on an unfortunate beggar picking through a rubbish bin

-Riding in a hot air balloon with the Ricci sisters in Cappadocia, Turkey

-Watching a hen (bachelorette) party in Nukus, Uzbekistan, near the dried-up Aral Sea

-Having secret political discussions with various Burmese, including a mountaintop nighttime session listening to the Voice of America with my trekking guide

-Sitting for hours in Turkish baths around Budapest with fraternity brother Art

-Riding for 5 days around northern Vietnam with two fun Kiwis and our terrific local guide – the last night of which was a homestay with way too much food and drink and merriment

-A day spent in the West Bank – an unsettling and deeply depressing experience

-Lunch at The Stoep (South African resto) on HKG Lantau Island’s Cheung Sha Beach

-Riding my motorbike back to Bean Me Up after watching the Patriots lose the Super Bowl to the Giants, was raised out my funk when I saw a woman touch a cow with her fingers, then kiss her fingers

There, I think that’s 20.  There are countless more, of course – if you remember anything worthy, please send me a comment or email and I can shoehorn those in next week.

Over the past three years, I’ve written nearly 150 posts, amounting to well over 1,000 pages of text.  One of these days I need to sit down and plow through these, and pull out a few threads worthy of more thinking.  Not sure when that will happen, but I’ll eventually get to it.  Again, I’d welcome any input from you.

The past week was not boring.  My step-grandfather was on his deathbed…I spent several days at his place, spending time with his family.  They’re a good bunch and I get along with them well.  Not at all a hardship.  On Saturday Willy seemed to be fading, and he called his grandkids into the room to tell them to study hard (good Jewish grandfather) and to say goodbye.  But he held on for a couple more days – we all marveled at his strength.  I hadn’t ever been around to watch someone dying – it was perhaps one of the more profound experiences in my life.  Willy spent his last days surrounded by family, in the privacy and dignity of his own home, being cared for by a professional.  That’s the right way to go.

I spent lots of time talking with various family members, and downed a few scotches – they had O’Ban, one of my favorite brands.  And I naturally thought about my Mom and losing her, back in 1995.  She was far too young and I often wonder how her life would have gone – she deserved so much more.  I don’t believe in any sort of afterlife, but for her I have trouble accepting that life is truly over and gone, and I hope that I’m wrong…I’d give anything to see her again, anywhere out there.

Had dinner with cousin Rick in Boston on Saturday night.  Ellen’s niece Jill kindly gave me a ride into Boston, and I met rick at Ma Soba, a terrific Japanese place near Government Center.  Good food, and great value – the set combinations were impressively cheap.  Rick and I always have lots to discuss, he’s perhaps my most accomplished and unconventional relative.

Got back to Newton around midnight.  Stepsister Amanda was still up – we talked for a while downstairs.  She was grieving for her grandfather, understandably.  She asked me about my mother, which I appreciated – Amanda’s the only one these days (besides my sister and brother-in-law, of course) with whom I have this conversation.  She has a kind heart and that will get her far in life – it’s a rare gift.

On Sunday morning Dad told me a bad storm was approaching, that it might foul up my travel plans, and that I might need to change my plans.  I was scheduled to fly from Boston to New York/JFK on Monday afternoon, and then on to Mumbai that night.  The storm would start on Sunday, and, with some breaks, continue until Monday afternoon.  Ugh.  Logan Airport in Boston tends to get nailed by these storms, and to shut down or at least experience awful delays.  I really had to get to Mumbai ASAP – and I had told Ellen that, as her father would likely pass away imminently.  She was perfectly OK with my leaving ahead of the funeral – I had spent a lot of time at Willy’s place and had seen him near the end, and that counted for a great deal.  So now I just had to get moving and get to Mumbai in time for some important meetings.

Dad and I are cut from the same cloth.  After dithering for a bit, I got to work, changed my flights (canceled the Boston-New York leg, which required a call to Expedia.com – didn’t want to lose the New York-Mumbai segment), booked an Amtrak train ride for that very night, called friend Bryan in NYC to secure his guest bedroom and midnight beers/snack, and began packing.  Felt a bit rushed, but only because I’d planned to do this the following morning.  In truth, I was fine – I’d ‘pre-packed’ and gotten everything teed up, and I had completed my usual tasks, like backing up my computer on a (new) external hard drive which I left in Dad & Ellen’s safe.  So I finished packing…everything fit just fine into my various pieces of luggage.  I’d given a good deal of thought to what I should bring – we frequent travelers obsess over luggage and contents, as I’ve written about in the past.  No issues here.

Walked over to Willy’s, hung out with Dad, Royce and Marty for a while.  Read the newspapers, there was an article about the Mumbai slums in there – no dearth of Mumbai slum articles in the wake of Slumdog Millionaire.  This obsession will fade with time…

Around 5:30 p.m. Dad drove me and my stuff to the Route 128 Amtrak station.  Yet another farewell – I don’t much enjoy these, I get a bit sad and feel guilty about leaving Dad and home, yet again…but I’ll be back in May so not such a big deal.  Still, it felt like a pivot point in my life – I was about to write a new chapter.   What is the theory of my life – is there one?  As I wrote earlier, I feel my destiny is to be out there in the world, having experiences, connecting cultures, coming up with fresh ideas – I just don’t know if this is a sustainable model.  When I’m older, will I need to put away my Tevas and hiking boots and ‘settle down?’  Is this truly the mandated, natural order of things?

The ride down to NYC was smooth, it was snowing out but didn’t affect the trip.  Got out at Penn Station, feeling weighed down by my stuff – I was certainly able to lug it around, but wouldn’t want to go 5 kilometers on foot with it.  And the taxi queue was brutal, and it was snowing – I wasn’t in the mood to get my stuff soaked and make it even heavier to carry.  So I went back into the bowels of Penn Station and took the subway to Tribeca, then trudged a few blocks through the snow to Bryan’s building.  Got there, he was still out (playing poker – he clears a fair amount of loot from that pastime), so I dropped my stuff, freshened up, and checked emails and the weather/airport situation – was looking OK for getting out the following night.  Bryan got home a bit after midnight, we caught up for a while, then went out into the storm for refreshments.

I wouldn’t miss the weather, that was for sure.  Nearly three weeks in New England and New York in February/early March – good to finally escape.  Bryan and I wound up at a bar, unfortunately the kitchen had just closed so we had a beer, then took a cab to the timeless Washington Square Diner where we gorged – buffalo wings, Monte Christo, and eggs.  New York diners – watch out.

Went to sleep around 3:30 a.m., got up around 9.  Bryan was already up, watching yet another frightening drop in the equity markets.  Depressing.  AIG was at $0.63 a share, down from over $60 a year or so ago.  When will it all end?  It’s like a bad pinball or video game these days…

Hung around with Bryan for the rest of the morning.  He went off around noon to play more poker, I got busy on emails and checking the weather.  I also had a work-related call, with a colleague with whom I’d first worked back in 1997.  We’d both left the firm, and returned within a few years.  Small world.

My Air India flight looked OK.  I went to the trouble of calling my firm’s travel department and had them double-check for me – same answer.  So I left for the airport about 4 hours before departure, and the traffic to JFK was reasonable.  Seemed too good to be true.

Wound up taking off about an hour late – not disastrous, given the other possible scenarios.  I wasn’t thrilled to be arriving in Mumbai near midnight the following day, but in general one tends to arrive and depart from India at terrible hours, and I was well used to it.  Used the 13.5 hours in the air pretty well – read “The Sign and the Seal,” about a quest for the lost Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia, for a few hours.  Pretty interesting book, written by a former East Africa correspondent for The Economist.  The book is lengthy, still in the middle of it, but I was struck by a chapter which covers the internal strife that afflicted Ethiopia centuries ago – between Christians and Falashas (local Jews).  The Christians apparently took the Ark from the ‘Holy of Holies’ in Axum and used it against the Jews.  How ironic is that??

Read a bunch of work documents, that took a few more hours.  Listened to a couple hours’ worth of podcasts, these had backed up while I was busy at home.  Finally, managed to sleep 3-4 hours.  Felt in solid shape when we touched down in Mumbai, around 11:15 p.m. on Tuesday.  I was already resigned to a long night with little sleep – jet lag would help me get up early the next morning.

The airport was a bit chaotic – numerous broadcasts by different people telling us where to collect our bags.  Little or no coordination taking place here.  I had a brief moment of anxiety – was I really doing the right thing, coming back to work in such a chaotic place?  What mayhem would I face in coming days and weeks?  Then I saw my bags coming down the carousel, I settled down, and just let it all be.

As I rode into the city I thought about similar moves I’d made in the past.  When I moved to Johannesburg in 1998, I’d also shown up with a few bags, and gotten right into the work.  I recalled having to scramble to buy a couple more white oxfords, as I’d only brought a couple and things were quite formal in South Africa, at least with Afrikaner-dominated companies (like our client) back then.   I only had four bags with me this time, pretty much all my important stuff.  How did I feel about being 41 years old and being able to carry everything with me like this?  Most of my friends and family have large residences and tons of stuff – stuff that marks their time and lives.  I have no residence, and very few things, mostly books…if I ever do settle down, and I suppose I will one day, I won’t be that happy about having to buy all the stuff you need to fill out a house or flat.  So I guess I’ll keep on truckin’ for the time being…

Also thought back to my summer in Mumbai in ’92.  Seemed like a lifetime ago…and was certainly the strangest summer of my life, and one of the best.  Strange=good when it comes to my life.  When I left at the end of that summer, I never suspected that I’d be back in 17 years to begin a lengthy stint here.  Come to think of it, just a year ago, when I sat with friend Craig in his house in Shanghai, I had no idea I’d be back to work, anywhere, by this time.  Craig was also in India in ’92, we were b-school classmates and he also had a summer internship in India, in the Rajasthan desert town of Kota.  Just goes to show that if you wait long enough, nearly anything can happen…

As I reached the city, my final thought on this topic was that my reemergence here, and with Monitor Group, was perhaps inevitable.  I’m pretty much a consultant lifer by now…and Monitor’s DNA and culture are a great fit for me.  And I’d been showing up in Mumbai nearly every year lately, and making sure to see the Indian Monitor guys – did part of my brain know something that it wasn’t sharing with the rest of me?  Bansi had predicted that I’d be back – I hadn’t disagreed (if you wait long enough, nearly anything can happen, right?), I just hadn’t known how things would shake out.  Turns out, not for the first or last time, that he was right.

Got to the Suba Palace Hotel, where I’d stayed during my interviews in December.  Dropped off my bags and walked down the street to kebab vendor Bade Miya, whose praises I’ve sung several times in this slog.  Had a couple rolls, thought about going for a beer somewhere, but it was already 2 a.m. and I had to get up fairly early.  Went back to the hotel and checked email and Skype, Dad had left a voicemail – Willy had died while I was flying.  Hard news – not a surprise, but still sad.  Left some messages for Ellen and Dad, rotated some of my stuff between bags, and hit the sack.

As expected, jet lag got me up early – only had 3 or so hours of sleep, but it would do for now.  Had to gather my stuff and check out, I’d be flying to Delhi that night.  I stored a couple bags at the hotel and went to the office.  Most of the team was traveling, so I had some time to get set up on my new laptop and on the phone, and did a bunch of other start-up tasks that morning.  Had a nice lunch with Naina, our HR person, at the Bombay Gymkhana – terrific Indian fare.  She told me that the staff was very excited to have me joining them – nice to hear that, but now I really can’t screw up.

Did some reading the rest of the day, then went to the airport to fly up to Delhi, where I’d meet a senior colleague and get going on a new project.  Took Kingfisher Airlines, my favorite here – new planes, attractive attendants, light-hearted image.  Perhaps this was a good metaphor for my new gig…

In Delhi, checked into the wonderfully-named Svelte Personal Suites.  I wasn’t feeling particularly thin…then again, I’d tried on my suit that morning in Mumbai, and the pants were quite loose – I must have been seriously portly when I last wore it three years ago.  The trick now is to not grow back into the damn thing…

Work.  The subject matter is new to me, but then again in consulting it’s often that way – you just get up to speed and gradually become knowledgeable.  Note that gradual here means 2 weeks.  The usual trappings are pretty much the same, although Lotus Notes is now on Version 8, and full of useless features.  Same goes for Office 2007, which I’ve already been dealing with on my personal laptop – tons of new features which are basically blowware to me.  One of my colleagues in Delhi is a design expert and she loves the new applications – they’re ‘more visual.’  They probably are, but they’re also more confusing.  I like simple pulldown menus.  Oh well.  And there’s an instant-messaging app called Sametime which is all the rage now – I’ve been interrupted several times already by an IM.  I can see that it will be a real challenge to actually sit and think…not that I had loads of time for that back in the day either.  But I do think this is a trend, and I anticipate the need to defend my privacy/sanity and dedicate some time to thinking and content – might have to flee my office to do it.

Put in a very long day – left the office around 10 p.m.  But got a lot done and was ahead of the work.  Had a quick bite, then tried to read the paper – didn’t get far.  Spoke with a senior colleague on the phone, he wanted to welcome me to India.  I barely got through the call before passing out.

Classic jet-lagged night.  Fell asleep at 11 p.m., woke up at 1 a.m., then at 4 a.m., and by that point was fully awake.  Read my book, checked emails and voicemail, then hit the gym.  One of the two treadmills was actually working, so got in a very solid run.  I rarely exercise in the morning, would be good if I could do it, but usually I’m a bit weak before coffee/breakfast.

Noticed that my face is a bit sensitive – not used to shaving every day.  When I was traveling it was once, perhaps twice a week.

BTW, the Svelte Personal Suites is a great hotel – right near our Delhi office, terrific rooms, pretty good breakfasts, a winner all round.  This is definitely the place to stay in Delhi – am actually looking forward to getting back there soon.

My first project starts in a few days, already met the client and did the paperwork.  It’s for a large NGO, fairly implementation-oriented, pretty good first project for me.  And the project leader working for me is excellent – I’ll be able to focus on client relations and the big pic.  So far, so good.

Flew back to Mumbai Friday evening.  Smooth flight.  Took a blue cab to the city, the blue cabs have aircon and they’re just outside the exit.  Soon regretted my decision – the total fare was over 1,000 rupees, about US$20.  Not a huge sum, but the regular crappy little cabs are around 400 rupees.  No aircon, but when you’re moving you don’t need it.  Now I know…real rookie mistake.

Checked back into the Suba Palace, same room.  I don’t love it, but it will do till I find a flat.  And the staff is pleasant enough – of course, everyone’s looking for a tip every minute.

Got a quick bite (is there any other type?) at Bade Miya, then went out for a few beers.  Checked out the upstairs bar at Leopold’s – pretty busy and welcoming.  Had a few Kingfishers at the bar, talked to some random locals, Nelson and Ashish – they told me that the doorman downstairs had taken two bullets during the terrorist attacks in December.  Wow.  When I left the bar later that night, I made sure to stuff some money into the guy’s shirt pocket.  Incidentally, the terrorists surely intended to scare people away from Leopold’s (and the Taj, and the Oberoi…), but it seemed to me that Leo’s is more popular than ever.  Good for Leo’s, and good for Mumbai/India.  Indians (and tourists who visit India) are resilient people, god bless ‘em.

Spent most of Saturday in the office.  Did some paperwork, took care of a few other matters.  Joined the Yahoo and Facebook Bombay Expats groups, sent a note about real estate agents, and immediately got some answers.  And some social offers too…these boards are superb.  Met the office head’s new ‘chief of staff,’ met with the office head as well, talked to some real estate agents and lined up some visits, etc.  A 1-bedroom flat here won’t be too bad, methinks.  Market is a bit soft, great time to look.  I imagine I’ll spend about US$1,200 a month for a good place.  I can handle that.

Had a large, late lunch at my favorite place, Mahesh Lunch Home – pomfret balti, cheese naan, and Kingfishers.  Called Christine in Dumaguete, then lay down for a snooze.  Still a bit jet-lagged.  Intended to get up and exercise, but didn’t make it.  Had made an online booking to see ‘Revolutionary Road’ at the Nariman Point INOX Theatre at 20:30, so was a bit squeezed for time.  Will stop here and let you digest this post (and perhaps expel it…), I’ll fill you in next week on my movie feedback and other misadventures here in the land of milk and curry.  Over and out.

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