Corrections and notes on departure
9/10/2005, 2:23 am Kolkata time
Note: if this post comes off sounding a bit disjointed, it's because I'm rather tired. I'm trying to stay awake as long as I can as an experiment in jet-lag avoidance. I figure if I can stay awake until my plane takes off from Singapore, that'll be around early evening Portland time, and my day/night schedule should start to pop back into place. I'm not sure if this strategy will work or not, but I figure it's worth a try.
The seat-back display says that we just passed over the Andaman Sea, and are about a thousand kilometers away from Singapore. Holy cow, -54 degrees celsius outside. That's quite cold. My return flight takes me from Kolkata to Singapore, then to Tokyo, then to Los Angeles, then to Portland. I'm just over 26 hours away from being back in Portland. On the one hand, it's amazing to me that it's possible today to travel from India to Portland in such a short period of time; after all, it wasn't that many years ago that I would have had to spend several weeks at sea to traverse that distance. On the other hand, it astounds me that it is possible to spend that long traveling. Our planet is absolutely enormous.
Leaving Kolkata was surprisingly uneventful. Going through the airport, I was pleasantly surprised at how efficient and friendly the customs and security personnel were. They searched one of my carry-on bags, but were incredibly nice about it. Changing the majority of my rupees back into dollars was an adventure— I had no idea that you had to fill out that much paperwork. The guy behind the counter spent a good ten minutes keying things into various data-entry screens on his computer, and I filled out two different forms and had to present my boarding pass and passport. I'm not sure if this was something specific to India, or whether it's just how currency conversion usually works.
While waiting in line to change currency, and then again in the departure lounge, I noticed several different cats. Yes, cats, apparently strays. Running around the airport. Of course, none of the airport staff seemed to notice them. Contrast this to the US— if a stray cat wandered past security in PDX, they'd probably have to shut the whole airport down, compensate hundreds of people for lost time and missed flights, hire grief counselors to deal with the traumatized persons, and face lawsuits from PETA and the ACLU.
Getting on the plane itself was interesting, as well. There was no jetway, so we all got to walk right out on the tarmac and climb a somewhat treacherous staircase to board the plane. I haven't gotten to do this since I was in Israel, and I'd forgotten just how freaking huge a commercial airliner is. This particular one is a 777-200, and it's absolutely enormous. The engines alone are bigger than many houses that I've seen.
I have extremely mixed feelings about leaving Kolkata. On the one hand, I'm looking forward to going home as it's been a few months since I spent more than four or five days in my house and with my friends. On the other hand, I've really grown to love Kolkata and the people who live here. I've made a lot of good friends, and have gotten a slight taste of the vast cultural buffet that is India— just enough to know what I'm missing by only having seen one city.
I have to say, the people I've met in West Bengal have taught me more about hospitality than I knew there was to learn. We Americans know nothing about hospitality when compared with Bengalis. That's not to say that Americans are bad hosts, but rather that Bengalis are so incredibly hospitable that it puts us to shame. Everybody at Tathya— really, everybody we met, anywhere— went out of their way to make sure we felt welcome and at home, and as a result the only times I really felt out of place or homesick were in the hotel.
Ah, right, the title promised corrections. Correction one: most of the television I blogged about a few weeks ago (Kuan Banega 2 Crorepati, the motorscooter ad, etc.) was Hindi, not Bengali. Correction two: Indra is not the owner of Tathya, he is the managing director and one of the principal stockholders. And correction three: contrary to my initial impressions, our driver was actually quite well paid. Apparently, driving is a very lucrative profession here, and one can expect to earn a similar salary to that earned by a mid-level software developer.
Ashis called me on my offer of a bet, and when we looked into the numbers, we found that Clint had been making almost exactly as much as I'd spent on sandwich and a beer. We called it a draw, and I got to keep my battery.
Correction four is not really a correction, but more of an addendum. After reading my post on relative income levels, several people (Ashis, Somnath, Indra, to name a few) made it a point to run some numbers with me about relative costs of living. It turns out that, proportionately, the cost of living is very similar here to Portland. That is to say, Ashis and I spend roughly similar percentages of our monthly incomes on similar things. A certain percentage towards housing, a certain percentage towards food, etc. My transportation costs were much higher than his, since I drive a car and he takes buses and bicycle rickshaws. On the other hand, his food expenses were a bit more than mine, proportionately. All in all, nothing was terribly out of whack.
So, my initial impressions may have been correct if one were to simply compare empirical quantities of money, but were rather off the mark if one corrects for the differential purchasing power.
Well, I think that's about it for this post. I'm still working on writing up everything that happened since being sick- I have an outline taking up a couple of hundred lines in my text editor, and have a nice long flight ahead of me on which to write. I figure I'll post this once I get to Singapore and have internet access, and then will continue writing up everything else.
Note: if this post comes off sounding a bit disjointed, it's because I'm rather tired. I'm trying to stay awake as long as I can as an experiment in jet-lag avoidance. I figure if I can stay awake until my plane takes off from Singapore, that'll be around early evening Portland time, and my day/night schedule should start to pop back into place. I'm not sure if this strategy will work or not, but I figure it's worth a try.
The seat-back display says that we just passed over the Andaman Sea, and are about a thousand kilometers away from Singapore. Holy cow, -54 degrees celsius outside. That's quite cold. My return flight takes me from Kolkata to Singapore, then to Tokyo, then to Los Angeles, then to Portland. I'm just over 26 hours away from being back in Portland. On the one hand, it's amazing to me that it's possible today to travel from India to Portland in such a short period of time; after all, it wasn't that many years ago that I would have had to spend several weeks at sea to traverse that distance. On the other hand, it astounds me that it is possible to spend that long traveling. Our planet is absolutely enormous.
Leaving Kolkata was surprisingly uneventful. Going through the airport, I was pleasantly surprised at how efficient and friendly the customs and security personnel were. They searched one of my carry-on bags, but were incredibly nice about it. Changing the majority of my rupees back into dollars was an adventure— I had no idea that you had to fill out that much paperwork. The guy behind the counter spent a good ten minutes keying things into various data-entry screens on his computer, and I filled out two different forms and had to present my boarding pass and passport. I'm not sure if this was something specific to India, or whether it's just how currency conversion usually works.
While waiting in line to change currency, and then again in the departure lounge, I noticed several different cats. Yes, cats, apparently strays. Running around the airport. Of course, none of the airport staff seemed to notice them. Contrast this to the US— if a stray cat wandered past security in PDX, they'd probably have to shut the whole airport down, compensate hundreds of people for lost time and missed flights, hire grief counselors to deal with the traumatized persons, and face lawsuits from PETA and the ACLU.
Getting on the plane itself was interesting, as well. There was no jetway, so we all got to walk right out on the tarmac and climb a somewhat treacherous staircase to board the plane. I haven't gotten to do this since I was in Israel, and I'd forgotten just how freaking huge a commercial airliner is. This particular one is a 777-200, and it's absolutely enormous. The engines alone are bigger than many houses that I've seen.
I have extremely mixed feelings about leaving Kolkata. On the one hand, I'm looking forward to going home as it's been a few months since I spent more than four or five days in my house and with my friends. On the other hand, I've really grown to love Kolkata and the people who live here. I've made a lot of good friends, and have gotten a slight taste of the vast cultural buffet that is India— just enough to know what I'm missing by only having seen one city.
I have to say, the people I've met in West Bengal have taught me more about hospitality than I knew there was to learn. We Americans know nothing about hospitality when compared with Bengalis. That's not to say that Americans are bad hosts, but rather that Bengalis are so incredibly hospitable that it puts us to shame. Everybody at Tathya— really, everybody we met, anywhere— went out of their way to make sure we felt welcome and at home, and as a result the only times I really felt out of place or homesick were in the hotel.
Ah, right, the title promised corrections. Correction one: most of the television I blogged about a few weeks ago (Kuan Banega 2 Crorepati, the motorscooter ad, etc.) was Hindi, not Bengali. Correction two: Indra is not the owner of Tathya, he is the managing director and one of the principal stockholders. And correction three: contrary to my initial impressions, our driver was actually quite well paid. Apparently, driving is a very lucrative profession here, and one can expect to earn a similar salary to that earned by a mid-level software developer.
Ashis called me on my offer of a bet, and when we looked into the numbers, we found that Clint had been making almost exactly as much as I'd spent on sandwich and a beer. We called it a draw, and I got to keep my battery.
Correction four is not really a correction, but more of an addendum. After reading my post on relative income levels, several people (Ashis, Somnath, Indra, to name a few) made it a point to run some numbers with me about relative costs of living. It turns out that, proportionately, the cost of living is very similar here to Portland. That is to say, Ashis and I spend roughly similar percentages of our monthly incomes on similar things. A certain percentage towards housing, a certain percentage towards food, etc. My transportation costs were much higher than his, since I drive a car and he takes buses and bicycle rickshaws. On the other hand, his food expenses were a bit more than mine, proportionately. All in all, nothing was terribly out of whack.
So, my initial impressions may have been correct if one were to simply compare empirical quantities of money, but were rather off the mark if one corrects for the differential purchasing power.
Well, I think that's about it for this post. I'm still working on writing up everything that happened since being sick- I have an outline taking up a couple of hundred lines in my text editor, and have a nice long flight ahead of me on which to write. I figure I'll post this once I get to Singapore and have internet access, and then will continue writing up everything else.
posted by steve | 4:50 PM
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