So its official.  I've booked my flight, got a room, paid my fees.  I'm going on a geek trip.  Destination: Drupalcon Boston 2008.  This probably does not excite you as much as it excites me.  I'll be hanging with some of the brightest web developers in the world, learning new techniques, writing cool new stuff.  And, due to the oddities of working for a distributed company, I'll be meeting many of my coworkers at Advomatic for the first time.  After having been working with Advomatic since last spring, I've met only one of my ~15 coworkers, and that was Yashesh when we were traveling through Mumbai.  It will be interesting to see what people are like in person.  Will the impressions of people that I've built up over the last 10 months of email and IRC resemble anything like the real thing?  

So I spent the evening creating a new look for the blog.  The last one was pretty and all, but had nothing to do with chickens or eggs.  Those of you who have ever got an invite to one of our parties will recognize the line drawing style as that of the beautifully talented Debbi.  We then took photos of the drawings and I played with them in The GIMP.  

Hope you like it. 

As Debbi mentioned earlier, due to the fact that S. Korea is suddenly changing their requirements for obtaining a visa for English teachers, we can't go there anymore. So we need to find another place to live. We have about 2 weeks before we need to be there, so we need to decide fast. And basically the world is our oyster; we could go anywhere. Well anywhere where that Debbi can find a job, probably as an English teacher, and I can do my work (building grassroots, progressive, political, oftentimes American, sometimes left-wing websites) without fear of being thrown in a gulag. This has ruled out a few possibilities including Saudi Arabia and Mainland China.

Having anywhere in the world is too many options, so we're leaning towards East Asia, cause that's where we are now, and getting back to N. America is pretty easy (as opposed to say central Africa). So I've been doing research on the different options from my point of view, while Debbi is simultaneously investigating the job market.

I'm collecting information on things like quality of living, political stability, political freedom, internet availability and pollution. But man it's hard to find hard information on pollution levels. What I would really like to see is charts that compare air pollution and ground water quality for Asia's major urban centres measured over time. But such information is not on the internet. Part of the reason is that governments don't publish the data that they collect. It's bad for tourism apparently. Really ?!?!? But I might suggest that It's not the publishing of information that scares the tourists, it's the actual pollution. Everyone knows that Asia has the worst pollution in the world, whether you publish actual numbers or not. So all I have to go on are qualitative phrases in newspaper articles and blog posts. Which is probably specific enough for our needs.

So here's what we're thinking so far in no particular order. For those of you who are geographically challenged I also created a map.

Malaysia

This ranks high on our list. We had a stopover in Kuala Lumpur the other day and it was quite impressive. Low pollution (we just came from India so just about anything is low in comparrison). Littering is a punishable offence (also a sharp contrast from dirty India). And it ranks high in all our other categories. Oh and there's nice beaches there.

Hong Kong

We've done little more than ride the transit and go for dinner, but so far it seems like a great city. We want to look around a bit more, but this seems like a promising option. The tapwater is drinkable!

Taiwan

Also ranks high. Though I'm getting the impression that the pollution might be a bit higher in Taipei than Hong Kong or Kuala Lumpur.

Singapore

Singapore is always rated as the number one place for expats to live in surveys like this one by a big HR firm. However the primary language is English which means that expat English teaching jobs are scarce.

Macau

Haven't done much research on this yet, but it ranks high too.

Thailand

It might be an option. Need to do more research.

Japan

It would rank high, however there's currently a low demand for English teachers. Also the high cost of living and low value of the Yen will cut into out ability to save.

Mainland China

China scores terribly in every category except the avaialability of English teaching jobs. So we likely won't end up there.

So we pretty much need to have this figured out bu Monday at the latest so we can book some flights, get there, find Debbi a job, find a place to live, and get me setup to be able to get back to work by year end.

Wish us luck.

I can remember times back home when my seasoned traveler friends would gripe about the substandard transit systems in Alberta. "Nothing connects well; you always have to wait at least 20mins for a bus..." I always thought that they might have been overreacting a bit. After all, you can still get from one end of the city to the other in under 2 hours.

Well today we arrived in Hong Kong, and I have now experienced transit the way it was meant to be: Clean, efficient, lots of space, on time, and frequent. And you get these pre-paid RFID cards that you just hover over the payment machine as you walk by.

We needed to get from the airport (which is located on a huge man-made island) to the New Territories (read suburbs) where we're staying with Debbi's friend Ellen. Total distance is about 50km. And it only took about an hour. Hong Kong has 11 metro lines. Eleven! Calgary has two. We took three different trains. But it was super straightforward, even though we can't read Chinese. The whole experience is designed to be real usable: You get off one train, walk 10 steps across the platform and step on a train from the next line which has just arrived.

There's dynamic maps all over the place that update your current position, show the next stop, what side of the train the door opens, and what lines connect. Wow. And there's lots of room, even at 4 in the afternoon (cause trains come every 5 mins); A far cry from Mumbai.

The trains are about 100M long, and are basically all one car. I bet if you rode late at night when there's not that many people around, and brought your skateboard, you could do some tests of Newton's laws of thermodynamics. I think that if you got on at the front of the train, got on your skateboard and gave a little push right when the train started moving, you could ride all the way to the end of the train; basically staying in one spot while the train moves forward. Unfortunately I don't know how to skateboard, and I'm not gutsy enough to mess with the authorities.

Back to our trip. After the subway we got on a minibus. These little 16 seaters come ever 5mins. And they have seat-belts. Seat-belts, on a bus?!?! Crazy. And there's a numeric display above the driver telling the current speed of the vehicle. There's so many buses that there's so little traffic, so you get to your destination real quick.

Needless to say my inital impression of Hong Kong is pretty good.

I just finished reading E.M. Forster's A Passage to India. This novel has helped me to understand many of my experiences in India; of why I see "poor India... where everything was placed wrong." And how "there seem[s] no reserve of tranquility to draw upon in India. Either none, or tranquility seem[s] to swallow up everything..."

But if I search deeper I find that perhaps the problem is not India, perhaps it is me: "This pose of 'seeing India' which had seduced him... was only a form of ruling India." The West expects the Rest to wait upon us, our slaves to rush to our every whim.

[What the book conveys] is Forster's growing skepticism in the wake of the First World War about modern civilization's ability to solve on its own the immense new problems it had created - to deal with for instance, the heavily armed nation states and empires that fought each other and pre-modern peoples for control of the world, enlisted scientists and historians as well as artists in their conflicts, and, whether totalitarian or democratic, demanded the subjugation of individual conscience to the allegedly higher needs of the body-politic.

A Passage to India is however not primarily about West/Non-West relations, rather about how things are not as they appear. It is so very easy for us to deceive ourselves. We devise ways to justify our wants and to manipulate others to achieve our ends. But the whole thing happens on a level that is almost sub-conscious. We must ever strive to unearth our malicious tendencies, to climb the superficial barriers that we create. Many of these barriers are between ourselves and those people different from us. It is "us" and "them". But if we only take the effort to question our assumptions, and put our wants on hold, we can bridge the divide.

Experiences, not character divided them; they were not dissimilar as humans go; indeed, when compared to the people who stood nearest to them in point of space they became practically identical.

I'm finding that really it takes very little to begin to break down this barrier. Simply asking a rickshaw walla his good name and asking about his family is enough to move mountains. "One kind action was with him always a channel for another, and soon the torrent of hospitality gushed forth."

I struggle with being in a position of colonial supremacy while needing to find ways to overthrow it. And in the 21st century it is not just the lingering British colonialism that I'm talking about; it's the West's cultural and economic colonialism over 2/3rds of the world. And some days I think my presence here only serves to reinforce it.

And then unrelated to the main themes of the book I noticed this quote that really speaks to one of my pet peeves:

[T]he conversation had become unreal since Christianity had entered it. Ronny approved of religion as long as it endorsed the national anthem, but objected when it attempted to influence his life.

A few days ago - I can't seem to keep track of the flow of time, even though I bought a watch to help me out - we got up at 4 in the morning to take a train from Mumbai to Goa. Upon arriving at the platform we discovered that we'd been upgraded to first class. There's one car for 8 people with two bathrooms. This is a far cry from my last journey in sleeper class (The lowest class with beds).

As we entered our cabin we were greeted by our fellow passangers: Professor A. A. Kazi who introduced himself as the Chairman of the Cancer Aid & Research Foundation and his assistant. Let me tell you these two just might be the biggest jerks we've met in India to date. We were assigned to the upper beds, and these two had the lower. After the train got moving they requested that we move up so that they could rest. I was more than happy to oblige; after waking up at 4am I was wanting some extra Zzzzs too. However they did not rest. They called up three of their co-workers from 3AC to join them in the 1st class berth. So now there are 5 people down below, with Deb & I trapped on the upper bunks, and I don't have a hope of sleeping.

When the conductor came in to collect tickets he said that the extra people needed to move back to their assigned seats, but the professor made some excuse about how they needed to conduct a business meeting. The conductor returned several times trying to convince the extras to move back to 3AC, "If you want to ride in 1st class you need to pay for 1st class". After which Prof. Kazi began threatening him. "I know the Station Master in Mumbai, I can have you fired! Do you want to be out of a job?". At which point the conductor apologized profusely. I thought he almost might start kissing the Professor's feet.

If this was a business meeting, I'm not sure how their organization survives. But it soon became clear as throughout our journey they suggested several times that we should donate to their organization, or even work for their organization. Right. Like we would consider it after seeing the way this guy acts. If I was one of his subordinates, I'd be looking to see how I can get out before he turns a similar trick on me.

But the tables turned in our favour as they were only traveling half as far as us. So for about 5hrs Debbi & I had a first class cabin to ourselves. We even set up the ipod speakers and danced for a bit.

Upon arriving in Madgaon, we got a taxi for a decent rate to our hotel, which was really nice, and the people really friendly. We then went for dinner at a great little downstairs restaurant where we made friends with the manager - Micheal. He's trying to save up to get to the UK. He gave us his mobile number and told us to call if we ever got in a bind or needed advice.

The next day we got on a local bus to Palolem Beach which is excellent! It's the quintessential palm treed, white sand beach. We're staying in a little beach hut. If we sit on the veranda we can see the water, and we fall asleep to the waves at night. The food is great; we even found an organic restaurant.

So now time is slipping by.  I only know that it's Wednesday because I looked at my watch, but I have no idea how long it's been. We spend our days reading, or swimming, or riding scooters up the coast. Debbi wants us to stay here for a while, but I'm worried that I'll get antsy. So today I'll book us tickets for 3 or 4 days from now. Not quite sure where we'll go yet. Maybe Kerala.

So we've made our way down to South India. About a week ago we flew from Delhi to Mumbai. For $55 a piece we flew on Indigo Air which is somewhat comparable to Westjet; they get stuff done, and on time. A far cry from the old guard Air India.

At my job with Advomatic we often work with some developers in India since there's always more work than we have people to do it. Yashesh Bhatia and his business partner Prakash live in Mumbai and Yash invited Debbi & I to stay with his family. This was a new thing for us, we hadn't yet stayed in someone elses home here in India. As with many homes in India (and anywhere in the non-West for that matter), this is an extended family home. The home takes up several floors of an apartment building. Yash and his wife Neha have a 3 year old boy; there's also his parents; sister in law; and at any given time there's between 2 and 6 other family members staying for extended periods. Plus 3 staff, so the house is a pretty busy place.

The Bhatia clan was very hospitable to us. They really bent over backwards to try and make us feel at home. Yash drew out these elaborate maps so we could find our way around the city, and whenever we walked through the doors we were always pulled to the dinner table for something to eat.

Mumbai is a pretty cool place too. Way nicer than Delhi: cleaner, fewer cows, all the rickshaw wallas use the meter, and far fewer touts. Our first night we walked around the suburbs a bit and checked out a Hare Krishna temple. On our first day we took the local train to downtown Bombay (which was a bit difficult since there's little English signage) where we walked and shopped and saw the sights (photos might not come for a while). We visited the National Gallery of Modern Art which had some really great stuff. The top floor is a half sphere, so it's really cool to walk around and hear your footsteps echo.

On day two we went to the planetarium and saw a movie about stars, planets and all things celestial. We then walked accross to the Nehru Centre where we saw another art exhibition (The artist copied several famous paintings and made their subjects "Indian") and an exhibition about Nehru, India's first Prime Minister.

Yash has been recovering from malaria for the last 2 weeks and has still been getting fevers.  2 days ago he went back to the doctor and got some more tests and found out that the reason he's not getting better is that he also has typhoid. Talk about bad luck.  So in the interests of aiding his recovery we decided that it would be time for us to move on. 

So we again took the local train downtown to purchase train tickets to Goa. We stood in line for at least an hour. In Queues in India you always have to watch for budgers. You've got to speak up otherwise you'll be in line for days.

We took the local train back to the 'burbs but this time it was rush hour. Canadian commuters have no idea what a full train is. Imagine a C-Train at it's fullest in downtown Calgary during rush hour. Now imagine the same train with twice as many people and you'll have an idea what a rush hour train is like in Mumbai. I'm not even exaggerating. We were one stop away from getting off and I was worried that at 4 ft from the exit I wouldn't be close enough to get off at our stop. But then all of a sudden I was expelled from the train as the 30 people in the 12 sqft next to the exit rushed off. As the train was pulling away I quickly grabbed on to the edge of the door of the ladies car and rode on the outside of the train to our stop. I was hoping that any authorities would give a foreigner a break. Not that it would be possible for anyone to check tickets anyway.

We're now in Goa, but I'll leave that for a later post.

After a few days in Jaipur, Byron and I went off on a camel trek together. We took an overnight AC bus to Jodhpur (By far my best bus experience so far, but AC is too cold). As we were booking our trip we met 2 guys from Victoria who had just come from a camel trip deeper into the desert and they told us horror stories of how bad it hurt: "I broke my nose once; ridding a camel hurt more." But they said that it was worth it, so we carried on.

From Jodhpur we took a 1hr local bus to Osian where we met our guide Namm. There was a 1-hump camel for each of us. Byron and I rode in front of the humps while Namm and his younger brother rode in the rear. It wasn't half as bad as what the guys from Victoria described. I'm guessing they didn't have saddles.

It was a 6km ride to Namm's house which was our base camp. The only other buildings in the vicinity are a few huts, one of which we stayed in. Over the next 24hrs we made 3 treks into the surrounding desert and to local villages. I think we spent about 11 hrs on camel back. We saw antelope, goats, sheep, a fox, and at least 20 species of birds including peacocks and a kingfisher. The people here grow mostly millet or castor or raise sheep and goats. It was a blast.