Around Chennai: Theosophical Society

Continuing our tradition of sightseeing on weekends (three for three so far!), we decided to go check out the Theosophical Society today. Our trusty neighbor/tour guide went with us to show us around and as always get breakfast (or "Idly, Vada, Coffee" as he calls it). Unlike normal, we took our own car! It was a bit cramped with the 5 of us (driver, 3 adults, and a toddler in car seat) but we managed. The Theosophical Society location in Chennai is the international headquarters and is known as "Huddleston Gardens." Brief history: The society was started in the United States by a Colonel from the civil war (Henry Olcott) and a spiritualist (Helena Blavatsky) who essentially decided that all religions were correct and lead to the same place. They later moved to Madras to study Eastern Religions and create the headquarters for their movement. 

The Huddleston Gardens are one of the only real green spaces we've seen in Chennai. It is very popular for morning walkers. So popular in fact, that you have to have a permit to do it. Unfortunately those permits are often sold out up to a year in advance. Fortunately, they only apply to people wanting to walk before 8am. So around 8:30 we headed over to take a walk in the naturally covered (but mostly paved) pathways.

Headquarter building. We liked the elephants.

Aside from being an fantastic green space, the gardens have buildings representing the places of worship of every major (and many minor) religion. These are not "active" facilities, but they can be used for private meditation.

Look! Trees that aren't surrounded by asphalt!

The gardens are also the location of the (certified) largest banyan tree in the world. It is hard to take a good representational picture, but trust me, this banyan takes up acres of space.

Banyan expansion tendrils

The whole place is very pleasant, but many of the buildings seem half abandoned. We were told they are used from time to time, but they have an air of neglect around them.

The paint is newish, but the furniture inside was insanely dusty

If only I could live here... it'd be worth the commute!

Jain temple with a fantastically mustachioed statue. 

We noticed some men cleaning up a tree fall. Looks like it demolished that brick wall!

Hope no one was under it

More banyans. Also, she's watering the 'grass'

Col. Olcott is one of the few (only?) Americans to enjoy having a statue in India. As it turns out, there were at least four around here. This one commemorates the site of his funeral pyre.

The gardens is on the south side of the Adyar river. The Adyar has quite the stench to it on the north side, but it appears the smell is confined to the north side of the uninhabited "Adyar River Mangroves" island. Don't ask me how that works, but it did.

You can see the "Leela Palace" hotel in the background.

We wrapped up our visit with a walk inside the main meeting hall.

Motto/philosophy

Logo

We finished up our morning with a trip to Elliot's Beach, a pretty wealthy college town area, for breakfast at Murugan's Idli Shop. We were told they had the best Idly in town... and we weren't disappointed. We'll have to make it back out for a better look at Elliot's Beach though, especially at night. We were lead to believe the area draws quite a crowd and has fantastic food.

Two Years in India, Week 3: First Pouch Run

You know, when I originally applied for the Information Management Specialist position with the Foreign Service I thought I was signing up to install and maintain computers. What I didn't realize was that we were in charge of ALL information going to and from the post. Anyway, this week I got my first taste of one of the forms that information takes.

One of our many jobs at post involves packing, tracking, and escorting secure mail from our facilities overseas to the airplanes that take them out of the country (and back, for incoming packages). As far as I can tell, this is generally called a pouch run. Being a consulate (and a relatively small one at that), this isn't a common occurrence in Chennai. However, we wanted to make sure I got a chance to do one before my predecessor shipped out on Thursday. I expected it to be quite exciting, I mean, we get down on the tarmac with the plane and watch them unload and load cargo. Sounds cool, right? Yeah... it's not as cool as it seems. In the end, it was just a long, sleep-depriving night.

In other news, my predecessor did in fact leave, ostensibly leaving me as the only IMS in Chennai. However, we were loaned an Information Programs Officer (IPO) from Delhi to help me manage things until my boss gets here. On the one hand, I think I would have been fine without the help, but I'm definitely glad he's here. Aside from the work benefits of having an experienced hand to help me, he's also just nice to have around from a social aspect! Who wants to be locked away by themselves all day?

I had one final revelation about my job this week. For years, as a government contractor, I was so pleased and proud of the fact that I never really received a lot of e-mails. I thought it was a good indication that I was actually getting work done. This week I realized that the majority of my job now consists of reading and answering e-mails. Sure, I do things also (apparently a lot of things, with how fast the time seems to go at work), but a lot of my job is now just making decisions that other people implement. I don't know how I became a manager, but it just feels weird!

Scary to visit America

This is a post I drafted while at FSI, but never managed to finish / post.

We've heard from several of the instructors that America is considered a scary/dangerous place to visit. Kind of the way we (Americans) joke that "EVERYTHING IN AUSTRALIA CAN AND WILL KILL YOU." However, unlike Australia where this is in fact true, the United States is relatively safe, right?

Well... it depends on how you look at it. Hurricanes, Tornados, Earthquakes, Volcanos, Floods, Landslides, Blizzards, Firestorms, Rattlesnakes, Alligators, Bears, Mountain Lions, Black Widows (albeit non-fatal, they still are often mistaken as such), and Crime are all in the news and in movies. Let's face it, that media exposure is how most people form their opinion of the US. Plus, I think most people who have never been to the United States don't really grasp how big it is (like us regarding Africa). They live in relatively small, geographically homogenous countries and therefore may not internalize the sheer size of the US. Even the Aussies, plan like one week to see the entire US and they live in a huge country as well, albeit sparsely populated (though to be fair, I only spent two weeks visiting Australia).  If you condense all of the US's various dangers into one place, say one state... I could see how that'd be pretty terrifying.

I bring this up because I was recently sitting next to an LES from Morocco in the breakroom while the news reported on a sinkhole in Baltimore that swallowed some (empty) cars. No one was hurt, but the guy I was talking to was pretty shaken up about it. He said he has the opportunity to move to the US soon, but he's not sure he'll take it. Apparently he wants to come, but the US is a "dangerous place." He then proceeded to list off a bunch of the dangers I mentioned above. I explained that only some of those apply to any one place you live. He didn't seem to convinced and said he never has to worry about any of those things in Morocco (though I've later learned that Morocco does in fact get some floods, earthquakes, and insect swarms...). In the end, we didn't talk long, but I was surprised to find out that our instructors weren't just pulling our legs about the "scary America" idea.

Take that Europe! Even your map distortion can't save you!

Ok, Ok, you win Africa.

There's a neat website where you can compare country sizes, aptly named OverlapMaps.com.

Around Chennai: Triplicane

This weekend we participated in our first Community Liaison Officer (CLO) event since getting to Chennai. It started bright and early in the morning (7:00) in Triplicane (Thiruvallikeni). Located directly north from Mylapore (the neighborhood we visited last weekend), Triplicane is another really old neighborhood. The event (which seem quite popular here) was a "photowalk." Our guide (Rom) was a tour guide volunteering for the day in hope of getting paid gigs with the CLO in the future (which I think will probably work out for him). 

My wife was quick to notice their ISO 9001 certification.
This really confused us...

We grabbed a ride with our neighbor and arrived a bit early at the meeting point: Parthasarathy Temple. As it turned out, he had gone on walks with Rom before so we knew we were in good hands. Shortly after arriving, it became clear that there was a festival going on at the temple. Of course the temple has a festival every month, so that's not a huge surprise, but this one turned out to be their "yearly festival." This was a several day affair, but today we got to see the priests (Brahman) carrying the temple deity around in his (very heavy) chariot. 

Did I mention it was a LOT of priests?

The Chariot with the Temple in the background.

Sadly this picture doesn't quite capture the weight of the 'chariot.' These are a bunch of young, fit guys and they're really struggling with it. We noticed later that they were moving very quickly; our guide told us they tend to get tired near the end so they start running every time they pick it up - instead of walking.

These guys don't look all that excited to be here.

Heeeeeave!

Jasmines are sold all over temples. Many are also left as offerings.

We weren't clear what this signified, but this guy was putting this bell/hat on people that approached him.

Suddenly: COW!

A quick note on cows: they are all over the place. They are nominally fed by the temples so they tend to congregate around them. Later we walked down a street 'known for its cows.'

Vegetable shopping along the parade route.

This poor cow is so taunted.

Temple Tank.

After the parade, we started on our photo walk.

What happens when you take a panoramic while a guy walks by? THIS!

My son was a little antsy, so we had to keep walking. Unfortunately this meant we missed most of the "stop-and-listen" points along the walk. It was still quite interesting though. Very young cows are often tied up, probably to keep them from getting hit by cars. Anyway, we started walking down Singarachari Street to check out the cows.

Oooh, that's the spot!

It's not all cows. They don't discriminate.
Here are some water buffalo.

It's like a clothes line!

One of the interesting things about walking around in these older sections of Chennai is the crazy juxtaposition of very old buildings with recently built modern structures.

Hindu gods above what otherwise appears to be a house.
(I assume it's a temple in disguise.)

The US has no concept of what "small business" means.
This guy sells banana leaves (used as plates in South Indian eating establishments).

We started to circle back toward the temple when we learned a valuable lesson. Namely: my son is our ambassador. We were walking down a road and he just turned down a tiny little alley. Well, it turns out this was the alley that many of the temple priests live on. It's an incredibly old neighborhood and Rom told us that my son was the only reason we weren't shooed away! The ladies sitting outside of the houses were delighted to see him walking around without a care in the world!

Indian cul-de-sac.

Yep, that's a functioning well. Though we think it is ceremonial, because they had well spigots as well.

After our glimpse of the old neighborhood, we walked back to Parthasarathy Temple to check out the inside. We payed a few rupees to leave our shoes at the "shoe check" stall and walked through the temple. We were told we shouldn't take "snaps" in the temple, so I don't have much to show. We walked around clockwise (as you always do in Hindu temples). It was a huge complex with hundreds of gods carved into the walls. 

After the temple tour we wound up the photo walk and made plans for breakfast. We settled on Ratna Cafe where (between the 7 of us) we go a huge variety of Idly, Vada, Poori, and Dosa.

I went with the Poori.

We had a great time on this walk, and it was an excellent way to meet some new people from the Consulate. Besides, it's not every day you get to eat a casual breakfast with the acting Consul General!

Going Away Parties

Life in the Foreign Service has a lot of strains that just aren't that frequent in 'normal life'. Living overseas is the most obvious, but generally speaking, we're people who joined specifically for that reason... so it naturally doesn't seem so bad. However, a byproduct of moving around so much is the lack of a stable work environment (pretty obvious right?). Having previously worked as a contractor, I never really stayed in the same position for much longer than a year at a time. I thought that would help prepare me for the constant moving in the FS, but now I'm finding that there's a lot more to it than that. Every time I've moved in the past, I was still within easy driving distance of my former coworkers. If I made friends... I'd keep them. The next time I change positions it'll be to another country, possibly even another hemisphere. The chances of regularly seeing any friends I make here is pretty slim for other FSOs and almost nil for LES.

Anyway, I bring this up because of the sheer volume of farewell parties going on around here. I came very early in the transfer season - just in time to watch 50% of the post leave! In the two weeks since I arrived, I've seen several farewell parties of varying formalities. Last week, the IMS I'm replacing threw a pizza party to say goodbye/thanks to LES in our section (and to introduce me to them). This week the LES in our section threw a goodbye/thanks tea party (complete with going away presents) for my predecessor. This week also saw an unofficial going away party at the Consulate General's Residence (CGR), under the guise of "come drink the wine the CG can't bring with her when she departs post this weekend." Finally, we also had the official "Hail / Farewell" party sponsored by the CLO, to welcome the new comers (like me) and say farewell to those leaving this week. Needless to say, I've seen more teary eyes and heard more heartfelt speeches in the last two weeks than I'd been expecting!

Note: The picture is of the spread from the tea party. Out of frame, there is masala chai and extra samosas and chips. They were pretty darn delicious.