Dhoti Friday... on Tuesday

Just a quick note for today. One of the things I'd noticed when bidding on Chennai was that they celebrated(?) "Dhoti* Fridays." I was somewhat disappointed when I arrived at post to learn that the practice had lapsed. Fortunately, this week we had the first revitalization of Dhoti Fridays, and to make it pop, we're having it on Tuesday! Unfortunately, not knowing the difference, I purchased a lungi**... not a dhoti, but oh well! I'm thinking I might have to start wearing a dhoti (or lungi) every Friday. Maybe I can single-handedly resurrect the weekly event. The local staff generally chuckled, shook my hand, and/or informed me that I was indeed not wearing a dhoti, but a lungi (often all three).

* "The dhoti, also known as mundu, pancha, mardani or veshti, is a traditional men's garment worn in India." -Wikipedia

** "The lungi, also known as a sarong, is a traditional garment worn around the waist in Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Brunei, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, Thailand, the Horn of Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula." - Wikipedia

PS: I cheated by having my housekeeper teach me how to properly wearing my lungi... and I cheated even more by wearing a belt (hidden by the rolled up part of the lungi and by my shirt).

Around Chennai: Mylapore Festival

This weekend marked the start of the four day Mylapore Festival. Since arriving in Chennai, we've been told this is the "can't miss" event in the city. In the middle of the winter, the temperatures are mostly pleasant (lows in the 70s and highs in the 80s), so it's generally a nice time to be outside. We took a trip with CLO to check it out. We started by watching the hard working Kolam competition contestants. There were almost as many techniques as people and the submissions ranged from simple clean patterns to very complex.

A Kolam is a line drawing with geometric repetition made of rice flour (or occasionally other white powders). Kolams are thought to bring good fortune to the house and are an invitation and welcome to all living creatures. We've even heard (jokingly) that they're made of rice flour so the ants won't have to walk too far to get food... and will find no need to actually enter your house. I can't speak to that, since we have both Kolams outside our house and ants inside, but they are still pleasant additions to the street sides. 

I bet that guy has a great view!

After checking out the Kolam competition, we took a stroll down a couple alleys with vendors. We also saw a large number of people selling colored powder, likely in preparation for Pongal.

The CLO trip ended (as many of them do) with a stop for some delicious vadai and filter coffee. Since we had walked, we started our trip home and stumbled on the street food alley.

Miniature fair rides

We were debating if we wanted food, but were practically dragged (verbally) by a local telling us to "see some traditional Madras culture!" I don't know about all that, but the food was good.

On our way out, we saw the most plantain chips I've ever seen in my life. Unfortunately my picture doesn't really show off the fact that the guy is frying them right there, on the other side of the chip mountain.

On the rest of our walk home, we noticed that there were a huge number of produce vendors around. There were many more than we normally see, but figured it was due to the upcoming Pongal festival. It is also possibly because we're rarely walking around temples on Sunday evenings.

That's some good looking produce.

Around Chennai: Mahabilapuram

Mahabilapuram is about an hour drive from downtown Chennai. It's one of (the few) tourist areas that people visiting Consulate members tend to see when they come to Chennai. We had our first visitors from the US in town, so we decided to (finally) hit up the sights. We started off by seeing the Shore Temple. The details of the carvings are pretty impressive, considering it's 13 centuries old. My diplomatic ID card lets me buy the vastly cheaper "local Indian" tickets, but my family and visitors had to buy the tourist tickets (which cost 25x as much). 

From there, we hopped back in the car (it's really nice having a driver, since he can pick you up and drop you off at the entrance, alleviating all the stress of dealing with the crowded and sometimes distant parking lots). We took a short drive to Pancha Rathas, which is a group of five chariots chiseled out of enormous boulders. It was relatively crowded owing to the nice weather this time of year in South India. 

Now that's an Elephant.

I really enjoyed these [random strangers] taking their "Hear no, See no, Speak no evil... and thumbs up!" picture.

Another short drive led us to the "main event" in Mahabilapuram. There is a long stretch with many little carved caves and reliefs, as well as the lighthouse and "Krishna's Butterball." Our driver dropped us off at one end and we walked/hiked through the stone hills to the other side. There were a decent number of monkeys hanging around, looking for food handouts. We saw one open and drink an entire bottle of mango juice, while the ecstatic tourists took pictures.

Those are some heavy earrings.

Krishna's Butterball

We ended our day trip with lunch at the Seashore Garden Restaurant, a place quite acurately named due to its location.

Merry Christmas from India

T'was the night before Christmas
When all through the house

Not a light bulb was shining
Not even a [computer] mouse

The appliances all sat
With their power not on
In hopes that GSO
Soon would be anon

The child was nestled
All safe on a chair
While shadows from flashlights
Danced here and there


Uuuuh, this is getting hard to maintain... so...


But I heard them [GSO] exclaim
As out of sight they were driving
Happy Christmas to all
And we'll be back in the morning


Ok that was pretty strained. It seemed easier in my head when I was driving home from work. Anyway, it's our first Christmas in the Foreign Service, and on paper it was pretty lousy. In reality, it was quite pleasant, TAKE THAT PAPER; you're always lying to us!


I should start from the beginning, and I'll recap at the end. So we have some family visiting and after 5 days of traveling (standby, and being bumped from flights several times), they arrived at our house at around 2:30 AM on Christmas Eve. I had an extra long day at work, but an hour or two before leaving I got a frantic call from our housekeeper saying that one of the AC units was smoking and she'd turned it off. Thinking she'd done well, but might have been overreacting a little, I planned to submit a request to GSO that it be repaired, and just not use it for few days. (One missing air conditioner is not really a big deal when you have 7 in the house, and we were coming up on several holiday days.) Shortly there after I got a call from my wife... Apparently the AC unit had caught fire and my housekeeper had turned off all the power to our entire house. This seemed a little more serious, so I called GSO to have them look into it immediately (yes... fires are always an emergency). When the maintenance guy got to the house, he attempted to turn the power back on. Approximately half of the house stayed dark, and the light bulbs from the other half started making popping sounds and turning off. (Hooray?) He quickly turned the power back off and had the landlord call an electrician. Long story (a little) short(er), the electrician left with one AC unit and most of our lights working. However, our refrigerator and microwave were not so lucky. We moved most of our chilled goods to the freezer (separate unit, still working) and the rest to our upstairs neighbor's refrigerator. The GSO guys came the next day (Christmas), conveniently arriving shortly after we finished opening presents to continue repairs.


To recap, my Christmas eve was a sleep deprived work day, with overtime, where my house caught on fire, our power was out for several hours, our refrigerator and microwave broke, and we had only one AC unit to cool the house, all while having guests from the States. Sounds pretty bad, right? Well... not so much.


The positive side. We had several people (even the CG) offer to let us stay at their house if needed. We had upstairs neighbors who could store our food and let us heat up meals. Christmas day we had (previously arranged) plans to be at a friends house. The GSO folks were fantastic: they came quickly, fixed as much as they could, and had no issues with coming again on the holiday day to continue working. Best of all? I don't have to pay for any of this. Having just gotten rid of my old house, I can truly appreciate how lucky I am to not have to replace every major appliance in my house... as well as paying electricians overtime (and/or holiday pay) to come fix the faulty wiring in my house.


We've been jokingly saying "Welcome to India" or "Welcome to the Foreign Service," but honestly we still had a great Christmas. We opened presents (most of which were shipped half way around the world by our family), we spent the day with friends, and had good food. We're quite lucky; many of the locals here would have never had any of these problems, since they live everyday without air conditioners, refrigeration, or even power.


Merry Christmas!

Corridor Reputation: Bagels and Blogs

Corridor Reputation is a big deal in the Foreign Service. They literally teach you about it in the first 3 week orientation class, heck they even named their internal social networking system "Corridor." I don't think the term is really unique to the Foreign Service, but I'll define it anyway. Corridor Reputation is what precedes you when people ask your former (or current) coworkers about you. As you can imagine, this is always an important thing to maintain in any job. That being said, it's even more crucial in this job, because your future assignments (after your first two) are decided by 'bidding' or 'lobbying' for the position. If people have heard of you (in a good way), you're more likely to get the jobs you want. If you're known as a 'screamer,' well... enjoy getting posted wherever is left.

I'm a pretty friendly guy and generally good at getting things done at work, so I've never had any issues with my reputation preceding me. <brag>In fact, my last job as a contractor, before this job, I literally got the job because some higher up I'd never met or heard of found out I was in the list of candidates and told them to take me. </brag> All boasting aside, Corridor Reputation isn't something I've overly concerned myself with. That being said, I can feel myself being inexorably changed... I'd be lying if I tried to claim that I never consider my reputation while at work. In fact, I've taken on some projects that I probably wouldn't have cared about, except that they'll give me nice exposure to other IMS around the world.

Of course, let's face it. I made bagels for a CLO bake sale (which are unavailable locally) and I have this blog. I should just resign myself to being the "Bagels and Blog" guy. I'm pretty sure it's already begun. The Management Officer here (jokingly?) told me bringing bagels in once a week should be added to my work requirements... and I learned from my social sponsee that my blog had some readers in the 134th Specialist class. I guess the moral of this post is: if you want to succeed in the Foreign Service, learn to bake bagels. Wait no... I mean, be that guy with crazy hobbies... No... that's not it. Oh yeah, be nice and work hard! Yeah, we'll go with that one.