ProcrastiBlog

For the benefit of future foreign MSRI employees and other Americans in possession of a Citibank Suvidha account:

1) It is possible to transfer your Rupees to a US bank, see below.
2) I have not been able to use my Citibank India ATM card in the US, but I haven't actually tried very hard. It is not a PIN issue, as I can check my balance---it just won't let me take out cash.

To transfer your money to the US, you need to:

a) Have your passport, visa, and pay slips that have been signed and sealed by the company. In my case, I brought every single pay slip and they were stamped and signed by HR.

a) Go to the Citibank Suvidha office in the Prestige Meridien building on MG Road. This is not the regular Citibank branch office out front, but a special office which is reached by walking around the building to the left, up a staircase, and past a Cafe Coffee Day. You will be asked to sign in. You need to talk to, IIRC, Shamila at the second desk on the left.

b) Fill out a form requesting "Remission for the Maintenence of Family". Do not ask to close your account. This will cause a controversy. For the amount you will write something like "X Rupees in USD" to signify the conversion of your Rupee balance to US dollars. I believe there is a fee of Rs 1200 for the transfer.

c) Be careful when you sign the forms. The most commonly heard phrase in the Suvidha office is "signature mismatch". (Do you actually know how to sign your own name? You'll get to find out!)

D) Et voila. Your money will appear in your US bank account within a week.

[UPDATE 9/9/2006] ATM card works in U.S. Citibank ATMs. Has not worked as yet in non-Citibank ATMs.

On August 21, 2006, the company purchased me a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label* which I promptly turned over to Jonathan, who had gifted me the stolen whiskey. By some twisted Indian logic, this event was precipitated by my mentor's threat to buy me a bottle of whiskey himself by the end of the day if the company wouldn't. Thus endeth the Story of the Whiskey.

* Let's ignore the difference between Tennessee and Scotland and call it even.

So, yes, I am back in NY. I arrived back last Sunday. It is surprisingly not-weird to be here. It feels just like... being home.

I dropped off the face of the blogging Earth two weeks ago because (a) I had an enormous amount of work to do before I left Bangalore, (b) I've been just totally disoriented since I got back, and (c) NYU handed me a new laptop on Monday and I've spent all of my computer fiddling time since then trying to get wireless and "suspend to RAM" (i.e., sleep) working under Linux* (not responding to email, catching up on blogs, or getting any real work done).

I've actually got a bunch of things stacked up that I need to blog about, including: an end to the Saga of the Whiskey, the final lessons of India, the irritating trip home amid the Liquid Explosives Scare of '06, the Ballad of the Lost Bag, and "closeted gay friends: what's the deal?" Stay tuned.

* Anybody? Tips? The PC's a Dell Inspiron 6400, the wireless card's a Broadcom 1390, which I finally got working with a custom-compiled ndiswrapper**. Suspend to RAM seems hopeless.***

** NDIS!! Oh, how I loathe you!

*** As a result of my summer employment, I am feeling marginally more inclined to fuck it and just run Windows XP. The thing is, I spent an inordinate amount of my summer trying to get Cygwin and MSVC to play nice together and I long for a nice, reasonable command shell and a compiler to go with it.

There's this project on Flickr to have lots of people submit photos they took at exactly 2:42pm GMT, 19 August 2006. At the appointed hour (as ajudged by my insanely accurate timepiece), Carolyn and I were stuck in traffic coming back from Koramangala. I'm not sure what the exact rules are wrt sub-minute accuracy and what-not, but I now have three candidate pictures for submission. Let's take a vote!

The auto driver next to us (not our auto driver!), who thought we were two completely insane tourists:


Carloyn, centered and washed out by the flash, with a hint of another auto driver giving us the skunk eye:


Carolyn, off-kilter and trying to simultaneously take a picture of me:


Vote in comments.

Vijay invited us to visit his Dad's business, which is AFAIK to train pilots, build specialty aircraft, and sell aviation novelties.
I didn't even realize it was Vijay's family business until we were already there and he said, "Do you want anything? Just take it."



After a while I got bored and decided to just annoy Deb.



Later, we went to Cunningham Rd and had a disappointing meal.



What a day!

This is classic. And more here. Via Becks.

May I suggest a conservative over-approximation for Ms. Mackey Paisley Passey that avoids the arrogance charge? "I do not accept romantic propositions that I receive from strangers via email or blog comments. Thanks but no thanks." Wasn't that easy?

[UPDATE 8/20/2006] As Ms. Wei points out in comments there's more fun here. Executive summary: ugly people beat their girlfriends and poor people are immoral. You go girl!

Sitting in front of the Taj Mahal (which, for my American readers, was built by the Muslim Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial to his wife, incorporates verses of the Qu'ran into its design, and has an on-site mosque), I remember asking Hilleary what Osama bin Laden would think of it. The pinnacle of Muslim civilization's accomplishments or an impious despot's folly?

She said she had no idea and that predicting Osama bin Laden's thought patterns is not an activity that interests her.

I think this helps answer my question. (Although, it is not clear how legitimate this threat is or how well it ties in with the Islamo-whatsist world-view.)

Gilbird just handed me a bill of Rs 120 for 2 bottles of beer. So they weren't intended as repayment for the Jack Daniel's.

I spoke with Lepakshi on the phone and asked why I had received the beer. He said I received it because I had asked for it. But I hadn't. Gilbird says he was pulled away from his other work to go on an emergency beer run on my behalf.

This is all very strange, no? But I like beer. I even told Gilbird I am willing to pay for it (it's a fair price and I am glad to drink it), but he refused to take the money. He wants to get to the bottom of this. Good luck, man! I give up!

[UPDATE 9/4/2006] I paid for the beer before I left (at least I tried to). And Gilbird quit.

Not so easy to mix up. Via Kevin Drum.

Bonus happy talk about terrorism from John Rogers:

Who the hell am I supposed to be scared of? Joseph Padilla, dirty bomber who didn't actually know how to build a bomb, had no allies or supplies, and against whom the government case is so weak they're now shuffling him from court to court to avoid the public embarassment of a trial? The fuckwits who were going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches? Richard Reid, the Zeppo of suicide bombers? The great Canadian plot that had organized over the internet, was penetrated by the Mounties on day one, and we were told had a TRUCK FULL OF EXPLOSIVES ... which they had bought from the Mounties in a sting operation but hey let's skip right over that. Or how about the "compound" of Christian cultists in Florida who were planning on blowing up the Sears Tower with ... kung fu?

I have never been particularly interested in the the JonBenet Ramsey murder, partly because I just don't get into this sort of tabloid-y stuff and partly because the whole gestalt was just so Ick-Ick-Icky. But the story of this guy who claims to have murdered her is just really interesting. The dude looks exactly like a child murderer is supposed to look. He says he was “with JonBenet when she died.” He was picked up in Thailand, to which he had traveled in order to quasi-legally fuck children.

This is a tabloid story, people. Not Kate and Chris. Get real!

[UPDATE] His wife says he was in Alabama. Could this face tell a lie?

Josh Marshall flunks rhetoric, but captures my heart...

Is there anyone in the country who can say honestly, in their heart of hearts, that when that moment of fear hit them after the recent reports out of London, they said to themselves, "God, I'm glad we're in Iraq"?

Anyone?

Either (1) the mangosteens I bought the other day were not the best of the batch, (2) those damn ants got in there and ruined them, or (3) they don't take well to refrigeration (although it stuns and/or kills the ants). Mangosteen, my exalted queen! Why have you forsaken me?

Just the thing to take your mind off the end of the world.

My hand has healed to the point where I can make use of it in most normal situations. There's still some swelling, which pushes my knuckle out of whack, and it still hurts if pressed, squeezed, or twisted.

Which brings me to handshaking. I suppose I am a bit of a handshaking pedant, feeling that a handshake which is neither too limp nor too firm (the Goldilocks shake) is an essential aspect of good character. The predicament of having a fractured hand without a cast puts me in something of a characterological double bind.

My strategy at first was to simply offer my hand and pray that my shaking partner was not one of those confounded knuckle grinders. This usually did not turn out well.

Then I tried offering my left hand. This is awkward.

Another course is to hold up my hand and declare, "I am injured," thereby excusing myself from the shake. This is lame.

Putting my comfort ahead of my reputation, I have stumbled across a foolproof strategy. As the hands come together, I conspire to make sure that only my fingers end up in the other party's palm. The result is the ultimate in a weak handshake---the action is essentially equivalent to offering up my hand to be kissed.

I'm sitting in bed, eating a mangosteen*, when I look down and my bowl is absolutely crawling with ants. "Huh. That's fast work," I thought. "Where did those ants come from?" Then I looked at my hand. And the fruit. Which were both covered in ants. Ack!

This might explain why only 2 of the 6 fruits in that batch were edible.

* Yes, mangosteen**. Which is not a kind of mango.

** Wikipedia says, "Mangosteen juice is a dye which can be almost impossible to remove from fabric (the reason why they are banned from some hotels in countries where they are available)." My bedsheets can attest to this fact.

Gilbird came over tonight with two bottles of beer, sent courtesy of Lepakshi. Thanks, Lepakshi! 40 more bottles like that and we'll be in the ballpark!

* I apologize for this unimaginative, generic title. This could have been the title of every single post I've done in the last 3 months...

[UPDATE 8/19/2006] Beer actually sent courtesy of my line of credit.

On July 4, 2006, Jonathan gave me the present of 1 liter of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey. Unlike some brands of liquor, which are franchised to Indian distillers and sold for Rs 400-500, Jack Daniel's is imported from the US and costs more than Rs 3000.

Over the course of the next few weeks, no more than 5 shots of whiskey were poured. When we left for Delhi and points North on July 21, 2006, the bottle was more than 3/4 full.

When we arrived back in Bangalore on August 3, 2006, as I briefly mentioned, the whiskey was almost entirely gone. And to the extent that the contents had been diluted in the fashion of a homeopathic remedy, it was just plain gone.

The only people who had been in the guest house in those two weeks were two other MSR employees (who are moderate of habit and, in fact, teetotallers) and the household help.

Since I hadn't actually paid for the whiskey, I felt awkard about complaining. But at the same time, the housekeepers absolutely should not be drinking my liquor. So I complained to the appropriate persons in the lab.

Two days later, on August 7, 2006, I was informed that the culprit had been identified, had confessed, and would be made to pay. "Tomorrow."

Six days later, on August 13, 2006, the new housekeeper, Gilbird, informed me that the accused had "left the state" and was now denying that he ever drank the whiskey. "He cleaned the toilet and made the bed only. On his mother he swears."

Today, August 14, 2006, Gilbird, his manager Lepakshi, and the accused housecleaner knocked on my door at 10:00 AM. (Was the accused extradicted or had he given himself up? I don't know.) Lepakshi told me this was the boy who stole my whiskey, but he claims now to not have stolen it (and again with the toilet and the bed and the mother), and what did I want to say about that?

Um...

[UPDATE 8/15/2006] Two bottles of beer appear.

[UPDATE 8/19/2006] And are billed to my account. Word is that a resolution is pending... "Tomorrow"?

[UPDATE 9/4/2006] A bottle of Johnnie Walker appears. Close enough.

New photo set.

The good parts:

A really good breakfast at Kamat's on Mysore Road. Maybe the best meal I've had since Haridwar.

The falls:


The temple:


The hysterical laughing on the car ride home.

The bad parts:

The potholes:


The Qualis:


The 3 or 4 hours driving over potholes in the Qualis.

I really don't understand where this question comes from. I guess it's a clumsy translation of the local formalities. My answer is always "Christopher" (which inevitably comes back as "Mr. Christopher"), since "Chris" can easily become "Krishna" and "Conway" is just a waste of everybody's time. People here know the name "Christopher" the same way Americans know... Um... Are there any Indian names that Americans know? "Vijay"? "Ravi"? (Stupid Americans.)