The PAD billboard near the UN building, reminding people not to vote. Clever.
No Peace in Goa
Goa is much different from the southern Indian states. It’s a tourist Mecca, where the roads actually get paved, the water stays on, and the poor (mostly) stay out of sight. It’s also a place the British Empire somehow never left. Most of the business owners along the coast are Englishmen–or big Russians.
In Goa, Russian influence is hard to miss.
Everyone serves a full English breakfast with mushrooms and a pot of Tetley tea. I am told that at night all of the local Indian girls head to the clubs owned by Russian thugs. Apparently, the seedy parts of Goa, are a human trafficking disaster. Girls from Mumbai lured into working in a coastal paradise, but end up being bound by heavy contracts to their Russian masters.
Sick.
Oddly, it’s the Russians that made the first impression. Two 20 something Russian guys yelled at me from the street that first evening. They even bought me a beer and we hung out a bit. They said they knew of places where all the foreign tourists were going for the night. (Wooo!!) We went to this place called Tito’s (a real dive) where we met up with these 3 Russian girls. Small chit chat was made. Bullshit mostly.
(Zees ees my friend, ze American. Khhee is cool guy.)
The average looking Russian girls abandoned us (no wonder) as I was told they were interested in meeting up with some “scary Indian guys” for the night. What fucking scary Indians are there in Goa? Old Brits, yes. But fuck that. I left the poor lonely Russian guys alone (who turned out not to be 20 somethings, but 18 and 19 year old stoners) to finish some funny business–buying a large brick of hash. Sorry. Just not my style.
“Idi na khui, bliad.”
Don’t get me wrong. I love Goa. Big sweeping beaches, warm water, sunbathing tourists, cold beer, and more. What’s not to like? Plenty, but more of that later. Goa fills me with the kind of laziness I’d love to be famous for. A walk to the beach at sunrise for breakfast and a mango juice (or three), followed by complete silence. 11am rolls around and it’s time to head back to the room where my AC is cranking at 16 degrees with the big room fan spinning. Ahhhhh. That transition from 36 degree tropical morning heat to 16 degree Carrier-cool is fucking amazing. In five minutes tops, I’m asleep. 1 or 2 rolls around and its time for lunch under the shade, three more beers (at least), and a bit more silence.
A perfect evening companion.
Silence doesn’t come, not in the afternoon or evening.
(Excuse me. Excuse me. Sir? Sir?)
“No!! Thanks. Not interested.” (two to ten times at least)
That’s what I tell the first wave of solicitors, selling anything from trinketry to jewelry. Mostly shit. Late one evening, probably my last day in Goa, I’m chilling on the beach. Sunbed, shitty umbrella, cold bottle of Kingfisher Blue, and a sleepy eye. It’s perfect until I’m disturbed by an Indian woman selling jewelry. I refuse. 10 minutes later I’m in full REM sleep. I can’t even hear the water. It’s great.
(Sir? Hello? Sir? Excuse me, sir? Hello? Sir?)
“WHAT??!!!”
(Jewelry? I give good price? See? Jewelry?)
I’m pissed.
“Buddy, you’re going to be shitting jewelry for a week in a minute, because I’m going to shove that crap down your %$%#@# throat.”
I know. It’s an angry response for sure. I’m an asshole for saying it. But before you pass judgment, remember that India is a maddening place. It’s desperate and beautiful at the same time. You want to be here on Goa’s lovely beaches, but you hate being harassed by people who are desperate to sell you the same shit day in, day out. This is a question that’s with me from day one.
Just how do you reconcile India’s growth with it’s staggering poverty? India tests your patience, your limits.
You want to help people. I’d happily give 5-10 rupees to the young girl or the mother and child, but not 500 to the poor fellow trying to make ends meet selling tourist garbage. Once or twice the first day is fine, but how many cheap t-shirts or elephant sculptures do you need? And how many times can you say NO before you turn to anger or madness?
That’s Goa. That’s India.
Case in point, two more stories. I’m drinking a beer while waiting for my dinner when a man who works at the restaurant comes over. He strikes up a simple conversation. It’s nice actually. He’s from the north–400km NW of Mumbai. He works at one of the beach shacks during the tourist season to make money. I ask him about his family (something I hardly do) and his life. I ask about random things like housing in India, family life, how people cope with the heat and the poverty. It’s a lovely random conversation–one I am all to happy to have with a good guy. Sounds great, right?
Wr0ng. The problem is that our talk was just an opening line for him. Turning on a dime, he busts out his wares. An assortment of stone statues and candle holders. Now it’s a sales pitch. Fuck. The conversation turns desperate. 800 rupees for a cheap elephant statue AND his prized egg, which he says he sells for 1500. He’s going to let me have it for 500 because he doesn’t want to lug them all back home in a few days. It’s a great deal if I’m a sucker. I turn him down. Repeatedly. It’s so bad that my food has to wait until his stuff is off my table. It takes him 10 minutes to pack it up.
The same can be said for a lunchtime interuption by four lovely Indian women who strike up a conversation. I know for a fact that it is going to be a sales pitch, but they are pretty, so whatever. I turn all four of them down. It’s brutal and sad.
This is all over Goa and it’s with me the 5 days I am there. It’s a blight on my trip, but surely educational. It’s a lesson on how tough life in India—even the most stunning part—can be. India is a rising economic power and will remain so, but it also has the world’s highest rate of poverty. Millions upon millions are desperately poor. It’s so bad that pours from every corner of the country.
I can’t say I’d like to come back to Goa. It’s beautiful for sure. But I am sure there are beaches just like it in SE Asia that are just as nice, but without the hassle.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game
First Day in Bangalore
First things first. Sowmya attracts men. Up the long creaky elevator to her new apartment, I’m greeted by a flying Sowmya, who leaps on to my chest–all the while 3 colorful men are moving about her third story flat. A big jovial Muslim man is her real estate broker (complete with the white hat), a younger guy and an older man–an ex-Army colonel who runs the place. I’m the fourth guy in and the lady servants are already thinking this chick gets around.
“Hey man, I’m not married. She ain’t my wife. She’s a friend. A friend.”
Bangalore is a public works hell. Shit and garbage line the streets along with teeming classes of people Indian society either doesn’t give a fuck about, or takes some kind of sick pride in stepping on: maids, store operators, tea stands, rickshaw drivers, the hapless poor, beggars, street stand chefs–the whole lot.
Her place is a mess. A freakin’ sty. The previous tenant somehow didn’t manage learn about soap and water, let alone Clorox Bleach and some blue Windex. It doesn’t outright stink, but the floors and the bathrooms aren’t places you want to take your shoes off. I beg Somwya to get us the fuck out of there–not because I don’t like the place–but because I think she needs to have it cleaned first before she makes a first impression of the place. God knows, she spent weeks trying to find a decent pad. Her time in India so far seemed rough.
Late into the night, we settle on a posh hotel just off MG Road, Bangalore’s expensive, yet amateurish Rodeo Drive. They show us 4 rooms, all cool, all expensive. We settle on the cheapest, a 8000 rupee (about $175) little number with two beds. The lady at the front desk hates Sowmya and won’t even think of giving me a smile. The bell hop knows it and is laughing on the inside. Maybe he knows she’s a frigid bitch or is just as tired of cranky Western tourists as she is.
He’s looking at me.
“We’re not married, man.”
In the morning, she introduces me to Kaz, a cool guy from England who studied at Brandeis and works with Sowmya at her NGO. (Man number six.) We have pretty decent afternoon running around looking for cell phones, opening a bank account. In this time, I do manage to think about my vacation priorities. I somehow knock back three beers before it’s time to take the bus to Mysore. Kingfisher isn’t all that bad. 
Patterns
I am a man of many patterns. For instance, my Tesco shopping list consists of 2 bottles of 2% milk, 4 small cups of yogurt (2 strawberry, 2 grape), 12 bottles of water, a loaf of sandwich bread, smoked Thai-German ham (whatever that is), and 2 boxes of Corn Flakes. I know the exact total. Nearly every weekday, I order the same fried rice with chicken and vegetables from the Aung San Suu Kyi lookalike down the street.
I know what shirts to wear with what trousers, what shoes to pair with each and the belt to match. Every morning, I put my apartment key in my work backpack, gather my things and walk out the door. Five steps down the hall, I will stop, open the backpack and check for the key. Knowing whether it is there or not, I will go back into the apartment and repeat the process until I am quite certain I have the key. Something needs to tell my brain that I need the key to reopen the apartment, so there is no need to go back again. But I do. Every day.
I will put exactly 60 baht in my pocket when I go to work, knowing that is the exact fare needed to go from Arun Amarin Road to the UN Building via Rama 8. I also put 120 baht in my pocket at lunch, knowing that the motorbike taxis could charge that much if I am caught waiting for a taxi longer than 30 minutes. And they know I will pay it.
At work, I eat the same thing. A ham and egg sandwich from the lunch lady in the morning, with green tea. I get anxious when she forgets. At 10:30, I eat sliced watermelon from the Sodexho vendor or a wheat croissant—25 and 20 baht, respectively. At lunch, I will order a Thai omelet with rice, and a meat selection (pork, beef, or chicken curry)—depending what is available that day. It takes me about 7 minutes to eat it.
I’m baffled by the elevators. Why does the elevator go from the 11th floor down the ground floor, but the one on the 3rd floor is the one that comes up to meet me on the 12th floor when I want to go to the ground floor? Or why do 2 elevators on the 8th floor stay still, while one from the ground floor comes up instead?
I didn’t observe these things much until I was told it was my second diagnosis. OCPD.
Weird.
Greg Kinnear is My Shrink
My therapist looks like a balding Greg Kinnear–and at the rate he charges ($175 every 50 min
ute session), he’s just as well paid.
Nothing very interesting to report. He spent most of the session trying to talk up this breathing technique that is supposed to help give me “a better set of brakes” for my PTSD. I handed him my “Trauma Chronicles” journal–a depressing list of symptoms and triggers. Not quite sure what he wants with that, but I will wait and see.
By the time he called showed me this technique, called “diaphragmatic breathing,” I was disappointed. I knew it already. 18 years of vocal training, a college concert choir, two private vocal coaches and two community choirs will give you a good set of pipes. “Dr. Dr.” Bill Kester, an old band instructor, called it “tanks.” One in the stomach, one in the chest, a small one in the throat, and another in the mouth. The slower and more controlled you breathe out all of that air, the better. It’s relaxing and makes you a better musician. Maybe it will work for PTSD as well.
Instructions for the week: Wrap my legs as much as possible and practice that “technique” I already know.
The Trauma Chronicles
Since I returned from the United States, I have been experiencing a resurgence in my PTSD symptoms. I can hardly sleep most of the time–and when I do, I drop out for hours and hours. The night is a mixed bag of cold sweats, nightmares, and disorientation. In between, there’s the restless legs and the incessant scratching. My UN colleague recently noticed dried blood between my fingernails and caked on my palm and practically ordered me to go get help.
Probably rightly so. I went this past Saturday. Nice enough fellow. Prissy office. His diagnosis was hard to take. He said that I have remarkable coping and adaptation skills. I’m a fast talker and a master bullshitter, what can I say? He said that the longer I do that, the more I prolong the symptoms, which sear the disorder into the neural pathways of my brain. It’s been three years, almost to the date.
So now, every Friday I’m going for “Virtual Iraq” treatment, an intensive immersion therapy that is supposed to compel my brain to deal with uncomfortable surroundings. In preparation, I have to write a journal, explaining all of my symptoms and what triggered them. It’s like a trauma chronicle. Creepy. Sad. Tough.
It’s 6:05am. I haven’t slept at alll. My right leg won’t stop shaking. Time to make another entry.
Moral flexibility
Last night, I was invited to a small dinner party with some UN colleagues. Midway into a bottle of white wine (yuck), I was trying to explain how the UN could better express ideas and issues to the public, much like we do it in the US, through common values. For example, if mothers are universally valued, they could be a symbol for why more women should be in Parliament. No one will love us like our mothers, right? Who could better represent issues you care about other than her? (Education, food, health, etc.)
The conversation then turned to how these values could be used to persuade someone of other things—for example voting down cigarette taxes instead of supporting children’s health care. What would happen if other values (independence, personal responsibility, frugality) were used to help defeat a kid’s health bill and the tobacco companies won? It happened in Oregon. I said it takes a certain moral flexibility to do advocate for these issues, but it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I worked for John Kerry, while having serious doubts about many of the things he stood for. I put people in office that probably shouldn’t be there.
I work for the UN, who promotes and champions some issues I personally oppose. (Gender equality, carbon taxes, etc.) It takes a certain moral flexibility to advocate these issues even though personally I don’t like the philosophy. Does that make me unfit to represent the UN? Personally, I’m ok working for a candidate I support 80% of the time or voting for someone even though that politician didn’t vote my way on an important issue. I look at the whole picture. I love the UN’s advocacy for the poorest people and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In my office, I am often an outspoken critic of soft or neutral language. I prefer that the UN stick to language that promotes its values—whether I agree or not. I love it when we take a stand.
So in the case of the other 20% or less where I disagree, am I expected to “toe the line” no matter what? Can I not express to a colleague these moral flexibilities that others demonstrate every day? Or am I supposed to represent the UN all day, every day, all the time? I’d much rather just be me, whether in the office or out, whether at a small dinner party or in a local bar. Anywhere.
Moving On Back Home
While briefly in Tokyo, I received word from home that the weekly newspaper I used to run was named “Business of the Year” by the Chamber of Commerce. While I couldn’t be happier for the paper’s owners, I couldn’t help feel terrible at the news.
In the paper’s editorial, the publisher wrote:
“Frankly, after we published what will forever be known as the ‘Marlyn’ story, we didn’t expect we would survive, let alone eventually become Business of the Year. It took Rebecca and I a number of years to ‘right the ship’ and we were pretty miserable. Shopping at McKay’s at midnight to avoid getting our shopping cart crashed into was not a pleasant experience. Being uninvited to events and made to feel like pariahs is not something we ever want to relive.
We kind of thought we would be in ‘purgatory’ for a long time; like Moses who wasn’t allowed to enter the Promised Land; like Pete Rose who will never be allowed to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame.”
But it’s my purgatory that makes me so sad. It’s been nearly three years to the day, and I get asked about that damn thing at least once a month from people back home. And while they now feel accepted by the community, and “never want to relive” that experience, I relive those painful four or five months in my head every day and every night, it’s a bad memory that won’t go away.
And while they now at last have redemption and acceptance, I get the distinct impression that it is my prolonged absence that gave Gold Beach the license to forgive.
The D-Bag on the Delta Flight
Sometimes I have the habit of saying things I regret later (or writing them for that matter), because I speak before thinking, or say what I think too much. More on that later.
As for this little blog post’s second opener, I am amused by the people I met when traveling. Planes are a little metaphor for, or a microcosm of greater society. They’re full of a cast of characters–traveling athletes dressed in tacky road uniforms, pretentious urban hipsters with thick black glasses just like mine, wannabe princesses, common grandmothers and ordinary couples with children, and the laptop wielding businessmen.
It’s when two of these businessmen get seated together next to me that begins to piss me off. They talk about nonsensical things I don’t care about and use terminology that would give the bureaucrats at the UN who invent useless acronyms a bulging hard-on. And when they aren’t traveling together and meet by chance on a plane it’s a nightmare for any long-haul traveler.
Ok, so here’s the part where the two introductions merge. Seated in front of me on the flight from Tokyo was a man who made his living doing something boring that required travel to Asia and a working mother the Pacific Northwest who hails from the tech sector selling something called the “MeeGo.” (Who the f@#k wants that?) She seemed like a nice lady when she wasn’t babbling on about work or thrashing her Dell laptop keyboard.
I honestly can’t remember or process what they were saying, but it was indescribably dull and allowed me to get a few hours of sleep. But when I woke up occasionally, the male businessman was still talking as if he knew everything about everything (cardiology, long-haul trucking, monetary policy, literature, real estate, Chinese etiquette, classical music, American foreign policy, to name a few)–and although he was recently married–I got the distinct impression he was hitting on the corporate working mom. This in between him bragging about how he snagged his new Chinese bride.
With “Easy A” playing as our in-flight movie offering (Classy move, Delta. Real classy.) , my frustration with my corporate companions became too much. So, in textbook form, I mumbled “Man, someone shut this d-bag up.” Now, it’s important to note that the man to my left in the center aisle during their two-hour conversation and I were thinking the same thing. It’s male non-verbal conversation. We can tell when another man is being a douche. He rolled his eyes or shook his head every time I did. But he succeeded where I failed. He wasn’t wearing headphones while trying to mumble something to himself in frustration.
I think most people in the 30-40 section of economy class heard me. Let’s just say it put an end to their conversation and the man in front of me fumed. Rightly so, but I’m 192cm and 114kg. He’s not even close. F@$k him. I got a few smiles from the folks next to me as we left the aircraft–even the MeeGo-selling corporate mom. I guess she was relieved.
UN Resident Climate Change Skeptic
Today at lunch a pair of Norwegians and I got into a discussion about carbon footprints. A bit of a debate started when I said I was NOT willing to consider refraining from flying or reduce my air travel to combat global warming. Yes, I understand the implications and the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per passenger per flight. I just don’t care. (Yeah, I said it.)
The truth is I like the modern convenience and I like the freedom of choice that currently exists. Does that make me ignorant or something worse? Probably.
The fundamental truth for me is that on a trip to from Bangkok to Ubon Ratchathani I would rather spend $65 to fly, which takes 3 hours by plane (including the waiting in the terminal) versus 12-14 hours on a train or in a minibus for about $9.
And I don’t fly that often. Once every three months or so. (The UN books my tickets.) And when I do pay for a ticket, I don’t mind the carbon discharge as long as I get to see my family once a year.
My carbon footprint is very low. I take public transit here in Bangkok. The taxis I use are on the road all day, regardless if I use them or not. My car in the U.S. is a Toyota, which gets 35 mpg. A cow probably farts more CO2 than I put out in a year.
So, I am fine with my ignorance. I just want to have the choice to fly if I want to without a lesson in moral leadership or guilt trip about the perilous state of the planet.
