Personal

Got tagged by TGFI. So here goes… and I now have one more person I can tag the next time around!

Three things that scare me:

1. Scary movies/ads/stories/anything – especially when I am alone

2. Where our crazy world is headed

3. Mean dogs

Three people who make me laugh:

1. R

2. My Mom with her PJs (poor jokes, not pajamas!)

3. Jay Leno

Three things I love:

1. The moment you wake up and realize that you can sleep some more

2. Movies that make me cry

3. Summer

Three things I hate:

1. Double standards

2. Feeling I accomplished nothing in a day

3. People who have no lives and therefore discuss the lives of others

Three things I don’t understand:

1. Valuing things over people

2. Physics (wish I’d had a better teacher)

3. Why people who have no lives discuss the lives of others – especially in a mean, petty way

Three things on my desk:

1. Little Ganesha

2. My wonderful Mac Book Pro

3. Stack of blank DVDs

Three things I’m doing right now:

1. Freezing

2. Telling myself that I will be very structured tomorrow

3. Er… it should be obvious

Three things I want to do before I die:

1. Make a difference

2. Make a movie that makes a difference

3. Decide whether to share the third bullet point with all you lovely imaginary readers

Three things I can do: 1. Make paneer from scratch (I thought it was tough till very recently)

2. Listen

3. Procrastinate

Three things you should listen to:

1. Bhaja Govindam by M.S.

2. People who give you objective input

3. The rain

Three things you should never listen to:

1. Those who tell you you can’t

2. The little voice in your head that causes you to doubt

3. Infomercials

Three things I’d like to learn:

1. The violin. Again. (Yes, me too!)

2. Yoga

3. The equanimity that my grandmother possesses

Three favourite foods:

1. Puliyodarai

2. Chaat

3. Elai vadam

(Clearly I just came back from Madras and am craving the foods I was blessed with when I was there!)

Three beverages I drink regularly:

1. Chamomile tea

2. Tall, skim, no-whip hot chocolate

3. Water (unfortunately only when absolutely need it – need to fix that!)

Three TV shows/Books I watched/read as a kid:

1. Amar Chitra Katha

2. Mr. Men

3. Ranger Rick

(mine are all books – we weren’t allowed to watch TV!)

Three people I would like to tag:

1. Lulu (Since your cool new blog is live and you didn’t respond to my last tag!)

2. MumbaiGirl (Because I want to see the answers)

3. Dave McClure (Since I was good and replied to your tag)

I read this hilarious article in the NY Times today. The author talks about how much she abhorred her Home Ec classes in high school –

…of being in that last wave of girls, in the ’70s, who were expected to master the domestic arts in school.

Seventies? What about the mid to late eighties? When I was in high school in India, all the girls had to learn to sew. Needless to say I hated it with a passion. The stitching itself was not terrible, but they insisted that we learn to be able to cut a pattern, change the size of said pattern and other such painful things.

I remember it vividly. We had to make a Jabla (a what??). Basically it was a little, sleeveless top for a child. The sizes we made were for 3-5 year old kids. All the girls had to make one. We were graded on it. You had to get a decent grade since this fed into your national level 10th grade scores. I have no clue what the guys in my class did during this time? Soldering, perhaps?

If it is such a life skill (I agree that being able to sew on a button is definitely a life skill), how come the guys weren’t required to learn it? And why isn’t soldering a life skill I needed to learn? Who do you think knows where the fuse box even is in our house? Ha!

Anyway, after much searching, I found that a Jabla is technically an upper garment worn by Parsi children. At least now I know.

Unlike the journalist at the Times, I have not rediscovered a love for tailoring. I do what I must to survive. Maybe one day if I have a small child that needs a frock stitched for a doll…

Charlie is running a Superbown Charity Wiki – for $10 (ok, $10.59 including PayPal fees, to be exact), you can sign up to a box in his 100 Bloggers, 100 Boxes wiki.

The winner gets to give all the winnings to the charity of his/her choice. I am #99, right ahead of Josh. I signed up with my Tatvam blog and my charity is, of course, Magic Bus.

Join in! It is certainly worth a couple of Starbucks drinks…

If I had been here in early Jan and slowly been introduced to the bone-chilling cold, a few degrees at a time, it might have been bearable.

But spending day x in glorious 85 degree weather in Madras and day x+1 in 25 degree weather in New York? That’s not so great. I spent the past day wearing three layers of clothing, wool socks and freezing – all inside the house. Outside was a lot worse. I thought I was going to become an icicle.

Let’s hope the body adjusts fast – this weekend is going to be 9 degrees!! Makes me want to run back to India. But… I can keep whining or enjoy being home. Let me try the latter for a few hours and get back to you.

P.S.: Apparently this is post #50.

Every child has the right to play

_{– Article 31, UN Child Rights Convention}

Our favorite charity is Magic Bus. It is a completely phenomenal organization.

R met Matthew Spacie, the founder and chairman, in Bombay many years ago and was involved as Matthew started Magic Bus. Matthew lived and worked in Bombay and started to play rugby with a group of street children in 1999. As he spent more time with them, he realized that the ability to play in wide open spaces and learn through playing and having fun had a huge impact on the children – on their attitude and their perspectives. So, Matthew started Magic Bus.

The number of children in need of help in India is staggering¹-

• 11 million children live in slums or on the street. 2.3 in Bombay alone
• Most will be exposed to crime before they are 8
• 14% of children in India are involved in child labor
• India accounts for 20% of the world’s out of school children
• Over 60% of street children start their day with substance abuse
• About 900,000 prostitutes are under the age of 18

Magic Bus works with these children – street children and at risk children, the poorest of the poor, to help try and change the trajectory of their lives. A lot of organizations in India work on the basic needs – shelter, food, clothing. Magic Bus supplements this and focuses on letting kids have fun and through having fun, teaches them life skills.

Magic Bus has worked with over 18,000 children to date! The video (below) is a wonderful encapsulation of what they do, is incredibly impactful and is exceptionally well-produced – watch it!

We spent Thanksgiving in London for the Magic Bus Annual Gala. Held in Whitehall, it was a phenomenal event and the auction that night raised a significant amount of money – including funding for a second “magic” bus. It is so great to see an organization that does so much good that is also so superbly run.

This post that is long overdue from our visit to London, but it is perfect to post this now because… for all of his efforts in creating a sustainable organization and for all the accomplishments of Magic Bus, Matthew was recognized with an M.B.E. this year! Congratulations Matthew and the entire Magic Bus team!!!

You can help! Here’s how:

• Donate your time and volunteer (flexible options available)
• Donate to Magic Bus – if you are in India
• Donate to Magic Bus – if you are outside India

• You can also give in kind – there’s lots of stuff they need (scroll down a bit)

1. from the video 

We were in Sri Lanka over the new year holidays. But whenever we told people we were going to Sri Lanka, they looked at us like we’d lost our minds. But, fortunately, we were going to the southern part of the country, far away from most of the internal conflict. We spent a couple of days at the beach (where this picture was taken). Gorgeous, but as gorgeous as most gorgeous beaches.

Then we spent a few days in Galle Fort – what an amazing place! The Galle Fort is the only living fort in the world Sri Lanka [corrected] and the Galleans are very proud of it and rightfully so. Galle’s history dates back to 1344 AD when merchants from all parts of the world like Portugal, China and Southern India docked for trade. In 1505, the Portuguese stop by Galle on their way to the Maldives and in 1588, the first fortification was built. In 1640, the Dutch captured the fort after a bloody battle and an eighteen day siege. And it was the Dutch that saw the completion of the ramparts of the fort that still stand today.

The name Galle is attributed to the Portuguese. Apparently, the sailor who was on the lookout for land saw a crowing rooster on a rock face and called out “Galla – buonovista”, a rooster – a beautiful sight. In fact, while the English pronunciation of Galle sounds like Gaul (as in the Asterix and Obelix cartoons), the Sri Lankans pronounce it Gal-la or more accurately Gal-le, the le like the French le in le maison.

Galle even claims links to the Ramayana! In the Ramayana, when Lakshmana is injured, Rama sends Hanuman to find the Sanjeevani herb from the Himalayas. Hanuman can’t find the plant and he instead uproots and whole mountain and flies back to Lanka. Apparently a chunk of it fell off, now forming the Rumassala hill in Galle. The locals profess that the hill has some very rare and healing plants which are found only in Galle… and the Himalayas.

Galle itself is a the fourth largest city in Sri Lanka and is filled with ugly buildings and over-construction. But the little city within the fort is very different.

Standing on the ramparts, the sight of the bay is magnificent. It is amazing to think that the walls built centuries ago withstood the Tsunami of 2004. The water knifed around the rampart walls, and destroyed the city of Galle. As the water receded from the city, through the fort and back to the bay, the fort did flood about 2 feet in the low-lying areas, but the damage was minimal and no houses were affected.

Inside the fort, it is like being thrown back to another century. Life immediately calms down. The pace slows and you want to walk slowly, talk quietly and breathe deeply. Muslims, Christians and Buddhists all live peacefully within the fort – a point of pride for Galleans who told us that unlike the rest of Sri Lanka, the residents of the fort see themselves as a community first, religious distinctions came later. They were eager to give us examples of how the communities helped each other in the upkeep of the mosques, churches and temples.

The fort claims quite a few well-known residents, foremost amongst them, Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lanka’s most famous architect. If you are into architecture, check out his work, it is astounding.

There are about 250 houses inside the fort and in recent years, expats have started to move in, charmed by the idyllic lifestyle. The first expat moved in in 1999 and today 72 of the homes have been bought by foreigners. They buy homes that are run down and re-do them, restoring the soaring ceilings, cool interiors and indoor courtyards. They often enhance these with indoor pools to create private havens.

Shopping is plentiful within the fort. You can wander up and down Leyn Bann street and find much entertainment. Even though we are Indian and I thought we could blend into the Sri Lankan population, we must have had tourists plastered on our foreheads since we were hit on by numerous touts offering to show us around. Eschew all such offers — you can walk the length and breadth of the fort on your own and can’t possibly get lost. Besides the persistent touts though, the people are wonderful – warm, generous with their time and eager to help.

The most economical way of enjoying the fort is to rent one of the houses from an expat who’s out of town. But there are also two wonderful hotels located inside the fort – the Galle Fort Hotel and the AmanGalla. Both are fabulous hotels that have been painstakingly restored. AmanGalla used to be called the New Orient Hotel hotel and is Sri Lanka’s oldest surviving hotel. It has striking similarities to the Raffles hotel in Singapore. It is the perfect place to spend the afternoon, nestled in a plantation chair, reading a book and the indulging in some wonderful tea with scones and finger sandwiches. Charming doesn’t even begin to describe it.

The Galle Fort is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As it should be. It is a place you’ll want to return to many times.

All too quickly, it was time to leave. Security was tight getting into the Galle Naval Base and fortunately, it was only then that ? (Ohm)¹ reminded me that the LTTE had attacked the base just a couple of months ago – thank god he didn’t bring it up earlier or I would have been stressed about it instead of enjoying my time there.

We waited by a gorgeous lake for my first ever seaplane ride and we headed to Colombo and back to reality. Looking down over Galle, I wished for Galle and Sri Lanka a lasting peace that such a beautiful place and such a warm people truly deserve.

1. My husband, has now become “The Artist Formerly Known As (Name Hidden)” and will hereby go by this symbol, which is used to denote Ohm. It also sounds like the Sanskrit Om… all very symbolic and all that jazz. 

Feeling compelled to post this. Maybe if I make it public, I will try to stick to these things.

1. Health – eat healthy, drink lots of water, exercise more regularly, fix the niggles in my knee and shoulder (yes, I know, a lot)

2. Maintain regular hours. I’ve never done this in my life — I stay up late, work insane hours and generally throw off my clock. Need to fix that.

3. Write every day. Structuring my day will provide me more time to do this.

4. Watch four movies a week.

5. Spend less time online  – without the pressure of work and meetings, it is easy to spend too much time online.

6. Spend more time in India.

I think that’s it. I want to keep it to an attainable list and while this may be short, it seems pretty daunting to me. Let’s see how far I can get.

Happy new year my imaginary readers. Here’s to a fabulous 2007!

I finally feel unemployed. Even though I left work in June, I had a crazy six months, jammed with a whole bunch of things.

But now, I am free. After ten years of never going on vacation for more than a week or two, I am finally on a real vacation.

Actually, here’s the true benefit of being unemployed — being on a mini-vacation from my vacation. What joy!

This view (which I just photographed 5 minutes ago), has me thanking my stars that I have no job.

It’s been busy. Crazily so. Was working to a deadline where I pulled an all-nighter (I think the last time I did that was in undergrad). Then I headed out west and I feel I am on the verge of falling sick again. I wonder how I can be so busy when I am technically unemployed at the moment.

But, the best part is that I am back in California for a few days. It has been wonderful, seeing friends and catching up.

California will always have the most special place in my heart. The first few years of my life in the US were spent in Boston and they were the roughest years of my life. Then I moved to California. New city, new job, new life. I loved San Francisco — I overcame my fears of driving on the insane inclines, learned to sail, made wonderful friends. I loved my job in product management/marketing. As I moved from the city to the peninsula, the better weather and the most spectacular views on 280 made me love the Bay Area even more.

It will always feel like home in some ways. This was where I was happy in the US for the first time. This was where I found myself.

Confused’s post on motives behind charity giving, reminded me about one of the most analytical ways to think about charitable giving that I�ve ever heard of.

Bjorn Lomborg, a Scandinavian economist, became famous for his controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, that challenged the notion that our ecology was at risk. He proposed that our environment was actually improving and that if there was real risk, people would adapt how they did things in order to continue to live on earth. He also proposed that giving money to climate change was like burning it.

As someone who believes that our climate has changed and that people need to sit up, take notice and do something about it, this was hard to hear.

But in 2005, I attended the TED conference. And I heard Bjorn speak. He was extraordinarily compelling. He has started a project called the Copenhagen Consensus. What the Copenhagen Consensus does is get top thinkers to figure out the charitable causes that can be best addressed with funding. That is, if you gave one dollar to climate control or one dollar to fighting communicable diseases, where would your money be more efficiently used and actually help solve the problem. The first year, he had economists participate and rank the problems. You can see the results here. In 2005, he had 24 UN ambassadors do the ranking. It is quite interesting.

If you are someone who cares about your money actually helping to solve a problem, check out the website to learn about where it would be most compellingly used. It is not the only way to think about charitable contributions, but it is the most analytical way to do so.