About a month ago one of the teams I work with had a deadline coming up and the leadership team told them that they should come up with a reward for hitting this goal and we would try to accomidate the goal. Well, they said they wanted "slave day". I had no idea what that meant at the time but turns out it meant that they brought in slave clothes for the leadership team to dress up in. I took it a step further by walking around the office saying "Ram Ram" which in very loose translation means "How may I help you master". It was fun and people still come up to me and say I remember when you were a slave for a day. Here's a picture of myself and Raja, one the team's track leads.

UConn college hoops are back! I hope I can see a game this year but I'm definately going to be glued to the ESPN website.

I'm reading a good but largely depressing book by Robert Kaplan called The Coming Anarchy. It's all about the world's political landscape over the next fifty years. The book is really a series of articles that Kaplan published between 1991 and 1999. It's very interesting because I think most people are starting to be aware or open to some substantial changes in world relations/politics since the September 11th catastrophe and while this material was written before the event the material is only more relavant (or at least believable). Kaplan has spent the last 30 years as a political coorespondant in the Middle East, Russia, Africa, and a little of Latin America. In his introduction he mentions that while the book's outlook is grim and divergent from what you read in the popular press it is very much inline with what the intelligence community has been thinking for years. The book is well recieved by both popular press (NY Times, NY Times Book Review, Washington Post Book Review) and intelligence community (James Woolsly, former director of CIA).

I was mentioning the book to some colleages at work and they mentioned that in South Africa every house has "the button" which when pressed drops bars into the windows, locks all doors (in many cases shutting a steel security door), and calls for an armoured car to come to the house. Most people never press the button but everyone has one and they all live with the knowledge that it may need to be used sometime. One of the people South Africans that I've known over the years -- Cobus -- apparently (this is word of mouth, I haven't talked to him directly as he is now in Germany) went home to S.Africa recently and said that for the first time truely felt unsafe. His next door neighbor had recently been shot to death in her home in some random violence and things are escalating out of control. Crazy. Well anyway, enough on that tangent for now. If anyone decides to read the book let me know what you think.

Star World TV has many American television programs -- reruns from shows that are mostly still showing in the US -- and I've found myself watching both Drew Carey and Who's Line is it Anyway. I'd watched these a little in the US but I've really started to fully appreciate how funny these shows are out here. Drew Carey is just plain funny, Who's Line Is It is equally funny and impressive at the same time. The ability of the team members to improvise so well is amazing, especially the tall guy from the Drew Carey show. Reminds me of the SF Improvisational theater but on steroids. It's funny how all the adds for the American shows show an Indian national talking about how they can relate to the characters and how this imported culture is relavant to Indians. For example an Indian woman saying that while she sees differences, she see's herself being like Dharma from Dharma and Greg. Seems like a stretch but fine, you gotta make television relavent to sell it.

I have some good news...looks like I'll be able to make it back to India for Christmas/New Year's! That's a good thing since we have guests coming at that time. :) Things are looking good for me spending some time in Delhi over the next few months; I just have to work out when it makes sense from a project perspective. In the mean time, Ken may stop off in Denver before heading back to Delhi after his bachelor party in Vegas in December.

Have I mentioned that Denver is absolutely gorgeous? The weather is great - if it gets cold, it only lasts for a few days, and it's almost always sunny. If I'm not in Delhi, at least I'm in a pleasant place. I live in the Embassy Suites downtown (a corporate apartment), and that's pretty convenient to restaurants and clubs. I'm starting to get into a groove here (after 8 weeks!), and I've made some friends, so the weekends aren't too lonely. Jill visited a few weeks ago and might come back for another visit, so that helps, too. :) Hey, Ken, wanna keep renting out the house when we come back to the US and spend a year in Denver? Heh...just kidding. ;)

Did I mention that our couch folds out? Anyone? Bueller?

Hugs to all,
Amy

Here's a picture of our new cook Thomas, his wife Mary, and their daughter:

Ok, now that I can again post images I'm addicted ... here are some pictures from my visit to Bangkok. Both were taken on Friday's "Boat and Barge Tour":

Just hanging out	sittin on the doc of the bay, just watching the tide roll away. Sittin here wastin' my time ... Otis Redding, Sitting on the Dock of the Bay

Well it's monday morning and for the first morning in a long time I feel pretty healthy. The cold I've had for the past 5 days can't yet be spoken of in past tense but it's getting close and I won't waste any time with formal good byes. I'm off to work in another 1/2 hour to address the technology worker's never ending burden of reading email. Since I missed 2.5 days of work last week my Inbox got so full that my account won't accept any more mail. Jeez. I wonder how many unread messages that is. Probably over 500, maybe even over 750.

On a more upbeat note, due to my being sick I did have a little more time to fix up ken.net, I already mentioned the images for the blog now being able to be hosted but I also have done a little work on Amy and I's wedding site. Still not really ready for public consumption but it'll be there soon. For an advanced preview, take a look at: http://ken.net/wedding.

Well, it looks like my Journey through India will continue to be centered in Denver, Colorado. I was supposed to fly back to India yesterday for 2 weeks, but it didn't make sense for the project. I'm still trying to work out when I will go back, but this part of the project goes on until February.

Last weekend I went to Austin to see my parents and celebrate the birthdays of my friends Melissa and Katie. It was a quick trip - I flew in Friday night and left very early Sunday morning - but busy. My cousin's wedding was on Saturday (Congratulations Gary and Anita!!), and my mom, my dad, and I did a little wedding related shopping (tuxes and dresses for Mom). My parents are building a house, and it's really coming along. I hope to go back and visit them weekend after next when my brother is there putting the tile in.

This weekend was nice (considering I'm not in Delhi!). I went to see David Sedaris speak and read some of his new work Friday night; he was hysterical! I got a lot of sleep and had a chance to work out. I hope to get some wedding stuff taken care of today, and get ready for next week from a work perspective. If anyone wants to come to Denver, let me know!!

My phone numbers here are:

Corporate Apt.: 303.297.8888 x3212
Cell: 303.241.5685
Work: 303.390.3494

Thanks, Jon, for getting rid of the ads!

More later...aes

Some of you probably noticed that two things on the site disappeared recently: the advertisement headers and all the India pictures that had been a part of the blog. Why? For two completely independant reasons:

• Jonathan paid to have the advert's removed from the site. Thanks Jon!
  
• I stopped paying for the old Pacbell DSL account 5-6 months ago but they only recently shut me off (this is where I was storing the pictures)

Well I finally got around to setting up ken.net so that I could use it to host the images. So on that note, here are a series of images from the past number of weeks:

On our second day in Thailand we took a tour outside the city to the old capital of Thailand. This picture was taken from a old government center that had been raided by Burma in the late 1700's, the Burmese army decapitated all the statues of Budda and burned down all the wooden structures but even after all the damage it is still an impressive sight.	Every young man in Thailand spends at least 3 weeks as a Budhist Monk, these two guys/monks were hanging out at another temple in our tour outside of Bangkok.
Thought this was a cool looking picture, behind my back by a couple hundred yards was Buckingham Palace.	As a kid I always loved traveling on the top deck of a double decker bus. This picture was taken in the financial district of London a couple of blocks from the Sapient office.
I went to India Gate and all I got was some crazy monkeys.	The two of us when we were at Becky and Carlos's wedding in Napa.
Becky and Carlos eating dinner at the reception.	Becky's mom comes over to talk to Amy and Mel.
Isn't it nice to see the young couple sharing. This picture was the last one before things got messy. :^)	This picture of Becky and Carlos was taken right after the ceremony.

When I was at the drug store getting cold medication I recieved my change and noticed that one of the 10rs notes was a very different style than all the ones I'd seen. I asked our driver Deepok and he said, "Yes, this one is very old. May I keep it?" Selfishly I said that I would actually like to keep it because I like to collect these things, he smiled and reached into his pocket and handed me 50, 25, and 1rs notes from Nepal. When I had taken a look I tried to return the money and Deepok wouldn't hear of it. He said "I do not care about money, only happiness. If you are happy then you keep." This is just another example of Deepok surprising me; as he's told me "I am not an educated man, sir" but he is so well intentioned, enthusiastic, and while strangely naive also very intelligent. It's great having a driver like this, our first driver spoke much better english but he was a stiff. :^)

I'm sick. Damn! I have a sore throat and general body ache. I slept until 4:30pm today, pretty much straight through.

I went to Bankok over the past weekend! It was good fun, the basic itinerary was played out as we went through the weekend rather than being planned in advance but ended up being as follows:

1. Friday -- arrive in Bangkok at around 6am. While at the airport we notice a woman who seems to have many, many credit cards and is taken turns with people using the ATM machine and rotating her cards in to take out large sums of money, seemed pretty sketchy so we tried to alert security unfortunately no one could really speak english. Interesting start. We spent the majority of the rest of the day taking a "boat and barge tour" of the city of Bangkok. The tour was a good introduction to Bangkok. In the evening we made the mistake of signing up for a "traditional Thai dinner and dancing". What a tourist trap! The dinner was very below-average Americanized Thai food and the dancing was from a poorly training group. I suppose the dancing may have been traditional but I'm sure Thailand wouldn't want this show to represent their dance tradition.
2. Saturday -- since this would be our only full day we took the opportunity to do travel outside the city on a all day tour to the old capital city of Thailand ... can't remember the name of the city right now. We toured several mosques, took a short elephant ride, another boat ride, and finally had a great Thai meal.
3. Sunday -- didn't do a damn thing of consequence. This was according to plan. I woke up late, got a message, read a book, took a nap, ate some Sushi, took another nap. We left to the airport around 6pm and flew back to Delhi.

Angie and Tucker came over to our place last night and we met two cooks who might replace Shanta at the end of the month. The first cook, Thomas, came with his wife Mary (who works as the housekeeper) and their 18 year old daughter ... they seemed great! Very warm and Thomas has lots of experience. The problem? Well, there are two. One, the servant quarters are too small for the family but they have a car and so that might not matter. Two, they're expensive. 11,000rs a month for both Thomas and Mary and then another 3000rs for their rent (since they can't stay here). Ouch. We were only paying 4000rs a month for Shanta. Jeez. Well the reason that Angie and Tucker were here is that we're thinking about sharing them (and the costs).

By the time that the second cook (Rosy) arrived I knew that I already wanted Thomas and Mary. She was good too but not at the same level ... not the same amount of warmth, less experience, and overall the costs weren't significant enough to really consider her too much.

So I think I'm heading to Bangkok this weekend! Looking forward to getting outta Delhi for the weekend, it is a 3-day weekend for us. I'm not sure what the Indian holiday is but right now I don't care. :^)

Amy returns to India a week from Sunday ... I can't wait

I went to Bangalore over the weekend for a hiring event. Bangalore is a city in the southern part of India and everyone I've talked to -- bar none -- seems to love Bangalore. The weather is very much like the Bay Area in the the US (although warmer at night), the air is very clean, is known as a great pub and restaurant city, and has the largest concentration of technology companies (it is India's Silicon Valley). Unfortunately for me the weekend was largely spent doing work (e.g., hiring people) but I was able to go out to dinner and have some amazing food and the weather was fantastic. Once Amy gets back out here I'd really like to go back and spend more time.

On Friday I went to a cross-cultural training course. Sapient has brought in a 3rd party company to teach these classes and expects all expats to attend. It was interesting but the focus was a little too much on "I know you're really struggling to adapt, it's scary, you are not alone" type crap instead of where I think almost everyone is which more just "so I've noticed people do this, what does that mean? what should I tip? etc." One of the things that was probably the most useful was they brought in a father and son to talk about different generations experiences with India. The son, who was about 25 years old, was working in the IT consulting space which was nice because IT in India is more westernized than other industries. One of the things he mentioned is that companies that are Indian owned versus multi-nationals have a very different polical environment. In Indian companies, your first priority is to please your immediate superior and to make sure that he/she looks good; after that the next goal is to do the right thing. Multi-nationals are more competitive and encourage more openness. Since this difference is so well known it is self-enforcing, most of those who believe they can compete effectively against their peers prefer the more open environment where movement within the organization is closer tied to capability. When talking about gender differences both the father and son said that woman in India today "have something to prove" and therefore are very motivated to play roles in all parts of top Indian politics, IT, and other power positions. The father made the claim that 7 out of 10 top graduates from IIT (the top Indian university) were women these days. I asked a co-worker and he said that he thought that was exagerated but still it is clear that the "glass ceiling" in non-traditional industries (and some traditional like politics) has been removed and women are doing great things here. On other force that helps women here is that corruption is considered a problem in government and most people believe that women are less likely to be caught up in corruption. In one case a couple of years ago one of the Indian states dealt with corruption by firing all the men in top government positions and replaced them with women! As always though, India is a case study in contrasts. With all the progress that women are making there are also clearly areas of industry and parts society that women are not treated equally.

For those of you interested in the current status of India, here's a report from SOS International:

SOS members are strongly advised to monitor events in the media and to avoid all demonstrations due to the potential for violence. Refrain from travelling to Kashmir - whether to the Indian or Pakistani side. This area is not only a scene of fighting, but large demonstrations, which often turn into violent clashes. Be more aware than usual when travelling in India and avoid rural areas. Maintain a level of awareness when visiting public places around Delhi.

SOS members are advised the following:
1. SOS does NOT advise evacuation from India
2. SOS advises that normal business travel to India should proceed but travelers should be briefed on the security environment and met by colleagues on arrival.
3. SOS advises that members minimize activity on the streets of New Delhi today

Overall status remains green ... the US and Indonesia are orange, Pakistan and Afghanistan are red.

I had to leave work early today due to "Delhi Belly II". It's not too bad this time -- no fever or hot/cold spells -- and I'm just trying to figure out what it was that I ate that got me here. Weird.