So the other day I was in the In Room Dining kitchen testing some recipes and a couple of funny things happened. First, I had been cooking for a few hours and needed to leave for about 45 minutes for a meeting. I was going to come back after the meeting so I took all the things off the heat, but I left things set up in the kitchen. I informed a couple of the stewards that I would be back and then I left.
Before my meeting I saw one of the sous chefs in one of the other chef's offices talking about some of the local breakfast foods that we would be ordering for the employee dining room. Fuul (beans), local breads and tameya which is falafel. He was going to leave to go fry some of the falafel, to test it out. So he left to do that and I went and had my meeting. Afterward, the fried tameya was on a plate in the chef's office so I tasted it and then went to the office that I share with my sous and the other chef de cuisine, a Vietnamese woman named Mai Phuong. She stood up and looked at me with wide eyes and started laughing.
"Very big fiyah! Yo kitchen! Black!"
"What?" I replied.
"A lot smoke! Very big! Eveewhere!"
Again from me, "What?"
Beeg fiyah! He make!" And she pointed at the sous.
He looked sheepishly up from his desk and said, "Eet was esmall...notah that beeg."
At this point I was beginning to understand...and I took off at a fast walk to the kitchen where I had been working and sure enough, there was a huge burn pattern up the entire wall!! Up into the hood vents, completely engulfing the pot shelf above the burners. Whoa. There were also signs that someone had tried to clean it up. The sous. Poor bastard. Moments later there was a team of six stewards in there to clean it up and they were laughing at him the whole time.
The sous is a local and this was a bad thing for him because he lost face in front of the other Egyptians. It will probably take him a while to live it down. He had left the fire on high beneath the pot of corn oil he had used to fry the tameya and it had hit the smoke point and ignited. Doh!
The next funny story occured while those same stewards were cleaning up the mess. They were joking and laughing and behaving as all young kitchen dudes do. I was on a table prepping as far away from the mess as I could be. They are really friendly people and kept looking over and smiling. Finally a guy with decent english skills walked over and asked, "Hey chef, you used to make da movies?"
Again my answer, "What?"
"Before you do this, you do the movie?"
"What?"
"I think I see you in the movies..."
I laughed. "Ok, what one?"
He smiled big and hit me with one I have never been hit with before. "Walker: Texas Ranger! You Chuck Norris right?"
Oh man it was all I could do to not double over on that one. Yeah, ya had to be there, but do I really look like Chuck Norris? If I do I would like to think I can at least act better than him. Ha ha.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
The Free Climbing Handyman
Originally written August 7th-
A few days ago we were having the handyman guy do some things around the house. It is interesting because here you just make a call and a guy shows up with a toolbox to repair any and all of your things around the house. That day he was putting up a towel hanger in the bathroom, a place to hang shirts to dry in the laundry room, seal a door that was allowing sand in when the wind blew, and then finally, running an internet cable from the router downstairs to one of the bedrooms upstairs.
I wasn't thinking this was going to happen the way it did. Maybe it would be run inside the house, along a wall or maybe inside the wall. But, as Esther says, 'Here they like to make holes in things.' And that is what they did. Just drilled right through the wall and ran the cable out from the floor above. Then he came downstairs and blasted a hole through the downstairs wall. Plaster and sawdust flying all over.
But then the inevitable problem became evident. How to get the cable in the little hole from the outside. The windows in that area don't open, and you can't reach around the building to do it. So what does the guy do? He climbs out our third floor window and shimmies all the way around the side of building with his feet on a tiny ledge! He makes it around but the hole isn't big enough so we have to hand the drill out the window to him. He MacGuyver's the hole and puts the cable in. Then shimmies back around and in the window again. With a grin on his face he wipes the sweat off his brow and nods once quickly. Just another day in that guys life. We were impressed...thirty feet up without a net, and probably earning about 2 dollars a day.
A funny footnote to that story was when he went to drill from the outside, the cord to the drill came unplugged so I went to plug it back in. It had no actual plug, just two exposed wires that I had to stick in the holes of the wall outlet...I held them in while he drilled with my eyes closed just waiting to feel however many volts rocketing up through my body....but it never happened. El humdalilah!!!!
A few days ago we were having the handyman guy do some things around the house. It is interesting because here you just make a call and a guy shows up with a toolbox to repair any and all of your things around the house. That day he was putting up a towel hanger in the bathroom, a place to hang shirts to dry in the laundry room, seal a door that was allowing sand in when the wind blew, and then finally, running an internet cable from the router downstairs to one of the bedrooms upstairs.
I wasn't thinking this was going to happen the way it did. Maybe it would be run inside the house, along a wall or maybe inside the wall. But, as Esther says, 'Here they like to make holes in things.' And that is what they did. Just drilled right through the wall and ran the cable out from the floor above. Then he came downstairs and blasted a hole through the downstairs wall. Plaster and sawdust flying all over.
But then the inevitable problem became evident. How to get the cable in the little hole from the outside. The windows in that area don't open, and you can't reach around the building to do it. So what does the guy do? He climbs out our third floor window and shimmies all the way around the side of building with his feet on a tiny ledge! He makes it around but the hole isn't big enough so we have to hand the drill out the window to him. He MacGuyver's the hole and puts the cable in. Then shimmies back around and in the window again. With a grin on his face he wipes the sweat off his brow and nods once quickly. Just another day in that guys life. We were impressed...thirty feet up without a net, and probably earning about 2 dollars a day.
A funny footnote to that story was when he went to drill from the outside, the cord to the drill came unplugged so I went to plug it back in. It had no actual plug, just two exposed wires that I had to stick in the holes of the wall outlet...I held them in while he drilled with my eyes closed just waiting to feel however many volts rocketing up through my body....but it never happened. El humdalilah!!!!
Segway from India to Egypt....
Originally written August 1st-
I never really got to it on blogging about Nepal. When I got there I was overwhelmed with the depth of the culture and the variety of the nature there. I was on the way to do a trek in the Himalayas and then I was going to sit down and write about it all. But when I got back from the trekking I was so overstimulated by all that I saw that I couldn't even begin to write about it. I got blocked, and then I wrote nothing. That is unfortunate because Nepal is, without a doubt, the coolest place I have ever visited. A combination of the people, the nature, the Buddhism and the energy there completely won me over. Despite nights spent in hotel rooms full of ants and roaches...with daily power outages and incredible levels of pollution, the place was, hands down, the most amazing I have visited.
Maybe at some point I will get to describing more of how it was. But for now I want to get to how things are going in Egypt. To do that, I have to finish the end of the India/Nepal story. It will be kept brief.
I went back to India from Kathmandu and flew down to Bombay. It was raining really hard when I got there, the heart of the monsoon. Mumbai was interesting enough, but I don't think I need to go back there. While I was in Colaba, Hillary Clinton made a diplomatic visit and stayed at the Taj Hotel, which was just a few doors down from my much more humble hotel. We visited a lot of the same places. India Gate and the Jain Temple in Malabar Hill. I also went to Dhobi Ghat, the Laxmi Temple, Haji Ali Mosque and a few other religious places. When the rain came it was incredible. Enough to fill buckets in mere minutes. On the way back from seeing the Ali Mosque I was on the jetty that connects it to the mainland when the rain came in from the Arabian Sea. You could see the black clouds coming, but they caught us by surprise moving so quickly. The next thing I knew I was moving at full speed in a large crowd of muslims and in seconds we were all soaked to the bone. Never seen rain like that.
When I left Mumbai, like Hillary, I went to Delhi. Back to the Pahar Ganj ghetto. I was there for a few days. I went to see the Taj Mahal in Agra and took some cooking classes. I like Delhi. It is completely nuts, but in a good way.
So then I took the old overnight flight back to Abu Dhabi, and then Cairo. I got picked up by Ryan and Catherine and her driver Mohamet. Everyone seems to be named Mohamet. There are to be 5 in my kitchen alone. I have had this week to get ready for work. Buy new clothes, shoes and a stereo. From here on I will use this blog as a place to write short updates on things that stand out as strange or funny or somehow interesting. This culture is very different from that of the west and many times I see things that seem fun to share. My impressions so far are that this culture is very misunderstood by the West. I hope that my picking out of the more strange happenings doesn't serve to enhance that misunderstanding. People here are people. It is a good culture with many positives. Nothing like the demonized version the West percieves.
Here is the first anecdote. Ryan's wife Esther and I went to the Carrefour one day. It is like a SuperWalmart, but the brand is French. On the way there we were driving across the Mars-like terrain and saw a little boy on the side of the road trying to hitch a ride. He looked to be about 5 or 6 years old. The cabbie asked us if we could pick him up and we said yes. It was at least 100 degrees and the boy was little. But when he got in he was like a little man. His face and the way he responded to the things the driver said made him seem much older. It turned out that he also wanted to go to Carrefour. The driver let him out a little way away and I thought that we would not see him again. But we did. It turns out he was there to play in the store! He was drinking soda, picking up toys and at one point he had a box of whopper candy that he dropped and they went in all directions. But he picked them up and ate them all. Of course he was never going to pay for any of these things. It wasn't so much what he was doing there that was interesting. It was the backstory that gave us the questions. Why would a little boy of that age be out by himself? Was he going to Carrefour because his mother had sent him? Or did he sneak out? Did he go on this journey often? Was it just to have fun? I will never know.
I never really got to it on blogging about Nepal. When I got there I was overwhelmed with the depth of the culture and the variety of the nature there. I was on the way to do a trek in the Himalayas and then I was going to sit down and write about it all. But when I got back from the trekking I was so overstimulated by all that I saw that I couldn't even begin to write about it. I got blocked, and then I wrote nothing. That is unfortunate because Nepal is, without a doubt, the coolest place I have ever visited. A combination of the people, the nature, the Buddhism and the energy there completely won me over. Despite nights spent in hotel rooms full of ants and roaches...with daily power outages and incredible levels of pollution, the place was, hands down, the most amazing I have visited.
Maybe at some point I will get to describing more of how it was. But for now I want to get to how things are going in Egypt. To do that, I have to finish the end of the India/Nepal story. It will be kept brief.
I went back to India from Kathmandu and flew down to Bombay. It was raining really hard when I got there, the heart of the monsoon. Mumbai was interesting enough, but I don't think I need to go back there. While I was in Colaba, Hillary Clinton made a diplomatic visit and stayed at the Taj Hotel, which was just a few doors down from my much more humble hotel. We visited a lot of the same places. India Gate and the Jain Temple in Malabar Hill. I also went to Dhobi Ghat, the Laxmi Temple, Haji Ali Mosque and a few other religious places. When the rain came it was incredible. Enough to fill buckets in mere minutes. On the way back from seeing the Ali Mosque I was on the jetty that connects it to the mainland when the rain came in from the Arabian Sea. You could see the black clouds coming, but they caught us by surprise moving so quickly. The next thing I knew I was moving at full speed in a large crowd of muslims and in seconds we were all soaked to the bone. Never seen rain like that.
When I left Mumbai, like Hillary, I went to Delhi. Back to the Pahar Ganj ghetto. I was there for a few days. I went to see the Taj Mahal in Agra and took some cooking classes. I like Delhi. It is completely nuts, but in a good way.
So then I took the old overnight flight back to Abu Dhabi, and then Cairo. I got picked up by Ryan and Catherine and her driver Mohamet. Everyone seems to be named Mohamet. There are to be 5 in my kitchen alone. I have had this week to get ready for work. Buy new clothes, shoes and a stereo. From here on I will use this blog as a place to write short updates on things that stand out as strange or funny or somehow interesting. This culture is very different from that of the west and many times I see things that seem fun to share. My impressions so far are that this culture is very misunderstood by the West. I hope that my picking out of the more strange happenings doesn't serve to enhance that misunderstanding. People here are people. It is a good culture with many positives. Nothing like the demonized version the West percieves.
Here is the first anecdote. Ryan's wife Esther and I went to the Carrefour one day. It is like a SuperWalmart, but the brand is French. On the way there we were driving across the Mars-like terrain and saw a little boy on the side of the road trying to hitch a ride. He looked to be about 5 or 6 years old. The cabbie asked us if we could pick him up and we said yes. It was at least 100 degrees and the boy was little. But when he got in he was like a little man. His face and the way he responded to the things the driver said made him seem much older. It turned out that he also wanted to go to Carrefour. The driver let him out a little way away and I thought that we would not see him again. But we did. It turns out he was there to play in the store! He was drinking soda, picking up toys and at one point he had a box of whopper candy that he dropped and they went in all directions. But he picked them up and ate them all. Of course he was never going to pay for any of these things. It wasn't so much what he was doing there that was interesting. It was the backstory that gave us the questions. Why would a little boy of that age be out by himself? Was he going to Carrefour because his mother had sent him? Or did he sneak out? Did he go on this journey often? Was it just to have fun? I will never know.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Nepal...A Short Intro...
So after a frenzied few days in Delhi, I cabbed it to the airport and headed up to Nepal. It was a cloudy day in northern India, and combined with the smog I couldn't see anything out the exit row window after we headed up into the sky. That said, it was a different story on the way down. As we crossed into Nepal the clouds grew from flat grey ones to huge towering nimbus formations. And descending into Kathmandu was like coming down into heaven. Green and lush, the landscape gave way to the signature brick buildings and I smiled a happy smile.
The acquiring of a visa in Nepal is cheap, but not without its challenges. They won't allow you to pay for it with Indian Rupees and the exchange place won't exchange Indian Rupees, so you have to actually leave the airport to get Nepalese Rupees at an ATM and then come back into the 'departures' area to change your money into US dollars or Euros. Jeezuz. And how do you get out of the airport without a visa or without going through customs? Well, they just let you. They hold your passport and you just leave. I made it through the guantlet and got a ride into town to a guesthouse where I had a reservation...or I thought I did and they thought I did, but I didn't and so I got to stay at the neighbors the first night.
I will preface this entry by saying I have nowhere near enough time to explain the things that have happened in the last few days. Let me just say that this place is so incredibly deep on the cultural level...it has stunned me. Tomorrow I am heading to Pokhara and then into the wild, so I will not have the time to write down the stories until after I get back to Kathmandu from the trek.
But it is amazing here. I am kind of overwhelmed with how much there is to take in...to see and smell and feel. There are Buddhism and Hinduism and Islam everywhere, and it is such a mixed group of people living here together. Nepal has had its political problems with the Maoists and others...and now may be a lull but it is not perfect by any mearuring stick. Saying that though, it is a very peaceful mix of ideologically varied people. They are just as curious as the Indians and I have spent a lot of time just talking to people in the shops and restaurants and streets. This is where the Buddhism really starts...and heads north. The Hinduism goes south into India from here. But in the temples you see the dharma wheels of Buddhism along side Ganesh, the elephant-headed God of Hinduism, beneath the domed roofes of the Muslims. It is quite a thing.
Today was Saturday and I spent the day visiting temples across the valley. It is a holy day so I saw all the people in the process of their worshiping. Got to see a goat get sacrificed. A lot of incense burning. A lot of smiling and a lot of prayer wheels spinning. I love it. That is all for now.
The acquiring of a visa in Nepal is cheap, but not without its challenges. They won't allow you to pay for it with Indian Rupees and the exchange place won't exchange Indian Rupees, so you have to actually leave the airport to get Nepalese Rupees at an ATM and then come back into the 'departures' area to change your money into US dollars or Euros. Jeezuz. And how do you get out of the airport without a visa or without going through customs? Well, they just let you. They hold your passport and you just leave. I made it through the guantlet and got a ride into town to a guesthouse where I had a reservation...or I thought I did and they thought I did, but I didn't and so I got to stay at the neighbors the first night.
I will preface this entry by saying I have nowhere near enough time to explain the things that have happened in the last few days. Let me just say that this place is so incredibly deep on the cultural level...it has stunned me. Tomorrow I am heading to Pokhara and then into the wild, so I will not have the time to write down the stories until after I get back to Kathmandu from the trek.
But it is amazing here. I am kind of overwhelmed with how much there is to take in...to see and smell and feel. There are Buddhism and Hinduism and Islam everywhere, and it is such a mixed group of people living here together. Nepal has had its political problems with the Maoists and others...and now may be a lull but it is not perfect by any mearuring stick. Saying that though, it is a very peaceful mix of ideologically varied people. They are just as curious as the Indians and I have spent a lot of time just talking to people in the shops and restaurants and streets. This is where the Buddhism really starts...and heads north. The Hinduism goes south into India from here. But in the temples you see the dharma wheels of Buddhism along side Ganesh, the elephant-headed God of Hinduism, beneath the domed roofes of the Muslims. It is quite a thing.
Today was Saturday and I spent the day visiting temples across the valley. It is a holy day so I saw all the people in the process of their worshiping. Got to see a goat get sacrificed. A lot of incense burning. A lot of smiling and a lot of prayer wheels spinning. I love it. That is all for now.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
So Many Things
I want to start by saying that this is the craziest place I have visited in my time on the road! And I love it! Nowhere will you see such a cornucopia of life happening in the streets, in the gutters, in the trees, in the homes. If you walk the equivalent of 1 city block you will see 10 things you never expected to see. In fact, you will miss a lot more than you actually do see! I am just now, after days of wandering around, able to read the signs, even though they are in English. It is that there is too much for you brain to process at first. The streets are packed with people and vehicles and animals and trash and animal shit and tea vendors and incense and almost anything else you can think up. But it just comes at you in ways you could never foresee. It's amazing, sortof like being a little kid again...just in wonder of the differences.
(Dad, you would hate it here! Ha ha!)
I have been really digging on the food. A lot of dahl and naan. Chana masala, paneer, aloo and gohbi. My usual suspects, but better, cause it's here. Today I tempted the fates by eating with a big group of Indian people in a complete hole in the wall. (Not a joke, a REAL hole in the wall.) I had the variety platter which is what they were all having, and it was delicious, even while burning a section out of my stomach lining. It was naan and rice with three pools of food, and wow was it tasty. The Indians all got a kick out of me liking spicy food. In fact, I was the hit of the trip we were on, all of them asking lots of questions and wanting to take photos with the gringo. This has happened a bunch of times now. Not just with these semi-acquaintences I had made. I was at the burial place of Mahatma Ghandi and three dudes pounced on me for a photo-op on a bench. I laughed a bit with them and then took some tough-guy photos with them. I took off my glasses for the shots and for the last one the kid put my glasses on and just loved it! It was a riot.
I had wanted to go on a trip around the city since I didn't have a lot of time here. I asked the G'ed out guy at the front desk of my guesthouse about it and he arranged it. I got 'picked up' at 9 this morning by a fat man in a tight white shirt. He waved me out the door and we set off to find the vehicle, which I, like an idiot, thought would be in the vecinity of the hotel. It wasn't. So we walked through the muddy streets of ghetto Pahar Ganj for fifteen minutes before arriving at a massive thoroughfare, where the roar of traffic almost drowned out his passive command to 'Wait here.' I was standing on a moist pile of garbage which was being bound by a fair amount of animal (and maybe human) feces. I was on this pile because the rest of the area was under standing water. I waited perched with about ten other indian dudes for a while. And then it started to rain. They want you to be happy so I was pulled back against a building with the group into an area that was indeed dry, but that smelled like the mouth of a dirty urinal. After about 20 minutes, the fat man returned, pointed across the madness, and said 'You go there!' So I froggered my way across the gnar and entered a bus marked 'Tourist'. I was greeted on this bus by the glances of about 20 Indians. I turned to the guy who takes the tickets and asked where this bus was going. Was it leaving the city? Where were the other gringos? Turns out it was the right bus, and there were no other gringos. Which really is the way you want it to be right? Hangin' with the locals! But the gentleman who ended up being out guide was under the strange impression that I was a fluent speaker of Hindi! Or at least this is what I assumed because even though he looked at me a lot, he only addressed the group in Hindi.
We visited some really cool places but I didn't get a whole lot of info on them. Mostly, I got to know some of the others in the group and enjoyed their enthusiasm. We went to a bunch of temples and resting places and the Indira Ghandi Museum. The tour ended up being 10 hours long!! And we seemingly crossed the whole of Delhi, which is a sprawling place.
I saw so many things that were as random as can be...and laughed out loud a couple times. Like when seeing a tuk tuk named after pro wrestler John Cena...I thought of Adam when I saw the Jindal Hotel International written in huge bright pink neon letters. (The next great hope of the Republican Party...for all of two seconds...later Bobby, Bobby Jindal!! Mister Rogers...) There are street barbers who will give your beard a shave right there amongst the cows and garbage in the gutter too. The list could go on.
At one point I had an exciting little adventure during the afternoon. I was low on money and needed to hit an ATM. They charge a lot more for gringos to enter the temples...in the case of Qutb, it was 25 times more for me than for the locals. Not saying it isn't fair, because it is fair, but at this particular place I did not have enough to get in. We had a half an hour to see the place...not long enough really, but we were on a schedule! Not a punctual schedule...a lot of hurry up and wait...but still, you tell an American a time to be there and he is there.
So some guy near the entrance tells me where there is an ATM. In the next township. So I get a tuk tuk with my last rupees and head that way. Turns out it is not so close. We drive and drive. Through cows and people and bazaars and more cows. When we get there and locate the ATM, it is not working. But this takes time to figure out. I am starting to feel the time crunch and am now almost completely out of money. I get back into the tuk tuk and go back empty handed to the temple.
It was a big place and there were busses everywhere. Because of the Hindi speaking guide I did not know where the bus would be...I was looking for familiar faces from the bus but only saw a sea of Indians. I had no watch and in my head the thirty minutes had passed. So I walked back and forth to the three places I thought he might go. Nothing. I was starting to panic because my backpack was on the bus and if it was gone, it was gone. Time passing, me walking, me sweating like a bastard in the 100 degree sun and humidity. Finally I saw the red paint-dabbed forehead of a familiar face. An older lady from the tour decked out in blue and yellow robes. She smiled at me and I walked over and she was with about 14 of the others, sitting in the shade. "Do you know where the bus is?" she asked. I just laughed. They were clueless too. Nevertheless the bus came and found us. My bag was there and I hit an ATM later. But it was a good little heart-stopper.
And the final thing I wanted to write today has to do with the job outsourcing to India from America. I had a talk over lunch with a cool Indian dude from the north and he asked me about Obama. I told him what I thought and asked him the same question. He said, "Good for the world, bad for India." This was, of course, in reference to Obama's desire to keep jobs in America. But I told him I wasn't so sure it would work.
Here in India, you get the feeling that if we have to compete against them, we will lose. Not because they are better educated, or more talented in general, but because they will work 10 times as hard, for basically no money. (By western standards.) These dudes are hustlers...capitalists in so many ways. There are side 'businesses' attached to everything you see. For example, I have this cool kid that comes to my hotel room door every night at 9 o'clock to see if I want a beer. (Beer is not as easy to find here and not legal to drink in most hotels. The kid is an employee of the hotel but he operates this on the side because he knows he can.) If I do, he goes and gets it for me. A big beer. I found out that for him it costs 40 rupees...less than a dollar, but he knows that for us it costs more. And so we are happy to see it cost a dollar or two, because where we are from it would be 5. Plus, even knowing the real cost I still give him more 'cause he is a cool little dude who is going out and making it happen. Imagine this in many other part of life...there are people working this kind of thing in every dimension of life here.
So, if it comes down to greedy business owners in the west wanting to save money on payroll, making a decision based on bottom line, we will lose. If there is nationalism involved, maybe fewer will send those jobs to India, but it if is just based on money, they will go. In the long-run this should be a concern. Not that I care because you can't outsource good food!
Another part of the conversation was based on my question, 'how can you be a buddhist/hindu and be a capitalist at the same time?' The values seem almost contradictory. His answer was interesting, but I think it is an entry for another day...this has gotten long.
Really enjoying India.
(Dad, you would hate it here! Ha ha!)
I have been really digging on the food. A lot of dahl and naan. Chana masala, paneer, aloo and gohbi. My usual suspects, but better, cause it's here. Today I tempted the fates by eating with a big group of Indian people in a complete hole in the wall. (Not a joke, a REAL hole in the wall.) I had the variety platter which is what they were all having, and it was delicious, even while burning a section out of my stomach lining. It was naan and rice with three pools of food, and wow was it tasty. The Indians all got a kick out of me liking spicy food. In fact, I was the hit of the trip we were on, all of them asking lots of questions and wanting to take photos with the gringo. This has happened a bunch of times now. Not just with these semi-acquaintences I had made. I was at the burial place of Mahatma Ghandi and three dudes pounced on me for a photo-op on a bench. I laughed a bit with them and then took some tough-guy photos with them. I took off my glasses for the shots and for the last one the kid put my glasses on and just loved it! It was a riot.
I had wanted to go on a trip around the city since I didn't have a lot of time here. I asked the G'ed out guy at the front desk of my guesthouse about it and he arranged it. I got 'picked up' at 9 this morning by a fat man in a tight white shirt. He waved me out the door and we set off to find the vehicle, which I, like an idiot, thought would be in the vecinity of the hotel. It wasn't. So we walked through the muddy streets of ghetto Pahar Ganj for fifteen minutes before arriving at a massive thoroughfare, where the roar of traffic almost drowned out his passive command to 'Wait here.' I was standing on a moist pile of garbage which was being bound by a fair amount of animal (and maybe human) feces. I was on this pile because the rest of the area was under standing water. I waited perched with about ten other indian dudes for a while. And then it started to rain. They want you to be happy so I was pulled back against a building with the group into an area that was indeed dry, but that smelled like the mouth of a dirty urinal. After about 20 minutes, the fat man returned, pointed across the madness, and said 'You go there!' So I froggered my way across the gnar and entered a bus marked 'Tourist'. I was greeted on this bus by the glances of about 20 Indians. I turned to the guy who takes the tickets and asked where this bus was going. Was it leaving the city? Where were the other gringos? Turns out it was the right bus, and there were no other gringos. Which really is the way you want it to be right? Hangin' with the locals! But the gentleman who ended up being out guide was under the strange impression that I was a fluent speaker of Hindi! Or at least this is what I assumed because even though he looked at me a lot, he only addressed the group in Hindi.
We visited some really cool places but I didn't get a whole lot of info on them. Mostly, I got to know some of the others in the group and enjoyed their enthusiasm. We went to a bunch of temples and resting places and the Indira Ghandi Museum. The tour ended up being 10 hours long!! And we seemingly crossed the whole of Delhi, which is a sprawling place.
I saw so many things that were as random as can be...and laughed out loud a couple times. Like when seeing a tuk tuk named after pro wrestler John Cena...I thought of Adam when I saw the Jindal Hotel International written in huge bright pink neon letters. (The next great hope of the Republican Party...for all of two seconds...later Bobby, Bobby Jindal!! Mister Rogers...) There are street barbers who will give your beard a shave right there amongst the cows and garbage in the gutter too. The list could go on.
At one point I had an exciting little adventure during the afternoon. I was low on money and needed to hit an ATM. They charge a lot more for gringos to enter the temples...in the case of Qutb, it was 25 times more for me than for the locals. Not saying it isn't fair, because it is fair, but at this particular place I did not have enough to get in. We had a half an hour to see the place...not long enough really, but we were on a schedule! Not a punctual schedule...a lot of hurry up and wait...but still, you tell an American a time to be there and he is there.
So some guy near the entrance tells me where there is an ATM. In the next township. So I get a tuk tuk with my last rupees and head that way. Turns out it is not so close. We drive and drive. Through cows and people and bazaars and more cows. When we get there and locate the ATM, it is not working. But this takes time to figure out. I am starting to feel the time crunch and am now almost completely out of money. I get back into the tuk tuk and go back empty handed to the temple.
It was a big place and there were busses everywhere. Because of the Hindi speaking guide I did not know where the bus would be...I was looking for familiar faces from the bus but only saw a sea of Indians. I had no watch and in my head the thirty minutes had passed. So I walked back and forth to the three places I thought he might go. Nothing. I was starting to panic because my backpack was on the bus and if it was gone, it was gone. Time passing, me walking, me sweating like a bastard in the 100 degree sun and humidity. Finally I saw the red paint-dabbed forehead of a familiar face. An older lady from the tour decked out in blue and yellow robes. She smiled at me and I walked over and she was with about 14 of the others, sitting in the shade. "Do you know where the bus is?" she asked. I just laughed. They were clueless too. Nevertheless the bus came and found us. My bag was there and I hit an ATM later. But it was a good little heart-stopper.
And the final thing I wanted to write today has to do with the job outsourcing to India from America. I had a talk over lunch with a cool Indian dude from the north and he asked me about Obama. I told him what I thought and asked him the same question. He said, "Good for the world, bad for India." This was, of course, in reference to Obama's desire to keep jobs in America. But I told him I wasn't so sure it would work.
Here in India, you get the feeling that if we have to compete against them, we will lose. Not because they are better educated, or more talented in general, but because they will work 10 times as hard, for basically no money. (By western standards.) These dudes are hustlers...capitalists in so many ways. There are side 'businesses' attached to everything you see. For example, I have this cool kid that comes to my hotel room door every night at 9 o'clock to see if I want a beer. (Beer is not as easy to find here and not legal to drink in most hotels. The kid is an employee of the hotel but he operates this on the side because he knows he can.) If I do, he goes and gets it for me. A big beer. I found out that for him it costs 40 rupees...less than a dollar, but he knows that for us it costs more. And so we are happy to see it cost a dollar or two, because where we are from it would be 5. Plus, even knowing the real cost I still give him more 'cause he is a cool little dude who is going out and making it happen. Imagine this in many other part of life...there are people working this kind of thing in every dimension of life here.
So, if it comes down to greedy business owners in the west wanting to save money on payroll, making a decision based on bottom line, we will lose. If there is nationalism involved, maybe fewer will send those jobs to India, but it if is just based on money, they will go. In the long-run this should be a concern. Not that I care because you can't outsource good food!
Another part of the conversation was based on my question, 'how can you be a buddhist/hindu and be a capitalist at the same time?' The values seem almost contradictory. His answer was interesting, but I think it is an entry for another day...this has gotten long.
Really enjoying India.
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Shimmy to Delhi
I spent a little less than a week in Cairo when I first got there. My original impressions of the place were definitely positive ones. It is a different world, there is no doubt about that, but I am reminded more and more of how people are all the same really, despite their nuances.
I arrived in Cairo from Jordan late in the evening and was picked up at the airport by Ryan and my new boss Philippe. Even though they don't encourage the expats to drive, Philippe does. We wove through the mayhem, locally known as traffic, back to the house of Ryan dodging people, cars and animals all along the way. Ryan's house is in the expat community called Maadi, on the south end of Cairo. It is a part of town that is a little quieter and quite a bit more green. Road 23 where he lives was recently turned into a one way street and at one end it is now used as a garbage dump. The wind gathers paper and plastic there and humans account for the rest. It isn't as bad as it sounds. The traffic there does what it wants and you play frogger everywhere you go, crossing between the honking, zooming cars.
The next night we met up for dinner at a Swiss restaurant with Chef Philippe and Catherine from Human Resources. Over fondue, sausage and Italian Falanghina I learned a bit more about the situation into which I am diving. The time table, the players involved, and the challenges posed. At this stage I will refrain from details but lets just say it is exciting and kinda freaky all at once!
The following night a friend of Ryan's came over for dinner with his wife and their wild little kid. The wife is German and Jean Carlos is Italian. He is the executive chef of the Four Seasons in Cairo. He has been there for 3 years and had a lot of funny anecdotes and pieces of wisdom in regards to how things go there. The cultural differences of the staff are the biggest puzzle of them all there...and combined with a dicey sourcing/purchasing situation, present the juggernaut of our project.
Yesterday afternoon I cabbed to the airport in Cairo to take a pair of flights over to New Delhi in India. The check-in process in the Middle East is quite different...you basically bum-rush the security people and they stuff your bags onto the conveyer belt through the x-ray machine while simultaneously frisking you crisply. Some little Indonesian dude tried to walk off with my bag and I gave him my scary infidel face and he gave it back. Then you check in, after security, and go through passport control on the way to the gate.
I flew through Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, which was interesting. There are all different sorts of garb that people in the Middle East wear and I am starting to get a feel for where people are from by looking at it. Much can be known about a person by the choices they make with their clothes, but again I will wait until I know more to blab too much about it. It is a trip to see so many women fully covered in this way. Some of them wear black, full-body robes that cover everything except for a tiny strip across the eyes. Many women wear very colorful robes and headscarves and accessorizing is big business for many muslim women. The clothes of the men and women look very comfortable but I can't imagine that being covered head to toe in black would feel to good in the glaring Cairo sun in mid-July.
In Abu Dhabi I could barely keep my eyes open. I hadn't slept much the night before and was going down. I was on the ground for only an hour and then back on the same plane on the way here to India. I am not going to bitch about it but I must have some shitty plane Karma coming my way right now. All the flights from the States and then the ones from Cairo to here have been little-shrieking-kid heavy. Then the final one last night, I was placed next to a huge Albanian dude with what sounded like the death-rattle in this chest. If they didn't delay him for questioning in the Swine Flu station when we landed then I don't know what the hell they were doing. Hopefully I am free of death-rattle symptoms. Time will tell.
I landed at 4am at Indira Ghandi airport and passed passport control and the Swine Flu screening area with zero problems. Got my bags and changed money, no worries. Then I pay for a pre-paid airport taxi and the mayhem begins. You pay for it in the terminal and then take the ticket they hand you out to a bunch of random Indian dudes who claim you and take you where you want to go in their beater cabs. I know they all have their own agendas...that is pretty common in the third world airports regarding gringos...but this time it was downright hilarious. This tall guy with a sweet child molester-style mustache told me he was my driver. He looked at the ticket and said no problem, crumpling the ticket in his hand. Then he lead me out some side tunnel of the airport onto the highway that ran by it! I was on my way back when he chased me down, 'Sir, sir! This is how we do!' We were walking down the median of the highway and I was not having it but he was on the phone calling his buddy and before I knew there was a cab there. They told me that this way they avoid the parking lot fee. Ha ha. I had to laugh. You just never know where this shit is going to fly in at you from. But I got in the cab, which was so old that it barely moved and we slowly made our way into the city.
For those who have been to India, they know that there is no explaining it. It is the craziest mass of humanity one could imagine. I have seen a lot of poverty around the globe, but this is other level stuff. As you enter Delhi at 5am there are people sleeping and waking up everywhere. People sleeping in the gravel strip between the lanes of gnarly traffic, on cardboard or plywood planks in the ditches. Fires burn in the streets and cows walk about as normally as the people. The traffic itself is a comedy. I actually really love it! My driver was not familiar with the labyrinthine area surrounding Pahar Ganj and so predictably we spent about 45 minutes asking about where my guesthouse was before defaulting to the old "i am pretty sure your guesthouse is full anyway' line. We woke up some grungy dudes in a tourist office at about 530 and he tried to convince me the street has no access because of construction. Standard shit. I ended up getting a tuk tuk to take me there.
Some of the rooms here a bit like a prison cells. 'Spartan' is the word the guide books use. It really is comedic. The backpacker game. The touts swarm down onto you wanting to 'help you' (e.g. milk you for whatever possible) and then discard you when you are on the way out. They don't really like it when you play ball and say no to everything. I had this guy following me around while I tried to check email and make a couple calls. He wanted to see everything I did so that he could offer some other 'service'. But that is all part of the game.
I ate lunch in my room and I shit you not it was all but free. I had a huge platter of food, pepsi and water for about two bucks. And it was real good too. We'll see how long it is until the gastro-intestinal fallout begins. It is a ticking clock for sure. But I have to say that I like the intriguing nature of this place. Its smells and flavors and colors and sounds. The chaos and diarrea are all worth it in the long run.
I arrived in Cairo from Jordan late in the evening and was picked up at the airport by Ryan and my new boss Philippe. Even though they don't encourage the expats to drive, Philippe does. We wove through the mayhem, locally known as traffic, back to the house of Ryan dodging people, cars and animals all along the way. Ryan's house is in the expat community called Maadi, on the south end of Cairo. It is a part of town that is a little quieter and quite a bit more green. Road 23 where he lives was recently turned into a one way street and at one end it is now used as a garbage dump. The wind gathers paper and plastic there and humans account for the rest. It isn't as bad as it sounds. The traffic there does what it wants and you play frogger everywhere you go, crossing between the honking, zooming cars.
The next night we met up for dinner at a Swiss restaurant with Chef Philippe and Catherine from Human Resources. Over fondue, sausage and Italian Falanghina I learned a bit more about the situation into which I am diving. The time table, the players involved, and the challenges posed. At this stage I will refrain from details but lets just say it is exciting and kinda freaky all at once!
The following night a friend of Ryan's came over for dinner with his wife and their wild little kid. The wife is German and Jean Carlos is Italian. He is the executive chef of the Four Seasons in Cairo. He has been there for 3 years and had a lot of funny anecdotes and pieces of wisdom in regards to how things go there. The cultural differences of the staff are the biggest puzzle of them all there...and combined with a dicey sourcing/purchasing situation, present the juggernaut of our project.
Yesterday afternoon I cabbed to the airport in Cairo to take a pair of flights over to New Delhi in India. The check-in process in the Middle East is quite different...you basically bum-rush the security people and they stuff your bags onto the conveyer belt through the x-ray machine while simultaneously frisking you crisply. Some little Indonesian dude tried to walk off with my bag and I gave him my scary infidel face and he gave it back. Then you check in, after security, and go through passport control on the way to the gate.
I flew through Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, which was interesting. There are all different sorts of garb that people in the Middle East wear and I am starting to get a feel for where people are from by looking at it. Much can be known about a person by the choices they make with their clothes, but again I will wait until I know more to blab too much about it. It is a trip to see so many women fully covered in this way. Some of them wear black, full-body robes that cover everything except for a tiny strip across the eyes. Many women wear very colorful robes and headscarves and accessorizing is big business for many muslim women. The clothes of the men and women look very comfortable but I can't imagine that being covered head to toe in black would feel to good in the glaring Cairo sun in mid-July.
In Abu Dhabi I could barely keep my eyes open. I hadn't slept much the night before and was going down. I was on the ground for only an hour and then back on the same plane on the way here to India. I am not going to bitch about it but I must have some shitty plane Karma coming my way right now. All the flights from the States and then the ones from Cairo to here have been little-shrieking-kid heavy. Then the final one last night, I was placed next to a huge Albanian dude with what sounded like the death-rattle in this chest. If they didn't delay him for questioning in the Swine Flu station when we landed then I don't know what the hell they were doing. Hopefully I am free of death-rattle symptoms. Time will tell.
I landed at 4am at Indira Ghandi airport and passed passport control and the Swine Flu screening area with zero problems. Got my bags and changed money, no worries. Then I pay for a pre-paid airport taxi and the mayhem begins. You pay for it in the terminal and then take the ticket they hand you out to a bunch of random Indian dudes who claim you and take you where you want to go in their beater cabs. I know they all have their own agendas...that is pretty common in the third world airports regarding gringos...but this time it was downright hilarious. This tall guy with a sweet child molester-style mustache told me he was my driver. He looked at the ticket and said no problem, crumpling the ticket in his hand. Then he lead me out some side tunnel of the airport onto the highway that ran by it! I was on my way back when he chased me down, 'Sir, sir! This is how we do!' We were walking down the median of the highway and I was not having it but he was on the phone calling his buddy and before I knew there was a cab there. They told me that this way they avoid the parking lot fee. Ha ha. I had to laugh. You just never know where this shit is going to fly in at you from. But I got in the cab, which was so old that it barely moved and we slowly made our way into the city.
For those who have been to India, they know that there is no explaining it. It is the craziest mass of humanity one could imagine. I have seen a lot of poverty around the globe, but this is other level stuff. As you enter Delhi at 5am there are people sleeping and waking up everywhere. People sleeping in the gravel strip between the lanes of gnarly traffic, on cardboard or plywood planks in the ditches. Fires burn in the streets and cows walk about as normally as the people. The traffic itself is a comedy. I actually really love it! My driver was not familiar with the labyrinthine area surrounding Pahar Ganj and so predictably we spent about 45 minutes asking about where my guesthouse was before defaulting to the old "i am pretty sure your guesthouse is full anyway' line. We woke up some grungy dudes in a tourist office at about 530 and he tried to convince me the street has no access because of construction. Standard shit. I ended up getting a tuk tuk to take me there.
Some of the rooms here a bit like a prison cells. 'Spartan' is the word the guide books use. It really is comedic. The backpacker game. The touts swarm down onto you wanting to 'help you' (e.g. milk you for whatever possible) and then discard you when you are on the way out. They don't really like it when you play ball and say no to everything. I had this guy following me around while I tried to check email and make a couple calls. He wanted to see everything I did so that he could offer some other 'service'. But that is all part of the game.
I ate lunch in my room and I shit you not it was all but free. I had a huge platter of food, pepsi and water for about two bucks. And it was real good too. We'll see how long it is until the gastro-intestinal fallout begins. It is a ticking clock for sure. But I have to say that I like the intriguing nature of this place. Its smells and flavors and colors and sounds. The chaos and diarrea are all worth it in the long run.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Outbound...
I've always liked an adventure. When I was a kid I would always be running around the countryside with my buddies, fighting bad-guys, saving damsels, being a ninja or a cowboy or a knight of some sort. There was always something in the venturing into the unknown that appealed to me. As we leave childhood it seems necessary to leave a lot of that spirit behind, but I never wanted to. I liked the idea of being an explorer until i found out that everything had already been explored. I liked the idea of being a spaceman until I found that I had to be a genius to do it. So I ended up as a traveler. And that has been just right.
In the last few days I left America again. This time it will be for a long time. Two years. On Tuesday I exited San Francisco in the morning after one last batch of Tartine pain au chocolates and coffees with some of my SF family there. It has been over a year since I have written in this blog but I wanted to start it up again to provide a window into what is likely to be one of my most interesting and challenging adventures yet: living in the middle east.
I accepted a Chef de Cuisine job opening a California Cuisine restaurant in the new Fairmont Hotel that has been built on the banks of the Nile River in Cairo. It will certainly be a test to that which I have come to perceive as reality, and I will be excited to use this blog as a way to share some of the stranger and more interesting parts of the adventure.
Since the last blog entries, those of the many months in South and Central America, I have never really stopped roaming. Following the opportunities and options, I sold wine in Montana for a summer and then lived in Portland, Oregon while attempting to secure a job in Bhutan to which I had been connected by a culinary brother. Due to the recession, that job ended up not being a possibility and just as I was about to fully embrace my Portland future, Egypt popped out of nowhere and punched me in the face. It was a long interview process and after many hours answering questions over the phone, I was offered the job in early January.
Since then I have lived in near-complete limbo, traveling between Portland, San Francisco, Montana and Peru many times. I, at one point, had three jobs in Portland, but nothing seemed the right fit. I was originally scheduled to start work in Cairo in February, but things kept getting pushed back due to slow construction and delays due to the recession. In late April I left Portland with the aim to travel before beginning work. I was back in Peru and then about to be on the way to India when my grandmother died and I ended up back in Montana for a few weeks at the beginning of June. I was further delayed when I arrived back in San Francisco and have just finished two weeks of waiting there.
With my recent flight I feel very good about being back in the flow! Ayn Rand, who I think was a good writer despite not really agreeing with her philosophies, says that humans need 'motion and purpose' in order to be content, and in this I do agree. For a while there was neither, then there was purpose without motion...now there are both and I can feel the reason that she wrote that. I am only vaguely sure of where this combination of effects will take me, but the trail that has led me this far has been incredible in its ups and downs and twists and turns...that much more increasing my faith in whatever process it is that leads us where we go.
I think that this will be an interesting time with a large learning curve and surely a good amount of struggle. But I have always enjoyed that. One of the first words I have learned in Arabic is also one of my favorite phrases in Spanish; 'inshallah' and 'si dios quiere', respectively. They both translate to 'if God wills it' or 'God willing'. They refer to different Gods in different parts of the world and I am not even a particularly religious person...but I think this pretty much sums up the way I am looking at this pathway that leads into the blurry future. Sea lo que sea...vamos a ver...we don't know what will happen but we'll soon find out! It will definitely be a trip. And it will probably be pretty damn funny! I'll try to post the interesting stuff here. Salaam alaykum.
In the last few days I left America again. This time it will be for a long time. Two years. On Tuesday I exited San Francisco in the morning after one last batch of Tartine pain au chocolates and coffees with some of my SF family there. It has been over a year since I have written in this blog but I wanted to start it up again to provide a window into what is likely to be one of my most interesting and challenging adventures yet: living in the middle east.
I accepted a Chef de Cuisine job opening a California Cuisine restaurant in the new Fairmont Hotel that has been built on the banks of the Nile River in Cairo. It will certainly be a test to that which I have come to perceive as reality, and I will be excited to use this blog as a way to share some of the stranger and more interesting parts of the adventure.
Since the last blog entries, those of the many months in South and Central America, I have never really stopped roaming. Following the opportunities and options, I sold wine in Montana for a summer and then lived in Portland, Oregon while attempting to secure a job in Bhutan to which I had been connected by a culinary brother. Due to the recession, that job ended up not being a possibility and just as I was about to fully embrace my Portland future, Egypt popped out of nowhere and punched me in the face. It was a long interview process and after many hours answering questions over the phone, I was offered the job in early January.
Since then I have lived in near-complete limbo, traveling between Portland, San Francisco, Montana and Peru many times. I, at one point, had three jobs in Portland, but nothing seemed the right fit. I was originally scheduled to start work in Cairo in February, but things kept getting pushed back due to slow construction and delays due to the recession. In late April I left Portland with the aim to travel before beginning work. I was back in Peru and then about to be on the way to India when my grandmother died and I ended up back in Montana for a few weeks at the beginning of June. I was further delayed when I arrived back in San Francisco and have just finished two weeks of waiting there.
With my recent flight I feel very good about being back in the flow! Ayn Rand, who I think was a good writer despite not really agreeing with her philosophies, says that humans need 'motion and purpose' in order to be content, and in this I do agree. For a while there was neither, then there was purpose without motion...now there are both and I can feel the reason that she wrote that. I am only vaguely sure of where this combination of effects will take me, but the trail that has led me this far has been incredible in its ups and downs and twists and turns...that much more increasing my faith in whatever process it is that leads us where we go.
I think that this will be an interesting time with a large learning curve and surely a good amount of struggle. But I have always enjoyed that. One of the first words I have learned in Arabic is also one of my favorite phrases in Spanish; 'inshallah' and 'si dios quiere', respectively. They both translate to 'if God wills it' or 'God willing'. They refer to different Gods in different parts of the world and I am not even a particularly religious person...but I think this pretty much sums up the way I am looking at this pathway that leads into the blurry future. Sea lo que sea...vamos a ver...we don't know what will happen but we'll soon find out! It will definitely be a trip. And it will probably be pretty damn funny! I'll try to post the interesting stuff here. Salaam alaykum.
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