Not Tech | Procrastiblog

There really are cows in the streets, but not very many. It’s unclear who, if anyone, owns them or why. I haven’t yet seen a cow and had my camera at the same time.

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Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

Filed under: India — Chris @ 10:13 am

When your (quite nice but fairly stern) yoga teacher asks you to close your eyes and join him in a Sanskrit (?) prayer, which option is more culturally sensitive?

1) Concentrate on your breathing and keep your mouth shut, or
2) Mumble along semi-phonetically and try to follow the melody.

I’ve been trying Option (2), and I feel like a jackass.

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May 23, 2006

This is not me being ignorant, this is you being crazy…

Filed under: India — Chris @ 2:21 pm

Dad, mom, and baby boy. All riding together. On a motorcycle. None of them have helmets. This is a common occurrence.

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A4 paper is great. No more margin fiddling with European conference papers, and I haven’t had any problem with letter-size documents. It is a peculiar assertion of American hegemony, our heedless attachment to letter-size paper.

Also, from the Efficient Uses of Labor Dept: there is a man whose job it is to stand in the copy room, in case, e.g., you need staples, but are unsure how to load them into your stapler. We have a similar job description in the U.S., but it requires decorating your office space with cat calendars. That’s the great thing about India: lots of staples, no cats.

There are also always plenty of workers available to stare at you if, perhaps, after a week on the job, you still don’t know if the main office door opens inward or outward. And they don’t think you’re stupid. Not at all.

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