Days 13 - 15: Wednesday - Friday, Insomnia, Anniversary

Sometimes I get insomnia. In bed, I stare into blank space, and I contemplate and I daydream for several hours at a time. I write in my journal and I pace back and forth. This derails my sleep schedule, or circadian rhythm.

When I'm off-schedule, I don't want to do anything. I eat little and stay home. It's as if the experiment of my life is broken until I can reset myself. Trying to get results in such a unknown state feels pointless, because I wouldn't be in control of myself.

Regular sleep has been a problem since 2003. Since early to mid 2008, consistency has improved, but there is still an occasional problem. In my philsophy, there is no plan or recipe for what to do when I encounter insomnia due to being mentally preoccupied. I made some new conclusions about that this week, so that was good.

This is one example of how, regardless of my environment, something has stayed the same.

Two Week Anniversay

On Thursday night at 11:30pm, almost exactly two weeks since my arrival, I "ate out". For the first time, I ate a meal that wasn't prepared by me. I picked Papa John's - I chose this place hoping that corporate responsibility would imply a clean kitchen. I got a medium pizza with mushrooms/olives/red peppers, some breadsticks, and a pepsi. Including delivery, the cost was $6. It tastes exactly like it does in the United States. I did not get any food poisoning. My roommates and I stayed up late listening to one of my playlists.

Day 11, Monday, Shashi and I Exchange Words on Math

I woke up late and just went out the back entrance of my apartment complex.

I found a driving range. It was a private driving range next to a hotel. They both looked quite luxurious. I couldn't actually see the golfers, but the area was clearly marked as a Golf Club, available to members only, and over the buldings in the foreground, I could see the tall screens that keep golf balls in a driving range.

I turned around and walked down a path finding some other shops. There was a golf shop, a bakery, and a mini market. At the market I bought some wheat bread. I was looking for as specific brand of delicious healthy whole wheat bread, but I only found some other stuff. I took it.

I came back home and studied some math; I did several precalculus probems, thus completing one of the first chapters in my math book. It is talking about analytical geometry, roots of polynomial expressions, and basic rules and names of functions.

My roommate Shashi came home and tried a couple problems. Some of these problems took me a long time; he was able to solve them at a much faster rate, and he knew some tricks that I didn't know. Shashi is extremely fast and makes calculations in seconds with great confidence, and without looking back. Eventually we argued about a method he was using to determine the sign of a rational expression (like 1/x, or 1/(x-1)); after some disputes, a couple motivating examples, and a bet, we concluded that the method could be used under specific conditions.

Day 12, Tuesday, Families in the Courtyard

I spent time in the courtyard of my apartment complex. There is a large playground in the center, including a basketball court, well-maintained short-cut lawn, plenty of running space, assorted playground rides, a gazeebo, a swimming pool, a dozens of palm trees, plenty of benches, and all surrounded by the tall apartments.

In the afternoons, children and their mothers take to the courtyard.

I saw one mother trying to teach her daughter to ride a bike. The daughter was clearly intimidated by the prospect and was hesitant to pedal. The mother held on to the back seat of the bike, which had a specially-made handle for just this purpose. She moved the bike forward and told the girl to pedal, but the girl wouldn't even maintain her footing on the pedals. The mother growled and scolded, "look at the job you are doing!"

The sister of the girl silently watched, as if she was not looking forward to her own turn. I passed by them as they continued to repeat this exercise of stop and go, attempting to pedal.

Eventually I took a seat on a bench and read my biology book. Many women in saris passed me by, half of them supervising their children.

The sky was blue but as grey clouds began to move in, I returned to my room.

By the time the day was over, I'd gotten eight pages of biology reading done.

Day 10, Sunday, Excitement and Anxiety

I woke up late after our poker game; slept in again. The past few days I've been waking up at noon; I've been sleeping in too much. It's hard to fall asleep sometimes at night; I feel too excited.

I repaired some old blogs with some pictures, and released the last few days' worth.

Today's meals:

1 small banana

2c oatmeal

2c cauliflower, broccoli, carrots

2 parathas

8 slices of Atta bread (hehe)

1 orange

2c mix of mung split-bean lentils and gold basamati rice

Day 9, Saturday, The Mozzy Net, Finding a Transformer

Tonight there were more mosquitoes than I'd seen before. While I was working on my computer, one flew across my field of vision and I made my first mosquitoe kill. There was a drop of blood splattered between my hands - this particular mosquitoe seemed to already be carrying someone's blood. Who's? My roommate's? A stray dog's?

My roommates seemed to not care, but I was grateful to have a mozzy net.

I setup the mozzie net Thursday night, and it feels reassuring to be able to get into it at night.

After I get out of bed in the morning, sunlight begins to beat down upon the net, and I drape a sheet over it to prolong the life of the nylon. At least that's the intention...the directions said to keep it out of direct sunlight.

The three of us stayed up playing cards. They taught me "three cards" or what sounds like "tem-pati" in Hindi. In that game, each player gets a hand, makes some bets, and shows their cards. The rules of which hand beats what hand resemble poker hands. But Three Card isn't as exciting as poker. So, we learned poker and played a variation of texas hold 'em. Unfortunately, I didn't remember the rules that well, so we played under some strange rules instead of the correct rules.

I bought a transformer from MK Retail, and it worked. It was a 220/240 V to 110/120 V converter. All appliance transformers indicate the voltages and hertz of AC current that they accept, and my electric shaver from the United States required 120 V. It only drew 20 watts of power, and that was precisely the wattage supplied by the voltage converter.

Earlier today, I went out and got a loaf of whole wheat bread. It was quite healthy; a ratio of carb-to-simple-sugar of 4 (many whole wheat breads struggle to attain this ratio, and end up with a higher amount of simple sugar). The bread was baked and packaged here in Bangalore, and only costed about fifty cents. It was my first major purchase of food that I didn't plan to cook myself. I figured that since the bread was baked, the baking process would have killed most of the germs. I at a couple slices and waited for two hours to see what occured. Nothing (well, nothing but tastiness). I devoured most of what was left during the evening.

Day 8, Friday, Fieldtrip to the Market

Today at Foodworld, a very small van pulled up beside the store, and about ten school children - no older than four or five - emerged one at a time. Three women assembled them into a snake of held hands, and led them into the store. Some sort of field trip was taking place.

As I shopped, I saw two such "field trips" come through the market. One of the women played the role of tour guide. She led the children through the aisles and paused to pronounce the names of various items. As they came by the toiletries, she proclaimed "brush - toothbrush!", "paste! lots of paste!" (all the children stare, agape), "deo-, deoderant!", "talcum powder!"

It was a celebration of nouns.

Day 7, Thursday, Programming Work Begins

Dad (via his friends at work) has pointed out that there are some cases of Dengue running around. I believe that Dengue is a problem, but it is difficult to know whether one should be more worried than normal. A lot of the national Indian media is yellow journalism; its like the local nightly television news in the United States.

Regardless, mosquitoes have always been a problem here, and I was warned about Dengue and Malaria by the CDC and IndiaMike. My room has a fan and repellant, I always wear longsleeve shirts, and I don't go out unless its daylight, but, I haven't setup my mosquito net yet. I'll setup it up.


Today was a good day. Some firsts:

• Started computer programming (5 hours). Started a personal project, and competed in a programming contest.
• Didn't spend money today.
• Had at least three decent meals - oatmeal and an orange in the morning, veggies and two bananas for lunch, and chicpeas and rice for dinner.
• My first week here will be complete in a few hours.

My "office" is better than the one I had in the states, in the sense that I have a window that recieves sunlight during the day. I am ashamed to admit it, but I think this raises my moral as I work.

Got my final photos back from GK Vale; they're a little blurry but they should work. I went to ask about my club membership in the complex; it's Rs. 200 per month ( $4.08), starting at the beginning of the month (i.e. they won't pro-rate the remainder of a month for me). I'll probably pay the 200 rupees for July, even though there aren't many days left.

Day 6, Wednesday, Recovering, Arguing

Returned to GK Vale to print my photo. The same lady who was working there yesterday there was on staff today, so it was nice to see a familiar face. Her name was something like "Somja ". Upon seeing my neatly arranged six photos, she wanted to charge me Rs 40 instead of Rs 5. I disputed things, claiming that I just had a simple 4x6 photo and wanted to print it on photo paper. It was the price they advertised on their website. She referred me to her boss, who said he would permit it as an exception. I handed over the 5 rupee coin and I am scheduled to pick it up tomorrow.

New foods today included a 1kg bag of Quaker Oats, some bananas, and some imported oranges. Everyone says pealable fruits are okay. I ate three bananas without an upset stomach. I spent over Rs. 200 today, so I may not get much tomorrow. I'll try to get some cinnamon soon.

My sore throat is almost entirely healed; I've been doing a good job of fighting it off. I suppose I attribute this to slightly different strains of relatively harmless viruses in the area. My body is probably just learning to deal with them.

Day 5, Making a "Passport" Photo

Met Ankit's Dad and we talked for fifteen minutes. He works for the Indian government's power generation. He said India has only trace amounts of power coming from nuclear plants. Most of it comes from hydro-, coal-, and gas-powered electricity plants. As of a new nuclear pact with the United States, more nuclear power plants should begin coming online in 4-5 years. He says he can't believe or understand how the United States can have a recession. After trying to explain what I knew about it, I concluded with "No matter how much money you have, you can borrow more than you have and get into debt."

My apartment complex has a swimming pool and gym, but I need a membership badge to use them. For the badge, I needed a passport style photo.

To save a hundred rupees or so, I wanted to take the photo myself. Our rooms had light-yellow paint, which would serve as a light-colored background. I used a a couple chairs stacked on top of one-another, scissors, a ruler, a gorilla pod, and a Canon digital camera.

First, I tried to take the picture with the natural light available in the room. My camera didn't turn on the flash by default.

Next, tried it with natural light from the sun coming through the window.

Finally, I manually forced the flash, enabled the "Hi Auto ISO" setting, and tried it again (I closed the curtains to keep out the sunlight). This got better lighting, but the quality of the photo wasn't as good. My face looked oily.

I compared these to my Passport picture scan. The "best" overal picture was probably the second one. It seemed better than my passport photo:

Cropping the photo required solving for an unknown - how large should I make it?

My plan was to take measurements of my passport photo, which had been taken by a "professional" at the US Post Office.

On this US passport photo, the width is 3.5cm: 1 cm of white space on the sides of my head, and 2.5cm ear-to-ear. The length is 4.5cm: 3.25cm from my chin to the top of my hair, and from my chin to the bottom of the photo, there is about 1.2cm (some small whitespace on top, too).

I used these measurements to resize my new photo in Photoshop. First, I cropped out some excess background, retaining a width-to-length ratio of 3:4 (Select an area, then Alt + I to crop). Then, I used Image Resize to resize it to be 3 inches wide (Image -> Image Size -> Document Size, or Alt + Ctrl + I).

Here, I inspected the needed dimensions by using the Info tab (Windows -> Info, or F8) and the View Rulers option (View -> Rulers, or Ctrl + R). I was in inches mode, so I set Photoshop to use centimeters (Edit -> Preferences -> Units and Rulers -> Rulers: cm ). Note that Photoshop also reveals printing dimensions with File -> Print with Preview.

From here, I could see that the photo was too small. My chin-to-top-of-head height was too large - 4cm. Dividing 3.25 into 4 implied that I could resize this image to 80% of its current size. I did that. This yielded a chin-to-of-head length of 3.23cm. The 0.02cm difference from my passport photo could be due to my hair being shorter in this photo.

As a way to check my result, I checked my ear-to-ear width (which, as indicated above, should be 2.5cm) and this was 2.47cm, which was close enough. The photo was now sized and proportioned appropriately. Of course, after printing it, I would cut off excess space with scissors or a slicer. The important thing was that my face was sized appropriately.

In cm, the final image was 6.096cm by 6.913cm. I saved the final result as a JPG image with 100% quality; the size was 160KB. I put copies of it on a USB drive, and in my inbox.

This took me 2 hours.

Next, I needed to print a few copies of this photo.

Ankit advised me on two places where I could go to get printed photos - one was "GK Vale", the other was a "Kodak" place. I went to GK Vale, which made this process easy. They accepted my USB drive, and I asked for a 4x6 print out (apparently India uses American inches for photographs). The cost was Rs 5 - very cheap. I asked for two copies.

When I picked up my photo, the size of my head was much, much bigger than what I had anticipated, and it took up the entire photo; my chin-to-top-of-head length was 8 cm. The final image was 15.24cm by 17.29cm. How could I have made this mistake? I immediately was mad at the vendor. I agreed to come back in the next day.

However, when I went home to recheck my file, I discovered that indeed I had used a photo that was much larger than what I needed. So, it was my fault. I had no idea how I had made this mistake.

I reworked it in Photoshop so that the final size of the photo was precisely 4 by 6 inches. After shrinking the photo, this left a lot of free space. I used this free space to make six copies of the photo on the same photo print out. This would eventually yield six copies of my photo on a single 4 by 6 printout.

More Exploring

My journey to GK Vale included many stops.

I found a coffee shop called "Coffee Day" that resembled a modern coffee shop, only it was a sit-down place with a menu. There were many well-to-do Indians and foreigners there. There's no jumbo menu for take out - you have to sit down and take a menu.

I found a Spa and Beauty Salon. A one hour Deep Tissue Massage is $20 USD, compared to the $75 that one normally finds in the United States, and which I used to pay with Melanie Waite in Redlands.

I found a Nike store, an Addidas store, a Van Heusen store, several appliance stores and electronics stores, a book store with 90% English books (and 10% in some other language I didn't understand - not Hindi, Telegu, nor Kanada), and a Mormon Mission for the Church of Latter Day Saints. Following a recommendation from Melanie Waite, I went into the Mormon mission and met an "elder" named Castano, who was one year into his two-year mission trip. Castano was originally from Orange Country, California. I found a nice all-purpose store called MK Retail. This place sold voltage converters, and I will probably return at a later date to purchase one for my electric shaver.

I found a grocery store called Foodworld, and unlike many other stores, this place had a supply of Broccoli, and some imported oranges. I had been struggling to find a source of Vitamin C. Foodworld became my new standard grocery store.

I finally got home and noticed that we were running low on drinking water. We get large bottles of drinking water delivered from the local convenience store. I went to the market in our complex, but it was not open. Daily hours in India are called "Timings", and the timings of the in-complex market are 7:30am to 8:30pm.

When I got home, I was able to prepare my broccoli without much effort. My cauliflower, however, had a caterpillar in it, and some random slimy things, and it was browning. I should inspect what I buy more, and I shouldn't have been shopping so late in the day.

At the "Total" market, they have huge barrel-size bins of rice where you can buy it by the kg. I saw women there scooping rice into their hand and staring at the rice for several moments. I asked one of them what they were looking for, but she didn't understand me. What are they looking for?

Rush hour is at seven at night. Traffic is very bad; cars will line up at an intersection for 300m at a time. The traffic signals do not successfully create breaks in traffic.

Walking at night feels dangerous. There is no lighting on the sidewalk brickpaths, so the only light is from the shops and cars. There are lights on the road, but they are not lit. According to WikiTravel, it generally okay to walk in the early evening, but I don't feel comfortabe doing this yet. Besides, dusk is when the mosquitoes come out.

Day 4, Monday, Slept and Drank Water

Eager to fight off a sore throat, I spent most of the day sleeping and drinking water. I didn't go out.

Day 3, Sunday, Learning at the Market

I felt a little stalled this morning, but I recovered much quicker than yesterday morning.

Up at 7am, cooked breakfast, dumped last night's boiled water into my water bottles, and created this blog.

Went to the market to buy carrots. A dark, fat, sun-beaten man tried to cut in front of me, having only a few bottles of pop to buy (myself, I had just a bag of carrots). I stubbornly held my place in the queue, but the woman behind me with a cart full of vegetables let him cut in front, and without conversation. But, when it was my turn to purchase, the cashier gave me a funny look, denoting that I needed to go weigh my bag of carrots. I half-jokingly said "one-kay-gee" (1 kilogram). She smiled, shook her head no, and said "weight!". Then, the queue-cutter got vocal and pointed me in the direction of the...weighing procedure.

I learned that I need to have my raw food weighed and labelled before going to the checkout counter. The "weighers" are workers with lightning-quick dexterity; a girl snatched my bag of carrots, fluttered fingers over keys, and sealed the bag with a label. All without my eyes being able to follow.

Most people shop on the weekend, and they spend Rs. 1100 - Rs. 1400 ($22 - $24 USD), so I feel foolish when I ring a mere Rs 22 ($0.50 USD). The cashiers look mildly surprised, too. They ask if I have 1-3 rupees to simplify my change, which I usually don't.

On the way home, crossed the street against oncoming motorcycles; my best street-crossing yet. Oncoming motorcycles move at 20-30 mph. Like a school of fish magically avoiding an obstacle, four drivers swam around me with grace. In this way, I crossed sooner than the native Indian behind me, who preferred to wait for a complete break in traffic.

I explored a bit; saw some conventional developing country sights. A cow laying down in a heap of trash. A dog asleep on a small mountain of dirt. As in Mexico, there are stray dogs everywhere. They all look like descendants of the same mutt. Each dog seems to reign over a block or two of territory. This is part of why Rabies is such a huge problem in India. I saw one dog with a couple newborn puppies - future strays. The streets hold plenty of trash for them to live off of.

While exploring, I found a store selling ON Whey supplements, which sharply got my attention. It is just as expensive as in the United States, though. Perhaps in a month or two, I can get some.

Toward the end of the day, my throat felt dry. I originally diagnosed this as excess salt in my drinking water, and tried to solve this problem. But, I realized that I was just getting sick. My current explanation is that my immune system is dealing with three things at the same time: undernourishment, slightly different strains of conventional germs, and mild stress. All of these things will improve over a matter of days. I slept longer and drank more water, and this has helped. An important victory is that my GI tract seems to be just fine so far.

Some Early Locations

View Mike's Early India Locales in a larger map


View Mike's Early India Locales in a larger map

Day 2, Saturday, First Meal, First Outing

Woke up at 7am, greeted the roaches, and got started on a large breakfast of Moong Dal, Basamati White Rice, and Cauliflower. Learned to use a pressure cooker. Would highly recommend one to anyone.

22/14/10 pushups. 10/10 tiny one legged squats.

Went to HDFC and Citibank to open bank accounts. Citibank turned me down since I don't have a job here. HDFC wanted employment proof, but when I said I couldn't do that, they said proof of address and a passport would suffice. Both places thought I was an NRI.

Explored Bridgade road to find a foreign exchange place. Eventually found an illegal one. Consisted of a middle age dude reading a Hindi book behind a tiny stall, with just a calculator. He gave us a rate of 48.2 Rs. for 1 USD. He seemed bored with us. We should have inspected the notes for counterfeit cash when we got them from the guy, but we didn't until we got to the bank. Ankit says he's seen two counterfeit notes in his life, and they're good.

Central Bangalore, or at least Bridgade road, is extremely trendy and crowded. It has a sprawl feel, like what I've seen of New York City or Tokyo.

Took the cash money to Ankit's bank and made a deposit. 5k in the bank, 5k cash to Ankit, and 3014 cash to me.

Visited the Manipal Hospital about 1km away. Talked to the Doctor about vaccinations for Hep A and Hep B. Vaccinations are cheap; it'll probably be $30 total for both of them. In the US, they were twice as expensive.

Went grocery shopping. Got Kabuli chana (aka Garbanzo Beans, Chic peas). The guy looked at me weird when I paid for a 35 Rs item with a 500 Rs note, but he broke it for me anyway.

10/10 with ab wheels, 10 to the side. Some stretching.

At night, Shashi showed me his private stash of fireworks that he keeps for Diwali (Indian Festival of Lights). We lit a sparkler by the stove.

Day 1, Friday

My roommate Ankit has saved my ass repetitively. For example, when I went to the bank, a security guard took up position in front of the door as if to look imposing, and he said what the door already indicated: that the bank closed at 3:30pm. I was late. So, I walked away. I met up with Ankit, and told him it was closed. He stared off into space for a few moments, then said "why don't we go ask what we need for setting up a checking account." We talked to a few people and suddenly a [new account maker dude] told us he worked for the bank, and for us to come inside. The bank was closed but he took us in anyway. He explained (tried to sell) the simple details of the bank. He has his name and some sort of number (I assume either a phone number of unique identifier) on many of his paper advertisements which explained how the bank worked. The young man was from Mantupi. They only have "savings" accounts here; they don't seem to have checking accounts. Also, the Government regulates how each bank cannot loan out beyond 40-60% of what they current have. Supposedly India has been resilient to the current economic recession.

Vijesh at HDFC bank will probably be the person who helps me out.

Rashida is the maid who cleans the dishes and floors, and does the laundry by hand. No English. She made it a point to tell me that she follows Islam.

Naayak is the cook. He works a 1 hour shift in the morning and a 1 hour shift in the evening; he moves swiftly.

At the Target-style supermarket, there is a ton of decent cotton women's clothes ranging from $10-30 USD. The prices there are reasonable. I told Ankit about Target in the US.

When I achieve something "new", I call it a milestone or acheivement. Ankit has caught on to this, and he playfully mocked me today, asking if I'd made a milestone.

Even though I know English, I don't know "Indian English", nor do I know Hindi. Hindi is more popular here than English. English is okay for doing business, but if the business people want to expidite things, they will use Hindi.

A wireless router was delivered to our door - apparently we can receive packages straight to our door. Our address is B32 Block, Diamond District, Old Airport Road, Bangalore, India. I configured the router for the house - I had to go online to lookup its default IP.

I fervently resisted eating any food that I didn't cook myself with boiling water. I went about 18 hours on just a banana, which I allowed myself to eat bsaed on reading, and because Peter Rohl from work told me peeled fruit was probably okay. Finally, I went shopping for food. It took a lot of motivation, but I convinced myself to find adequate food for just 100 Rs ($2.10 USD). I was mostly successful.

I cooked cauliflower by boiling tap water, dumping in a few heads of the cauliflower, and letting them cook for several minutes. I ate it. I don't seem to have an upset stomache. I ate using the chopsticks I brought; we have spoons but no forks.

Later, I cooked some sort of pulse or seed called Moong Dal (aka split Mung bean). In the Market, it resembled lentils in the supermarket, which I remembered needed just 45 minutes of cooktime. I think these cooked even quicker - 30-40 minutes. I just boiled water then tossed them in.

I also bought 1kg of "gold" basamati rice, which I hope to cook tomorrow.

On my first day, we had our first power outage - it lasted about 30 minutes. I think this is very normal. Most Indians who care a lot of their services usually need to arrange for redundant backups.

The weather is pleasant; not too hot. 60s and 70s throughout the day. The sun is mostly gone by about 7pm.

Tomorrow, I hope to setup a bank account and arrange a wire transfer.

Day 0, The Flight, Thursday

The day of my flight, I woke up in my parents' house and they took me to the airport on their way to work.

I paid $614 to Delta Airlines (specifically NWA and Air France) for a one-way 25hr plane ride from LAX, to MSP, to CDG, to BLR (Los Angeles to Minneapolis to Paris to Bangalore). I left LAX on July 15th 10am local time and arrived in BLR on July 16th at 11:50pm local time. The departure from MSP was 10 minutes late, but otherwise every flight was punctual. This surprised both me and Ankit, who says Domestic Indian flights are usually delayed by up to two hours. One important thing to note was that my luggage automatically followed me the entire trip - I didn't have to pick it up and re-check it at CDG.

The BLR "customs" was surprisingly effortless. The BLR airport didn't seem that large; it felt very dead, even for midnight. LAX is usually teaming with people, even at strange hours.

In the US, TSA searched my luggage and left a flyer in my bag saying as much. The main sign of search that I noticed was that they'd opened up one of my Pepto Bismol chewable tablets packages to inspect its contents. I was proud of myself for including a photocopy of my prescription from Dr. Dowty. It was also great that the Redlands hospital prints out their prescriptions instead of having the Doctor write them.

The eight hours to paris were easier than I thought they'd be. Many French high schoolers on the plane were up throughout the night, even though the plane turned off the lights so that the passengers could sleep. The high schoolers plade poker, listened to music, or joked. I stayed up through most of it and read a dozen or so pages of my book. A couple of mothers took time to stand up and walk around the plane with their new borns, and rocking the babies back and forth. There were also some movies playing. The Cabin of a 2-aisle jet is less tense and more comfortable than a single-aisle jet. With all these sights, it was somewhat of a pleasure to be on the plane.

The highlight of the day was sitting next to Peter Weise, a UC Davis PhD student who is studying romantic literature. Peter grew up in Illinois. His disseration will be on how writers from the 18th century wrote about sound. He was traveling to spend time in both Edinburgh and Berlin. In these places, he would visit libraries and inspect some primary sources. In one case, he was going to read the original hand-written manuscript of a writer from the 18th century whose work had never been in digital form.

Peter was in general a cheerful, enjoyable guy. He knew more than functional French. He'd pickup on some of the conversations happening around us and translate them for me. Like my friend Joe, he had spent time in France teaching English. He reminded me a little bit of Josh, my old hybrid Japanese-Iowan friend. After making plenty of banter and telling some great stories, he had a few drinks and knocked out for a few hours.

Apparently, the French colonized many of the Northern African countries, but after this ended, many of the dark-colored Northern African people remained in France and had children. The newborn French Citizens are subject to conventional, even somewhat mean, racism. Peter said that he's repetitively seen French police walk up to African-French citizens and ask to see their IDs. In one case, a couple was out on a date, and the police requested only the black man's identification, but not the white woman's.

Even from just the Air, Paris looks beautiful. There are many small buildings built upon a slightly hilly countryside, and in this way, it reminds me a little bit of Hollywood.

In Paris, in between planes, they made me go through security again before I transfered. Here, the made me empty my water bottles. "It is forbidden" the lady security guard told me.

French is not enjoyable to listen to, but I can understand how a French accent on English is considered sexy.

The C terminal in Charels DuGaulle airport was under construction and there was very little walking space - about 3 meters breadth instead of the 20-30 meters that I'm used to in American Airports.

I took 25mg of doxylamine succinate before boarding the plane to bangalore. I also bought 2 water bottles for ~6 Euros and dumped them into my Camelbak water bottles. Upon landing in Bangalore, these would supply me with drinking water.