Ninja vs Penguin

Penguin August 28th, 2007

Performance Anxiety
Today is the big day. Technosoft is going to come and demo what they’ve been working on for the last month and we’ll be able to ask them a few questions.

As the technical lead and pretty much the only true technical person on the team, it’s on my shoulders to evaluate Technosoft’s efforts, Neil’s analysis and suggestions, and to assist Hamadri by making my own analysis and recommendations. This is an extremely heavy burden, especially since we only have one day for it.

All morning, I felt nervous that I would do something wrong. Or I would say something wrong that would jeopardize the mission. Especially with Technosoft being here and their fear of us, I didn’t want to inadvertantly say something that they misconstrue as an attack. I also know that when I get serious and focused, the tone of my voice can become harsh and commanding. I want to try and help Technosoft help CSS. Not reprimand them.

The Lord is good, and he will carry me.

Related posts

• India: Quick Update (2)
• India: Day 8 - The Lord’s Day (2)
• India: Day 7 - The Orphanage (1)
• India: Day 6 - Back In This (1)
• India: Day 5 - The D Train (1)

Tags: India, Trips

• Missions , Posts by Penguin
• Comments

Penguin August 28th, 2007

Bombing
Even though we don’t have a TV, we have Wenhai’s Blackberry. The first thing that we talked about was the bombing that happened in Hydrablast.

Hamadri and the girls were surprised that we knew about it already. How this will affect our flight, is still uncertain.

Hamadri’s Church
We had the option of going to an English speaking church, but it didn’t seem appropriate while we were in India. When Hamadri asked yesterday, I asked if we could go to his church. His church was in downtown Kolkata. Service starts around 9 AM, so we would have to get picked up around 8.

The driver picked up the girls and then swung by the apartment to grab us. Just as we were leaving the gates of Peerless Nagar, I was reminded that we were going to try and change our flight time. But I had forgot my ticket back at the apartment. Luckily, we hadn’t gone too far yet. I grabbed the envelope with my ticket in it and jumped back in the van. The humidity had sealed the envelope closed.

It was about an hour’s drive into the city. Even on a Sunday, the traffic was really bad. Hamadri said that during the weekdays, the traffic was even worse. Tons of smoke and dust was kicked into the air.

We arrived at the church around 9:20, the service had already started. The entrance was this short hallway breached by large double doors. The hall opened to a large assembly room with a platform at the other end. In the center of the platform was a small podium, where the MC stood and lead us in the program. Lined up in front were rows of green chairs occupied by worshippers. Just in front, and to the left of the platform sat a small female chorus of 6 or 7. To their left was the pianist on a Roland. In front of them was the electric drummer and the bongo drummer. To their left was a woman operating this odd box piano. We later learned that it was similar to an accordion. The left hand operated a lever that pumped air through the machine.

We hadn’t learned the words for Jesus or Lord in Bengali yet, so it was a little hard to pick out what they were singing about. But the music was lovely. Looking around, even though the hall wasn’t physically full, the room could hardly contain the hearts of these worshippers.

After the singing, there was a time of sharing, where people would stand and give thanks to the Lord for things that had happened during the week. The electric drummer surprised us all by sharing in very good English. He shared about how he went on a long trip by train. Normally, the trip would take about 20 hours, but there was a flood and the train before them had derailed. Luckily, they were safe, but there were no detours they could take. They were land locked and were stuck on the train for close to 56 hours.

During this time, they were in a portion of the jungle that was really dangerous. They gathered some of the larger guys and spent the night patrolling the aisles. And praying. There were no roads to reach the train, so they couldn’t be supplied with food or water. But thanks to the Lord, he was able to make it to his destination. When he was done, he grabbed the redeye back to Kolkata, got a good nights sleep, and made it to worship that day.

After the sharing, there was some more singing. And then the speaker. The man that spoke was the same man that presented while we were at the orphanage. He spoke with such passion and heart. As he spoke, I thought about my own life and how this could be one path. I thought about Power Point presentations. About Pastor Tim’s one point sermons. And about the stories that pastors tell. What would be my preaching style? What would be my signature?

Everywhere we went, we were greeted with such hospitality and generosity. We’re just students and office workers from the states. There’s nothing special about us. Yet we’re treated almost like kings. If every church treated new comers this way, I think our churches would grow like crazy. Instead, we’re so eager to meet up with our friends or get stuff for our ministries done. I can imagine the look on a visitor’s face if they were treated like a king. They would have to ask, “What is it about these people?”

Before the message, we had gone to the front of the congregation to introduce ourselves. The electric drummer was kind enough to translate for us. They were surprised when we spoke a bit of Bengali. To give back a little more, we decided to sing the Bengali songs we knew after the message.

We stood before them again, staring with the English version of “This is the Day”. When we got to the Bengali version, music and drums accompanied us, and the rest of the congregation joined in as well. It was awesome to sing with them. When we sang our second song, we were at their mercy as they repeated the middle line twice, when we only did it once. We closed with our action song, which was really weak.

After the service, we greeted some people, shook hands, and were greatly blessed. The electric drummer came over and introduced himself to us as Kokesh, aka Joy. It turns out, that he was the worship leader for the church. He also worked in IT, so was very interested when I said that we were hear to help CSS with their software. It’s nice being able to connect with people solely on profession.

His wife motioned for Michelle and Alice to come to her. She was a fashion designer and wanted to adjust their saurees for them. This was the third time in three days they had to have their saurees adjusted. It just goes to show how difficult it is to put one on.

We talked to Joy for a bit and he was extremely gracious. We talked about some sight seeing opportunities in Kolkata. Victoria’s Memorial, of course, and the museum. The museum was the biggest and best museum in India. He also talked about the zoo, but suggested that we probably shouldn’t go because it’s really dry and hot there.

Emmy mentioned that we needed to get our tickets changed. The airport was a good 20 clicks away, so it would be a bit of a trek. Luckily, Joy travels a lot on Jet Airways and told us that there was an office only 3 clicks from the church. What a blessing!

Related posts

• India: Quick Update (2)
• India: Day 9 - Boom (2)
• India: Day 7 - The Orphanage (1)
• India: Day 6 - Back In This (1)
• India: Day 5 - The D Train (1)

Tags: India, Trips

• Missions , Posts by Penguin
• Comments

Penguin August 28th, 2007

I think I got a lot of sleep from Day 5, because I woke up really early. I went to pee around 4, and put on my iPod to try and fall back asleep. But I went through an entire CD before I started feeling tired again. Even with the eye mask, I would wake up every 5 minutes. I might as well just stay up.

Training
This was an especially big day of training. Everyone had two or three students per machine. Karen took some time to interview some of the older staff, members who have been serving with CSS for 16 years or so.

As expected, the students I had were not very computer literate. Luckily, I had someone who helped out a little bit. I decided to change my tactic. Instead of jumping straight into Excel, I first wanted to make sure they understood “plus” and the other English terms for the math they were used to. To illustrate, I used my fingers to create the illusion of addition or subtraction.

Once I established the English equivalent, I typed out the computer equivalent of each of these terms. I also tried to teach the concept of shift before moving on. They seemed to get it, so I went back to Excel to see how far I could get. I got through a little bit of addition, but I sensed there was still hesitation and some trouble, so I had them go back to typing.

After the paragraph, we went to Excel again. This time, it was much better. We spent some time on using the SUM function, but they eventually got it. The first hurdle they overcame was they kept clicking on the cell they were trying to put the total in. Invariably, they would end up clicking somewhere on SUM and move the cursor to the wrong position.

The next hurdle was selecting a set of rows. One of the students had some difficulty with this. But by the end, he had it down. I didn’t have Word installed on my machine, but I did have OpenOffice. I figure, the concepts of bold, ital, and underline were pretty universal.

Looking back, I don’t know how helpful this training is going to be. Yeah, sure they learn a little bit, but they don’t even have the basic computer skills necessary to operate the machine. Some of them don’t even know how to double click. I think going through basic computer training would help them a lot more than just learning Excel. Of all things, Excel should be the last things that they learn.

By the time we wrapped up training, it was close to 12:30. We were supposed to wrap at 11:30 so we could get to the orphanage for the special program that they had prepared for us.
The Orphanage
Although we were late, we were blessed to see so many people had come to greet us. The orphanage and the children’s ministry had spent some time preparing a special program for us.

The first act was this little girl who performed a traditional Indian dance. She was dressed in traditional Indian clothing too. I wish the lighting was better, than I could’ve gotten some better pictures of her movements. They were really graceful and elegant.

Next, the orphan boys presented a song for us. I’m not really sure what they were singing about because it was in Bengali, but it was still a blessing anyway. Along with the song, they had some actions to go along with it. They were really cute.

The muslim children were kids from the muslim community. Some of them had become outcasts since they had become Christians. But through the ministry here, they’ve come to be welcomed and know the love of God. They also presented a song to us.

The children’s ministry was CSS’s leadership program. One of them came up and told the story of Noah and the flood. In English. I was rather impressed. Another came up and read from the scriptures. In English. And this cute little girl sang this song about calling Jesus on the telephone. It was to die for. As a group, they sang “This Little Light of Mine” in English for us.

The last thing that I remember clearly, was some of the orphan boys performing a drama for us. It was actually pretty involved, with dialogue and everything. The general gist of the story was, this boy drank some liquid and died. In order to save the boy, someone had to drink this other liquid. They would die so the boy would live. It was actually pretty good.

I wish I remembered all the presentations, but it was just amazing to see their eyes light up when we were there. To be an encouragement just by being there is amazing. What God is doing here is really wonderful, and I hope that he continues to bless their ministry.

Our Gift
In comparison, what we had to present wasn’t nearly as good. We had spent the previous night learning some Bengali childrens songs.

We opened by singing “This is the Day” in English, and then seguing into the Bengali version. We followed it up with two other Bengali songs that seemed to underwhelm. Even though they weren’t as impressed as we were by their presentation, I hope they were still blessed by the effort that we put forth.

I’m definitely glad we didn’t do the body worship. I think it would’ve been too little.

Broken Back
While we were enjoying the program, the driver went and grabbed us our lunch.

We sat and talked with the head warden responsible for taking care of the children and running the program. She shared with us how God was really moving and helping her serve. Even though she was pretty old, she had broken her back. Twice. Both times, to the point where doctors said that she probably wouldn’t be able to walk. Despite all that, through God’s touch, she was healed. Not instantaneously, but still miraculously. It’s not everyday you get to hear how God is doing amazing things.

Crying Girls
As we finished up lunch, the girls heard some crying coming from the hall. They peaked their heads out and saw 5 little girls huddled in the corner. At first, we didn’t know why thy were crying, and then we learned that they had left their mothers for the first time.

The girls grabbed their gauntlet of materials to try and cheer the girls up. They grabbed stickers, bracelets, and little plastic jumping frogs. The stickers and other items seemed to distract them briefly, but it wasn’t much. We didn’t know what else we could do, so we sang our the Bengali action song that we knew. We chose this song because the lyrics basically said, “you are my friend, I am your friend”

We didn’t know what else we could do, so we prayed for them.

After exhausting the materials that we had, Alice and Michille tried something a little different. Alice started quacking and doing other silly things. Some of them started to manage reluctant smiles. But the mood was still really somber.

If they only knew what was coming. If they only could see the future program that they’d be involved in at the new girls’ orphanage. The love that Jesus could show them.

Crafts
The girls had brought some crafts for the boys to make. The first item were salvation bracelets. Bracelets with 5 colored beads, black (for our sin), red (the blood of Jesus), white (made pure), green (we grow in our faith), yellow (to get to heaven). We made a nice little assembly line and they all really seemed to enjoy the bracelets.

Next, Michelle brought some Polaroids. Before she came on the trip, someone from her church had given her about 40 or so pictures. We would take pictures of the kids and then they would paste them next to outlines of their hands. Then they would write their names and age under the picture.

While Michelle took the picture, I would hover right behind her trying to make the kids smile. Most of the boys were pretty easy. But when we got to the new girls, there was nothing I could do to make them even crack a smile.

Closing Pictures
After they had pasted the pictures down, and they started developing, the kids got so excited to see their own picture slowly revealed. They jumped up and ran around around, showing themselves to us. They swarmed each of us in turn, holding up their constructed work.

We had a few Polaroids left, and took a group shot to leave with the orphanage. We also took one of our driver next to the van. When he saw the picture, our driver smiled and said, “Style.” Awesome!

As we were about to leave, the kids rallied around, trying to shake our hands. Too bad I had put my camera away and was carrying too much. By the time I pulled it out, the group had thinned a bit.

Then we were off to the girls’ home, which was under construction.

Girls’ Orphanage
When we arrived at the girls’ orphanage, we were swarmed by villagers. Everyone, even people down the street came out to see the foreigners. Most would stand at a good distance while we walked through the premises of the orphanage.

Even though it wasn’t complete yet, they are building furiously to try and get it complete sometime in September. The girls that we had saw crying earlier would be coming here. It was a really nice area. They had an gated courtyard where they could play. There was a big room where all the girls would sleep. And there was a quaranteen room for the sick.

If the boys’ orphanage is any indication, than this is going to be a great place as well. A home where destitute girls can come to know the Lord and be loved and cared for.

New Computer
It was back to the office. When we arrived, they were unpacking a new computer. This would be the machine that Technosoft would be demoing their software off of.

The computer operation was pretty ghetto. All the software, except for maybe drivers, were all pirated. They just had blank cds with serial codes written on the face with sharpie. A bit of sham, considering they were still paying for the software.

I sat down at one of the machines to make sure everything seemed to be in order. I tried getting to the networking, but it didn’t show up. They hadn’t installed the NIC drivers yet, so I asked them for the CD. Initially, the CD they gave me was throwing errors, saying that it wasn’t compatible with the operating system (Windows 2000 Advanced Server). Next, it was saying that the motherboard wasn’t compatible withe the CD. They insisted that the drivers were there and I managed to manually install the drivers.

In addition to the computer, CSS had purchased two cross over cables. I hadn’t much experience with cross overs, but I knew how they worked in principle. In theory, you should be able to just plug two machines together, set the IPs and it should act like a 2 computer network. But everytime I tested them, the machines wouldn’t detect media connected. I was able to jump on to Wikipedia at night to look it up, and I was doing it correctly. I’m not sure what was wrong with the cables though.

I told Sanjay that I could teach him a lot of stuff. But there were some things that even I didn’t know or was unsure of.

Meanwhile, the girls wrapped up compiling the stories they had collected from the villages. They were eager to get it done before we left so they could get it to Hamadri. He would take what they had gathered and flesh out the stories a bit more.

The computers that CSS had couldn’t read USB drives, so if we wanted to move anything, we would have to put the files on CD.

Michelle’s machine didn’t seem to have burning software on it. I knew that WinXP was able to write CDs straight from Windows Explorer, but it kept throwing an error. We dropped the file on a USB drive and tried it on Alice’s machine. But the software she had didn’t support mult-session, so it would complain that the CD was blank. We finally had to use my machine to burn the CD.

We printed a wopping 13 pages. We’re so used to printing everything, even for just proofs, but ink and paper here is pretty expensive. When we showed Hamadri, his eyes almost popped at the quantity that they had gathered. The girls had thought that he wanted all of them, and then he would pick 8 or 10 of them to flesh out. What he meant, was for the girls to pick them out.

Wenhai was working on my machine, wrapping up the Sanjaya’s Excel date conversion. He tried to be funny and changed my background to a picture of him rocking aviators. I promptly changed it back to my default black background.

Dinner
Emmy was pretty tired, but the prospects of internet after dinner kept her up.

Last night, we had went to Penguin Dhaba and saw some mice running around. To alleviate the girls’ fears, we went to Penguin Inn, the nicer of the two places.

We’ve been in Kolkata for awhile now, and fried rice and chowmein was starting to get REAL boring. It was time to try new things. We tried this Thai Noodle, this Manchurian vegetable, tandori roti, shikh kabab, and this cheese and spinach dish.

The Thai noodles weren’t bad. A little spicy, a little sour. The Manchurian Vegetable was odd. The vegetables were like a clump. It didn’t taste bad, but it wasn’t expected to come in this fashion.

The cheese and spinach dish was really odd. Mainly, because it was dry. All we saw, were balls of fried stuff. We thought that it was cheese and spinach, rolled up inside. But when we cut it open, it looked like it was just cheese. It didn’t have much flavor, but the texture of the cheese was kind of odd. A little spongy, not quite like tofu, but similar in consistancy.

Wenhai had ordered a soup, but they brought the wrong one. We should’ve sent it back, but Emmy opted that we keep it anyway. I wasn’t sure who was going to have it. It sat there for awhile, and I decided that if no one was going to eat it, I would.

When the waiter came back, we told them that they had given us the wrong dish. It probably wasn’t a good idea that we had ate the first round of cheese that they brought out. When they brought out the cheese and spinach, we were all really surprised. It was essentially the same thing, a block of cheese, but only covered in this pale green spinach puree. The sauce tasted like spinach, curry, and other spices. Not exactly according to my tastes.

When we got the bill, there was a slight disagreement. Because we had ordered the cheese and spinach, essentially twice, they didn’t know that the first time it was wrong. It was our fault for eating it anyway. We got it sorted and left it.

Emmy commented that this seemed like a date place, because there were a few other couples in the restaraunt. Penguin was definitely a pretty nice restaraunt by Kolkata standards. So it would makes sense that you would bring a girl here. It also had AC, which was big plus.

One of the things that she noticed, was how they sat next to each other. The rest of us said that it was kind of weird, because if you wanted to talk to them, you would have to turn your head. And if you weren’t talking, and looking forward, you’d be staring out into space. I would think, if you were on date, you would want to be sitting across, that way, you could get lost in each other’s eyes. But that’s just me.

We asked if we were going to do any sharing, but Emmy dropped the hammer on that idea. She wasn’t harsh about it, but it was just funny how decisive and quick the response came.

Internet Cafe
So, it was to the internet cafe. I was already pretty up to date with the posts, and I didn’t have any urgent emails to answer, so I passed. The only reason that I went was because Wenhai wanted me to change his name from Day 3.

He didn’t mind what I had written, but he just didn’t want his name to show up in case his coworkers Googled him for dirt. The girls were interested in what this was about, so while we were waiting for a free computer, we pulled the page up on his Blackberry.

I was pretty tired already, and since we had a big day tomorrow, I wanted to get some writing in before turning in. I didn’t know how long it would take to get a machine, and since I only had to change one word, it seemed like a waste to spend all that time waiting. So I logged into NvP and tried to see if I could edit the post from his Blackberry. It was a bit of a struggle, but I managed to make the requisite changes, and we were off.

Tomorrow, we get to visit Hamadri’s church and maybe a little bit of sight seeing in Kolkata proper.

-Penguin

Related posts

• India: Quick Update (2)
• India: Day 9 - Boom (2)
• India: Day 8 - The Lord’s Day (2)
• India: Day 6 - Back In This (1)
• India: Day 5 - The D Train (1)

Tags: India, Trips

• Missions , Posts by Penguin
• Comments

Penguin August 28th, 2007

90%
After some antibiotics and a good amount of sleep, I’m back at 90%. Still a little tired and weak from lack of food and nutrition, but I’m ready to work again.

I grabbed my moleskin and my pen to journal. Before I could even get through the first sentence, my pen went dry. Fantastic. A writer without a pen. Useless.

Because of the D train, both Wenhai and I had light breakfasts. Bananas, apples, some bread with a little bit of really sweet jam. Not filling, but enough to hold us over.

While we were waiting for the driver to come pick us up, we played a little Rummy 500 and I won, 210 to 70.

Saurees
After dropping us off, the girls went to the market to buy some saurees. They had no idea how to put them on, so they had some one at the office show them.

Saurees consist of three pieces. There’s a blouse that covers the top and a slip to cover the bottom. The actual sauree wraps around the body.

To put the sauree on, first you tuck one end into the slip, and tuck it all the way around, counter-clockwise. Then you leave a good amount of slack before throwing the remaining fabric over your left shoulder. With the slack, you fold about 4-6 pleats, depending on the length of the sauree, and then you tuck this in. Again, with the fabric over your shoulder, you make about 3-5 pleats and then pin it to you shoulder. The entire process is fairly complicated. When they asked how they went to the bathroom, they were told that they had to take it off.

Morning Training
Every morning, we would be training some of the office staff and some of the field officers on how to use Excel. This morning, we had a lot of interested parties, so some of us had two students per computer.

The student I got was pretty computer illiterate. I tried explaining the cells in Excel to him, and that took a good several minutes. When I tried to teach him how to add two cells together, he didn’t know how to enter “+”. This prompted me to try and teach him about the keyboard. If he didn’t even know the basics of typing or using the computer, how could he be expected to learn Excel?

The whole concept of shift was extremely hard to explain when all you can do is point and type domonstrations. Luckily, one of the staff came over and explained the concept to him. As an exercise, I had him type out two paragraphs, not much longer than this one. It took him almost an hour, hunting and pecking the keys.

Finally, I was able to teach him a little bit about the mouse. How to click, right click, and double click. He was okay with the single clicks, but when it came to the double clicks, he kept holding the button a little too long. It seems to be a trend among first time computer users to not fully understand double click. Or at least they have trouble executing it well. He didn’t fully get it, but he made a lot of progress, and I was really proud of him.

After training, Michelle and Alice went to some more villages to take pictures and write down stories for the website. As they gathered more and more material, the site was growing larger. I didn’t know if they had PHP running on their web servers, so the safest route was to make static pages for everything. Hopefully, we’ll still be able to finish everything.

The rest of us tried to figure out what we could do back at the office. Karen suggested that she sit down with Sanjaya to go over the reports. Emmy was confused. She thought, based on the conversation that we had yesterday, that there was no point. It took some time trying to explain how the database, software, and reports were seperate in some ways, and dependant on each other in other ways. I don’t think she fully understood, and it might have been the way that I was explaining it. Without knowing where the disconnect was happening, it was hard to try and rephrase it.

I think part of it comes from our backgrounds. As an accountant, all Emmy cares about is the reports. From her point of view, the reports should dictate the way the software is made. In some sense, this is true, but there’s not much we can do about that now because the software has already been developed. She viewed the reports that needed to be generated as sufficient requirements for software developement. The reports were just a subset of the overall requirements for the software, which were never given to Technosoft.

Trying to feel useful, Karen started looking at some of the reports and the Crystal Reports book that she brought, but without Sanjaya, it would be hard to try and figure out what was working, what wasn’t, and what the report was supposed to be showing. Still she did her best to keep occupied.

Wenhai sat down with Sanjaya to work on some Excel stuff. But they were extremely hampered by the electricity constantly going in and out. Eventually, they were able to burn the file they were working on and move to one of the laptops.

Emmy went outside to with one of the staff to walk around and look at some of the local shops.

There wasn’t much I could do, so I just did my best to occupy my time waiting for lunch. Solitaire, hearts, spider solitaire, typing of the dead, minesweeper, all good distractions. I wish there was something I could do.

Coming to America Early
There had been some talk before we left about leaving India a day early. Emmy, Karen, and I are all on the same flight. Or original departure was going to be Sep 1, 8:30 PM. We weren’t planning on doing any work on Friday anyway, so we thought it might be better to leave a little bit earlier. Emmy had stuff she had to do with her house. And with classes starting, I didn’t want to be too jetlagged.

For the two of us, it’d be pretty easy, because we had direct flights. But Karen had to connect with Continental to get back to Chicago. Being in a third world country, without access to a lot of the information, it would be pretty hard for her get her flight changed.

If we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to do it soon. We only have about a week left.

Something Different for Lunch?
The girls got back pretty late, but they brought food, which made it okay. They had stopped by a new place to get some south Indian food. They had a bag of the sour manto, two bags of sauce, and some rolled fried bread, which seemed to have some veggies in it.

In addition to the southern fair, we got sound chicken clear soup, fried rice, and fried noodles from Penguin. The lunch was one of the lighter ones we’ve had.

Interviews
After lunch, the Michelle and Alice typed up the stories that they had collected so far. Meanwhile, Wenhai went through Sanjaya’s Excel file, converting all the dates so that they were consistant. Some dates were in mm/dd/yyy, others were in dd/mm/yyyy, and there were even some using just yy. Excel doesn’t contain any easy function to detect this, so it was a long tedious process of going through each row and checking them against the data around them.

Karen and I took interviews of the staff. The staff were excited and scared. They weren’t used to speaking so much English, so they were really nervous. They all said that their hearts were beating real fast. Some of them also thought that they were being interviewed so that they could keep their jobs. I think this really affected their answers, because they were all glowingly positive.

Karen got most of the staff that could speak English fairly well. The subjects I had required a fair amount of translation. I couldn’t help but think back to the scene in Lost in Translation where Bob is at the shoot and the director is telling him stuff, and the interpreter reduces it to a few words.

Interviewing was a bit tough. I would ask a question and get an answer that was completely unrelated. I would ask another question. And I would get the same answer. Michelle, Alice, and Emmy had come up with the questions. I think when they were developing them, they didn’t realize that the nuances in the questions may have been lost of them. Afterwards, we were told that they thought we were asking the same question over and over. It would make sense that we were getting the same answers back.

Bengali Children’s Songs
Tomorrow, we’d all be visiting the orphanage, where they would be presenting something to us. There would be villagers from everywhere coming out to see the foreigners.

We didn’t want to just receive, so we had to come up with something that we could present to them. The options we had were, sing a song, do the body worship, or come up with something else.

We were limited, because we didn’t know what would be available to accompany us. We were pretty sure there was no guitar, so singing would have to be acapella. Not that we knew how to sing acapella. If we wanted to do the body worship, we had to figure out a way to play the song. We couldn’t rely on the laptop, because it wouldn’t be loud enough.

God is good and provided a third option. One of the staff was a Christian and said that he would teach us some songs. It turns out, it was the same guy that I had taught how to double click! Small world.

He sang one of the songs, and we were all just lost. We wouldn’t know where to begin to write it down. Hamadri took him down stairs to write it down. We were surprised when they came back with three songs. We looked at each other, unsure whether we’d be able to do it. But we vowed to do our best.

As he sang the songs, we looked at what was written on our papers. We all started searching for pens or pencils to mark up the lyrics. We had to change the romanization to something that we were hearing.

Afraid that we would lose the melody to the songs, we all grabbed our digicams and took video of him singing. There was also one song that had had motions. Luckily they were easy, but still, we wanted to do our best so we got everything on video.

It seemed like an eternity, but we were able to get the songs down to a point where it was good enough. We could continue to practice later.

Singing on the Bus
On the way back, we did our best to practice the three songs. Some were harder than others, and we kept losing the melody. But we did pretty good and I think we were able to sufficiently memorize them.

It must’ve been a sight, to see a van roll by with a bunch of foreigners singing in Bengali. At one point, a truck honked at us, and we joked that it was because of our awful singing.

Now, I can add Bengali to the languages I have successfully butchered.

Dinner, Testimonies
This was the first time that we’ve been able to have dinner together as a whole team. This whole week, Emmy was too tired to come out. And yesterday, I was too sick to come out. It was nice to sit down and fellowship as a team.

Since we had a small lunch, we ended up ordering a lot of food. Alice had a bowl of soup and chocolate ice cream. Which was hilarious because the guy asked if she wanted it together. As in, did she want the ice cream in the soup. I think he was amused by the juxtaposition of the hot soup and the cold ice cream.

During the day and along the car ride back, we all got bit by a ton of mosquitos. Wenhai had brought some White Flower Oil. It’s this Chinese medicine you put on bug bites to stop the itching. I’m not sure how it happened, but Michelle managed to knock the bottle off the table. When it hit the floor, shards from the cap flew everywhere. Luckily, the bottle was still in tact, but the cap was pretty much ineffective.

After dinner, we went around and shared about our testimonies. The trend seemed to be, that even if they went to youth group or grew up in the church, it really wasn’t until college that they found their faith. This is not to say that youth group or a youth program isn’t important in the development of their faith, but goes to show the importance of college in a person’s personal development.

Internet
Then it was off to the internet cafe to connect. While we were waiting, a young man came up to us and started asking a few questions. He asked us what we were doing, so we told him about CSS and microfinance. When I told him that I was a technical consultant, his face lit up and he offered his hand, declaring that he was an engineer too. It was hilarious that we could connect with a total stranger based purely on our career background.

I knew the internet cafe was ghetto. Of the three computers that we had tried so far, only one CD drive worked. The other two failed to read the CD. Even the one that worked, the button was missing and you had to push your finger into the hole to get the tray to eject.

It was nice to spend some time on the thread and pretend I was back in the states. I eventually got in contact with Ninja and we were able to chat over Gchat.

Humidity Kills
We got back to the apartment, and I began to unload some pictures from the CF card to my laptop. After about 30 pictures or so, the CF reader just stopped. The lights went dark and the drive couldn’t be read. I had left the CF reader out on our table, so my guess was that the humidity got to it.

I’m going to have to be more careful with my other electronics. I don’t want my iPod or my NDS to die before I get back to the states.

-Penguin

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Penguin August 28th, 2007

I didn’t sleep well. The D train woke me up around 2 AM to let some off. I woke up again at 6 for the early commuters. Wenhai and I took turns dropping. It got to the point where I decided it would be a good idea to take some Levaquin. I normally don’t like taking medication, unless I really have to. But since our nutrition was already pretty poor, I didn’t want things to get worse.

Either taking the Levaquin was the best idea or the worst. I already started feeling nautious, so I wasn’t sure how I would be the rest of the day.

When we got to the office, we sat down with Hamadri to try and come up with a plan of action for our remaining time. When we had come, we didn’t expect to work with the new software or the new server.

There had been some question about the need to move to SQL Server in the first place. It turns out that Hamadri’s organization had grown to the point where certain collection points were too far away. It wouldn’t be practical to drive the receipts back for entry. What he wanted, was to create a server and have the these connect remotely to update the server. This poses a new set of problems.

In either case, there was some argument between Emmy and I about what we could and what we should do until Technosoft came on Monday. She was very insistent on documenting the process and sitting with them to see how they did everything. From my perspective, the software was changing, so until we saw it, there wasn’t much we could do.

The move from Access to SQL Server wouldn’t change the underlying data structure, but it would change the way that the software interfaced with the data. The problems that they had would either be fixed, be the same, or new problems would arise.

Because of the uncertainty, it would be difficult to create a concrete plan of action. Instead, my recommendation was to teach them how to check the software for bugs and to report it back to Technosoft.

In the mean time, we could still check the reports against their existing database to see if they were correct, even if the data was not.

After our discussion, I started feeling chills. I was pretty sure I was coming down with a fever. It wasn’t long before I had to lie down and rest.

That was pretty much the rest of my day. Eventually, I got home and went to sleep. The D train really took me for a ride.

-Penguin

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• India: Day 6 - Back In This (1)

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Penguin August 27th, 2007

Don’t Forget to Save
I didn’t get a chance to blog Day 3 last night because I wanted to make sure I got enough rest. It would totally suck if I got sick so early into the trip.

I woke up around 6:20. Although, I probably could’ve gone back to sleep, I figured it was a good chance to blog. I pounded away at the keyboard for a little more than an hour. Then, BAM! My laptop shuts down.

In order to keep from burning my lap, I had put the laptop on top of some pillows. Bad idea. All that info, gone.

No Scallion Pancakes
Our goal today was to cross the street to see what else was around our apartment. Since I lost everything I typed, I opted to rewrite everything.

Wenhai went to the market to grab breakfast and buy some more eggs. When he got back, he said that they didn’t have scallion pancakes. Instead, they had manto. I was excited. But when I went to try it, it turned out to be a little on the sour side. Normally, I’d eat it, but I wasn’t sure if the bread was supposed to be sour, or it had spoiled. In either case, neither of us wanted to eat it.

We did have the eggs, so we started to boil them. Just as they finished cooking, the driver had come. I hurried to pull them out of the pot and run them under some water. Dropped them into a bowl and ran for the van.

We went to the guesthouse to grab the girls. Too bad we didn’t have the scallion pancakes to share with them. We did have the eggs, which they were very happy for.

Who Gets Sanjaya?
We got to the office and almost immediately, the power went out. This was going to be a fun day, sitting in on the second floor with the gas fumes.

The auditor was going to come today. So Emmy and Wenhai needed Sanjaya to walk help walk them through the accounting. But if Karen and I were going to work on any of the reports or the software side, we would need Sanjaya to walk us through that. Meanwhile, the girls could work sorting pictures and figuring out how to sort the stories for the website.

Obviously, since we both needed Sanjaya, we needed a plan to best utilize his time. The auditor said that he would come after lunch, so we figured it would be good to sit with him in the morning. But he ended up sitting with Wenhai to do some Excel stuff. The girls also sat with some of the staff to teach them some Excel as well.

Meanwhile, I worked on the website. Not sure whether they had access to PHP, I decided to hedge my bets and just make the pages static.

Excel seemed like a really important application, so they typed up a quick lesson and a schedule of who would be going through it.

The best laid plans… Oh well, at least we managed to find stuff that we could work on. It seemed like Karen was just floating around, trying to figure out how she could best be utilized. I think it was really hard for her, because without Sanjaya, there was nothing she could do.

Yay, Spilled Soup!
We eventually got lunch, which consisted of soup, salad, and naan. Lunch was brought to us by motorcycle, so a lot of it had spilled into the plastic bags. None the less, we ate it anyway. It seems as we eat more and more, we end up eating less and less. I’m afraid that our nutrition won’t be sufficient and people will end up getting sick.

To Audit or Not to Audit
After lunch, we had the opportunity to sit with the auditor and Neil, the auditor’s computer cousin. Initially, I thought it would be a lot of accounting, so I wanted to go with the girls to the orphanage. But Emmy said there might be some stuff related to the software. So, I stayed.

We sat down and waited for everyone to get together for the meeting. It took awhile for it to get started, so Wenhai and I did our best to try and pass the time. We played tic-tac-toe, dots, and rock paper scissor. Then I started drawing pictures of him jump roping. I wanted to draw a flip book, but I was way too lazy for that.

Eventually everyone gathered. Since Neil had just gotten here, him and the auditor went into the computer room with Sanjaya to see how the system worked. Meanwhile, Emmy, Karen, Wenhai and I sat with Hamadri. We talked a little bit, mostly about some of the new developments of CSS.

Some really cool things that were happening were the new sources of funding they were finding. A pastor from New Zeland had found CSS through the internet and contacted Hamadri, interested in donating money. Another development was this Foundation in Ohio. Hamadri’s daughter applied for some funding and they received several thousand dollars, both in operations and loan capital.

We did talk a bit about Technosoft and the state of microfinance software in India. It seems that almost all of the companies developing software don’t know anything about the business side. With any software, if you don’t understand the problem, how can you write software to solve it? Some of this software is cheap, like Technosoft. Then there are expensive vendors, like Javasoft. In either case, they don’t really know what they’re doing.

Hamadri gave us a quick rundown on what Technosoft was bringing on Monday. They would bring SQL Server and a software upgrade. Whether this consisted of a patch to the existing software or an entirely new version was unclear. In either case, Technosoft claims that this would fix all their problems. I wasn’t inclined to believe them.

After about an hour and a half, Neil and the auditor joined us. The auditor was hilarious. He was so dramatic with his phrases, such as, “A known enemy is better than an unknown enemy”, “If a baby has digestive problems, you don’t tell him to become a man” and so on.

Neil made some really good assessments. I don’t know much about Access, but I knew a bit. Some of the new revalations was the ability for Access to do connection pooling. This would alleviate the issue of having mutiple people performing data entry. But this would increase the problem of cuncurrency.

When we first got put on this project, we were kind of pidgeon holed into thinking that we had to solve the problems. Essentially, we needed to try and make this work within the boundaries. We knew that we were moving to SQL Server (even though I didn’t know why), and that we would be getting a new version of the software or something.

Part of it was that we didn’t really get a lot of time to sit down and experience the software. We were thrown into debugging right away. As such, we weren’t familiar with what the software could or couldn’t do. Had I known that the software was in this state, I would have urged that technosoft first fix the known problems, before developing new software.

Hamadri had sent us a requirements document and agreement between CSS and Technosoft. Andy and Ken had reveiwed it and both gave their approval. The problem was, Hamadri didn’t ask if he should even do this in the first place. The fundamental problem wasn’t being addressed. Instead, we were blindly accepting Technosoft’s panacea as true. I’m not saying that Technosoft wasn’t trying to solve the problem, but I don’t think they fully understood the needs of CSS. Even after 3 years, they still didn’t know anything about microfinance.

Now What?
So, where are we now? In odd similarities to the Honduras trip, there wasn’t much we could do. My assessment of the situation is:
CSS probably won’t support the first version of the software anymore. After CSS paid all this money for SQL Server and the new software, I think they should see if it can work with Access and get connection pool working. If they have to use the new software, they need to QA it, thoroughly. Something they didn’t do with the first iteration of the software. And only once they have a working application, not one without bugs, but one that’s accurate, then should CSS pay for the software.

As for the rest of the team? There’s not much else we can do to support CSS. We can look at the Crystal Reports that they have created and see if the reason why the reports aren’t accurate is because the data is wrong, or because the reports aren’t built correctly.

I’m working on a website that will showcase some of the success stories of CSS’s microfinance operation with client biographies and statistics. With the help of the pictures the girls took and the information that they got from the interviews, CSS will be able to get more funding and better support for their operations.

We can still move forward with the Excel training. And if we need to, we can do some other office training. I took a look at their proposed course, and it’s extremely simple. Sure, most of them probably can’t do advanced Excel, but I think there are probably a few that will be able to handle it. It may be beneficial to go deeper with them.

<3 Intarweb
It was getting late, so we all headed back to the guesthouse. We’ve been deprived of internet for awhile, so we were eager to get online.

We stopped by the guesthouse to drop off Emmy, who was tired. Probably from a combination of jetlag, the heat, and lack of nutrition. She’s been skipping dinner and eating ramen instead. Sure, ramen will give you calories, but it won’t be enough to keep you healthy.

The rest of us went to the internet cafe by our apartment. When we got there, it was packed. So we showed the girls the rest of the market. The South Indian food place was open, and we saw that they had Scallion pancakes. We ordered and squated down at the side of the road to enjoy it. It was definitely a sight to see.

Then we went to the internet cafe and waited for a computer to open up. The cafe consisted of 6 computers packed tightly together. The only way of cooling the tiny room was a ceiling fan. The hallway that led to the cafe lacked any soft of air ciruclation or ventilation. Just standing there, we were all dripping with sweat.

Eventually, we all got online, I made the last 3 updates. And sent out some emails.

Another Penguin Place?
The driver came to pick us up at our apartment for dinner. We had asked Hamadri if there were any other places we could eat, other than Penguin. I think he misunderstood and said there was another Penguin between the guesthouse and our apartment. Same owner, same menu. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that we wanted something else.

We started to venture off our normal fair. We ordered this tandori chicken that was really tender and flavorful. Most of the tandori chicken I had in the states was really dry, even the dark meat. But this was moist and tasty.

We also ordered some kashmiri naan. We thought that it was garlic, but when we got it, it had nuts on it. It was actually a little sweet, which was a nice departure from the butter naan we had become so accustomed to.

All Aboard the D Train
Right after I ate the scallion pancakes, I felt my stomach starting to get a little unsettled. It didn’t hurt, but I knew that something would be coming down the pipe later on. I thought it was just me, but Wenhai had it too.

We got back to our apartment and proceeded to start dumping. After I went, I just had to lie down. Meanwhile, Wenhai jumped in the shower. I was planning to shower, but I ended up passing out.

-Penguin

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• India: Day 8 - The Lord’s Day (2)
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• India: Day 6 - Back In This (1)

Tags: India, Trips

• Missions , Posts by Penguin
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Penguin August 24th, 2007

Breakfast
I woke up fairly early. It was a combination jetlag, heat and humidity. We finished off our morning routine with a lot of time to spare, so we headed to the market.

This time, we actually looked at the items that were being offered. Potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, tomatoes, and a few other vegetables. We also saw a small South Indian Food shop making, what we thought was naan. We got the man’s attention and ordered two. Not knowing how much it would be.

We were pleasantly surprised to see that he was slightly frying them. In addition to the flat bread, we got this soup of potatoes and other vegetables. Mean while, Wenhai went to a small grocery to pick up some “Digestive Bisquits” and 5 eggs.

When we got back home, we found the flat bread we had purchased were scallion pancakes! Awesome! We boiled up the eggs and they were delicious. We felt like kings.

Eventually, the van arrived with the girls. we just couldn’t contain how happy we were about our breakfast and had to share the experience, to their chagrin, with them.

Not in Kolkata Anymore
As we ventured out to the office. We noticed that the congestion gave way to open stretches of road. This was the first time we didn’t see another car for several minutes. Even at night, the streets of Kolkata were still teaming with van rickshaws and auto rickshaws.

The shops that normally lined the street gave way to fields of rice and small huts. This eventually gave way to dense forests. the road narrowed considerably as we got deeper.

It was a really nice departure to be outside of the city. Away from the incesant honking of cars and barking of dogs. In some ways, it felt even simpler than the simple life that we were experiencing in Kolkata.

The Office
We arrived at a small two story building nestled deep in the forest. This was the office we’d be working at for the next two weeks.

The previous night, we had talked about what we would be doing for lunch. We asked if there were any places near the office we would be able to eat at. Now seeing it, we realized how far from everything it was. There were probably some street vendors around, but nothing that would provide us with a real meal. So for lunch, we had the driver get take out from Penguin Inn, which was 30 minutes away.

At the office, we were greeted by the staff. It was kind of awkward walking past them and the gesture of welcome that they showed us. We went to the second floor where we saw a long table with six chairs. It was pretty obvious that this was for us. Behind us followed the staff.

We stood at our chairs in awkward silence, looking at the staff who stood there silently. For serveral minutes, we weren’t sure what we were supposed to do. Eventually, Hamadri arrived.

He formally welcomed and thanked us for giving our time and coming to Kolkata to serve CSS. The presented us with flowers and a booklet about CSS. Each staff member introduced themselves to each of us in turn. As a gusture of thanks for having us, we presented them a box of Belguim chocolates Emmy had picked up in Brussels. We got to the office around 10. It was 11 when the welcome ceremony ended.

We sat down and began discussing the plan for the day and for the week.

Hamadri was going to try and get Technosoft, the developers of the software, to come and demo their work for us and be available for any of our questions. Technosoft was afraid because we were essentially here to audit their work. They didn’t understand that we were here to help them help CSS serve the community. If that meant pointing out all the faults and problems with the system, then that’s what it would take.

There were a bevy of problems with the system. Technosoft was insistant that SQL Server would be a panacea. But I knew that the reality was that SQL Server would only solve some of the problems.

It was a little frustrating discussing the problems that CSS were having. Before we could clarify our understanding with some questions, Hamadri would move on to a different subject.

During lunch, the power went out. Luckily, CSS had a backup generator. The problem was, the power inverter they had could only hold a load for about 4 hours. Hopefully, we’d be able to get some stuff done in time.

Technosoft’s Black Box
After lunch, we went down stairs to see their computer set up. Although all the machines had USB ports, they were all running Win98, so they couldn’t recognize the USB drive as a mass storage device. If we wanted to get any reasonable amount of work done, we needed to have the files on our computers. They did have a CD burner, but it would take 20 minutes to burn the CD. If we wanted to keep transfering a lot of things, we would be there all day just burning through CDs. The best choice was to try and get on their network.

While we were working, the rest of the team had an opportunity to go to a field office and meet with some actual clients.

We tried Karen’s machine. Even though it could get on the network, it couldn’t access the share drives. For some reason, my machine could. We pulled the latest database and all the requisite files.

One problem they had, was accounts that had balance due values that were negative. This couldn’t be possible, because it meant that CSS owed the client money.

After a bit of digging through the database, we learned a lot about the process and where data was changing and where it was coming from. We eventually discovered that every year, technosoft gets a copy of the database and does some sort of conversion on it. During this process, all the loan amounts are set to 0, the outstanding loan amount is calculated based on all the receipts that they had received. Why they did this, was beyond us. It wasn’t even clear what exactly was happening. I surmised that it was during this process, that the data was changing and something was getting messed up.

Club
We had been working for several hours already. I started feeling a little sick to the stomach. I went outside to get some air and felt like I was going to throw up. When I left the office, I passed the backup generator. The room we were working in was pretty close, so I figured the fumes were getting to me.

While I was walking around, I met a young man. He knew a bit of English, but his accent was so heavy, my only response was blank looks. I don’t think it helped that I tried repeating what he was saying.

In an effort to connect, I started pointing to random objects, and said their name in English, then said “Bengali”. I think it was clear that I had told him what the item’s name was in English. He would then respond with the Bengali name for the object.

It took several minutes, but I learned, naal gotch (coconut tree), ahm gotch (mango tree), kal gotch (banana tree). Amazing!

We went back to the street and he wanted to take me to Club. It was the small building on the side of the road. Music emenated from the darkness inside the building.

Club consisted of a TV which played Indian music videos. The crowd was made of tired men. some slept on the floor, others slept in the corner. Then there were those sitting in chairs.

It was actually quite relaxing and I felt honored that they welcomed me into their club. Over the entrance was painted “Only Members”. So I guess I was now a member!

The rest of the team had returned and we relayed to each other what we had learned and experienced. I was proud to show off my membership to Club and invited everyone in.
This was one of the hottest and most humid days yet. Everything I had was wet from the humidity.

The airline had found Emmy’s luggage, so Wenhai accompanied her to the airport to retrieve it. We had about two hours to kill before they returned.

We arrived at the girls’ place and were in heaven. The cool dry environment of the AC was magnificent.

While we were waiting for dinner, I showed the girls Typing of the Dead. Michelle instantly fell in love with the game and “had to have it”. When I showed Alice the game, she was shocked and horrified at the gruesome visuals of zombies and blood. But it wasn’t long before she was addicted to the game. Meanwhile, I taught Karen how to play Big 2. I figured, this would be valuable later on.

Several hours later, Emmy and Wenhai returned. Michelle was tired, so she had already gone to bed. Emmy wasn’t feeling well earlier in the day, so she turned in as well. The rest of us went for dinner at… Penguin Inn! Again!

Ice Cream for Dinner
Most of us weren’t that hungry. It might have been the heat or the late lunch, but we all ended up having soup. Most of us ordered a mock-tail, a cool concoction of fruit juice and ice cream. The guy kind of looked at us funny when that’s all we had for dinner. It was nice. A simple and relaxing time.

Am I Getting Sick?
When I had come out of the girls’ place, my nose started running. By the time I got back to the apartment, I was sneezing like crazy. I don’t know if I was just allergic to something, but I knew I couldn’t just suck in the snot. I had blown my nose earlier in the day and saw that it was all black from the soot and dirt that was in the air. I had probably breathed enough of it in that I didn’t need to take it down with my mucous either.

It was still early, a little before 10. I took a shower and felt a little better, but I didn’t want to risk it. I popped a Unisom and went to bed.

Black Mail Time
Before turning in, I had the unique opportunity to witness one of the funniest spectacles. W e n h a I, in nothing but boxers, socks, and sneakers, jump roping with the his Blackberry charger to the music of his ring tones. This was definitely a sight. If I were a cruel man, I would have taken pictures and plastered them all over the internet. Instead, I’ll leave the visuals to your imagination.

-Penguin

Related posts

• India: Quick Update (2)
• India: Day 9 - Boom (2)
• India: Day 8 - The Lord’s Day (2)
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• India: Day 6 - Back In This (1)

Tags: India, Trips

• Missions , Posts by Penguin
• Comments

Penguin August 23rd, 2007

Wake
We ended up going to sleep around 1:30 AM last night. Not because we weren’t tired, but I just had to wait for Wenhai and give him a small tour of our new home.

I woke up briefly around 5:30, looked at my watch and promptly went back to sleep. The next time I woke, it was around 7:45. Himadri said that he was going to come by around 11 AM. Figuring it was good to start getting into a good schedule, I woke up.

The bed that I selected was the closest to the outlets. This gave me ready access to plug in my iPod as I slept. One of the ways to block out the noise of barking dogs and fans. I wasn’t sure where the sun rose, so I put on a sleeping mask, just to be safe. It’s a good thing too, because the sun was right in my face when I woke.

We took a quick shower before we did our devos.

Explorers
We still had plenty of time before Hamdri would show, so we went for a quick stroll around the complex. We discovered that we were in “Peerless Nagar”. We also found a map drawn on a big sign near the entrance.

As we exited the complex, we were greeted by eager merchants at the market. One, especially of note, was the fish monger. He saw my camera and motioned for us to take pictures. I was more than happy to oblige. The rest of the market sold fruits and vegetables. Each little stand had scales and weights to measure out the quantity of the produce.

The sign that we had seen for internet cafe turned out to be closed. Luckily, there was another near by, but now wasn’t time for internet. The laundromat that I had saw was really a dry cleaner. Not much use for that here either.

Seeing the end of the market, we stepped out into the dusty street. We looked down each way as far as we could, looked at each other and decided it was best if we didn’t enter the street.

Back in the complex, we started exploring. What was really interesting was the various lawn ornaments scattered about the complex. There were kangaroos next pandas next to men and women with slings. Some were made of stone, others were made of what seemed to be glazed.

On the map, we had seen “proposed” play field and decided to see if they had finished construction. Where there was supposed to be a field, we saw a wall. I guess they didn’t get the appopriate funding or permits yet. Satisfied, we returned to our home.

The Waiting Game
We sat around and talked for a bit. Caught up on some happenings since high school and just shot the breeze. 11 rolls around, and Hamdri still didn’t show. I figure it was traffic or Emmy’s flight got delayed.

There’s only so much two guys could talk for. It wasn’t long until we busted out the cards and I taught Wenhai at Rummy 500.

The Girls’ Place
We kept snacking on bananas and bread, doing our best to pass the time waiting for Hamadri. Eventually, the van showed up around 12:30 and took us over to the girls’ place.

They had this quaint little guest house. Not unlike the place I stayed when I was at Honduras. They had remote controlled AC, small TVs, and what appeared to be carpeting. They even had a small cafe outside. Convenient.

on the ride over, Hamadri had given me the run down for the day. We’d meet up with the girls, have some lunch, then, it’d be off to the city to change some money and do some shopping. And maybe go to the internet cafe. He also told me that Emmy’s flight had been delayed and lost one of her luggage. The one with her clothes. Suck.

We greeted the girls, asked how Emmy was doing. she looked exhausted. We suggested she take a shower and get some rest. The rest of us went to the cafe to get ready for lunch.

We had grown accustomed to fairly large portions when we ordered. It wasn’t until after we started placing our order that the guy told us how small all the dishes were. I wanted to order a lot of traditional Indian fare, full on spicy, but most of the girls couldn’t handle it. Oh well.

We ended up ordering some chicken, some mixed veg, and some chapatri. Too bad they didn’t have naan. If nothing else, I could always eat naan. It took them awhile to prepare the food. Later, they informed us that we should probably place our order ahead of time. If we wanted dinner, we should order at lunch. If we wanted breakfast, we should order at dinner, etc. Makes sense, since it was a small family affair.

The running trend seems to be that the people are very intent on serving you. They’ll bring the food and want to spoon it on to your plate for you. It’s a nice gesture, but it’s hard to communicate that we’re okay.

Eventually, Emmy joined us and grabbed a bit to eat. When they said the portions were small, they weren’t kidding. The chicken dish we ordered only had two pieces of chicken per order. Just from looking at the menu, this wouldn’t necessarily be obvious.

As we finished up lunch, there was a quick tussle about the check. We wanted to see the receipt. They said that it would be put on our tab, along with the rooms. I guess there was a bit of information lost in translation and it wasn’t clear to them that we just wanted to see the tally for the meal. They ended up giving us the bill and asked for payment.

The driver was going to show up soon to take us to central Kolkata. Being the good traveller, I made a quick bathroom brake. When I came back to rejoin Wenhai, I looked down and saw that my finger was bleeding. I don’t know how I managed to start bleeding between the girl’s room and the lobby. I popped back in, washed it off and it looked really superficial.

To the Core
We all piled into the van and set off for the center of the city. Michelle and I were extremely generous with our picture taking. The lighting was fantastic. I was able to catch stuff at around 2000 ms shutter. Surprising, considering it was overcast.

The journey into the heart of the city took a little more than an hour. Amidst the dust kicked up by other trucks and cars. It was kind of hard to tell when we actually entered the city. It wasn’t like this sudden shift, rather, it was a gradual increase of congestion and density of buildings.

But the core was definitely different. It felt truly urban. We had a person guide us to a parking spot. We disembarked from the van and emmediately, I was accosted by a begging child, holding a baby. I guess it’s the camera.

A man approached Wenhai, showed him this tag slung around his neck and we proceeded to follow. As we were led into the market, this sense of danger and uncertainty fell over the group. We were foreigners in a strange land, not knowing any of the language. had we been led to our slaughter, no one save for our driver, would have known.

We were led to this small jewelery place some where in the back of the market. They said that we could exchange our money here. Before even telling us the rate, they asked us how much we wanted to change. Karen insisted that we be brought to a bank. The guy on the counter was adament that the rate that he was going to give us was better than the bank. As we started to leave, the counter guy shouted that he would give us a rate of 40 RS to 1 USD.

Our guide then led us up some more stairs until into a place that seemed a bit more legit. There was rates clearly displayed on a wall. The difficulty was that they didn’t have calculators. When trying to convert odd amounts from USD to RS at a rate of 39.55 tested a lot of our math skills. I had to pull out some paper and do the math. Twice!

Even though they asked for passports, only Karen had one. It turned out, it didn’t really matter, and they changed our money anyway.

We exited the “bank” and our guide asked us where we wanted to go next. I was actually quite curious to see what the rest of the market had, but again, Karen was insitent that we don’t go shopping without Himadri. Even though it made sense, I still would’ve liked to have explored what lay in the shadows of the market. Instead, we were taken back to the driver and we were on our way.

It seemed like a shame to drive all this way, just to change money. In retrospect, it was probably for the best. Not knowing what was there waiting for us really put us all on edge. I guess I’m just a bit self-destructive. Just a bit.

On our way out of the city, I managed to get accosted by a beggar. The old man had come up to our van while we were stopped at a long traffic light. He put out his hand as we all did our best to pretend that we didn’t notice him. We had just changed our money, and I commented about how I disliked coins. As we were talking, I was shifting the places where I was holding my money. I also pulled out some of the rupee coins that I had to look at them. I hadn’t noticed that the old man was now behind me, as I jingled the coins around in my hand. I must’ve looked like a total dick to him. In which case, he promptly cursed me out, calling me a “bastard” and walked away.

On the way back, we were able to stop by an internet cafe and we connected with the first world, if only for a moment. I sent out emails to people to let them know that I had arrived safely. Too bad I didn’t have yesterday’s post handy. I did manage to post a quicky, just saying I had landed.

Before getting back on the van, I made a trip to the public urinal. It wasn’t really a urinal so much as it was just the side of the road next to a flow of water that smelled like shit. Peeing into the maggot infested fluid, out in the open made me feel extremely open and vulnerable. But there weren’t many other options.

Before we knew it, we were back. I stopped by the apartment to grab my laptop for the meeting we were going to have. Then it was to the girl’s place.

Brief
We had about half an hour before Hamadri was going to meet us. The girls showed us the body worship that they had developed in the Taiwan bathroom during their four hour lay over. As much as I applaud their effort, I couldn’t get behind it. I never liked body worship to begin with. And even though they had spent some time on it… it was still pretty lame. I just couldn’t go on stage and pretend to be into it if I really wasn’t.

The other issue was that we didn’t know what the body worship was for. We didn’t know when we’d be performing it or who we’d be performing it to. Without this information, it’d be really hard to know what to put together.

Satisfied with what we had done and with no clear goals, we decided to pass the time by playing cards. I taught them the simplest multiplayer game I knew, Loser, aka, Asshole, President, etc. Before we could get through one game, Emmy stopped in and we asked her about the whole Body Worship thing.

There seemed to be a disconnect between our understanding and what was actually going on. The girls were under the impression that it was something that we’d be performing right away, thus, they threw it together really quickly. It turns out, it was going to be something we presented as a welcome “gift”. Although the intentions were good, you can’t build a house on good intentions. Not to sound arrogant, but isn’t our being here a gift? I just feel that our time could be better spent working on the task at hand. If all we’re doing is presenting a gift, we can just present a song or something. But, whatever.

Before we could really come to a decision on this, Hamadri arrived. We met up in the cafe to talk about a high level of the next two weeks. As we entered the cafe, they had music playing, blacklights shining, and if I didn’t know better, it was almost like some cheesy club or something. They turned that all off for us and we proceeded with the meeting.

Hamadri gave us the run down on the whole orphanage/children’s ministry ordeal. It turns out, the orphanage is really far away. If we went, by the time we got back, it would be close to midnight. So our plans to do that were pretty much shot. They did have children’s ministry, which they called “Leaders Training”, where they would teach the kids and have Sunday School. There would be two days where they would be presenting some material. One, on Sat, the 25th and another on Monday, the 27th. The kids were still in school, so they wouldn’t be out until 3:30pm.

So, we learned a lot about the ministry and where it was going. We’re still not really sure how we could assist in that ministry, but that’s okay.

Shopping
Hamadri’s wife came along to help the girls buy some clothes. We went to a shopping area where we passed shop after shop of saurees. Some of them looked really nice. Even though it was late, around 9 PM, the streets were alive with activity. People were coming and going, shopping and doing their thing. If you din’t know better, you would think it was closer to 6 or 7.

Quite suddenly, the power went out and the street was thrown into darkness. It wasn’t long before the shops were lit again with backup generators. As the girls finished up, Wenhai went to get some shampoo. When he boarded the plane, he didn’t put his liquids in his checkin bags, so he lost a good amount of it. I hadn’t brought that much shampoo to begin with, so there probably wouldn’t be enough for the two of us.

The girls finished and were on a quest for string. The clothes they had bought were one size fits all. Normally, they would be pinned back, but they didn’t have any pins. The next best thing was string.

As we were heading back, we stopped by a fruit stand to buy several kilos of fruit. Apples, bananas, pomegranates and pears. It’s always nice to have fresh fruit. The stand was really close to Hamadri’s apartment, so we bid our farewells.

We grabbed a quick dinner at the Penguin Inn and we were off to bed.

Tomorrow, we head to the office to begin work.

-Penguin

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