Saturday, June 30, 2007
Voter Fraud in the States - Pay Attention!!!!
Ok, this isn't about India. This is about our fucked up voting system and the fraud that goes on. I've forwarded this information to a lot of people already, so I figure why not post it here as well. Take a few minutes and introduce yourself to the issues surrounding voter fraud if you haven't already.
http://goleft.tv/viewer.asp?v=96
http://blog.pdamerica.org/?p=1161#more-1161
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen
Forward this material on and raise hell!!!
Oh yeah, and we are doing fine over in India! I'm having a quality suit tailored for me over here for very cheap. Luis/Brad get a hold of me if you're interested!
In the meantime, I'm trusting all of you in the states to fix up the country so it's actually a democracy by the time I get back. Ask your local new stations and newspapers why they haven't carried stories about voter fraud, vote caging, and the investigations! Educate yourselves! No matter what your political views, tampering with the voting system cannot be tolerated. Voting is the foundation of democracy.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
The last few days...
So, Kristin and I have been working our butts off at Navdanya. I am working on food safety laws and a bunch of other stuff and Kristin has a project with global food movements. We have fallen into a bit of a daily routine with our morning 5 rupee coffee and walk to work.
Tuesday we went to work and came home. Nothing too exciting. However, at night, there were fantastic lightning storms! I will try to post some of these movies so people can see, but I'm not so sure that they turned out well. The lightning storm was intense eerie because there was no sound of thunder. Plus, lightning was nearly constant for the hour that we watched. It rained a bit too so I fell asleep on a chair on the deck.
Wednesday was hot! We went to work, spent all day there and then walked home really sweaty. In the evening, we went for a run around the lake near our house. It was muggy, so neither of us stopped sweating for about an hour afterwards.
We decided that we wanted to eat out, so we went to the Park Baluchi restaurant in Hauz Khas. Park Baluchi means "deer park" and I have, to date, seen no deer in the park. The sign outside of the restaurant claims that it was voted the best restaurant in India by the tourism department. If this is the case, the tourism department needs to be disbanded. The set up was really nice, but the food was actually pretty terrible considering the price. Plus, the service was really slow. It was cool inside, though, so not all bad. After that, I watched Billy Madison with the guys and Kristin went to bed.
On thursday, we got up, showered, had coffee, and started walking to work. On the way there, we saw a mongoose cross the street! We made it to work, kicked ass there, and then stopped to get some sweets on the way home. We worked out and went to Tasnim's place for some dinner.
Then... the greatest movie of all time came on the tv. It's called "Rocky - the Rebel" and it is the best movie I have ever seen by far. It starts with this tough, pretty boy guy named Rocky singing and dancing on the top of a tall building, "Rocky... Rocks the world!" and then the next twenty minutes are about him slapping people around, getting mad, fighting with his dad, getting arrested, opening a cyber cafe, fighting goons, etc... he meets a girl and falls in love, then she gets killed by the mob, so Rocky's parents take him to London. Rocky gets a new girlfriend in one day, though, even though he is emotionally shattered. So he's completely depressed and all these scenes are about how sad he is... then right in the middle of this, there is a huge theatrical dance and song with hip hop dancing and upbeat music... right afterwards it goes back to being sad. hahahahaha. This movie is truly the greatest thing I have ever seen. Everyone needs to watch it. I predict that it will become a cult classic.
Beyond that, we are just getting ready for the weekend. We might go shopping tonight at a new market or maybe go to a Hindi movie with Manu and Mukesh.
Tuesday we went to work and came home. Nothing too exciting. However, at night, there were fantastic lightning storms! I will try to post some of these movies so people can see, but I'm not so sure that they turned out well. The lightning storm was intense eerie because there was no sound of thunder. Plus, lightning was nearly constant for the hour that we watched. It rained a bit too so I fell asleep on a chair on the deck.
Wednesday was hot! We went to work, spent all day there and then walked home really sweaty. In the evening, we went for a run around the lake near our house. It was muggy, so neither of us stopped sweating for about an hour afterwards.
We decided that we wanted to eat out, so we went to the Park Baluchi restaurant in Hauz Khas. Park Baluchi means "deer park" and I have, to date, seen no deer in the park. The sign outside of the restaurant claims that it was voted the best restaurant in India by the tourism department. If this is the case, the tourism department needs to be disbanded. The set up was really nice, but the food was actually pretty terrible considering the price. Plus, the service was really slow. It was cool inside, though, so not all bad. After that, I watched Billy Madison with the guys and Kristin went to bed.
On thursday, we got up, showered, had coffee, and started walking to work. On the way there, we saw a mongoose cross the street! We made it to work, kicked ass there, and then stopped to get some sweets on the way home. We worked out and went to Tasnim's place for some dinner.
Then... the greatest movie of all time came on the tv. It's called "Rocky - the Rebel" and it is the best movie I have ever seen by far. It starts with this tough, pretty boy guy named Rocky singing and dancing on the top of a tall building, "Rocky... Rocks the world!" and then the next twenty minutes are about him slapping people around, getting mad, fighting with his dad, getting arrested, opening a cyber cafe, fighting goons, etc... he meets a girl and falls in love, then she gets killed by the mob, so Rocky's parents take him to London. Rocky gets a new girlfriend in one day, though, even though he is emotionally shattered. So he's completely depressed and all these scenes are about how sad he is... then right in the middle of this, there is a huge theatrical dance and song with hip hop dancing and upbeat music... right afterwards it goes back to being sad. hahahahaha. This movie is truly the greatest thing I have ever seen. Everyone needs to watch it. I predict that it will become a cult classic.
Beyond that, we are just getting ready for the weekend. We might go shopping tonight at a new market or maybe go to a Hindi movie with Manu and Mukesh.
Monday, June 25, 2007
On our way to work...
I'm sure you are all getting tired of reading about what we have been doing so this time I am going to show you. I thought it might be fun to post pictures of what our daily walk to and from work is like... Some of the pictures are a bit hazy because I took them in a rush as we walked... so bare with me!
I think Nick wanted to sleep a bit longer... :o)
Exiting our ally... right next to the huge ruins
The little village of Hauz Khas
An old Jeep that we see every day when exiting our village
The sign that tells about our village, Hauz Khas.
The boys... Manu, Nick and Mukesh
Two women with baskets of veggies on their heads
The Hindu Temple
Some one lives there
This one is for you Mariah!
A few of the random ruins along the way
Some cool looking pots.
Another home
Street vendors
If you look closely you will see that it says J.H. Caleb... Nick was excited about that...
he wants to go meet the reverend!
Traffic, traffic, traffic!
The "Believers" Church
A New Delhi Ambulance
The gate to a rich persons home
A used car shop
Public drinking water
Where we get our mango's from... YUMM!!
We finally made it! Navdanya is right upstairs!
I think Nick wanted to sleep a bit longer... :o)
Exiting our ally... right next to the huge ruins
The little village of Hauz KhasAn old Jeep that we see every day when exiting our village
The sign that tells about our village, Hauz Khas.
The boys... Manu, Nick and Mukesh
Two women with baskets of veggies on their heads
The Hindu Temple
Some one lives thereThis one is for you Mariah!
A few of the random ruins along the waySome cool looking pots.
Another home
Street vendors
If you look closely you will see that it says J.H. Caleb... Nick was excited about that...he wants to go meet the reverend!
Traffic, traffic, traffic!
The "Believers" Church
A New Delhi Ambulance
The gate to a rich persons home
A used car shop
Public drinking water
Where we get our mango's from... YUMM!!
We finally made it! Navdanya is right upstairs!
The weekend... That means Sunday!
Back at work on Monday has a very different feel here. I think it is because they don’t allow enough time to really recoup from the previous week given that they work on Saturday and only take Sunday off (guess we are just spoiled in the US)... still here we are back at it. It is now Monday afternoon so we have plenty of fun stuff to tell you about once again!!
Nick and Manu walking to Navdanya
Saturday, June 23, 2007
We woke up a bit early and showered and got ready for work. We then headed down to Manu’s apartment because we normally walk with him to work (Mukesh walks with us too but he was in South India visiting his family). When we knocked on his door two guys that we had never seen before opened the door and acted like they had never heard of Manu. A bit confused we headed off to work without him. We were a bit early and Nick was really missing his coffee so we walked through Green Park Market to get him some coffee. Green Park is a really expensive Americanized area of town. Manu refers to it as being “quite posh.” In this market they have a Costa Coffee that is very modernized. We feel a little guilty every time we go there but some times it is a necessity.
It is a bit of a sad reality but the Costa Coffee shop is one of the few places where Nick and I feel comfortable in public because it is SO Americanized that it’s the ONLY place (that we have been to so far) where only half the people stare at us rather than all of them.
After Nick drank his coffee we headed back into the real world and off to work. It was a really uneventful day at work. There were not many people in the office on Saturday so it was fairly quiet. The air conditioning was still busted so those of us that did make it in were tired and grumpy from the awful heat. Manu left a little early from work to go to a wedding reception and Nick and I followed shortly after (at 4:30 or so). We then walked back to our apartment.
By the time we got there we were both exhausted from the heat and hung out under the fans for a little while. Around 5:30 the heat started to die down and we decided to go out and wonder around. First we went to the Green Park market and shopped around. We decided that it wasn’t a place that we wanted to buy anything because it was all really expensive. Well… expensive by Indian standards but normal price for American standards. We then headed down the street to another market. In Delhi it seems like around every corner you find another market… lots of shopping… lots of fun! We really needed to get a bed sheet so we shopped around the market looking at all the shops. These was our first real shopping experience so we were a bit timid to start off and were shy about the idea of bargaining.
As we shopped around we got more and more comfortable with it and ended up enjoying our selves. We bought a few large pieces of cloth that were meant to be saris… though I probably will use them for decorative purposes when we get home. The sari looks beautiful on Indian women but I’m not so sure it is my style;o). We then headed back to the first place we looked at sheets and bought one from the nice old man. He was the only one that didn’t jack the price way up on us because we were Americans and he was willing to bargain.
In one of the shopsThen as we were walking down the street we saw our first one elephant!! Unfortunately Nick was so stunned by the sight that he was a little slow with the camera and we didn't get a picture. Hopefully we will see another one. Manu says it is really strange that we saw one here in Delhi because you normally don't see them around here. He said that it is really common for rich people (they are REALLY expensive to feed!) down south (where he is from) to own them so you see them much more often down there.
Hard to see... but there is an elephant there!
After a little bit of shopping we headed a little closer to home for dinner. We ate at the same place that I mentioned before (where I spilled my water down my front). It was once again really great food. This time they also had a live Indian band playing and it set a really fun mood. No mishaps with my water this time… though the same waiter was there and gave me a recognizing grin when I walked in. We ate and then left to go home.
On our way we stopped at the same mango stand that we do every day on our way home from work. The man that was there recognized us as we came up and greeted us with a smile. Nick asked the price of the mango’s just to make sure it was the same and before the man could answer the man next to him shouted out, “50 RUPEES!!!” Nick and I gave him the Delhi disappointed face (we are getting quite good at it) and told him that we were just by the other day and they were only thirty-five. The first looked very embarrassed but the other insisted that these were larger and of far better quality. The first man snapped at him in what I assumed is Hindi and offered us our usual price. We bought a kilogram of mango's and headed home.
As we were passing Green Park, Nick wanted to go see if we could find any DVDs so we walked back though the market. Finding nothing that really struck him as a must see we then left and really headed home finally making it there around 10 o'clock.
Shortly after Manu got back from the wedding and came to visit. We all decided that showers were necessary so we decided to shower and then play some cards. Nick and I taught Manu how to play a fantastic game called pitch the night before (I think he is already obsessed as well… Amy would love him… he is a close second to her in competitiveness). After showers we headed down to Manu’s place and played cards until mid night. We then called it a night and headed to bed!
At Manu's place
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Finally the Weekend!! We had a lazy morning and rolled out of bed around 9. every morning we wake up completely drenched in sweat… actually every time we are out of the shower for more than five minutes we are completely drenched in sweat... so much humidity... many showers are necessary! The thing about the shower is that only the cold knob works. When it is hot outside hot water comes out and when it is much cooler out cold water comes out. It seems like a huge tease because what ever it is you want at the moment you can’t have it.
Anyway… we showered up and headed down to Manu’s place. We sat around and talked for a while and then around noon we headed out to get some lunch. Manu took us to a fantastic little restaurant that was right in Hauz Kaus Village. We made him order the different meals because we still have no idea what is good and what is not. So far it has all been good so we aren’t feeling too timid about trying new things.
Anyway… we showered up and headed down to Manu’s place. We sat around and talked for a while and then around noon we headed out to get some lunch. Manu took us to a fantastic little restaurant that was right in Hauz Kaus Village. We made him order the different meals because we still have no idea what is good and what is not. So far it has all been good so we aren’t feeling too timid about trying new things.
Artwork at the restaurant
We ate, it was great and then we headed back home. Not many people stay outside during the afternoon hours because it is far too hot! Once back at the apartment we played another game of pitch. I then headed up stairs to take a nap while the boys watched a movie about Dr. Vandana Shiva called Bullshit.
After a relaxing afternoon we headed we decided a bit of shopping would be fun. We jumped in a tut-tut and headed to a place called Dilly Haat. Dilly Haat is a really nice little market. It is in an enclosed area that you have to pay to go into (15 rupees each… about 35 cents).
We walked around for a little bit just browsing at the many interesting items. Very few items have a price tag on them so it is all up for bargaining. At first I really sucked at it. My first purchase was for two pairs of earrings. The were beautiful shell earrings. The man asked 75 rupees for them. So I offered 50. We ended up settling at 55. I didn’t think I had done too poorly but Manu said I should have made my first offer for less. We then moved on and found the Navdanya store/ restaurant. We ate some food and bought some hand crafted journals. After our bellies were once again full we headed off to do more shopping.
Every shop that we walked by people tried to coax us in. Finally one was persuasive enough. It was a man selling silk scarves. I walked over and he started showing me all the pretty colors. I asked him how much… he said 150 rupees. I gave him the Delhi disappointed face but didn’t say anything… I looked around a few more and offered him 75 rupees for one. He laughed at me and said something to Manu in Hindi. He said 120. It was the lowest he would go. I stuck with 75. He laughed at me again so I said sorry, then I wanted none, and we left. Once we were a few feet away I heard the man calling me back. So I headed back over. The man wanted to make me an offer. He said 10 at 80 Rupees. I told him I didn’t want 10 I only wanted 2. He then said 5 at 80… some how this is what ended up happening. Manu only laughed and asked if I would do his bargaining from then on. I guess I had done an all right job.
High on bargaining confidence I headed off to the next shop and got another great deal! 2 pairs of leather shoes for 120 rupees (3$) a piece. And they are cute too! Way too fun!! I think I am going to like this style of shopping. We then headed off to get Manu’s favorite drink, fruit beer (it has no beer in it though… it is more like a soda). As we were about to leave Nick decided he wanted to take a stab at the whole bargaining thing so we found a shop with men’s shirts. Manu helped him get a good price on three shirts and we left.
We took a tut-tut back home. Once there we showered and then headed down to Manu’s place. We sat around and talked for a bit and then went over to Tasnim’s for dinner. Tasnim is still away visiting family but she lets us sue her stove and her air conditioning. A few of Manu’s friends came over and prepared dinner for us… fantastic food once again!! His friends were really funny, nice guys. We ate and then had dessert and then headed off to bad at midnight.
Every shop that we walked by people tried to coax us in. Finally one was persuasive enough. It was a man selling silk scarves. I walked over and he started showing me all the pretty colors. I asked him how much… he said 150 rupees. I gave him the Delhi disappointed face but didn’t say anything… I looked around a few more and offered him 75 rupees for one. He laughed at me and said something to Manu in Hindi. He said 120. It was the lowest he would go. I stuck with 75. He laughed at me again so I said sorry, then I wanted none, and we left. Once we were a few feet away I heard the man calling me back. So I headed back over. The man wanted to make me an offer. He said 10 at 80 Rupees. I told him I didn’t want 10 I only wanted 2. He then said 5 at 80… some how this is what ended up happening. Manu only laughed and asked if I would do his bargaining from then on. I guess I had done an all right job.
High on bargaining confidence I headed off to the next shop and got another great deal! 2 pairs of leather shoes for 120 rupees (3$) a piece. And they are cute too! Way too fun!! I think I am going to like this style of shopping. We then headed off to get Manu’s favorite drink, fruit beer (it has no beer in it though… it is more like a soda). As we were about to leave Nick decided he wanted to take a stab at the whole bargaining thing so we found a shop with men’s shirts. Manu helped him get a good price on three shirts and we left.
We took a tut-tut back home. Once there we showered and then headed down to Manu’s place. We sat around and talked for a bit and then went over to Tasnim’s for dinner. Tasnim is still away visiting family but she lets us sue her stove and her air conditioning. A few of Manu’s friends came over and prepared dinner for us… fantastic food once again!! His friends were really funny, nice guys. We ate and then had dessert and then headed off to bad at midnight.
In the Tut-tut... traffic was CRAZY!
Monday, June 25, 2007
This morning we woke up feeling a bit groggy. One reason I will be excited to get back to the states is for the 2 day weekend! One day just leaves you wanting so much more!! Nick and I are currently absolutely roasting in Delhi! This morning at 7 it was already 92 degrees!! Now at 10:15, I'm sure it is 100+ and 60% humidity! With no A/C yet (it is supposed to be fixed today!! But Manu says that every time they fix it works for a day or two and then breaks again!)! It doesn't bother me so much but Nick hates the heat! Same old stuff at work. Dr. Shiva is back. It has been a little awkward for us because she didn’t even acknowledge that we were here! We were sitting on the couch finishing up the assignment that she gave us and she walked by a few times without saying a word. Nick decided that we would go talk to her if she doesn’t talk to us today. Back to work now… he he he … long break!
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