Mumbai is completely amazing. We had two goals for our one free day, do some shopping and see the Hindu carvings on Elephenta island. Cabs in Mumbai charge flat rates. Our driver, Ramesh, would’ve have charged us 800 Rps per destination (2,400 Rps total) or 2,000 Rps for the entire day. So, we rented a cab for the day.
According to Ramesh we saw the entire city, and considering we spent ~5 hours in the car I’m inclined to believe him. I’m not even sure how to explain the entirety of what we saw, so I’ll break it down by numbers.
Mumbai is a large city (21 million people).
On the average city block there are:
500 people along the street, generally families
15 people selling fruit
10 peoples pushing individual carts, laden with food or materials
5 stray dogs
3 goats
2 water buffalo
1 cow
1 completely awesome sight
1 completely heartbreaking sight
Driving:
Driving in Mumbai is organized chaos. There are lanes, but they’re really more guidelines than rules. If a road has three lanes in one direction there are usually five vehicles sharing that space (one or two of which are bicycles or motorcycles). Ramesh stated a good car in India needs two things: “A brake and a horn”. Drivers honk as they swerve around or merge between to let other drivers and pedestrians of their intentions. It is common for a driver to merge between two vehicles leaving only inches on either side, sometimes with one vehicle being oncoming traffic. Ramesh was a super hero. He seemed to know every inch of his car. Amazingly we never saw a single accident, though it seemed inevitable on many occasions.
People:
I should point out that the people of Mumbai are among the nicest in the world and we were hard pressed to find someone who didn’t speak English. Everyone, with the exception of shop keepers trying to sell you something, is ridiculously polite. Even the scam artists are nice. There is obviously a lot of poverty in the city, but nobody seems to act downtrodden. The city itself is dull and depressed, but the people are as bright and cheerful as their clothes.
Our journey through Mumbai:
We had Ramesh take us to a recommended shopping area. This turned out to be mostly generic clothing and goods, and not what we were looking for, so we asked to continue on to The Gateway of India, which is where we’d catch a boat to Elephanta Island. One the way we passed various iterations of the above averages, several different local markets.
Ramesh pointed out a market where you can buy any pet, either the normal kind or monkeys or elephants. He took us to the world’s largest manual washing machine, which is a large serious of stone basins filled with water where many people are hand washing clothes. He pointed out the slums and the new high rise buildings being built by the government to give new housing to those who need it. He even pointed out the red light district as we passed.
We eventually reached the Gateway of India and purchased a ticket for the ferry to Elephanta Island. Our dutiful driver waited behind for the 4 hours we’d be gone. On our way to the ferry we were stopped by someone claiming to be a holy man, who blessed us by tying a red and yellow ribbon around our wrists and anointing us with a third eye. We were grateful for the blessing until he asked for money. I’m not entirely sure if this was a scam or not, but considering how many people would later offer us free things and follow up with requests for money, I’m inclined to think it was.
We spent over an hour on a very slow ferry ride to the island. When we got there it was early afternoon and the temperature had passed 100 degrees. I’m not sure that we thought our cunning plan through. The island consists of a flat 1/4 mile of unprotected stone walkway, followed by a steep 1/4 climb surrounded by trinket booths. After that you’ve arrived at the main cave on the island, filled with gorgeous Hindu carvings. I was pleased to remember about 5% of my art history class from college.
After that you’ve got another 1/4 climb up much less even stairs to Cannon Hill, the top of the island and location of large cannons the Portuguese put in place to defend the waterways. I wasn’t particularly interested in the cannons, but figured it was worth the rest of the trek for the view. The view was impressive, but the experience was the more worthwhile.
The other reason I wanted to go to Elephanta Island is because I owe Hayden some pictures of monkeys, and the monkeys run wild on the island. They walk around people all day, eating whatever fruit or leftovers they can find; and what they can’t just find they will steal. Early on we witnessed a monkey run at someone carrying a bag and try to tear it open to steal the contents. He almost got it.
I think my favorite moment of the trip was when a monkey charged at Lori’s water bottle and she screamed at me to take it since I was tall enough to hold it out of the monkey’s reach. I must have stood holding the water bottle at maximum vertical arms length with the monkey hissing at me for a minute before walking away. That was certainly a unique experience.
We returned to the ferry around 5 p.m. and watched the sun set/burn through the smog over Mumbai during our slow ride back. We found our driver around 6:30 p.m. and struggled though heavy evening traffic until arriving back at our hotel around 8 p.m.
I’m sorry we only got to spend one day in Mumbai, even though we were able to pack in so much in that day. This is only a fraction of the stories we saw. I would love to visit again some day.
This is perhaps one of the best coming-of-age novels I have read, in that it feels more accessible to multiple generations. Perhaps I am a bit biased, in that it is one of the most well-known coming of age novels that comes close to my time frame (unlike Catcher or King Dork). But Charlie’s voice seems to be untouched by what year it is. It wasn’t until about a third of the way through the book that I looked at the dates of his letters, in 1991. There were multiple moments that I would find myself catching the date again, and I would realize how infinte the writing seemed.
Yes, he is an exceptional young man with a past that colors him, but the true story is about the development of relationships, successes and failures, both.
We arrived in India late Friday evening (Friday afternoon time back home). The process of getting to India was very easy. Our flights were on time, I was unmolested by security. Flying business class gave us access to a hundred movies and chairs that fully recline into beds which made the 16 hour flight pass surprisingly quickly.
We had to wait an unusually long time to get our luggage, but were picked to skip customs in India, so we considered that a wash. We stepped outside to find the hottest weather we have ever encountered. It was only around 90 degrees, but with 70% humidity. We quickly found the car sent from the hotel and basked in the air conditioning.
After a short drive we arrived at our hotel, called loved ones, ate a late dinner and crashed.
The next day we got to explore Mumbai by ourselves. That is an amazing story that’s going to need it’s own post.
But now we’re off to Pune to get settled in before our training.
The past year has been much of a whirlwind for me, and while I might not be able to remember all of it, I can certainly remember some of the best moments from you.
You are amazingly easy to tickle, and your laughter can make me smile after the longest day or the largest headache. I have a few prime spots that I can barely touch on you, and you burst out in your contageous and loud giggles.
The only word I am positively sure you know is “oh-oh.” You drop food from your highchair, “uh-oh.” You break a toy into two pieces, “Uh-oh.” You take a slight tumble to the floor, “uh-oh.”
However, you will pick yourself right back up, and then you cheer for yourself. You clap your hands and bounce a bit, your eyes filled with life and energy.
Too much energy sometimes for me, as you are a little dare devil. You will climb anything and everything, and you are interested in anything that is just outside –no, that’s within your reach, isn’t it? Uh-oh.
When you want to be carried, you have a tendancy to point and raise the pitch at the end of your babble. It seems to be your way of saying, “Take me there, tell me all about it.” Because when we do that, you’re a much happier little man. When we let you touch something (like the pictures on the walls, the little figurines on the mantel) you bounce in our arms and squeal.
You love exploring foods, too. Currently, your favorite food is parsnips. Second is carrots, then broccoli, then chicken, then bread, then anything other than fruit. You’ll occasionally eat bananas or cinnamon with a little bit of applesauce in it.
You have taken to giving us high-fives and blowing us kisses, but the kisses might just be your way of saying, “thanks for loving me, guys.” There’s no real difference between a morning kiss blown across the room and the thank you we get for those parsnips.
It’s been a full year for you. You have 6 teeth; a couple of small scars that will likely be replaced with new ones by the time you are 2. You have helped me to reach my goal of reading 50 novels in a year by the bedtime ritual of me reading novels aloud to you (by your birthday, we had finished 14:A Wrinkle in Time, The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, The Little Prince, Taran Wanderer, The High King, Ralph S. Mouse, Treasure Island, Prince Caspian, The Last Battle, The Silver Chair, and The Magician’s Nephew. I tried to read The Jungle Books to you, but I couldn’t get into it enough to finish it. We finished shortly after your birthday A Day No Pigs Would Die and next on our agenda is The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.
You seem to love books, especially as they are the only way to get you calm at bath time. Baby Dolphins is a miracle worker for your screams, especially when read to you by Hayden in his robot voice.
The rough patch of your ears not working as well as the doctors would have liked has been solved by the tubes we had put in your ears. You came through the minor surgery like a real trooper, and immediately started responding to sounds you hadn’t in the past (such as the vaccum cleaner a floor away). You seem to calm a bit more quickly when I sing my improvised lines to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” too.
The day of his father’s death, the day no pigs would die is the turning point in a young boy’s life, when he realizes he is to become a man. No, it is not an easy story to read (in the thematic or in the stylistic senses) nor is it a story for 13 year olds, in my opinion. It is a story written to show the development of maturity, and in today’s world, that simply does not happen at age 13 for most people. So no, the details of Peck’s story do not meld into every man’s life (the Shaker lifestyle alone would put most reader’s at a distance). The voice is different from ones that young adults are used to today, but it is still an important read.
This story shows that the metamorphasis between boy and man can happen in an instant, regardless of the preparation one has for it. The change in tone when discovering his father’s death allowed the reality of the growth to set in for me.
It is a simply written, unshameful examination of the death of a father and boy, and the birth of a man.
Tomorrow I leave for a two week jaunt to India to train engineers who are taking over for my old position. I’m both nervous and excited. I am looking forward to experiencing a completely different culture, but I’m a little nervous about leaving Brie with a one year old and a four year old for two weeks.
Luckily my parents should be here for half of the time I’m gone.
Also, I’m nervous about having to talk for 8+ hours a day for seven business days. It’s very likely that when I get home all conversations in the house will be done via text for a few days.
It figures that I’ll be missing the first birthday party that Hayden was invited to,
but we picked up some disposable cameras for him to take pictures of anything interesting that I’m missing.
I’ll be armed with a camera and a laptop, so I intend on sharing anything interesting with you. Also I owe Hayden some pictures of monkeys.
Connectivity may be an issue at times, so for those that are curious as to whether or not my plane lands and such, check my twitter feed.
The nice thing about having your own domain you can do whatever you want with your email addresses.
Back when I first bought withak.org I was slightly paranoid about companies selling my email address out to spammers so I would assign different email addresses for each company (i.e. company name at withak dot org).
There isn’t any extra work for me, I have one email address that works as a catch-all for anything I don’t have an account setup for. Basically any non-personal email winds up in that directory.
I’ve done this for seven or eight years now and I’ve never had a problem with a company giving out my info to a third party, until now.
Recently I’ve noticed a ton of spam coming in to the email address we setup for DSW Shoes. This email address has never been broadcast publicly, so the only possible way it got into the hands of spammers is that it was given or taken by DSW.
I called their customer service line to complain about the issue and right away they informed me that their privacy policy stated they reserved the right to give people’s personal information to third parties.
We definitely should have read this and not given our information to begin with, but I’m still very upset with DSW not only for giving our information out, but passing it onto non-reputable businesses.
So, not only will they be losing our online business but business to their brick and mortar stores as well and we’ve got two growing boys, so we need a lot of shoes.
The past month is a bit of a blur. One child turning 4, one turning 1. It’s enough to drive a man to drink, which is probably why the past month is a blur. But who needs memories when you’ve got pictures!
We held Hayden’s first real child oriented birthday party at a park the day before Ike moved through. It was a smashing success. His dearest friends showed and everyone was well behaved and we didn’t have to awkwardly try to get people to leave because it wasn’t at our house.
The next day Ike showed up and took our power lines with him when he left, leaving us in the dark without hot water or refrigeration. We persevered and burned about 10% of the votives we still have left over from our wedding reception 7 years ago (down to less than 2 baskets full now!).
Funny thing about candlelight; after 5 days of not showering it becomes startlingly unromantic.
Hayden and I went on several adventures in pursuit of D batteries and ice. We returned home with harrowing tales of daring, but never anything else. Things were so bad that on day five Hayden (McNugget) begged to cook dinner at home. I’ll let that sink in. Finally after six days and multiple phone calls, the power was restored.
Gabe turned 1 and we more or less ignored it on the party side electing to just give a small handful of gifts in our living room. He didn’t seem to mind. We did keep the time honored tradition of letting him shove a chocolate cupcake in/around his face. Honestly the boy is so pleased to be walking steadily I don’t know what else we could do to improve his demeanor.
As Brie mentioned Hayden started soccer, which means we’re now spending the next 7 Saturday mornings in fold-out chairs watching 4 year old’s be given instructions by other adults. It brings back warm memories of my own childhood, except this time I don’t have to run laps.
We moved Gabe from his infant carrier to a forward-facing car seat. Gabe was very taken by the new orientation. We got lots of dancing and pointing. Taking the infant car seat out made me sad. I don’t have a baby anymore. On the other hand, I don’t have a baby anymore!
We bought two booster seats for Hayden (one for the van, one for the car) after trips to three different Targets because Hayden wanted matching ones.
Hayden has a tendency to declare unsafe practices whenever he spots a motorcyclist without a helmet. Today, as we were were leaving Target #2, Hayden declared from the backseat, “Daddy, you started driving before I was buckled. That wasn’t safe!”
I am officially a soccer mom, as I drive a mini-van, and Hayden had his first soccer practice on Saturday. A local YMCA has a Tiny Tots soccer program that one of his best friends is in, too. So, we took chairs, sat with Connor’s parents (Lisa and Kris), and cheered Hayden on.
Ny favorite quote from the weekend: from Hayden, “What in the world in the heck?”
There are choices in everyone’s life that looking back, you know you would do differently. There are choices in everyone’s life that looking back, you hope would take a different path. There are even moments in everyone’s life that you know at that moment the choice is wrong. I know these moments exist, though I can’t quite buy into the idea that a woman would make poor decision after poor decision with the consciousness that is depicted in Cohen’s memoir. Rather, I have to wonder how much of Cohen’s fictional writing experience is coming in to play in the memoir. The author and subject knows how her “character” develops and wants to let readers believe she is more in control than she ever really was.
I also realize that “memoir” has a strikingly similar definition to autobiography, but to me, the word denotes a closer investigation of a certain aspect of the life. Therefore, I was expecting a deeper understanding and appreciation of the voyage and destination. Instead, I was simply told she knew she was making mistakes, she knew she wanted to change, she knew she had an addiction. And it felt as though she was suddenly cured with very little time spent on the why or how of the cure. I was not interested in paragraph after paragraph, page after page of nameless men and hookups. I was not really even interested in the few long-lasting relationships she did have that came to naught.
Perhaps giving more insight into her mental development would have subtracted from available pages for guaranteeing to the reader that she was, indeed, promiscuous. I personally think it would have added gravity and authenticity to the memoir, making it more believable than simply filling the pages with uncertain names and descriptions of men’s hair and eyes.
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