Ganges

Now I am beginning to wonder if I should change the name of my blog to "IndiaImpressions" or maybe "IndiaAmerican" as it would appear that I am infatuated with the great country of India and it's people.



I received a book named Ganga: A Journey Down the Ganges River by Julian Crandall Hollick. I finished reading the book in 3 days during the week off for Christmas and New Years. The web site for the book has some really nice photos and accompanied radio broadcasts from which the book originated. Over the next few days left in my vacation, I hope to listen to the NPR broadcasts so I can comment on them. I really enjoyed the book as it gave me a better understanding of Indian mind. The Ganges is considered a holy goddess and therefore cannot be polluted but it can be dirty. Even if it dried up from what we westerns think of as factory pollution and human waste dumping freely in the Ganges then the goddess will live on. Since this British man spent 20+ years in India researching the Ganges, the book has valuable insights to help a weak American grasp such deep concepts.

In the future I hope to walk parts of the Ganges with a good friend of mine, who has walked almost half of it in bi-yearly two week jaunts and has only 20 more years to go to complete the walk.

Real men can weep

My blog, which started out as a collection of web design problems and solutions as I encountered them, has turned into a discussion of Indian movies and the Hindi language. Having lived in India for two years, when I was but 20 years old, there is something that happened to me while I was there that I have not been able to remove since - I just love to be around the people of India and to learn more about the culture.

Last night was very interesting... My wife and I wanted to see a movie at the local Indian movie theater. I read the reviews in the local newspaper of the new Indian films currently showing and one of them sounded bad while other one had a certain appeal. A really good friend of mine once told me that he did not like movies that invoked your emotions as the director was manipulating you. I understand his view, but for me a movie has to stir up your emotions or make you contemplate life in order to be a good movie. There is no way I could watch so many Indian movies without this view, as I still believe the goal of an Indian movie is to make you cry, laugh, and dance, but not particularly in that order!

The movie we choose to see was Taare Zameen Par. I was really wondering what we had done as the opening credits were quite strange, but it all made perfect sense by the end of the movie. In summary, I have never ever wept as much as I did last night. I wanted to quickly leave the movie theater when the movie was over, in case I saw someone I knew and had to show them my red eyes! The movie was so emotional for me due to many reasons...

When I was in the first grade I had severe learning disabilities as I had dyslexia. My first grade teacher hated me and it was a mutual feeling. I would not sit still and I could not read, but I loved to draw - not a good combination when the whole goal of the class was to learn how to read. In the rural Virginia school I attended, they decided by the third grade whether you were in the smart class or dumb class and split you up. My mother was determined not to allow me to get into the dumb class as you basically never got out and by high school you were delegated to shop, woodworking and industrial classes. Looking back this seems so cruel and such a bad educational system. Anyway, for two years my mother tutored me and somehow using the local library as a resource learned how to help me get over my dyslexia. I actually only learned about this recently. Throughout my life, few things have come to me easily and I just overcame by working as hard as I could.

Our daughter had similar reading disabilities and had trouble reading until she got into the third grade. The schools now are much more forgiving and she was given special reading classes and taken out of her normal classroom every day for 1-2 hours of tutoring with teachers who specialized in disabilities. Now she loves to read and had the highest grade for reading in her last year of elementary. One of our boys has suffered thru his disabilities, but much later in his life. With the internet providing so much information, my wife has become an expert at helping him. I can just imagine what would become of them both 100 years ago, when ignorance on such issues ruled.

One more point... I have had many Indian friends over the last 25 years who have attended private Catholic schools in Indian as they are considered the best education you can get. Once you get to be college age, if you are the absolute best you can try to get into one of the 5 Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) universities as many of my friends were able to. One of them told me there were 25,000 applications for the 1000 freshmen allowed to attend. Just imagine how privileged you are when you graduate from these universities - truly the cream of he crop. What happens to everyone else who does not make it? It reminds of of professional sports in USA. There is an excellent book that documents just how hard it is to get into pro sports called Fair and Foul: Beyond the Myths and Paradoxes of Sport.


Back to the movie, I think so many factors came into play to cause such emotions to flow. Having lived the subject of the movie and having seen my kids live it as well along with having lived in India, it all came to life in this movie. When watching the movie, I thought I had been there before. In researching it this morning I found out that I had indeed been in the same location for a month when in Mahabaleshwar, Maharastra some 25 years ago. When watching the movie I saw a sign that said New Era High School and the town of Panchgani.

It all just leaves me speechless.

Remembering in Tears

So it is Christmas and time for me to reminisce about Christmas' past as this is my 48^th Christmas. The up and coming year will be a year to remember enduring feats. My sister is turning 50; I will be married 25 years; two sons will be out of the home (hopefully) and other personal landmarks.

Last night I watched It's a Wonderful Life on TV with my wife. I think I had seen it when I was a just a young whipper snapper, as a couple of parts seemed familiar. Watching that movie made me become nostalgic as we just gotten back from eating at Olive Garden for my son's 17^th birthday, when I turned on the TV. My son told me twice during the evening how much he liked that movie. They just don't make them like that any more - I am talking about both my son and the movie!

This has been an emotional couple of weeks for me. It started off last weekend when I rented an Indian movie called BLACK, which I had watched on the plane to India in February of this year. I cried like a baby on the plane and was hoping no one was watching this American man with tears running down his face. India has a way of invoking a broad range of emotions in anyone. I must say that in the privacy of our bedroom, the tears on the plane were nothing compared to my uncontrollable sobing. I tried to turn over so my wife would not see a grown man cry. It amazes me that a movie can invoke such emotions. In this case, the subject matter helps as the movie is an Indian version of the life of Helen Keller. I remember hearing about her when I was a boy. Reading her story now reminds me how little I do with what GOD has given me and how she overcame such huge obstacles.

The next crying event of this week was a CD my wife gave me to listen to in my car driving to work. I thought it was going to be something to stimulate me to think and to challenge me to be a better person. It turns out my wife wanted to embarrass me in public as I was crying huge tears in my car! Just a newer case of someone doing amazing things with their life as David Ring has Cerebral Palsy and yet he did not just give up, he travels all over the USA as a motivational speaker. He motivated me to cry that is for sure. Such an amazing story of how someone can take the little GOD gave them and use it for great good. The CD I was listening to is available on-line at Focus on the Family as a 3 part series called "Victorious Living".

Lastly, a good friend of mine, sent me a YouTube video of Evel Knievel speaking at Robert Schuller's church. I remember when I was a young kid how I marvelled at Evel Knievel's daring antics. A couple of years ago we saw his son at the NC State fair jump a bunch of vehicles just as his father had done many years before. I had anyways heard Evel Knievel liked to live life in the fast lane or cars and women. It warmed my heart to hear that in his last moments of life on this earth he wanted to follow in his Creator's footsteps. I was even more amazed at the comments in this YouTube video as they are people that really take offense to spiritual things. Reminds me of how I used to be many years ago, but that will have to wait for another day.

Hidden secrets of every society

My wife and I saw the Indian movie Provoked this weekend. It did not shock me that there was only one other couple in the theater with us when we saw it, as I do not expect this movie to be popular. It is not your typical feel good movie, but a true life story of an abused wife who kills her husband. We get used to bad news in the west, but to even talk about a husband abusing his wife is shocking for an Indian topic. Shocking that someone would try to make a movie about such a taboo topic.

I was 19 years old when I first went to India. I knew very little about India, except that Indira Gandhi had something to do with it and that my mom always told me "eat all your food since children are starving in India". For some odd reason I thought India would be full of highly religious people. I still remember how shocked I was the first time I saw drunk men in a remote village. I had the strangest misconceptions, but what to expect at such a young age! I would not have been able to handle such a harsh topic as wife abuse.

Becoming wiser in my old age, I now understand morals have nothing to do with culture as there are good things about India and America and at the same time evils I really don't want to know about. There are so many good things about the Indian culture that I really like and appreciate the more I get to know Indians. I have to say that I am a better person because of becoming immersed in another culture other than my own.

death & taxes

The last couple of weeks have made this topic come to life for me.

We paid the highest amount of taxes this year that we have ever paid. I have never thought about avoiding taxes. It is just something I do every year. I try not to think about how they are used improperly by the government as that would only drive me crazy. I try to think how much I like the roads here and how wonderful are the public universities. I also like my freedom as that is priceless.

Having met my wife at VaTech and her grandfather was Dean of Argiculture for 30 years there, we have a lot of family history involved in VaTech. The senseless deaths of 33 people was truely a sad day for me. I have always thought about my time in Blacksburg as perfect and such a wonderful place to attend college. One crazy person has messed up my perfect view of that small town with an even bigger student population than permanent residents. One fellow worker told me his son pulled an all nighter and accidently slept in and missed his class. He was supposed to be in room 204 in Norris where 4 students were killed. What a perfect day to skip class and obviously GOD protected him. It just reminded me that mental health is so neglected in America and if you don't deal with the real issues, there will be consequences.

Today I learned that a good friend of mine died yesterday. It really made me sad as he suffered for the last year. Now he is gone, his young children and wife have to suffer, which makes me even more sad. Life can be hard sometimes. There are no simple answers to such suffering. Jim Cortese was a true friend in that he was willing to share his sadness and happiness with me. For two years we worked closely together and he is the best designer I have ever known. He transformed the product we worked on together into the most usable product at the company. What shocked me the most is that he was younger than I was. That is what really hit home for me. Younger and with surviving small children. Sometimes life just does not seem fair. Makes me want to enjoy every day with my kids!

fight over the backyard

I have been in a fight over who owns the yard behind our house for the last month. Two weeks ago, I lost the battle for that day. Yesterday I returned to the battle field as I want to win the war. Vines have been trying to kill my tress, but yesterday I taught them that I am in it for the long haul. Two weeks ago as I was moving the vines I had removed from some of the trees to a brush pile, I tripped on a stump, which I think was trying to get me back for hurting it's brethren. The farmer who originally owned the land, deposited a pile of glass and metal right where I fell and that is why I think the stump tried to get me. I cut my arm pretty bad and had to rush to the local Fuquay Urgent Care, where I was seen by a great doctor who gave me 14 stitches. I had a "nice" tetanus shot, which will keep me out of harms way in the battle zone for the next 10 years.

I have three different vines trying to kill my trees. The most hasty of all is the green briers. I have seen this enemy before growing up in Virginia. The bright green stems and the long yellowish thorns give them away. They really climb up a tree and they once they reach the top, the grow leaves and have no thorns. The second enemy is wild grapevine. It does not have thorns, but it makes up for it in the shear volume of vines it grows from one root. Once they reach the top of brushes or small trees they pretty much choke the poor neighbor to death. I actually have found a couple of grapevines 2" in diameter, which reach to the top of 100' trees. The last one I have been fighting is a hard enemy to conquer, it is Carolina jasmine. It looks so pretty this time of year with its yellow flower, but it really puts the choke hold on small bushes. It wraps itself around the trunk and a strangle hold. It you try to pull it off, then it will either break off or snap the tree or brush. I have one 50' tree that it crawled all the way up and made a cork screw bite into the tree half way up. It made sure if it ever died in battle it would leave a mark to be remembered.

For now I have 1/3 of the area cleared of vines and it is looking very nice. In other areas I am not going to clear I have wild raspberries and blackberries, so I am forced to leave the nasty vines alone to I can have the berries from the good vines. I also a have a couple of poison ivy vines, but I have to leave those alone as I am highly allergic to them, but that is another story...

walled offices vs. cubicles

I moved into my walled office this week, so I have to comments on comparing working in a walled office versus cubicles. Having worked in cubicles for 8 years out of a total of 23 years of my working life, I am speaking from experience.

As an aside, I read an article by Joel Spolsky once of what he thought about this topic. I see he is still writing about this topic as they are considering moving to a larger space. I am in no way as creative in my thinking as Joel, but then again he runs a company and wants the best for his employees, which is a great thing.

For me, there are both pluses and minuses about either walled offices or cubicles. At the moment I cannot decide which I like better.

	Good	Bad
Walled Offices	Privacy when you need it to make a personal phone call Can listen to music without headphones Can put up posters and paintings on the wall Personal white board to sketch designs and to-do notes Wife and kids can come and I don't feel about being loud	Harder to have interaction with team members Must work at communication to learn what others are working on Others may need your help, but must walk to see you for help
Cubicles	When surrounded by team members, easier to know what everyone is working on Perfect for Extreme Programming, if no walls are present Easy to help others when they get stuck and need help Fosters team environment in getting to know team members	Everyone hears personal conversations or phone calls When loud talkative people around, can be very distracting Little room for personal items, unless they are small Hard to pair in small cubicles and show someone your screen Suffer through gopher syndrome : people popping up out of chair and talking across cubicles