Recap (Part 2)

Alright, so I believe I last spoke about my trials at the FRRO, which was definitely an experience.  However, I have had many more positive experiences in the rest of my time in Bangalore.  One such happy memory occurred the Friday after my visit to the FRRO.  I had just started working with the Quality Team on the 2nd (American 3rd) floor of the SVYM office, and we were brainstorming ways to tackle the very ambitious projects given to us by our boss, when we were informed that we wouldn't be coming into the office on Friday because there is a Cricket game.  Now, I knew that Cricket is a very popular sport in India, so I wasn't that flabbergasted that the office would take a day off to watch a match. In actuality though, it was an entire office-wide sports day.  Each department in the office would be its own Cricket team, and there would be a tournament with prizes and everything!  I feel like I've got the best workplace, hands down.  None of the other GSE groups got a sports day at their office.

As you can see, all the men in the office have been divided into teams based mostly on the department in which they work.  Three teams played in the day's tournament, the Field Team (consisting of the TAs and school supervisors) in darker blue jerseys, the Tech team (they make the Project 1947 videos) in red jerseys, and the Quality Team (our department!) in light blue.  As you can see, this is a pretty serious affair.  But I know you're probably all wondering where all the women are in this?  Do any women work at PremaVidya?  Yes of course they do, in fact both my immediate supervisors (at the Quality team, and Tech team for that first week) are both women.  The women could choose to watch the Cricket match, but if they wanted to do something besides sit in the bleachers they could play a game called Throw Ball.  Throw Ball is great.  It actually is as lot like volley ball.  Well, you play on a volleyball court, and there are nine members (as opposed to six) on the court at a time.  You serve the ball from behind the back line, but instead of volleying the ball you catch it, and throw it back across the net.  The trick is that you can only touch the ball with your hands.  The ball may touch no other part of your body, even when you are catching it, and you can only throw the ball back across when you are done.  All of us GSE-ers headed over with the women to learn the game and have a bit of fun.  After we had played about three games though (in the full sun), we broke for a snack (samosas and Pepsi), and were informed that those were just practice games.  We would have a real game now.  All the guys took a break from Cricket to come and watch the women's Throw Ball game.  During the practice games I had been doing really well, I was throwing and catching and running all over the place.  However, during the real game, I was told very directly to stay in this one spot, and you know what, the ball didn't come over to me once.  My team lost.  Women were also playing a tag game called "coco."  I wasn't able to pick it up, but it reminded me of a game I used to play at summer camp called partner tag.

Oh man, something really awesome that I participated in was Musical Chairs--Indian style!!!  Everyone put a bunch of big plastic chairs in a circle on the cricket field, and once again, the women all stood by a chair.  When the music starts playing, we are supposed to run (no walking allowed!) in a circle until the music stops.  When the music stops you all book it to an empty chair.  When Justin Bieber's "Baby" started playing for the music.  I'm not sure what sort of much I was expecting to hear for this, but it was not Bieber.  Not to blow my own horn, but I did pretty well at musical chairs.  I believe I was like, 5th or something like that.  Not too shabby.

And the Quality Team wins the Tournament!!

The tournament continued throughout the day, even when it started raining in the afternoon.  There was a covered part of the bleachers that everyone crowded under, but the men kept playing.  That's dedication right there.  At the end of the day, the Quality Team won the tournament!  Go Team!  Everyone got gold medals, which was adorable.  The Tech team got silver medals for coming in second.  Then there were medals for best player in Throw Ball, Cricket, Coco, etc.  The whole awards ceremony was conducted in Kannada, which meant that we weren't really paying much attention, until we heard our names.  Apparently, from what I can tell, us interns got medals just for "trying" everything.  I'm not sure we really deserved anything, but Navee was really proud of her medal and wore it to dinner that night.  As we munched Tibetan food and mulled over the day's events, we all concluded that we were really happy to have had this opportunity to interact with our colleagues on a different level than we would in the office.  We had the opportunity to not only interact more with the people we would be directly working with, but we met other parts of the PremaVidya team, like the TAs and school directors who work in the field and only come into office on occasion.  Have I also mentioned that everyone we met was super-duper nice???  It's so true.  Every single person greeted us warmly, and we all felt included in the group.  What a great way to end the week.  Am I right?

Finally, a New Post! (Part 1)

First of all, let me apologize most profoundly for neglecting my blog for the last two weeks.  Some of my excuses are reasonable, most are not.  I've been quite busy the last few weeks at PremaVidya (PV) trying to hash out exactly what sort of project we will be working on.  The PV staff is so enthusiastic and optimistic that the second week we went into work they plopped down a lengthy list of some very broad and ambitious jobs for us to work on.  Basically, we have been busy narrowing and fine tuning just a little piece of these broad issues to work on for the next three weeks.  Additionally, in lieu of writing in this blog, I have been writing some blog posts for the official Wooster GSE blog, which can be found on the side bar of this blog.  If you just want to read an article I wrote about my initial impressions about PV, just click here, but I highly encourage you to check out the rest of the blog, because many of my classmates have constructed some very thought-provoking, reflective, and well-written posts.  Their writings are certainly much more profound than what I have written about.

Alright, what has happened to me since I last posted about my film debut?  Quite a bit actually.  Way back two weeks ago I actually had to take a couple days off from work because I had to go register at the Foreigner's Regional Registration Office (FRRO).  All foreigners holding any visa that is for longer than a few months are required to register with the Indian government.  If we don't register within 14 days of our arrival in India, and we try to leave the country, we can be detained, fined, and jailed for 5 years before finally being deported.  I'm still trying to work out why they would want to keep you in jail for a few years if they are just going to deport you afterward.  Anyway, I arrive at the FRRO office with three other GSE students.  At the FRRO they have gates set up at the entrance of the building in order to bottleneck the group of people coming or going.  There is only space for one person to squeeze through at a time.  There is also a guy with a big gun at the gate.  Not a warm and friendly welcome to be sure.  He actually tried to stop Navee from entering the building because she looks Indian; now Navee won't stand for that sort of thing so she totally sassed-out the guy with the gun by basically saying "back off, I'm Malaysian.  I need to go register."  Guy-with-the-big-gun just stared; he didn't know what to do with Navee, and she waltzes right in.  When we get in we have to get a token (actually just a slip of paper with a number on it) by showing the man at the desk a bunch of documents in the exact right order.  They would call your number and send you upstairs.  I was number 145, it was 10:30 and the counter was at number 100.  Not too bad.  We wait.  At 1:30pm the men at the front desk leave for lunch, and we still haven't been called yet.  So we leave to get juice (lime, it's the best!), and when we step out on the street we see a group of people coming down the street, drumming and dancing.  Excited, Maddy, Sam and I step closer to the curb to see this parade, and Navee chuckles and shakes her head.  The drummers pass, and they are followed by a large white van, and inside the van is a dead man shrouded in nice smelling flowers.  Navee knew exactly what was happening and she just laughed at our astounded and shocked looks.  This was not the sort of parade I had expected to see, it was actually the first time I had seen a dead body.  Just our luck to stumble across a funeral procession after spending all morning in the most joyless building on the face of the planet, and we still had to go back for another afternoon of sitting. 

After the lunch break we sat for another couple of hours and were FINALLY called upstairs where....we sat again and waited for our token number to be called AGAIN.  When our token numbers are called, we have our documents checked over by a person at the (appropriately titled) "scrutiny" desk.  Actually, I believe I had to visit four different "scrutiny" desks during the registration process, and throughout those four desks someone decided to give each one of us a hard time about something.  For example, all four of us who were there had the EXACT SAME document stating where were were staying in Bangalore for our stay.  Three of us go through that desk relatively easily.  When it's Maddy's turn they hold her up because they need proof that the woman who gave us those documents actually exists.  I feel sort of bad for those people behind the desks because giving me a hard time is probably the only form of entertainment they have during the day.  I know if I worked in a place like that, I would be cranky all the time.  So at the end of the day (5:30pm) I get through to the final desk...and they tell me to come back the next day at 10am.  The next day is very similar.  I go, wait for a bit, and finally get the piece of official paper that will allow me to leave the country in July.  I will say, the ONE cool thing about the FRRO is that there's a wide array of people from all over the world, so if you are a person who enjoys recreational people watching (like myself), this is the place to be.  Off the top of my head I saw people from Spain, Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran, Democratic Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and New Zealand.  There were countless others, but these were only from the passports I was able to snag a glimpse of as people sat around and waited. Fortunately, this second round only took half a day, so I was able to make it back to PV in the afternoon to meet the Quality team, whom I will be working with for the rest of my time here (more about the Quality team later, because they are awesome).

So, I will be stopping this post for now.  I still have a lot of things to share, as well as pictures to include, so never fear, I'll be back!  I have to take a break from this post because a) I want to break it up into manageable pieces for your convenience, and b) I have some homework that I desperately need to do, and that unfortunately takes precedence over my personal blog :-(

Musings, and my film career premier!

So, this is the world premier of the short film, "Tourism in Vermont" created by Navee and myself.  It features both our voices, reading original scripts, and animated PowerPoint slides.  I'm pretty proud of it, although it is not winning any Oscars anytime soon.  Yes, it is a little cheesy (actually, it's quite cheesy), but the whole point of this project is to really understand the amount of work and effort it takes to develop these videos to be distributed en mass to government schools throughout the state (of Karnataka, not Vermont, actually this video will never be distributed to any school for academic use).  It's a lot of pressure, and everything must comply to the government mandated curriculum.  It also took us a good three days to create a five minute "okay" video.  Project 1947 produces videos that are approximately 20 minutes in length, four times as long and the one Navee and I made!  We actually did the majority of the editing and syncing while we were working at home due to the bandh (transportation strike).  The strike only lasted for a day, and now everything is back to normal I think, except we are a day behind in our work, and since we don't have a set project yet, we are all getting a little bit nervous.  Alright, I had hoped that I could be more reflective today.  I even planned to recap for you all the seminar I went to this evening, but I'm just too tired.  I'm running around all day, and I'm just exhausted.  Tomorrow I will spend my time running necessary errands and applying for jobs.  Cheers to you all!  I'll have something better soon, I promise!!  If you have any questions, do not hesitate to leave them in the comments section of this post!  I love answering questions (and comments)!