Art View

This is amazing.

Mike Fay flew over Africa at 500 feet and took 92,000 pictures. Michael, in film school and also a pilot told me about this.

He wants to convince policy makers to invest in natural resource management for the promotion of peace. Sounds odd? Perhaps not. He alleges that Dafur, Rwanda, and many other troubled areas in Africa have resource depletion as a hidden cause. Would convservation help preserve peace and prevent human rights abuses? Read the article here, or watch the really, really good and short video here.

I like to look a bit more in what he has done. And how he got here in life.

"Fay drummed up support from various sources—the Human Footprint lab at WCS, the WILD Foundation, the Bateleurs (an Africa-based organization of bush
pilots volunteering for conservation), and, as chief financial sponsor, the
National Geographic Society."

I find it interesting who he got involved... and the varied life stories of the people behind; the pilot slash optometrist and the Mario Scherer pilot slash Kosovo war crimes investegator.

"Fay arranged collaborations wherever possible with local conservationists, field
scientists, or national agencies, assisting them with their aerial-survey needs
as well as adding data to his own comprehensive trove."

I think in order to be successful anywhere, you must arrange collaborations.

Post your comments on what you think about this guy, his political ambitions, or the breathtaking pictures/videos.

Monday Dec. 19, 2005: I'm in the back seat of Hassan M Osman, driver 84334
of Karma Taxi Corp. Osman seems to have learned to drive from somewhere in
Asia. I got in the car and he clearly didn't know where to take me so he's
talking on his cell phone to some dispatcher. Then before I can settle in
we're weaving all across traffic and through pink lights, oops that was red,
and around and through all forms of other vehicles. I think he just checked
his text messages and email on his phone. And there goes another big red
light.

Thursday Dec. 22, 2005: I rode in another taxi. This time, he said he was up
driving since 6am, and had to get up again tomorrow to start at 6. (It was
currently 12am.) He had to pay his rent. Money was tight he said, so much
that he had to sell his medallion to get some eye surgery. I'm really
grateful for my education and possibilities in life. And I want to keep
working hard, he's doing it and so will I.

It was not long ago, 15 months or less, that I was bemoaning to all as a pledge in a cooperative house of the many chores I had to do. The sweeping, the dishes, the memorizing of names, girlfriends names, parents' names, home-towns, ages, and personal trivia, the organized functions...

So about a month into it last fall, I left the house, kept paying them rent, and got my own apartment. Then in the spring (when I finished job interviewing and ran out of excuses to waist so much money) I stopped the massive cashflow leak, put on a grimace, and moved back. It wasn't that bad. At first I was so pissed off for geting home at 11 from group projects, homework, and student organizations--only to find a heaping pile of 5 hour old crusty dishes from 45 guys, a dirty floor, and flour, sugar, fat and meat all over the kitchen. I put in the time cleaning this two hour mess, then did homework, and thrice weekly woke up early in the morning to work out with Jillian. Surprisingly, by the end of the semester, I strangely looked forward to the chores and brainless, but productive, hours involved.

I write this after moving out of that house, trekking over India with Jillian, moving to Minneapolis to work, then relocating to Chicago, and just capping off 140.5 hours of billable work since Dec. 1st. The funny thing is today--Friday--I got home relatively early (10:30pm) and just can't sleep. I'm too wound and post-stress-y to lay down. This is my free time, I want to sleep, but by golly I should relax some too! Not just drop in the bed unconscious. So I spent the last 45min taking out trash, bundling up garbage and doing dishes for my roommate and myself. It felt good. If I wasn't going to bed in a few minutes, I'd do laundry too, as it is a very important, but quite mindless chore.

Enjoyment is found, surprisingly, in completing the not-so-glamorous tasks in life. Some people could watch TV or movies, and in fact they may have more fun than I do with my garbage, dishes, and even laundry! But I don't have a TV, don't particularly want to watch movies more than every other month, and really feel good after getting chores like this done! (Another great one is paying bills. When I'm done gosh (!) I feel like I've finished something and it's great to know I saved and invested more than I spent for the month.) I think I might start reading a novel or two that I have on my bookshelf. I do quite enjoy reading, and non-fiction 24/7 isn't the best for my creative side. (After all, this blog is called Art View for a reason.) I'll blog too, if Jillian doesn't mind me flooding Art View with so many posts... (-;

Good night and may household chores find you great contentment and relaxation, Jonathan

Ever feel pressured with tight deadlines, but too much work to do? Maybe that's a really, really good thing if you're a creative person... hmmm.. http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/constraints_breed_breakthrough_creativity.php

37signals.com is a sweet blog to follow regarding design. Design. Lots of different kinds of design. And it's really cool stuff. Also they are a web development company that's releasing really cool stuff built on a framework called "ruby on rails." I met David a few weeks back at a rapid web development talk at Depaul and it was really cool! It'll be great to get some time from work to do some playing around with these new technologies! AJAX and more.

Also I just found (from the above blog) a podcast series about great entrepreneurs of the web. http://www.venturevoice.com/ That's what I want to be in 6-8 years!

I'm a thanker. And in 5th grade Mrs. Stoner would say I was an 'I'm sorry'-er cause I said that tri-syllabic phrase even when I was completely disinvolved in what I was sorry-ing myself to. But I posted this to thank Jillian, and I stopped my sorry-ing nonsense.

But thanking... now that's a present day priviledge I have, and exercise often.

Jillian, the self-admited spaz when learning new computer software, has actually brought alot of patience into my life. I've learned to be more patient and understanding when explaining things or trying to help her fix something that is broken--and should work, "now!" I really appreciate it. If I stay calm and confident that together we'll get things working, she ends up fixing it faster and with less pirate sounding, "arghhs." Here's to me learning more and more with you, Jillian.

-Jonathan

Have you heard about what the founder of MIT's Media Labs, Nicholas Negroponte, is now leading? A $100 laptop for children in developing countries. There are many stories on this and I won't go into detail other than saying it's lime green, hand crank powered, running FOSS, able to create a wifi mesh network with other laptops of its kind, and 100 million are planned to be distributed in a few years.

Might this technological invention have parallels to the 80's server and mainframe market? Peter Gordon from The Standard thinks so.

Good insight:

...the US$100 laptop is most definitely a computer project and it will be as
revolutionary as the original PC or the Internet, and for the same reasons.

The PC industry now exhibits many of the same problems that the mainframe
and mini-computer industry showed back about 1980: legacy designs, attempts to
maintain proprietary standards, slow-moving bureaucracies as much if not more
concerned with legal and political issues rather than innovation.

The PC brought simplicity back to computing: almost anyone could program them, almost
anyone could use them and almost anyone did. The initial versions of new
innovative software spreadsheets, operating systems, databases were often
written in a couple of weekends: many of the resulting companies or their
descendants are still with us, while many of the mini- and mainframe computer
companies have vanished.

I didn't live (with an adult brain) through the 80's enough to know the truth of that, but I do believe open source is going to be revolutionary, and education is the world's most powerful enabler for positive change.

A little too rosey:

The US$100 laptop will open the industry up once again, for three
reasons: first, there will be lots of them, perhaps as many if not more than all
other PCs put together, creating a tipping point for almost universal adoption
of the computer technology and, second, for open- source (i.e. non-commercial,
non- proprietary) software platforms.

Jillian's a whole bunch of miles away (mad props to the first person who googles and posts the distance in miles exactly from here to her home), and I've been helping her a bit to update her website. To that end, I've made a series of screencast how to videos for web technology that she can use to learn how to use stuff.

The descriptions are lite, but the content is pretty detailed. You will need a broadband connection to take full advantage of this. It covers dreamweaver, style sheets, and now embeding audio on webpages.

>> wow. Srah rocks! 382 miles.

Loved ones will know I've talked about the innovation and exciting startup companies in California for several years. And CA has alot going for it, last I heard it was the 5th largest economy in the world with a GDP that is 1/6th of the entire US GDP. (*see note)

Just before 10 tonight, in Chicago, I left from work a very tired and happy worker. I got some code to finally listen to me and do what I was telling it to do for 3 days, or 32 quasi-billable hours of work. This is always a good way to start the commute home. Plus I was going to get a cab, and be in bed in 30 min. Then I crunched my feet on 7 inches of fluffy, white snow that was at least 20 degrees warmer than the entire city was yesterday! This special treat appeared in the last few hours! It was 30 (deg. Farenheit), reflectively bright, crisp, fresh and downright playful outside. It was awesome!

I laughed with several other wannabe taxi passengers as none of us could hail a cab. I wandered around and found one who was stuck in the city the last 2 hours because the highway was practically closed down. He drove me to the train station, about 3 blocks and I wished him luck and gave him a big fat tip. I kept laughing about the nice, beautiful surprise outside and pretty soon a train arrived and wisked me towards home on rails above the snow. I walk and run and jump in the snow (in my dress clothes) and get home in total by quarter after 11.

California may be big and powerful, but tonight I really enjoyed snow that is definately not going to land there any time soon. The surprise weather made people so much more friendly, talking and laughing amongst each other about this unexpected dumping. The bus driver, taxi driver, and other people on the street (myself included) got a mental mindset vacation. If it's always 70 and sunny, I suspect that may be harder to come by.

Note. This article in the Onion: According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, California is an economic region with an annual gross domestic product of $1.36 trillion—an amount equal to one-sixth of the U.S.'s total gross national product. Considered internationally, California's GDP ranks fifth in the world, behind the U.S., Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

so monday as it was 9 degrees above zero, or 21 below freezing, or with windchill some dozen degrees under zero, or over 40 below freezing--i asked myself why in the world did i move north to chicago with lots of cold, wind and cold. And commute.

Tuesday a.m. I repeated the question for about 46 minutes.

But then each evening as I stay late at work for a push to get our project done on time -- i take a taxi home, and walk a block to my house. And get it all reimbursed. And that makes me feel special and somewhat important inside. a cheerful driver from some other country shuttling me around and keeping the cab warm.

well, i'm grinning now and need to relax to sleep. jonathan

Computer Associates' last month decided to sell Ingres (a database company with 10,000 customers) to two venture capitalists (see this sell Ingres article). Ingres has open sourced their product.

In a FOSS related comment (free open source software), the $10 billion database industry is dominated by 4 players: Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and Sybase. Says Terry Garnett, the acting CEO of Ingres, as well as being the managing partner of Garnett & Helfrich Capital:

The systems are proprietary and expensive and leave customers with
virtually no way to get out from under. Meanwhile, the companies supplying those database products are looking at approximately an 80% profit margin.

Open source software is here to stay, and it's definitely going to take some huge mammoth sized chomps into high profit margin commoditizing industries. A few more snippets:

Garnett plans to increase the current staff with at least 100 new hires
worldwide. Ingres now has the ability to sweeten the compensation programs with
Ingres stock, though it will be at least several years before those shares
become tradable.

What about open source database competitors, such as MySQL?
According to Garnett, MySQL does not represent a threat, for two reasons. First,
the Ingres customer is often a large transaction-oriented firm, such as those on
Wall Street, as opposed to being more query-oriented. Transactions are Ingres's
forte.

MySQL may have gotten in a bit of a bind on the transaction side.
Oracle recently bought InnoDB, the development company behind what many
developers consider to be one of the most crucial pieces of technology in
MySQL's 5.0 release. Although InnoDB is only one of several storage engines that
ship with MySQL, if you want to do transactions with MySQL, InnoDB is an
important option. Garnett was adamant that Ingres had full ownership and control
over all of its code.

In summary, Garnett's team appears to be well qualified
to take Ingres to the next level. His company has the financial resources to see
the program through over the long run. And remember, Computer Associates
converted its software to run on Ingres. While Garnett's group owns more than
50%, Garnett said that Computer Associates also owns a "substantial" piece of
the company and as such wants to see Garnett's plans come to fruition.

Source: http://software.itmanagersjournal.com/software/05/12/02/2055247.shtml?tid=28

There is an interesting videoconference on Broadband as an economic development by Steve Rosenbush, senior Writer at BusinessWeek Online engine. http://www.iian.ibeam.com/events/mcgr004/14273/index.jsp?autoLogin=false lets you log in. It should be free, although you may need to create an account.

Some interesting tidbits:
* The US has 94 telephone lines per 100 people.
* Developing countries may only have 5 lines per 100 people.
* A 1% increase in phone lines leads to a 3% increase in GDP
* Nov 2003: 35% of US internet users had high speed access, May 2004: 42%, Dec 2004: 50%, 2005: 53%+

Dr. John Rudledge of Rudlege Capital, LLC (Economic Advisor to Reagan and Bush) talks about what is broadband. He suggests it is a verb, not a noun. It means you're faster than everyone else. Once the "Pony Express" was broadband, now it is wireless and cable internet, for some it is optical fiber to the desktop. He continues, "I think of broadband as the Central Nervous System of the economy.... America is not competing for jobs, but capital. Capital makes you productive and allows you to earn a paycheck. We need to learn to compete for capital with other countries in the world who know the importance of telecom capital. ... China's current energy use 20 years in the future (with no conservation) uses more than total world production today. ... Because of that impending clash, they are shifting resources from oil and gas industries to IT growth [and efficiency.] ... The US is in 16th place in the world telecom speed tables.

Christina Heakart (?) is the Gen. Mgr. of Marketing for Microsoft TV. She points out that the entire broadband revolution is limited to people using PC's. It's helped businesses and homes (with PC's) into the digital age. In 5-10 years broadband will bring it to the TV. We will see the ignition of enormous new amounts of new commerce, new ways to communicate, unite community, and new content. ... Bring the TV in as a full citizen to the digital age. TV will become 2-way and no longer 1-way.

Leo Hinderly, Jr (Managing Partner of InterMedia) claims broadband is not available to all and is in fact discriminatory--favoring urban and wealthy areas; rare in rural and poor areas.

Once again, John Rudledge says there is not (or only recently) a broadband policy in the administration. Most pressure for reform has come out of congress. "5 years ago 40% of telecom equipment was made in the US, now it is down to 20%. R & D is going as well. Because the manufacturing factor is going, the intellectual aspect is getting more and more important. This year, China will make more engineers than America + Germany + Japan."

Christine advocates the free market to "wave it's invisible hand" that will allow economic models to emerge for the digital divide to reunite. Most people that are poor don't have PC's. They have TV's but not PC's. It doesn't matter if they have broadband in the home if they can't use it.

Then they go into a lengthy Q & A where I stopped watching. I'm tired and can use my sleep to arrive at work early and refreshed by 7. About Christine's point with poor not having PC's -- the open source community in Chicago has been working on creating free machines in exchange for volunteer hours building refurbished PC's out of donated hardware. I've been volunteering there, and I encourage you check out their website at www.freegeekchicago.org With some digging, you can even find some pictures of me, I suspect.

I'm going to start posting to this blog just for the sake of making blog entries, tracking things that I find interesting, and regurgating some information in the hope that it helps me remember and internalize more.

I'll probably make posts in international issues, technology, social trends, futurist ideas, and business. We'll all learn a whole bunch.

I invite you all to comment, and Jillian to post as well.

Sincerely, Jonathan

Below you will find an entry I recently submitted to the Road Trip Nation Grant Program.

Mandy,

Below you will find our grant application. I met with Brian McAllister at Purdue about two months ago. We both are very excitable people and as Jillian and I shared our ideas Brian inspired us to shoot video and track our international roadtrip to India in a blog. We did both and returned to America last week.

In short, we spent a month in southern India living with local people, interviewing NGO leaders, business outsourcing people, community developers, slum children, middle class children, street children, volunteers, a retired Indian couple, and a software developer. We both did interviews and we gave back to the community by using Jillian's artistic skills and we put on four art camps. I was in charge of setting up all our connections (via a month and a half of cold-emailing-calling), all technical stuff, and most of the video.

You've got to check out our blog to get an idea of what we did! See pictures and our raw, unadulterated thoughts: http://artview.blogspot.com.

Each team member's: name, info, and role on trip
#1: Jillian M. Longheier, Purdue Graduated with Masters in Art May 2005, she is the artist and a writer and photographer.
#2: Jonathan A. Wolter, jawolter@gmail.com, 765-532-6876, Purdue University BSIE May 2005 (engineering), coordinator, videographer, writer and guy who carries heavy bags.

Descriptive Name for roadtrip
Art View (India)
We are both creative people, Jillian is a bona-fide artist, so we are using our Artistic interests and skills to understand India from the viewpoints of children, business professionals, NGO leaders and retired people.

Destinations (approx.)
Chennai, India (Madras) May 11-18
Bangalore, India May 19-June 3
Chennai, India (Madras) June 4-8

Interviews (all were successfully completed)
Video Interview: Dr. Nirmal, founder of Exnora International, an NGO with several hundred thousand members focusing on environmental issues in India. He also is a speaker and international trainer on effectiveness and leadership. He has founded over two dozen organizations. He talked about keys to success and how he went from living in a slum to transforming thousands of lives. (www.exnora.org)

Video Interview: Krupa, co-founder of Sukrupa Community Development which feeds and teaches 300+ slum children a day. She was formerly a very successful international businesswoman, and she discusses the transition from a life of luxury to service (www.sukrupa.com)

Video Interview: Kamla Ravikumar, an artist and interior designer who formed an art institute in Chennai to meet a need left by the schools in teaching art instruction.

Video Interview: Fr. Cyriac Adayadiel, Director of Vocational Training at Bosco Mane, a residential home for street children. He formed this organization 25 years ago and it has helped thousands of boys from the street. He shared what made him successful, why he choose this over other careers and risks in going out on your own forming an NGO.

Video Interview: Ram Sinam, graphic design consultant. He formed his own design studio after graduating from the number one design school in India and discussed the journey of running his own company. Also he gave Jillian tips on entering the design field from her background of fine art, and he shared his ideas on "what is design."

Informal Interview over breakfast: Narayan Sethuramon, Managing Director W.S. Industries (India) LTD. (www.wsinsulators.com). He shared education in India, how he gives back to the community, and his experiences as a Purdue Alumni in India.

Informal Interview about outsourcing in India: Malati et. al. of Allsec Technologies, Ltd. a Business Process Outsourcing (call center) company.

Informal Interview: Vishal Talreja, managing trustee of Dream a Dream, an NGO that collaborates with other organizations to encourage children to accomplish their dreams, no matter what hardships they may face (www.dreamadream.org)

Informal Interview: Mr. and Mrs. Ramachanadran, our first host family that let us stay with them and absorb the culture of India. They are a retired couple and they discussed what transformations India has undergone as well as gave a wiser generation's perspective of India.

Informal Interview: Krishna Chandra, our second host who is a software professional. He discussed everything from the future of India to childhood education, to village life to the influence of the west. Also he shared with us how his life went from a mining engineering degree to IT and Software.

Video Interview: with an (unnamed) child who was a (forced) child laborer, but since has moved into Bosco Mane, a street-children's residential home. He now wants to become an Engineer and performs very well in school.

Many other video interviews were taken, we shot over 12 hours of video.

We also spent two days in a Yoga Ashram learning a great deal about "real yoga," not "Americanized-get-it-at-Wal-Mart-in-the-sporting-goods-isle" Yoga.

Purpose – Why do you need to hit the road? What do you hope to get out of it?
We had 4 reasons:
#1: The world is not like America--we needed to fully experience another culture, their value structures, and take their lessons back to our friends and family.
#2: Jillian just finished an art exhibition which focused on child and women human rights abuses in developing countries (including India). She had to go to the impoverished children and experience their stories first hand.
#3: Jonathan is intrigued with the economic and political transformations India is experiencing and wanted to talk to people first hand about what this third world country is undergoing. It seems that China gets most of the press about how it's the "factory of the world" and already graduates more engineers than America. The truth is that India is an established and stable democracy which is experiencing tremendous economic growth. How is that really transforming the poor and children... I had to know.
#4: This adventure combined all of our interests: video, art, teaching, business, cross-cultural experience and more.

Our (tight) budget
Airfare: US$ 1100 for Jillian, frequent flyer miles for Jonathan.
Lodging: US$ 340 total
Food: $6 per day * 32 days = US$190
Video Equipment (camera, wireless lav mic, lav mic, shotgun mic, wide angle lens, extra batteries, tapes, 160 Gb HD) $750

Do not hesitate to contact me with ANY questions or for more details. I look forward to your response.

Jonathan and Jillian

Well, I've been back in the U.S. for week now. India seems very far away. I expected to feel more of a culture shock when I got home, but it is barely there. I think spending over 36 hours within the confines of airports and airplanes desensitized the impact of switching environments. Nonetheless there are a few things I have noticed about the U.S. that I overlooked before. It's extremely clean, quiet, open, and peaceful. I drove across Illinois a couple days ago, and I was just amazed by the flat open fields- the yellow green meeting up with the blue sky was serene. The natural landscape in India (witnessed from the train) is much more rugged. The colors are also a bit more jarring. The dirt is a rusty colored and it is accompanied by its complementary color, the green of grass and trees. This Indian landscape gives me an emotional reaction I can't quite desribe, but I'll just say that it is quite different from the feelings I get when I see American midwestern farmland.

In his last blog, Jonathan mentioned the difference between traffic here and in India. I feel it too. I'm amazed at how behaved the drivers are. No one feels the need to honk their horn at anyone. Everyone stays within the lanes painted on the roads. The streets are far less crowded here with no random cows or pushcarts selling vegetables. I do have to admit that when I crossed the street yesterday I got a little confused as to which way I was supposed to look. I expected the cars to be driving on the left side of the street.

This is an open letter to my new Indian friend Krishna. He was soooo gracious to let us stay in his house for two weeks! (originally it was going to be only 2 days.)

Thanks so much for all of the time you spent with us, man I do miss India.. but it’s the most unexpected things that I miss.

Like the heat. (my apartment I’m staying in for my Target internship is quite cold, as is the 75 F temp out side). And the traffic. I keep wanting to Jwalk and cross through moving traffic because it seems so tame here. I tend to lose the other people I’m walking with, which doesn’t stop surprising me! I expect everyone to just walk through the street like in India. And the (good) food (that I liked), like yours! It was soo much fun, I’m looking for my next adventure now… so any suggestions are welcomed!

I think I’ll also look into the work experience opportunities a bit you mentioned… maybe in 4-5 years… I’ll be working in India...

Thanks Krishna!

I developed a very intellectual, but slightly inconvenient addiction while in India. There were so many great book stores (or street hawkers) selling books from extremely-way-too-cheap to good-deal-cheap. I bought a lot of books, maybe 45 books. Jillian got a few kilos as well.

I can’t wait to read them.

In fact I’ve started several. If it’s okay with Jillian I’ll post tidbits of what I learn up here to this blog. I’m reluctant to totally change the theme—but (hello!) I’m not in India and I will have a hard time getting the Art View of India for at least the near term while I’m in the US. And we’ve got soooo many loyal readers (hi Popsicle Pete!) I feel we just have to keep posting.

This is what I propose for the blog: “Art View (India).”

Jillian’s still an artist, and I’m a creative person… so that’s kinda related to art. We both create viewpoints on life, and interesting perspectives. So…. Let’s combine this to be a blog of the two of us as we (1) read our 50 kilos of books we bought, (2) reflect on the video post production, (3) ditto for the compilation and possible integration of the children’s artwork with Jillian’s future art, and (4) keep an open mind of how to add art perspectives by children in the US or other countries.

Going to India was an invaluable experience for my growth and development. I have traveled to the Amazon, Europe, out west and east in the states, Canada’s tundra, some Mexico and an Island in the Caribbean. However--I was young in those experiences, and I ended up learning more culturally than I ever expected.

The developing world has changed dramatically since last time I visited third world nations (~10 years back in South America.) When I was there, crowds would occasionally follow me because of my blonde hair and fair skin. I saw no TVs in rural villages, and a motorized boat was a rare occurrence. Even India’s slums we visited had many televisions and cable or satellite. And from what I was told, there is medium to high TV penetration in villages. People were more familiar with westerners (I suspect through TV) and no crowds followed me and touched my hair.

Most surprising to me is how India is similar to the west. Of the 100+ children we worked with, most smiled frequently, watched movies (many the same as we watch), played freely, laughed, ate enough food, and had experience with westerners before. This does not mean that there are children in India who suffer immensely. Many do, and we met a few who rose up from horrific pasts. What’s important to me is that it seems the country is moving forward and there are many NGO’s that truly care for kids and give them love, education, food, and encouragement that they may not get in traditional family structures.

Interestingly, many of the original big dreams I had of what the trip would turn into did not materialize. I wanted to film a gut wrenching documentary that would bring tears to any westerners’ eyes. I wanted to compile the artwork to publish a book to raise awareness of needs of Indian Children and sell for fundraising. I believe both of these ideas are still worthy to be done, but we did not film exclusively what was “gut wrenching.” Some shots may be touching, but in a whole this is a country with a solid democracy, free elections, a liberalizing economy, and (in my opinion) an extremely bright future.

Other dreams have materialized. I learned a lot about myself and my friend Jillian. This was hoped for. I saw many more of my own weaknesses and personal development areas I need to improve in that I ever expected. Also, I accept and appreciate more the country I live in—and cherish a common language. India has 84 different languages—not dialects but full fledged languages. I saw first hand the development in the “Silicon Valley of India,” Bangalore. Sitting down and reading the newspapers, magazines and talking to the locals we lived with gave me a huge insight into the country.

It was very good. It was very inexpensive to travel there. I encourage you to do your own travel into a third world nation, live with locals (minimize hotels), and soak it in deep.

So next time where do I want to go? Jillian accused me two weeks ago of already thinking of the next big thing—which may be either China, North India, Thailand, the Warsaw Pact nations, or a Spanish speaking country like Mexico or Costa Rica. The fact that Krishna whom we lived with is planning a budget bicycling and camping journey on the highest navigable road in the world (up in the Himalayas’ of northern India) and I’m invited is a very tempting idea.

The trip to and from India is complete. Well, almost.

I’m actually sitting in an airport terminal in Toronto typing away in Word because:
a) I accidentally pulled out the inflatable life raft and inflated it in the plane, which incidentally led to a lengthy reprimand by airport security missing my flight
b) Germany changed times on my flight to Toronto for no reason
c) I enjoy the airport lifestyle of not showering for 36 hours, toting around kilos of luggage, and running through terminals pretending to talk on my phone shouting “hold the plane” only to disappear around a corner and repeat it.
d) I was so busy coming up with pretend reasons why I missed a flight that I actually missed one.
It’s b. The flight was delayed 45 minutes and there wasn’t enough time to: deplane, go through customs, make declarations, duly fill paperwork, pick up everything at baggage claim, change terminals, re-enter customs for the US, check in myself and my bags for the connecting flight, and re-plane in 50 minutes. Do you like how I used “duly?” That’s a word I picked up in India.

I’ll wait for an hour and then go to Chicago and hopefully Jillian and our ride Lindsay and John will be there to pick me up still!