August 2008 Archives

You are given feedback forms everywhere you go, but it's actually in restaurants that they really do the hard sell. At my lunch yesterday, I didn't have a lot of time, so when they handed me the feedback survey, I just smiled vaguely. "Please, ma'am," the waiter said, shaking his head in a "we both know that it is necessary for you to fill out this form before you leave" sort of way. Once I paid, he refused to bring me my change until he saw me writing, which was a persuasive tactic.

So I filled out the form. Food, excellent. Service, excellent. Ambiance, good. I've heard that if you are too enthusiastic and mark everything excellent, you can have your feedback form returned to you and can be told that your feedback wasn't honest enough. It's a fine line, though. If you are too honest, the manager may come out and argue with you about the validity of your opinion. That dish, he might say, does not in the slightest resemble regurgitated mutton in either appearance or taste, in response to my comment "I prefer to be the first person to chew my lamb."

After I finally filled out the form in the hopes of getting my change, the waiter who had disappeared with it quickly returned and requested my "details." This is the information that most of the feedback forms request, in addition to your opinions: your full name, address, company that you work for, email address, mobile phone number, home phone number, work phone number, spouse's name, your birthday, your spouse's birthday and the date of your anniversary.

I had already learned the hard way, after a few too many Kingfishers, that giving the restaurant my email address results in a stilted and formally worded email thanking me for my patronage and hoping that I might consider having them cater any potential nuptials that I might be engaging in at any time in the future. My feedback, they tell me, "of great importance to us for improving our standards to serve you better." They wish me "warm culinary regards" before signing off.

"I don't want to leave my details," I explain.

"Please, ma'am." It's that same tone, the "we both know you must do this" tone. "You must at least give your name," he says, "my manager will be requiring this at the minimum."

I give my name, and thank the stars that I hadn't been on one of my feedback binges. At first, I found the forms supremely annoying, until I realized that this may be the first time in the history of the universe that anyone has actually showed any interest in my opinion on anything. Since then, I've been going to town on the feedback forms. At the outdoor market: did I feel that the ticket taker was courteous or not courteous? I put a check mark in the middle, and write "I would have appreciated a larger smile." I draw a smiley face as an example. How did I like the food? "I did not eat food here today, but your reputation for delicious snacks is well known." The landscaping? "Exquisite."

At the spa, they ask for your feedback. At the hotel checkout they ask for your feedback. At department stores they ask for your feedback. And although there are opportunities to make your feelings known in other countries, never are they quite so intense and enthusiastic about it. At the airport, there are kiosks that ask for your opinions. Even more surprisingly, I see people actually using them, typing in one character at a time on the touch screens as they wait for their 3am flights (which India has a lot of) eager to make their opinions heard.

At the conference I was at, there was a woman whose job it was to stand outside of a door next to a sign that said "Silence Please." This is all she did, all week. For forty hours a week, the woman stands next to a sign that says "Silence Please." But when passerbys ignored the signs and were talking so loudly that it was interfering with the conference, attendees had to go out of the presentation to the "Silence Please" sign outside the door and shush them. The woman standing next to the sign hadn't shushed them herself because that wasn't her job. Her job is just to stand there.

There are generally four people lounging in the six by eight foot break rooms "keeping then well stocked" at any given time, and when I walk past some of the unused meeting rooms I'll see a glitter in the darkness, the eyes of the cleaning people standing in the darkened rooms doing nothing. There are also people whose job it is to stand in the bathrooms. This is different than the people you may have seen in nightclubs elsewhere--the "blacks in the jacks" phenomenon--as they aren't standing there hoping for a tip, they are just standing there for the sheer love of being employed. In one bathroom I frequented, there was a woman who stands there all day and whose only job I could determine was to jump into each stall as soon as people had exited and to fold the top sheet of toilet paper into a triangle like in a hotel room. At the airport, there was a woman standing in the bathroom to hand me a paper towel. At the airport. And seriously, they don't even get tips--they are just trying to justify their employment, which is difficult, when six or seven people might be hired on any given shift to keep a single restroom clean.

You are not allowed to serve yourself anything at mealtime. Waiters must leave the dishes on the table, and then each time you have taken two bites, they come back to your table and heap two more bites worth back onto your plate. At any one time, there can be three or four people attempting to serve your table. This is especially exciting because most restaurants in this city seem to have themes of varying degrees and force their waitstaff to wear ridiculous costumes, many of which harken back to the days of British colonialism. It's actually rather stressful if they leave for too long, though. If you dare to pour yourself a glass of water--which you will need because the spice levels will abuse even a rather strong palate--this can cause a major uproar. If they see any movement of an arm stretching or something other than fork to mouth, three or four of them run back to the table as if you've just personally insulted them by pouring your own water. They make up for it by being even more insistently gracious and overbearing for the rest of the meal.

Today at the place I was having lunch, I was getting sort of irritated because I had asked for my check a few minutes earlier and it hadn't arrived yet. I had my driver--and yes, every Westerner in India has a driver, it seems--waiting for me downstairs and I didn't want to be rude. I counted 12 employees in my direct line of sight doing nothing while I waited. Seriously, it was actually 12, I'm not exaggerating. What could be the opportunity for insane levels of efficiency quite simply isn't. India is one of, if not the, most inefficient place I have ever been.

Whenever one asks a question, the response is generally a head bobble. It's sort of like a head shake, but going side to side. It most closely resembles one of the bobblehead dolls. The head bobble is an interesting and contagious way of saying "yes, no, or maybe." On occasion, I think it means "go fuck yourself." However, it's unclear as to the actual meaning because although it is the response to most questions, it is not usually backed up with any sort of concrete language.

Shopping in India, is sort of one of the worst things you can imagine. A great number of stores and shops are bargain-only sort of places. Because the general population sees all Westerners as walking wallets, they often quote prices three times what they are hoping to get, and then force you to argue your way down to a reasonable price, which usually takes at least 30 minutes. Since I spend most of my day arguing anyway, I do not relish doing it in my off-time. "Please, ma'am," they say beseechingly when I offer them a more reasonable price, although still within the range of allowing myself to get completely fleeced. I like to think that my job is to get them to lower the price by a few pennies so that I can feel that I've at least attempted and their job is to screw me over as much as possible. I got a spoon down from 110 rupees to 100, and I felt we had both succeeded.

When you walk into other stores that are fixed price, you generally have at least two men following you within 12 inches of your person. As someone who has serious boundaries issues, I found this excruciating. My only source of amusement was to stop short, or turn around quickly, so they'd run into each other or me, or have to take a quick 180 while still trying to seem casual. "Ma'am? Are you looking to do some shopping today?" I'm walking into a store, so yeah, duh. "Ma'am?" I also especially liked when these mustachioed young men insisted on pulling clothes from the racks to help suggest items I might like. "Ma'am? Very beautiful, 100% silk sari, very classic, very trending, large sizes, ma'am." Even in the airport, when I had a few thousand rupees in cash that I was desperate to get rid of, I wasn't able to spend it due to all of the overwhelming assistance.

In India, you must sign forms to show that you have signed other forms. You must have a special tag stamped and scanned for your purse to walk into the airport. I have had my boarding pass checked by at least eight attendants so far, and it's been stamped by three of them. What this is meant to prevent or ensure, I haven't a clue. Some attendants just like to look at the your boarding pass to see the stamps, but they don't do anything if the stamps are or aren't there. Their job is just to look.

You must have the wheel wells of your car checked with mirrors before you can drive into any number of areas, despite the fact that they don't check the insides of the cars.They are very enthusiastic about metal detectors in India. After one disembarks at the airports in India, you must go through a metal detector before being allowed to collect your baggage. This is India's way of saying that the screening done at whichever airport you started out at wasn't sufficient to meet India's high security standards. Once you have your luggage screened by a man that is actually facing away from the screen that shows the innards of your baggage, you go through the metal detector, which almost always beeps, and they let you though without saying a word. So the lines to deboard a plane are backed up by hundreds of sweaty people waiting to fail a metal detector test.

The malls and many stores also have metal detectors and to enter the airport, even if you've passed through the metal detector without incident, you still have to be given a pat-down in a special enclosed room by a woman in an official looking sari while another woman watches and while a man examines the tag that a man ten feet away put on my hand baggage. These tasks do not prevent crime, I suspect, but they do keep a large number of people employed. Which is good, I guess, because there are a lot of people around here.

"It's just," she said, wiping the tears from her eyes, "I can't imagine a person who would hate India more than you."

I'm interested to see how this trip pans out because I've not been particularly looking forward to my trip to India. I'm glad to get it out of the way because I think to be the sort of asshole I want to be in life, I have to have a large stack of Lonely Planets casually piled somewhere highly visible and to be able to drop references to 'my time in India' in irksome Berkeley cocktail parties. This necessitates some time in India, and I've decided to start with a week-long business trip.

If I had to stereotype--and god knows I don't have to, I just love to--I sort of like Indian women. Although it drives me berserk, I like the way they stare at me--it's so bold. I don't like the way their husbands stare at me, though. Their husbands, in fact, disgust me. I hate everything about their look. Their beer guts (or are they dal guts?), their mustaches, their hair that is too long and parted so intensely that the back is always out of place in a way that brings out my maternal urge to fix it while at the same time making me hate them for not taking care of themselves, their sandals, their young wives. But most of all, it's the stare. The stare is at once lascivious and condescending and freaks me out most considerably. I sort of feel this way about all men between the ages of 40 to 60, but the thing about Indian men is that they act and appear to be between the ages of 40 to 60 from about the age of 9 until 90. I'm fine with the very old and the very young of India.

However, I've been told that things like the stare are just a cultural difference. Cultural differences are things one needs to accept. In the leadup to this trip, I've tried very hard to not focus on things, or stereotypes, if you will, that irritate me. I want to be the sort of person that could bring up the possibility of going to India for six months without having anyone laugh.

But then I attempted to get an Indian visa. This took a few weeks, two hundred and three euro and three trips to the Indian Embassy. The Indian Embassy in Dublin is much like the disused teacher's lounge of an Indian elementary school. There's mismatched furniture, piles of Indian picture books, pamphlets on Indian teas and bulletin boards with aged notices about things long past. The Indian Embassy in Dublin is mostly empty when I visit.

They have a filing system that is interesting--it doesn't involve computers as you might expect, but consists of giant manila envelopes at least three feet long, each with a year written on them, piled on top of a bookshelf. I don't really understand why it is is so difficult and expensive to get a visa for India.

Most countries I don't have to get a visa for, or can get one issued upon arrival. Most countries are grateful to have me come spend money on worthless knickknacks, overpriced drinks and on duty free goods. Some countries, such as Turkey, wish they didn't need my money, so they let me get a visa at the airport but make me pay for it as a small sort of fuck you on arrival. The visa stamp even has the price printed on it, an entrance fee into the country. But Turkey only charged me fifteen euro on my last two visits which is a far cry from the two hundred and three euro that India demanded of me. I wasn't even allowed to pay in any normal fashion but had to get a postal money order as if India were some decrepit eBay seller that was unable to accept credit cards or other standard forms of currency.

India, I think, should be grateful to have me. We have a lot in common, me and India. We were both colonized the the same dickheads, right? We both still struggle with trying to stop ourselves from loving those dickheads and realizing that it's not really possible. We both speak English with slightly ridiculous accents. We both constantly struggle with disaster. We both love fancy words. But India is not grateful to have me, and instead wants to test my dedication to setting foot on its soil. My friend Pam planned a trip to India not long ago and was refused at the airport because, not knowing, she hadn't gotten a visa in advance. She was clearly not dedicated enough.

The first time I went to the embassy they told me to come back in 10 days. In the meantime, I got a typhoid shot and a lecture on cultural sensitivity. Two weeks later, I went back. "Leave your passport," they told me, "and come back tomorrow." I do not want to leave my passport in a place that considers manila envelopes an adequate means of organization. As an expat, one learns to hold onto their passport rather tightly, as losing it means being stranded in a foreign country and a lot of unpleasantness at the American Embassy.

But what can you say in the Indian Embassy after all? "No, sorry, you've given the impression of a complete lack of competence and no I will not leave my passport here."? Of course not. I hand over my passport, stomach in knots and after a surprisingly restful night, return to the embassy the next day.

"Who?" Shuffling of paper but giving no appearance of finding any particularly relevant paper or related paper. "Come back tomorrow." I cannot, I declare, come back tomorrow. I have a cab waiting for me outside. I'm heading for Cork that evening, which is a foreign country by all accounts, and I didn't want to leave my passport into this documents graveyeard for a weekend. This is my third trip to the Indian Embassy. I was told yesterday that it would be ready today. The man behind the desk gives me a condescending look as if all of this was somehow my fault.

"By whom?" a woman next to the desk asks. I begin to describe the woman that I had spoken to the day before, and then notice the woman in question trying to hide behind a manila envelope.

"Her," I declare. The woman, who was next to the desk and who is now at the desk since the condescending man wandered off after realizing that my case was not important enough to deal with, shoots the woman behind the envelope a death stare, and tells me to sit down and wait. I do, mindful of the taxi driver waiting for me outside, which I now realize was a bad idea.

Finally, I am handed my passport which now has a sticker with my details hand written in it. This is what I paid two hundred and three euro and waited nearly three weeks for. This hand-written sticker is not a tracking mechanism for some sort of larger immigration policy as I would expect, but is really just a little bit of a "You think you're so superior? Pony up and hold your horses. We're in charge now."

Have I ever posted some of the ways the Irish describe smells? My two favorites: whack and bang. I think I've mastered these terms enough to attempt to use them here. "Some bang of bootrot off that durian fruit cart, eh?" or "The whack of foot we got when walking past the durian cart nearly bowled me over, and I had to take a long drink out of my tea in a plastic bag to right myself."

It's my understanding that one can also use bang to as a "reminds me of" sort of expression. So you could say, when talking about Marilyn Manson, "sort of get a bang of Kev's best friend on the Wonder Years from yer man, there, eh?" Whack seems to be more literal--this is what that smells like, or that specific thing is emitting an odor, but bang can be used more creatively under the guise of describing a smell. "I'm getting a bang of sugarplum fairy off yer wan," for example.

Anyway, this city is one giant bang of durian. I've been wandering the streets like any one of the dozens of feral dogs I've seen searching for sustenance. "Same," I say, pointing to the styrofoam tray of dumplings the man in line in front of me has just ordered. "Same," the cart stand dumpling woman repeats back to me, pointing after the man who has paid 16 baht and is now wandering away, spearing dumplings with a skewer as he goes. I get the same dumplings, but when I hand over my 20 baht note, I'm greeted with a head shake. 32 baht. Not same. I got the round eye discount. On principle, I find this offensive but for 16 baht, or €0.32, I just don't have the heart to complain.

I've only eaten one meal indoors--the complimentary breakfast at my five star hotel--and it was the one time that my iron stomach threatened to somersault. I'm not usually the sort of girl that can be phased by 100 year egg congee, watermelon, sushi and pork floating in grease soup at 8 am. I sternly reminded myself of who I am, and hit the streets for some more satay, fish balls, noodles, dumplings, sausages and nary a vegetable to be seen.

I'm still flashpacking through Bangkok now. And they really do ping pong shows here, god love 'em. What I like about Thailand is that the Thai people seem very indifferent to me. I find this reassuring. I still have not recovered my trip from Rome where I was either given a freebie or sexually assaulted, depending on your outlook on these sorts of things. Thai men are mostly ignoring me, which I much prefer. The ladyboys, though, thank god, gave me all of the attention (and photo opportunities) that I desired, so I can't complain.

I can't decide if the word "flashpacking" really irks me or not--I just learned it today so it hasn't had time to settle in. I just read a thing about flashpacking, though, and it's sort of what I've been dreaming about and half-heartedly plotting for a while. (Check out this blog) Traveling like a backpacker, but with a computer, paying extra for single rooms or non-hostels, eating quality meals, that sort of buzz. Which is what I'm doing right now. I'm staying in a hostel but have paid for 2 to get my own room. Last night I was in a 5 star hotel. Since my meals are average about €2 per day, I think I can handle it.

I really want to stop working and go travel for a year. Finish the effing novel already. Write a new one, maybe. Eat street food all over the world. Finally go to Korea. But I'm not sure if I could cope with traveling for that long. In my heart, I think I might hate traveling. I don't like being uncomfortable or lonely or hungry or anxious or lost. These are all things that will probably happen if I try and travel for a year. So London is still in the running. Instead of backpacking, I transfer.

In Tokyo, everything was so expensive that it sort of forced me to keep myself in check. Street food isn't as popular there--more often than not the fast food is served out of actual establishments that are so small that only a few people can be in them at any one time.

There's a street that caters to businessmen on their way home from work who eat giant bowls of ramen standing up. It's next to the train station, and is called "piss alley" (check out these awesome pics), because the businessmen tend to get drunk and redfaced and urinate on a nearby wall before stumbling onto their trains.

We went there one night and had tiny (by Irish standards) beers and skewers of chicken, cooked on a grill right in front of us. Our host, Shinya, excitedly whispered to us that the proprietor of the place was Japanese mafia. The skewers of chicken were pretty intense--one was just chicken hearts. Another was just liver. When the skewer was presented to us that was just chicken cartilage, I declared that my mother would love the place. The next one was just chicken skin, and I declared that my father would love the place. If the beers were just a tad bit larger or came in a hat with funnels and straws, my entire family could have spent the rest of their lives there.

I was reminded of the Tokyo street scene tonight when I ventured out of my scandalously nice hotel and onto the streets of Bangkok. This is a city that takes their street food seriously. This is a city that I could reach a triple digit BMI in. They just park their carts anywhere and everywhere and start cooking. After wandering the streets, alone, jetlagged and sweaty, I finally worked up the nerve to stop at one of the bustling stalls filled with unidentifiable meats. I pointed vaguely at something and was served a plate of pork and chili and basil over rice. For 25 baht. Yes, friends, I just had dinner for €0.50.

I sat there and watched them cook for a while. My mother used to dream about setting up a roach coach. I think she worked it out of her system by cooking on a regular basis for the local homeless shelter, but after seeing the setup they have here (check these pics), I could almost imagine myself dumping my so-called career, investing in a few plastic tables and chairs and a large number of wooden skewers and getting down to business.