In Which Virginia Leaves the Apartment and I Neglect to Beat Her

When we moved into our apartment, the landlord only gave us one key. Maybe he expected Virginia to stay put. On a related note, I just read a paper about gender politics in Tamil Nadu, where 30.7% of female respondents stated that a man is justified in beating his wife if she leaves the home without telling him where she is going. In any case, VA doesn't fit into this 30.7%, and I don't beat, justified or not, so we needed an extra key. I asked my buddy to look around.

Literacy Compaign

Triumph! Jeff and I finally bought produce yesterday! We've been subsisting on restaurant food, pasta and Maggi Noodles (basically Indian Top Ramen, which we're very grateful is vegetarian). Last night, we had steamed potatoes and carrots and truly fantastic mango and banana smoothies. Partially because we're cowards and partially because we have legitimate cause, we didn't try approaching our local vegetable and fruit sellers until we had someone who spoke Hindi with us to negotiate prices.

Arakshit

I’ve spent the last two days at a government office, gathering data on reservation status of mukhiyas in Bihar. I will likely spend the next eight days there as well. This is because the data I need is in hard copy, and so I need to enter it all into Excel spreadsheets. It is a bit challenging since the files are disorganized and the handwriting on them ranges from beautiful Devanagari to illegible scrawl, as if the scribes were not all that happy about reversing decades of political discrimination against women. 

Creamy Layer

So, we're beginning to settle into our "empire" - that's what one of our P.I.'s (principal investigator, aka boss) called our apartment, and it's a fair assessment since it's palatial in comparison to typical R.A. housing and most of Patna. As you can imagine, there have been a few humorous hiccups. And now that my mother is headed back to Oakland, we're just going to have to figure them out ourselves…

Last night was our first night in our apartment, and we were very excited to settle in. We arrived at about 11:30pm (dinner is typically around 8 or 9pm around here) to discover that there was no electricity in the building and the generator wasn't working. Surprise! Luckily I knew where I'd stashed a headlamp, so we fumbled through the apartment to our pile of bags and hurray! Light! Unfortunately, no electricity meant no ceiling fans, and it was 30,000 degrees Celsius in our apartment - definitely not conducive to sleep.

Luckily, Jeff is a very curious fellow. We discovered, to our complete mystification, that in fact even without the generator, three outlets in our apartment worked: the plug for the fridge, the light in the Indian-style bathroom, and one other plug in the kitchen. Don't ask me why. We discovered this by running around with our one headlamp (and a cell phone) flipping switches and plugging things into sockets to see what worked.

Also luckily, Jeff is a very creative fellow. Realizing that we really needed to leave the fridge plugged in, Jeff dragged our standing fan into the kitchen and plugged it into the one other functional socket. Then he stretched the fan as far away as the cord allowed, and set our guest cot* directly in front of it (basically at the door, in the hallway in front of the kitchen). Then we collapsed onto it and tried to position ourselves on the cramped cot so that we got the maximum exposure to the fan without knocking each other off. And even though it wasn't the best sleep I've ever had, we were so happy to have that fan.

[*Our guest cot is a wooden board nailed to a metal frame that lifts it off the ground, with a 2" foam "mattress" placed on top of it.]

Unluckily, Jeff and I invoked the cardinal rule of "if you assume, you make an a** out of you and me." Knowing that the electricity was down, Jeff and I didn't even consider testing the A/C window unit to see if it was working. We woke up this morning and the power was still out, and for whatever reason I ambled over to the A/C and viola! Power. So last night, we could have slept blissfully in our real bed, in a cool(er) room, without the need for all that fanfare. Alas.

It is now Day 2 in the apartment, and since most of our P.I.'s left Patna today, we were on our own for dinner. Thankfully, mom had stocked our kitchen full of basic staples, so Jeff and I decided to start nice and easy with the very simple pasta + Ragu sauce meal. Of course, things are more complicated here so while that kind of "dinner" would require zero thought back in Cambridge, MA, it was a bit of an ordeal here. For starters, I haven't used a gas range on a regular basis since high school (and Jeff's never really used one), and I had fancy things like automatic starters and a gas line. Here, we have a propane tank connected to our little two-burner stove perched on the counter (see below):

In order to use the stove, you need to flip a switch on the propane tank and then briskly light a match, turn the stove on and light the gas. This is not a simple maneuver. I had heard of this special trick for lighting gas ranges in the magazine Real Simple, where you light a piece of long, straight pasta with a match and then use that to light your gas range, which gives you a bit more of a safe distance. But alas, apparently Indian  pasta is insufficiently flammable. So I leaned as far away from the stove as I could, with Jeff grimacing in the doorway, and was delighted when the stove lighted after only a few tries. I celebrated a bit, and then realized that I had been so focused on lighting the stove that I forgot to prep the water, so I grabbed a pot and plunked it on the stove with some water. Once it approached boiling, I realized a few key things I had neglected in my haste:

1. The pot was nearly full of water, and boiling water takes up more space than non-boiling water.
2. I wanted to add pasta, which takes up additional space.
3. I had plopped the pot down on the burner in an unstable position, so the now-boiling pot was slightly rocking back and forth.

So I basically backed as far away from the stove as I could while still being able to be considered as interacting with it, and crossed my fingers.

And as you can see below, everything worked out just fine!

P.S. The title to this post comes from the official Government of India website, which uses the term "Creamy Layer" to describe the uppermost castes (la crème de la crème?) in a compilation of demographic data. Totally bizarre.

Paranoia Undergarments

In the past three days, we have essentially stocked our apartment, in a flurry of activity before most of our professors (i.e. bosses) arrive on Thursday. I'm sitting here in the common space of our new apartment while two guys build our bed and dresser (no IKEA here…).  We got some really great stuff, some of it way nicer than we had in Cambridge. There were some things that are a little different here, as you might expect. For one, people don't appear to have ovens. Instead, they have convection ovens that look like microwaves (basically, microwave-sized real ovens). Which is AWESOME. This means that when we cook stuff in the microwave, we are actually cooking it, not turning it into gooey, spongy, post-microwave blobs. However, it also means that when I bake cookies (which I obviously plan on doing soon), I'll have to bake four at a time.

We also have all the normal stuff - fridge, blender, table and chairs, living room couch, bed, dresser, etc. An astonishing amount of stuff to buy in just three days. As soon as we've got it all in place (and I remember to bring my camera), I'll definitely take some photos.

I just spent the past 45 minutes reading through the "India's No. 1? Washing Machine" manual, which was unbelievably detailed.  Unlike in the U.S., washing machines are extremely customizable, so you can determine the temperature, water level, etc. to a much greater degree of specificity. I think that our washing machine may be a bit snazzier than most, because the manual made a great to-do of the "washing algorithm" which controls the relationship between the water level and temperature. I'm not always 100% clear on the nature of this algorithm, however, and apparently neither were the manual writers, who inform us that: "The standard detected by the sensor changing the algorithm is set by the normal standard. It may not be the same to the washing habit of a specific user. So, it does not matter that the user uses it according to his/her washing habit."

Also, the standard wash cycle here is called "fuzzy" (they have an additional setting called "smart cleaning" which apparently is not the customary option…). One other difference is that included with our machine was an "anti-rat cover." I'm a little perplexed why we only had to install that on our washing machine, not our fridge, which presumably would be of greater interest to a rat.  I shudder to think what a rat would make of an operational washing machine.

But before I could have the luxury of carefully reading through the abundance of owners manuals that we now possess, we had to actually buy our stuff and get it into the apartment. Which has basically meant dragging Prabhat and his lovely wife Rim Jhim all over Patna with us to buy nearly everything we need. Of course, we probably could have found all of this on our own, eventually, but they are tough negotiators and we have benefitted so much both from their recommendations of which stores to go to and their expertise with haggling.

Since we finally have the keys to our apartment (!), however, we got a jump-start on the morning by heading to the Mega Mart that Jeff and I found (the one Walmart-type place we've discovered in Patna) and bought a zillion little things (dish scrubbers, mops, soap, etc.) that ending up filling two carts. Now, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do in the U.S. when you hit up the BB&B (Bed Bath and Beyond, to those of you who need translating) and then cruise back to the parking lot where you've parked your sparkling Prius. However, we bought an absolute ton of stuff, without really paying attention to the fact that because we went without Prabhat or Rim Jhim, we didn't have access to a car. So we got out on the street and tried to beg a few auto drivers to take us, but they clearly thought we were too much trouble. A number of cycle rickshaw drivers had approached us early on, but Jeff and I were both highly skeptical that a rickshaw driver could handle the amount of crap that we'd bought, in addition to us. Finally, though, we gave in, and jumped into three rickshaws (one for each of us - me, Jeff and mom) and stuffed the bags in next to us. And then rode for 4ish kilometers with our bodies in weird, strained positions so that we could hold the bags in place and not fall off into the street. How I wish that we'd had the camera with us, because we looked quite a sight.

Oh, and the title of this post is the name of a prominent company that sells stuff at the Mega Mart, which sells both underwear (which we didn't get) and kitchen towels (which we bought 20 of). Not my choice for a family-friend brand name.

So we did eventually unload all of our bags from the rickshaws and headed up to the apartment to clean for a few hours before we met up with Rim Jhim. There's still a lot more to do, but we did clean some windows, counters and walls. Much to our surprise, however, it turns out that the paint rubs off with even the slightest contact with water. So we have to be really careful to keep the windows closed when it rains (remember, it is the monsoon season), or else all the paint will run down to the floor.

After spending so much time and effort acquiring and moving into our new place, it's a bit of a shock to realize that the rest of our bosses will be here in two days for a very intense 5 day period of meetings and field visits. It's a bit of a relief that we'll already have established our base here, so that when my mom leaves (on Saturday), and kicks us out of her hotel, we won't be scrambling for a place to stay, in addition to all of our JPAL responsibilities.

Tomorrow early morning, Jeff and I are going with one of our professors who's already here to a neighboring district to meet with the District Magistrate. We've done a smattering of JPAL work here and there, but tomorrow will be our first really full day (it's about a 4-6hr drive each way to Gopalganj). That should be really cool - we'll get his perspective on the political structure in Bihar, and hopefully meet a few other kinds of officials as well. Jeff arranged for a driver and translator, so keep your fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly!

Tamil Nadu Small and Tiny Industries Association

This past week has been a flurry of activity and inactivity. Some highlights (in rough chronological order):

- Meeting up with Jeff's uncle in Chennai (he lives in a different part of Tamil Nadu). We went to a very popular coffee shop chain called "Cafe Coffee Day" - so it was three Jeff's (Jeff Weaver also joined us), two Jeff McManuses (Jeff is named after his uncle) and 2.5 McManuses (since I was reminded I'm partway there).

- Going to church with Jeff's uncle. Definitely an experience. Probably 2-3,000 people there, and the sermon was given by the charismatic leader who heads up this evangelical movement in India (his father founded it). The sermon rambled a bit over the course of an hour + (it was pretty clear he didn't have prepared remarks). Choice moments include the statement "if you kill a monkey, be sure to run fast or a mob will kill you," and his condemnation of a hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. But the music was great (the boys lent me the songbook, the consolation prize since the church was gender segregated so I sat by myself. You can imagine how well I took to that).

- Meeting up with my mom in Chennai, getting to stay at her super posh hotel and use the fitness center (which apparently only Americans use, so said the guy who stood about two inches away from mom while she was on the treadmill, clearly convinced she would hurt herself).

- Having to repack a suitcase in the airport because when it was put on the scale to measure the weight, the scale read "ERROR." Apparently they aren't equipped for 45kg (100lb) bags. What a shocker. (I'd packed a duffle on the top of the suitcase in case we had any issues, so we just checked an extra bag). And before you judge me, remember that I'm going for the year and my mother is a doctor, so fully half of the suitcase is medicines (because of course I'll need three different kinds of splints...how I wish I was joking).

- Arriving in Patna and being driven from the hotel to the airport. Seeing hundreds and hundreds of men and a handful of women. My first thought was "Maybe there's some kind of event at 3pm on Tuesdays that's very popular with women." Of course, it's just that Patna (and Bihar) is much more conservative than Chennai, so while there are definitely women out and about, there are many, many more men doing so.

- Seeing cycle rickshaws for the first time! After two weeks of auto rickshaws (motorcycles with a cage-ish thing to sit in) blasting exhaust into the air and honking like crazy, it's wonderful to have mostly (maybe 65-35) cycle rickshaws (with super cute tinny little bells), about even numbers of motorcycles and bicycles, and some cars. Doesn't make the traffic calmer or much quieter, but it does make it less polluting. Plus, the cycle rickshaws have the coolest embroidery over the awning-like things that you can pull over your seat for a little shade.

Auto Rickshaw:                                                          



Cycle Rickshaw:
 
(P.S. my first attempt at including photos! apparently it works)

- After several days of worriedly trying to figure out how I would find an apartment with minimal Hindi and minimal knowledge of Patna, we were basically handed our apartment on a platter. We have been enormously lucky that an acquaintance of my mom's through work is a very generous and helpful man here in Patna, and he found us a fabulous apartment - three bedrooms, three porches! (oh the plants I will grow, with Allison's advice, of course), nice tile floors, a western style bathroom, a backup generator maintained by the building. Basically a dream. We don't really need three bedrooms, but there will be a ton of JPAL people in and out of Patna over the course of the next year, so we'll hopefully be able to make things more comfortable for folks visiting.

- Best of all, being joined in the apartment inspection by none other than Irfan Alam (http://www.worldandi.com/subscribers/feature_detail.asp?num=26743). He was looking at another unit in the building, and basically tagged along while we walked around our apartment. He's a friend of our acquaintance, and a really nice, funny guy. What a delight!

- Getting an Indian cell phone ("mobile" phone), which requires both buying a new cell phone and getting a sim card. As usual, we're blessed with incredibly helpful people in our life here in Patna, and Jeff's friend and project assistant from his time in Uttar Pradesh got us sim cards so our phones are functional. Hurray!

- Finally, pausing an episode of Numb3rs I was watching with my mom because of a loud commotion outside and discovering that our hotel was hosting a wedding. Of course, we didn't know that until much later. But we enjoyed the awesome procession around the big park in front of the hotel, and up to the hotel (but not so much the embers that landed on us from the ridiculously close fireworks). Not knowing that it was a wedding, we walked back up to the entrance of the hotel, and when a man offered me a plate of juices, I took one (why turn down free juice?). And we didn't really notice that we stumbled through a line of people at the entrance to the hotel, which mom realized this morning (to her horror) was the receiving line for the wedding. Yikes. So basically we trampled through someone's wedding, but can quite honestly write it off as "stupid Americans."

And weddings are definitely on my mind, since today is my and Jeff's pre-anniversary. Because one year from today, Jeff and I are getting married. And even though Jeff and I aren't together right now, we're both very excited!

Snakeguard Korma

First, some great news: We got our remaining two suitcases yesterday! Hurray! Of course, at some point in the process, the handles were broken off of both of our bags, so we're going to try to rig something so we can actually drag them around, but at this point, we are just so happy to have our stuff (intact! although covered in yummy smelling shampoo that popped open), that we honestly don't care. And we spent so many hours fighting with Virgin Atlantic and Jet Airways just to get the bags, I'm not sure we have much fight left in us over the condition of the bags...

Ok, so now that we've given you a bit of a sense of why we're here (and of course continue to ask for clarification and we'll provide it), let's go back to what we're doing. We arrived in Chennai last Tuesday night, and we stayed at a hostel affiliated with our work until Sunday-ish. Then on Sunday, Jeff and most of the other RA's left for the beach resort where we are right now, in Mahabalipuram. I came a day late because I needed to finish registering as an employed foreigner (a lengthy process).

And now we're here at the RA meet, and I'm writing from the most comfortable bed I will ever sleep on in India. The resort is amazing. Everyone had been hyping it so much that I thought I would have unreasonable expectations of its awesomeness, but it really is gorgeous - greenery everywhere, a huge pool, right near the beach, ridiculously sumptuous buffets and the most hypervigilant service I've ever seen - we routinely have to reassure the staff that no it's ok, we don't want a third scoop of ice cream… because we have ice cream for dessert at both lunch and dinner! And anyone who knows me knows how delighted this makes me.

As a sidenote: the ice cream issue is a funny one, since India has notoriously bad ice cream (when it's available at all). I was chatting with a guy who grew up in Delhi, but who had gone to the U.S. for a summer internship, and he asked me, all wide eyed, if I had heard of "Ben and Jerry" because he said it was the best thing he'd ever tasted and he would go to the grocery store just to buy some. Just imagine, for those of you who have had the fortune to taste Toscanini's or Grater's, what he would have thought! One of the other RA's in Patna informed me last night that there was this big news article because Patna just got Baskin Robbins, so perhaps there's some hope for me there….

But really, we're not here to eat ice cream. They have us working from 8am - 8pm, no joke, which is exhausting but also exciting, especially now that the sessions have begun to move away from the theoretical background of RCTs (Randomized Controlled Trials, what we do) and into more of the nitty gritty tips for how to run successful projects. We're also broken into groups of about 6, and each group is given a different real J-PAL project that we're supposed to design the sketch of an impact evaluation for. We meet for a few hours a day, and we're supposed to present our conclusions tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes :).

So who knew several months ago that I would now (mostly) know how to calculate statistical power? To be honest, as the material covered in the training moves closer to logistical management and planning, I'm feeling increasingly confident that I wasn't the "admissions mistake" - my brain went into overdrive when one of the presenters was talking about putting together a training for our survey teams (which apparently they don't have a handbook for yet in India, so that's something that probably a group of RA's will work on). Needless to say that it did not during our 4 hour session on statistical power, despite the awesomeness of the presenter.

And that's something else too - we are incredibly blessed in having an amazing executive staff. I haven't been naming any names because, while I know that only a few people will read this, all blogs are public documents (so I apologize if my stories sometimes sound vague or confusing!). But yeah, I could not be happier with the people that I'm working for, and I feel really comfortable going to any of them with questions or concerns, which is definitely not something to take for granted.

Oh and the title is the name of one of our dishes at lunch yesterday. It was actually pretty tasty, although lord only knows what was in it...