La fin en vue [en]

On sait tous comment c’est. Le début des vacances, les jours s’étirent et le temps ralentit. Et soudain, on se retrouve presque à la veille de rentrer, un peu désorienté et dépaysé, à se demander si le monde normal de “à la maison” existe vraiment.

Demain, je rentre à Sonipat. Une nuit et un jour là-bas, puis direction Delhi pour prendre mon avion au milieu de la nuit, très tôt dimanche matin. Cela fait bien une semaine que je ne sais plus quel jour on est. On est jeudi, mais ça ne veut plus rien dire.

Juliette Armanet chante “c’est la fin” en boucle dans ma tête. Je pense à toutes les choses que je n’aurais pas faites durant mon séjour, tous ces possibles qui ne se sont pas réalisés, je m’exerce à “lâcher”. Des choses que je pensais ramener, bijoux, tissus, et autres peut-être, pour lesquels il me semble maintenant déraisonnable de fournir l’effort, au risque de regretter plus tard, de me dire “j’étais là, j’aurais quand même dû profiter”. Les habits que je voulais acheter avant-hier (ou était-ce hier?) et que j’ai remis au rayon car les cabines d’essayage n’avaient pas de lumière (nuit noire) et que ma capacité à communiquer avec le personnel du magasin n’a pas suffi à les faire marcher, ou apparaître, et après avoir attendu et attendu j’ai cru comprendre qu’à midi il y aurait la lumière, et je n’allais pas attendre là une heure dans ce magasin-fournaise alors que mon idée initiale était de rentrer dans le magasin, trouver 2-3 trucs, essayer, acheter, rentrer. J’accepte relativement bien tout ça.

Mais c’est la fin. Je ne l’ai pas vu venir. On est jeudi soir, dimanche matin je suis de retour à Lausanne, quelques heures de décalage horaire perdues en l’air entre Delhi et Zurich.

Me suis-je assez reposée? Ai-je assez récupéré? Y a-t-il un bilan à ces vacances qui ont démarré par un changement d’aiguillage assez brutal? Ai-je fait ce qu’il fallait? Vais-je revenir dans ce coin du monde un jour, ou est-ce que je quitte à tout jamais le Rajasthan, cette ville, ces gens? Vais-je réussir à ramener dans ma vie en Suisse un peu de ralentissement, de sérénité, d’équilibre? Non pas que j’idéalise mon temps ici, je ne veux pas croire ou faire croire que j’ai trouvé la paix et la sérénité ou un rythme de vie que je pense transposable en Suisse dans une vie professionnelle active, mais j’ai pu reprendre contact avec un certain goût du temps qui passe, du faire, de l’être, qui m’ont un peu manqué ces dernières années dans ma vie, et je rentre avec l’espoir de réussir à me servir un peu dans cette petite boîte à épices indienne que représente cette dizaine de jours à Nawalgarh, et aussi la crainte d’échouer complètement à cela.

Les phrases longues c’est pour vous montrer comment c’est dans ma tête.

J’ai peur d’arriver à la fin, alors que je suis déjà sur le seuil. La fin, comme la fin de la vie, c’est clore, c’est dire adieu à tous les potentiels, à tous les possibles. Quand on meurt, la somme de notre vie est faite. Elle est entière. Elle est comme elle est, ou plutôt a été. Il n’y a plus de marge de manoeuvre pour changer, pour être autre chose, faire autre chose, surprendre ou se surprendre, décevoir ou être déçu.

Loin de moi l’idée de mettre sur le même plan deux semaines de vacances et une vie qui s’achève, mais le mécanisme de clôture est là aussi. Tant que les vacances sont encore en cours, leur sens n’est pas complet. Elles peuvent encore apporter ceci ou cela, donner l’opportunité de faire, d’observer ou d’accomplir – de mettre du sens dans cette parenthèse au milieu de la vie ordinaire. Une fois que c’est fini, une fois dans l’avion du retour, l’histoire est écrite, la pièce est jouée, ce qui est fait est fait et ce qui n’est pas fait n’est pas fait. On peut tirer un bilan. On n’est plus dedans, on est dehors, à chercher à faire sens, peut-être, mais ça ce n’est plus du vivre, c’est de l’analyse, du commentaire, de l’interprétation, du discours sur. Un voyage qui se termine, c’est un espace qui se ferme. Un délai avant lequel il reste encore un peu de temps pour quelque chose, qui réveille désagréablement en moi ce sentiment d’urgence de vivre dont je parlais hier.

Comment faire, pour vivre ce jour qui vient comme s’il pouvait être suivi de tant d’autres, alors que je sais pertinemment que c’est le dernier? Aujourd’hui, alors que j’étais couchée sous mon ventilateur entre un repas et une sieste, j’écoutais un épisode du podcast The Pulse: How We Talk About Death. Il y a une histoire qui me prend à rebrousse-poil, mais qui me fascine aussi, parce que ça va tellement à l’encontre de mes croyances sur le monde que je me demande si je ne suis pas en train de rater quelque chose. Ce couple, dont l’un des deux est HIV+, qui se rencontrent dans les années 90, et vivent ensemble 30 ans sans jamais avoir les fameuses discussions sur la mort qui est à l’horizon, restant sciemment dans le déni en quelque sorte, et malgré les alertes, les hospitalisations, les “ça n’a pas passé loin”, continuent à vivre comme si cette épée de Damoclès n’était pas là – une formule qui leur a fort bien réussi, semble-t-il.

Alors, en continuant avec mon parallèle douteux entre les vacances et la vie, la fin du voyage et la mort, est-ce que j’arrive à vivre demain matin comme si je ne rentrais pas? A ne pas voir ce mur dans le temps devant moi, à me balader en ville comme si je pouvais y revenir demain? Est-ce souhaitable? Qu’est-ce qui me retient?

Je ne sais pas.

Still Having Adventures in India in 2023 [en]

[fr] En 2023, toujours des aventures en Inde!

When I first arrived in India in 1999, I quickly started writing up my “Adventures in India“, as I seemed to be having some. Nearly 25 years and a dozen visits later, it seems India still has it in her to provide me with adventures.

My plan for these precious two weeks of holidays was to meet up with one of my very best friends and head off for a good week of walking and road-tripping in Arunachal Pradesh, after a couple of days of shopping in Delhi. Everything organised, comfortable, a perfect holiday for two middle-aged women who needed one and were “so over” managing everything themselves.

Unfortunately, barely 24 hours after my arrival, my friend had to head off to the USA for a family emergency. I needed a different holiday plan. I reached out to everybody I could think of who might be able to help me improvise something. After considering a trek in Nepal (something I will definitely do on some other occasion), I realised that given the circumstances, I needed a slightly different holiday than what was originally planned.

I ended up heading to Rajasthan (5 hours away by car) to settle in Apani Dhani Eco-Lodge – a recommendation by a friend’s brother who runs an Indian-centred travel agency in Lausanne. Apani Dhani reminded me a little of Hillview Farms where I spent so many lovely days in Mysore. They also had a little catalogue of activities you could choose for, and I figured that it would allow me to find the right balance of rest and activities. Also, I’d always wanted to go to Rajasthan.

So off I went, by car (not very economical but simplest and less stressful), heading into a rather rural area without a proper wardrobe (I’d left my Indian dresses in Switzerland given our programme), and realising that I had lost all sense of how much things are worth. My sense of money is stuck 20 years ago, and all my last visits (the last one was five years back) I have always been visiting friends or travelling with them, and not directly dealing that much with financial issues. Thankfully my friend’s husband quickly gave me some pointers regarding the cost of things and expected amounts for tips.

Upon my arrival, I was informed that there was another guest at the lodge (a larger party would be arriving a few days later). The other guest was a woman from… Lausanne! What a coincidence, I thought. But then, maybe she was also there through my friend’s brother’s travel agency – the owner of the lodge is a francophile so it makes sense that it would attract French-speaking visitors.

To my surprise, it turns out this other guest was an ex-colleague of mine from 20 years ago! She was also very familiar with India (more than me probably) and I really enjoyed our long conversations for the few days we were here together. After her departure, five French guests arrived: a couple who were visiting India for the first time, and a family (a mother and two daughters) who had spent two weeks in Ladakh followed by two weeks in Rajasthan, and were stopping here for a few days before going off their separate ways.

Talking to them, I realised how long it has been since I’ve come in contact with people who are discovering India, and how obvious some things are to me now that were not when I arrived. (I just read through the first chapter of my Indian logbook – gosh, what a trip down memory lane.) So, these last days I’ve been diving back into my experiences in this country and my understanding of it.

As far as activities go, I enjoyed a guided visit of the town of Nagalwarh and got a chance to visit two havelis – the traditional houses with two courtyards and striking painted frescoes. I also went out for a bicycle tour in the surrounding countryside. A punctured tyre gave me a chance to brush up on my Hindi by making conversation over a cup of chai with the daughter-in-law of my guide’s friend, as we stopped there to fix his bicycle. I also had a go at doing traditional tie-and-dye with the mother and her two daughters (we had quickly connected), and the next day we all went out to visit havelis in the neighbouring villages with a French-speaking guide. A great day out, but tiring!

As a new batch of travellers arrive tomorrow, I’m going to try and have a little more quiet time. I’ve taken quite a lot of bird photographs which I’m happily editing and cataloguing. I also want to take some time to write. And rest…

Ordinary India [en]

Last week’s Reply All was riveting. The second part was this week. You should listen. This post will spoil things if you haven’t. Trust me, you won’t regret the ride you’ll be taken on.

So, this story has something to do with India. My readers and friends know that I am quite familiar with the country. (A degree in Indian culture, rusty Hindi which was once functional, two years in the country end-to-end, one of which was in one stretch.)

While I was listening, something was niggling at me. And I finally managed to put my finger on it. See, one part of the story is Alex’s magnificent sleuthing, and diving into the underworld of scammers. But another part is… India.

I kept having the feeling that (no fault of Alex or the rest of the crew) bits and pieces of what was going on were getting lost in cultural translation. I got to see behaviours that I know to be usual or at least unsurprising through the eyes of somebody who is not familiar with Indian culture or India – and at times made to appear more significant than they seemed to me.

For example: guy from far out in another state goes to Delhi to try and make it in the city – perfectly plausible. Ends up doing some shady job: also not surprising. Not that many moral qualms? I’ve remarked previously (long looong ago on this blog) that Judeo-Christian culture has strongly embedded values of righteousness, fairness, and stuff we consider basic like “not lying” that is not necessarily present in a majorly Hindu-influenced culture. So, lying to somebody’s face? BSing like there is no tomorrow? Being completely impervious to confrontation, even when the facts are in front of your face? Not at all surprising. This is where our Western understanding of how relationships and individual psychology break down.

Inviting somebody you’ve never met (or barely know) to your house? Quite normal too, and, I’d like to add, particularly if they are foreign (mix of curiosity, sense of opportunity, and also simply duty to be a good host). Similarly, asking somebody “what’s your plan?” is a rather banal question (I always find the American “what’s up?” weird, in the same kind of way). Being stand-offish, not showing up, last-minute stuff, cancellations: just normal.

A few years ago, I noticed that the way I deal with this is I really slip into “Indian mode” when I’m in India. In “Indian mode”, I do not function the same way as in “Swiss mode” – at all. Things that annoy me in Switzerland do not annoy me in India. I do not want to do the same things. The way I approach planning (or lack of) my time is completely different. There is Swiss-Stephanie and there is India-Stephanie, and I have learned that one should not try and make plans for the other. Weird, huh?

Before I wrap up, I just want to make two things clear (because I can feel the comments coming):

  • I’m not criticising Reply All’s stellar job on this story. Just pointing out some minor points of frustration for me, which are only impacting me because I am way more familiar with India than most Westerners. And seizing the occasion to show how easy it is (and I’m sure I do it too!) to ascribe intentions or meaning of our own to words or actions that we don’t have the cultural framework to interpret more precisely.
  • I am not dissing India or Indian culture. I am describing some behaviours as they come across seen from here, and the cultural gap may mean they are seen negatively – just as some Western behaviours are perceived negatively when seen from India.

Read this article about the sleuthing on Ars Technica.
Read the AMA on Reddit.

Hello From Kolkata [en]

[fr] En Inde. Des trucs (très) en vrac. Un podcast en français dans les liens.

I’m in India. For a month.

I did it again: didn’t blog immediately about something I wanted to blog about (the rather frightful things I learned about the anti-GMO movement, if you want to know) because of the havoc it wreaked on my facebook wall when I started sharing what I was reading. And as I didn’t blog about that, I didn’t blog about the next thing. And the next.

Steph and Coco

And before I know it I’m leaving for India in two weeks, have students to teach and blogs to grade, and don’t know where to start to write a new blog post.

The weather in Kolkata is OK. The trip to come was exhausting: 20 hours for the flights, add on a bit before and after. I didn’t sleep on the Paris-Mumbai leg because it was “too early”, and spent my four hours of layover in Mumbai domestic airport in a right zombie state. Needless to say there is nowhere there to lie down or curl up, aside from the floor. I particularly appreciated having to go to the domestic airport for my Mumbai-Kolkata flight only to be ferried back to the international airport while boarding, because “Jet Airways flights all leave from the international airport”. But I laughed.

It was a pleasant trip overall. Nearly no queue at immigration. Pleasant interactions with people. And oh my, has Mumbai airport come a long way since my first arrival here over 16 years ago. It was… organized. I followed the signs, followed instructions, just went along with the flow. I’ve grown up too, I guess.

I slept over 12 hours last night. I can’t remember when I did that last. I walked less than 500 steps today, bed to couch and back. I’ve (re)connected with the family pets: Coco the African Grey Parrot, (ex-)Maus the chihuahua-papillon-jack-russel-staffie mix (I can never remember his new Indian name), and the remaining cat, which I’ve decided to call “Minette”, who “gave birth” to two empty amniotic sacs yesterday and is frantically meowing all over the place. Looking for non-existent kittens, or missing her brother, who escaped about a week ago? Hopefully she will calm down soon.

Maus and Minette

I plan to play about with Periscope while I’m here. Everyday life in India seems like a great opportunity to try out live interactive video. Do follow me if you don’t want to miss the fun.

Oh, and don’t panic about the whole “meat causes cancer” thing.

Some random things, listened to recently, and brought to the surface by conversations:

  • Making Sex Offenders Pay — And Pay And Pay And Pay (Freakonomics Radio)
  • Saïd, 10 ans après (Sur Les Docks) — an ex-con, 10 years after, and how hard reinsertion is, when you’re faced with the choice between sleeping outside, unable to get a job, and committing another offense so that you can go back to prison; extremely moving story
  • You Eat What You Are, Part I and Part II (Freakonomics Radio again)
  • When The Boats Arrive (Planet Money) — what happens to the economy when immigrants arrive? it grows, simply;  migrant workers need jobs, of course, but they also very quickly start spending, growing the economy and creating the need for more jobs; the number of available jobs at a given place is not a rigid fixed number

Yep, random, I warned you.

I can now do the Rubik’s cube and have installed Catan on my iDevices, if ever you want to play.

I’ve activated iCloud Photo Library even though I use Lightroom for my “serious” photos. Like the author of the article I just linked to, my iPhone almost never is connected to my Mac anymore. And the photos I need to illustrate blog posts are often photos I’ve just taken with my phone. I end up uploading them to Flickr through the app.

It seems the “photos ecosystem” is slowly getting there, but not quite yet. I’ve just spent a while hunting through my post archives, and I can’t believe I never wrote anything about using Google auto-backup for my photos. At some point I decided to go “all in”, subscribed to 1TB of Google storage, and uploaded my 10+ years of photos there. I loved how it intelligently organized my photos. Well, you know, all the stuff that Google Photos does.

Why am I using the past tense? Because of this: seems automatic upload of a whole bunch of RAW formats has quietly stopped. This is bad. Basically, this paid service is not doing what I chose it for anymore. I hope against reason this will be fixed, but I’m afraid I might be disappointed.

One thing I was not wild about with Google Photos was the inability to spot and process duplicates. And duplication of photos when sharing.

Flickr now has automatic upload and organising. Do I want to try that? Although I dump a lot of stuff in Flickr, I’ve been slack about processing and uploading photos lately. I’m hesitant. Do I want to drown my current albums and photostream in everything I snap? Almost tempted.

I think that’s enough random for now. It’s 10.30 pm and I’m starving, off to the kitchen.

Sleeping in India and Putting My Brain Straight [en]

[fr] Le silence nécessaire au sommeil, c'est il me semble quelque chose d'acquis. Un segment du podcast mentionné avant-hier parle de l'Inde... je ne pense pas que donner des boules quiès aux indiens améliorera vraiment leur qualité de sommeil. Et sinon, je continue avec intention à reprendre mon cerveau en main, y compris pour l'administratif et la compta!

After writing my post the day before yesterday, I listened to the end of the two-part series on sleep from Freakonomics Radio. I like Freakonomics because they go beyond the easy fluffy questions, and dig down to where things can be uncomfortably unclear. Maybe I should read the book.

Liseron coloré

Anyway. There was a segment on sleep in India (Chennai to be precise), and some of the comments stuck me as a little… ethnocentric and uncritical. Yes, India is noisy, definitely. And we westerners have trouble sleeping in the noise.  But remember that we have had to learn to sleep in the calm. The womb, where we all come from, is a noisy place. It is only with time that noise starts waking us up.

I remember hearing about the miller who will wake up when his mill stops (sound gives way to silence). More recently, I’m sure I read something about a study where they put volunteers in a terribly noisy sleep lab and kept their eyes open to flashing lights, and they fell asleep just fine. (Couldn’t dig it out, if you find it let me know.)

Many Indians, in my experience, have no trouble whatsoever sleeping in the noise. Some cannot sleep without the noise and wind of the fan whirring above their heads, even when it is cold. So, I’m not sure that providing Indians with earplugs will actually help them get better sleep.

Also, one thing that stuck me in India is that a bed is just “a place to sleep”. It seems to be less of a private, intimate place than in the West. In that respect, I’m not sure one should interpret people sleeping in weird places the same way one would here: maybe they’re just sleeping, and not “passed out from exhaustion”.

This Indian sleeping comment aside, I’ve been mulling over my efforts to get my brain back on track. One thing I didn’t mention in my last post was that I am trying to put more intention in things. If I realise I have forgotten something, I make an effort to recall it. I make an effort to be organised and not let things slip. I am making a conscious effort to get back on top of things, and it seems to be working.

Obviously it’s not enough to help me keep track of everything I’ve read, because I can’t seem to find the piece which talked about this guy who made a conscious effort to floss every day as an exercise in self-discipline. If you can’t get yourself to floss each day (less than a minute of your time!), how can you hope to stick to bigger things?

So, I’m flossing. These last two nights, I also went to bed with my phone on airplane mode and in the living-room — just me, the cats and my kindle. This morning, I didn’t touch my e-mail or social media until I had showered, had breakfast, and headed down to the office. Environment design

I’ve also decided to stop being flaky about certain things, in particular around admin and accounting. I have no love for either of them, and like to say that I am with financial stuff like some are with algebra: my brain just blacks out. Well, enough of that. It’s not rocket science. If I was capable of doing Fourier transforms at some point in my life, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to remember which papers I need to bring my accountant for my taxes and accounting each year. Hell, I’m even enjoying listening to Planet Money!

India, Women, Men [en]

[fr] Quelques réflexions sur l'Inde, les hommes, les femmes. Même si la situation est clairement différente d'ici, il est tout à fait possible de voyager en Inde en tant que femme sans que ce soit l'enfer.

I lived in India for nearly a year, and upon my subsequent visits there have tacked on another 7 months in the country over the last 13 years.

Traveler Candace shares her notes on travelling alone as a woman in India. Her article, a reaction to this very dark picture of Indian men written by an exchange student (do also read the counter-piece), made me want to share my experience as a woman in India too. And also because since the highly publicised 2012 rape in Delhi, people ask me: is it really that bad? what is it really like?

Well, honestly, I haven’t had any particularly bad experiences in India. Sure, people stare more in India. And when it’s men or teenage boys, it can be a bit unsettling. But look around — women and children stare too. We’re staring material. People are often genuinely curious about foreigners. Get over it.

I had one guy I didn’t know e-mail me for a “sex date”. A fellow traveller leaning in a little too close on a bus (I swapped places with my male companion). A furtive breast grope at a crowded new year’s party. A friend of mine had somebody mumble “are you interested in a fuck?” while she was hanging out in front of a shop — she had to make him repeat it three times before she understood, I think the guy was more mortified than she was. In one of the hotels I stayed at, the manager came to chat with me during dinner a little too often for my comfort. But maybe he was just honestly curious (I really don’t know).

Let’s put this in context, though: like most women, I get unwanted attention in the West too. See #shoutingback. So this is not limited to India. Now, true, despite all the kamasutra and tantra idealisations, India is more sexually repressed than Switzerland. And more male-dominated. And it’s big. So yes, there are creepy guys, and there are definitely issues that need to be addressed. And there is risk, too. The Delhi rape didn’t just come out of nowhere. Years ago I read Bitter Chocolate, a book on child sexual abuse in India, which is quite chilling.

All this doesn’t mean that each woman’s trip to India will necessarily turn into a horror story. It’s quite possible to spend time in India without feeling like a sexual object at every turn of street. Being “sensible” is a part of it, just like it is in the West.

I’m careful how I dress, knowing that as a white woman I’m likely to start off with higher “sex capital”, so in doubt I might dress a little more conservatively than my Indian peers. I use the ladies’ compartment in the Delhi metro, the ladies’ side of the bus when there is one, the ladies’ queue — specially if I’m unaccompanied. I don’t feel like I’m driven by fear: one part is “do as Romans do”, and the other is that it just makes things more relaxed and avoids potentially annoying situations.

In her article, Candace points out one piece of “advice” that was given out to students going to India: “don’t smile at people”. I spent most of my time in India glaring at people, to be honest. A few years ago, I realized I spent most of my time in Switzerland glaring at people. I started smiling more to people I didn’t know, and trying to approach strangers in a more friendly mode rather than defensive. It changes things.

Sure, a smile is an invitation to some kind of interaction. If you have huge boundary issues you might prefer to lock yourself up in a scowl to prevent anybody from approaching. Interaction can indeed lead to unwanted attention, but it can also lead to friendly interaction. My life in India was (and is) filled with friendly men, and yes, having friends is something that will increase your safety — and your feeling of safety. For example, I travelled all the way to Chennai in sleeper class with my friend Shinde, something I would not have done on my own.

So, here’s a quick selection of some Indian men I met along the way.

Shinde and his wife Nisha, whom I stay with when I go back to Pune:

20040201_eating_out8_2

Madhav, who helped me find hotels to stay at when I kicked myself out of my pay-guest place, and remained a close friend for many years:

20040201_tennis13_2

Mithun and his family, who helped me out when I arrived in India, hosted me and helped me find a flat so many years ago:

Pune 125 me and Mithun's family

The “Delhi Boys” plus my host Sunesh’s family in Kerala:

Goodbye Family Pics Karivellur 14.jpg

Satisha, one of the helpful staff at Hillview Farms:

People of Hillview Farms 42.jpg

Thanks to Claude for sharing the article that got me started on The Life Nomadic.

Off to India [en]

[fr] Départ pour l'Inde. Programme.

My bags are packed, all is set, the plane takes off at 8.50am tomorrow morning.

The Painter of Signs

Why India? The short answer is that I have lived there, have friends there, enjoy the food and the place. And like a sunny warm break in winter. And a good break in my working year — no e-mails for me during my trip.

What’s the plan?

  • Pune (25.12-02.01)
  • Madgaon (Goa) where I’ll be going back to Arco Iris (03.01-06.01)
  • Kannur (Kerala, 06.01-09.01)
  • Mysore, back to Hillview Farms of course (09.01-15.01)
  • Bangalore for a couple of days with Anita (15.01-18.01)
  • Kolkata (18.01-01.02)

Off I go!

Vacances annuelles de Noël à mi-février [fr]

[en] Annual vacation coming up, from Christmas to mid-February.

Ceux d’entre vous qui me connaissent le savent: je prends depuis quelques années un “gros break” en hiver. Ça me permet de me ressourcer pour être plus productive et créative le reste de l’année. Et ça m’évite aussi de passer un mois de janvier en Suisse à déprimer dans la grisaille.

Concrètement, cela signifie que je ferme boutique entre Noël et mi-février — je reprends après la conférence Lift, qui a lieu du 6 au 8 février.

Je vais consacrer les deux semaines qui restent avant Noël à mettre de l’ordre dans les divers dossiers en cours. Certains d’entre vous attendent des réponses à des e-mails, et vous devriez les avoir d’ici là. Pour tout ce qui peut attendre mon retour, on verra ça dans deux mois!

Here We Go Again [en]

[fr] Des nouvelles du front.

Here we go again. My last post dates back to November 19th. This would seem to say the after-effects of the Back to Blogging challenge were short-lived! Not quite, though, because I’m writing today, and nearly wrote Tuesday, and am still focused on writing shorter.

The week before last was module 2 of the course on social media and online communities that I direct at SAWI. That means 4 days in the classroom, although I’m not teaching all the time (about two-thirds of the time I’m watching somebody else teach, and learning stuff!), with a conference and networking event by Rezonance on the Thursday night. (Needless to say I had other stuff going on the other evenings.)

The module went great, I was very happy — and from what I heard the students were too — but it was utterly exhausting.

Early this week I finally managed to extract myself from the nightmare of dealing with IRCTC Customer “care”. This is the blog post I started writing, and might finish at some point. Endless to-and-fro e-mails, disastrous user experience, crappy website, ridiculous security rules… I’ll spare you the details for the moment. Weeks of frustration were suddenly solved when I accepted I would get nowhere through official channels. An Indian phone number from a friend in Delhi and a few confirmation codes by IM later, I was finally booking train tickets for my January holiday.

I’m heading to Paris tomorrow for LeWeb, like each year. I’m looking forward to it! Maybe tomorrow or later today I’ll write a post on how to pitch me (or how not to pitch me). Short version? Do your homework. Know that I’m not interested in breaking news. I like cool new toys but what is cool for you is not necessarily cool for me. The main thing that interest me? People. What I’ll do for a friend, I won’t for a stranger. My contact page is harsh, but still stands.

Other than that I’m having some drama with the cats and the concierge. Three cats in my building go out. Tounsi, Quintus, and my neighbour’s Salem. (All the others are indoor cats.) One or more cats are spraying in the corridor. We don’t know who it is. All three cats know how to sneak into the building in between somebody’s feet when they walk in. So there are regularly cats hanging out in the corridor. I clean any markings I find with water, but unfortunately they leave stains (attack the flooring?). So my concierge is asking me to “make an effort” but won’t tell me exactly which effort I’m supposed to make (yeah, prevent my cats from being in the corridor; I’m already doing that).

 

Amit Gupta Needs You, and Other South Asians Too (Join the Marrow Registry!) [en]

[fr] Amit Gupta, celui qui a démarré Jelly et Photojojo (entre autres), court le risque de mourir de leucémie aiguë s'il ne trouve pas un donneur de cellules souches du sang. La chance de trouver un donneur pour quelqu'un d'Asie du Sud est très faible -- c'est pourquoi l'entourage d'Amit (et tout internet s'y met) remue ciel et terre pour encourager un maximum de personnes du même groupe ethnique de s'enregistrer comme donneurs.

I should have blogged about this weeks ago. I’ve been anxiously watching the countdown of the time that was left to find a bone marrow donor for Amit Gupta.

I’ve been checking Facebook and Twitter in the hope that I would see good news announced.

The countdown now says 0.

Amit Gupta Needs You!

It doesn’t mean it’s too late, but it means that if there is no good enough donor amongst the people currently in the registry, Amit will have to take his chances with extra rounds of chemo (with possibly lasting damage) to survive the acute leukemia he was diagnosed with only mid-September.

If caucasians have a roughly 90% chance of finding a matching donor should they need one, chances are much slimmer if you’re South Asian (1 chance in 20’000 of finding an exact match). The reasons, it seems:

  • the huge variety of HLA profiles (a set of genes) amongst South Asians
  • a general reluctance to register and if matched, to donate (50% or more of South Asians back out once matched).

Heck, if the Ugly Indian can keep a street clean in Bangalore, can he not join a marrow registry and possibly save a life?

I have to say that when I first heard that Amit needed a marrow donation, I imagined the procedure was something like a spinal tap. It isn’t. The donor’s stem cells are usually taken from the blood stream directly, or if needed from the hip or pelvis, not the spine. All in all, the procedure is close to giving blood. Not a huge deal, to be honest.

Team Gupta’s next move, Clark tells Wired.com, is to make sure people are aware of how simple and painless the donation process is. Marrow is extracted from the arm and generally takes six hours or so. The procedure is about as invasive as donating blood — it just takes longer.

And to join the registry, all you need to do is send back a cheek swab. It’s really easy.

Here’s how to help if you live in India.

Even if you’re not a match for Amit, you might be a match for somebody else whose life depends upon a bone marrow donation.

As for me, well, there’s little chance I may be a match for Amit (obviously). I looked up the Swiss Marrow Registry to sign up, and was quite disappointed to see that my heart operation seemed to rule me out. I checked with them, though, and it’s on a case-by-case basis. In my case, there’s happily no reason to rule me out on the basis of the operation I had over 30 years ago.

So, who is this Amit? I don’t really know him, though I had a couple of e-mail exchanges with him when I started the eclau Jelly. Yup, he’s behind that. And he also started Photojojo, which you should definitely join if you’re into photography.

But this goes beyond Amit: it’s an issue for the whole South Asian community. If you are South Asian, in India or elsewhere, please do see what you can do to help.