It’s been two weeks now that I have been in Pune and finally I am feeling a little more settled than the first week. I have to admit that I still feel somewhat tired and maybe that has something to do with the heat and humidity. Even though I get about seven hours of sleep a night, I don’t feel 100% energetic especially in the afternoon. After lunch at Vinaya’s place I feel so tired that I often do nothing other than resting underneath the fan in her house. This has been going on for two weeks now. It doesn’t sound much of an exciting vacation right? But hey, that’s the nitty-gritty reality of living in India for you. Having only traveled during the monsoon, I know it’s best just to stay indoors in the afternoon and not to go outside when it’s raining. The only time I venture outdoors is to go off for a swim in the morning from 8:30-10:30am and then walking back and forth from my place to Vinaya’s. Even then, you’ll be surprised to see how tan I’ve become and that’s only due to two hours of exposure in the Indian sun--thankfully it hasn’t been direct sunlight otherwise I guess I would have been baked beyond recognition.
Trip to India
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Fruits are my best friend in India
It’s been two weeks now that I have been in Pune and finally I am feeling a little more settled than the first week. I have to admit that I still feel somewhat tired and maybe that has something to do with the heat and humidity. Even though I get about seven hours of sleep a night, I don’t feel 100% energetic especially in the afternoon. After lunch at Vinaya’s place I feel so tired that I often do nothing other than resting underneath the fan in her house. This has been going on for two weeks now. It doesn’t sound much of an exciting vacation right? But hey, that’s the nitty-gritty reality of living in India for you. Having only traveled during the monsoon, I know it’s best just to stay indoors in the afternoon and not to go outside when it’s raining. The only time I venture outdoors is to go off for a swim in the morning from 8:30-10:30am and then walking back and forth from my place to Vinaya’s. Even then, you’ll be surprised to see how tan I’ve become and that’s only due to two hours of exposure in the Indian sun--thankfully it hasn’t been direct sunlight otherwise I guess I would have been baked beyond recognition.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Settling in Pune
It’s been just a little over a week that I have arrived in Pune and surprisingly it took me around five days to really get over my “jet lag.” I’m still getting up a little too early more than I would like to even though I usually go to bed by 10. Since I don’t have any pressing traveling plans this time around in Pune, I feel very free.
Vinaya with the help of some her of friends found me a very nice apartment which is about 10 minute walk from her place to mine. It is a lot quieter than her place. The apartment for three months rent cost me 33,000 rupees which is close to $600. And because India is truly a dusty country (I don’t know why), every morning when I get up around 6, I spend a good half-hour to an hour doing my laundry, sweeping, and mopping my place with an old dhoti that I have. It’s a good routine and I’ve been doing for a week now. Afterwards, I would have two alfonso mangoes and two bananas before I leave my place for Vinaya’s with my stuff, drop it off at her place, and go off for a swim at an Olympic size pool from 8:30am-10:30am. The pool is actually freaking awesome--outdoor, clean, and dirt cheap. I only pay 850 rupees for a monthly membership which is ~$15. The pool is actually quite clean now that I think about it even though at first I thought it was dirty, the visibility under water, however, is no more than five feet--not sure why that is so. My only pet peeve about swimming there is that from 8:30-9am it can get somewhat crowded and with no lane regulation, hitting people while swimming is a pretty common occurrence. But it really dies down from 9am-10:30 when kids go off to school and other people go off to work and so I have pretty much most of the pool all to myself. Time to learn how to do the butterfly stroke and be good at it during this two months that I will be swimming there.
After my swim, I head home to take a shower, eat another mango or so, and then head to Vinaya’s place again for a simple home-made but delicious lunch that she prepared in the morning before she go off on her morning walk. We generally have lunch at around 12:45. And since I was still too tired to do anything the first five days in Pune I rested after lunch. Vinaya also helped me sign up for a yoga class that is close to where she lives and I started a class on Friday evening from 7:15-8pm. The class will be Monday thru Friday in the evening. She also found me a philosophy teacher who I will probably take lessons from three to four times a week. I still want to learn Pali but unfortunately the teacher who was supposed to teach me is reluctant to because in the summer she is affiliated to this organization called AIIS (American Institute for Indian Studies) where scholars, and PhD students from America come to India for a period of three months to study Sanskrit or other Indian studies intensively. Vinaya on the other hand is reluctant to find me other teachers because she said that she doesn’t want people whose interest is only to make money from me which is true. I wouldn’t want any teachers whose intention is to cheat me. I’ve already had one the first time I traveled to India and I wouldn’t want to make that mistake again. However, I already told Vinaya that I will not wait three months for this Pali teacher to finish teaching at AIIS before she gets time to teach me. Living in India taught me NEVER to wait for anything. If I want something to be done I need to demand for it immediately otherwise nothing will ever get done. It’s just the way how Indians do things--of course it’s not very professional but what can you do. Vinaya knows that it would be a very big financial loss for this teacher if she loses me as a student because like Vinaya, this teacher doesn’t have a regular university position and so she has to depend on teaching privately. And Vinaya insists that this is the ONLY teacher that I should have for Pali because of her sincerity and knowledge.
I still need to figure out what I will be doing in the afternoon since I generally have that time free. In the eveing, Vinaya and her brother Amod do not eat dinner so I usually have to order a take out at some random restaurants. I need to find out more good places to eat since the dinner that I had yesterday was pretty crappy. Only in the morning am I really busy when I have to clean the apartment and go off for a swim. Otherwise life has been really good, eating good home-cook meals at Vinaya’s place and sometimes being invited to eat at other people’s house. That’s the one thing that I cherish the most, home cooked food, it is almost always better than the food found in restaurants.
Friday, June 7, 2013
continuation of Bangkok tales and off to India
We set out on Thursday to MBK mall (Mahboonkrong) in Bangkok and we both thought that we would have to search a lot to find an iphone 4s battery for Mako and a charger for me but surprisingly in that mall there was pretty much every electronic items that you can possibly want. It was like having an actual and physical ebay mall. It was so simple and straightforward, and since I thought Mako was in desperate need to get her battery, we bought it immediately at the first shop that had it without bargaining for a better price. Mako ended up paying 1000 baht which is about $33. For my charger, I got a better deal though. The person was nice enough to knock 250 baht for me. The longer I stay in Thailand, which is really not long enough, I really appreciate the Thai’s people hospitality. Thailand is such a beautiful country and I wish that Vietnam will someday be as developed as Bangkok. After a couple of hours of charging the phone and making sure that it was a battery problem, we settled for sushi at an all you can eat sushi buffet for 660 baht around $20 for the two of us. It was a bargain and it is the first time ever that I was completely stuff after eating sushi. In the late afternoon, we headed back to our guest house and worked on our blog at the restaurant where we were staying for the rest of the evening while I soaked in my last evening in Bangkok. Suprisingly taking a cab in Bangkok is not too expensive, a 15 to 20 min cab ride only costs around $3-4 dollars which puzzles me because I always thought that the price of gas always makes driving more of an expensive option.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Bangkok travels
The last two and a half days in Bangkok has been truly a wonderful experience as I got to hang out with Mako, my former philosopohy teacher twelve years ago when I was a student at city college. We shared many of our travels and it was delightful hearing many of her stories about India and all the other countries that she visited after her six months visa expired. Mako is one of the of the most resilient person that I know and despite seeing extreme poverty in India, she did not feel dismissive but felt completely at home. I have said earlier that India is really not for the faint of heart--the dirtiness found in this country of 1.2 billion people will shock and repulse western minds into disbelief. The spiritual India that I thought I would find on my first trip was displaced by the unspeakable suffering of an overpopulated country struggling for its daily existence. And being cheated on my second trip, I became extremely jaded with the people but despite all of the difficult experiences of the previous year my love for Sanskrit and Buddhism make me want to only come back for more. Among the people who’ve taken me for a fool, there are also a lot of good people here who have sincerely helped me. Not only have I grown mentally stronger, I know that I am extremely fortunate to have a Sanskrit teacher like Vinaya whose simple honesty will help me on my path to mastering this language.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Some observations of Vietnam
I’ve spent my last two days in Vietnam in Saigon swimming at a small 25m pool, and taking a stroll with my aunt and cousin at a lotus park close to where my hotel was. The last few days was also spent eating a ton of delicious food and figuring out what we’ll do when I come back in mid-August for my second stint of Vietnam before I fly back to SF. Vietnam is truly a robust country with plenty of developments happening. I hope that in a period of ten to twenty years the country will be even more developed like some of its Southeast Asian neighbors. There are two metropolis in Vietnam: Hanoi in the north and Saigon (i.e. Ho Chi Minh City) in the south. The streets to my surprise are very clean for big cities like this. While there is somewhat a lack of garbage cans, people put their garbage out responsibly and there are collectors who pick them up throughout the day. The only problem that I have seen so far is the amount of traffic in the city. There are too many two wheelers on the streets which can cause bad traffic congestion during rush hour. While the pollution is nothing compared to India or China, many Vietnamese are aware that they do not want to be breathing in fumes and so you will have a lot of people wearing face masks when they’re riding their scooters--personally, I’m not too sure how effective they are. Vietnam now is also building overpasses which I hope will alleviate the congestion. What I would like to see more are buses and investments in mass transmit.
As far as I know, the food is hygienic. Vietnamese for some reason are concerned where their food comes from and what kind of water they are drinking. My relatives are not a fan of the Chinese food industry and I don’t think that Vietnam import much food grown from China due to our fears that it might be contaminated. I read in the news a few months back that officials found 16,000 dead pigs in the Shanghai river and just a few weeks ago some people were arrested for lacing rat meat into pork to maximize their profits. Vietnamese are aware of all that, hence when I was in Vietnam I preferred to eat more of seafood than pork. In terms of water, we don’t have crazy water shortage like there is in India. I took at least six showers a day in order to cope with the high humidity--that’s a luxury that is not available at all when I stay in India. In many parts of Pune, water supply is cut off after 10 in the morning and will not come back again, and so most residents have to fill up a 20 gallon tub of water that will last them for the entire day.
Vietnamese people get their drinking water from 10 gallon bottles that are distributed from water companies, rarely will household use tap water due to the fear of contamination. Our rice fields and the green vegetables that Vietnamese grow abundantly and used in so many of our dishes are probably organic too. I guess it’s what you would expect from countries before the whole agro business industry that changed and distorted the mindset of people and their relationship to food. It was somewhat strange to see chickens ranging freely since I’ve been so accustomed to seeing them in cages in India. The chickens that I saw were small to medium sized and come in a variety of different colors and not the plump and sickly varieties that are all pale white found in India. But the one thing that I am concern about is the fact that we have too much pork in our diet and I didn’t see any free-ranging pigs--heck I didn’t see any pigs at all for that matter.
The one thing that I don’t like so much about Vietnam is the way how we construct our houses. I’m sure there are better ways to build houses so that it doesn’t trap the heat and make it feel completely stuffy and unbearable. The vast majority of the houses are build as if it is a slim tower with lots of depth, but lack all sense of spaciousness. It’s hard to describe the actual structure and to add insult to injury, Vietnamese are obsessed with building gates and fences as if robbers are going to break into their house and steal all their possessions. But I’ve seen some really beautiful mansions too, hopefully that will be a sign of what’s to come. I’m very excited about Vietnam’s potential in the future. On this trip to my homeland, I feel more connected to the country than I did last year. What ties me to the country is the shared language and the delicious food with its subtle differences in different parts of the country. People are friendly to each other but a little reserve when it comes to foreigners, unlike Thailand which is probably the friendliest country that I have been to. In many ways it was simply amusing to hear people making witty and sometimes sarcastic remarks about life and other people. It was such a relief to observe my countrymen taking a very light-hearted approach to living.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
First blog after many days...
I have had two Sanskrit classes with Vinaya so far since I came to Vietnam. I called her when I was at the airport in Tokyo and it was good to check in with each other. I’m very excited to finally get to see my teacher after nine months even though we see each other almost every day on Skype. I’m not entirely sure whether we’ll focus on a text but whatever it may be I know without a doubt that I will receive a first rate Sanskrit education from her. She’s been truly an incredible teacher and I feel extremely lucky to have her. Going to India to study Sanskrit, like any endeavors undertaken in India, is really sometimes a mixed bag. The first person who taught me Sanskrit in India completely ripped me off and taught me close to nothing. The second person was decent but nothing compared to Vinaya. She’s been reliable and trustworthy, and for the past nine months alone, I’ve called her way before dawn so that she can teach me Sanskrit. India is ahead of San Francisco by 12.5 hours and for at least half that period of time I’ve called her at 5am so that we can have classes. With daylight savings, I woke her up at 6am. I mean can you imagine anyone having that kind of time, patience, and devotion to their student that they are willing to lose sleep in order to teach? Vinaya is very dear to me and somewhat like my second mother for without her I am literally nothing. The progress that I have made this year alone is due to her committment to me.
Now that we will meet in less than a week, I would like to learn how to speak Sanskrit and many other things from her about this sacred language. Even though I have said earlier that I will not ruin my vacation this summer by focusing on my studies alone, I will probably devote at least a couple of hours a day to studying. Last year, I think I spent close to four to six hours to ward my mind from dwelling on some bad experiences that I had. We still have to figure out who will be teaching me Pali since the other teacher is backing out from her earlier promises. But even that endeavor requires a little more study time on my part but I’m willing to go easy on it since my main focus is to have fun this summer and plenty of it.
Heck by the time I come back to America, I will be transitioning out of Zen Center and probably be looking for a second job to keep up with the cost of living in SF since my wages have been flat for the past five years. But really I welcome the challenge. If I had to compare myself and how much I have to toil to earn a living in America, it pales in comparison to the amount of sheer hard labor that people in poor countries have to go through. Many people in this world, unfortunately, work harder than I do and what they earn is a pittance to what I make even though my pay is hardly considered a living wage in SF. But the irony of it all is that while I hardly make any money, for some crazy reason or another I just feel that it’s right to go traveling in the summer and especially to go to India to devote myself to Sanskrit. I am fond of the timeless wisdom that I so naively imagined many years ago that I would find in modern day India. Maybe I am chasing after a dream which will someday haunt me for the rest of my life as I whittle away my “productive years.” Or maybe I'm just fooling myself and that there is truly nothing special at the end of this long journey. What I have learned from my travels is that there is nothing more rewarding in this lifetime than knowing myself and one of the best ways to do that is to observe this human life and the myriad people who share this very same existence. Unfortunately, people living in poor countries as much as they would like to travel cannot afford to and understandably enough there are more dire things for them to think about. But on the other hand, people who live in wealthy countries are somewhat reluctant to because they have mortgages to pay and families or other social responsibilities that take up most of their time. Nor do I feel that I have the wisdom of Socrates who never traveled outside of Athens but knew very well about the human condition.
In terms of accomodations, Vinaya has finalized for me an apartment that I will be staying in which is close to where she lives and close to an Olympic size swimming pool that I am dying to swim in. Ever since I have been a health freak the last three years, I’ve noticed how much physical exercise changes my mood completely. I started biking to work in order to save money, and then learning how to swim the last couple of years, and then just recently took up running two months before my trip. Abbot Paul Haller many years ago suggested that I should take up on some kind of exercise and at first I didn’t think much about it but ever since I started biking, the love for physical activity never stopped. I was afraid that in India I would not have been able to do any of those things because Indian streets are notorious for it’s lack of sidewalk, and well the streets are pretty deadly enough to walk on much less to run on. Furthermore, running in 90 plus degree temperature is not what I call fun.
I have left for Saigon Saturday morning and even though it has been a short visit with mom, I think I will come back next year. Despite the fact that I’m always indoors and never get to explore the town very much, I really enjoy some of the aspects of this small town where I was born. The people are very friendly and there is a sort of laid-back contentment too among the townspeople and the food is always a good enough reason to come back to my hometown.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Ruminations on what life would have been
On the trip down from Saigon to Bac Lieu I often wonder what life would have been like for me had I stayed in Vietnam. What kind of life would I have had in Vietnam? What would my job be? At first the idea brought only dread and fear that I would have been unhappy had I grown up in Vietnam since that would mean giving up a lot of the pleasures and comforts that I have gotten so used to. Does my happiness then depend on the materialistic things that I have accumulated? I doubt that it does and truly it is a scary notion to think that materialism singularly holds the key to happiness. My possessions only serve to make my life more convenient and easier but it is impossible to demand happiness from objects. If materialism is the cause of people’s happiness then surely people without those things cannot attain it and people who lived in the past could not have gotten it which sounds truly absurd.
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