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| Recently I read a good book on etiquette, "How Rude!" by Alex J. Packer. It's very amusing and since I think it's important to have good manners I really liked it, since I don't really know what to do in some situations and it's good to know. For an etiquette book it's one of the funniest books I've read and I really suggest it.
I also suggest seeing the movie "Fast Food Nation", although if you're Hindu it'll probably be too much, considering all the stuff they do to cows. I didn't watch that part, it was too much for me. I became a vegetarian when I moved to India and I'm not thinking about going back any time soon. Anyways, it really showed how gross the world is when everything is done so artificially. I think we just need to scale down.
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| I'm going to the Himalayas on Sunday. I can't believe it. I won't climb them of course, but I'll be staying at the bottom for six days. It's for a school field trip, we'll be helping build shelters for part of it but mostly drawing flowers. I'm so glad. This city is really getting to me, and I need to go back to the mountains. There's so much dust in the air here, worse than in Asmara, and everything stinks outside. As in how it smells, not just in general. There are so many stray dogs, and huge ants that bite, and mosquitoes, and I really can't wait to be away from civilization for a few days. I haven't had much time to think since I've been here, which is probably why I'm so confused and tired all the time. All I do is homework, and if you have no time to reflect, you're not really learning anything, are you? It's also hard for me to find time to practice, since I play the tinwhistle and the flute. And since I'm not very good at the flute I really do need to practice. So hopefully I can take some books and my instruments and have a nice time drawing flowers and reflecting. Have a nice week! | | |
| India is an odd place. There's all the spiritualism you always hear about, but there's also all the capitalism, and it strikes me as being kind of schizofrenic. With the spiritual aspect of it, the goal is to give up all worldly possessions and live on as little as possible in order to obtain true enlightenment, and then on the capitalistic side, everyone is trying to gain as much physical wealth as possible. There doesn't seem to be much of an in-between. And I feel bad about it, because as a westerner, I know that my country puts a lot of pressure on India to be as capitalistic as it is, and I feel like instead of India trying to be an India, it's trying to be another America. Its economy is growing exponentially, but that's not enough when people are still starving and have no clothes or food, and I feel like if people concentrated more on those problems and weren't affected so much by the pressures of the west to industrialize, we'd be able to get something done. As it is, I wouldn't even know where to begin. With Eritrea, the problems were easy to solve because there are only 3.5 million people in the country and the dictator has all the say, there isn't an infrastructure, and the country itself is very small. India on the other hand has a large beaurocratic democracy, has the second largest population in the world, and is gigantic. Solving the problems here will take many lifetimes, and many people, and lots of resources, and I don't think the work will ever be done. It was Gandhi's birthday yesterday. I admire him because he saw this huge country with its huge problems and he didn't run away like everyone else. He actually tried to solve the problems. And I think if people implemented the solutions he came up with, things would be a lot better here. I just wish people would listen to him. His picture is everywhere, there are statues of him, his quotes are all over the place, yet I don't think many people try to do what he suggested. They just put him up on a pedestal and ignore what he actually said. His picture is on the money. Something tells me he wouldn't be happy with that. | | |
| Hello from New Delhi! I am now in India and I am liking it, yes there really are cows and elephants but you don't see the elephants all that often and the cows are just wandering about. My new school here is American, and so they are trying to follow a block schedule like many public U.S. schools have. Unfortunately this means the teachers feel they have to cram two days' worth of homework into every assignment, and I have no time to learn on my own. I haven't finished a book in two weeks. I used to read 3 books a week. Needless to say, I have not had time to update on this in a long time, and I'll try to do that more often. Hope y'all are having a good school year. Ciao! | | |
| If you'd like to improve your manners, I'd suggest reading a book by E.M. Forster. I just finished reading "Passage to India", and although the plot of the book wasn't very exciting, the main thing I liked about it was the dialogue. The author is British, of course, so it has more to do with British etiquette, but what I like about it is that the people in the book pretty much always know the right thing to say and they fix awkward situations by having such good manners. I think in the US we don't really focus so much on manners anymore, which is why I'm always so confused and bewhildered in social situations and I never know what to do or say. Reading books by this author really help me with that. I've noticed that since I've started reading it, I've found things to say which come off a lot better because I understand the social nuances put on certain sayings. Now I think more before I say things, but I also know that the main point of saying things is to start a conversation, and you want a conversation to be interesting, but it's better to be boring than to say nothing at all, and it's always best not to insult anyone if you can avoid it in any way. I've noticed that since then, adults have seemed to enjoy my conversation much more than before, and I've contributed quite a bit more to society than I used to. So I really suggest you read books by this author, probably "Room With a View" would be a better choice because it was far more interesting, and if you pay attention to the dialogue, you'll see what i"m talking about. - | | |
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