First, I just want to say that the letter "t" does not work on this keyboard. I have to paste it in whenever I want to use it (which seems to be frequently), so if a word is missing a letter...add a "t".

I woke up with a rather piercing headache this morning. Or, not a headache exactly, but a sharp pain on the right side of the head, behind the eye, stinging down to my molars. Last night we (Julia, Crystal, Silas, Arvind, me) went out to dinner to celebrate the end of week 4. On the way, one of my favorite rickshaw wallahs (he has some side business going on, but I can't figure out just what), hit a pothole. My head hit the metal bar on the side of the rickshaw. It probably would've have been merely a bump, but there was a screw sticking out. Luckily, it was a flat tap, not a sharp, self-tapping screw, otherwise it would have left a good puncture. As it was, it took a bit of time to recover (and, no, I didn't cry, even though I wanted to). I thought my teeth had been knocked out, and the vision in my right eye was a bit off all night, and still a little off this a.m. It was a little better during the day today, but in the evening, we drove down a road full of potholes, and every bump reminded my head that it hurt. Anyway, tomorrow I will avoid all potholes.

Today we went to Am(b)er as a class, also visiting Jaigarh and Nahagarh forts. I've been all three places, but still had fun. Well, the guide at Amer was a bit odd, and he kept asking my why I wasn't listening (which I was, but I was also taking photographs). When we were at Nahagarh, a fort from which you can see the entire city of Jaipur, a storm arrived. That was a lot of fun because not only did we get wet, the teachers stood under the eaves and played Antakshari, male teachers against female. In general, I think the teachers really enjoy the field trips, so even if it was tiring (a ten-hour day!), I'm glad we did it.

Notables: we watched a family of monkeys eat bananas at the petrol station. Ashlee cut open her foot on a stack of rebar. Arvind cannot pronounce Rotem's name properly in Hebrew. Sayedji only likes to hold babies when they are not crying. The storm approaching while we were at Jaigarh was pretty nice. I saw the jantar mantar jaisa watchtower on the road to Jaigarh. One by one, our Reliance Classic cellphones ran out of batteries, which means there was a never-ending chorus of the Reliance shut off music, also known as the theme to Harry Potter. A ton of elephants on the road.

So, as a large group field trip, it was pretty fun. But we also had fun earlier this week when we went on a small group field trip (five people). We were assigned destinations to visit, and we hit two of the three possibilities. First, we went into the old city to Sahitygar, a Hindi bookstore on Dhamani Road off Chaura Rasta. Took us forever to find it. I remember it from last year, but had no real idea where it was in the city. Then we went to the Govind Devji Temple, but it was closed, so we wandered in Jai Niwas gardens. We went out a gate I've never used before, and suddenly we were in the barnyard of India. It's too bad Arvind wasn't with us, because he's been sad that there aren't as many animals around these days in Jaipur--he remembers a lot from his childhood. We wandered through a lot of animal pens, cows, goats, chickens, dogs. We ended up on "Vegetable Street" (Subzi Marg). I can't remember the name of the neighborhood, but it was the Panjabi word for vegetable. A new part of town for me.

Today is an ausipicious day for weddings, so I think a lot of the elephants we saw on the Amer road were coming to Jaipur to carry grooms to the wedding. For the past two days (really, the past two weeks), we've been hearing non-stop wedding marching bands, seeing the light towers paraded down the street, seeing a lot of white horses all dressed up to carry grooms. At the religious center between my house and the Institute, workers have for three days been building a wedding reception structure. Tonight is the night, so it is all dressed up in lights and flowers. I imagine I'll see or hear the marching band go by soon.

Tomorrow my plan is to go to the jantar mantar and talk to some of the workers for my final project. However, if it's raining, I think I'll just go to Cafe Coffee Day and do homework. One more week until Hindi Camp in Pushkar, then we're off to Ujjain.

I consider myself fairly averse to risk-taking. If the category had existed in my senior high school yearbook, I'm pretty sure I would have been voted "Most Likely to Err on the Side of Caution." Every once in awhile, though, I tend to do something stupid and ill-advised. After I think, "Hmm....not a good idea," I sometimes follow up the thought with, "but I think I'll do it anyway." Where does this tendency come from? I don't know, but it seems to make its appearance in India more often than in the States. Example: what was I thinking last summer when I rode from Nehru Bazaar in the old city to Jawahar Nagar side-saddle on the back of a strange man's motorcycle with no helmet? Couldn't tell you, other than "Not a good idea, but I think I'll do it anyway."

Last night, when Elliott called me to say that a bunch of students were setting off fireworks on the roof of the Institute at 8:30 in celebration of U.S. Independence Day, the first thing out of my mouth was, "Wow, that sounds dangerous." The second thing out of my mouth was, "Okay, I'll see you there." Let me just say: there's a reason that fireworks factories in India burn down a lot more frequently than they do in the U.S.: they're incredibly fucking dangerous. So, going to the roof a building while a bunch of undergraduates were playing with matches and unregulated fireworks was just a stupid idea all the way around. Somehow Julia and I thought, "Well, maybe it will be okay," so we went.

I really can't type out all the profanity I used last night, but lets say it was repeated loudly multiple times. There is no way any civilian should ever be playing around with that level of explosive, particularly young people who have no sense of danger. The first one that went off probably could have been heard up at Nagarh Fort, it was so loud, and if we'd been in the States, someone would have called the police. The second was slightly smaller, but the third one, which shot balls of green fire into the air, and then subdivided into more green balls of fire, was lit without warning the people standing around. No one got hurt, but I could see disaster coming when people started scrambling away from the firework. The fourth one exploded after it was done shooting sparks, sending flaming pieces in all directions.

Julia and I decided it would be a good time to leave.

I haven't heard of anyone getting hurt, and I'm really surprised. I know I'm old and cranky, but it really is stupid to allow college kids to play with such dangerous toys, particularly when it's no secret that the fireworks industry here is far from regulated. So, hopefully that's my stupid decision for the summer, and I won't have to flag down strangers to ask for rides to remote locations, or go mountain climbing in inclement to get my adrenalin fix.

It occurs to me that my language learning goal should be something along the lines of learning the word "insomnia" in as many languages as possible.

I'm not feeling all that great today. In fact, I didn't even go into the Institute. I figure...I'm an adult, I can make my own decisions about what's best for me right now, and squeezing into a hot room with sweaty students to discuss joint families just isn't it. If I could have gone in just for grammar and film prep class, I would've have gone, but two hours of small group (4 people) discussion just wasn't going to happen. I'll go back tomorrow, and then I'll regret staying home today, because I'll have to answer the question, "Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick? Were you sick?" twenty five times before tea break.

So, perhaps you are all thinking that I spend most of my time riding around the city in rickshaws, looking for Hindi bolnewalle people to talk to. However, with the exception of today, I spend most of my time at the Institute, or in my room doing homework or my own work. I don't do any homework on Fridays, but on every other day, I do between 2-4 hours of Hindi, then try to get in an hour or so of my own stuff.

My schedule this week (as it was supposed to happen):

Monday:
9-10:00 Magazine article discussion "joint families"
10-11:00 Grammar (-wala constructions, use of milna, conditional and contrary-to-fact constructions)
11-11:15 tea
11:15-12:00 Journal discussion
12-1:00 Film preparation
1:00-2:00 Lunch

Tuesday:
9-10:00 Vocabulary development
10-11:00 Listening comprehension
11-11:15 tea
11:15-1:00 Film "Bombay"
1-2:00 Lunch
2-4:00 Film "Bombay"

Wednesay:
9-10:00 Film Review
10-11:00 Conversation "At the Doctor"
11-11:15 tea
11:15-12:00 open
12-1:00 open
1:00-2:00 Lunch
2-3:00 Personal Tutorial

Thursday:
9-10:00 open
10-11:00 Literature story "Namaste"
11-11:15 tea
11:15-12:00 Discussion with community member "Housewife"
12-1:00 Oral presentation "My Dreams"
11-11:15 tea

Friday:
9-10:00 Personal Tutorial
10-11:00 Weekly Exam
11-11:15 tea
11:15-12:00 Dictation
12-1:00 Listening Comprehension Doordarshan
1-2:00 Lunch
2-3:00 Group Discussion

Plus on Saturdays, we usually have a field trip (I think this Saturday we go to Sanganer), and this week after class some time, we have to go in a small group to Hawa Mahal, a Hindi bookshop, and Govind Devji Temple. We have a major writing project due at the end of the semester, I think I wrote about that before, though.

So, that's my week. As you can see, I spend comparatively little time in a rickshaw, but I guess since that can be the most frustrating part of the day, it gets a lot of play time in my journal.

So, that was a pretty fucking awesome Hindi day.

I had a hard time getting out of the room today because suddenly they were all about making sure my bathroom was clean, my floor was clean, my bedsheet was clean... So, the sun was high in the sky before I made it out into the wide world of Jaipur this a.m.

I spent a lot of money (INR 180) to get into the City Palace w/ my camera. I suppose I didn't really need to go there, but I wanted to wander around for awhile and take pictures. Not sure what I'll use them for, but now I have them. Then I spent a long, long time in the Museum craft hall. This is where Maharaja-approved artists sell their workshop produced art. I sat and talked a long time to one artist named Harish. I paid a little too much money for the painting I bought, but I took up a lot of his time, and he was really patient with my Hindi. I think we both had fun.

When I went out, the same rickshaw wallah that had driven me from outside the wall of the old city to the palace was still outside. We had a funny conversation about how I wasn't to let any other rickshaw wallah drive me home. It's the slow season, and it pays for taxi and rickshaw wallahs to waste their time waiting around for a sure fare, because otherwise they might not get one all day. Anyway, he made me laugh, and I told him I'd look for him, but it would be a long time because I was going to the jantar mantar, and that might take me hours.

This was my first trip to the Jaipur jantar mantar this year, and jesusfuckingchrist. It was totally awesome--the entire complex is under renovation. They've pulled up the grass, they've surrounded everything with scaffolding, and they've torn the plaster off some of the masonry instruments. There was a group of men plastering the instrument just inside the gates, and they managed to explain the resurfacing process to me (basically a mixture of lime and marble dust, "for sparkle"). I really and truly didn't understand most of what they said, but they were all very excited to talk about their work. Then I wandered over to watch them work on the Samrat Yantra--you've got to see it to believe it, no fucking way I'd go up on that scaffolding--and had a conversation with two of the boys working toward the bottom. One of them almost clobbered himself with a chunk of plaster he'd just pried off, and I said "Careful!" in Hindi automatically. They thought that was completely funny.

Anyway, it was all very awesome. All of the workers seemed really knowledgeable about plastering, etc., but none of them really seemed to have much of an idea of what they were really working on. This might be my final project subject for class this summer.

And, yes, my rickshaw wallah was waiting for me when I left the jantar mantar. I stopped to buy a useless Hindi guidebook to the site outside the gate (useful for the correct spellings of the instruments' names only), and then let the guy take me back to Rajapark. Again, we had a very funny conversation about how I should really let him take me to the best markets, but he didn't really try very hard to convince me.

It's amazing how far such very, very bad Hindi takes you. I think no fewer than five people complimented me on my Hindi today. It's sad in a way, because it means very few visitors actually make the effort to speak the local language. On the other hand, it makes even my 5th grade vocabulary seem quite impressive, so I guess I should be grateful that most tourists don't try very hard.

I forgot to type the most important thing: monsoon arrived the same day Andyji arrived. One good rainstorm on that day. It hasn't rained again, but it's consistently cloudy and humid out, a nice change from the typical desert scorch.

It was nice having Andy back for a couple of days. He's coming back for the memorial lecture for Bhabhiji's husband on June 25th, and I'm already planning to skip class that day so we can hike out to Gaitor and some temple he wants to visit. I suppose it's just as well he's not here all the time, we'd probably get in a lot of trouble. We had a good, long, hard laugh over the time he almost died last summer. Looking back at last year's blog entries, I can see that I avoided discussing the entire series of unfortunate events in public (although I've since told the story several times). He says it wasn't my fault, but you know...I'm still pretty sure that it was.

Anyway, it was good hanging out with someone who already knew me. I'm so tired of repeating my backstory. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's a good idea to be kicking it with someone who's been spending all of his time in a village overwhelmed with TB. Although...I have to admit, I was kind of hoping he'd cough all over the obnoxious group of kids who joined us while we were trying to enjoy our coffee yesterday.

I've managed to make hotel reservations for Ujjain (I did try to use the phone, but they never picked up, so I ended up using the web, in English.), so I guess we're on for the big trip. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do about Varanasi.

Today I'm off to the City Palace to take some photographs, and I'll probably spend some time at the jantar mantar as well.

This morning I woke up to find my alarm clock in bed with me. I'm not sure what it was doing there (especially as it doesn't light up); perhaps my cell phone was being ganged up on and needed an ally in the fight against the flashlight and MP3 player.

It has been a *$&(! long week. Really. A $(*#(! long week.

Last night, we were all out late at a wedding. Anitaji, one of our teachers, has an older sister, and she invited us to her wedding. 1000 guests! It was a really nice show, but must have cost a fortune. The bride's sari was beautiful, and so covered with gold it was barely red at all. Most importantly, there was a lot of food at the wedding, and most importantly out of that, they had jalebi. Arvind says he overdosed on jalebi as a kid, but I don't really think that's possible. At least, I haven't managed to do it yet.

Andyji is back in town for two days only, so we are hanging out this afternoon. I skipped out on lunch at the Institute, and went out for chowmein with him at this rather sketchy looking dhaba. He says he's eaten there before, so I trusted his judgement. Now we're hanging out together checking our e-mail, which sounds like a weird thing to do, but there you go, we've always been an odd couple. Today, I got more hassle on the street than I have had to date this summer, and I'm absolutely sure it's because Andyji was with me. We look very funny, he 6'-7" and rail thin, and me 5'-2" and round enough to roll down the street with just a small push forward.

Today, I did a stupid thing and walked off and left my wallet at the shop next to my hotel. Luckily, the boy who works there saw it and tucked it under the counter. I'd just been to the bank, so I would have lost 2100 rupees or so, plus my bank card. Not an insurmountable lost, but definitely enough to panic me momentarily. I have to think of something nice to do for the kid, other than start considering him my son.

In the three weeks I've been in India, I've developed one really odd habit: sleeping with objects in my bed. I'm not talking about the extra pillow I use to prop up my shoulder, or the blanket I use to cover my eyes, or even the pile of clean (or dirty) clothes at the foot of the bed. I'm talking about plastic and metal inanimate objects that I would never keep in the bed at home. Every night before I turn out the light, I take my flashlight and MP3 player out of the nightstand drawer, track down my cell phone, and arrange them on the empty side of the bed well within reach. I only realized last night that I had been doing this every night. Why? Why can't the flashlight and MP3 player sit ON the nightstand? Why do I need my cellphone? I don't call anybody at 3 a.m. I was thinking about this after I was in bed, and while I was flipping through all the Johnny Cash songs to get to the death metal section of my MP3s (in case you're wondering, death metal isn't a great substitute for a lullaby), it suddenly occurred to me that all the spare items in my bed light up. My phone, my MP3 player, my flashlight, they all make my room as bright as day when they come on during the night. Who knew I was so afraid of the dark that I needed not one, but THREE, lights next to my pillow? India's a great place to get to know oneself.

One last post about my cell phone, and then I promise to shut up about it already. Much as many of you may have suspected, I just needed to throw more money at the problem. If I had walked in on the second day and offered to empty my wallet, I'd probably have wasted a lot less time. Anyway, it turns out what I needed this entire time was a top-up voucher. I have at least five balances on my phone: a global (ISD) balance, a local balance, an All India balance, a Rajasthan SMS balance, and a main balance. This main balance? God knows what it is. I can't figure out how to check it, and before two days ago, I never even knew it existed. So, the solution to my inability to SMS is to buy top-up vouchers to add to the main balance. I have no idea what the main balance is paying for, or how quickly it disappears, but at least now I know that I need it.

Well, hopefully Crystal and Julia will not tire of my company over the next few weeks, because I just signed them up for five days in Ujjain with me. If they are sick of me before we even leave, it's going to be a long, long trip. It's a ten-hour train ride from Jaipur to Ujjain on the "express" train, but it's all during the day, so we're just riding in the chair car instead of getting sleepers. Since I was already planning on going, I offered to pick up the hotel tab. That, in fact, is my task for Wednesday afternoon, trying to reserve a room over the phone in Hindi. I want to stay some place nice (not Taj group nice, but still), so it's only fair that I pay the tariff. Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing the observatory--I'd like to have at least a strong outline written for my Madison paper by the time I leave here.

The formal tasks that I've set for myself:

Roughest draft of my dissertation proposal (still possible)
Make at least one contact within the City Palace archives (still trying)
Preliminary bibliography for major field exams (seeming impossible right now)
Some sort of draft of paper on Ujjain observatories for Madison (still possible)
Varanasi photographs (still possible, but dubious--how much is airfare? ask Kumarji)
Return to Delhi for more photographs for HSS conference (still possible)

Informal tasks I've set for myself:

Gather as much ASI literature as possible for minor field exams (in progress)
Gather as much info about INTACH as possible for minor field exams (still possible)
See as much architecture as possible, for both exams (in progress)
Gather as much printed info/photographs on architecture for syllabus project (in progress)

I have been working some in the evenings, but find myself easily distracted by everything going on around me. And this week, I really need to work more on my Hindi. I feel like everyone else is progressing more quickly than I am. I should be able to keep up, since I have more free time than anyone else, but it doesn't seem to be happening.

Well, a lot of time spent at both the Hindiwali Reliance store as well as the Angreziwali Reliance store, and I'm not sure I'm any closer to fixing my SMS problem. I'm also not sure why it seems so urgent: before ten days ago, I'd never sent a text message. Suddenly, if I can't text message, my world will end. Well, it's nice be able to communicate without having to actually *talk* to people, so maybe that's the attraction.

This morning, I dragged a classmate to Jai Niwas gardens so I could take photographs--I'm working on the second draft of an article (well, we can hope it turns into an article) about the Jaipur city plan, and I need my own photos. I'm really pretty excited about it, especially now that I've revisited the gardens and re-experienced the space for myself. I even managed to get a photo of the facade of the Chandra Mahal that faces the Govind Devji temple. I looked and looked for one this spring, but except for a 19th b/w print in the British Library collection, I wasn't able to find one. So, that alone made the rickshaw ride through the bazaar this a.m. worth it. The ride was so hair-raising that I handed the rickshawallah 2x the agreed upon price when I got out of his rig. I mean, really, it was pretty intense for a few minutes there.

Also in Jai Niwas gardens is a Hanuman temple, and outside is a monkey corral full of happy monkeys eating temple offerings. Baby monkeys with wrinkly baby monkey faces = SO CUTE.

We walked around Jai Niwas, and then around the bone-dry Tal Katora. Hard to believe the site used to be marshy and wet during the 18th c. Today, it was full of boys playing cricket. We saw this unfortunate 8-year-old albino boy--my eyes hurt from the sun here ALL THE TIME, even with sunglasses. Imagine his pain.

I think perhaps Julia and Crystal are getting tired of my impromptu architecture lectures. "Look at the Shahjahani baluster columns!" "Oh my god, look at the faux chini khana!" Crystal had to sit through an endless session of me with Ebba Koch's Mughal Architecture (OUP) book while we were drinking watermelon sparkles in Barista: "Look at the perfect hesht behesht!" "Look, aren't those fantastic squinches?"

Today, a 26-year-old informed me that 40 = over the hill. She apologized, but said that's what she thinks. Over the hill, and I haven't even finished my Ph.D. yet.

In other news, I still can't speak Hindi. I also seem to be suddenly struggling with English, however, so maybe that's a step in the right direction.

A few random points:

• I feel compelled to go back and correct the misimpression I gave about the quality of Jhoom Barabar Jhoom as a movie. Mr. Bachchan's role as a sutradar (sutradhar? where is my dictionary?) was quite awesome, and the music is snappy. Otherwise, I have to say the movie was really just a timepass. Don't get me wrong--I'd pay INR90 to sit in an A/C cinema hall and watch Preity Zinta do just about anything, but that doesn't mean it was a good movie. As far a PZ goes, I'd say that she really needs to find better roles. It couldn't have been in the least bit challenging for her. Well, physically, I suspect it was grueling, those are some high intensity picturizations. But as far as substance? Not worth her time.
• There is a "closed for renovations" sign on Big Shopper. I suspect the sign should really read "Closed because Reliance Market down the street put us out of business," but maybe I'm wrong. I'm not sure I get this whole Reliance Market thing. Can you imagine shopping at Cingular Market or the New AT&T Market? Rajapark and the surrounding neighborhoods are definitely high-end (one of the host fathers described the houses here as "bilkul palatial"), and Reliance Market shows it. Its major selling point seems to be its produce section--even I have purchased apples there, each with their own little "Washington State Apple" sticker (because I am doing my part to help my family's local economy, even if I'm doing from without in a global economy, right?). Anyway, mostly it seems to be a place for rich locals to shop without having to haggle over prices. Also, it seems to be a place to buy microwave popcorn, but I don't know anyone here with a microwave, so I'm not sure what good that does anyone.
• Survived the first full week of classes, took my first exam. It's hard to get too worked up when you're not actually being given a grade. Anyway, we just got next week's schedule, and the homework seems to have doubled. Plus there is the major project to think about. I should be able to do something about the jantar mantar. The project is really a way to force us to go out to talk to people. We need to write up a questionnaire, go ask random strangers all the questions, then write a paper about it. Some crazy student once wrote a 45-page paper for their final. I think if I can manage 10, that will be good. Anyway, I think I'm going to hang out at the various jantar mantars and just ask people why they came and what they think about them. It's nothing I can really use officially in my research, but you never know, I might hear something really useful.
• Speaking of the jm, apparently they had a gathering at the Delhi jm to watch the occultation of Venus by the moon. The same may have happened here in Jaipur, but I was sick and thinking seriously about dying that night, so I missed the entire thing.
• Back to the topic of Reliance: So, I paid almost $40 to get a Reliance cell phone. That price included the phone, the activation fee, 220 local minutes, plus INR575 worth of international minutes (about 110 minutes). For some reason I was given a Delhi phone number, but everything seemed fine. A couple of days ago, my SMS function suddenly stopped working, and I kept getting a message saying the SMS mobile function hasn't been activated on the network. Back to Reliance, where I paid INR35 for 1000 local SMS messages. I was assured that as long as I had minutes on my 575 card, I could SMS to the States, too. Today, I am still receiving this message about not being activated in the network. So, here's the question. Do I go back to the same store, where everything has to happen in Hindi and there's no paper work to back up these transactions, and no one really explains what the problem is, they just say it's fixed, or do I do the colonial thing and pay INR50 for a rickshaw to Gaurav Towers where there is a very posh Reliance store with English-speaking employees and many forms and explanations for every transaction? I think I'll try the Hindi-wala people one more time, but if it doesn't work, I'm off to GT. And maybe I'll eat at Pizza Hut while I'm down there.
• Dude. The rickshawwallah I had on the day I got sick was TOTALLY singing Ye Dosti from Sholay. I mean...seriously. I leaned forward and asked him (in Hindi), "Hey, dude, are you singing Ye Dosti from Sholay?" And he said, yes, and wasn't that a great movie? So we talked about what a great movie that was, and then he told me that in June he was going to Washington with a friend, and was it nice there? And then he stopped at the petrol station for a drink of water. And then he took me to Rajapark.
• Sunday night, a young father was out with his little boy, teaching him how to ride a bike in front of my hotel. Well, that's okay, because there's not much traffic there. The kid fell off a couple of times while I was watching. Fifteen minutes later, I saw the kid out in major traffic on Big Shopper Road, father trotting happily behind. I hope the kid made it home alive.

One thing about being in India: everyone suddenly drops their inhibitions about discussing their lateness infirmity and illness. Let me just say that I know way too much about my colleagues' intestines. But I understand why people talk about it all way too much. As Andrew pointed out last summer, you might often wake up with indigestion at home, but you can say to yourself, "Well, I shouldn't have had that last piece of pizza." Here, it's anyone's guess as to why you're sick. Is it indigestion, or are you about to develop something truly horrible? It could go either way, really.

Anyway, all of this is just to say that I've survived my first bout of sickness this year (god, only two weeks in!), and everything seems to be fine at the moment. I'm really glad that I'm living on my own, otherwise I'd have to share every single detail with the host family. On the other hand, on Wednesday evening, when I was wondering if I maybe I was going to end up in the hospital, it occurred to me that no one would even miss me if I died of whatever it was I had, at least not until late in the next school day. Those are the moments in which you wonder why you didn't do research in...oh, I don't know....Canada.

Then again, it's not a good idea to carry yourself with too much confidence. My Hindi is good enough for waitstaff, but not good enough for dukandars (there's your vocab word, Beth). While I can talk someone down from 2750 rupees to 2000, I can't talk them down to the 750 it should be. It's frustrating in the moment, but once I do the conversion to US dollars, it's difficult to get too upset about being more or less robbed. Gotta let it go.

Advanced Hindi follows the same type of daily program that Intermediate follows, so I feel a bit as if I've been here forever. Today, we had our first listening comprehension class. That was the worst class last year, but I seem to have lost my stress over it this year, possibly because I've heard the passages before, possibly because I just really don't care so much about my progress this year. I'm either going to learn Hindi or I'm not, and I can't lose a lot of sleep over trying to keep up (or keep ahead) of the other students. This is the attitude I should have had last year, instead of feeling inadequate all summer.

But...it's only day three of class (not quite two weeks in India), so I reserve the right to change my mind about the entire thing.

I'm overhearing many conversations that remind me of why I am living in the hotel. Even people who really want to live with a family can get stressed out by the all Hindi environment, by the family's expectations, obligations, etc. I definitely made the right choice.

Stage Three: Hoarding Knowledge. Now that you have your social group established, and you feel comfortable traveling around the neighborhood together, you are finding out interesting things. You know where to buy a cell phone, you know where the post office is. You've found a good book store, or a good rickshaw driver. This is the kind of information you're willing to share, but only within your social set. You have a lot of hush-hush conversations that end with "but don't tell anyone, I don't want the entire group to show up there." Everyone is sworn to secrecy about every aspect of Jaipur. What are the repercussions of revealing this information to the larger group?

I'll let you know.

Yes, I must speak on this subject again: it's nice knowing what's up. It's not nice being completely clueless.

Today, I took my two (TWO!) new friends into the old city. This was kind of cool for me, because I knew just how to get there from the Raj Mandir, and knew which direction was Bapu Bazaar, which direction was Nehru bazaar, etc. Even nicer was the fact that I was able to take them the marble carving section of the old city. A lot of places were closed up because it was Sunday, but they now know where it is, and no one from the group does (hoarding local information, that might actually qualify as Stage Three--I'll think about it). Anyway, I just had fun showing them cool stuff in a hopefully not too pretentious way.

Also, I impressed Julia's out of town friend with the fact that I once had dinner with Maxim Shostakovich. Just saying.

I think the point here is: I'm impressing myself, if not my friends. I'm getting so much more accomplished than I did last year because I know exactly what I want to do, and more importantly, can communicate that desire in Hindi. Last night, the man at the stationery store was really pleased I bought my notebooks from him in Hindi, and today, the waiter complimented me on my Hindi. When he asked if we needed our bills separated, and we said no, he said he thought not, but the tourists tend to want separate checks. It was as if we'd passed some sort of cultural entrance exam.

Anyway, I'll stop bragging on myself, but I've just been noticing how much more relaxed I am this summer. A lot of that has to do with staying in the hotel (best decision EVER), but some of it has to do with having the ability to take care of myself without a lot of problems.

Today's high temp was only 95 again, and it sort of sprinkled for awhile. It's just so lovely being able to walk around in such cool air. Well, okay, I guess I'm dripping with sweat, but it's nothing like it was that first weekend in Delhi. Thank god.

Oh, today was the first monkey sighting--three in Bapu Bazaar. @#$*(! monkeys!

On the other hand--there's a lot to be said for being the local expert. I'm finding it immensely rewarding, anyway. I'm trying not to be obnoxious about it all (there's plenty of pretentious posturing going on here as it is), but I do kind of enjoy being consulted about Jaipur. I can give directions to the bank, the supermarket, two different hookah bars (don't ask me why, I don't smoke the sheesha), two different coffee shops, fabric stores, book stores, and all kinds of other things like parks and post offices and pathways. I am trying not to offer advice unless asked, but once asked, I have to say...I'm batting a thousand (two posts, two baseball metaphors) at getting people where they want to go.

So, this is a big difference between last summer and this summer--my confidence level speaking Hindi. I'm the one doing all the talking: directing the rickshawallah, bargaining, asking directions, etc. I'm still falling back on English a lot, but seem to have lost that fear of speaking that followed me all summer last year. It's kind of relief to be the one with all the answers for a change.

Mostly hanging out with one or two people (we've formed our own clique, membership requires that you be shut out of the rest of the cliques that formed the first week of classes). Started classes officially yesterday, started studying this a.m. We had a brief pre-monsoon downpour today, which was fantastic. The high today was only 95, dropping below 100 makes such a difference. The temperature is supposed to climb again by midweek, so I'm enjoying the cool while I can.

Okay, this is my mailing address for everyone who wants to find me:

[My Name]
c/o Hotel City Home
463, Gali No. 4
Across from Bank of Baroda
Raja Park, Jaipur 302 004
Rajasthan
India

I'm being taken of really by the hotel staff, they put me in the safest room, I think, and one of the AIIS program leaders is in the same place, so I always have someone available if I need it. More importantly, I have a TV, so I can watch the IIFA awards tomorrow. Rocking.

That was fucking awesome. Seriously. That whole cancelled-flight-to-Chicago-rent-a-car-race-to-O'Hare-during-rush-hour-barely-make-the-flight-followed-by-13-hours-of-interrupted-sleep trip to India was totally worth it for just the first 45 seconds of Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. When Amitabh Bachchan came on the screen in that *completely* bizarre but rocking outfit, the crowd went wild. It was like witnessing a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth inning in a tied seventh game of the World Series. Seriously. Totally fucking awesome.

(I'm not allowed to swear in India, so I have to do it online.)

In the Foreign Languages Building at UIUC, there is a display about travel abroad, outlining all the stages a person goes through before adapting to life in a foreign country. You'd think I'd know all the stages because I've read that display a minimum of 100 times, but no, I can't remember. Anyway, it is directed toward individual adaptation, not group behavior. I'm thinking of outlining my own stages of adaptation for group study programs, particularly for groups in India. So far, I've seen the group go through two distinct,but overlapping,stages. I'm trying to predict stage three, but having no luck.

Stage One: Culture of Knowledge Possession.
This stage starts for all American travelers the moment they leave U.S. soil, often as early as the plane trip to India, or in the customs line in the port of arrival. This stage involves an elaborate display on one's personal and deep knowledge of all things South Asian: food, people, religion, history. In a group, this behavior quickly develops into a type of Indian-one-upmanship, with everyone aggressively performing their "Indian Expert" identity. Anyone who makes a statement about India is immediately contradicted. This could be a large statement (for instance, a proclamation about Islam in India), which will spark a fiercely competitive debate on the issue, with everyone involved invoking previous in-country life experience as evidence. Similarly, this could be a small statement (for instance, a claim that there is a mall near the hotel), which will also become a much-debated matter. Who has more local knowledge? This period of individual identity formation within the group is at its most intense in the first week of in-country time, but will continue to ebb and flow throughout the duration of the program.

Stage Two: Evidence of Economic Competitiveness.
This stage grows out of, but does not completely supercede, Stage One. In this stage, each member of the group continues to position themselves as a container of authoritative knowledge by behaving in a certain manner with money. Americans seem particularly prone to this stage. In this stage, shopping and acquisitive behavior alone is not enough to solidify one's position in the group of knowers--we also have to demonstrate the we arrived at the moment of purchase only after a particularly challenging bout of bargaining with shop owners. Few of the compliments made about clothes are sincere--rather, they are an excuse to open the discussion to matters of bargaining. Who spent the least amount of money on the most amount of cloth? This behavior might be considered a subset of the Culture of Knowledge Behavior, but it requires active participation in the local economy to provide an opportunity to display one's position of greater knowledge. This participation must be followed up by a discussion, otherwise the purchase is socially invalid.

Stage Three: I'll let you know.

This is me being introspective.

You know, I could completely be a bigamist, that' s how separate I've managed to keep my two lives. It is true that a few people in Illinois have met Catherine, but I could have easily have prevented that from happening. There is such a complete disconnect between here and there it's amazing. A short anecdote to demonstrate this:

I have been growing out my hair since last March. It's been longer and shorter over the past 1.25 years, but it's mostly been over my ears and collar--unusually long for me. A couple of weeks ago, I got it cut back to something more bearable. When I was in Illinois last week, every single person I saw commented on the short hair. But this weekend, when we were with all our Indiana friends, no one noticed, because to them, it was completely normal, the same length it's always been--no one in Indiana has seen me for any length of time over the past 2 years, so how would they know that I've been wearing it shaggy for the past several months? Anyway, it's a small story, but it's those little details that make me realize that I'm not doing a very good job at balancing the here and there.

In other news, I am doing more introspecting.

You know, I'm not completely stupid about my work. I realized it's political. In fact, I had a very real moment of fear earlier this semester when I looked over the sum total of my work this year and realized that if I published it all, no BJP-led government would ever let me back into India. So, I'm not really blind about what I've been working on and what I've been writing about. I'm also not totally unaware of the fact that it is MY work. I've been without an advisor for a year, and I've really been relying on my own brainpower and abilities to connect the invisible dots to produce my article drafts. I can see that (again, not totally stupid). But what I hadn't realized is that my work is somehow an extension of my self. Okay, that seems obvious--my ideas, my words, my work, blah blah blah. But yesterday, when I realized that the person I hate most in the world had accidentally acquired something I'd written, it wasn't the intellectual or political I was worried about--it felt like a personal violation. I've worked SO HARD to keep my private life private, to keep everything about me guarded and protected, only to find out that for the past two years, *I* am the one creating the chinks in the armor. How stupid is that I would simultaneously exhaust myself building up my defenses with one hand while drilling the wall full of holes with the other? Pretty stupid, I say.

This is me, still being introspective.

Yeah, no, I'm not ecstatic to be leaving the country for ten weeks. It might sound like a vacation to some people, but it sounds like a hell of a lot of work to me. It's going to be a long, hot (did I say hot? I meant HOT) summer of balancing classwork with my real work, and it's not going to be easy. So, yeah, no. Not caring so much about going to India. Also, I don't want to take my new pajamas with me, because you know they're going to come back all ruined. Why go at all, if you can't take your pajamas?

Okay, I know my blog editing is messing up my own RSS feeds right now, but I can't tell if other people are receiving my four year olds posts every ten seconds. If so, I'm sorry. I'll be out of the country in just a few days, and you all can take a break from my chaos for a few months.

Shot hoops for about an hour today, then spent the balance of the afternoon reading Katie Hnida's Still Kicking: My Dramatic Journey As the First Woman to Play Division One College Football. I haven't read many sports books since going back to grad school, and this will probably be it for the year. It only took a couple of hours to read, but I think the content will linger with me for awhile. I know a lot of people questioned both her kicking ability and her honesty when left Colorado, but I have to say--Katie's story rings true for me. I suspect any girl/woman who has ever played on a boys'/mens' sports team will recognize at least part of her experience.

Playing on a boys' team in junior high was embarrassing (I'll never forgive the coach for making a big deal out of the chest block drill); playing on a boys' team in high school was mostly humiliating (crying in front of my teammates when I blew out the ligaments in my right ankle isn't one of my favorite memories); and playing in a mens' league my first two years of colleage was traumatic (even before one of my teammates knocked me out cold with a soccer ball, my first concussion). In theory, there were two other women on the team, but they were apparently smarter than I was and left well before season's end. I don't know...I remember being struck mute from finding mens' hands in inappropriate places, being called inappropriate names, being constantly derided or patronized. I was literally unable to open my mouth when Anka asked me what was wrong after practice. I stopped talking to her completely, because how could I tell her about the things my teammates were saying and doing? God, I hated that team and everyone on it.

Anyway, how much worse was Katie's story? If I still feel like vomiting twenty years after relatively mild harassment, what must she be going through? I think my own blog is a testament to the power of sport to drive a person to do incredibly stupid and dumb things--play even when concussed, play with a broken bone, play even though you know you're moving one step closer to permanent disability. So, I understand what kept her coming back to game. I was willing to sacrifice my mental and physical health for recreational sports; imagine if I'd had real talent, if I had been good enough at anything to play Div I. Well, Katie Hnida's stronger than I ever was--I stopped playing soccer by my twentieth birthday, and she kept working to make football happen, even after being raped by a teammate. I'm just sad that she had to work so hard, and that Div I football protects its abusive behaviors so well. Hasn't anyone in athletics learned anything since I was a freshman 20+ years ago? Apparently not.

Yesterday, we went for a hike out at Cedar Bluffs (if you follow that link--look at the rather radical topography). Once upon a time (before we knew the Nature Conservancy rules, I swear), we were strong and agile enough to climb straight up the bluff. Hard to believe, but it's true. Our first trip to the bluffs was spurred by our desire to find the Corbeau letterbox (in its original location). We've been back a couple of times just because. Yesterday, we took the trail around the foot of the bluff, and that was challenging enough. A lot of scrambling over slippery rocks--a stupid thing to do the week before you're scheduled to leave for India, I'd say. Still, it was fun, even though I spent 3/4 of the time saying "You remember when I wasn't such a wuss?" We saw a baby Copperhead snake taking in the sun on one of the rocks.

Carburetion Day 2007

Yesterday, a black ant bit my face. Also, I bought an MP3 player.

Our trip to Fort Wayne last weekend reminded me that I'm generally in favor of people named Beth. Well, really, any variation on Elizabeth is probably fine--I'm not sure I've ever met a Beth, Liz, Lizzie, Eliza, Bess or Izzie that I haven't liked.










Ray is four, and as charming as he ever was. Maggie is eleven months, and the cutest cute thing I've ever seen. Much like my experience with Dana's kids, I kept expecting a fight to break out between the two kids all weekend, but Ray seems to really like having a sister. Whenever she cried, he jumped up and tried to make her laugh, instead of clubbing her on the head, which is what I thought brothers were supposed to do in that situation.

Really nice to see Beth for a few days--we missed the last two Thanksgivings in Valparaiso (my fault), so it's been two years since we've talked in person. That's okay, because whenever we get together, it's like we're just picking up a conversation from the day before. Maybe it's because we spent so many hours in the car together going back and forth to hockey practice, but I forget to be quiet and awkward when we're together.

We had a nice visit to the Lincoln Museum--I really recommend it, and it has a nice "conservators' area" for the kids to play in. We also went to the botanical gardens to see the butterflies. No sporting events, but we totally need to go back in the winter for a hockey game, or maybe to watch some baseball if they get the new stadium built. I like a town that has lots of sports opportunities. Beth just got a tenure-track job at St. Francis, a Division II school that apparently has an awesome football team. Lucky woman.

We take running water for granted. Even though I went to junior high and high school with several people who had neither running water nor electricity on their properties, I have come to expect running water wherever I am in the U.S. Especially in my own house. It's not until you don't have it that you realize how convenient it is to turn on a faucet and not have to wonder if you're ever going to get anything out of it.

It's not like we've been living totally without water, but we lost 1/2 of our water pressure overnight about eight years ago after the City did some work on the water main in front of our house. A couple of months ago, our front yard got hit by lightning, and at that point, we lost what little pressure we had until then. The hot water still worked because it was being slowly accumulated overnight in the water heater, but we had no cold water in the kitchen, and the water in the bathroom was just a weak stream.

All this is to say that over the past two days we've had our house entirely re-plumbed. I hadn't realized how deprived we'd been until I turned on the kitchen faucet yesterday and WATER CAME OUT OF THE SPOUT. How did the plumber make that happen? We have water in our kitchen sink AND our bathroom sink AND even in our toilet. Do you realize it's not supposed to take 10 minutes for the tank to fill, or 30 minutes to fill the washing machine? For the past eight years, we've been wasting all this time waiting, waiting, waiting on water, and it turns out a couple of thousand bucks and a good plumber could have fixed it for us in 48 hours.

Well, I was going to write out a long post about a few of the misassumptions in this blog entry. For instance, Kinsey may have developed a personal fascination with sex by the end of his career, but it hardly motivated his original choice of research topics. Anyone who has spent time with his gall wasp collection would probably back me up on this. When someone says "it makes sense," that usually means "well, I have no evidence, but I will infer based on my own experience." Based on my own experience, I can say that I do the research that I do not because it's personally fascinating, but because it's convenient and reasonably not boring. That's all.

Anyway, there was some other stuff I wanted to comment on, but in the end, what I've decided to say is this:

My wife is not matronly. If you can't recognize a hot, lesbian chick when you see one, well, that's your problem. Please use the proper adjective next time.

A long, long time ago, I lived in Los Angeles. A lifetime ago. Barely remember it. One thing I do remember, however, was scraping together enough money to eat at the California Pizza Kitchen in the Wells Fargo Center downtown. Back then, I wasn't a vegetarian, and I was all about the barbeque chicken pizza. I think I only managed to save up enough money twice to eat there, but I remember how great the pizza was. That may have been the only thing I was sad to leave behind when I left. Well, and the museums, but that's about it. Anyway, I'm here to tell you--that cardboard garbage California Pizza Kitchen is selling in the frozen food aisle isn't worth whatever spare change I could scrape together. This is twice now that I have succumbed to the temptation of the shiny yellow box, and both times, I have had a completely dismal meal. So, knock it off, CPK. Next time, I might as well just spend 99 cents on the storebrand cardboard frozen pizza.

Well. Do you think I'll come back in five years and read that last post and remember exactly what it was that had me so embittered? I'm not going to enlighten anyone, but I will say as a future memory prompt: today I drove some friends to the airport in Chicago, and while I was glad to do it (and really, I was, I don't know how they would have managed six pieces of luggage, a baby, a stroller, a dog in a carrier, two laptops, a diaper bag and a purse on the bus), I had to give up something else to do it. Obviously, giving up that something else made for an angry and disappointed Susan yesterday. It was worth giving up, seeing Ayse, Olivier and Sinan off today, but it didn't seem like it last night. And maybe it won't seem like it later, but in the meantime, I'll take it as a good trade off.

I feel like I should type some sort of wrap up post, maybe something demonstrating either a) giving up everything you value in life to earn a Ph.D. is well worth it; or b) there is no point in giving up everything you value in life to earn a Ph.D. because it will never be worth it. There's probably a middle ground between those two points, but I haven't been able to find it. It's like the manic-depressive version of graduate school: "Everything's great! Everything sucks! Everything's great! Everything sucks!"

One thing I know for sure: agreeing to a 3-hour one-way commute so your wife can keep her job is in no way a good idea. In the last month, I have driven not hundreds, but thousands, of miles trying to keep everything in balance: home, work, school, professional obligations, personal obligations, friendships, family, etc. I have done a horrible, horrible job of balancing things this past year. I had less academic stress this year, but the personal stress levels skyrocketed. I think I became more integrated socially in my Illinois home, which made it hard to leave behind everytime I needed to go back to Indiana. It was much easier to just pack up and leave last year when I didn't have any friends in Urbana-Champaign. Now, I feel like I have two homes pulling at me all the time, and I can never be in the right place at the right time. And that's without even considering the large magnet pull of family from the west coast.

I desperately want to live in only one place, or god, if I have to commute, can't it take place all in one time zone? Because I'm really, really tired of not knowing what time it is. Have you ever spent two years not knowing what time it is, two years during which it is fairly essential to show up on time to class, meetings and lunch dates?

Hm...so, this reads mostly as an elaboration of point "b" as stated above.

Academically? Things are fine. Completed papers weren't as polished as I would have wished, and I know I didn't perform very well on my final exam (although I only needed a 75% to get a 96% in the class, so I can't really care about that too much). My final presentation in my Rajput Architecture class was actually quite awesome, too bad the paper didn't live up to its promise. Doesn't matter, it's over, can't change it now. Well, yes, I can, and I will, because it will make a very nice article, two drafts from now.

I have to write one conference paper over the summer, that's not too worrisome, but I need to go to Ujjain before I can write it. I also have a rather more serious paper to write before October 20, and I'd like to get some of that out of the way this summer. I want a preliminary draft (advisor's eyes only) of my dissertation proposal written by August 18. Also, I'd like a preliminary bibliography for both my major and minor field exams completed by the same date. Oh, yeah, I'm also supposed to pass Advanced Hindi this summer. I need to go to Varanasi. I need to go to Ujjain. I need to go to Delhi. It would be nice if I could stop in Mathura. I'd like to go back to Agra. I'd like to go to Bikaner and Udaipur. I've only got ten weeks, and yeah, there's that whole go-to-class-every-day-and-do-your-homework thing that I also have to do.

So, that's the semester wrap up. At home in Illinois until Thursday a.m., drive home to Indiana Thursday p.m., in Ft. Wayne Friday and Saturday, drive home to Indiana on Sunday. Try to relax for four days. Up to the Speedway for Carb Day on Friday, over to Illinois on Saturday, drive home to Indiana on Sunday. Try to relax for a few days. See some friends? Do I have any left in Indiana?

I only have one more thing to buy before I go to India (an inflatable pillow), but at some point, I should think more seriously about packing. My visa came back FIVE DAYS AFTER I MAILED IT TO CHICAGO. That must be some sort of bureaucratic record. Not that I'm complaining.

Oh, yeah. I bought a telescope with some of the prize money. I ordered it on Friday, it was supposed to arrive this coming Wednesday, then I got a notice saying it was backordered. Oh, yeah? Then how come your stupid website said there were still 2 in stock? Last time I order anything from you people, let me tell you. So, maybe, or maybe not, I will have a new telescope to use for a few days before I leave for India. Catherine has permission to use it while I'm gone.

done
done done
done done done done done done done done done done done done done done donedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedone
donedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedone
donedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedone
donedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedone
donedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedone
donedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedone
donedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedone
donedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedone.

Exhausted.

But done.

I would just to draw everyone's attention to the last section of this news article. $*#*! monkeys.

I'll just try and capture a few random thoughts before I go underground for the rest of the semester.

I'm exhausted, having arisen at 4:00 a.m. to give me enough time to get back to Illinois for the last meeting of my postcolonial queer seminar. I've been at home "taking care" of the cats since Catherine has been in out of town. Our tenth wedding anniversary was last Thursday, but our plans to get together and celebrate over the weekend were thwarted by a death in the family. We're not scheduled to see each other again until May 7. I'm not even sure I remember what she looks like. But, hopefully, we should have a full month (almost, anyway) together before I leave for India.

Speaking of, I spent a huge amount of time yesterday filling out visa paperwork, etc. I haven't really started thinking about the trip, but abruptly realized that I need to take care of all the formalities or I may not ever get out the door. Note to self: turn in fellowship acceptance tomorrow. As I told Beth, I'm pretty much not packing before I go. If I forget anything, well, there's always Big Shopper.

Anyway, I've got one more paper to write, one more project to complete, about 20 more exams to grade, final grades to calculate, and then one last teaching meeting. Then I'm taking a few days off before trying to organize my research for the summer. Paper writing went pretty well this semester (so far). The paper I turned into today (all 47 pages of it, but that includes illustrations) is probably the first draft of my first dissertation chapter. The paper I turned in a few weeks ago isn't nearly as developed, but is probably going to work into my second dissertation chapter. The paper I'm going to turn in on Friday is related to my dissertation, but probably won't lead directly into the third chapter. Still, it's been useful. Chapter four first draft will be written this summer, and presented at a conference in October. Chapter five...don't know. It would be a better idea to take my exams and actually defend my dissertation proposal before doing this, but this is what happens when your advisor is out of the country for a year. I'm going to have an incredibly well-developed proposal, that's all I can say. Three of my committee members have been reading all of this stuff I'm writing, so I'm hoping they will red flag anything they think won't work in the long run. I've got a good research agenda worked out for the summer, so I think things are going as well as they could be doing at this point.

Really, compared to fall and spring semesters last year, everything has been going pretty well. I haven't been to the counseling center even once, although I admit that's mostly because of lack of time in which to have a nervous breakdown. It looks like I forgot to mention below that one of my papers was well-received on campus (look now because I'm sure the web page will change soon). I found out last night that a second paper was well-received in the Department of Landscape Architecture, but I don't have a fancy link for that. I figure I'm getting paid about $50 an hour in prize money to do work I would have been doing, anyway. That's good incentive to keep writing. That, and the fellowship money I was already getting, I guess.

Okay, I'm completely exhausted, it's been a long week. Catch you on the flip-flop.

Today's activities in the TBH atrium perfectly demonstrate why you shouldn't stand up in front of a group of architecture students and try to fake your way through a lecture on trusswork. It also explains why you see kids running around with packs of uncooked spaghetti on the last weekend before final critiques. The studio is a competition: who can build the strongest, most stable structure out of uncooked pasta and glue? I'm not sure what the design parameters were, other than it needed to have four feet and a central space from which to suspend blocks (a basic version of the experiment is described on Science Buddies). I only got to watch a few, but I think the last one I saw was up to 28 lbs. before it crashed to the ground. Good stuff, that spaghetti.

Beth: It was Francis Drake. Next time we forget, we can just look at this post:

The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580.

Dear obnoxious business students in the Undergraduate Library:

See those doors over there? They lead into rooms specially designed for group work. Next time, start your project early enough to reserve one of those rooms ahead of time because you know what? None of us give a damn about your stupid Barnes and Noble coffee shop project. None of us care that you think you know everything there is to know about centralization v. decentralization models. None of us want to listen to you yell at each other because you're too stupid and too arrogant to stop and listen to what your teammates are trying to say before you express your own half-baked idea. Hey, I get that this is a convenient place to do group work. Look around--there are many groups here working on their final projects, but why do you think yours is the only group getting dirty looks from everybody else in the library? Didn't your parents teach you about "inside voices"? No? Well, here's a hint: it doesn't involve yelling just to make yourself heard over the rest of your babbling idiot classmates. You know why you're yelling? Because you all keep making dumbass mistakes with your PowerPoint presentation, and you keep making more every time you try to fix them. You know why? Because you tried to do all the work an hour before your final presentation. So, because you all didn't get your act together and plan ahead, we have to sit here for 45 minutes and listen to you behave like children. She didn't save the PowerPoint after printing? Well, maybe she was flustered because you'd just spent ten minutes yelling at her. Can't find it even after you saved it? Maybe you should shut the fuck up and let the guy at the keyboard look for it, instead of contradicting everything he's trying to tell you. You know what I really want? The e-mail address for your professor. I'd like to tell him just how bad you all are at group work, and I'd like to tell him that you all deserve to fail for disrupting the entire south side of the UGL for an hour because each one of you has the MOST IMPORTANT VIEWPOINT THAT MUST BE EXPRESSED and god forbid any of us should try not to listen to you. Morons.

No time to write, but can you imagine what Ray Bradbury could do with this story?

I'm about to leave town for just a few hours short of an entire week. That would almost qualify as a vacation if it didn't involve going to the SAH annual meeting. I have to say, I'm not highly excited about the program (sorry to all those who worked very hard putting the panels, etc. together, but...I'm just not). I know there are tons of people out there not studying European or American architectural history, but apparently they are not proposing sessions for SAH. Give me a year, and I'll have something to say myself.

Anyway, we're taking a road trip. Has anyone else noticed that the only time I get to spend time with my wife, we're on our way somewhere else? She's taking time off work at a very horrible time to be doing so because this may be our last "vacation" together until Thanksgiving. We've got tickets to see two houses by Frank Wright (doesn't he sound just *normal* when you don't use his middle name), Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob, on Saturday. That may be the most interesting part of the week, we'll see.

Then it's back here for one final push on those four research projects. I'm stalled on project two right now. I need to stop thinking of it as potential dissertation material and think of it as just one last seminar paper to knock out and finish. But it's for one of the smartest people I've ever met, and I don't want her to think it sucks. I psyched myself out this same way last semester, and I've got to just stop obsessing about quality and write the damn thing.

Still and all, it's looking like I might get through the program. I'm worried about exams--less about the historiographical/methodological exam questions and more about my basic lack of knowledge of South Asian architecture. I don't even have a Master's level competency in the built environment of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Sri Lanka. It would have helped if I'd actually had a class on say, oh, Indian Architecture, at some point in my endless years of education. But, no. I had a ten week class on Indian art in 1990, and a ten week class on "humanities of India" in 1986. Can I be expected to remember the content of a class I took 17 and 21 years ago? No.

I am taking a seminar on Rajput architecture this semester, and it's helped immensely. I'm learning tons, but mostly it all predates my time period, so it's not directly related to my exams. I'm trying not to get too anxious about it all because it does seem as if the dissertation is already taking shape. At least, I turned in a rough draft of a seminar paper on the colonial historiography of my site, and the professor thought I was well on my way to having the first chapter. That's putting the cart before the horse, I need to actually defend the proposal before writing the chapter, but at least I now know what to propose for my first chapter--something slightly different than the expected literature review, but still demonstrating that I know my postcolonial theory. I have a date of January 15 for my minor field exam. I'd still like to take the two major field exams in November, but we'll see.

Did I say site? I meant sites. This is the first time I've ever tried to work on multiple sites simultaneously. Try coming up with a filing system for a literature that covers five observatories. Thank god for bibliographic software. As long as I note on the computer which article is stored in which manila folder, I don't have to obsess quite so much. "This article covers both the Varanasi observatory and the Ujjain one. Where do I file it? If I file it by author's last name, how will I know by looking at the file label which observatories it covers?" and so on. Anyway, thank you Endnote, you've made my life much easier even if you hard-coded the Ibid. record wrong for the Turabian output style (idiots).

So, yes, I am guardedly optimistic that I will finish the program. My dissertation committee is in place. I have two architectural historians, one landscape historian, and two "regular" historians. I am spending a lot of time with a third historian, reading interesting books together and just generally working my way toward friendship (keeping in mind that I have an abysmal track record in that area). I'm hoping that between these six people, someone will keep me from dropping out again. If I quit, it will clearly be because of exams--they seem dark, mysterious and terror-inducing. If I can get through those, I think I'll be fine.

Not sure how much typing will get done in this little box between now and May 14. My one goal for the summer is to write more--I did a horrible job posting about India last summer. This summer, I will do better. Wait, what? I forgot to mention I was going to be in India this summer? I guess I did forget. I leave June 7, get back August 18. Catherine is being an amazingly good sport about it. I'm horribly sad about missing YET ANOTHER SUMMER AT HOME, but also looking forward to being in Jaipur again. I am a conflicted individual, no doubt about it.

Okay, people, yes, I am the reason your RSS feed is going crazy. Those aren't new posts. Those are old and boring and whiny posts. But I found a backup that seems to have most of the stuff I lost when I deleted my blog in a panic once long ago, so I'm transferring it over. Because it's more important to do that than write the paper that might form the basis of the second chapter of my dissertation. Really. It is.

Okay, this seems like the quickest way to handle this for now. We finally got tired of having our mail stolen--well, okay, they stole the mailbox, too, this time, so we've finally subscribed to a post office box. To those of you who put pen to paper to write to me, the post office box is 1603. But you need to change the last number of my zipcode to 2. If you don't know my zipcode, well then, you probably haven't ever written me a letter, so you don't care about my mailbox, anyway.

ETA: Yeah. Next time, I should double-check the box number for before writing in the blog. It's correct now, anyway.

I'll tell you what. I can't keep up with my life, that's for sure. It's not the big things that are killing me (although, yeah, now that you mention it, four research projects in one semester is at least one too many), it's the little stuff. It's been an incredibly social day, for one thing. I had coffee with Dana so we could discuss the Diana Paton book (wow, by the way. It doesn't take long to discuss a book you really like; it's much more work to try and figure what doesn't work in a book than what does), and after an hour-and-a-half of non-stop conversation with her, I ran into Chuo just as we were leaving the library. Haven't talked to Chuo since last semester, so that took me into another rapid fire conversation. Then Luke-Jim e-mailed me--another person I haven't seen since last semester. And then I ran into Martin, and we discussed the travails of being a T.A. And then I even had a short exchange with Ellen. And I also talked to Gary in the graduate office.

Who are all these people, and what do they want from me?!?!

I cranked out a draft for the first unit of my course proposal (roughly four weeks worth of lecture outlines for a course on South Asian architecture), turned that in. Wrote and re-wrote a conference proposal, sent that in this evening. Registered for that conference (it's required, I'm not that much of an optimist). Finished the last two corrections of an article I want to send out for review, realized this computer can't produce .pdf files, downloaded a .pdf maker. Made a .pdf, tried to upload it to the journal submission website, but the server refused to recognize it as a .pdf. Sent an e-mail about that. Sent an e-mail about T.A. stuff. Sent an e-mail apologizing for not turning in my annual report today, promised to turn it in tomorrow. Uploaded it to the server so I wouldn't have to remember it tomorrow. Started to answer a personal e-mail, ran out of energy (sorry, Lizzie, you're in draft mode right now). Did a load of laundry, skipped dinner.

Sent some e-mails about my fellowship for the summer/next year. And, yes, it's official, I received a FLAS Fellowship, and for many reasons, this makes me happy. If I understand this all correctly, I only need to be on campus for my language and area studies courses next year, which means my presence in Illinois will only be required from 4:00 on Monday to 5:30 on Wednesday. Also, it covers my work in India this summer, so that's all to the good. Thank you very much, FLAS awarding committee (otherwise known as "Center for Global Studies")--I appreciate it.

Played the guitar for an hour. Because I have tons of free time.

You know, I also had a class today, so it's not like I was just wandering around jabbering and e-mailing. And you know what else? I also had an hour long meeting with Valeri at the Center for Teaching Excellence. All I need to do is write my essays and then I can submit my GTC application. Talking with her is always useful because she helps me pull together the disparate threads of teaching experience into one cohesive skein of knowledge.

How many people did I talk to today? Since I usually talk to....hm...no one, any number above one is remarkable.

Spring break roundup:

Good things about the last week (or two):

Social stuff: Beth got back from Europe. This is good for me not only because she is good company, but because I like to eat tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch on Thursdays. Also this Thursday we had dinner with Dana and Craig (and Evie and Jonah, who charmed our socks off). Evie informed me that she is very brave, and I have to say that I agree. It is nice to occasionally escape the stupidity of academic life with people who don't give a damn about my academic progress. Catherine finally met Ayse on Friday, and although we were all tired and a couple of us were angry (see below), we had a nice talk.

Academic stuff: I was unofficially notified about a fellowship for both the summer and upcoming academic year earlier this week. If the award letter appears in hard copy, I'll say more. A bit of unofficial celebrating (and no, I don't mean that in the UIUC sense of the word "Unofficial") has been happening at our house. One side-effect of this is, even if this unofficial notification never turns into an official notification, one professor on the awards committee who didn't think much of me in the past has suddenly changed his opinion about me. Hopefully, this will work in my favor in the future.

I was officially notified that a paper I proposed for a conference was accepted. This doesn't sound like such a big deal, but it counts as an invited paper, which means more in my field. Also, it comes with round trip airfare and travel expenses attached. Now...I just have to write the paper. I should have paid more attention when I was writing the proposal.

Domestic stuff: The good news is prefaced by bad. The bad news was having our front yard hit by lightning a couple of weeks ago, frying our GFCI outlets along with our television. The good news is that I had just received a payment from an editing job I did for my advisor, so we could buy a new TV. That bad news about that is that I wanted to put it toward a new, more portable telescope. The good news about that is that Catherine got the kind of TV she really wanted but would never buy as long as our old TV worked. The goods news is that we bought and installed the TV with about 30 seconds to spare for second-round NCAA basketball. The bad news is that IU lost the game in large part due to two horrible in-bounds plays in the last few seconds of the game. Probably the other bad news is that we only buy TVs when our basketball vision is threatened. Priorities = scary.

Bad news about the last week (or two):

Social stuff: I can't think of any except that I suffered with my tomato soup for two weeks.

Academic stuff: See earlier posts about having a difficult time transitioning from instructor-of-record to T.A. Things came to a head about three hours before I was due to leave town for spring break. I've lost a lot of sleep over this problem, and I can't decide what to do at this point. Trying to just suffer silently through the semester doesn't seem to have worked.

Domestic stuff: I'd rather not talk about it. Life just seems hard sometimes.

I actually got spam today with the subject heading of "The British Library." How many people outside of academia are going to be at all interested in that subject? "The British Library of Sex," maybe, but "The British Library"? Come on.

• The wind on I-74 was cracking today. Almost lost control of the car at one point, which would have meant joining the other wrecked automobiles in the median. Four cars, buried in snow. Nice.
  
• My afternoon class was cancelled due to a wreck on I-57. Slow down, people!
• Also: the pedestrian has the right of way when hu is in the crosswalk. And then I have the right of way, because the light is green and I'm turning right. You only get to turn left *after* the pedestrian has safely crossed the slippery street, and I've made my right turn. *After*, not before.
  
• I'm not going to comment on the whole retired mascot issue, except to say that if you ever start a sentence with "I'm not a racist, but..." you seriously need to shut up.
• This weekend we watched Jaan-e-Mann. Not sure what to say about it; some person over at imdb claims Preity Zinta "breaths fresh air in her role." Was she being all breathy when she was being played by a cardboard cut out? 'Cause I think that was the strongest part of role as written for her. Seeing Salman Khan in a dress almost made me not hate him...almost.
• Catherine bought me Jon Auer's latest CD, Songs from the Year of Our Demise, as well as David Einmo's new Head Like a Kite CD, Random Portraits of the Home Movie (which I would have called "Random Portraits of the Social Hygiene Filmstrip" but no one asked me). I shouldn't say that I like them, because it can only hurt their images to have middle-aged scholarly fans from the Midwest. Still. I've always wanted to say to one particular person, "Dude. Whatever. I'll call you when your dead." but never had the guts. Jon Auer says it better, anyway.
• No one ever bought me Too Loud for the Snowman, which rips me. I may need to game my Amazon.com list to get what I want.
• I need a new blog layout. The fact that my basic layout has remained the same for the past five years is indicative of how little I care about the web, web design, and web technology these days. I wish someone would redesign my blog template in such an extraordinary way that I would suddenly find myself caring about it all again.
• More important than a new blog, however, is a new website. I like the aesthetic of my old freelancing site, but it's impossible to update, and I need something with my current academic info in place of my professional info. Send me your bids, and maybe I'll hire you to redesign my life.
  

Okay, these are not my photos, I stole them from some people nearby. Still, this is what it life looks like in Rantoul:






































Wow...does the new interface for blogger really suck when it comes to images. I mean...really suck.

Well, seriously, I can do better than that. Things I considered writing about:

1. A funny conversation about long underwear I had in the women's locker room at CRCE with a retired school teacher. Funny because it demonstrated that no matter how old you are, you still worry about looking like a dork in front of undergrads.

2. The fact that the soundtrack from Pardes has been banging into the back of my head all week. It wasn't until I listened to it that I remembered all the scenes in the movie that were filmed in Fatehpur Sikri. We've been looking at FS in my Rajput Palaces seminar.

3. My hate-love-hate relationship with the ice rink. Spent three hours there on Saturday night watching a so-so game of hockey (didn't check out the heavily advertised wireless networking capabilities); spent a couple of hours there on Sunday watching a short-track competition. Why am I wasting my time?

4. The general sense of depression and confusion I go through every Wednesday after my a.m. seminar.

5. The weather.

6. Reactions to various movies I've seen lately. All I can say is that the movie we're watching in Hindi class better turn out to be telling me something other than "men suck," because I didn't need to watch all this stupidity to come to that opinion. I've pretty much got that one covered on my own.

6a. The fan letter I should be writing to Preity Zinta to thank her for her crystal-clear Hindi. SRK, no letter for you.

7. My own arrogance and the way it interferes with my academic career.

7a. The difficult transition from being in charge of your classroom to becoming a T.A.

8. Various opinions on various people with whom I spend my time. Not that I would write about that in my blog even if I was writing a lot, but it's still a potential topic, I suppose.

9. My research. Again, nothing I would ever write about in my blog, but again, that could be a potential topic.

10. The fact that the pipe underneath our back parking lot has broken three times in the last week. This should probably be topic 5-sub-a.

11. Sports. Genetically encoded in my DNA. Ask my wife.

12. And, no, I am not against gay marriage. That point should be probably be 4-sub-a.

13. Lucky number.

You know, I think to myself some two or three times a day, "Oh, I should put that in my blog." And often I actually type an entry, only to delete it before I hit the "publish" button. In case you're wondering, that has already happened three times with this entry. I just can't be bothered to finish what I've started. I sat down here intending to make a list of all the things I considered writing about this week, but then didn't. It would have been an interesting list, I think, but again, I just can't be bothered. If you're really creative, you can probably make a better list of potential topics, anyway, so really, I don't need to go through the effort, right?