random thoughts

just a few thoughts and observations from mumbai:

only in india can you be walking down the street of the largest city in the country and be worried about being kicked by a spooked cow that's hanging out on the sidewalk

if ever though that the caste system was dead and buried, you only need to be reassured about its continuing existence by looking in the matrimonial ads of the sunday paper. where everyone is brahmin, earns a lot of money and is light skinned. (yes, those are all specified in most ads)

ever see the movie "And the band played on"? It's about the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but the beginning scene of the movie is basically some CDC epidemiologists showing up at a village in the middle of an ebola outbreak. The epi team is driving WHO vehicles, white land rover-style with the WHO seal in blue on the doors. Those are the quintessential WHO car. I get to ride around in one. It's very cool. (ah, the things that make an epidemiologist happy)

the city government has a specific line item on the budget for rounding up stray cows. they spend 400 times more on that than on HIV/AIDS work.

you can judge the cost of the hospital by how much the halls smell of urine. it's an inverse correlation.

Tuberculosis is a truly horrible disease. It's not like I didn't know that already, but it's great to have it demonstrated to you day after day.

no such thing as pre-fab in India. the office i'm working in is having new cabinets made. they're all made from scratch, with hand tools. it's a rather fascinating process or watch. but when they start staining the wood i clear out of there since the ventilation is rather poor.

eating dinner late is the norm. most restaurants don't start serving until 7:30pm.

many people in the slum areas use scrounged corrugated tin for roofs. it rusts through rather easily, so they buy large blue plastic tarps and tie them down on their roofs to try to keep the rain out. you can tell how poor the area you're in is by looking at the amount of blue plastic. Immediately around my hotel, the only blue plastic visible is in the construction site across the street; but three blocks away is a small slum area and there is blue plastic peaking out from everywhere. (I'm on the 20th floor so I get a good view.)

that's all for now.