I’m Working… I Swear

This is stupid don’t watch this.

Ridin Dirty from Andrew Lang on Vimeo.

I guess two weeks is about how long it took me to get used to India. When I come back I feel like I won’t have any problems getting my stomach to be happy with me and I will completely be able to understand the differences between my culture and the Indian culture that make things hard at the beginning.

Today was a ridiculous day. We ended up meeting with about 5 companies providing search engine optimization services. At one point we got so double booked that one company walked into our hotel room as I was still talking to another company, that probably didn’t look very good. I learned so much by going through these meetings with different companies that by the time we got to the last company we ripped them apart. This company came in here with a pathetic proposal that had errors, blank tables and graphs, and a horrible pricing strategy and payment scheme laid out.

We basically told them that with what they laid out before us we could structure it so that we never had to pay them anything. They had zero answers, and apparently knew less about what to do than what me and Bala did. It was pathetic. I think they must have been ready to cry by the time we got through with them. They are supposed to send a clarifying e-mail but I’m pretty sure they won’t even bother with how that meeting went. Poor kids.

I felt pretty bad about it actually, like I was being a jerk to them. But at the same time, they wasted my time, I wouldn’t walk up to someone trying to sell them something and not know a thing about what I’m selling, that’s just rude.

Back to my point. I’m going to miss India, the people I’ve met here, and the lifestyle. On the bright side I’m wearing one of the most comfortable pairs of jeans I’ve ever owned. I was just explaining to Bala that I’m always on the look out for pants I can wear and still easily kick someone in the head. These pants are designed for just that, perhaps unknowingly. Bully’s beware, when I’m wearing my Indian jeans, best watch out.

In an hour or so I’ll begin my 24 hour long journey back to the US. Two layovers and 2-3 countries. No biggie, its just traveling to the complete other side of the planet. I was telling Bala that we better have a good dinner for my last meal in India, turns out it was, but he replied with “why, you’ll be back in just 3 months”. He’s right, and that made me feel better about leaving. I’m excited to come back, I hope that the next trip will be longer, the people here have demanded at least half a month so they can show me more, and I’m tempted to comply. I was telling Bala that when I get back to the US, I probably will be spending a lot less time in the office than I was before. I’ll be spending more time at the Lightning MMA Orange County gym and doing a lot more of my Circuit Assembly eStore work remotely. I really want to be able to do my work, stop for an hour and train at lunch, and then get back to work. I’m excited about spending time working on Lightning MMA. It’s a passion project for me. I barely think about the money that I need to be making from it because its just so much fun to work on. I could really care less as long as the gym breaks even, I just want it to be able to stay open so I can have a place for me and all my friends to train. I’m really excited about showing new people what it was that really changed my life four years ago, I hope it can do the same for them.

I’ve been reading this book that one of the people I met here gave me, its called “The Art of Living“. Its all about Vipassana meditation. I like the idea because unlike other forms of meditation it isn’t based in religion. Well, its based on what Buddha used to attain enlightenmnemt, but I don’t really consider Buddhism the same as traditional religion. It’s really quite interesting and definitely agrees with many aspects of what I’ve come to believe about life, spirituality, and the attitudes we need to have about life in order to be happy.

I guess my next post will be on the other side of the planet.

I realized today, while there were 25 Indian programmers asking me to be in a photo with them, that people seem to think I’m somebody. This trip to India is the first time I’ve ever really been the big guy in the meeting. It’s been weird interviewing potential employees for jobs, and meeting with companies and being introduced as the boss. Suddenly I’m the decision maker in the situation.

The weirder part to me is that although I’m pretty nervous at first to go into this kind of thing, I end up completely taking control of the situation and everything seems to workout well. Today I basically took charge of this meeting evaluating our new website with the head programmers working on it and found over 20 items they need to fix.

What’s my level of education in web design? I took an HTML class in highschool.

Despite all this I really love what I’m doing right now, getting to meet new people and interact with different cultures is awesome. Its refreshing to see how other people work and live and seeing how I can work together with them to leverage how I get things done and how much it costs me. If I continue down this road I see myself as being some kind of expert outsourcer.

It’s funny because so many people are terrified of outsourcing or even traveling to other countries to do the type of thing I’m doing. I absolutely love it, there’s so much to learn about people just by asking them questions about what kind of food they eat, and how they live each day. I feel like this trip has helped me to understand Bala so much better and I think it will really allow me and my work to improve leaps and bounds as a result of that understanding.

At the same time as soon as I’m done with meetings like this I revert back to my little kid jokes with clouse or whoever on AIM or facebook. I’ve even caught myself on facebook in very important meetings while someone is trying to come up with something to show me. Yeah, I’m a professional, except for the way I dress and secretely talking on AIM and facebook when I shouldn’t be.

Indian SEO Sign

And... The Entrance

Hey maybe if you could all keep up I wouldn’t have time to screw around?

Today was a cool day. No running or yoga today because my room mate went to temple in the morning. I was kind of thankful because my entire body is sore. I guess we’ll go back to normal tomorrow morning though. I bet its from never getting to eat any protein so I have no idea how my muscles are getting any nourishment, poor muscles.

The kids are really starting to warm up to me. The older one will come up to me and just start talking to me in english, she’s super nice. They are always bringing me snacks, its so cute. The younger one is a bit shy when it comes to talking but she is always saying “Hi” and “Bye” to me whenever. Also she will just walk up to me and smile and stick her tongue out and make faces and I make them back. I hope if I have a daughter that she’s like her, I’ll be stoked.

We interviewed someone today for a customer service rep job. Bala said he thought the guy would work for less than 4 dollars an hour. The guy has a bachelors in mechanical engineering. The US is screwed. I really don’t see why I would ever hire anyone in the US to work for me again personally, I’d avoid it at all costs. The people here are so intelligent, kind, hard working, and appreciative, I just never see that kind of person in the US.

Tomorrow we go back to Bangalore by train, looking forward to my 8 hour train ride and sleeping on the train. I’m gonna come back addicted to ambien, oh well.

Bala Taking the Kids to School

So this weekend wasn’t really much work (there’s not too much to do on weekends besides answer a few e-mails). So what we did yesterday was drive out to see Bala’s family in a nearby town. I need to remember that whenever Bala says we’ll be back by a particular time I should add about 50% onto that duration to approximate how long it will actually take. So we took off in the morning on a two hour car ride and stopped at about 3 different houses containing about 4 generations of direct and extended family. It was insane. I’m pretty sure they were all talking about me the entire time and asking why I was there… which I myself couldn’t really answer if they’d asked me.

After we visited every member of his family in the town and picked up a few of them we headed to the families local Hindu temple. The coolest part of my day was talking with Bala’s wifes’ sister who was in the process of getting her PhD in Archaeology, specializing in the writings on the walls of the ancient buildings in this part of India. She came with us to the temple and basically answered every question I had about Hinduism, their beliefs, how they worship and everything. The most interesting part to me was that she told me what she believed about why Hinduism has a positive benefit. She went over the social history of what temples were in ancient times. People would gather at the temple whenever there was an important event and if someone ever had a problem they would come to the temple and ring this bell. After ringing the bell everyone would come nearby and ask what the problem was, even the ruler of that area would come to find out.

Beyond that, their religion involves a lot of meditation and focusing on one object. She explained that the true value in this is the meditation and focusing on something for a long period of time, not in the gods themselves. I thought this was interesting because that had been my theory about other religions as well. I think it gives people time to reflect on themselves, their problems, and their lives that they wouldn’t ordinarily take time to do without religion. For whatever reason I felt really peaceful after this talk and everything, it was cool to see how the family all came together for this special day. I couldn’t help thinking that I hoped that she shared her thoughts about the true benefits of religion with her kids and family instead of just me.

Today I found out James won his fight on the ultimate fighter finale. So now he’ll be in UFC and be all rich and hopefully it’ll get our new school some good press for free. I guess I lucked out on that one?

I went running and did yoga again today with the guy I’m staying with. He’s a nice guy, he barely speaks any english but whenever I ask him something he will smile and somehow convey his answer in a way I can understand. When we do yoga he says simple stuff like “you watch, they you can try” or “slow breathing” or “relaxxxx”. Its pretty cool. I admire the way he lives his live, every morning he takes time to go do his walking and yoga, only then will he go to his shop and begin work.

Anyways, woah, big tangent. I meant to get to the part where we went to Bala’s wife’s cousin’s house for a special Sunday lunch, FINALLY MEAT. Yeah so I ate good today, I was stoked. Also we stopped by a bakery where I bought some stuff I’m DEF going to scarf down later. Back to the point, at the house I met the husband and Bala pointed out to me that he was really into meditation. So naturally I’m interested and start asking about it. He explained that unlike what most people practice, the type of meditation he is into has nothing to do with religion and can be practiced by anybody. So by now I’m REALLY interested. He gave a book called “The Art Of Living” and I started reading it immediately and its very interesting. I love the idea of being a spiritual person without being religious. I’ve always felt like there is so much to know about this world and the answers aren’t in books.

I also keep thinking back to my childhood and being told by my religion that the end of spirituality was me accepting Jesus Christ as my savior. I always felt there was something wrong, that couldn’t be the end result of spirituality, that’s far too easy to be considered salvation. Now something you have to work for in order to better yourself and attain truth, that makes sense to me. I don’t think truth can be the same for every person and I think people should always be questioning things written down, things change, we are constantly discovering new things about our world and about ourselves, why should we be following what’s written by people who may have known less than we do?

I think the best thing I could have done here is spend time meeting all of Bala’s friends and relatives. We just got back from a neighbors house who made me french fries and something that kinda tasted like fried zuchini, so bomb, my stomach feels pretty normal for the first time in a week. We also discussed the differences between American and Indian culture. They came out and asked me “so when do you plan to get married”. I laughed, I said, “well my parents aren’t trying to find me a wife and I’m not really working that hard at it so… not anytime soon”. It’s cool comparing and contrasting different cultures with different people. Its kind of weird to have people be facinated with what seems like my average life. What are your hobbies? “Well… I enjoy fighting?” *they freak out* So do you have any siblings? “Uh well I have 3 half siblings, my dad was previously married.” This of course leads into talking about a divorce rate of 50% compared to 10%.

I’m having a good time, now if only my stomach would stop being such a bitch I’d be stoked.

Ok so yesterday we got off our 6 hour train ride, which was actually quite comfortable. I hung out on the top bunk and read a book for several hours and maybe fell asleep, I’m not sure. Some people laughed at me as I hurt myself trying to get down the first time, that was awk.

Arriving in Coimbatore the weather was kind of California like, dry and hot, but just a bit hotter than I’m used to. The taxi driver (who is also Bala’s neighbor) picked us up and I found out I’d be staying with him while we were here. We caught up on some work stuff last night and then I had dinner and went to bed. Turns out my bed was some blankets laid down on the floor, not exactly what I’m used to but thank the good lord for Ambien.

The yoga dudes house was pretty interesting. Actually, its literally a yoga mat on the floor and some dishes in the kitchen, I didn’t really see much of anything else besides his clothes drying. Less is more.

I fell asleep pretty early and i recall waking up in the middle of the night and this strange guy being next to me. Cool. In the morning he was MIA so I just kind of hung out. He had told me the night before we were going running and doing yoga in the morning around 7:30. I woke up around 7 and wandered around. When he came back we took a scooter ride down to an empty field. His english isn’t so hot but he started walking, told me to jog cuz he knew that was my plan. So I ran for like 30 minutes or something ridiculous and then stretched out afterwards and we were ready to head back.

So then was yoga time, he uses the same mat he sleeps on and I used the pile of sheets that I had slept on. I was pretty much only able to do the first half of stuff. I have horrible leg flexibility but it was still cool. He kept saying breathing was important. This is my first time doing YOGA OK.

Anyway, it was pretty cool, I’ll get a picture of the bathroom that I’m using.

Ok so this happened a while back, and this video is pretty boring, but I just had to make a video with this song in the background.

Enjoy

Socalmartialarts.com

So this is the newspaper article I envisioned being written about me the next day as I was filming this video. I told Bala that I thought this driver could be given a fast car in the US and put on a race track and be a professional race car driver, he came within inches of pretty much everything, this wasn’t even the worst of it. It was an exciting 45 minute drive (which was supposed to take an hour and a half) to the airport.
Bala’s first plane ride was pretty exciting, it was cool to share that experience with him. I let him borrow my phone so he could take some video out the window and also got a photo of him on the plane.

From the plane our plan was to go have lunch at the Ramada Resort because he knew the head chef at the restaurant. We had lunch and he showed us around the hotel, its gorgeous. He comp’d us a delicious lunch and offered to give us a room for 100 USD when its normally 400 per night. We took him up on the offer because the place was just to gorgeous to pass up. I was also stoked that they had a gym, which I used at night and in the morning. The pool was also sick, it had a view of this gorgeous river/ocean type deal. Sampled some local India rum while Bala had a beer, it was delish.

I met a cool guy from Dubai who was on his honeymoon, we played a bit of volleyball and chatted for a bit. The next day he told me he had been on this river boat house thing the night before and that sounded awesome. I asked Bala about it and we decided to go for it today. I’m actually on the boat right now, it’s a freaking blast. I’ll probably post a video of it later edited to the song “I’m on a boat” that clouse sent over.

I really love this kind of thing. We stopped by a little shop while we were on the boat and bought some huge prawns for like 12 bucks that we’re having for dinner tonight. It’s going to be delish. We also stopped by a shack that sold this coconut fermented thing. I thought it was alcoholic because it tasted awful but Bala assured me that it wasn’t. I drank a couple cups of it because he said it would grow on me and then realized I had become drunk. I then told him that he lied to me but he continued suggesting that it wasn’t alcoholic and that it just helps you to sleep better and keeps you cooler in the hot weather.

In other news, I have never felt like I’m living the name of this website URL more than right now. I’ve got my laptop out cruising along on this boat in the middle of nowhere in India writing down my thoughts. E-mails are still coming to my blackberry and I’m answering them as they come in. That device is a god send, I don’t know what I would do without it (not work I guess).

I feel like the theme for the last few days has been simplicity. The first hotel room we stayed in was simple even by my standards but the food was awesome. The resort was way too fancy for me but it was a nice refresher. Tonight its going to be a pretty tiny cot on a houseboat but that’s more my style. Going down the river I was reminded of how simply people can get by. This entire area was up by the British and now the people live here and obviously lead a pretty simple life. There’s miles of rice paddies and just small huts up and down the river everywhere. You’ll see people riding by boat back and forth. There’s even a state run boat system for transport that runs just like busses.
But this, right now, is exactly what I want to be doing with my life. Not planning anything and ending up on a boat going up some Indian river eating food prepared by locals… and… out of necessity, answering some e-mails on my phone.

I don’t think anyone back home could even tell that I’m not sitting at an office working all day, and that makes it all the better to be here. I guess I owe a serious thanks to Bala for this because if it wasn’t for him there’s no way I’d be enjoying this right now. This won’t be my last trip.

After we docked the boat we took a walk on the land where we docked. There’s just small simple houses all up and down this dirt road. I asked a ton of questions about how these people live and learned a lot. While we were chatting on the boat a man came by in a canoe selling clay pots, there’s people doing this for everything these people would need, there’s no reason to venture outside of their local area for anything at all. He said that they’ll spend about 10 rupees for fish each day and about 20 rupees for curry and they will have food all day long, for about 50 cents.

He also said that typically these people will go to some of the gulf countries and work for 5 years and save money, then, with the money they’ve saved they will come back here, put the money in a bank and build a house and live on that money for the rest of their lives. You have to admire that kind of commitment to simplicity. They will essentially work hard for 5 years of their life so they can enjoy a simple care free life for the rest of their days. Compare that to the American life where we work from 18 to 65 and then spend 65 to ~80 living out our retirement, once we can’t even enjoy the true joys of life.

That’s my one goal in life is never to fall into that. I never want to have to work because I need the money. The only reason I do any of the work I do now is because I enjoy it and I feel like its’ appreciated. I hope more people have that attitude towards work and I hope that everyone I work with can have that attitude too. I feel bad for those people that have to work to “pay the bills”. Why do you even have bills? Why did you buy something that you couldn’t afford to buy? Do you really need that plasma TV or that BMW? I doubt it considering 80% of the planet has never even seen them and they get by just fine.

As you can see my new plan has become to make these posts so long that nobody will ever want to read them.

Alleppey

So this morning we rode the boat back to Allepey and took an “auto” to a hotel. For a non-AC room its 18 dollars a night. Its clean and its not even hot so, it rocks. We spent like an hour and a half trying to find Bala a Moneygram outlet so he could get his bi-monthly paycheck. From there we walked around a bit, got some juice at a local stand (with no ice) and then went for lunch at this local hotel that was basically somebody’s house. They took great pride in showing me this European child that was sleeping there. I guess their son married a girl from Holland. Pretty much a miracle.

I’m struggling without Wifi, we’re going to a little internet café later on today to check e-mails and what not. I took a lesson from Four Hour Workweek and washed some of my clothes in the bathroom with some soap and hung them up to dry, I don’t have enough shorts so it will be nice to have some relatively clean ones to wear. I’m pretty sure I must have gotten sunburned today, I was in the blazing hot sun for like 2 hours without sunscreen. We’ll see. Glad I have clouse on AIM all day so I have someone to tell my stories to.

Pretty concerned about getting food poisoning right now especially after eating that food and probably drinking water that wasn’t purified. It’s not like I could really tell if my stomach is hurting since in general its in pain as a rule. It just varies in the level of how much pain my stomach is in, no biggie, I’m assuming I’ll get used to it eventually?

Going to the temple with Bala later to get blessed by an elephant and then go swimming at the beach. I hope.

So its kind of weird but I really have been enjoying all the time traveling alone. When I have to sit alone for a long time waiting for a plane or on a plane it gives me a lot of time alone with my thoughts which, normally, I don’t get. I’ve been reading this book called “Less is More” which is basically just a collection of quotes about living simpler arranged into a way that the book kind of progresses through different topics and themes. It’s pretty cool actually. I also put a really good selection of my music onto my phone and I listen to that with my headphones, its actually pretty awesome.

Lately I can’t seem to avoid the feeling that I’ve wasted too much of my time working for something and trying to earn money or make something out of myself. I actually started thinking about it more upon the realization that I’m alreayd 24. I’ve only got about 6 more years before my youth is considered over and I haven’t gotten anywhere near accomplishing all of the things that I wanted to do while still single, healthy, and able to do ridiculous things.

I guess I should be thankful that right now I’m in India on a business trip and getting to experience an entirely new culture. But in reality I’m actually kind of dreading returning to the US and working on my gym and getting it going. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy my work but… Thailand is just a few hours flight from here and its been my dream for a few years now to go train there for a month. Part of me had the idea to just ask Lili to modify my ticket, and head to Thailand for a bit while I’m here… but… I know I shouldn’t.

Besides death I worry about love too, I mean, I’ve never really had the type of relationship with someone that most other people encounter in their life and decide “I definitely want to spend my entire life with this person”, nope, has not happened for me. I guess its just my view right now that I don’t think human love was meant to last a lifetime in reality and that I think marriage is just an ideal that we have been taught to accept and aspire to, although in reality its ridiculous. I’d like to believe that a life long commitment to someone is something that I will some day want to do, but at this point I’m not sure, and I think that’s a bit sad.

I mean what really is the point of life if you can’t create something and share it with a group of people you love? I mean sure I love my friends and my family, but I really want to create my own family one day. I guess I’ll mature into it, maybe I just have too much selfish living and exploring to do right now to be ok with it, 24 is a bit young after all right?

Anyways, I landed in India yesterday and met Bala for the first time. Oh I also got my first encounter by someone trying to rip me off. Bala made the mistake of thinking my plane arrived an hour later than it did (no big deal). He’s lucky I’m not an insane freak and didn’t panic I was just kinda chillin at the airport thinking to myself “what are the chances that I’ve been talking to someone on MSN for 4 months that isn’t… a real… person”. So anyways eventually he showed up, nice guy. We’re staying in this cute little apartment that was hotelized. Basically the living room is like the reception and we stay in one of the rooms. We’re sharing a bed right now, not bad at all. The food actually has been amazing so far, I got this spicy omelette and toast in the morning and this ridiculously good indian food at lunch. We met up with a guy Bala knows named Dinesh who is starting up an SEO company. He gave us a short proposal and took us to lunch, it was fantastic. We’re gonna go shop for some clothes and stuff this evening, I need to get some rupees.

I also need to take some photos since I’ve got nothing for this post, so uncharacteristic of me, time to get touristy on this place.

Ok here’s something to tide you over:

Me and Bala's Room In Bangalore

View From Our Hotel Room, It's Beautiful I Know

So, I recently had to think about what I would do in the future (something I generally despise). I had a tryst with an overly religious girl recently, shortly after she started questioning me about my thoughts on religion and how she wanted to raise her children Christian because of her strong belief in Jesus Christ. It got me thinking about my childhood and what effect Christianity had on me as a child. The most vivid memories I had were being forced to go to church and having my friends make me feel guilty for the things I did as a kid and not being a “better” kid. I remember being really concerned about what god thought about me and worrying that I would go to hell.

I always had a problem with the idea that saying a prayer one time suddenly would send me from hell to heaven, it didn’t seem like enough. Now I think about how much time I wasted being judged by my friends for the things I would do that were “unChristian-like” and being told that people belonging to other religions were bad people.

So, would I raise my kids Christian?

Lets imagine that for some reason I ended up married to a woman who was religious, Christian even. I wouldn’t have any problem at all with her taking them to church on Sunday. After church though I’d make sure to remind my kid that although they’re attending Christian church, there’s also Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, etc. that they haven’t heard about and all have an equal probability of being just as correct as Christianity. I’d probably give them a crash course in the beliefs of other religions and their stories. I’d make sure to point out how similar the story of Jesus Christ is to other religions saviours and dieties and make them think about where Christianity really originated. At the end of all that I’d also mention that there’s also one more option and that’s to not believe in a god at all.

I actually get a bit upset thinking about my childhood and being taught that no other religions could possibly be correct. I never even knew that there were other people that didn’t believe in the same god I did and never got a chance to hear their ideas or teachings. I think this kind of upbringing teaches a child to be close minded and teaches the child not to think for themselves or question what their told. Essentially I think it has all the makings for creating an ignorant person because of the unwillingness to listen to unfamiliar ideas. I don’t think its a good attitude that if something is hard to explain, its because only God knows. This attitude leads to the discouragement of new thought and discovery.

We’re getting to the point with modern science that we can explain almost all the things that were previously considered acts of God. Demonic possession – schizophrenia, A vision of angels or speaking with god – schizophrenia or ergot poisoning or hallucinations, the origin of humanity and conscious thought – Darwininian evolution.

Religion has existed for the last several thousand years due to a lack of understanding of how the world worked and because human beings needed something to comfort them because we’re the only beings capable of understanding our mortality. Do I like thinking that when I die my body goes into the ground and nothing happens? Well, I don’t think heaven really sounds that great either (well maybe Muslim Martyr heaven). Who wants to sit around for eternity and worship a god? BORING. I wanna play ping pong. Beyond that, I don’t recall what it felt like to not have been born, but I don’t remember being bothered by it, I suspect being dead will feel much the same way.

I believe and hope that as we learn more about how our world works that god and religion won’t even be necessary anymore to explain how this all came into being. Maybe religion is just a passing phase that will become extinct when people begin understanding that evolution and science can now explain much more than god’s existence does. Its a role reversal that has happened as we progressively learn more, the more scientific education we have, the less likely we will be to believe in a god.

I do understand why some people still choose to believe in god, its because they don’t understand science, and they don’t require something to be proved to them for them to believe it. I also realize why I changed from being a believer to a non-believer. I spent 4 years studying physics, biology, psychology, and chemistry. I have a much better understanding of human thought, human behavior, the rules by which our universe is governed, evolution, and human motivation than the average religious person does. There’s a reason why there’s a negative correlation between level of education and belief in god. I think not being educated in the areas I described above make it easy to say that god exists and not see the blaring contradictions that science has created in the last century. More than that I could expect that knowledge humanity has only had for 50 years to change 8000 years of belief, no matter how irrational it is.

So, to answer your question miss, I would want my children to think for themselves, question what their told instead, and not blindly believing what someone tells them. I don’t think only showing them one tiny of religious possibility is the way to do that.