Revelation from my India trip

I have stopped writing the blog again!!! This time is like for the entire life!! Not really.... In fact, I have only stopped writing for a few months. A few things I have done in the past few months: I have got myself a boyfriend, which is good and uplifting because he is quite a good catch (LOL), at least in my opinion. I went back to London to show my second chapter to my supervisor, and it turned out not bad. I have also managed to produce a paper for a Feminist and Geography conference, which is organized by RASPAS of ANU and the Delhi University. I wrote on self-reflexivity in feminist research. And it was so unexpectely good. Because I found out a few things about myself and about India.

I went to India once and that was ages ago and I didn't spend much time hanging out as I was just visiting the Delhi bureau. This time is the same: I went there arrving Tuesday night and left on Wednesday night (blah!!). That was a really awful experience as the plane left not until 23:00pm, which is 1:30am in the morning!!! So, again, I didn't get a chance to see Delhi myself.

But then along the way to the university, I saw camp after camp along the construction site for the commonwealth game. At first I thought that was for the construction only. But then later on I saw naked kids running around the camps and when I asked about what that is. An Indian student told me the poor lived there at night. And the construction site is for building better electicity network for the commonwealth game. Upon arrival at the university international residence, I was so shocked as I saw electricity didn't run as freely as in the cities I have visited in the past. They still required a generator to regulate the electricity we used. I thought that happened ages ago and should have been better. Well, obviously, there is lots of room for improvement.

The conference was great. The Indian students are efficient, smart and hospitable. I had a great time there meeting people from different places and getting a sense of what my future would be like. Going to conference after conference and trying to get my papers and books published. Well, not bad. It's scintillating and it's absolutely necessary if I don't want to get alzheimer when I am old. (I hope not frail :P).


And about myself: My Indian counterparts told me that I actually look like an Indian, which is all too greek to me. I have been told I look like: Indonesian, Filipino (you have our faces), Nepalese, Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese and now one more: Indian from the north-eastern province. I guess this is good to work as a journalist with such a trans-regional face. Now, I am no longer a journalist but an ethnographer, perhaps I will test how this could work for me in the future when I conduct fieldwork outside my own place. It could be lots of fun. At least, I am keeping my fingers crossed.