Sundays with Regina

Sundays with Regina
To the Vilhelm Kiers 29, foerste gang, go visit Regina. What a fantastic guide. The first Sunday, we went to Taoist temple, visited her old primary school, had yum cha, walked along the river, and laughed at various oddities of Hong Kong society, and wondered where her time was consumed in HK since it seemed like she was learning so much more in Aarhus by comparison. She even seemed a slightly different girl, in dress, and in attitude.

The next Sunday we started my holiday ritual food escapade with some typical HK pastries, wandered around Mong Kok, the busy busy gadgets and fakeware area, listened to some young and disappointing Canto rappers rapping against violence. It appears to be Sunday soapbox street, HK's version of Hyde Park's speaker's corner in London. Except it happens every day. We grab gei-darn-tsei and a HK style milk tea with weird bits thrown in: tapioca, cornflakes, grass jelly. We sit down to watch the Filipino maids and HK old men play badminton. We have a vegetarian dinner, watch Black Swan (Regina's intellectual tastes are unfortunately not satisfied by the film), and grab milk-pudding at a local dive. Regina lives near one of the old and large markets where you The kind of place where they treat you like shit, but serve good food. I'm glad they still exist.

There is so much that a real tourist would see, that I would not, as a HK-born psuedo-Cantonese speaking kid who will probably forever see HK through the eyes of a three-year-old. So I am not even giving this post-colonial Asian metrolopolis a fair go. Discoverhongkong.com and rediscover Regina.

Status of women in Delhi

Even when you know that women have different degrees of freedom and empowerment in every country, the manifestation where you see the inequality and unfairness for yourself can be extremely discomfiting. I had an inkling of the situation when my Nepali couchsurf host, a female volunteer teacher/educator who had on her profile something about working to improve the status of women, gave me not her (female) friend's number, but the son's. From the outset, I felt that I would not be able to speak alone with his mother and sister, despite their English probably being better than his. When I arrived the following day at a time when the 18-year old Prince (his name was another indication of the way Punjabi folks reinforce the patriarchal family roles) was not home, his mother conversed uneasily with me. Her English was clearly good. I found out later htat she had also been a teacher (in English) for many years. She was shy.

Prince's older sister is in her final year of an honours Bachelors degree in Commerce, who worked 3 hours every day tutoring a group of 10 students to earn money. I clearly had more in common with her. Each day, I discovered something about the family that confirmed my suspicions about entrenched North Indian gender roles, whilst simultaneously discovering that the family was wealthier than the small kitchen, and neighboorhood with intermittent water and power cuts suggested. When I discovered that they had a car, the rather straighforward and jocular conversation between Prince, his sister and me went like something this,

"So you have a car? What do you use it for?"
"It has tinted windows so I can sit with my girlfriend and nobody will discover us."
"Is that all? Does your mum or sister use it to do the shopping?"
"No. I do not let them use it."
"So you have a motorbike and a car. And they ..."
"Take the rickshaw."
"Would you let me drive it?
"Yes. Tomorrow?"
"But why? You haven't seen how I drive."
"Never trust a girl!", he says, pointing to the new sticker he got on his motorbike.

Whilst his sister and mother work, Prince does not. He hardly attends school because he is an aspiring cricket player. In his spare time he does stunts on his motorbike. The straightforwardness of the conversation was to me, not a positive sign.

This are obviously many more even more explicit acceptable behaviours for women. They should not smoke, nor drink alcohol, else they are seen as easy. The unwritten but well-known list is perhaps 100 items long. Maybe Puni will write it down for me.

A good start might be in these well-written anecdotes from India, which echo the experience of every professional woman I spoke with:
http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2009/06/08/surviving-as-a-woman-in-urban-india/

ThereWhereas the general compartments on the train are packed to the raftersWomen have their own bogies (Lisa's vocabulary is larger than mine) in which hardly anyone stands. There are almost no women on buses (the one in the photo, puking, was an exception). Women do not work at the stores and markets; they should not even visit their husbands there.

When I asked at a party, I was told that Delhi middle class is plagued by this "protection" of women because of
- punjab/northwestern patriarchal traditions,
- as an expression of "Indianness", where women's traditional status and role came to be used as the reaction against modernity

And how is it perpetuated? What the upper middle classes do, the burgeouning middle class imitates, and so on. Everyday examples are easily found.
http://mohennaorem.blogspot.com/2010/10/never-volunteers-again.html
There was a fatwah decreed on a muslim actress who pronounced that premarital sex was ok, even though everybody knows it is common, if not the norm. India still has retrograde marriage laws (http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2010/06/11/an-easier-end-to-unhappy-marriages-in-india/) which make it difficult for a woman to receive an expedient divorce, even in situations of abuse. Honour killings, where daughters are killed for apparently bringing dishonour to the family by marrying below their caste, occur even in posh neighbourhoods of Delhi. [ http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2010/06/25/india-must-ask-where-is-the-honour-in-killing/ ]

As I drag my 3 pieces of luggage plus dangling plastic bag from one side of the railway station to the other, I am badgered by would-be porters, rickshaw drivers, and guesthouse hustlers. There is a scene in Slumdog Millionaire where the main character stands on the bridge crossing all 20-odd wide platforms, looking forlorn in a sea of people, as he realises that he has no hope of finding the girl he loves. I look like that, with a massive double backpack on my back. And not half as good-looking as Dev Patel.

In my limited developing country experience, I immediately see a reflection of the service-driven economy. The push is no longer for goods. Where previously I recall being badgered to buy pants [link to Thailand Bjarke] and flimsy gadgets, fake-brand wristwatches, here it is: "where you staying?", "how many days you here?". Of course, "where you from?". Nobody believes me when I say I'm from Australia; they are convinced that I'm another Japanese backpacker. Even the food market has reached the "maturity" (at Rs 30; ~40c) and there is little attempt to hunt me down into their shop [later link to Turkey]. The margins are too slim. And a service-economy needs English-speakers. I have been told that Indian schoolkids' medium of instruction in school is English, even up here in the north. Unfortunately, a chorus of "hallooo..." amidst the constant tooting of carhorns and firing of old engine pistons makes me wish I looked somehow less capable of understanding English. When I am in China, at least I really won't understand when they pester me in Chinese!

The successful arrival by cheapest means possible, through the densest set of hounding salesmen,  has made me feel like I can face anything in Delhi.

Stuff I have, who gave them to me or remind me of

P-nok's wallet. The gang's macpac backpack. A snowgum feather sleeping bag (bought with heidi's help) that reminds me of many fellow campers. Heidi's silk sleeping bag insert. My parent's health fund's glasses (bought with Ben's help. and Dad's unhelp, as I should never have ordered them with this ghastly light-sensitive tinting). A leather jacket of inherited sentimental value (mum's sisters's late husband, who I did not know too well, but well, others did). Winnie's ipod. RIP: nathan's neckwarmer (lost during COP15). The list is brief. I like the essentiality of it. It's really the only stuff I own.

So why am I hauling four bags weighing 40kg (13 kg over the limit!) halfway around the globe to 7 different stops?

Missing planes, honest danes

When I first tried to leave Denmark, I missed my plane. But I got to live out an experience that I had only heard and witnessed through other people. One of the great things that I'll miss about Denmark is the comfort of being fairly sure that your wallet, or computer (in this case), will turn up again when you accidentally leave it somewhere in a public place, like a post office.

On return of a wallet, a 50kroner (US$10) finder's fee can be simply removed by the finder, so I've heard. That sounds quite antithetical to the notion of decency that I know of in Denmark, but I guess, if absolutely everyone is doing it, then it doesn't detract so much from the act of returning what is not yours to keep. That there is claimed to be a standard amount, though this is not verified by half of the maybe 4 people I've asked about, gives some credence to not detracting from being wholly decent behaviour.

Unfortunately my computer can't be divided into 50kr denominations. So when I happily picked it up, just as my empty seat on the plane was somewhere over the North Sea, I went next door to the Føtex (like a Marks and Spencers superstore) to get danish pastries (of course, the Danes call them Viennese pastries, "Wienerbrød") and buns and pineapple-flavoured cheese. It was a bit crazy because it's unlikely that employees at a post office can take sufficiently long breaks to all sit down and spread cheese together. So I threw in a bar of fairtrade chocolate with licorice pieces.

On having stuff returned, my Lithuanian friend experienced quite the opposite. Slowly after several phone calls to her own phone, which she thought had been lost and found honestly, it became apparent that the possibly-Arabic-speaking holders of her phone had stolen it, and fooled her, so that she left her account open long enough for them to call the Netherlands, Germany and other Danish numbers throughout the night until the balance went negative enough to be locked. There will be other posts on "integration" of other "cultures" in Denmark.

Eat in India

We are on a trip in India, so one of the first entries should be on a theme reflecting basic life-affirming activities. Pray and Love can come later. Let's start with Eat. Food here is too spicy for almost all westerners' stomachs, and hence a temptation to be avoided. Even some berries here, a variant on cape gooseberries, which were the only exotic fruit I found in Denmark (annanaskirsebær), are making my stomach perhaps too acidic.

So far I've been on one meal a day, and avoiding liquidy foods. Of course it all tastes so good, but I don't want my coming trip to KL and China to be like one I had two years ago, where I spent most of the trip in a foetal position cradling my stomach, whilst platters full of food were dished out agonisingly before me to fellow travellers. So hopefully I also avoid the runs that seem to strike so many exactly a week after landing in Asia and eating local food. That would just be terrible timing, since my flight out of Delhi leaves in a week. "Being sick on a plane," said mum, "is worse than funeral. It's a modern Chinese saying, not least because my mum is chinese. It's the modern day version of the toothache. "Toothache is worse than major illnesses."

Avoiding food since the fast has been harder than prior to it. I developed an unhealthy fixation on food in general. I am constantly aware of my gut. Living to eat, rather than the other way around. I've always tried to provoke myself into compassion by leading food-craving thoughts to mindfulness of the hungry and destitute; hoping that maybe, one happy day, some action will eventuate. It should be easier to do that in Delhi.

Some hostels in Delhi

Hostel owners play it strategically. In a place where people are likely to chat about poor service and dodgy deals, there is a practical solution: don't afford them the place to chat! This seemed to be the setup in my particular hostel, part of the New King chain that includes Kuldeep and Yes Boss. They comprise more than half of the cheap hostels in Delhi. Damn monopolies. I couldn't find any Delhi hostels with good common areas.

When I come back after a day of wandering around, I enter the room to find water running all over the floor, when all i wanted was to take a pee break. I hold it in. go downstairs. The 14-year old porter wants to blame me for turning a tap. I haven't touched a thing, and it occurs to me that this is the first pee all day. It's 6pm, and not going well so far. The toilet is naturally filthy, and the water and condensation running all day has made the room humid and hospitable to mosquitoes. I hold my breath, and make the best of the situation by taking a combination toilet break. I have to borrow tissue from the danish couple next door, who may have been scammed into paying $2000 for their 23 day trip that must include every single site in Rajasthan.

It will suck if they have paid for nothing: they have not even been allowed to see their train tickets there. It may be great and reasonable value too. Wish them the best. But I am so tired that I can hardly even understand what they are saying in Danish. Everybody is travelling in pairs or triplets, and it's completely understandable. India as a backpacker is an overwhelming place and meeting up with Shome's friends on the weekend could not come sooner I'm really looking forward to a break, to trustworthy people. To ... chillaxing :P