1967 - A Week of Good Vibes

I stayed with Jeff about a week. Another good friend from high school, Bill, was there too.

Mostly what I remember was that this was a week of good food and conversation.

Jeff had something to do with water pumps for the farmers but I didn't then and don't now understand what he did.

Most memorably He took me to the butcher to buy meat. Chicken I think. Picture a nearly naked, not terribly clean man, loincloth and ragged shirt, sitting cross-legged on a table with his knife held between his toes. He drew the meat across the blade and let each slicet fall to the table (or floor). Naturally there was no refrigeration or sanitation as we know it (and in 1999 in New Delhi I again went to a butcher shop in a local market and found conditions to be much the same).

Eat your meat well done in India.

Jullundur

The distance from the border to Jullundur is only 70 miles or so. But the train from the border took several hours. Stopping in the middle of nowhere and then moving at a snails pace. It was dark when I reached this Punjabi town of several hundred thousand.

Jeff, my best buddy from high school was in the Peace Corps in Jullundur. I had his address but he didn't know that I was on the way.

I hired a cycle-rickshaw at the train station, gave the driver the address and off we went into the night. After Pakistan I was a bit freaked out about my personal safety. As we rode along I had my hand in my daypack on my knife for defense. But, we arrived at his location without incident.

All lights were off and in a cluster of small houses I had no idea where Jeff might be living. I said to the driver - 'Let's go back'. He said 'No' and persisted in looking around, knocking on a door and there was Jeff.

I don't remember but I hope that my driver got an excellet tip.

1967 Border Sweat

The next day the Dane returned with our passports and exit visas. He'd had to argue a bit but was able to get all of us certified for departure.

Now, this is June, so it is quite hot - a hundred or so. I was sweating extra as I had three things that are not allowed into India: Hashish, Gold and Indian currency. The Indian border guards asked no questions.

I was IN. June 7th, 1967

On to Jullundur!

1967 Border Jump

So, we made it through expressions of hate and crowds of demonstrators to the Pakistan/India border by horsecart.

There are about six of us. I knew none of the others as German Peter had returned home. So, I continued my journey East.

At the border we were informed that we needed Exit Permits and no amount of discussion or bribery was going to change that.

We handed our passports to a Danish guy and he went back to Lahore to get the permits we needed. Not a smart decision by post-9/11 standards but back in those days such actions were fairly common.

Anyway, we settled in as it would probably be the next day before our passports came back to us. We had no food but the border guards very kindly shared what they had with us.

At night the guards advised us to be very careful as Cobras were in the area. The guards had their Charpoys to sleep on which raised them off of the ground. Charpoys are wooden-framed, string-laced beds that are used throughout the area. Since we would be sleeping on the ground the guards advised us to sleep like spokes on a wheel, heads on the outside so that we could detect any approaching Cobras. Also, they gave us a lantern to sleep by so that oncoming cobras might be seen.

I drifted off to a uneasy slumber....

I awoke in the middle of the night to something moving on my sleeping bag. Shouting, I must have set a new world's record for exiting a sleeping bag and everyone woke up.

It was only a frog. I hope the guards had a good laugh.

It's too hot! 

1967 Catchup - Tehran to Afghanistan with a sidetrip to WWIII

What with vacation in New Mexico, followed by vacation in Seattle I am very much behind. Here is the start of catching up:

One final Tehran memory: A hamburger at the US Consulate dining room. Back in those days there were really no security worries at the Consulates and Embassies so we could wander around and pretty much help ourselves to anything we wanted.

Left Tehran May 9th
Left Mashad May 10th
Left Heart May 15th
Left Kandahar May 17th
Arrived Kabul May 17th

We traveled over a terrible road from Tehran to Mashad where we, natch, stayed in a terrible hotel for the night. Whilst taking a short stroll around Mashad we were stoned by children as Mashad is a holy city and we were infidels. Peter, a German buddy I met in Tehran, and I learned that the bus to the Afghan border was full. We hitched rides to Torbit-e-Jam where we found a meal and then walked 4 k out of town and sat in the too hot sun and through a cold night hoping for a lift to the border (4 p.m. to 11 a.m.). Two Germans picked us up and took us to the border where they were turned away as they had no Visa. An oil tanker took us into Heart for $1.30

May 12th Heart

Heart was a nice place with a beautifully tiled Mosque (mostly in Ruins) and friendly people. It was so cheap there that I traded my Gaz butane stove for a fist-sized chunk of very potent Hashish. This was my first ever purchase of an illegal drug.

May 16th -Kandahar

Flush toilets full of human waste, seemingly because no one told the Afghans how to pull-the-lever. A Heroin addict at the hotel caressing her syringe as I would our housecat. Flies all over the place thick bunches of them on anything edible and landing / crawling on us in profusion. We left as soon as possible.

Kabul May 17th to June 5th

Four of us in a cheap hotel room smoking Hashish, having our meals sent up from the dining room. We'd occasionally eat at one of the nicer restaurants (The Khyber) in town for a twenty-five cent steak dinner.

I had cereal in the lunchroom at the US Embassy too. We could wander about the embassy without supervision. In the lunchroom I picked my cereal and opened the fridge to select my milk. A wonderful moment of normalcy on the road.

I found the street of moneychangers and acquired some Indian rupees at an exceptional rate. It is illegal, of course, to take rupees into India but everyone seems to do it.

If we are in the hotel dining room we had an amazing sight each day. An older man would walk in with an enormous sack on his back. Inside the back was the hotel's water!

Not too many memories for such a long stay ? Good Hashish perhaps?

At this point my intestinal problems began to regularly appear. When I returned to the States it was diagnosed as Giardia, an intestinal parasite. I've always suspected that the Marzipan in Istanbul was the culprit.

June 5th - Kabul to Lahore

We caught a bus through the Khyber Pass into Pakistan where it seemed as if WWIII was near. The Arab-Israeli war had broken out and anti-American demonstrations were everywhere. We could see that this best course of action would be to get out of Pakistan and into India as soon as possible. We caught a train from Peshawar to Lahore. Onboard the train a student asked me where I was from and I said "America". He promptly replied 'I hate you". Those words, the tone and threat in them are something you never forget.

Tehran to Herat - 617 miles
Herat to Kabul - 397 miles
Kabul to Lahore 362 miles

Next installment: Onward to Jullundur India
Lahore to Jullundur - 78 miles

May We Export Your Job?

In the Summer of 1999 my then employer Galileo International sent three of us to New Delhi as mentors for a newly graduated class of computer programmers employed by IGT (an Indian company). The Indians had just completed a technical training class given by one of our Denver Colleagues. We would help them with the ins and outs of the actual work that we did in Denver.

Going over was controversial. Several of my colleagues were completely against my going to New Delhi as they felt that American jobs were at risk. I felt that was probably true, but - with or without my going - mentors would be found and the Indian ‘experiment’ would proceed.

So, over we went. The class was intelligent, motivated and smart. We had our ups and downs, some of which was caused by our Denver project managers. They were willing to lead the project and give advice from afar - as long as they did not have to go to India themselves. You know: Poverty, filth, strange food, beggars and sacred cows – the usual! The usual bs – India is a fascinating, progressing country. Yes, it isn’t like the USA.

We left by the end of that year. With Y2K coming Galileo wanted us home in case the lights went out. This was the biggest irony; if there is one place in the world to be when the lights go out, it is New Delhi where power outages are the norm. No one even pauses or remarks about an outage.

We left after a rewarding life and work experience.

Jump to 2005. Galileo, now owned by Cendant, lays off roughly 80 Denver programmers and sends their work to IGT in New Delhi. They also close a Help Desk in Atlanta and send that work to India.

Job well done?.

The Weird Part. Shortly after the layoff IGT advertises in Monster.com – they need computer programmers, based in Denver. So, some of those folks laid off may end up working for the company that ended their careers at Galileo.

PS - Cendant owns an interest in IGT.

Sith Snore

Saw SWIII today a.k.a Revenge of the Sith

Special effects - fine, incredible, bombastic and frankly a bit boring

Acting - Yoda isn't bad, Obi Kenobi was okay but the rest of them were pretty raw.

Script - You gotta be kidding! Maybe Lucas and his droids have Alhzheimer's.

I now understand how it all ties together but did it take parts I-II-III to do it?

The trailers were pretty much the teen rock'em / sock'em style with lots of flash and bang. No trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The trailer for Mr & Mrs Smith left me cold.

I wondered about War of the Worlds but the trailer was one of the few to give slim clues - a bad sign is Tom Cruise in the lead - he may be pretty but his skills are slim. We'll see....

Well, this is summer movie season when movies for kids and teens rule. Where do the adults go this time of year?

Netflix is my answer.