Chill time out before the Big Push!

Hey y'all

Am skiving atm in Pondicherry, a delightful ex-french colonial enclave halfway between sites two and one... we stopped off on the way up to break-up the journey and haven't yet managed to leave!

Well, I was going to go today but DB desperately needed today to do some work. he has never asked anything of me this whole time, but simply goes with whatever I am doing (seeing as we are here for my work) but did look lost when he thought we were going to spend all today travelling because of a deadline he has. So we are here today too and then tomorrow we head to Site One to start work! Eek! I am excited and nervous, but have plans to relax me... Am not going to scare myself too much but will make sure every day counts. Will settle in tomorrow and try and find somewhere nice to stay who will have us for a month-plus... fingers crossed!

I have been in email contact with one NGO, whose director is very keen to meet with me - even emails me to see how I am and keep contact! (Unlike the NGO I volenteered for over xmas period and haven't heard of since. Pah) so I am looking forward to seeing them and how we may be able to help each other... I am also planning to start my informal 'hanging around' interview/chats this week too. I am going to go to each beachside cafe at a quiet time each day and drink chai and get out a prop (notebook) and hopefully someone will come and talk to me and have a nose about what I am noting. They usually do!! And I will hang out on the beach and try and talk with the hawkers and children and chai wallahs too in much the same manner. It may sound daft but people are super-chatty in India but there they *really* were. I was sat in a cafe and the guy who worked there got us both a drink and sat down and chatted away till I had finished! So I hope for much of the same. I shall try this tack for a couple of weeks and see how it goes anyway... I want to see my contacts (three peeps) in the first two weeks and hopefully start volunteering and talking directly with tsunami peeps in a specific capacitiy - e.g. liveligoods or coops or gender issues - notice which issues are prevalent and cross-cutting themes too. Pinpoint a focus. I want to recce the area too, apparently there are a few relief camps still inhabited along the coast, are fishing colonies, and are ex-villages where the aid went seriously awry. I want to see these.

So that is my plan for the first couple of weeks. Then it is nearly time for my ma to come and visit! Kerazy.

So I have finalised this plan, contacted my NGO for Monday and stuffed myself silly with finger-chips, beer and I have a tasty apple pie waiting for me at home. :0))) I have some serious weight to put on (happily!) though better be careful at this rate that I don't end up going the other way!!! ;0)

Am off now to look at an org's website and get some thoughts going about how they may be able to help me, and then to see about flights to the andaman islands for my birthday snorkelling. Whoop!!

x J

A happy researcher indeed

Yes, I am a happy researcher! I am having a half-day of profound contentment and happiness, that I am exploiting to its maximum!! I don't know exactly why I feel so happy. I just feel calm and at peace in a way that is very strange for me. However, the sticky keys on this keyboard could just be the undoing of my calm ocean of contentment... Uh oh... I can feel the rage...

Nope, am still happy.

So, today we went to another site of tsunami-ness and it was really very lovely, much different to how I pictured it. It is a compact town, no stranger to tourists yet are not very many - not enough to make it a tourist oriented town which is good - it has bikes for rent, a couple of still working NGOs for the tsunami and a nice beach and good transport connections... so I think we shall be back at some point when am working down here. I can't base myself in the town - it is far far too tiny, though for a couple of months maybe it could be good? hmmm, will think. I don't know - but it was very pleasing to find anyway. We stopped at a lovely hotel for some lunch - and had some chicken in a red wine sauce?! I ordered it thinking hmmmm... but it really *was* chicken in a red wine sauce! It was delicous! and quite a surprise. It did open the hunger floodgates though - I have not stopped being hungry since I ate it. So much so that I made DB come for a snack with me post-recce. The snack was 'vada', a kind of deep fried lentil bread thing, in a small round shape. You get sambar with it (a lentil sauce) and some coconut chutney (not sweet though) and soak all your vada in it - it is yum. Today it was particularly yum though, really hot and fresh and I was most pleased. Not least becasue I am really getting into South Indian food now. I haven't had anything spicy for aaaages - which surprises me because I thought once we were out of cities and tourist areas the food would become really spicy and hard to eat, but actually it has been the reverse. I love it! I have had such good food these past few days. This little roadside place was lovely too, it was spanking clean and we went in and did the whole thing fluently, and no Engish was spoken! you would think such a thing woud have happened by now, but India is a strange land with strange customs that take a while to get right. For example, you always wash your hands before and after a meal, so you need to find the public wash basin - not the kitchen one, oh-no. Then you order your food in Tamil, while trying to stop the water-boy from filling up a glass of water for you with tap water (it is always free and provided everywhere which is great - but not for our tummies), but ordering bottled water instead. Then you eat with your hand, squashing up the rice and really getting right in there - very hard for a cutlery-oriented person to get into. For some reason I am precious about getting my palm and the last two fingers manky. Then you eat, spooning the food into your mouth with your third and fourth fingers. Then when your plate is taken you don't say thank you, you look at them and wobble your head. You don't ever say thank-you out loud - it is all in the wobble. Today the cleaning lady came to take my plate and I wobbled at her - and she wobbled back! It was an amazing moment of communication - not laest because women are so tacitern in India, I am convinced they all hate me. It is sooooo hard for a British (and American I am told) person not to vocalise 'thank-you' all the time, and here to start with I though people just seemed really off with each other and abrupt. But it is all in the wobble. Hurray that I have mastered it! (well, nearly.) And then we had coffee which is boiling hot and comes in a metal vessel which is inside another much broader and shallow flat-bottomed bowl - because you pour the coffee from the vessel into the bowl and back again - which cools it down. you do this without scalding your fingers (a skill I think I have mastered! Yaya!) and drink it... and then pay, tell the waiter he can keep the tip, wobble your head in gratitude and off you go!! Huzzahs! Small exchange but so satisfying!!

Am now permanently hungry. If I was at home I would order a massive 14" pizza, chips and some ice cream. I would. We are going out for dinner in half an hour - the new series of heroes 3 is starting on Indian tele and we wanna seeeee!

Worked on analysing my photies from the recce later this afternoon, it takes ages to do. And wrote up my journal. Am now going to research the two aid agencies I saw in town. And then eating (yay!) and home for tv then some more work laters on what to do in site1. Tomorrow we are heading up north - site1 is very far away on the bus so we are stopping off in Pondicherry on the way - I have a date with some baguette and chips on the beach, and a cup of 'secret tea'. (beer). I have been sober for 15 entire days! A miracle! Maybe that has something do to with my good mood?!!! I am not being a morose alcoholic...

I don't know why I am in such a happy mood. I am worried about going to site1 and wasting time, and have a lot of prep to do, so it isn't that work is necessarily going swimmingly.

Who knows! but long may it last (DB is in a foul mood btw - he thinks he may be stealing away the PMT I should be suffering, like girls who synchronise, because we are spending so much time together... I think he is just grumpy).

G' Bah!

x J

Reccying away

I am still not ill! And I am working! A miracle...

And I have found an internet cafe opposite my hotel which is really fast and swish. Excellent. And my hotel room is LOVELY. So lovely I slept for a solid 9.5 hours last night... Well, that may be more down to my own laziness than the hotel but it is so quiet and clean!

We have moved on up the coast to a new hotspot, having reccy-ed rather successfully in the nagapattinam area. We got a bus up which was an experience as always. We tried to get the first connecting bus from our town but WOW the buses were full - us and our backpacks were never going to get on! So we got an exorbitantly priced rickshaw instead which was actually a blessing in disguise because I could take lots of photies again - I would never have been able to do that on the bus. But the bus we got up the coast was lovely! Big and blue with wide open windows - and what a view! This region is all countryside, small towns and cows. So peaceful. And sadly knackered from the tsunami. So much aid but so little that is visible! Why are peple still living in teeny manky huts on the edge of town? I shall investigate!

I have done a lot of analysis from my photos and experiences so feel like a good worker. I also have developed more of an understanding of the region- even just the transport links and the amount of Tamil/English that is spoken is really important. It isn't as dramatically non-English as I was told, and our Tamil seems to go down well. Well, DB's Tamil - I have to say that I am not really spoken to very much! Is fine though, am happy to watch and listen. UG I have a mossie bite that has swollen up on my thigh to be about an inch across. As you can imagine, it itches. A LOT. I was very proud of my lack of mossie bites until yesterday we were eating in this lovely side-of-the-road canteen and I looked at my arm to see a mosquito feeding away that was almost the size of a cat. It obviously didn't just stop on my arms. Poor me :0(

Yes, so work. Work is going WELL. I have developed a better focus too - I did loads of brilliant reading from notes that I brought out with me about case study design (yay!), and realised that the way my reserch is working out is pretty typical - including the slowness and unpredictability - and also realised that I need to focus it down so much more. This pleases me greatly - thinking of how to anotate the lives of a whole town was pretty daunting! I also always wondered how people know how many interviews they are going to do. How do people arrive at a number? I didn't know. Well, I do now! I have worked out that I need to speak to between five and nine groups of people - how these groups are constituted and of whom, I do not know yet, but I do know I need groups of people to talk with me and then I can compare these groups' experiences to others' I talk to, and start to get the semblence of a research project. This stuff is always so obvious when you know it and so obvious when you read other people's projects, but all I can say is - 'best laid plans...'!! It has been sooooo unpredictable! Being here is completely different to being at home and saying, 'Right! I am going to talk to women's coopperatives! 10 of them in each town!' Oh yes. Much different. And also, I have to bear in mind that I have never, ever done anything like this before in my life I am making it up as I go along, and learning sooooo much, next time it shan't be as bad - at least I would know that it needs to be so small etc and will take so long - and soon it will be good, and I would enjoy it. I am enthused by the fact that as I hone in on my focus of the project, my enthusiasm and interest in my topic grows again - I am so looking forward to interviewing and contacting people to find out information in a way that I really shied from before - because, and I really believe this, because I just wasn't ready. I did not really know what I wanted to talk about with anyone - when I have my focus in the next couple of weeks, I will know - I can ring contacts and ask for interviews because I will be confident in my reasons for wanting them to take time out of their day to talk to me. And I can contact people to start to arrange site no. 2 when I know more what I want from it - and that side of the research should be quicker to get underway...

Well, I say that but knowing this research it will not work out like that! But then again, that is something else that is interesting about doing research - you learn that plans you make, and ideas you have are good but are always only for now - and you have to just deal with the transitory nature of confidence. You have it, you don't, you think again and the cycle starts agian - but as it continues so you get closer to you goal.

Fieldwork is crazy! But, I have to say, I am finally starting to relax into it and, I suppose, live it. For so long I have been apologetic (to whom?!) for not being fast with the results, or working all day every day - but with fieldwork it is so much harder than that. You are always working in some capacity - a walk is not just a 'walk' for example - you are scanning and watching and learning about people, environment, the use of 'space', culture... on and on. It is actually hard work! But good, interesting and fun work. Then you go back to your hotel and write write write and think think think... then you watch tennis or animal planet if you have a tele. Yaya!

Tomorrow we had a date to move on again, straight up to site one, but am going to stay here another night. Today started quite slowly (is Indian Republic Day today so all very quiet and peaceful) but spent this afternoon reccying and then tomorrow will head to a neighbouring town - and on Weds will head up to site1 and start work! My aim over the next few days is to obviously analyse the day's findings, but also to work out what kind of focus I think I can get in site1, and how I may go about doing that. I am keeping in mind that I can't know this without being there so will just have a preliminary think more in regards to what to say I want to my vol places - I have two lined up and am dreading making the same mistake as with my last vol place in Chennai!

Another silly but vital thing that has happened to me on this recce is being open about what I am here to do. People may ask DB (of course, he speaks for both of us!!! arg) what we are doing in TN - particularly when we bit off the normal tourist track - and he says that we are here for my work and I always feel so embarrassed, like they are going to laugh at me or put me on the spot - because they live this life that I want to 'study' - what do I know, and who am I to know it? But the past week I have been open about it myself and have not been met with hatred or derision, but in fact with interest and even happiness - that someone wanted to pay attention to their plight, people who are ignored now the aid-effort has left. This makes me most pleased, and has also bumped up my confidence immeasurably. If people are pleased I am here working that makes my job so much better - the last thing I want is for people to think I am here to exploit anyone or to make people 'objects' of 'study'. I hope we can work together (but feel that this is some kind of hippy pipe dream sometimes) yet people seem to be encouraging and forthcoming. Yay!

x J

Nagapattinam

Halloooo

I have been a busy worker! Oh yes. I am fine and dandy now so have been reccying away! The area is nothing like I thought it would be and so the journey and travails (moving blinkin' rooms every day, struggling with limited tamil but utilising my new fantastic head wobble which solves all ills, and DB having Actual Flu, not just man-flu) are entirely worth it. I have a stack of photos and thoughts to be written and analysed later this evening and so, for the moment, am out of trouble.

Phew!

Nagappatinam is where the tsunami struck hardest and it is eerie being here and seeing the destruction, the new houses, the aid signs... I have read about it and thought about it for two whole years, and now I am here. In a curious way it is like being on some kindof film set - just because you are told so clearly what to expect and then, it is there! just like the pictures! It was horrible having to go round taking photos of everything, I felt like such a disaster tourist. DB followed me around with a notepad though to give us an 'official' air... He was great actually, he was my research assistant. He would get the rickshaw to stop so he could jump out and take photos. At one stage I actually had to ask him to calm down a bit, because he was hanging out of the rickshaw with the camera thrust out at the end of his fully extended arm, pointing toward a group of confused Tamil ladies and children who happened to be washing clothes in the way of his shot of a (their) house. Bless.

Other than that I have not much to report. Or, more likely, too much! I had a crisis of confidence this morning but it has gone now I have seen 'something'. The interesting thing about fieldwork is that you see stuff, but don't really know what it means until that evening when you sit and think about it... The region down this way is beautiful, green, clean and calming. Just lovely. And we are quite the white anomoly which makes me feel very happy indeed. (And usually a bit scared until I have found my bearings! There is nothing I hate more than walking into a new town with my enormous backpack on, I feel like *such* an idiot tourist.) Being a woman down here is very different I am noticing - I have taken to wearing a faux wedding ring because here we are either man and wife, or brother and sister... There is no other option. Here, I also get completely ignored in favour of DB. He is always given the menu in restaurants and is expected to order for both of us (!!), and today a young man came with our bill for our kaapi and when I took out a note to give to him he gave DB a dirty look. DB said he felt very small and unmanly, and was the clear victim of a horrible chauvenism. And no one says goodbye to me, they say goodbye to DB. It is odd, odd, odd. So I am glad I have him around to help me or this work would be *so* much harder - and it is hard as it is. from being here I know that I will need to be introduced to the area, and have some kind of 'cover' - working here independently like I will be in Site One will not work at allllllll. So I shall get on that asap, yarse.

Tomorrow I think we are staying here for another day... or maybe we will go up north to another area. There is not much I need to do here now, I have seen what I need to see, though a more few walks around couldn't do any harm. Problem is that it is republic day on Monday so a BIG national day. I am scared about being out of accomodation and travelling might be a nightmare- Indians love to travel!

We shall see..................................................... Watch this space!

x J

I am WELLLLL!!!! :0)))

Hey y'all

Yes, I am better! Woot! The anti biotics are working their magic! Yesterday I ate two full hot meals (well, sort of) and managed to get out to see a temple - I was very knackered but managed to walk to the top. DB was very proud, I wasn't, I felt like an old lady. Today though I am so full of energy! It makes me realise just how ill I have been really - I couldn't spend much time up from the bed, even walking up stairs whacked me out. But today I feel like I could go out and do all sorts all day! I don't want to stay in bed at all! So we are off to start reccying today - DB is at an internet cafe working (oh dear, I wanted to leave in half an hour... ain't gonna happen) and has taken it upon himself to find some accommodation (yay) as not much in guidebook... I hate turning up late with nowhere to stay, is really scary - plus everything, signs and lang will be Tamil so god knows what will be what!! I should have organised this before, but being ill I didn't know if I was even going to make it in the end - I thought I may have to go straight up to site one and leave the recce for when I was better.

Ahhh. I am so relieved to be well. Am going to think through what I want from this recce. At one stage in my imagination it was turning into full-on work, with interviews and everything and I was getting rather intimidated. So I have turned it right down to being literally a recce - asking things like: how will I fit in? Will I fit in? What can I do about this? Can I go there on my own (like I can with site one) and make my own contacts there, or will I need someone to introduce me/give me a reason to be there that participants will understand? Will I see anyone? What doe the area look like? Is it all Tamil? Is it rural/industry? Is it towns/villages? It is still decimated by the Tsunami, or totally rebuilt? and so on. I shall refine these in a min in my journal.

These, I feel, are questions enough for now. Then, over next few weeks while in site one I shall think through my recce and work out a plan of access. Aye. The good thing about site one is that it is in the north, and near Chennai, so I can always nip up there and talk to organisations if needs be - and do interviews. I am so looking forward to getting to site one. Get some work going!

I am also so very happy we are coming back in Sept. The strain of trying to fit it into one trip was ridiculous - I don't know why more people don't say that it is nigh on impossible to do the work in one trip - if now downright inadvisable. May be this is one of the things that sups like their PhDs to learn. Or maybe lots of peeps do do it, but I am confident that I could not. The one thing that I regret is being ill so much. I have been ill for ab out a month in total! A month! As a newbie researcher I need time. Lots and lots of TIME!

x J

Bah bah baaaaah

Ok so we came south yeterday, to the main railway port which is also a good tourist stop-off so we thought we would stay here a day or two, acclimatise to the new 'land' (is different down these parts to the North!) and then head off to site two... But I am still ill!

Yesterday I took some strong tummy tabs for the journey so generally felt ok (though not eating) but ate last night and was ridiculously full for a handful of chips and a small bit of pizza (I crave western style food when ill, for obvious reasons, and was so happy to find some here!). Then today I went for some 'lunch' (a popodam and some curd) and felt dizzy and tired walking around so had to come back. We decided to get some anti-biotics now as it has been over a week, so have some norfloxacin and tinidazole with betacyclodextrin to cover all bases for now (meant nothing to me either). I had some rehydration sachets too which really seemed to perk me up for a while which was great - I could concentrate better on animal planet then (!!). So, another day, another hotel room scene. It is so rubbish! SO RUBBISH!! I should be working! I have wasted to much time! And yet, I can't help it. And I can't concentrate on much - am a total zombie.

Ug, it is awful as well because our room smells of some kind of smoke (not fags) and the bathroom looks like the bathroom in SAW. Scary!

So that is me. I will write more tomorrow, we are rationing our home internet now we are in the wilds - we don't know when top-ups will be available and DB needs to for his work.

Speak soon chums, hope your projects are all more successful than mine is at the mo!!

x J

Up and at 'em

I am out of the hotel! Phew! I feel much better this morning having had two days of total rest(from moving).

Am feeling pretty on top of stuff now have read a few up-to-date papers and maybe started my own (hurray!)... And am out at the internet cafe to make reservations for my ma to come and stay which is proving rather tricky. Well, it will be lovely when she gets here (17 feb). If I am not stressed to the eyeballs with work. Oh dear!

SOOO today... Am going to check through the paper outline I wrote later yesterday. Need to really work out whether it is actually a synopsis of my PhD... you would think this would be obvious but the focus of it actually changes week to week - I have about three major foci of the PhD and in the end one will win out but as yet I am unsure which! Nothing wrong with a good synopsis though (or even abstract) and if it is a bit too all-encompassing then I can always take my favourite bit out if it and make it an article. It is a first step and that is enough for me!

Other than that I am emailing to get my ma somewhere to stay when she comes and, to be honest, resting my brain. Even though being ill is totally rubbish, because I have not felt ill as such I have been able to actually take advantage of being holed up to read for pleasure, for work, write and get on top of 'India'. In fact, I feel quite rested and ready to get back into work. I am so looknig forward to going south tomorrow, and finally, finally, getting my recce underway. I have decided to stay for a week and come back up north next Sunday, with the aim of arriving at site one that Sunday or Monday. Then I shall (again, finally) start work proper!! I am so looking forward to it now. Before Christmas I was dreading the whole issue of having to talk to strangers etc, but now with the hassle of getting site two underway I have realised that in many ways that is the easy and interesting bit! I am also so happy I have decided to come back to India in Sept - this means that I can relax into my work more and not feel the dreaded clock ticking above my head, counting down how little time I have left and spelling certain PhD-doom... Actually I started having a peek at rental properties in the area we are moving too and they are cheaper than when we left! God bless the recession ;0P and the cottages are gorgeous - I cannt wait to get one! yaya!

*detour warning*
Really am so looking forward to getting back to England - being understood and completely understanding, being cold (! hehe I know), going for a long, slow run (!! I know!), having a whole fridge and an oven of my own! And more than a room for myself! Seems really quite extravagant. Especially the fridge thing. Luckily I am a user-upper, I boil the bones of mah chickens for stock etc so don't often waste food which makes me feel less guilty about craving my fridge. Oooooh, I am having a fridge reverie... In my fridge I will have ham, cheese, eggs, and lots and LOTS of salad. LOTS. I miss salad. Cool, crisp lettuce and cucumber. I will have butter! Real butter and nice margerine-stuff. And some brie. And a sneaky, open bottle of chilled white wine... And some mince beef for a lovely lasagne. And I will have my veg bowl all stocked! With aubergine! And two courgette and carrots (some, not many) and mushrooms! Lots! And a squash or some beetroot, and green beans! Garlic and ginger! And in my cupboard I will have cereal to go with my cool, cool milk. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg......

And of course, lots and lots of curry.

Bizarrley, when DB went to our 'complimentary' breakfast this morning, they had hash browns - which were plain boiled potatoes (!!) and grilled tomatoes, or cornflakes with hot milk, or coffee with milk (had to pay extra for coffee without milk). What a strange breakfast!!

BTW, I am going to start a little section where I put a quote I particularly like, to help with my work. Just one a week or something. It is terribly cheesy, but you can't scoff too much at a wee bit of another's learning and knowledge...

Hope all is well with everyone!

x J

Hmmm!

Well, I am still in my pyjamas and DB has gone out to see if he can get us some tix to get to The South in the next couple of days. If he can't 'tis to site one for us!

I have been ill all day which is boring. Am just dandy in myself, is just my tummy :0( So, I read some papers and then wrote the introduction for my own! WOOT! I have not written a paper yet (yes, I know I am slow off the blocks, but am not a born academic. I like my dim, flickering bulb to be kept under a very thick bushel, thank you very much) but the articles seemed to sort of bring together my own thoughts (thanks Sup!) and ta da! I wrote a critique of how they fit into my work then realised that I sort of had all the ideas that form an interesting part of my work in my head for the first time (they don't usually convene together, or, if they do, cannot usually be described as 'interesting' to anyone outside my head) then wrote the abstract (100 words) and the intro (500 words). Obviously this is more of an outline than an intro. I shall check through later and tomorrow, then re write undoubtedly, then send to my sup and see what he thinks. And then I shall write it as I go along here, (when am ill, ug, all the time) or wait till I get home (Oh no! Tummy calls!)...

later...

... and write it then - but at least I have a) an idea of what to write about, b) am pretty chuffed about it, and c) have written it out so just need to flesh it out now.

hurray! I am quite excited about it!

x J

Oh crap

I am most unamused! I am still ill! For another blinkin' day I am in bed, near a loo, unable to go out and seek the people. I am just dying to go south and do my recce but no way is it happening today, and I am pretty sure it shan't be happening tomorrow either.

If anyone has any tips I would be most grateful. What to do? I didn't eat yesterday apart from the evil coke and crisps for lunch (I know pepsi as good zalfa but no one has any :0( ) and then dinner. So today I am only eating one packet of plain crisps. One. And hopefully it will go away of its own accord. I feel fine in myself which is frustrating, but then again I am catching up on work articles that otherwise would wait till I had some spare time so that's ok. Today I am in super chill-out mode though and not doing a THING. Except reading later of course, and checking emails and writing my fieldwork journal. Other than that, not a THING.

I have spent nearly a month of my time in India being ill I reckon. It doesn't help that I get ill anyway when I am stressed out. Arg I am such a PAIN!

DB has the beginnings of a sore throat too... (well, there is a stone in his throat and pain at the back like a knife has cut it) so I wonder if the trip south is a bit doomed, and I should just call it a day for now?! At the mo we are holed up in a hotel that is twice as much as we usually pay and miles away from real inja (vertically - I can hear it all going on beneath me but can't see it or join in... I can smell it though... Oh how I miss it!) and have been waiting out Pongal to get train tix while getting our work heads on after Goa and working through my illness for the past three days... but nothing is happening until I get well enough for the day-long journey, and we don't know when next available tickets will be (I know, I know, but I didn't realise - being in Goa - that Pongal was quite as huge a festival as it is in TN and so trains are BUSY). Being ill on a busy Indian train and a jolting squat loo would be one of the most unamusing events of my life I have to say - and likely to make me iller w' all the germs and that. So I am thinking about calling it a day on that plan for now and heading down to site 1 instead, recuperating there and paying normal rent rates, there is plain western food (the cause of my original illness I must not forget!) that I am comfortable with (porridge! Muesli!), and I can start working even if it is just watching and learning or talking to someone in a cafe or hawkers on the beach... I can go to the south later. It is inconvenient but it is better than doing nothing... I think this may be the best plan. If we were going to be well tomorrow (DB and I - not the royal 'we') and had train tix then I would defo go south, but feel maybe it is not meant to be right now.

Hmm. This new plan will take some adjusting to - it is quite a turn up for the books. I shall ponder on it for a couple of hours. In bed. Feeling shite. Going to site 1 tomorrow is really something I hadn't considered until this morn.

I don't want to get out of bed :0(

But I want to go to work!

x J

Wow and hurrah and Woot!

Today, for the first time in donkeys-yonks (what is a donkey's yonk?) I feel like a PhD student again. I really do!!

Last night I was reading through some rubbish on my comp, a bit hyper and unable to sleep and then opened what I thought was an old MA essay that I fancied having a superior chortle at (or gaining inspiration from, either way would please me). Well, it turned out to be my sup's MA module outline and it had on it the two most wondeful paragraphs I have read in many a moon - they so neatly summated my work and intentions and also brought me round full circle to my original intention in doing this research. Lights sparked and I felt happy and enthusiastic in a way I haven't for so long! I have even been considering leaving my field after this PhD because I just feel so flat about it - but now the exciting point of it all has come back to me and I feel much, much better. And then I read an article that I have read before but it made so much more sense, and for a while I felt almost clever and like a real PhD student.

So for the moment - and I do not say that in a self-deprecating way, it is always 'for the moment' in PhD-land - I feel ok and actually positive. Whoop-ha!

Today I am in the last day of my illness (yes, Goa gave me tourist disease which I think I am coming out of today after many, many hours of sleep and some peace - something India is not really that au fait with giving) and tomorrow we head south to recce site number two.

I heard from my Sup today as well. It was another lovely email, he said that he couldn't really advise me about what to do with my work as he doesn't know the scene (arg, how I long for the days when I was firmly held on some reins! 'Yes J! Do that! No J. Don't do that...') but did assure me that most PhDs need to go back to their field site as the first visit usually raises more issues than it solves. Bless him for that - that is the most lovely peice of wisdom and I am very grateful for it because that is exactly what has been happening to me. Every day I end up with only questions and riddles - but no blinkin' answers, and what am I here for if not to get answers?

Ug! DB has just come in and told me that we can't get train tickets for our recce tomorrow!! Arg this means we should probably book waaaaay longer in advance that we have. Hmmm, should I go straight to site one then? I shall have to ponder. Although today is Pongal (harvest festival and the first day of the offical Tamil New Year) - one of the biggest festivals and everything is shut down, maybe tomorrow will provide us with some answers when people are actually at work...

I have a packet of crisps and, most wonderfully, a bar of choccy courtesy of DB. And the necessary evil that is a can of coke (to kill tummy germs apparently). I know one shouldn't eat fat and sugar when ill but it's all I ever fancy and seems to do me good.

Oh research, research, when will you be my friend?!!! Time is going too fast, I cannot dither!

x J

Tanned, toxic and ready for action!!

I had a whole week off! A WHOLE week! I looked at the internet once! I seriously cannot remember the last time I did that.

I had the most fabulous holiday, with an amazing amount of fantastic sunshine, warm ocean, palm trees, any kind of food one could possibly desire (erm... not curry) - and an overwhelming amount of white russians (the drinks I mean - although, amusingly, it is rather a russian holiday hotspot). SO as a consequence I have been fairly intoxicated, sleeping till 12, spending the day by the sea and then getting to bed at gone 3am and being quite the stop-out. I am *knackered* and definitely more than aware that my real student days are far behind me. I have also managed to counter most of the weight loss that I have undergone during my time in India!!

I have to say though that I cannot wait to get to bed tonight. Well, I am on my bed already. DB is out at an internet cafe being mardy -we are both being fairly intolerant of each other today, too tired and so are bickering like little toddlers. It is quite pathetic and pointless. But ultimately harmless. I have to say though that I am loving being on my own for a bit.

Workwise I have to say, despite my showing off of my holiday-time, I only truly relaxed and forgot about my work for about the first three days. Then I started worrying at it again and feeling dread when I thought about it. To the point where ths morning I really wondered what on *earth* I am going to do about this research pickle I have got myself into. I really should have done a theoretical piece - that is my forte after all. But no, let's go and play at being researcher... But this evening I spent some time going through my last journal entries and feel considerably calmer. I keep getting really horrible visions of really intense social situations that I would hate (can't think of any now, they have been temporarily smoothed away) but have to do to qualify as a 'good' researcher and then realise that I don't *have* to do these things - what I do have to do is take each day as it comes and work as hard at getting info as I can. I don't know why I try and upset myself so much. Stupid.

So, at the mo I am back in Chennai. I got back today and had a hot shower (yay!) and some curry (ummmm.... Nope, nope, I love curry I *do*, but it does get a bit on top of one after a while) and am now checking emails. Then I shall stop. Tomorrow I am researching how to get to my second site in the south - I am going to go and recce it over the next week. We leave on Weds I reckon, and shall go and have a look-see at the area and work out how best to research it. I was told by a great Indian guy (who told me loooooads about the nuances of Indian culture on our sleeper-train journey - another actually 'awesome' experience (best 'The Hills' accent required - if you don't watch it, be proud of yourself for being adult, if you do - AWESOME!) that no-one - I mean no-one- speaks English down there, all the signs are in the Tamil script and even they, as Indians (albeit from Goa, with a totally different language but hey), had to match a symbol they had to the writing on the bus to check it was theirs. Uh oh! This does not bode well and indicates that a lot of time will need to be spent there - learning the language, getting to know the local (and thinly spread! eek!) population... Oh DEAR. This is quite a turn up for the books, so I am going to have a look-see. Otherwise I may have to organise some kind of volunteering placement or something with an org based up this way... I shall see how it goes. But I also have good news! I received an email from an org in my first site that I contacted and they are looking forward to my visit! WOOT! I am most pleased and shall see what is what when we rock up there in a week from now.

So that is where I am at the moment. I am increasingly aware that I will have to either extend my stay here or come back later in the year to do the second half of my research... I think personally I would rather go back to the UK for a bit and take some time out of India and get all excited about coming back; and professionally I would like to do some more reading around my ideas and also do some analysis to come back with - even stronger! (any strength please.) In my heart of hearts though I just wish I could get it done by April 7th and go home. I am tired and a rubbish researcher! I don't like doing it! Well, I don't like what I have been doing so far, maybe I will like the more on-site, ethnographic-style research more (ummmm....). Apart from the fact I keep forgetting what the chuff 'doing an ethnography' is about, what to look for and why and how to note it and why. Ug. I do think that going home for a few months will totally recharge my batteries so will keep that in mind while I am here... And it will mean another winter away from home! Maybe with xmas as a deadline to give me motivation...

I do feel, on returning to this work, that the work I have been doing so far has been useful, but is defintely the background and sort of 'researching-the-research' phase. I can't claim to 'know' anything yet, I have made mistakes and also come a-cropper relying too much on other people. I feel like this is all ok now though, and that I am now starting the 'proper' research - a little bit wiser and a bit more wary perhaps? I know more what I can/cannot necessarily expect and - most valuable of all - I know that it will take time - and also know the fact that just because it takes time does not mean that I have failed. This type of research *just takes time*.

DB is back and angrily chasing cockleroaches round the room in his pants.

My word.

x J

Holiday time for me!

I am just writing to say that I am off now until the 13 Jan! If I manage to keep away from the blog it means I have managed to keep away from the work and the thinking... I hope that I will be pretty inebriated and dopey most of the time so I will be mentally far, far away from being able to work even if I wanted to!!

Today has been fabulous. I have not felt this relaxed and in control of my work for so long. Perfect time for a break because I am really looking forward to starting again when I come back. I have to say though that I am not sure right now whether to go straight to site 1 and stay there, or whether to take a week to go and investigate site 2... I think the latter would be better and pretty fun, but shall see how I feel toward the end of next week.

I can't believe we are going tomorrow! Tomorrow! It is crazy. I can't believe I am leaving this place. It feels so much like home, having lived here for 6 weeks now... It feels like forever though really 6 weeks isn't very long. Maybe it is because fieldwork is so intense, the time is so precious and condensed - not like at home when days merge into weeks doing the same stuff. Time to go and make a new place my home eh?

Good luck to everyone getting back into the work-mill, and again, happy new year!

x J

A happy fieldworker - at last

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had the most amazing new years eve, on a beach with throngs of other people, and not another whitey or tourist in sight. They were all holed up in the fancy hotels but DB and I, being the explorers we are, made no plans and went with the flow - which was the beach, with kites and stalls and fireworks (dodgy ones), policemen with sticks, boys overloading cars (with themselves) jumping around and shouting like it was the millenium. It was grand! Such an atmosphere!

Anyway, I hope everyone had fun times wherever in the world they happen to be...

I was chuffed to bits as well, because I went to bed last night relaxed in a way I have not felt for weeks. I came to realise yesterday a very basic fact - that I can only do in this time period what I can do. And so, if I am in site one and can't leave after 6 weeks but should stay to find out more stuff - I shan't. But I shall work like I am leaving after 6 weeks, I shall work really hard and be really thorough. But I won't work like this is the *only* time I have, like it is a be-all-and-end-all deadline - it is this deadline that has been the cause of all my paralysis. After I have finished with site 1, I shall move to site 2. In the meantime I shall travel and chase up interviews and meetings. If needs be I shall go to SL and try and get an extension. If I get one, grand, if I don't I shall come home, get a housey (rent), chill and analyse my results so far, and then we will come out again (DB super keen to come out again, he's having a fabulous time so it seems and saving money along the way. Hurray!) toward then end of next year. Job done! I shouldn't worry so much. I don't know why I was worried so much! In a big dark vortex of stress and worry because I didn't really consider coming back as an option. I had until the beginning of April unless I get a new visa - which I may not be able to do. So I had no clue how to squeeze the work into the timeframe I have allocated (due to said visa), yet no confidence I would be able to stay for longer. If I allow for the option of returning to TN all of a sudden I have so much more room to breathe, to work, to de-stress, to enjoy myself here and go with the flow. This has made me so happy.

I am such a simpleton, I know. It is glaringly obvious, yet when you are in the thick of these things sometimes it is hard to see what is staring you in the face.

Also, it is always wise to bear in mind that this is a blog about a normal, not overly fantastically clever person, doing a PhD. I get confused easily in a world of intellectual giants.

And with this in mind I am relaxed and happy to go to Goa tomorrow! Am now considering what to eat for luncheon... curry?!

x J