So today marks the end of my first week of work in India, and my first week of proper work since... hmmm... Dec 07. Hehe. Today thought I needed only go in for an hour and a half... though I wrote a story about lions! I was sent home in case the rain blocked us in... I was also told not to worry about coming in while the rains are as they are - hurray! There was no point today really either as the internet was down (because of the rain - the power was out in a lot of places too) so couldn't look up any of my animal fact to write about them.
I have thought more, and realised that with the rains, any kind of travel or move would be most unpleasant and also, pretty dangerous. I ahve also realsied that getting accommodation anywhere else in December is going to be pointless - it is high season in Indian terms, as families move around to be close to each other and there are lots of festivals. So I shall have to stay put anyway, regardles of my intentions to go down the coast and do interviews etc. Further down the coast has actually been evacuated so that would be no god at all! I would be the only person there! Silly colonial. This realisation has made me much more relaxed and stopped all worrying thoughts about going elsewhere immediately. I shall stay where we are for December, then when I get back from Goa on the 12th I shall think about shipping south for a bit.
In the meantime, I have some train tickets to try and buy tomorrow... The rains are so annoying because they make staying in really quite imperitive. No sightseeing can be done really. I suppose I should read some reports!! I have a *lot* of reports to get though. Hmmm....
x J
Friday, 28 November 2008
Thursday, 27 November 2008
Woiking
Hallooo
I am at work, and at waiting for my umbrella to come back... The rainy season is well and truly upon us which means flooded roads, soaking feet, soaking clothes, smelly drains and grey, grey skies. But it's cool. It's nuts the way it just rains alllll the time. Allllllllll the time. Proper rain. English rain seems so pithy and cold in comparison to this hot, thick, drenching rain. And it's so dark! It is actually pretty depressing and I love the rain normally. It is very hard to get around because you get soaked. I arrived at work this morning with my trousers drenched (I had to wring out the bottoms!) up to my thighs and my shoulders soaked. I am just dry (5 hours later) and have to go out again! Actually, I would have left but someone ran off with my umbrella.
Work is cool! I am enjoying writing the kiddies materials but it is funny how exhausting it is! I have written two 700 wd stories today and just can't muster up any imagination for another. But today I talked a bit more to my neighbour, and have the internet on my laptop so also managed to be on facebook and look up flights from Goa. Hurrah! that's my kind of working.
I didn't come in yesterday. Yesterday was my (our - DB was v poorly) grumpiest day here and the first where I actually wished to be at home. We had moved accommodation to this place called Broadlands in Chennai, which is a sprawling old colonial-style mansion place just up the road from where we were staying. It was more traveller-y so we hoped to meet people, and the rooms were amazing - really high ceilings, open bathrooms with floor to ceiling windows, many windows in the bedroom and a little table and two chairs to sit at. It seemed perfect compared to our relatively dark and damp little room over the way. So we moved in lock, stock etc on Tues morn before work, all excited because they had said that we could have the room until after Jan. Which was a lie, and then they said we would have to move rooms (someone else had booked 'ours') and then that room was booked too! And that night we had had the most awful storm, which should have been very romantic in that old lodge with the giant windows and views of field, but instead we were bitten to death and didn't sleep until the sun rose!! To *death* - I have bites on my eyebrow, under my eye and on my lip - just to name my face. So, irritated and tired we moved back to our old place yesterday but have a better room! It has no gaping hole where the air con is meant to be and so is much, much quieter (a massive bugbear was waking at 6am to trance bollywood music played through a megaphone. I am NOT exaggerating!!). SO we are happier today. DB was terribly poorly yesterday when we moved too, so at least we had concrete walls around us and a nice bathroom and a nice bed and no bugs!! Hurray! And a tele back (sporadic reception) and a nice man who gets us cups of kaapi. So we will stay there until after new year - everywhere else we have tried is booked, and anyway, having had the broadlands horror we are so, so grateful, however dark it may be.
I heard from my sup today! I emailed him yesterday (feeling very despondant and rubbish at my researching skills) about my progress (lack of) this past month and he sent me such a lovely reply and am completely reassured. I didn't whine at him or seek reassurance (never do that) but just confessed about the kiddie book thing etc and my plans and what I have been up to and he said that research in actuality never turns out as imagined anyway and just gave me some tips. I was wondering what to do with the info that I get from general convos, with waiters etc - talk a lot to waiters actually - and he said they can count as a form of interview in the biblio and I can use it as anecdotal evidence. Which is ace because I get a lot of info this way, about corruption and how people feel about the aid etc - without it being a formal interview with the call for the 'confidentiality' speech etc. This kind of info also provides a lot of context to the research and would explian my thoughts and motives as I learn more (I hope I learn more).
My word the rain is coming down. It really isn't going to stop. Am going to see if my umbrella is back yet. I need a full body coat really and not these oversized, super-long trousers. It is rubbish as well, because I am going to have to go and have a fight with a rickshaw driver. Bargaining is just not my scene - why can't the just be fair in the first place?! They see my white little face and my wet feet and think KER-CHING!! So I have to prove my mettle and get it so I only pay double the fair amount (which is the normal amount). Peace studies be damned.
Friday tomorrow! WOOT! Hopefully I can blog a lot more now I have work internet.
x J
I am at work, and at waiting for my umbrella to come back... The rainy season is well and truly upon us which means flooded roads, soaking feet, soaking clothes, smelly drains and grey, grey skies. But it's cool. It's nuts the way it just rains alllll the time. Allllllllll the time. Proper rain. English rain seems so pithy and cold in comparison to this hot, thick, drenching rain. And it's so dark! It is actually pretty depressing and I love the rain normally. It is very hard to get around because you get soaked. I arrived at work this morning with my trousers drenched (I had to wring out the bottoms!) up to my thighs and my shoulders soaked. I am just dry (5 hours later) and have to go out again! Actually, I would have left but someone ran off with my umbrella.
Work is cool! I am enjoying writing the kiddies materials but it is funny how exhausting it is! I have written two 700 wd stories today and just can't muster up any imagination for another. But today I talked a bit more to my neighbour, and have the internet on my laptop so also managed to be on facebook and look up flights from Goa. Hurrah! that's my kind of working.
I didn't come in yesterday. Yesterday was my (our - DB was v poorly) grumpiest day here and the first where I actually wished to be at home. We had moved accommodation to this place called Broadlands in Chennai, which is a sprawling old colonial-style mansion place just up the road from where we were staying. It was more traveller-y so we hoped to meet people, and the rooms were amazing - really high ceilings, open bathrooms with floor to ceiling windows, many windows in the bedroom and a little table and two chairs to sit at. It seemed perfect compared to our relatively dark and damp little room over the way. So we moved in lock, stock etc on Tues morn before work, all excited because they had said that we could have the room until after Jan. Which was a lie, and then they said we would have to move rooms (someone else had booked 'ours') and then that room was booked too! And that night we had had the most awful storm, which should have been very romantic in that old lodge with the giant windows and views of field, but instead we were bitten to death and didn't sleep until the sun rose!! To *death* - I have bites on my eyebrow, under my eye and on my lip - just to name my face. So, irritated and tired we moved back to our old place yesterday but have a better room! It has no gaping hole where the air con is meant to be and so is much, much quieter (a massive bugbear was waking at 6am to trance bollywood music played through a megaphone. I am NOT exaggerating!!). SO we are happier today. DB was terribly poorly yesterday when we moved too, so at least we had concrete walls around us and a nice bathroom and a nice bed and no bugs!! Hurray! And a tele back (sporadic reception) and a nice man who gets us cups of kaapi. So we will stay there until after new year - everywhere else we have tried is booked, and anyway, having had the broadlands horror we are so, so grateful, however dark it may be.
I heard from my sup today! I emailed him yesterday (feeling very despondant and rubbish at my researching skills) about my progress (lack of) this past month and he sent me such a lovely reply and am completely reassured. I didn't whine at him or seek reassurance (never do that) but just confessed about the kiddie book thing etc and my plans and what I have been up to and he said that research in actuality never turns out as imagined anyway and just gave me some tips. I was wondering what to do with the info that I get from general convos, with waiters etc - talk a lot to waiters actually - and he said they can count as a form of interview in the biblio and I can use it as anecdotal evidence. Which is ace because I get a lot of info this way, about corruption and how people feel about the aid etc - without it being a formal interview with the call for the 'confidentiality' speech etc. This kind of info also provides a lot of context to the research and would explian my thoughts and motives as I learn more (I hope I learn more).
My word the rain is coming down. It really isn't going to stop. Am going to see if my umbrella is back yet. I need a full body coat really and not these oversized, super-long trousers. It is rubbish as well, because I am going to have to go and have a fight with a rickshaw driver. Bargaining is just not my scene - why can't the just be fair in the first place?! They see my white little face and my wet feet and think KER-CHING!! So I have to prove my mettle and get it so I only pay double the fair amount (which is the normal amount). Peace studies be damned.
Friday tomorrow! WOOT! Hopefully I can blog a lot more now I have work internet.
x J
Monday, 24 November 2008
Back in the Game
Hurray! I am being a proper adult! Well, I am not eating properly and still on a major sulk about eating more and more curry. But other than that...
Today I managed to go out and be happily self-sufficient. Being with DB does mean that he takes over rather, and me being all lazy I do let him... And also, the people here speak to the man and so I am genearally never expected to do or say anything, which means DB is even more asssertive than usual. As we are both fairly alpha beings this does grate and we do fight about it. But then I back down and watch tele. Anyway, point being, that today I went and sorted out my phone so I am now mobile-worthy! YAYA! Also, I managed to get to my volunteering appt today and have found out what I am to do! I am to illustrate kiddies books! ( a lot more fun nd creative than just writing 'leaf'.) And if I am good, I may get to help teach English to tiny tots using phonetics. I shall meet the lady they have doing that at the moment (an Ameican volunteer - woopy, I hope she is nice and can be my friend), tomorrow and see what that is about. I am so looking forward to writing out kiddies stories though! And picture books! how lovely! Although lord knows where I would start. Eck. I shall blag it. I can keep my own hours which is ace, I shall probably do ten/10.30 to four... As long as I don't have to get up early and commute then I shall be fine. The guy next to me keeps wobbling his leg, and we are sat on this flimsy mezzanine level (more like balcony) and so I am bouncing up and down like no-one's... And I spoke to the 'English team' about my research and they seemed very interested and nodded enthusiastically when I spoke about cycnicism about whether the aid worked and suchlike - so i think I am on to something here. My biggest fear was coming here and everyone saying that the aid they recieved and the way they were treated was just *the nuts* and so the past few years would be pretty much barking up the worng tree. Although, I suppose whatever happens I can turn it into research wobble wobble. Ya, so generally I feel a lot happier. And I got my first rickshaw on my won, got us lost and walked half the way back in the end. Great stuff. I wasn't ripped off though and also I spoke Tamil. Things are looking up! Now all I need is to find someone to give me a lovely meal.
We went flat hunting today to. We are in such a dilemma about what to do about accomm - do we get soemwhere of our own, or just stay in a guesthouse? Turns out that our vol org doesn't know of anywhere because they are all Indian... which is generally good for my research but not good for helpful tips about what volunteers do for accommodation in this land. We need to stay for about a year apparently to get a flat, but somewhere nice was found for us for three months (perfect area as well) BUT they want 1.5 grand deposit! WHAT?! And we don't have that. we coud probably find it - but then what if we don't get it back?!! They could say anyting and we wouldn't know or be able to even stay in the country to get it back. So, we think we will stay in a guesthouse. DB is looking now.
Other than that, I have been working out my general plan of action in TN... I always have to thinkover my plans. They change all the time, but really almost imperceptibly - it is only have a few weeks that the shift is noticable. Now I am not sure that an ethnographic style is going to work at all - the culture and language barrier is so great, and it would take longer than six months - longer than a year even to 'be remoetely accepted. There is just too muh of a divide between Indian and Westerner - not in a palpable way, just in a 'way'. So I cannot pretend and think that not pretending or holding out that it may happen is a good , honest way forward - and so now me-being-me will be an important part of the wirte-up, without assumptions that I can immerse. I don't think anyone can really - unless you spend a couple of years living in a tiny community that has no choice but to assimilate you, and you to it. But that would;t work for me becuase I need a lot of info from a lot of people... One village just won't cut it. So I think I will be inceeasingly observation and interview based... Also, there is the issue of interviews that i have to do in england with aid agencies - they need to have their say. This porbably constitutes part of the research process and so maybe my time here isn't the focal point of the 'data gatehring' process, but just one aspect of it - in which case until April should suffice. If i get all my interviews and my observations and impressions - why stay longer? So these things are all things that I ponder. I really do feel like I am the navigator of this process, but the geography, the terrain and the vehicle are all mostly independent of me, I just try and steer it a bit.
DB has come to get me! must go ta ta!
x J
Friday, 21 November 2008
Maladie
Hallo
Well, this week has beena bit of a weird one. I have been ill since monday eve, hardly eaten a thing and been spending whole days in the hotel at a time... Not done any volunteering but have managed to do some thinking!!! yaya for thinking. DB went to volunteering though and told me some things which have changed the research somewhat for the mo...
Basically the agency that i am volunteering for, now I am here, is very different to the one I thought I had signed up to volunteer with. This may sound strange because it is. I have no idea how this happened! I wonder if at home in england I have been accessing an old website from before they got all successful and mahousive - and now I am here I see a different website that explains very clearly what their org is all about and I tell you, if I had known, I would not have offered my (limited) services!! It is a purely educational agency and I have no knowledge of education materials or teaching skills which is what they do, and my research is a million miles away from this too. Sooooo. I will stay until I go to Goa in Jan and then if I like it etc go back, and if it isn't really happening then I shall make my excuses and leave having put in a month's worth of work. I came out wanting to volunteer for a small 'hands-on' org, by the coast, with a handful of staff and volunteers so I could talk to people easily, get to part of a wee aid family here and also have easy access to the people and communities who they work for and with. Instead I am part of a VERY busy aid-machine, with very paid employees, with very international meetings to go to, and a national agenda of change... which is great, but I am not that enthusiastic about being sin a back office somewhere labelling pictures!!!
HOWEVER,
Instead of crying about it I am working out how to work it to my advantage. I can use them to:
network with other large orgs here
use their brains about the aid industry in india
ask about their priorities (morally and philosophically)
See any aid villages they have worked with (hopefully, they did say something about that on email months back...)
ask about the makeshift huts I have seen up the road
find out about the aid-effort in Chennai
and use the time I am spending with them to also liaise and interview, even volunteer, with other peeps that I have just spend two hours rustling up on the tinternet.
Twill be fine I am sure. I am not going to worry about it for about a month or so and then shall see what the last few weeks have brought up (anything).
One thing I am learning is that when you are in the 'field' (UG! need a new word! anyone?!!) some days you find out loads and others you find out nothing. 'Tis the nature of the beast. And also, something that may been unexpected and therefore a challenge makes you look around it and question it - ' why is it 'wrong' - could it be useful?' and this too adds a rigorousness to what you 'know' and use in your research, and what you leave out/don't follow up. It also allows the research to progress a little on its own without having to be activley working on it all the time because these little challenges can be blessings in disguise.
Arg though, being ill this week has made me feel really lame. I sit there in bed thinking of all my friends and their intrepid, intellectual brilliance and think 'they wouldn't sit in bed for days, no sir! They would do the job they came to do!!' Then I think I am lazy and before you know it I am convinced I am a big, embarrassing research jokette. Pity poor me.
Then I go to sleep.
Oh oh OH though! I haven't said but I did some more research on my theoretical ideas and from my post the other day the answer was that indeed I was being ignorant and hadn't read enough - I put in very unlikely words into google and WHOOP! There it was! A lovely lovely article saying how my ideas were spankingly fine-a-doodle-do. So , finally, finally, my theoretical direction is all set, i love it, and I am sure that the rest will fall into place soon enough! SUCH an enormous weight off my mind, you just don't know what you are looking at when you don't have your theory pinned down. 'Can I write as a po-mo?! Or should I write as a realist? How would this affect how I go about and write-up and analyse my interviews? How does this affect my interpretations/transcripts of my observations?' bla bla blaaaaa.
But I know now. Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot!!
Now I just need to work out what my research structure will be like here. I think I sall have to wait until I have settled in for a month, do a lot of reading and asking around my vol place, and then reassess and start doing interviews.
I am tired!! we are flat hunting later... I would love my own place! I am sick of eating out - I am craving just a meal of bread, cheese (any cheese, plastic cheese will do) and some coco pops (I don't eat these sugar pops normally but they seem so normal and plain here!!). Or some lentils I have cooked myself in my own way. I just cannot face curry!! I cannot! What I shall do instead is beyond me - but then so is hunger so... I am getting a bit skinny malinny though and ought to start eating soon. My mind is not on my side though. If it sees dirt in a restaurant it goes 'Uch! I shall not eat!' And makes my tummy churn. If I smell curry it does the same. And so all is not good!!! I just feel sick!
Bah.
My word, I ought to get some chrimbo pressies! Oh dear lord WHAT shall I buy?! To the John Lewis website pronto...
x J
Well, this week has beena bit of a weird one. I have been ill since monday eve, hardly eaten a thing and been spending whole days in the hotel at a time... Not done any volunteering but have managed to do some thinking!!! yaya for thinking. DB went to volunteering though and told me some things which have changed the research somewhat for the mo...
Basically the agency that i am volunteering for, now I am here, is very different to the one I thought I had signed up to volunteer with. This may sound strange because it is. I have no idea how this happened! I wonder if at home in england I have been accessing an old website from before they got all successful and mahousive - and now I am here I see a different website that explains very clearly what their org is all about and I tell you, if I had known, I would not have offered my (limited) services!! It is a purely educational agency and I have no knowledge of education materials or teaching skills which is what they do, and my research is a million miles away from this too. Sooooo. I will stay until I go to Goa in Jan and then if I like it etc go back, and if it isn't really happening then I shall make my excuses and leave having put in a month's worth of work. I came out wanting to volunteer for a small 'hands-on' org, by the coast, with a handful of staff and volunteers so I could talk to people easily, get to part of a wee aid family here and also have easy access to the people and communities who they work for and with. Instead I am part of a VERY busy aid-machine, with very paid employees, with very international meetings to go to, and a national agenda of change... which is great, but I am not that enthusiastic about being sin a back office somewhere labelling pictures!!!
HOWEVER,
Instead of crying about it I am working out how to work it to my advantage. I can use them to:
network with other large orgs here
use their brains about the aid industry in india
ask about their priorities (morally and philosophically)
See any aid villages they have worked with (hopefully, they did say something about that on email months back...)
ask about the makeshift huts I have seen up the road
find out about the aid-effort in Chennai
and use the time I am spending with them to also liaise and interview, even volunteer, with other peeps that I have just spend two hours rustling up on the tinternet.
Twill be fine I am sure. I am not going to worry about it for about a month or so and then shall see what the last few weeks have brought up (anything).
One thing I am learning is that when you are in the 'field' (UG! need a new word! anyone?!!) some days you find out loads and others you find out nothing. 'Tis the nature of the beast. And also, something that may been unexpected and therefore a challenge makes you look around it and question it - ' why is it 'wrong' - could it be useful?' and this too adds a rigorousness to what you 'know' and use in your research, and what you leave out/don't follow up. It also allows the research to progress a little on its own without having to be activley working on it all the time because these little challenges can be blessings in disguise.
Arg though, being ill this week has made me feel really lame. I sit there in bed thinking of all my friends and their intrepid, intellectual brilliance and think 'they wouldn't sit in bed for days, no sir! They would do the job they came to do!!' Then I think I am lazy and before you know it I am convinced I am a big, embarrassing research jokette. Pity poor me.
Then I go to sleep.
Oh oh OH though! I haven't said but I did some more research on my theoretical ideas and from my post the other day the answer was that indeed I was being ignorant and hadn't read enough - I put in very unlikely words into google and WHOOP! There it was! A lovely lovely article saying how my ideas were spankingly fine-a-doodle-do. So , finally, finally, my theoretical direction is all set, i love it, and I am sure that the rest will fall into place soon enough! SUCH an enormous weight off my mind, you just don't know what you are looking at when you don't have your theory pinned down. 'Can I write as a po-mo?! Or should I write as a realist? How would this affect how I go about and write-up and analyse my interviews? How does this affect my interpretations/transcripts of my observations?' bla bla blaaaaa.
But I know now. Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot!!
Now I just need to work out what my research structure will be like here. I think I sall have to wait until I have settled in for a month, do a lot of reading and asking around my vol place, and then reassess and start doing interviews.
I am tired!! we are flat hunting later... I would love my own place! I am sick of eating out - I am craving just a meal of bread, cheese (any cheese, plastic cheese will do) and some coco pops (I don't eat these sugar pops normally but they seem so normal and plain here!!). Or some lentils I have cooked myself in my own way. I just cannot face curry!! I cannot! What I shall do instead is beyond me - but then so is hunger so... I am getting a bit skinny malinny though and ought to start eating soon. My mind is not on my side though. If it sees dirt in a restaurant it goes 'Uch! I shall not eat!' And makes my tummy churn. If I smell curry it does the same. And so all is not good!!! I just feel sick!
Bah.
My word, I ought to get some chrimbo pressies! Oh dear lord WHAT shall I buy?! To the John Lewis website pronto...
x J
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Poorly!
Grr I have been ill! Yesterday, the first day of proper volunteering, and I had to call in sick! How rubbish - especially with the palava of the day before!!! We have taken today off too and will go in tomorrow (lunchtime so I get a lie in thankfully! Sleep has not been my friend these past couple of days). Yesterday was just awful, we went to a posh restaurant for dins the night before and i am sure that was what made me ill because DB has been fine! Today I am ok but not eating and really weak and pathetic. Will go back to the hotel in a min for a rest methinks.
Am off curry for a while. My mind is totally averse to the curry. Crisps it is then! I remember in Guatemala when we were terribly ill I lived off crisps. Not the wisest, but better than beans or egg - or spicy curry!!!
Hopefully tomorrow I will do some work and have something to report. Bizarrely I had a lot of time to think (too ill to read or anything :0( ) and worked out that philisophically I shall have to take an eclectic approach. Not the easiest but one I have discussed with my Sup before and he wasn't totally averse to it (unlike my decision to be totally po-mo). I like a couple of theories and don't want to be boxed in by one or the other. I don't really see why they can't work together so that is what I shall do. I shall have to explain (and defend) it to the nth degree though, but there is no harm in that, and if I am passionate about it and believe in what I am arguing then the writing will come more naturally anyway. I have written out my points of view and generally think that either a) I have made something up which could be quite interesting; b) I have described a theoretical approach which already exists but, in my ignorance and lack of reading, I am unaware of it; or c) I am thick and making something up that is essentially contradictory and therefore impossible both in abstraction and practice. I am worried about making a fool of myself and so will go 'home' and ponder over it for a while...
Ug the boy next to me in the internet cafe stinks of B.O. The first smelly person I have encountered in India.
Au revoir!
x J
Am off curry for a while. My mind is totally averse to the curry. Crisps it is then! I remember in Guatemala when we were terribly ill I lived off crisps. Not the wisest, but better than beans or egg - or spicy curry!!!
Hopefully tomorrow I will do some work and have something to report. Bizarrely I had a lot of time to think (too ill to read or anything :0( ) and worked out that philisophically I shall have to take an eclectic approach. Not the easiest but one I have discussed with my Sup before and he wasn't totally averse to it (unlike my decision to be totally po-mo). I like a couple of theories and don't want to be boxed in by one or the other. I don't really see why they can't work together so that is what I shall do. I shall have to explain (and defend) it to the nth degree though, but there is no harm in that, and if I am passionate about it and believe in what I am arguing then the writing will come more naturally anyway. I have written out my points of view and generally think that either a) I have made something up which could be quite interesting; b) I have described a theoretical approach which already exists but, in my ignorance and lack of reading, I am unaware of it; or c) I am thick and making something up that is essentially contradictory and therefore impossible both in abstraction and practice. I am worried about making a fool of myself and so will go 'home' and ponder over it for a while...
Ug the boy next to me in the internet cafe stinks of B.O. The first smelly person I have encountered in India.
Au revoir!
x J
Monday, 17 November 2008
Almost week four!
Halloooo
I can't believe I have been here for three weeks now! That is nearly a month! Time has flown by!! I am enjoying myself tremendously - until i think about work and get all hot and bothered that is...
I started volunteering today! Although I say 'started', really we got lost twice while trying to find it and ended up taking a rickshaw and realised we were well out of the way!!! Ug. I make it a thing to always make sure I find my way to interviews etc in good time and without asking the way because I have a thing about showing assertiveness and initiative - and being competent enough t0 make my own way. But no, we got lost a LOT and was all rather embarrassing. So we finally turn up and after a ten minute meeting get to go home again until 2pm tomorrow! Wooty! My kind of working... hehe. I am to help initially with teaching materials for a class that someone teaches english to. This worried me a bit really because stuck in a room writing 'leaf' under a picture of - a leaf - isn't going to help my research much. But then, I thought that this is just an initial job while they work me out, and also I am not really to question much until Dec 17th - my unofficial review day as I would have been there for a month by then. If all is not going to plan - I haven't been able to do any research of any kind, then I will see about cutting my hours and also volunteering for somewhere else - I have two other agencies here in mind who I will talk to anyway but not until after new year...
I then had a panic about what I would find out in Chennai anyway seeing as this area wasn't really affected by the tsunami. But then on reflection realised it was in fact affected and could just ask around about waht happned, who was affected, who helped (INGOs?) and in what way, and what the status quo is - has everyone been rehoused now? (I know there was an issue with fishing people being taken away from the site of their villages and placed on the edge of a vile shanty town 2km inland... for aaaaaages - are they still there I wonder? Or in spanking new houses or whattie? I shall investigate!) So that direction of nosiness could be an 'in'. ('In' to what?!! How can I have an 'in' to knowledges I can't yet predict or define?!! Strange...)
Am still having terrible dilemmas with my theoretical point of view. I am just happily eclectic. To the unhappiness of everyone else. And when I try and justify my eclecticism I do sound barmy because the theories do contradict each other. But but but. I wonder if I should leve it until I have finished... but then I think 'hmmm, but doesn't it affect how I am meant to do my interviews and things? If I am a positivist, for example. then I would set up my interviews to have minimum bias etc for optimum rsults. But I am not one of those! Interviews are interactive! therefore I am.....' at which point I dose off. I wish my Sup would tell me the answer. I am sure he knows it, but is waiting for me to figure it out. I can't! I need books! i need a LOT of textbooks. And I have none. :0(
I am also fretful about what kind of info I am meant to be seeking. Am I meant to couch all my info in some kind of ethnography?! To give it some kind of context? Because if so, I am very bored already. I love other cultures but relaying them in tedious, ritualistic, objective detail is just so awful. I don't care about matriarchy vs patriarchy/dowries/inheritance stuff. Whatever, whatever. I hope i don't have to. But I don't know. when do I know? I hope this thing unravels itself as expected and I am not on the plane home crying because I know nothing. Nothing!
Good news though, my friends are coming to Goa on the 5th Jan and I am heading down for partay partay! and I was thinking of taking a long leisurely journey back via bus and train through karnataka and the ghats (cool, green mountains and beauty and forest and loveliness) but that would mean a two week holiday... I would get back around the 17 Jan and only have three and a half months left! eek! I think I really need to go to Sri Lanka and extend my time here. truth be told, I have no inkling to want to go home. Here is too ace. Ah! we had the lovliest lunch today - we went to a real local-local place on our road and sat down and there was no menu so we said 'meals'? and he said 'yes, yes, meal!' and wandered off and came back with massive banana leaves that he plonked in front of us and showed us to spread water on it, then two waiters came along and put two different curry dishes on them, and lots of rice and there was our meal! It was unlimited as well; I was stuffed but think I am looking a little too lean because they insisted on giving me more food. And the main waiter was like a really fussy old grandad and made sure we knew what we were doing (we didn't) and told us things and generally made us feel right at home. It was so lovely to be looked after like that!! So many Indian people we don't know have looked after us, really gruffly but with sincere kindness that doesn't ask to be thanked. Ahhhh. Human kindness.
After our 'volunteering' DB and I walked for about an hour in the neighbourhood the agency is based at and generally are getting our bearings as we stay here. We just love it. I am working in the evenings, working out plans and writing out my thoughts in my (really bizarre - I bought it here, it seem to have a picture of 'heaven' which is a vietnamese fisherman on his wee canoe, heading toward to *giant* swans kissing each other in a sunset. very lurid and frightening) 'fieldwork' journal, and asking myself a lot of questions I don't know the answer to. With optimism I could say 'yet'. At the moment though, I am just pretty scared. oh well, if I wasn't scared of knowing nothinig i would have no impetus to go and find anything out eh?!
And with that nugget of wisdom I shall thee leave...
x J
I can't believe I have been here for three weeks now! That is nearly a month! Time has flown by!! I am enjoying myself tremendously - until i think about work and get all hot and bothered that is...
I started volunteering today! Although I say 'started', really we got lost twice while trying to find it and ended up taking a rickshaw and realised we were well out of the way!!! Ug. I make it a thing to always make sure I find my way to interviews etc in good time and without asking the way because I have a thing about showing assertiveness and initiative - and being competent enough t0 make my own way. But no, we got lost a LOT and was all rather embarrassing. So we finally turn up and after a ten minute meeting get to go home again until 2pm tomorrow! Wooty! My kind of working... hehe. I am to help initially with teaching materials for a class that someone teaches english to. This worried me a bit really because stuck in a room writing 'leaf' under a picture of - a leaf - isn't going to help my research much. But then, I thought that this is just an initial job while they work me out, and also I am not really to question much until Dec 17th - my unofficial review day as I would have been there for a month by then. If all is not going to plan - I haven't been able to do any research of any kind, then I will see about cutting my hours and also volunteering for somewhere else - I have two other agencies here in mind who I will talk to anyway but not until after new year...
I then had a panic about what I would find out in Chennai anyway seeing as this area wasn't really affected by the tsunami. But then on reflection realised it was in fact affected and could just ask around about waht happned, who was affected, who helped (INGOs?) and in what way, and what the status quo is - has everyone been rehoused now? (I know there was an issue with fishing people being taken away from the site of their villages and placed on the edge of a vile shanty town 2km inland... for aaaaaages - are they still there I wonder? Or in spanking new houses or whattie? I shall investigate!) So that direction of nosiness could be an 'in'. ('In' to what?!! How can I have an 'in' to knowledges I can't yet predict or define?!! Strange...)
Am still having terrible dilemmas with my theoretical point of view. I am just happily eclectic. To the unhappiness of everyone else. And when I try and justify my eclecticism I do sound barmy because the theories do contradict each other. But but but. I wonder if I should leve it until I have finished... but then I think 'hmmm, but doesn't it affect how I am meant to do my interviews and things? If I am a positivist, for example. then I would set up my interviews to have minimum bias etc for optimum rsults. But I am not one of those! Interviews are interactive! therefore I am.....' at which point I dose off. I wish my Sup would tell me the answer. I am sure he knows it, but is waiting for me to figure it out. I can't! I need books! i need a LOT of textbooks. And I have none. :0(
I am also fretful about what kind of info I am meant to be seeking. Am I meant to couch all my info in some kind of ethnography?! To give it some kind of context? Because if so, I am very bored already. I love other cultures but relaying them in tedious, ritualistic, objective detail is just so awful. I don't care about matriarchy vs patriarchy/dowries/inheritance stuff. Whatever, whatever. I hope i don't have to. But I don't know. when do I know? I hope this thing unravels itself as expected and I am not on the plane home crying because I know nothing. Nothing!
Good news though, my friends are coming to Goa on the 5th Jan and I am heading down for partay partay! and I was thinking of taking a long leisurely journey back via bus and train through karnataka and the ghats (cool, green mountains and beauty and forest and loveliness) but that would mean a two week holiday... I would get back around the 17 Jan and only have three and a half months left! eek! I think I really need to go to Sri Lanka and extend my time here. truth be told, I have no inkling to want to go home. Here is too ace. Ah! we had the lovliest lunch today - we went to a real local-local place on our road and sat down and there was no menu so we said 'meals'? and he said 'yes, yes, meal!' and wandered off and came back with massive banana leaves that he plonked in front of us and showed us to spread water on it, then two waiters came along and put two different curry dishes on them, and lots of rice and there was our meal! It was unlimited as well; I was stuffed but think I am looking a little too lean because they insisted on giving me more food. And the main waiter was like a really fussy old grandad and made sure we knew what we were doing (we didn't) and told us things and generally made us feel right at home. It was so lovely to be looked after like that!! So many Indian people we don't know have looked after us, really gruffly but with sincere kindness that doesn't ask to be thanked. Ahhhh. Human kindness.
After our 'volunteering' DB and I walked for about an hour in the neighbourhood the agency is based at and generally are getting our bearings as we stay here. We just love it. I am working in the evenings, working out plans and writing out my thoughts in my (really bizarre - I bought it here, it seem to have a picture of 'heaven' which is a vietnamese fisherman on his wee canoe, heading toward to *giant* swans kissing each other in a sunset. very lurid and frightening) 'fieldwork' journal, and asking myself a lot of questions I don't know the answer to. With optimism I could say 'yet'. At the moment though, I am just pretty scared. oh well, if I wasn't scared of knowing nothinig i would have no impetus to go and find anything out eh?!
And with that nugget of wisdom I shall thee leave...
x J
Saturday, 15 November 2008
Saturday 15 Nov - Two and a Half weeks in...
hallooo!!
So we are two and half weeks in - I can't believe that is all we have been here for! we have done and seen and learnt so much! We are still in Pondy, enjoying the sites and gorging on 'finger fries' and 'secret tea' (beer in teapots so the police don't get wind of it?!) and, admittedly, cigarettes (I know), until we head back to Chennai tomorrow - the land of saintly goodness. In Chennai there is no beer really (is some kind of prohibition going on), no finger fries, and as a lady it is unbecoming for me to smoke - which I don't if I am not drinking secret tea anyway, so there. So back to the land of goodliness - and volunteering on Monday! Eek! they haven't told us when to turn up so I shall go along about mid morning and take it from there! I hope I don't get stuck doing admin. This is my biggest fear I think. Answering phones and being all customer service. NOOOOO! I hope I get to do hands-on stuff.
Am quite nervous about the volunteering really.
I am also having a total quandry about my theory. I just cannot work out where I stand. I seem to be in the middle of a few theories but not commiting to any in particular. So I have to do a lot of reading about that. And I would say folks- anyone wanting some sage advice plus a bit of philosophy thrown in I suggest reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence'. It is a novel but written by someone who is clearly a scholar and been through what we are all going through, he is very wise and talks about philosophy a lot (realism/rationalism/idealsim etc) and also has lovely nuggets of calming info such as his advice about 'stuckness' which concludes with him saying that stuckness is a good thing and things will always become unstuck and clear in your mind in the end. And he talks about how work creates a sense of peace of mind when you know it is right, because you care about it. Because you care, you are looking for it to be right, and you are looking for that feeling of 'peace'. I imagine that is how I would feel when I have completed my final draft of my PhD... Although maybe a bit mad at first, then a bit drunk, then very drunk, and then at peace (hungover/asleep).
Assuming I'm not up the stick of course. Then I would go out and eat a lot, which always creates a kind of peace when the sugar/carb-rush has subsided.
So yes, read the book - it's by... Arg, his name. I don't know, it's a weird one. Pop it into google anyway - I would suggest everyone read it if you are feeling a little disconnected from your work. Or just as a nice reference book to look at when you feel blue and he tells you 'well, learning is hard' and you think, 'yeah! it's hard!' and he advises you leave it for a bit so thoughts can work themselves out. I like that.
Well, better read sommat about Critical Theory. Please be the one, PLEASE.
x J
So we are two and half weeks in - I can't believe that is all we have been here for! we have done and seen and learnt so much! We are still in Pondy, enjoying the sites and gorging on 'finger fries' and 'secret tea' (beer in teapots so the police don't get wind of it?!) and, admittedly, cigarettes (I know), until we head back to Chennai tomorrow - the land of saintly goodness. In Chennai there is no beer really (is some kind of prohibition going on), no finger fries, and as a lady it is unbecoming for me to smoke - which I don't if I am not drinking secret tea anyway, so there. So back to the land of goodliness - and volunteering on Monday! Eek! they haven't told us when to turn up so I shall go along about mid morning and take it from there! I hope I don't get stuck doing admin. This is my biggest fear I think. Answering phones and being all customer service. NOOOOO! I hope I get to do hands-on stuff.
Am quite nervous about the volunteering really.
I am also having a total quandry about my theory. I just cannot work out where I stand. I seem to be in the middle of a few theories but not commiting to any in particular. So I have to do a lot of reading about that. And I would say folks- anyone wanting some sage advice plus a bit of philosophy thrown in I suggest reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence'. It is a novel but written by someone who is clearly a scholar and been through what we are all going through, he is very wise and talks about philosophy a lot (realism/rationalism/idealsim etc) and also has lovely nuggets of calming info such as his advice about 'stuckness' which concludes with him saying that stuckness is a good thing and things will always become unstuck and clear in your mind in the end. And he talks about how work creates a sense of peace of mind when you know it is right, because you care about it. Because you care, you are looking for it to be right, and you are looking for that feeling of 'peace'. I imagine that is how I would feel when I have completed my final draft of my PhD... Although maybe a bit mad at first, then a bit drunk, then very drunk, and then at peace (hungover/asleep).
Assuming I'm not up the stick of course. Then I would go out and eat a lot, which always creates a kind of peace when the sugar/carb-rush has subsided.
So yes, read the book - it's by... Arg, his name. I don't know, it's a weird one. Pop it into google anyway - I would suggest everyone read it if you are feeling a little disconnected from your work. Or just as a nice reference book to look at when you feel blue and he tells you 'well, learning is hard' and you think, 'yeah! it's hard!' and he advises you leave it for a bit so thoughts can work themselves out. I like that.
Well, better read sommat about Critical Theory. Please be the one, PLEASE.
x J
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
