Day 7, Internet is back!

Sorry for the absence, the internet service has been down the last couple of days due to the start of the monsoon. I was starting to feel a little removed from the world, so glad to be able to reconnect. There's only so much self-analysis one can do before thinking about what everyone is doing :) Incidentally, I had always pictured "the monsoon" being an elongated typhoon/hurricane. It seems like it's just another name for rainy season. With the expectation being any given rainstorm could be several inches of precipitation.

The past few days have followed a similar routine: walk, breakfast, massage, yoga, lunch, massage, dinner, bed. Mix in there a lot of reading, and drinking some of the nasty herbal medicine we're on (picture right) 4x/day, and you've pretty much summed it up.

Rather than write a few details on every activity each day, which would get rather repetitive, I figured I would mention a few unique items from the day, but focus on one or two individual topics. Should give you a reason to log in each day.

Today I wanted to mention the discussion we had with Col Babu and Dr. Baji yestereday. It was the first time I really felt like personal walls were coming down and we got to know them a little better. We spent a couple of hours with them. And you know what broke the ice? They wanted advice on buying a laptop :) The funny thing was that Dr. Baji wants a standard notebook, Col Babu wants a netbook, and neither sees the other point on the value of the other machine. I can't help but smile at the discussion, I can almost hear Intel people getting nervous that Dr. Baji will selldown to the netbook. I do offer some tips on purchasing, and as you can see here, Col Babu takes me right up on my suggestion to get an S10 Ideapad netbook. He even tried to get me to give him a discount for the local engineering school to purchase 100 netbooks. I'll have to work on that one when I get back in the office.

The rest of the conversation was discussion on the election and the subsequent 17% jump in the Sensex (Indian stock market). The election was a decisive victory for the incumbent Congress party, eliminating their need to partner with the Communist Party. As opposed to the U.S. system dominated by 2 parties, India has several hundred political parties. This usually means that whatever party is in power has to partner with a bunch of other ones, and usually leads to little progress on any one agenda. The Congress Party, led by Sonia Gandhi, will be in power with nearly 50% majority, and will subsequently get to set the agenda. Prime Minister Singh, known for his sound economic policies, will have more leeway to deregulate markets and unleash India's economic prowess. It is amazing that even after the Financial Crisis'08, the stock market recognizes the greatest wealth potential lies in open markets and competition.

What was interesting about our discussion with Col Babu and Dr. Baji was their optimism about the future. They mentioned that there is a common belief that India has been in a state of devolution, having peaked hundreds or thousands of years ago (I found this also common when I traveled in Brazil). But over the last 5 years, that perception has shifted, and there is a sense of India's rise being at hand.

I have to say I have been enjoying the reading time. Raechel has been trying to get me to read A Time Traveler's Wife for a while now, and I finally buckled down and read all 530 pages in two days. It helps to have a hammock with a nice breeze to keep you motivated. Anyway, a great book, and I would recommend it to anyone. It hits a little close to home right now given the story is about absence between two people in love, but at least I know when I get back to the States I get to see Rae every day as much as I want :)

And a very Happy 6th Birthday to my nephew Keagan!

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