Ali Bytes: Bullet-sized strategies for modern living

A lot of friends both in India and in the U.S. have asked me what I do on the weekends. Though time passes and I feel busy, it’s been tough to answer that question because every weekend has been different. I’ve posted about going to the zoo and TedXHiTechCity but here is a larger sampling of what my weekends have looked like in Hyderabad as I come up on my very last just a week from today.

1. Saree shopping at Pochampally: A little known attraction just outside of Hyderabad is Pochampally, the home to handmade silk saree manufacturing. In 1970, some village headmen decided to integrate silk weaving into cotton weaving to improve the livelihoods of the village and now they are leaders in the industry. We arrived with tempered expectations and were amazed by the selection of incredible silk sarees and equally incredible tour of the huge factory. The lack of crowds, friendliness of the staff, and up close experience of seeing silk dyed and woven made for an awesome experience and I got a saree to remember it by. Now I just need an Indian friend to marry so I have somewhere to wear it.
2. Senegalese hip hop band concert: BBC Sound System was an awesome group that stopped at the Novotel on a 12 city tour. Despite their mostly unknown music, they had an audience of ex-pats and Indians captivated for the couple of hours they played. I highly recommend them.
3. Sight seeing in Mumbai with Abbey: My good friend likes to wander the back roads with a camera, exactly my style for traveling making for a perfect first visitor. We spent a couple days in Mumbai, where she was the pied piper for little kids looking for a few rupees and then a few days in Hyderabad where she was a celebrity taking photos with young Indian guys at Golconda Fort. It was fascinating to notice the difference in how I am treated alone versus when I’m with another white, blond woman.
4. Playing Holi at the Hyderabad Children’s Aid Society: There really is no better group to spend a festival of colors and water fights with than 80 teenage boys. They were quite excited to see they had blank canvases as Mary Ann and I arrived clean with pale skin. It was a lot of fun but almost two months later, I still have pink streaks in my hair.
5. Exploring road number 11: Every day I leave my apartment building, I turn right. It took me until a few weeks ago to turn left to see what the rest of road number 11 looked like. On my journey, I met these two kids Mansoo and Akoo (”like Hakuna Matata” is how they told me to remember it) who walked around with me for about an hour while I took a lot of pictures. Last weekend, I took a bunch of the pictures I took back to the people and it was pretty awesome to see their faces as I handed them the photos of themselves. Two days ago, Mansoo spotted me getting into an auto and called out “Ali Auntie”; he wanted to invite me to his birthday party. These moments are some of the best I’ve had here.
6. Getting baptized at Hash: Each time a “virgin hare” lays the course for the Hyderabad Hash House Harriers, the individual gets baptized with a name and a showering of beer. A few Sundays ago I was up at 7am with a bag of cement and 3 other hashers to lay the trail. It took almost three hours and then I spent the entire day trying to recover before having to do the course all over again with the group in the evening.
7. Fundraiser for the Hyderabad Multiple Sclerosis Society: Last month, I joined a few Deloitte friends for a Saturday evening art auction, dinner and cocktails to raise money for the MS Society.  It was interesting to get a small glimpse into the Indian philanthropic community which a Bain study (full report) recently reported is about 0.6% of the country’s GDP (compared to 2.2% in the U.S.). The event was well done with about 50 pieces of art for sale starting at around 13,000 rupees up to a couple hundred thousand. 
8. GreenMango retreat at the Pocharam Wildlife Sanctuary: On this Saturday, about thirty of us spent an hour walking 6km around a wildlife sanctuary only to see one deer (that we could actually pet) followed by listening to a park ranger talk for over an hour about how we shouldn’t feed plastic bags to cows because they will expand in their stomachs and cry (while motioning a tear running down his face). Lucky for most of you reading this, I didn’t capture it on video or I would make you sit through the joy of Kindergarten-level environmental education. The rest of the day was equally entertaining as we picnicked in a park full of wild monkeys.
   
9. Pedicures at Juice: A couple times I’ve splurged for a 400 rupee (about $8) pedicure. Given that I, like most people, wear sandals every day and there is dirt and trash everywhere, a good foot scrub is the perfect way to pamper.

In late February I heard about these two informally organized groups that completely changed my perspective on Hyderabad and entrepreneurship.

1. Hash House Harriers: This “drinking club with a running problem” was started in Malaysia in the 1938 by a group of British soldiers and has since spread all over the world. The idea isn’t that simple but once you try it and get it, you may become addicted like I am. The group, open to anyone almost anywhere, meets at a different location at the same day and time each week (or month) to go on a run (or walk) that is set by a couple of “hares” who lay the trail using a powdered substance (usually flour in the U.S., cement powder here in Hyderabad). The trail is a series of clues that include sending you down wrong paths so you have to “on back,” retracing your steps to find the right path. It’s an amazing way to explore any city - particularly one where running outside is an alien endeavor; I often feel like we are a parade drawing people out of their homes to watch. Every group in the world customizes it to their liking - some try to catch the hares, some take beer breaks in the middle, etc. - but they all finish with beer at the end and members who have been initiated have nicknames, mostly NSFW. While I only did it once in DC, I joined H4 (Hyderabad + HHH) in February and haven’t missed a Sunday run with this fun group of quirky people from all different backgrounds.
2. Couch Surfing: How does one afford to travel around the world when hotel rooms in some places are $100 a night or more? Well couch surfing found an amazing solution to the problem - allow people to offer up their couches at no cost. While there is no money exchanged (or any other favors actually) between the surfer and couch owner, there is a small fee to register on the site which goes towards maintenance of the site and employing a couple of full time employees of this nonprofit organization based in New Hampshire. What’s most fascinating to me, however, isn’t just the simple genius of the idea started in 1999, but it’s the community that has grown around it. Each year couch surfers meet for a kind of conference, hang out and talk about couch surfing. It’s amazing that there is such a strong common identity among a group of people united by the fact that they prefer to stay in a stranger’s home than pay for a hostel. Though perhaps it’s more than that as the slogan adopted in 2006 suggests: “Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch At A Time.”

It may or may not surprise you to learn that I am obsessed with lists - list reading, list making, list following. Now, almost half way through my time in India, I am starting to think about cheeseburgers and going for bike rides outside.  However, nothing gets me more excited to return to DC than this exhibit that opened at the Smithsonian this month: Lists: To-Dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations. In the words of my friend Jackson (who was an impetus behind Alibytes) “like whoa!”

In case you think I must be joking (who could seriously get that excited about lists?), read below for a list that has been developing over the last few weeks.

1. Ceiling fans: Though it’s not the most southern city, Hyderabad is said to one of the hottest cities in India and I’ve only gotten a flavor of it so far. In about a month when “summer” starts - it’s been an 80+ degree winter so far for sake of comparison - it will regularly be above 100 degrees. I definitely love ceiling fans in the U.S. but I really celebrate them here. I am not sure how I’d get through the day without them.
2. Raisins: I have never realized what a universal, nutritious and pretty safe food raisins are. I have them in my muesli and yogurt in the morning, mixed with nuts with my lunch and with my vegetables for dinner. They can be eaten sweet or salty, alone or mixed with a wide variety of foods and taken anywhere requiring no special care or refrigeration.
3. A good driver: Some people say that Indians are terrible drivers. On the contrary, I think they are amazing. A friend pointed out that driving here is like being in a real life video game - with objects and people jumping in the way, cars swerving following no lines on the road and optionally following traffic laws. Yet, there are relatively few accidents given these circumstances.  Though I can barely cross the street alone (when I go in the field with my colleague who is about 5′0″ and 90 pounds, I have to hold her hand), when I get into an auto in the middle of rush hour, I feel quite safe.
4. Pooping: I’m sorry to be crude, but in the spirit of honesty it must be shared - and if you’ve spent time in a developing country I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. Western immune systems are not typically prepared to handle the bacteria which is so prevalent here, including in water. Getting through another day without a case of  traveler’s diarrhea (TD) or food poisoning is something to celebrate in a small way.
5. Stationary bikes: Each morning I get up at 7:15 to go to the gym so that I can enjoy delicious biryani and roti with slightly less guilt (and impact on the way my clothes fit). There’s a great walking park about 25 minutes from my house but it’s open only from 5am-8am and then 5pm-9pm, even on the weekends. This, combined with the 1980s era toe touching “fitness” routines that go on at the gym each morning, suggest to me that exercise is for people who can’t afford to ride in a vehicle to get where they are going.
6. Shade: On Saturday, GreenMango celebrated its 2nd anniversary at a Wildlife Sanctuary about 2.5 hours from Hyderabad. The experience is a another story (there was literally one diseased looking dear that we could pet) but one tid bit is that after 4km of walking with absolutely no trees big enough to shade even a bit of the trail, my colleague Ananth looks at my arms making a face as if he smelled something bad and said “you have a rash.” “Ahh, no that’s just a sun burn. It’s normal.” I’ve learned in these 7 weeks that sitting in the shade is in fact cooler than being in the sun.
7. A good vegetable peeler: I didn’t realize the clear trend here until I’m now at the last one - staying cool and staying healthy. When I traveled to India in 2008, the mantra was “as long as it’s well cooked” but living here for longer than a few weeks, it’s not sustainable to avoid raw fruits and vegetables, even with going to a gym each morning. A good peeler (which my roommate brought back from a trip to Australia actually) saves much time peeling carrots and apples - two of my staple foods here.

At least once a day I say “small world!” with the exclamation included despite how regular it’s becoming. For example, my high school friend’s (Allie) college friend (Abe) email introduced me to the same woman (Katie) that is good friends with the CEO of GreenMango (Yasmina) and was mentioned over dinner with a woman (Tracy) whom I met through a DC friend’s (Geoff) friend’s (Jenny) friend (Geetika). Yeah, I can barely follow it either. Bare with me, this entire post is not as complicated.

Anyway, I thought that was pretty coincidental until this first story happened last week. (The three others are included because my India small world story needed company.)

1. My roommate and colleague picked me up at the airport and on the ride home I learned she is from Hull, MA where my parents live. For the last ten days, two of her friends have been visiting who are from Hingham, the town next to Hull, where I grew up. When they arrived, her friend walked into work, took one look at me and said “yes, you look just like your mom.” Apparently, she was in my mom’s babysitting coop when I was little. Later that evening I was chatting with her other friend and discovered that she currently lives in my best friend from childhood’s old house.
2. Speaking of Hingham, when I was interviewing for a job at Grassroots Enterprise in Washington, DC, I told the CEO that I was from Hingham, something that I am rarely asked and rarely share since I usually say Boston. He mentioned it to the COO in our San Francisco office who was not only from Hingham but lived in my neighborhood and played street hockey with the same guys we did growing up.
3. While at Grassroots, I was at a conference in New York City and, in an ambitious attempt to network, I approached a woman whose badge had the name of a women’s organization. In sharing that I was living in DC, she said she was from Texas but on her way to DC after the conference to visit her daughter who worked at an organization called Systems Planning and Analysis. “Oh SPA? Yes, I know it and have a couple friends that work there,” I said. She said her daughter’s name (her mom has a different last name) and I replied, “You’re kidding? That’s my friend!” Now when she comes to town, I try to go over and say hello.
4. And finally, DC is notoriously small so I have a lot of stories here. But last fall, I was getting to know my new roommate and in small talk we got to chatting about the Peace Corps. She mentioned her college friend was in Mongolia and I said my good friend’s brother is there too when it dawned on me that she went to Brown and so did the brother. Turns out my roommate dated his best friend in college and had met my good friend a few times.

Ok now if you’ve gotten this far and I haven’t confused or bored you, what is your best small world story? And if you’re reading this and you are one of the people in those stories, maybe you could just say “hi Ali. I remember that.”