Ali Bytes: Bullet-sized strategies for modern living

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.

I spent three days last week at the Indian School of Business for the Ashoka and Lemelson Foundation’s Tech4Society conference. It was a thought provoking, global, action oriented meeting of the minds. In the coming days I will synthesize some thoughts, but one conversation inspired this short blog post.

One fellow (who happened to also be a Fellow) came up to me with an unusual inquiry: he wanted to confirm that I was not the Ali Cherry he dated in college. In the course of this unique dialogue, some how mental health and Facebook came up simultaneously and Doug shared that he thinks Facebook is good for his mental health because sometimes meaningless is necessary. His theory is that we’re always searching for the consequential and that we need breaks from it. It was a very wise Seth Godin-esque moment that, combined with the ensuing conversations, made this guy one of my favorites of the few days.

So in that spirit, I’ll share some photos and musings from the last few weeks.

1. I live on Road Number 11 in Banjara Hills, a “posh” Hyderabad neighborhood. Like most roads in India, this one is shared by various motor vehicles, stray dogs, peeing men, speed bumps, grape sellers and people going about their day. While it may not sound like it, this combination makes quite the people watching scene. On my first day here I saw three camels on this road, but think it was a covert stunt to shock me into my new life because I haven’t seen any since.
2. I captured this store front in a drive-by shooting (of pictures) around Charminar. I can’t figure out what it does. Watch repair maybe? (Click here to see larger version to fully appreciate my sarcasm.) I asked my colleague to explain this to me and she laughed having with no idea why a store would need four signs. I think strategic signage consulting is a service that could do quite well here.  As far as I can tell, if a sign needs fixing or repainting, a new one is just put up; maintenance is not a core competency of India. 
3. Driving back from ISB a few weeks ago, I also shot this photo from the road. It is one of the best advertisements for targeted advertising I’ve seen. If you look closely there’s a Princeton Review GMAT class ad on a pole next to a shanty village. I would bet many of the people exposed to this sign don’t even go to the U.S. equivalent of high school. 
4. More than anything else, I’ve taken a lot of pictures of kids.  This is partly because almost every weekend I’ve volunteered at a school and partly because kids go crazy when you put a camera in front of them. For whatever reason, they love to wave to the camera though I can’t figure out why. These are some kids from a government school in Film Nagar.
5. I’m intrigued by advertising in this country. In addition to the poorly placed GMAT ad, public service-type announcements lack creativity and seem to have very little impact (like encouraging bikers to wear helmets).  This is a recent favorite: “do not jump signals.” It is actually necessary to promote following a law which would be like seeing a stop sign with a sign below it saying “obey the stop sign.”  Seems a bit redundant.
6. While the western notion of recycling is pretty uncommon, the adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is very much alive in India. In the dumpsters, groups of animals and people pick through to recover leftover food or reusable materials.  Here are some goats eating trash, a pretty typical scene in many neighborhoods. 
7. Instructions that articulate the obvious amuse me. For example, these rules posted on the back of a bathroom stall door include: “3. Very Important!! Please do not use the extra floor space of the last loo for any of your business”  I would love to hear the story that brought about this rule.
8. On Sundays, I like to go for a walk in KBR park.  It’s one of the few outdoor spaces where one can walk without having to be careful not to get hit by a moving vehicle.  It is interesting to me that what I consider exercise clothes aren’t very common. 
9. I took my new friend James out to dinner for his birthday and had the wait staff surprise him with a mini cake.  They then insisted that they take our picture while we awkwardly followed the Indian tradition of feeding one another cake. 
10. I didn’t hear about this until seeing this ad in the paper. Apparently Lays discovered some SMS and email messages that suggested their products are not entirely vegetarian. This ad included a full letter from the Director of Legal ensuring customers that they are in fact 100% vegetarian, reinforcing the need for culturally specific marketing.
    
11. Of course my cost of living is less than Washington, DC.  In an attempt at a literal apples to apples comparison, I took this picture of groceries that cost me 150Rs or about $3.  As you can see, it bought me a small loaf of bread, head of cauliflower, pack of gum, 5 bananas and 4 apples.  (And now you also know my pitiful dinner most nights.) 

To me, the pinnacle of success is speaking at a TED conference. I could try to explain my love affair with TED but instead recommend you check out the talks and see what I mean (or read this old post). Last Sunday, I felt privileged to get to attend a TEDx event in HitechCity, x meaning it’s an independently organized event so does not carry the same gravitas or prestige that a “real” TED event does. Nonetheless I was looking forward to a day full of intellectual stimulation.

The cliff notes version of TED talks is that they are typically about 20 minutes of passionate, substantive, innovative and thought provoking content by some of the world’s most notable people. (The 2010 event actually starts tomorrow). TED used to stand for Technology Entertainment Design but they’ve expanded that and now use the tag line “ideas worth spreading.” Interestingly, I just learned that TED Curator, Chris Anderson, is married to Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen Fund officially making them the ultimate power couple to me.

Of the 22 or so speakers from Sunday’s event, many of them were unfortunately not worth spreading (or have been spread so far, it’s not worth repeating like “use LED lightbulbs to help the environment”) but these five really captured my attention. I look forward to hearing what ideas emerge from TED 2010 in Long Beach, CA this week.

1. Nagesh Kukunoor talked about the “unexplored zone”: Nagesh is a famous Indian film director who used to be an environmental consultant in the U.S. The dramatic career change is enough to pique my attention, but his approach to movies is even more intriguing. While he made a few interesting but unoriginal points: “naïveté lets you do things you don’t know you shouldn’t do” and “the unexplored zone is not always new, just twisting the old,” what most fascinated me was his seeming obsession with not being slotted into a genre. While he thinks movies should be entertainment first, and that a message is a nice to have, he is such a purest when it comes to story telling and letting the audience do the interpretive work, that he rejects the Bollywood mold of heavy makeup or songs, trying to be as “real” as stories can be. For this, some of his movies have been hits and others not so much. His takeaway message: keep exploring.
2. Dr. Neeraj Raj’s talk was Heads – Malaria…Tails – Jaundice: As in many parts of the developing world, illegal medicine practicing is a problem in India. Roughly 80% of India still lives in rural parts of the country and many (if not most) of these people have no access to a trained medical professional. At the same time, 50% of common medical problems (like diarrhea) don’t require a doctor but instead someone with an ability to point to over the counter treatment and recognize danger signs that do require a doctor’s attention. He argues that if we can digitize medical education such that we can more efficiently teach fact-based learning, then we can begin to address the problem of illegal rural medicine and also focus more on skill based education. While I didn’t quite capture how he wants to bring digital medicine to rural India (since I don’t even have internet at home), the idea of capturing teachings of the best instructors around the country, combining it with interactive multimedia, and adding note taking and direct question submission functionality is brilliant. The tool is called SmarTeach and currently has 750 active teaching professors on the site.
3. The best presentation of the day was Karuna Gopal on the truth about Indian Cities: She combined analogy and vivid photography to make the case that city planning should be a top priority for India, as poorly planned cities and rapid growth lead to extreme poverty and wealth, serious health problems, and the kind of civil unrest that can influence terrorism. She was refreshingly blunt in her message: Indian government doesn’t have project management capabilities, doesn’t know how to work in teams, doesn’t coordinate processes and lacks creative, persuasive communication to get people to pay attention or take action (there are lots of billboards and newspaper ads with a million words and only faces of politicians). She argued that business leaders need to begin to inject their skills and talent to teach and encourage government bodies to adopt better practices. Her take-away: Business cannot succeed in a city that fails.
4. Prosenjit Ganguly’s presentation was called Flowers do fly: An independent animation designer, screenwriter and media educator, PJ is slowly transforming Indian education through small workshops that teach children how to express themselves and tell their stories through multimedia. He showed one of his videos about how Indian schooling is about repetition, listening not talking, discipline and learning right/wrong which earned the largest applause of the day - clearly it resonated with the ISB students. The philosophy behind his work is that education should, instead, be a “tool to express what’s going on in your mind” and to reflect on what we see. He said that what moves us is our story line, and in inviting people (even little people) to tell these stories, the result is consequence and mission. I loved this message.
5. Similar to Karuna, Kanthi Kannan posed a question: Walking, is it a fundamental right? In a previous post, I mentioned the lack of sidewalks and danger when walking. If I had to say my number one challenge with living here, it’s easily my inability to walk where I want to go. She shared that 5 pedestrians die each week in Hyderabad and 40 get injured, despite the fact that 40% of the Hyderabad workforce walks to work. Why is this? People who walk don’t make decisions and people who make decisions (or have influence) don’t walk. Interestingly, it’s not just sidewalks that cities need, but walking needs to be marketed as cool.  Right now, walking generally means you don’t have money for transportation. Her take-away: The single biggest difference between a developed nation and an underdeveloped nation is footpaths.

Photo credit: TEDxHitechCity on flickr

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.”