It’s a funny thing, I’ve written a not unreasonable amount since I’ve been here. Sent some (quite long) emails, written several draft posts, but haven’t felt quite right about publishing anything thus far, for a variety of reasons.
I’ve been in Hyderabad for over a week now. It’s been absolutely fascinating, to say the very least. From taking an auto (aka rickshaw) to and from the office every day, to experiencing Chaand Raat at the Charminar Bazaar. There was definitely a bit of culture shock, but each day it seems to less and less of an issue. I’ve learned the streets well enough to navigate to where I need to go (and, more importantly, being able to instruct the auto driver how to get there).
The one thing that still gets to me is the sheer number of people. Now, I’ve lived in two of the top 5 largest US cities, both with millions of people each. Two things to note about India: 1) the top 7 largest cities all have more people than any city in the US, except New York. 2) Hyderabad faces a density issue, much like New York, where there simply is not enough space for the number of people living here. So on a day-to-day basis, it’s congested and there are people everywhere. But when there is a holiday or festival, things really get packed in. I wish I had a better photo of this at Charminar, but for quite a while there, we were unable to move, except by the crowd shuffling you around. Eventually you would come to a pocket, re-angle towards where you want to go, then go back into the mass of people. And don’t forget you’re also trying to dodge motorcycles and two-wheeled vendor carts cutting through the crowds. It makes being in Times Square or Grand Central Station feel like standing in the middle of Montana.
It’s already very likely that I’ll be planning a return trip as soon as I get back to the States — each day that goes by it gets more and more familiar. I think I’m starting to get the hang of “it”, whatever that is. There is still lots to learn, and simply not enough time.
I’m currently on the plane leaving Austin. I’ll be in India in a few days, but not before a short stopover in Atlanta to see my sister.
Thanks to technology, I’ll still be rather connected. I won’t have a phone with me, but my 512 number will ring on my laptop. And then there’s always Google Chat for text, video, audio if you’re into that sort of thing.
If you’re interested in seeing where I’ll be going, the easiest way is to add me on TripIt. My itinerary is a bit crazy, especially on the return trip. I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to post photos, but since my iPhone doesn’t work outside of the US - it will probably be via Facebook manually.
If you happen to be in one of the towns I’m going through (Atlanta, London, Chennai, Hyderabad, Chicago, Pittsburgh - in no specific order), hit me up and let’s hang out!
The set up to this is almost too easy: SF tends to lean more liberal, and is typically characterized as being anti-corporations. But I’m going to take the bait, and dive into this.
BART recently received a fair amount of bad press for their decision to physically unplug the cell phone nodes underground in their terminals in response to a potential protest. This was done because BART had discovered online rumblings that their might be the “use [of] mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police”.
There has been quite a bit of mis-information surrounding this issue, so I’ll lay it out as I understand the issue. Contrary to the NYT blog post (which states: “After all, since it pays for the cell service underground, it can cut it off.”), BART receives a not insubstantial amount of revenue from the mobile providers to offer service in the tunnels (0.75 million USD in 2010, per BART). It works something like: Nextel (now Sprint) built out the underground network, which it then licenses to the other major carriers, and pays BART for access to the tunnels.
BART posted messages on their electronic signs warning of potential disruptions of transport services due to protests, but made no mention of shutting down the third-party cell phone network system. This warning was released after some group… using Blogspot (heh), posted that they were going to coordinate a protest in the underground BART terminals.
The original BART press release (and subsequent media reports) indicates they tried to reach out to carriers to convince them to shut down coverage at certain stations — and I suspect they didn’t gain much support from the for-profit corporations on that. The revised statement seems to show that they physically pulled the power to the cell nodes underground. (Which, fortunately for BART, doesn’t seem to violate any federal anti-jamming laws.)
Enough back story: I don’t really care for comparisons of the BART incident to what happened in Egypt or what Cameron mumbled on about for London. What I find disconcerting is that BART, a conglomerate of Bay Area governments that came together to coordinate transportation in the region, receives public money (i.e. taxes residents of area counties) to support the system. According to the APTA2, BART only covers 64.5% of it’s revenues through fares. The remainder comes from taxes, advertising, etc.
I’m staunchly against a government agency attempting to quash free speech — but I’m even more strongly against the government interfering with the operations of business. This isn’t an issue of regulation… BART forcefully disconnected commercial systems and denied those businesses (the mobile carriers) the ability to capture revenues from the customers in the BART terminals. (At least, during the time of the protests, which, it should be mentioned, never occurred.)
Here in lies the problem: BART cannot sustain itself on fare revenues alone, but wants to retain the right to private property by restricting free speech and commercial activity to the benefit of the government, not the people.
There’s a simple answer. It sucks for people who ride BART daily, but is entirely sustainable for the broad economy. Privatize BART. Fares will go up, but area counties (many of which can’t even access the BART system) will be freed from ridiculous taxes. But the stronger argument? As a private business, and therefore private property, the underground system will have unrestricted control over limiting mobile service in order to prevent any “mishaps”.
The inverse effect? People will be able to vote with their use (or lack thereof) of the private system. If a private security force were to kill a subdued, unarmed man — it would be trivial to deny your dollars to the system (vs being forced to pay taxes to fund them). If you didn’t support their decision to shut down cell service for a non-existent protest, you could simply choose not to utilize the system.
A few things are happening in the next 6 weeks — and I’m making a conscious effort to make a few changes around those events. First off, work is getting incredibly busy again. Which is great, I thrive in that environment. Except this time, it’s not here in Austin, it’s in India. I’ll be leaving in less than a week or so to spend about a month in Hyderabad, India. Which means that I’ll have lots to do, and nothing to do, all at the same time.
Because of this expected increase in available downtime (that would normally be spent out and about in Austin, or just generally being busy), I’ve decided to disconnect from the media for the time that I’ll be out of the US. Mostly, this means that my TV consumption will drop, and that I’ll spend less time in Google Reader/Facebook/Twitter every day. The goal of this is to increase my consumption of “fine” literature and get back into the groove of writing on a regular basis (of which I’ve not done since finishing my undergrad studies).
My blog (which also makes up the majority of my Facebook posts and Tweets) has recently (the past year+) been heavily focused on the republishing of other content. It’s content that I deem interesting, of which you may or may not agree; but, in the end, it is content from others. This next month or so, I’m going to stop reblogging, and increase my original content output. This should be easier, given that I won’t be consuming as much media in general — however, it will clearly require more time to produce in the long run.
I’m mostly writing this post to serve as a marker; defining the change in direction I’m going to be testing over the next several weeks. However, I’d also like to get the 10 of you that read this on a regular basis involved. (Mostly for selfish reasons — I’m going to be living in India without much social structure, so y’all better Skype with me…) I’ll probably be sending rough drafts and other random thoughts to you — with the intention of getting your feedback and expanding my view points. I’ll probably include those responses when I deem something ready for public consumption. (Which, of course, I should point out, is going to be a very low threshold. My goal is to increase my original content, not increase the quality. You’ll still have to put up with my bullshit.)
I’m putting this out there, because I’ll feel like an idiot later on if I end up not producing any content… so this is an insurance policy to get me to live up to it.
Google Voice: “Share your voicemails by embedding them on a web site” — Why on earth would I ever want to do that?
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Grammar competency CAPTCHAs. Filter out the idiots from the internet.
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“No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains: Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bailout should be free, small and risk-bearing. We got ourselves into the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France, in the 1980s, the Socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.” — The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
(Source: books.google.com)