Seen in NYC -- Part II

"Summer Camp" at the Apple store on the Upper West Side... a two-year old excitedly tugs at the mouse, squealing at the resultant animal play onscreen. Gotta hand it to Apple, they capture their customers young.


A related aside from this morning: a stranger seated next to me on the crosstown bus strikes up a conversation (first about fashion, then about NYC, then about work). Visibly intrigued about my job, he talks about an article he read in National Geographic about indigenous, poor Peruvians and Ecuadorians living in the Andes mountains. Adding his own commentary, he states: "These poor families... I mean, the children have no idea what a television is or even what an iPhone is."

Somewhere out there, Steve Jobs is smiling.

Seen in NYC...

Find your buddy and hold on...we're off for an adventure!!

Happily Ever After

The story begins freshman year in Weld 36... takes an unlikely (although now, unsurprising) turn in NYC and the infamous pool party... and brings old friends from around the world together to celebrate happy beginnings in Salem, Massachusetts.

Rehearsal at Phillips Library followed by clambake at the House of Seven Gables...






Beautiful ceremony followed by reception in Peabody Essex Museum...









Morning brunch at the Boston Yacht Club to celebrate the new Mr. & Mrs. Meg and George...

Home Sweet Home

One of the strangest things about coming back home is the fact that nothing's changed. This is all the more true in Long Island, where the big change since my last trip back is that they've finally completed the parking lot behind arguably one of the best delis around. Now granted, the last time I was back was only April -- 3 months ago. But I can come back to India after being gone just two weeks, and entire buildings get constructed in my absence! The varying rates of change (or lack thereof) is really mind-blowing.

Getting ready for Meg's wedding this weekend, I sit at the nail salon that I've gone to since high school... looking around, I feel like I'm in a weird twilight zone where this literally could've still been high school. Change the fashions and hair styles a bit, but essentially it's all the same. General Hospital blasting on the tv... Jax, Sonny, Jason -- all the same characters since the last time I saw the show -- literally 13 years ago!!

Technology makes it easy to traverse the globe in a day, but my mind is still catching up. Funny how it takes a while to re-make sense of the culture you grew up in and still compare everything else to. I find myself ordering cafe lattes at Starbucks at a speed painfully slow to the cashier and all those around me. The dichotomy of cultures is strange, yes. After living in India, it becomes easy to be critical of complacent conversations all around me (although perhaps not fair to extrapolate conversations at the nail salon to American zeitgeist in general), as well as annoyed by all the mass consumerism that just feels over-the-top.

But in the end, it's home. It will always be home. And I'm glad to be here.

En Route

And just like that, the world seems a bit more magical again.

The last few weeks since Ghana have been surreal/maddening/frightening/frustrating/[insert negative emotion here] in Hyderabad. Cory Booker, one of the most inspiring speakers I've heard, once talked about lessons and the universe. Addressing a group of b-school students so nerdy that we went back to campus during summer vacation, he asked: "Does it ever feel like the universe is trying to tell you something? It often seems like it has a few lessons to teach us in our lifetime; it keeps pounding us over the head with that lesson over and over -- until we pay enough attention and finally listen."

It's clear that the lesson of the last few weeks has been simply this: "Count your blessings. Count your blessings. Count your blessings."

Yet even when I tell myself that intellectually, my gut has a hard time keeping up. Everywhere I looked and every experience I encountered seemed fraught with frustrations and a feeling of wanting to be anywhere except where I was. I found the country infuriating, maddening, and quite frankly, just too wearing.

And now that I'm three hours removed from Hyderabad, and within the surreal wonderland that is the Dubai airport, I feel a fog lifted. All at once, I feel like my old optimistic self again -- taking pleasure in the small things, like a security guard that looks ANYTHING but Filipino speaking perfect Tagalog to the couple in front of me, or the adorable baby sleeping soundly through the entire flight. And I'm not sure whether to feel better or worse... since in a way this only reinforces frustrations in India -- that all feelings of hostility fade across borders.

But sitting here waiting for my flight, I also gain more perspective on the last few weeks. It's not black or white, of course -- there are shades of grey that I've been missing. Or rather, perhaps I've only been focused on one end of the dichotomy.

I read a bit of Holy Cow, and the author (an Australian woman with a love/hate relationship of India, which starts with hate and ultimately transforms into love) writes of a party in Delhi:

"It's a bizarre scene -- full of foreigners attempting to figure out India. I'm beginning to think it's pointless to try. India is beyond statement, for anything you say, the opposite is also true. It's rich and poor, spiritual and material, cruel and kind, angry but peaceful, ugly and beautiful, and smart but stupid. It's all the extremes. India defies understanding, and for once, for me, that's okay. In Australia, in my small pocket of my own isolated country, I felt like I understood my world and myself, but now, I'm actually embracing not knowing and I'm questioning much of what I thought I did know. I kind of like being confused, wrestling with contradictions, and not having to wrap up issues in a minute before a commercial break...My confinement here is different -- I'm trapped by heat and by a never-ending series of juxtapositions. India is in some ways like a fun house hall of mirrors where I can see both sides of each contradiction sharply and there's no easy escape to understanding. What's more, India's extremes are endlessly confronting."

And the biggest contradiction of all? Despite all my feelings of frustration and anger these last few weeks, I know as soon as I land in JFK, I'll miss it. That's India for you.

The Team

Future improvement advisors in Accra.

Day 4 of Improvement Advisor Training

Day 4 of training and my brain is buzzing... I'm loving all the training on statistical analysis (Shewhart charts, scatter plots and what-not), and applying this to our work and quality improvement projects.

The morning was spent reflecting on our "Strength Deployment Inventory" -- similar to Myers-Briggs indicator, but which I like better due to its focus on motivation -- instead of behaviors. Interestingly, it tests for your motivation when things are going well, and again when you're feeling stressed and in conflict with others.

It reminds me of work with Ralph in business school, specifically in the smaller individual study that I did after his capstone course on Top Management Processes. It really is amazing how differently leaders act in stress or when feeling under attack, and how contagious this is for others on the team.

In fact, much of our work this week reminded me of Ralph and business school -- specifically things like "ladders of influence" and "psychology of change". Other concepts I realized were really fancy words for things I've picked up along the way; for instance, "affinity charts" really just means grouping items together into "buckets" or categories.

Because of this, by far my favorite part of the past few days has been learning about other participants' improvement programs. For instance, a project in Ghana aims to reduce under-5 mortality by 70% by working with nine hospitals with the highest rate of mortality since October 2009. The project focuses on the top three causes of under-5 mortality: birth asphyxia, prematurity, and neonatal sepsis. The main drivers identified for the situation include delay in seeking care, delay in responding to care, and unreliable use of protocols.

Indeed, one of the biggest learnings is comparing and contrasting maternal health in all of the countries that are represented. For instance, one participant talks about the challenges working in Afghanistan, where the rate of institutional delivery is 19%. At the same time, he talks about the influx of women doctors into Afghanistan from Pakistan and neighboring countries since the US invasion -- including his wife. Another participant talks about working in Malawi, where gloves are rationed and doctors often use only one glove during surgery. Or Ghana, where antenatal care registration is a whopping 90%, but where quality and standardization of care highly varies.

This cross-pollination of ideas, challenges, and best practices is definitely one of the best parts of the workshop. Looking forward to going back to India and applying these lessons!

The Black Stars

Twenty minutes into the Ghana-Germany time and things are CRAZY. I struggle to think about a time where I've been in the midst of such a frenetic atmosphere of emotional highs and lows, and I come up with nothing.

There's a radio-sponsored party at the hotel bar, with the game projected outside, next to the bar itself. The viewers come prepared -- waving (or wearing) huge Ghana flags, sporting red-yellow-green afros, and blowing massively loud horns.

I've never experienced anything like it: every time Ghana drove towards Germany's goal, everyone was out of their seat, screaming, dancing -- even if the ball was nowhere near the goal. When the situation was reversed and Germany was in scoring position, everyone would again be out of their seats -- screaming, jumping, punching the air, punching walls, and wailing as though in literal physical pain. The fury was exponentially more frenetic and emotional than a Yankees-Sox game, and the noise louder than any concert I've been to. There was something so visceral and emotional about the entire experience that seemed to elevate the atmosphere so much more than a sporting match.

The emotional anger and fury came to a head at ninety minutes, when it was clear that even with extra minutes Ghana would not win. Screaming, punching, jumping.

...and then: dancing?! A live salsa band comes on (again sponsored by the radio station), and everyone just starts DANCING. It's incredible. After two years in India, I'm taken aback by all the flesh and sexy dance moves. My Indian colleague stands in awe. I ask her if she's ever seen salsa, and she answers: "once, on the television." It's a scene straight out of Dirty Dancing, where Baby finds the staff quarters where everyone shows off their moves, and Baby stands, jaw dropped.

I go to bed soon after, drifting off to the sounds of salsa outside.

Arriving early, dressed appropriately for the occasion.

Hotel bar... it seems quiet and subdued, but this doesn't last long.

On Cloud Nine

AMAZING!!!! My favorite were the signs that read "Yes We Can". Absolutely incredible.

So many matches, so little time...

Two hours 'til the US - Algeria game and finding it hard to concentrate. And if I'm excited for that, the Ghanians in the room are practically jumping out of their seats looking forward to the Ghana - Germany match tonight.

There's no lack of places to watch the game in Accra -- the hotel here is hosting a huge party for the game. Same with all the five stars. But given how on-fire the whole country is around the match, it's interesting to think about how or where much of the country will watch... especially those living in slums or rural areas outside the city. I think about my recent trip to Mathare, a large slum in Kenya. One of the residents proudly showed his business -- a television inside a fairly small shack, which he estimates could hold 250+ people to watch the World Cup.

In rural Ghana, many towns are off the grid and do not have access to power. I'm feeling less cynical about the hotel sign I saw earlier this week on watching World Cup on renewable energy. I read an article this morning about that same organization, World Future Council, partnering with a renewable energy company in Ghana, to bring the World Cup to remote villages in Ghana through solar energy. While displaying the game on solar energy at a hotel resort seems a bit silly, doing the same in a remote village seems extremely empowering. It's pretty interesting, really -- leveraging the emotional and national pride of World Cup to strengthen support for renewable energy.

And in the meantime... Go Black Stars!! Go USA!!