The Pespi Challenge

Arrival:

Before travelling to India I got an e-mail from a friend who has been working in a city on India's East Coast called Chennai. He related an experience in which he was having lunch at an outdoor seating area, when a monkey raced down out of a tree, stole his water bottle and drank it not twenty feet from where he sat in stunned, thirsty silence. "Wouldn't happen in Boston," he succinctly concluded. Wouldn't indeed. But as I would soon learn during my first visit to this colorful land, these types of experience are what make it special, or terrible, depending on your appetite for chaos.

I arrived in Mumbai (the former Bombay) around 1:00 AM. As we glided over the last bit of the city before the perimeter of the airport, I was struck by the lack of any gridded streets or street lighting, and in its place the blackness of hobbled dwellings slapped down in any space big enough to fit a tin roof and a sleeping mat. All international flights into this city arrive and depart in the middle of the night to mitigate the city's atrocious traffic predicament. I hate flying, but the thought of exiting this tubular colony of civility into this unknown city, had me wanting to stow myself in the overhead luggage area. Maybe if I offered to pump gas into the wing, or unload baggage they would allow me onto the return flight to Bangkok. I wanted to hug the pilot on the way out, maybe give him a letter to take to my wife back home. So pathetic, when will I ever become a man. I had to pull myself together. I was there for the next week to attend meetings related to mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) issues on two projects; one in Mumbai, and the other in Chennai (the former Madras). The Indian's were screwing things up badly, and the projects were over budget and behind schedule. I was there to straighten things out. Good thing I liked LEGO's as a youth, maybe I could try and use a LEGO analogy to try and show these guys how to fix things. One thing for sure, I sure as hell knew nothing about MEP stuff. "Noth-ing." (Robert DeNiro voice from Goodfella's) Thankfully, accompanying me would be Ellis, Merrill Lynch's go-to man on such issues for the past 14 years, a Brit who handled their office build outs from London to Tokyo and all points in between. Ellis knows more about the layout and design of Merrill Lynch offices than anybody in the entire organization. An affable, portly man, with a fondness for cricket and ale, I had heretofore never met a man who could talk more than I was capable of listening, but this week I was to meet my match. To paint a running dialogue of the week would be impossible. The experience was more a mosaic of disjointed impressions which leaves me frankly unclear as to my opinions of this place.

Breakfast:

The phone was ringing, and it was not light out. Half asleep I placed the receiver to my ear, only to be barraged with the jolly, unmistakable cockney accent of Ellis. I knew it was him because we speak on the phone almost every day. Me in Hong Kong, he in whatever city of the week he happens to find himself needed. I'd never met him in person though, and part of me felt like this was a first date of sorts, which I was a feeling I didn't want to deal with on top of every other adjustment I was making. Ellis had just arrived (it was 4:00 AM), and was telling me to meet him downstairs for breakfast in the morning at 8:30. "The Indians are never ready before 10:00 so we'll have time to catch, up. I'll be wearing a yellow shirt. Cheers mate." I dozed back to sleep with visions of yellow tailed fairies dancing in my head.

Ellis met me the next morning, and instantly I felt at ease. He is a wonderful guy, who is knowledgeable, and more importantly, was patient and interested in my questions. He briefed me on the issues with the project, how we should tackle them, and how to manage the local team. The caste system is still very much a part of the Indian life, and this creates a huge challenge for effective project management. You can ask a project manager five times to do something, and even though you are authorized to give this direction without anyone else's input, and it is the correct thing to do, and to not do it will delay the project, the project manager will not move until his senior manager tells him to proceed. The mindset of the people I dealt with is completely brainwashed to take direction not from their professional superior, but their social superior. No one wants to make a decision for themselves. My opinion is that this will change as you have a rising middle class which will soon have more money than many of the upper caste people, and therefore demand the same kind of respect. But I digress, back to my day.

The Commute:

As a background, Mumbai was built on a series of seven islands that were filled in over time to create one contiguous land mass. It is the financial and cultural capital of India, attracting Indian farmers, and multinational companies with equal abandon. Everyone is trying to get a piece of a country on the rise. For a place hailed as holding the hopes of so many, I found Mumbai to be a sprawling dump. There is no other way to put it. It has been explained to me that typical urbanism adopts a balance where infrastructure is put in place, people move there, more infrastructure is built, and so it goes. Mumbai has no money because the tax system is ignored, and what is left is lost to corruption. So they have basically told the world, move here first - for a fee, and then we'll build it. U.S companies either need to form partnerships with local companies, or pay $40 million to do business in India. Thus you have a city that is getting rich, but is still years behind its population size. As a result, you see things like major city roads with no painted lanes. What you have are 7-10 cars, bikes, motorcycles, trucks, carts, donkey's and people trying to fit into the same 60 feet wide piece of asphalt. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn't. My hotel was approximately 8 miles from the office, and the commute each day took roughly one hour. Deductive mathematics tells me we averaged 8 miles an hour. To go from "downtown" to the office parks on the outskirts of town takes three hours. If I ever hear another American complain about traffic again I'm going to smother their face in curry. What these rides to and from the hotel offered me however, was a running dialogue more fascinating than anything you could possible make up. In one commute I witnessed a motorcycle accident, a child defecating on the side of the street, our driver being charged a 100 Rupees by a constable for an "illegal lane change", welding shops next to "medicine shops", and still occupied houses that had literally been cut in half to allow for new roads - laundry being hung across their halved openings.

I would be remiss to recount these details and not mention that the people I dealt with were some of the most welcoming, curious, and appreciative people I have had the pleasure to work with. That's not to say they are without fault, but generally speaking I found them much more pleasant to deal with than the Asians. A gross politically incorrect assessment, but there you go. They have much better language skills, and the biggest benefit of this is that they have a sense of humor. They aim to please, and you get the sense that they are sincerely thankful for the attention the western world is bestowing upon them. One of my favorite quirks that they have is that they literally cannot say "no". Likely another holdover from the caste mindset. You will be made to understand that the answer is no, but it will never be said. Instead they wobble their heads in a mixture of a nod and shake like a bobble head doll, "Yes, yes, it is not a problem, we will be delivering the space on June 10th." "But Nadim you just told me the diesel generator's are not arriving until June 15th." "Yes, yes, it is not a problem." And on it would go. But you have to love them for it.

Jerry S.

The one thing that I've learned British people like more than drinking beer, is drinking with beer with other British people. So naturally when Ellis' friend Jerry invited us out for dinner and "a few beers" there was no going back to the hotel to "check my e-mail". Whatever hopes I had of a savory meal, and an early exit to my bedside tv remote were dashed when Ellis referred to Jerry as a "squirrely bastard who could hold his own so well you'd swear he had hollow legs." As we pulled up in our Hotel car, there standing in the hot humid Mumbai night was Jerry wearing a European cut suit, with a fat knot in his tie. His grey, thinning hair was slicked back with oil, and as we sat down at our table I noticed on his right hand was a gold pinkie ring. All I could do was hope I had remembered to pack Tylenol.

Ellis had told me during the day that Jerry used to own a couple nightclubs in one of the seedier parts of Hong Kong that catered to horny sailors, and business exec's. He fit right in. He also did quite well, and through some of his richer clientele started branching out into contract work for private homes. This eventually led to more corporate customers, and interior office build outs. Jerry is a valuable man to have around because he gets things done on time, and on budget. The problem is to accomplish this, he cuts corners, and screws people. Not unusual in the contracting world, and Merrill Lynch doesn't likely care as long as he delivers what he promises. Unfortunately other people do, and Jerry left Hong Kong for Mumbai. Depending who you ask, he was either thrown out, or left to pursue better business opportunities in Mumbai. My take is it is somewhere in between, and though he is indeed a squirrely old bastard, there is a part of Jerry you have to respect. He gets it done.

Jerry had chosen an Italian restaurant in the "Greenwhich Village" of Mumbai where a lot of the Bollywood stars live. It was really quite good food, but the reference to Manhattan made me laugh. The neighborhood stank of garbage. As we chatted, I realized there was another side to Jerry which was less evident on the surface. He had a good singing voice. Or at least that is what he was telling me at dinner. He claimed he sang at Royal Albert Hall as part of an international choir festival. I ordered another beer, this was starting to get interesting. Thing was, I didn't need to because Jerry was ordering them every time the waiter walked by. It was getting late, and I was in way over my head with these two Brit's just playing a mental game of beer chicken. Who would bow out first. It struck me that Ellis had been right, Jerry couldn't have stood more than 5'-9'', but the little guy was stowing 'em away in those legs. He hadn't even gone to the bathroom, and I just melted half the block of ice they kept in the urinals. Just when I thought I might mercifully be allowed to fall asleep in my soup, Jerry casually mentioned it was time for a night cap. Ellis, the guy who had set up our 10:00 AM meeting the next morning, happily accepted.

I couldn't figure out what was going on at the dive Jerry took us to. There was no music playing, but a DJ booth, people standing around expectantly staring at a projector screen in the corner. Suddenly through my boozy haze I recognized the opening line of "Have I told you lately that I love you", but it was NOT Rod Steward, or any other professional voice for that matter. To add to my confusion everyone in the bar was cheering and staring in my direction. Starting to feel a little uncomfortable I looked over at Ellis who was smiling looking at Jerry. This was getting really weird. But then I realized it was Jerry holding a cordless microphone and who was the source of the sonic butchering to which we were all being subjected. It was time for bed.

Final Thoughts:

One thing that I think is lost in all the hype over India and China has been that they both have been in this place before. The gatekeepers to lands perceived by the Western world to offer great riches. Two hundred years ago it was natural resources we were after, and we used opium to numb them into giving it up. Today its the potential spending power of the rising middle classes we're after, but its not yet clear how we're going to do it or if it will even work at all. It is really a "Coke or Pepsi" debate over which country holds a brighter future. The answer won't be clear for some time to come, and in the end I think is irrelevant because there is so much potential in both.

Philippines Fast Facts

Following are a few facts we picked up during our trip that seemed worthy of sharing:

• The Philippines is the world's largest producer of coconuts
• The island nation has twice the amount of coastline as the U.S.
• The country has the highest English literacy rate of any Asian nation
• Manila's population is 11 million and 1 out of every 8 people in the country lives in the capital city

Philly Part II

I suppose the natural thing to do would be to pick Heather's narrative up where she left off so that is what I'll do, but before that let me just add a little color to her great recap of the first couple days.

1. The ridiculousness of the Jeepney ride cannot be overstated. It is a very Lonely Planet indeed for the man or woman who decides to ride in one of these Filipino Hellcrafts. Probably second only to the Jeep Sedan (once proudly owned by John Scarritt) as the worst automotive innovation since headlight wipers. I literally was sprawled between a metal bar and a bag of rice in the far rear of this "bus" with a mean looking Filipino woman (who was occupying 2 of the 8 seats towards the front) looking back every ten minutes to make sure I wasn't sorting through her things. Despite my love of dried food stuffs, I resisted. Meantime, Heather was being devoured by the thoughts and stares of four teenage Filipino's who clearly had spent too much time on a lonely planet. For the record, I would have come to her rescue if my legs weren't asleep, and my mind numb from heat stroke. So in short, kudos to Heather and I for taking this very unrecommended mode of transport. Word to the wise, splurge and spend the 4 hours in a $50 chauffeured air conditioned mini-van.

2. On Saturday Heather and I took a 5 mile hike down a dirt road out of Port Barton. We were given rough verbal directions on how to reach a spectacular waterfall up in the foothills of the rain forest. Meandering this working countryside the road turned to a path, and brought us out onto open vistas overlooking rice paddies, and then ducked back under the rich cover of jungle. Occasionally we passed by local farmers walking their oxen into or out of the paddies. A couple times we came to a fork in the path, and follow intuition (mostly Heather's), or rough recall of the directions. Always feeling a little unsure if we were heading in the right direction, but enjoying the thrill of making our own vacation. After following a small river upstream for a time we emerged through a mossy thicket out into a pool of water that lay at the base of a 40 foot waterfall. We took a seat on some rocks overlooking the scene and chatted for a while before heading back. That's what I call homemade Mac and Cheese.

3. The number one rule on a vacation, in my opinion, is that you never think about money, and you never mention money, period. You just to use it. I will never go to a place again without checking to see if they accept plastic. Hey, maybe we were naive, but I'm sticking with the opinion that Lonely Planet let us down by not mentioning the simple fact that nowhere on this island except the capital city can you A) get money and B) use a credit card. Said city was a four hour Jeepney ride. Not supposed to think about it. Not supposed to mention it. And there I am wearing a pair of goofy ass American swim trunks, a pair of goofier ass brown American Croc's trying to sell a bottle of sun tan lotion BACK to a woman who probably bought her family food for a week with money I spent buying the same bottle the day before. Just so I can get $12 for a boat back to a "money machine". You just don't know how low a man can go....

On with the adventure. The whole time we were planning this trip Heather kept going on and on about the "subterranean river", and how much Fanny had loved it during her trip. I was intrigued, but then again, Fanny likes Dahka, so my guard was up. As we left the pre-dawn calm of Port Barton part of me was wondering whether we were making a mistake. The nervous traveller in me was saying; "We just settled our bill for $80, and now have 3580 pesos. The boat ride is 3000 pesos (but did he mean a piece or for two of us?), and entry into the river is 400 pesos, we've been told a Jeepney ride (which I swore I would never ride in again) back to Peurto was going to be 100 pesos each. Meaning if were lucky, and were successful in bargaining the driver down, we would be dropped at a bus depot 5 miles outside of town with no money. That's if we were lucky".

Snap - I'm back in the boat ride, and Heather is asking me if I'm excited for the river, "Yeah babe, can't wait. (to myself: "I wish we never came on this trip"). But this anxiety melted away as we enjoyed one of the most placid and scenic boat rides of my life. The views were breathtaking, and I couldn't get over how calm the water was. We were later told that this part of Philippines has a very shallow coastline, and is known for its calm waters. Thus even though were in open ocean we were passing fisherman pulling their nets into canoes. After about 3 hours we arrived on the beach that serves as the exit point for the river. I could tell right away this was going to be special. We were the first boat to arrive which meant we would enjoy our own personal tour of the cave. We were loaded into a canoe with a guide and a car battery powering our spotlight which I manned while our guide paddled. It really was as spectacular as young Steph described. We rode back into the mountain for about 4 miles. At times the cave ceiling was right overhead, and at its highest point it vaulted 180 feet over our heads. As we re-emerged back into daylight, we knew we had made a great decision in coming to this spot. After paying our boatman (much to my relief it was in fact 3000 pesos or about $60), and enjoying a swim on a long stretch of deserted beach, we made our way into the town of Sebang to procure a ride back to civilization. My mood turned dark as I thought of the punishment we were about to absorb in the back of the Filipino Hellcraft.

Accepting our fate like lambs being led to slaughter, we found positions on two facing benches in the back of the bus. We waited as they loaded fish, pineapples, and other things that shouldn't be packed next to unwashed feet all around us. After 20 minutes of this, and while two local fisherman were planning my untimely demise leaving Heather to themselves, I snapped. I ran out and got us a place on a mini-van, air conditioned, and willing to drive us directly to an ATM. Perfect. And then the rain came. Rain drops on the roof of the bungalow at the Four Seasons? Sounds romantic, sign me up!! Sheets of rain on the town of Sebang? Ah, that turns the only road out into tapioca sludge. The end result was a 4 hour ride instead of 2 hour ride, having to get out and push on one occasion, and finally being assisted by a large Caterpillar grading machine which was already in the area fixing the road.

We spent our last two nights in Peurto Princessa at a fairly nice hotel, and enjoyed ourselves immensely. We did some island hopping on an organized tour which allowed us to swim and snorkel to our hearts content. Not our style, but it worked out well. It was a nice contrast to our first three days (which we also loved, but were more work), and I think rounded out the trip nicely. Each night we ate out, and I particularly liked riding in the motor-scooter taxis that rule the streets there. Just complimented how different the whole atmosphere was. We had memorable chats while having some San Miguel's under the warm Filipino night. The food was bad for the most part, but we tried it all, and have no regrets.

I'll close with one memorable moment. As Heather mentioned, the only US chain we saw the entire trip was a Dunkin Donuts which was in the center of Peurto. After returning from Sebang we were in dire need of something familiar, anything familiar. If they had sold Beanie Babies there I would have bought ten and snuggled with them all night. We were lonely. So D&D had to happen. Anticipation was huge for ice coffee's and glazed munchkins. Undoubtedly, we would share sips, and fondly recall the munchkins we ate at our wedding. Life would be good again. Practically pushing one another out of the way to make it through the front door we landed in front of the donut embankment ready to order. "Wow, lots of pink and orange on these munchkins and its not even Halloween" "What is Papaya glaze?" "What is an ice coffee freeze?" "This lady definitely doesn't speak much English." Sensing defeat, Heather ordered a dozen of the more benign looking cake balls for us, and I went for a small coffee which I didn't even want. As we took our seats with deflated drops, and cast each other that familiar look that said "hey, at least we're not in a Jeepney" I noticed over the store sound system the first few bars to the famous rock ballad "Stairway to Heaven" were tinkling out. How, who, or why this song was playing in this venue, in this Country, I have no idea. But that's the Philippines for you. Mesmerizingly beautiful one moment, rough around the edges the next. Populated by a wonderfully dispositioned people, mostly English speaking, who believe that "all that glitters is gold".

(Center of town, Sabang)

(Rain and mud spells more ill-fated times for the Jeepney)

('Tapioca Pudding')

(Amazing snorkeling)

(Island hopping in Honda Bay)

(A quiet moment - standing in front of the entrance to the sub-river)

(Looking out of the entrance of the subterranean river)

(Rice paddie on hike through the jungle)

(Sublime beach in Sabang)

(Life is good: Dunkin' Dizzies)