Vignettes

As in Chennai, I have about an hour drive into work in the morning from Shanghai, and usually an hour and 15 or 20 minutes back in the evening. Though I didn't have my camera with me, here is a word picture of the things that caught my attention recently:

• Two cars stopped dead in the right hand lane on the service drive (no flashing lights on) with the drivers doing their business in nearby bushes.
• An old woman of indeterminate age gathering used water bottles for sale--she must have had over 100--at a toll booth; she was collecting them in a hollowed out area of a cement barrier that divided one booth from another
• Two men in a fishing boat, with nets, in a small pond next to the toll road

I was scheduled for a couple of field trips---one to Beijing and the other, this weekend, to Louyang, where there are some temples and the original home of Buddhism in China. Unfortunately, both of them got cancelled. Now I only have another couple of weeks here before returning to the U.S. until the beginning of next year, so will have to put off much more sightseeing until next year.

Lately, though, I've been missing India a lot. Perhaps it's because this past week I've met some old colleagues, heard from a couple of others, and had some issues to deal with there for work. Coincidentally, Outsourced (the movie) was on cable TV one night as well, bringing back all the images and sounds and people. So far, work has not taken me back there, but I hope it does in 2010.