India is Cameroon inverted in terms of both enjoyabilty and ease. Where we stayed in a monastery and had printers erupting smoke, we’re now in the cool comfort of Anahita’s home and completing an install of brand-new, fast, and fully functional computers. I manage to screw software setup up enough to drag the process out for a few hours, but in reality it entailed maybe half an hour of necessary work.
And we have great company: a half-dozen students from IILM (India Institute of Lsomething Management, a prestigious Delhi college) are at our side. Smart and good company, they make the install even easier and more enjoyable.
We’re a world away, but people are strikingly similar. Through the course of the install, the lunch at a 5-star hotel for McDonald’s dollar-equivalent prices, and the touristy shopping trip that encompass most of our day, I particularly got to know Robin, one of the students from IILM. He’s like me in many ways: 22, studying business, maybe a bit headstrong... He’s even working at Citigroup, employer to many of my co-alumni. A major difference between him and many of my buddies back home is that he’s stuck dong marketing while he’d prefer finance; stateside, the story’s usually reversed. However, we have seen many of the same movies, aspire to recklessly drive the same brands of cars, and even read many of the same books. When he brings up Ayn Rand and says he found “Fountainhead” inspiring, I decide we might as well have been from the same block.
With a 5-star Indian/Japanese fusion dinner to end the day, Steve’s convinced that he wants to move here. Earning dollars, one could easily live like royalty. The food’s so good that I keep eating well past feeling full: t seems a horrible shame to let even the smallest morsels of ridiculously tasty curries go to waste. Sure beats fish heads!