“I like dick, thank you.”
-Michelle

“Sara: you always comment on how i was so quiet
Sara: but i dont think i ever was
Sara: you were just too not quiet?”
-Sara, explaining why we didn’t get to know each other at Norman High School

Alright, so I’ve gone to the doctor and have a diagnosis. Basically, I have a protozoic infection. For those of us who can’t remember back to good ol’ 10th grade biology, a protozoa is a single-celled organism like amoeba. In other words, I have an infection, possibly parasitic, in my lower GI tract.

At least now we can treat the source and not just the symptoms, as had been done for the past week and a half or so. Basically, my symptoms would be taken care of anti-nausea pills, fever reducers, and so on. Now I’ll be taking an anti-protozoan regimen, along with some other stuff to cleanse the liver and return its size back to normal, and so forth. I was also told to stay away from meat for two weeks, which shouldn’t be a great big problem to me; I usually just eat meat 3 times a week anyway. Cutting it out for the sake of getting myself back to healthy isn’t gonna be a problem.

And that’s it. Let’s hope I’ll be good as spankin’ new in a few weeks and I’ll be back to being as sarcastic and mildly funny as usual. Peas!

Type in “India” and “corruption” in Google, and you’ll get a plethora of studies regarding the rather sad state of corruption in India. There are studies from The Harvard International Review among others detailing the severe prevalence of corruption in India in every day life. And before you take the idea that corruption is the face of the fat Indian rich man raking in money from poor underprivileged people, think again. According to the Transparency Institute of India, more than half of the people surveyed had experienced corruption in regular public office. This means “paying a little more” to get a telephone fixed in your house, for electrical problems, and so on.

And then we get to education, the crux and perhaps highest sold asset of India. “Indian kids are smart!”, we’re told. “Indian people are hard-working,” and so on. But for every face that you see on the news of an example of one of these, there are hundreds more in India that scrape by on cheating on tests, faking degrees, and lying. Consider- why is it that degrees attained in India are not worth their weight in water in most of the world? Why do many people in India feel that they need to go outside of India to get a degree that validates them? And to those who have interviewed people with ‘degrees’ from here, how many times have you noticed that regardless of what it says on the paper, the person that you’ve hired has no idea about anything related to his/her major? (Ahem Lunardi- think of the guys we used to get interviewing at SIN) To answer, I offer a few examples.

My cousin Jo used to be a ‘broker’ of sorts. Basically, people give him money to give to colleges, and for the right price, the colleges would accept students that were sub-par, couldn’t get in on merit, but were still rich. (But we get to ‘merit’ in a little while anyway…. so stay tuned.) This in itself is a clear act of bribery, hence corruption. (Intriguingly, Random House’s Dictionary.com will list bribery as a detailed explanation of corruption in itself.) But Jo’s just a regular guy! He likes movies! He likes home cooked meals! He doesn’t rape and plunder anyone! So what’s the harm? When confronted about it as being a heinous act, he defended himself by saying that he charges less than other brokers do, and much less than the SCHOOL does. He just gets a commission.

Does this happen in America? Sure. I submit– how many of Daddy’s little rich kids have gotten into Ivy-League schools when you got rejected? Consider.

However (and back to India), this is a relatively honorable job. He makes money, and it gets publicized by word of mouth. I’m guessing people in his family wouldn’t have much shame in advertising the fact, either. But it goes further than just getting into school. Once you’re there, it’s a cheat-fest.

I was a trainer at a local company for American Culture. No matter how much I treated my students with respect, no matter how much I EMBLAZONED upon them that cheating would result in you being kicked out of the program, every single class I taught had at least 25%-40% of the students cheating on their final exam. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s nearly HALF. I hypothesize that the idea of corruption, cheating, bribery, and all its treachery have become so liquidated and generalized in India that it trickles down to every single schoolchild. The worst part for me as a trainer is that all I could do was threaten. After I would claim that they’d be kicked out of the program if they cheated, my superior would tell me to ‘give them the same test again’ (!), and again, and again, until they passed. So who’s to blame here? The ‘establishment’ (my company) for allowing this behavior? Or the students, for cheating?

My family and I went to another Indian family’s house. The head of this family talked to my father (and me) at great length about how if you work hard and fairly pay your taxes, the government will very fairly do the same and take most of your hard earned money. My dad sat enraptured at this conversation– and so did I. However, if you find loopholes to this rule, you can keep more of your money and still not technically do ‘illegal’ things. You know, put your money in your wife’s account and call it something else, and then at the end of some time period, switch it back to yours, or some ridiculous nonsense.

After we got back to Oklahoma, I thought about it for a while and told my mom this: “Ma, we may not have a $500 million dollar house, but at least we did it the right way. You and Papa raised two kids honestly. We may be poor in the eyes of those in our own Indian community who value the DOLLAR above all else, and you might even die poor. But at least you can hold your head up high.”

This is my culture. This is what I’m learning in my sojourn to India. Is it that there aren’t other people doing the same? Of course not– just think Enron. But when an entire country has fallen to this level, it’s deplorable.

One more story, to explain the point of getting in with ‘merits’ in India.

An hour or so ago, a ‘friend’ came in and started talking about how he’s doing great with his degree course here. He’d studied in Australia and now is finishing up some other post-graduate work here. He smiled and laughed as he told us all the story about how he’s getting through this entire degree through cheating. I couldn’t believe my ears– it’s the same issue that had been plaguing me all night. “Sure,” he smiled, “a lot of the questions are just multiple choice, and our graders will just correct the exams right then and there. So I just stand in line, and when I see the graders mark something as wrong or right, I go back and change my answers.”

He beamed after this story. I think I was supposed to congratulate him. I just looked away.

Sure this entire post is completely negative and I know (without numerous comments) that there are those people who study hard and get through school and yadda yadda. And yes I know that this exists in other countries. But being in India, with first-hand experience as to how this all happens– the process– as it were, shades my glasses different.

I leave you with one definition of corruption: 3. perversion of integrity.

Count the perversities. And write back if you’d like.

A really great article about kids who are refugees who have joined a soccer team in Georgia. It’s on the NYTimes website. Definitely check it out.

-v

“I’m receiving death threats from Jerrin. I got an email from him in 72 point font saying, ‘I WANT ADRIAN PETERSON’S AUTOGRAPH.’”
-Vinni

*Note – This isn’t the final design for the new site. (Sorry Nitu and others!) The header will be changed but I really enjoy the body organization of the posts with this template, so I think I’ll be using it.*

If you’re interested in seeing the new design, this is what it will sorta look like…
or just copy/paste this- http://beta.vinoj.com/images/design-newer.jpg

And no, I’m not changing it anymore. I like this flavor I’m coming up with, and I’m sticking with it.

I was talking to Apsi today, and told her that my fever still hasn’t gone away completely. Note- I’ve had this now for THREE WEEKS. So even though I don’t make a big deal about being sick, I’m starting to get a bit worried.

This whole thing started off as a cold/flu thing with sniffles, coughing, etc., and stomach pain. Then it progressed to just the stomach pain, and nausea and the aforementioned fever. Now I’m stuck with body pains, fever, nausea, stomach problems and fatigue.

Finally I went to a doctor. Guess what it could turn out to be?

Typhoid.

Whoa. I know. It’s a scary thought for those of us who lived most our lives in the West, but apparently it’s not too uncommon here. You take medication for it as long as it’s treated in time, and boom you’re back to normal. But I have to wait until Saturday for the first set of blood test results to come back, and until Monday night for the second set of blood cultures to come back. So we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, I can barely sleep, I’m tired, feel like throwing up all the time, and all in all feel like crap.

Yay.

“Can i please just be dumb and relaxx??”
-Nisha,  venting after graduating with a nursing degree with people still telling her she needs to get ready for boards and what-not

Hey I need you guys to please check out my alpha-phase new picture gallery.Basically what I need from you guys is to check out the pics and see if you can add comments onto there. As you can tell, there’s no real designing or css implemented yet. But first I gotta see if the thing works correctly.

Thanks,

V

Alright, so I know the game was last week and all, but I’ve gotta talk about the OU/Boise State game because I haven’t already. It really can be encompassed in one word: Amazing.

I mean yes, my team got beaten and I should be down. But to be honest, the game was spectacular, from the highlights I’ve seen. The fakes, the trick plays, the interception at the end, the Adrian Peterson touchdown, everything. It was all– wow. For one game, it was just too much to put. And yet, there it was. Take out the players and you can clearly see the minds of two great coaches in action. One doing all it can against the Goliath (OU being the Goliath), and the other (OU) working hard with a team that had just begun to gel after a dismissed QB, and lastly Adrian Peterson showcasing what he can do for OU one final time.

Put all of it together, and you’ve got one hell of a college game. And as an avid OU fan, I still have to give my props to the Boise State team and coaching staff for a job well done. Wow. A game for the ages.

On another note, now I’m starting to play with the other aspects of the page in case you can’t tell. I’ve got stuff that I may not enjoy right now and will keep playing with until… whenever. This seems to have become a project of no deadline.

“I don’t even know if he’s back from his de-flowering campaign.”

-Sharanya, talking about a cast member who’s on his honeymoon.

“You are SO HOT. I swear if I wasn’t seeing someone, I’d EAT you.”

-Drunk boy to Rumman, in an elevator

“God it’s so big I can barely fit it in my mouth!”

-Michelle, talking about her hamburger at The Leela. But only she managed to become a quote of the day even though all of us had the same burger.

Whew. Finally, the header worked out. The code I’m not too happy with, because there are some open tags that seem to have to be open for it to align correctly. Maybe it’s being closed elsewhere in the code– I still have like, 18 or so to open and analyze, each with at least 150 lines of code.

But hey, at least this is working okay.

So yeah, I went to a NYE party yesterday and there were fights breakin’ out left and right on the dance floor. Nothing like drunk Indian guys and their masculinity. Effin morons.

Peas,

V