New Friends: Hit or Miss

On the eve of my birthday, I visited a cult. Inadvertently, but still.

It started with a late evening trip to a department store last week where I found myself chatting happily away with a woman about things and not really things in the amount of time it would take old friends to drink a cup of tea. I reckon friends can be made in all sorts of places, and with all the moving around I do, I can always do with some friends. So we spoke, about scrubbing gloves (the best), work, and DC in general. She seemed nice. No red flags, just pleasant conversation. Usually a good sign. We exchanged numbers. She said "Come over for dinner some time. My husband and I would really like to get to know you. We have a business proposal we may share with you. Just come over." And that was it.

Cool.

Fast forward a weekend to the night before my birthday. I had just flown into DC, and I very quickly showered, bought a present, and got a ride over to this new couple's house, hoping for a good chat, and an early night in. Fairly low key.

Everything was going okay as I got there. I stepped in, we started talking about the kinds of things strangers talk about before they're going to be friends, and BAM! Suddenly, somehow, I was being steamrolled by The Business Proposal. (If you think this sentence is abrupt, you are on the right path about how I felt that day, my friend.)

The Business Proposal, as it turned out, was essentially an invitation to be part of a pyramid scheme/business cult. This was not going to be a chill, hang-out-and-chat kind of night. Oh no.

We They talked for a long, long while, but it took forever for the two of them to get to the point, so I'll save you the trouble and lay out a simple version here:

1. There is an online store, [name undisclosed] that supplies household products. 
2. You put down a deposit to be a co-owner of the store and commit to using only their products.
3. You make money if you convince people to buy in to the scheme and use their products. Your recruiter made money when you switched to buying those products. And so on, perpetuated by a long line of people who have paid in to the scheme and are forever tied to the idea that their wealth depends on the number of people they can persuade to join this long-winded endeavour. 

In other words, a pyramid scheme.

So here I was, at 7 pm, sitting across the kitchen counter from this lady I'd just met who was now frying chimichangas while her husband - who had been on the verge of leaving for a business meeting for at least an hour and a half - explained how whatever they were doing was a GREAT WAY TO MAKE MONEY SITTING DOWN. MONEY = SECURITY AND FREEDOM. YOU WANT TO MAKE MONEY, RIGHT? And also gems like: IF YOU TRIED A RESTAURANT AND LIKED IT, WOULDN'T YOU RECOMMEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS? and SEE HOW GOOD THEIR WATER TASTES which did absolutely no service to explaining the actual purpose of the business.

I guess money makes some people tick more than others.

After an hour of endless droning, with no less than three "YouknowwhatImean?"s per sentence, said at a pace so rapid and with such little pause after that there was no way to respond or convey any actual feelings other than the Indian head bobble, I was whisked away to a meeting who-knows-where by my new lady 'friend'. Stranger danger much?

Let me clarify: I'm not sure when I agreed to this, or why. Going in to a social engagement after many high activity days, I had just wanted to chat, have dinner, go home, watch TV, sleep, welcome my birthday in gently. Simple things. But there I was, being driven at high speeds (and badly) to a full-blown cult meeting in the middle of a Virginia suburb.

To answer any questions you may have at this point: yes, I contemplated jumping out of the moving car several times. Yes, I considered playing the "I'm tired and I just want to go home" (i.e. the Truth) card. Yes, I wondered how we had gotten here. All these thoughts and more, repeatedly.

But I got there safe and sound somehow, to a carpeted hall in a Crowne Plaza filled with what seemed to be exclusively Gujaratis. In business suits. A six-dollar entry fee later, a man with a heavy Indian accent was at the front, pointing to a very outdated powerpoint to explain the business model. It was like simultaneously being in a time warp and being in college again, this time with lots of Gujarati drones in black. Very strange.

9:15 pm.

The presentation eventually ended, the networking began. I was introduced to a bunch of people who tried to convince me to become part of the community. Great financial opportunity. Great values. Great business sense. Great way to help people. You can do this!

Wait a minute. Great financial opportunity? With yields in maybe 10 years? Great way to help (which kind of) people do what? Moderately well-off Gujaratis, to make more money? America, to buy more things? That's not exactly helping people, it's helping the capitalist machine. Seriously.

I was done. But you know, smile and nod. Or in this case, still the head bobble. On and on for a while. Potbellied Uncles, Aunties with a distracting amount of makeup, their collective children, and way too many clingy, half-assed handshakes.

"You should make an appointment with whoever recruited you in the coming days. Talk to them. Sort out your doubts. Tell them your decision. Don't read all that shit they say online." I was instructed by everyone we talked to. Good training, because they all said exactly the same thing.

Anyway. I managed to get a ride home and at the same time let my new friend down gently ("I'm not at a point in my life where I can commit to this"). As I left, she signed off "Let's hang out sometime, okay?"

Suuure.

Glorious Self Obsession: Prelude

8:30 am on my first day back to DC and I’m already bored. Since I woke at 7, I have unpacked, brewed multiple rounds of tea, eaten breakfast, and even set a pot of yoghurt. The entire day is ahead of me, and I could very realistically already have run of things to do. But it's only 8.30 am. Time refuses to move any faster.

I evaluate my options.

1. Get out of here. The DC landscape seems vast and unexciting in comparison to Delhi, where I spent the last few months, kind of like the Steppes might if you'd just left New York. There is nobody on the streets, the house has only gathered a nano layer of dust, as though things are used to not being used at all, and the sleepiness of summer holidays only compounds the feeling that there are still just as many things not to do since the last time I was here. 

My first instinct is to run away (default setting, can't help it). I could get another job, or at least ask to be able to work from another country. Tanzania, Sri Lanka, anywhere but here. 

See, my life here is incredibly self-centred. I live on my own, I shop for myself, and I have no responsibility for anyone other than me. A "table for one, please" sort of situation, where I am the centre of my own sad little universe. In comparison to Delhi, I have hours of empty time ahead of me that I don't know what to do with now that I don't have to worry about coordinating household logistics, doctors' appointments, grocery and pickup/dropoff schedules, all through a maze of incessant standstill traffic. #whothoughtIwouldevermisschaos

Things are so much easier here. Want 'special diet'-friendly superfoods? Go to nearly any supermarket. Want medicines? Go to CVS (while we're on this, has everyone noticed how they smell the same all over the US?). Want to wash your clothes? Walk to the washer/dryer in your apartment. None of that hand wash, rope line dry, iron stuff. You get the idea, life is easy, yada yada ya.

No wonder corporate America is so obsessed with tracking their number of steps, hours of sleep, and the 'nutritional' value of their meals among other things. Everything is so organised and standardised that they have a ton of time to ruminate on little things. First World Problems.

But I'm not going to go further into that right now. Just to say this bubble-wrap world looks great in the movies, but it's not for me. Most of the world lives in a world with serious everyday existence-affecting kind of problems; low access to water and shelter, a lack of safety, vulnerability to all sorts of epidemics, wars and natural disasters. Who am I to ship myself to the US in a flying metal box and pretend like it's the only place in the world, that only its miniscule neurotic-person-affecting problems here are worth publicising and listening to. I am not the New Yorker.

Option 1, seeming likely. Soon. 

2. Get another job. After spending days on days on days of waking up and not having any work-related activities planned, let's just say I've gotten very good at the (American) news, and had lots of time to not finish personal projects in the last year. That's why I went to India.

Fast forward a few months, I've signed up for two jobs in the same organisation, which if things go the way they are going, could mean more days spent vaguely doing things I don't really care about, but in the best case could mean more more learning, travel and workaholism (YAY). I'm planning to do double the work and spend half the time on it before caving in to Option 1 and finding a job to match. Let's see how that goes. 

So, Option 2, check. Sort of.

3. Volunteer my time at non-profits. My day job is in poverty alleviation, and I have a lot of free time outside of work, so this is a no-brainer. Because busy N is happy N, and I otherwise feel so self-absorbed on an everyday basis, and because my mother, who is one of the world's kindest, most generous people, said I should probably spend some time serving others. (Thanks for keeping it real, Ma!). So I'm now signed up for meal prep and community gardening over the coming weeks.

Option 3, check.

4. Personal projects. Some people say lots of empty time is great for getting your head straight, or being creative. I bet these people are new moms, nurses/EMTs, or otherwise overly stressed out people, because my creativity is at its best when I'm sleep-deprived (as I type this, it's now nearing 6 am and I am still awake), when I'm studying for a test I don't really want to give, or when I generally have a million things to do in the space of a few hours. Truth.

Surprisingly for me (and my ardent fan-following), despite the relative lack of stress in the past year, except the dull throb of constant what-am-I-doing-with-my-life type moments, the personal project front has gone semi-well. I've studied quantitative public service delivery related things, taught myself Spanish from textbooks and TV shows (enough to understand when they're trying to con me out of a cocaine deal anyway), spent a fair bit of time practising for my soon-to-be-released imaginary cookbook and working out with Jenny, Kelly, Wayne, and the good yoga ladies of Youtube. Thank you, Internet. Where would I be without you?

But there's so much more I need to do. Finish that Python course. Start a data science one. Write more, photograph more, publish more, put out an exhibition, make music, become famous...well, you know. So yeah, tons to be done. 

Option 4, forever in process.

5. F*** all, find a friend, and go travelling. Do I need to explain this? I agree that popular media depicts young people travelling as a hipster millenial myth. Before that, they claimed it was for hippies or the wayward, or for the very well-endowed. Thing is, popular media will forever complain, because people are boring and like to complain and can't stand to be in places they don't understand the language in. So what will you do?

We inhabit an entire planet, and I think it's a shame we only see a microscopic speck of it. It's amazing how people can live so differently just kilometres from each other, or how similarly birds, trees and cuisines can grow despite being oceans apart. Travel, in the kind of light-budget, walk-everywhere-and-eat-where-the-locals-do kind of way (or through assignments all over the world!) allows at least me to see, oh... humour, humility, impermanence, beauty. It is the single reason for any existing wonder and curiosity (though again, I have to thank Mother and Father for planting the seed and nurturing the sapling) and also for incessant philosophising. It helps me figure out more efficient new ways to do old things, and educates me of the old ways to do things we take for granted (pan-toasted bread or any kind of food prep, tongas and bullock carts, construction work). I could go on.

It's part of the reason my brain is wired the way it is. My entire growing up years, the consequences of (or embarrassment from) any action died out in a maximum period of three years, when we would promptly pack up and move to a new place, so I had no real sense of self-preservation (and few friends). What little I have has been cultivated by living amongst conformists progressives in Europe and the USA. "Welcome to the world of work, don't stick out too much, okay?"

So lah di dah di. Life is what it is, and travel will always be my comfort zone -- being in a new place with no agenda and minimal understanding of the local language. The tenuous accuracy of Google map distances and fortuitous meetings with wonderful people who become your real life friends. Airport security and plane food. Ugh, no, never mind that.

Option 5, I got you, babe.

Anyway, I'm sure that was illuminating. I'll let you know how it goes.