Filling in time

My idealistic plans were, as ever, quickly thwarted by less than perfect conditions. The monsoon was in full flow, and it rained most of most afternoons. Dharamcot had a stronger presence of Israelis than I anticipated, and was thick with chillum smoke and Hebrew. There's a Jewish centre there with a Rabbi, paid by the state of Israel to make Judaism available to Israelis searching abroad. I was addressed on the street many times in Hebrew, even by the rabbi himself, which for some reason I found offensive. The restaurant there claimed I was the first Englishman they'd seen for a month, but I only went there a few times because because few ghettoised Israelis bother to speak English for the benefit of any foreigners present. And why should they? What was I doing in their enclave? I spent more and more of the day wandering Dharamsala with my book, putting my face about, trying (but not too hard) to meet people and not hitting it off with anybody. I didn't mind being alone too much, but it would have been nice, when I had time, to have hung out with someone for a while before starting work. In my final week of leisure, I moved back to McLeod, where Nadia happened to be living, but also Deepti and Elvira, who rapidly started referring to me (amongst themselves) as the 'unfunny one' owing to my serious countenance. Their company was pleasant though, and gradually they warmed to me. Saw lots of films, but you quickly get the impression you've seen them all here. A guy goes to Delhi every now and again and picks up the latest pirate DVDs which then show simultaneously in most of the video parlours, then before you know it you've seen them all again.. Also I fell in with Ramon, an unemployed Indian, who likes to play chess with the travelling community.

Anyway, Deepti is mostly Indian, and from a tradition that rejects the caste system and religion. Fortunately, her family and friends all seem to be in Bombay's upper classes, most notably, her best friend from school who is Bollywood's biggest star, and presently adorns Pepsi billboards nationwide. Deepti herself, left school at the age of 14, and soon began a career in one of the world's top three advertising agencies, and was soon shuttling between Bangkok, London and Bombay for the working half of the year, and amusing herself for the other half. She's holds a pilot's licence, has been a champion swimmer, golfer and alcoholic. Last year she married some guy last year who promptly disappeared with a blank cheque. With this spectacular various history behind her, and at the age of 21, she has just pulled out of her successful advertising career following a Nestle campaign to experiment with settling in a place she likes - here.

Work

As my project stretched into its fourth (and final) week, and then into its fifth, I suggested that it was only half way through. This suggestion got me nowhere. The original idea for the game was to build and run a whiskey distillery, much like you build a city in the game SimCity. The client wanted to emphasise the stages of the whiskey making process, and reward the player according to the quality of whiskey produced. All my ideas at this stage fell on deaf ears, you understand. The brief went backwards and forwards throughout the Spring and the ideas were thrashed into something a little more bruised, but concrete, over the summer. By the time I started work. The brief was little more than the following: We watch over the distillery for a year. There are men wondering around. Periodically, of 18 bad things happen, and you have to go to the shop and buy a remedy. Before you start you choose things like the location and the equipment, and the master distiller, all of which affects the judges comments and the effectiveness of your response to the 'bad things' affects the quantity. At the end of the year, you mix it all up in barrels, and the closeness to a certain ration affects the quality. You get an email 5 days later telling you that 10 years has passed and the whiskey is ready to be judged. You start up the game again and do another year with more or less money available according to the value of your sales. I've been practically designing the game as I go along, but all the time hindered by the decisions of the project co-ordinator, and the veto of the client, and the sluggardly decisions being made. I feel quite abused.

Weekend break

It was an imposing place, with several hundred monks sharing rooms around a large courtyard with a temple at one end.The place is fully decked out with all the accessories of the religion, snowlions guarding the stops, great gongs, holy water, and monks chanting liturgy for hours on end before a HUGE statue of the Buddha.

In the evening, we heard voices and sporadic clapping from the courtyard, and Deepti's eyes lit up as she announced that this was the sound of monk's debating. The court was clustered with pairs of monks engaged in theological debate. Its a sort of homework for them. One sits and I assume contests the motion, while the other stands and makes his points with symbolic aggression, stylistically clapping the points home, as if slapping his contestant. The next day, we walked in the woods that surround the site. Almost every tree had feather-shaped etchings or scars on the trunk, and many had crude metal containers at the bottom collecting the sap, which is used to make incense. Wild cats roam these woods, but it was no panther that drew my blood that afternoon. Walking though the foliage as we tried to find a way across the stream, we noticed some tubular wormy things, which walked on one end, not more than 2cm long. A little later, I felt a curious drip in my sock, and as I pulled it down, one of these gorged leech fell out leaving a tiny puncture and a bruise. Yuk!

Bikes again

The monsoon officially ended one weekend, and the rain was becoming a little less frequent. Puppies emerged from under shops and frolicked in the street. The sun started to come out and, maybe because we're 1.5km high here (1/4 the height of Everest), it was BRIGHT. The Israelis noticed the change in weather and emerged with their bikes from their clouds in Dharamcot and Bhagsu, filling the bus stand with Enfields. I too was itching to move on, but having two bikes negated my freedom rather than doubling it. Having lost out on a sale because the bikes were showing rust, I graciously allowed Deepti to give the bikes a new gloss black coat. Then I finally went and paid about 110 pounds for the documents off another bike, and Deepti painted the number plates. It was with a great sigh of relief that then I sold the bike. It was a hard lesson to learn that I'd overpaid for my first bike, and that the value of a bike is determined almost solely by the year, and whether or not its been rebuilt or reconditioned. My investments, directed at getting the bike to work, added up to next to nothing compared to making the bike look pretty.

Deepti again

One weekend we went to Amritsar , 5 hours away on the bike

Even after I told her not to, Deepti fell in love with me, which she justified by saying that since I'd been here so much longer than planned, the scope of the relationship had changed. She took offence more readily and pointed out several occaisions when I'd said insensitive things. I guess its my way of keeping a distance. The problem is, if I didn't form attachments to people I wasn't prepared to give my all to, then I wouldn't form attachments with anybody; so time and again I settle for less, and leave a satisfied yet disappointed soul in my wake as I cruise off on my continuing peripatetic search for the Real Thing.

Work again

The game was progressing so incredibly slowly, that after 7 weeks, the monsoon outside giving way to bright bright sunlight, I declared that I was off on my bike at the end of the next week, come what may. It was a bluff so successful I even fooled myself. I was offered money for another week, (which included the Saturday and Monday following), + alterations and tweaking to be done 'on the road' somehow

On the Friday evening we were still working out the minutai of the game and Graphics were being made to order. Calculations show that all the time I've been hanging around waiting for this project and doing it, divided by the amount I've been paid, adds up to little more than I'd get on the dole in England. As a freelancer however, that's my problem. You'll need Shockwave installed.

Right. I'm off now on my bike to Pondicherry. I didn't persuade anyone to come with me yet, but then I didn't try too hard and I don't mind. I'm leaving my monitor here, and bunging the PC tower in the side rack of the bike with some padding. That way I might be able to do some debugging and alterations to the game in cybercafes en route.

Talk to you later!

Matthew