St. Charles, IL

I am in the middle of 2 weeks of consultant training at St. Charles, IL, about 45 minutes outside of Chicago. There are 240 of us in my course here at the Q Center, all from various offices of my company all over the world. In fact, Americans are a noticeable minority in this crowd of mostly Europeans. I feel like I'm back in college: full-buffet dining halls, classes which will never be useful in real life, a training center laid out exactly like a campus, parties every night, dorm buildings complete with lounges, and a room that looks like this:

Except, unlike college, classes are from 7:45 am until 9:00 or 9:30 pm some nights. Major suckage.

A word regarding the foreigners. For many of them, this is their first trip to the US, and this is what they see:

• Every meal is a full buffet with enough food (American, Italian, Mexican, Mediterranean, and a million desserts) to feed an army, plus fruits, hors d'oeuvres, cookies, and drinks throughout the day.
• The first after-class group activity was a trip to the outlet mall.
• The second after-class group activity was a night out at the Cadillac Ranch, a bar/club that looks exactly what it sounds like.

So, for a first-timer in this country, the impression is that Americans are:

1. Fat
2. Materialistic
3. A bunch of cowboys

Hmmmm.

Bollywood just entered puberty...

I think this is the first time I am able to recommend an Indian movie to everyone, including people who are not already fans of the Bollywood genre. (With the exception of Monsoon Wedding, whose director Mira Nair, is more of an independent/international filmmaker, and who I consider outside of the Bollywood world.)

Behold:



No songs. No dances. Two hours long.

Brilliant performances by the cast , especially the little girl whose first movie this is. Brilliant direction. Brilliant cinemtography. Brilliant script. The movie is slightly on the melodramatic side, and the plot is "straight out of a movie," but this must be the first time an otherwise masala movie (i.e., a regular Bollywood musical) director has made such a normal film with a big-name cast and big production values. Hats off to Bhansali. This is a huge step forward for Indian cinema.

And move aside Aishwarya Rai, because the new rani of Indian film is now, appropriately enough, Rani Mukherjee. (Rani means "queen" in Hindi.)

As a side note, this was one of the movies playing at the movie theater inside Virgin Megastore in Times Square, which I talked about a while back.

A Man, A Plan...

First post in a while. I was originally going to write up something at least once a week, as my previous project had me traveling to a new place every week. However, that project has sort of fallen through, and I am now traveling weekly only to one place. And unfortunately, Clayton, NC doesn't offer too much in the way of sights. But maybe I'll write more about that later.

For now, my focus will be Panama (the country), from whence I recently returned following a short family trip. You may peruse the pictures here.

I was there no longer than 3 days and did not stray far from the capital of Panama City, but here are some highlights:

• I did not know it, but Panama uses the US dollar for currency. Supposedly, this has made the country a hot destination for investment by multinational firms. This is evident all over Panama City, where development is in overdrive.
  
• Panama is trying to position itself as a destination for American retirees, which is why my parents and their friends actually made this trip. They were looking at some retirement properties in development. The benefit for Americans is lower taxes, cheaper healthcare, and increasing property value due to all the development. My parents were especially keen on the fact that live-in housemaids and helpers can be hired relatively cheaply (~$180/month). Of course, then there's the language barrier and the fact that you are a pretty long plane ride from the States.
  
• There is a huge gap between the haves and have-nots in Panama, which I believe is being exacerbated by the increase in foreign investment. Downtown Panama City is filled with modern high-rise luxury apartments and fancy office buildings, but the older areas of town are run-down and decrepit, with no apparent in-between. My mom's cousin, who lives downtown with his family, would be middle-class in the US, but in Panama, he can have a 3-bedroom condo on the 28th floor with 360 degree views of the city and Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, most of the locals live very humbly on the other side of the city.
• The Panama Canal, although cool, is not as impressive as I expected. I've know about the canal since I was in fourth grade, but I never imagined it would barely be wide enough to let through the really big ships one at a time. It takes between 8 and 12 hours for a ship to pass through.
• Panama City has some amazing restaurants. We tried Thai, Lebanese, and regular continental fare, and it was all very good.
• Panama shuts down during Catholic holidays. We were unfortunately there during Good Friday and Easter Sunday, which basically only left us with one night where things were open. This was my first time being in a Catholic country during a Catholic holiday, and it was just odd to see the whole place so quiet on those days.
• There are lots of Chinese (and some Koreans) in Panama City, and they even have their own little Chinatown, but never saw a single one on the streets. Oddly, however, they were packed into the casino I went to downtown at 1am.
• My mom's cousin is married to an Indian girl who was born and brought up in Panama. She and her siblings speak English with a Spanish accent. And it is sexy as hell.
• One of the "it" places to hang out for the young crowd in downtown Panama City is... T.G.I. Fridays. Crazy.
  

Overall, I had a great trip. The weather was awesome, a nice, humid 96 degrees, with light showers every afternoon, and a cool 76 degrees at night. The natural sights (rainforest and ocean) were awesome. The Spanish architecture was quite nice. I only wish I could have seen the rest of the country, outside of the city. Next time...