statecraft.

Brooklyn, New York

January, 2009

harry the 8 year old talks about his past:

but harry is still hopeful for the future:

apologia

firstly, to ward off complaints: this isn't going to be a real blog, in the sense that i'm not going (to be able to) update it regularly. so! for those of you who are interested in my general well-being, my sporadic thoughts about india, and photos of my adventure (if i find a computer on which to upload them), this is where you can satiate yourself. if you have a dull job and read a lot of blogs, you can add this to your blog-routine list. (i'm looking at you, marisa p.t.)

i have lived in new york for 2 1/2 years now, and am very sick of it for a number of reasons (i promise i'm not ungrateful. i just tend to focus on the negative). there are thousands of people living on the same block ignoring each other. people flock here because everyone wants to be here, yet most people don't quite know why. i want to be in a place with so few people that you can't ignore a stranger; camping at bear mountain isn't cutting it anymore. i need some time to step outside of my life completely while i'm still afforded such an opportunity. secondly, i've become very fascinated with ophthalmology, and would be very interested in specializing in it should i end up in medical school some day.

this is my trip:

• 1/09-3/09 i am living in a living room in washington heights with some dear friends of mine, babysitting for two dear children, and being experimented on by some dear experimental social scientists.
  
• 3/1/09 i embark on a 65 hour train ride from new york to portland, OR. hopefully i'll meet someone (think before sunrise) worth running away with.
  
• 3/4/09-3/7/09 portland will be explored, and kristine stolakis' NC friend will be met.
• 3/7/09-3/10/09 seattle and (possibly) tacoma will be explored.
• 3/11/09-5/28/09 i will fly to delhi (straight through my twenty-first birthday), and then take a 12 hour bus up windy roads to ranikhet. then i'll go hiking and rafting for a long time in the land where gautama buddha once roamed. do not expect any updates between march 9th and june.
  
• 5/29/09-6/29/09 my friend kate ray will meet me after her semester in shanghai, and we will travel about india, ride camels, push our hot-food-envelope, and hopefully avoid any potential indian-pakistani fighting.
• 7/1/09-7/31/09 i will work at the uma eye clinic in chennai with unite for sight, forgetting all my hindi and rapidly learning tamil. if you haven't given me money for that endeavor yet, and you have a spare dollar, please do! i generally do not like health care NGOs because of their neo-colonial nature, cultural insensitivity, and haphazard volunteer programs, but UFS is one of the better organizations i've come across. for reasons that i'll explain later. just trust me on this one for now.

if anyone has advice or suggestions of things i should do or see in the northwest of the united states, or in india, do let me know!

love,
harish-harry