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Stomach Problem

I won't regale you with details of my illness, but suffice it to say that I am not wearing Indian clothing today -- the pants of the Salwar Kameez take longer to undo and do -- and I want to be as near to a bathroom as possible. OK, I couldn't resist a little detail to help you suffer along with me.

I wasn't going to blog, as I told my local manager that I'd likely not be online today, but actually, I've been unable to stay away -- just monitoring e-mail, rather than doing anything substantial.

The day feels OK from a break-taking standpoint in any case, since I worked over much of the weekend and didn't rest then. My family and my U.S. manager want me not to work so continuously. There are two main reasons that I do:

My colleagues here seem to do so; I am helping in arenas of leadership development (LD), where I haven't prior, and need the extra time to explore how to be effective in helping, e.g., in designing content for LD programs, rather than delivering it, which is my historical area of expertise.

"Memory is useful. Nostalgia is less so." -- Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum

Last week, I gave that unsolicited and attributed tip to one of my colleagues here because it seemed to me that he was referring to the company he came from too often and nostalgically, and that it might negatively affect the morale of the people he leads.

He wrote down, "Memory - Nostalgia" and circled each and responded that it was the best tip he had been given in a very long time.

I waver between feeling that I need to take Rabbi Kleinbaum's advice and giving myself a break and realizing that it's understandable that I'd try to grab onto familiar cultural references et al in an environment that's so remote from the one I came from....And then I feel like such a baby, as a friend of mine spent six months in Azerbaijan, and not in the sort of comfortable housing we're in.

If only I could simply surrender to the local culture and stop watching "AbFab" re-runs and lurking on Librarything.com, smiling at all of the books I recall having read over my lifetime so far.

If I give myself a break, I say that I'm doing my best and trying to make a difference for the leadership of our company, and as a bonus, I have inevitable cross-cultural experiences with my colleagues.

Last night, we watched a fantastic movie, "Mr. and Mrs. Iyer," which my best friend here and colleague gave me for my birthday. I am learning from Indians just by being here; it was a movie that was mostly in English with some Tamil, which is her native language, and we loved it.

Are Indians learning from me, just by my being here? Or how can I help the learning exchange be richer? I know that I need to be, and stay, open to it.