Time and Space

Nope, this entry is not about physics. If you want to read cool blogs about science, go to http://scienceblogs.com/ where you can read people much smarter than me talk about this stuff.

This entry is about the way I see time and space being thought about differently in India vs. the US. Some of this is well known, but oh well.

Note: All statemetns about India/Indians below or anywhere on my blog are the result of what I've seen in my short time here. As a result, they may not be accurate.

Time

A lot of peole have heard of IST (Indian Standard Time). Its not so much a time zone as it is a delay factor... Indian's are between 15 min and 1 hour late to anything. Well, thas the story anyway. Well, I'm definitly seeing that at work, and even seeing extensions on this.

• We are supposed to come in at 9:30 AM, but I've seen people wander in as late as 11:00 AM and no one seems to mind. Obviously sometimes its with good reason, but from what I'm told this is pretty normal.
• My cousins don't seem to worry if they are late to work. They are never in a rush to get to work on time.
• If there is extra work to do at the end of the day, people seem to stick around and do it without thinking twice.
• There is a lot of idle time (my uncle told me a story about how he was idle for 45 days once on a project).

Even outside of work, things are different. No one knows when anyone will be home, things are done at a leisurly pace. Traffic moves very slowly so it takes a long time to get anywhere.

My sense is that time is just not treated as super important... the opposite of Manhattan where "ASAP" is the phrase and if you go to a restaraunt 15 min late you lose your reserveration.

Space

What constitutes an adequate sized room? What is big? What is small?

For those of you who remember the ex-brothel I lived in, try to remember the rooms there. Not my room, I had a "big" one, but the small rooms. They were probably about 8' x 12'. Big enough for a bed and a small desk.... and to walk from one to the other. When I left, those rooms were about $900.00 a pop.

Contrast that to a story I heard about someone living in Bangalore. The placewas maybe the same size as the room I just described... a bit bigger really, but it had three beds. Yes, one room, three beds, three people living there. One wall was just a cardboard partition seperating it fom another, similar setup. That place cost about Rs. 5,000!

Ok... lets do some quick math. The exchange rate is about $1.00 = Rs. 50.00. So, you say smugly, that room only cost about $100.00. What should you expect? True... in Manhattan if I want a room for $100.00 I expect a very sturdy cardboard box inside someone's closet. But you can't use straight exchange rates. You need to use PPP (purchasing power parity).

Googling around, I see the PPP is more like $1.00 = Rs. 10.00. So by that logic, we see this place is really around $500.00!!

I'm not sure what you can get for $500.00 in Manhattan, but I'm sure you can get something where you have your own room. A quick look at Craig's List and we see a decent number of rooms. Ok, some of them are in Jersey City or other way uptown... but still, its your own room.

Now, to be fair, I just found a place where I'm thinking of moving in. Its also Rs 5,000 a month and I'd have one housemate (seperate rooms, living room, one bathroom, kitchen). But from what I'm hearing from my cousins, this is the exception not the rule.

Of course, they also charge a lot more for bachelors than for familys, but still, I think the example of 3 people sharing a room with a cardboard wall is pretty extreme. But, this whole room sharing thing seems reasonably normal around here...