Dust clouds, networking and parrots, oh my!

The first day of the renewable energy conference, DIREC, was today and the whole affair was rather exhausting. From 8am to 4pm I was meeting people, talking about solar power, listening (perhaps dozing off a bit) to the VIPs talk about different financing and private sector renewables issues... and all the while there seemed to be a limited availability of water at the conference venue. I was so dehydrated and irritable by lunchtime that when I finally FOUND the water (conveniently bottled in 8 oz. containers) I drained about 5 within 20 minutes. I must have surprised the various waiters attending me-- there were staff to bring you water bottles, offer you juice/bread and take away your trash, and inevitably one of them would approach you approximately every two minutes to ask if you needed any of those three services. I was irritated already, and thank goodness I was able to get water in me to cure my headache or I might have just screamed at one unfortunate waiter to leave me alone!

I did manage to conduct one interview this evening and schedule three more (!!) for tomorrow, which bodes well for my research. Tonight I interviewed one of my adviser's friends who used to be an adviser to India's Planning Commission on energy issues, and he was able to give me an insider's view of the issues batted around during the design process of the National Solar Mission (mostly a bunch of ideas he had that were not implemented because they made too much sense). It was easy to "interview" him because he had a lot to say about his experiences, which made it much less stressful for me... I've done other interviews this year where I had to pepper my subject with questions the entire time to get him to say two consecutive sentences, and eventually you run out of questions! Bodes well for tomorrow, but I'd still like to do a bit more preparation. And sleep, that too (jet lag!!).

I'll have to elaborate more on my sightseeing trip through old Delhi yesterday and the idiosyncrasies of today's conference (like my new friend from Suriname and my attempts at posing as a master's student) when I'm not so worn out, but here are a few notable tidbits:

• Dust. Smog. Some combination of the two. I woke up this morning bright and early, got dressed in some smart business clothes to go the world renewable energy conference, threw open the curtains to look out the window and... haze. The entire horizon is smothered in haze. It's been like LA for the past few days here in Delhi, and though I don't remember the air quality being so bad the last time I was here, it kind of reinforces my conception of this city as a rather grimy place.
  
  
• Networking... I guess I mostly covered this, but it never ceases to surprise me how draining meeting people with your charisma switched "on" for the entire day can be. I think the only thing that keeps me going is thinking of my younger sister or my other extroverted friends and being like, "Hm. In this situation, Ella/my friends would walk up to this person and cheerfully introduce herself. FINE." My reward is curling up in my bed now to read my book. :)
  
  
• PARROTS! Me and my new friend Shashur went to the Red Fort in old Delhi the other day, which was a set of architectural marvels in itself. Though I won't be able to upload pictures until I get back to the U.S. (forgot my USB cable!), I will try to describe everything in a later post, but what really stuck in my mind were the LIME GREEN parrots flying around inside one of the palace structures. I look up and there, straight out of the rainforest, were these beautiful, bright green parrots with yellow striping. And they were big-- like at least comparable to a decent-sized owl. There were little rings installed on the roof for the parrots to swing on, and I turned to Shashur and I was like, "You have these? Just flying around?" He assured me that yes, parrots were a normal sight, though he seemed to think the swings were a novel idea. I tried (unsuccessfully) to explain to him how cool it was that India has rainbow parrots as everyday animals while the U.S./Princeton is stuck with brown/black animals such as sparrows and squirrels. This quickly devolved into a conversation about the distinct, insidious character of Princeton squirrels.
  
  Also, this may come from watching too many Disney movies as a child, but I see pidgeons, dogs or chipmunks in India and it's funny to me to think that, if we could somehow let them speak, they wouldn't speak in English... they've only ever lived in India! I tend to appropriate thoughts or personalities to animals in passing, but it doesn't feel right to attribute English thoughts to animals that rightfully would only know Hindi or another Indian language. I'll have to work on a few appropriate Hindi snippets in my spare time. :P

Bed now, interviews tomorrow, then only one more day of this conference to go!