I wear flip-flops to work

What's a typical day like? It varies greatly. I could either be having a somewhat normal day working in my office, or out in the field having a completely abnormal experience.

I live with two co-workers, Santhi and Joe, in a two-bedroom apartment. We eat almost every meal together. We travel together. Two of us even sit within the same cubicle at work (incidentally, it's the same two of us who share a bed). We are instant best friends, because we don't have a choice. But fortunately, we all like each other a lot (unless they hate me and haven't told me yet).

Anyway, my typical office day usually starts with a phone call (my parents or Matt) and the arrival of our maid, Valli. Valli speaks broken English and refers to Santhi as her sister (I can't be her sister because I'm white, not brown). I have a soft spot for Valli because for some reason she reminds me of one of my aunts -- strange, I know, but they both clean a lot and have the same sort of facial expression.

Anyway, after getting ready for work I walk a block to the office. That's right, I live a block away from work. In this sense, it's almost like being on a college campus. Lots of people are asking what I usually wear -- usually, it's a kurta (an Indian tunic) with really amazing pants that are lightweight and flowy and made out of cotton...they are probably the coolest way to deal with the heat in Chennai. I always accessorize with flip-flops though. It's a very casual workplace, mostly because all the work I do in Chennai (unless I'm in the field) at the office I could easily do from home. Some days, in fact, I don't even go into the office!

So, by all appearances my daily life seems very laid back. However, it's not. Immediately when I get to the office, I have a ton of emails to catch up on that were sent in the middle of my night (my bosses are located in the U.S, 9 1/2 hours behind me). I quickly move through my self-made to-do lists of the day (everything from arranging travel and accommodations for myself and a bunch of surveyors over the next week to doing literature reviews to tracking down district-level statistics to writing up questionnaires to ask in the field). Then, conveniently, the end of my workday coincides with the beginning of my bosses', so I often have calls with various people during the 6pm to 8pm window. In these phone calls, I could be instructed to do various things, such as work in the office on tedious calculations for the next week or magically find a train ticket to Bangalore for the following evening so that I can do field work there for a week. Finally, I usually choose two of the following four things to do with the rest of the night: go out for dinner and/or drinks with co-workers or others from my newly-formed friend group of expats/Indians, go run on the treadmill at the gym (the only running option, considering lack of lower-than-100%-humidity weather and inability to wear shorts in public), veg on the couch in front of a pirated episode of the Office or Arrested Development, or practice yoga for an hour or so. Oh, and read books. A lot of them. I've probably read more books in the last two months than I did in the last year in DC.

I've written more about the field aspect of my job, which I'll post about at some point. However, regarding the "living in India" part, I think I've adjusted well socially. I'm not as lonely, I know my way around Chennai, and even though it may not be the most happening place (most restaurants are veg, bars are spare and the ones that exist are in expensive hotels and are closed by midnight), I feel like it's home and it's a fine city to live in. So there's a lot missing: a dance floor with good hip-hop, ovens, pancakes, washing machines, woks. But if you look hard enough, you can find it or a substitute. That's why I started to feel like India was normal. Then, I took a trip to Turkey and saw how much cleaner it looked to me than it has in the past...and realized that India had changed my definition of "clean."