Afterwards we cleaned ourselves up a bit, then headed out to pick up appetizers (the expected-yet-still-delicious samosa) for Aditya’s brother & sister-in-law’s Diwali party. We arrived right on time – i.e. early – and helped finish setting up the decorations before the rest of the guests. Great food, good conversation, and a nice clear night. Can’t ask for much more. I hope everyone else’s Diwali weekend is going wonderfully!

Aditya picked up the tealights and holders from IKEA. Ah, IKEA - the place where tealights are so cheap, Maa and Baba purchased some to take *back* to India!

After lighting all fourteen of the candles, we took a moment to appreciate their light and the meaning behind them.

Afterwards, we put the candles on a tray (also from IKEA, like 90% of our household) and carried them out to the front yard. The dogs were, as always, highly interested in anything that originated in the kitchen.

We discovered a little neighbor when we went to set the candles down. Lucky for this newt (?), the dogs didn't notice him.

Kajol waited patiently for us to finish up by the front gate threshold.

After dressing in kurtas, we headed over to Dada and Bhabi's house for their Diwali party.

We helped finish up with the decorations for the party after we arrived, including placing these tealights around the Buddha in the garden pond.

If you’re interested, a few more photos of our Diwali evening can be found on my flickr page.

Happy Diwali, everyone!

Photo Credit: Meanest Indian

Friday Connections: a time when I give links and a bit of commentary to things I’d blog about if I had the time. This week there’s just two categories: random India-related articles and vodka the Russian way. Because I’m all about multicultural celebration traditions, especially on Fridays after a long week.

India-Related Articles

• It’s Morning in India
  As many of you have probably already heard, Obama is headed to India today as the first stop on a trip around Asia. Friedman is more bullish on the Indian economy than many, and perhaps a tad too optimistic overall (see, for example, this post on the problems facing NRIs returning home), but I think his point on India’s optimistic aspirations here is valid – especially the contrast the current mood in the US.
• A Sikh Temple Where All May Eat, and Pitch In
  A fluffy article about the Golden Temple in Amritsar – not a lot of depth here, but I enjoyed reading it and learning a bit more about Sikhism.
• Fadeout for a Culture That’s Neither Indian Nor British
  Another short NYT profile on another culture of India: Anglo-Indians. The thing that struck me the most is how similar this story of a community of older British/Indians living in India but not assimilating sounds like the story of older communities of South Asians in Britain or the US. Both groups, I think, tend to cling to the old ways of the “home country” closer than the home country itself does.
• Oldest university on earth is reborn after 800 years
  An international group is hoping to recreate the Nalanda University in Bihar, which sounds like it could be a great thing for both the state and India overall.
• India Journal: Gandhi and Ambani, Indian Neighbors
  I suspect the fear of coconuts (among other things) is too high for Obama to make this walk between these two houses, but I hope that the sense of India portrayed in this article is not one that is lost on Obama during his trip.
• Chess & Sanskrit: Persian Jones in Old Calcutta
  A wonderful profile of the (by all accounts) good man and polymath who first made (or at least published) the connection between Sanskrit and European languages, kicking off the field of comparative linguistics.
• The Living Dead
  The zombie apocalypse is here, and it’s sorta the Indian government’s fault!

Vodka the Russian Way

• Holiday Spirits: A Russian Doctor Describes the Only Correct Way to Drink Vodka
  Yeah… This and Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin are probably my two favorite cultural items to come out of Russia. (Dostoevsky is so over-rated.)

Addendum: Being in San Francisco during the World Series has been a pretty cool experience, despite my complete lack of interest in baseball. I’m even okay with the way the games have completely screwed with my commute. This video gave me shivers – I really love how sports – despite how silly they are objectively – can really bring a community together.

Photo Credit: mary_gaston22

As most of you know, Diwali, the festival of lights, is upon us. I really love Diwali as a holiday – like Thanksgiving, it seems like a celebration we can all get something out of, regardless of our faiths or lack thereof. Focusing on light in our lives already in our lives, our thanks for the people who have helped us get to our current state of knowledge and happiness, and our wishes for increased light and good in a world is something I think everyone can get behind.

This year, for the first time, Aditya and I are stringing up lights outside the house. We’re a bit behind other people, though – about every fourth house in our new neighborhood has lights up, so we either have a lot of South Asians in the neighborhood or a lot of people who like to get ready for Christmas early! We’ll also be following a particular family tradition when we light our candles; I’ll post about that a little later with pictures.

Tomorrow night we’ll be going to his brother & sister-in-law’s house for a potluck Diwali party. We’re in charge of bringing the appetizers – any suggestions?

Anyone else have fun plans for the rest of the week or over the weekend?

Photo Credit: Mckaysavage

My first international trip occurred when I was four – we took a ferry to Victoria, Canada from Seattle during a Christmas vacation. I have only three hazy memories from that trip: shivering on the ferry from winter weather so unlike balmy California, walking along some cobblestone streets, and marveling at the snow and woolly mammoths.

In retrospect, I believe the woolly mammoth was behind glass at the Royal British Columbia Museum, but for years I informed people that Canada had weird streets, snow, and woolly mammoths.

By the time I met Aditya I’d had the chance to live abroad in Germany and travel around Europe and Mexico, so I was about as well prepared for a trip to India as anyone can be. Before that first departure, I was remember reading books on travel and India fervently in an effort to make my trip there – and the Hindu wedding Aditya and I would have – more enjoyable and stress-free. Most of the advice I found was garbage, to be honest – Aditya and I had a lot of laughs at the expense of writers who seemed to think that India was entirely composed of only squalor and spirituality, instead of, you know, regular folks living their lives. However, one short quotation I came across prior to that trip still stands out to me – it was great travel advice, especially for someone on her way to her wedding:

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. – John Steinbeck

Traveling anywhere means leaving the familiar where we’re comfortable and in control – to a large extent, that’s the purpose of travel. And so giving up control, and allowing India to be a shock to my (very Americanized) system ended up being half the fun.

So if you asked me for my number one piece of advice on traveling to India, that would be it – accept that traveling means giving up control, get ready to get uncomfortable, and learn to appreciate the unfamiliar quirks of the new place you’re at, even if they’re not the way you’d prefer things to be – after all, you’re only visiting.

Of course, this sort of advice, while important, is not helpful for specific concerns – concerns like the ones Cristina Chopalli lists in her recent article in India Currents asking for advice for her first trip abroad to India for her traditional wedding:

The Goods: What to Pack
· What medicines should I pack which may not be available in India?
· Any certain types of clothing?
· Are there any items which are common in America which people in India love, i.e. microwave popcorn?
· What type of gifts do we bring to family members? For ladies? For men? For kids?
Plane and Simple: How to be Comfortable on the Long Flight
· What should I keep in my carry-on bag?
· Do airlines serve good vegetarian food or should I pack some?
· Tips for maximum comfort in a confined space.
Ports of Call: A Guide to International Airports
· Best ways to spend a lay-over in an airport?
· Advice for smoothly getting in and out of airports: documentation, etc.
· Tips on Duty-Free shopping.
· Ways to overcome jet lag.
First Impressions: Culture Shock: Mental and Physical
· Common remedies for common ailments: tummy aches, bug bites, etc.
· Greeting family members for the first time.
Travel Within India: Planes, Trains, and Temples
· Tips for taking train journeys.
· Tips for air travel within India.
· Temples and places to visit on day trips in and around Bangalore.
The Indian Wedding: Let’s Get Married!
· Any general advice for a bride getting married in South India.
The Road Home: Travelling Back to America
· What items should I bring back from India?
· Is the trip back more exhausting?

Since a lot of us have been in (or currently are in) the same spot as Cristina – anticipating our first trip to India, possibly our first international trip ever, going to see our partner’s family members, looking forward to a traditional wedding in an unfamiliar land – I thought it would be great if we could all pitch in with a bit of advice for her.

So, I’d love to hear both your number one piece of advice for Cristina, as well as any answers you have for her specific questions. Please leave your advice in the comments for everyone to learn from, and, if you have the time, email them to the editors at India Currents at editor@indiacurrents.com. I’ve given my most important piece of advice above – I’ll post my answers to Cristina’s questions in a couple of days in the comments section as well, and email the editors so they’re aware of what I hope will be a great resource with lots of advice.

One thing I love about living in California is that the area is not just diverse – many parts of the US have racial and cultural diversity – but that the area has been diverse for such a long time. From the Punjabi-Mexicans of Yuba City to the Gosei generation of the Japanese-Americans, this area has had, and continues to have both a striking ability to maintain important pieces of cultural continuity of immigrant groups and a high degree of intermarriage and mixed-race kids. As I walk down the streets of San Francisco everyday, I’m struck by the number of people who look like they could have very diverse backgrounds.

Which brings me to the main topic of the day – the future of mixed-race-ness. You may have run across this idea before – that, in the future, we’re all going to be some beige color. Heck, Russell Peters even has a few words on the topic:

Of course, it’s not so simple as all that. Yes, it’s true that interracial marriages – and presumably mixed-race children- are on the rise world-wide. But it seems unlikely, at least to me, that interracial marriage will suddenly skyrocket in the places it needs to – like India and China – in order to have a “homogeneous” world population in two hundred or three hundred years. And then there’s the complications of slower intermarriage and changing birth rates. As one of the commenters on Razib of Gene Expression’s blog posts on this topic points out, attempts to “average out” the current world population into an average man don’t work very well, since they don’t take into account current and future birth rates:

Even ignoring the laws of hereditary when it comes to appearance and assuming there is no selection effect on different features one still needs to look at the time scales on which a blending of races would take place and take note of the differential birth rates.

We can’t project indefinitely but lets say three decade predictions are not completely useless and lets assume there is no quick rebound in fertility after the demographic transition in the works. If one takes there to be a hundred million or so more Ameridian, a billion more African, and say 500 million more Indian, and a hundred million less European faces in a composite of a “future human” one would get a much better if still deeply flawed picture.

Still as a member of a mixed-race family, with an eventual expectation of mixed-race kidlets, I find these sorts of “averagings” interesting, even if they aren’t particularly accurate. The face at the top of this post is one population-weighed average created using measurements from different racial groups. The one to the left is created by using four composite of Northwest European, South & West Asian, East Asian and African faces. I still haven’t decided whether I think the first or the second is a more accurate representation of the current population, averaged out.

In the end, though, I think the most interesting piece of this “mixed-race” future is how it will affect society and social interactions. First there’s the claims that mixed race people increased genetic diverseness makes them more attractive and/or healthier. Then there are the claims that an increased percentage of mixed-race people will decrease racial tensions and general prejudices.

For the first claim regarding genetic fitness, well,  I’m rather skeptical of most social science claims of this type – they tend to be a bit shoddy on the science side of things. If it turns out to be true, cool, but I don’t think it’s worth losing any sleep over it. The second claim I see as pretty naïve, although stemming from understandable premises. As Ta-Nehisi Coate, one of my favorite bloggers on race (and a host of other topics), writes:

There is some truth to that–people tend to discriminate against people who are different from them, and the most obvious marker of difference is phenotype. From this perspective, a black/white marriage is a blow against racism, and our history of white supremacy, because it produces kids who presumably don’t represent the phenotypical extreme of blackness or whiteness. The hope is that one day, we’ll all be beige hence rendering racism inoperative, hence the “Beige Theory” of fighting racism.
….
It may seem, at first glance like the ancient marital beef between blacks and whites extends from how different we look. But it’s so much more complicated. And humans being humans, even if we were all beige, we’d find some way to discriminate. Assuming that we can destroy whiteness or blackness, assumes that these are actual, tangible things which can’t be redefined, refitted and reformed. But history says otherwise, and I’d argue that should we ever become one race, we’d basically create new ones.
Circling back, it’s true that the interracial couple is striking a blow against white racism–but not because they’re creating a beige kid. They’re striking a blow because they’re thinking more about their own individuality, their own humanity, than about convention. We can all applaud that–and while applauding it, understand that the notion of fucking our way out of racism, presumes too much of our good will, and too little of our imagination.

In other words, racism is not the ultimate fight – it’s all based on prejudices and stereotypes, which are used to discriminate against groups. Race is just been the most convenient marker for separating out and grouping people – and has been since the Age of Discovery, when global trade and interaction really took off. Instead of imagining a future where we all look the same, where racism dies and another  prejudicial -ism begins, we should focus on people’s individuality and unique humanity.

Photo Credit: LiangHH

This is the sixth post from my ten question series on questions and discussions that are particularly important for intercultural or interracial couples to have. All of the posts from this series can be found on the series index, The Ten Questions Every Intercultural Couple Should Discuss.

Home. It’s the place where you should feel comfortable, accepted, and loved. Where you should feel perfectly free to just be yourself – and the same is also true for your partner. However, since intercultural couples often grow up in very different homes, how you picture home and how your partner pictures home may be two very different things. In order for you both to feel comfortable and “at home”, you’re going to need to talk about what sort of mixed culture at home you want to create.

People of different cultures, while having the same fundamental needs (eating, sleeping, procreating, etc.), may very well have not only quite different wants (social and psychological) but also quite different ways of perceiving their needs. Both are convinced of the “rightness” of their ways, because they are behaving instinctively, naturally, and properly according to their own cultural logic. There is potential for conflict because what is natural for one is not always natural for the other. Their divergence is further complicated by the fact that many, if not most, of their behavior patterns are based on unconscious values and cultural assumptions about how life should be lived. They have “learned to breathe [their cultural] logic and to forget that they had learned it.”

Digging into the question

When dealing with such a big, overarching question, I think it’s always easiest to break it up into a series of mini questions on smaller pieces of the whole. So ask yourself and each other about the pieces of home life that you find most important, and then work from the specifics to a more general picture:

• Location
  Where will we live? Your country, my country, a third country? Near family – and if so, how close is close enough? Is living in a diverse area important to us? What if one of hates the area we’re living in or gets homesick for their own land? How will the employment situation affect where we live?
• Work and Chores
  Labor is a part of life – so how will we divide it? Will we both work outside the home? Who is responsible for what sort of chores in the home? Is some work “men’s work” or “women’s work”? How do we want to decide what chores are important, and which we can let slide? What does a “clean home” mean to you? How do you want to handle the whole life-work balance, especially when there’s a trade-off between location and money or hours worked?
• Type of House
  Is having an extra bedroom or two important because we often house guests or family? Does one of us want a backyard for greenery, gardening, children or pets? Do we prefer an open-floor plan or something more traditional? A suburban style house or a more urban apartment?
• Language
  What language or languages will we speak at home? How important is it that one partner be fluent in the other person’s language? Should we budget in money for special media – books, movies, television channels, music – in a second language?
• Religion and Philosophical Values
  Do we share the same faith or philosophical creeds? If we do, is our understanding of the values the same, and our beliefs about how it is practiced day-to-day similar? If not, what sort of compromises will we need to make to live under the same roof?
• Children
  Do we want kids? If so how many – and how will we get them (the traditional way, adoption, fostering, or something else)? Why do we each want children or not? How do we envision them impacting our lives compared with today – are we at least in the same book, if not the same page, on this matter? And, of course, there are a million and one small and large questions on how we want to raise children.
• Decoration
  What do we want our home to be like? Do we want to try to decorate with furniture, crafts, accessories, textiles, and art from one particular culture, or mix it up? What sort of things does a home simply need in order to be a home?
• Pets
  Do we want animals in our lives, and if so, what type? What role or function do pets play – are they “fur kids”, companions, friends, just animals that we keep around ’cause we like them?
• Meals
  What sort of food do each of us like to eat? Who cooks it – or do we eat out? Where do we get the groceries from? Do either of us have dietary requirements or beliefs – and how do they fit into the other person’s diet? How elaborate should each meal be?

These questions are only scratching the surface – I’m sure each of you has another topic or three that is important to discuss in order to build a shared vision of a home you both will love and feel at peace in.

The bottom line

In the end, the goal is for each of you to understand what the other person needs to feel at home in your house and in your relationship. From the specific answers you tell each other, try to build a shared image or story of what your ideal “home culture” would be. What would a day look like in the life you want to live? What would your home look like, sound like, feel like? And, when things are tough, what can each of you compromise on while keeping a home life that truly embraces who each of you are as a person?

Photo Credit: Jaci Berkopec

Friday Connections: a time when I give links and a bit of commentary to things I’d blog about if I had the time. This week the categories are three perspectives on “Do-It-Yourself Foreign Aid”, two in-depth profiles of extra-ordinary men, and a crazy number of “gori blogs” that I’ve been finding and catching up on – still more to go!

Do-It-Yourself Foreign Aid

Three related articles on foreign aid and development.

• D.I.Y. Foreign-Aid Revolution
  We’re all looking for ways to help others – and it can be especially difficult to see the poor in developing countries struggling with so little help. This NYT article profiles three women who jumped into the mess, and started working to help others. However…
• Don’t Try This Abroad
  …as this Foreign Policy article points out, there are real concerns with development amateurs trying to do what so many experts often fail at. My perspective on this is that, unless you’re on the ground in a developing country, know the community well, and already have a good background in development do’s and don’ts, you’re probably going to do the most help by channeling your efforts through already-existing, proven-effective programs.
• When A Child Moves To Nepal
  Finally, we have a third perspective on this issue – how does it feel to be the people cheering the DIYers from the sidelines? Especially when it means that your young adult daughter is working in a rural part of a developing country.

Extra-Ordinary Lives

There’s nothing much hanging these two articles together, other than the fact that they’re thought-provoking profiles of two men from two very different cultures and time-periods.

• Abd el-Kader and the Massacre of Damascus
  His obtituary read “If to be an ardent patriot, a soldier whose genius is unquestioned, whose honor is stainless; a statesman who could weld the wild tribes of Africa into a formidable enemy, a hero who could accept defeat and disaster without a murmur – if all these constitutes a great man, Abd-El-Kader deserves to be ranked among the foremost of the few great men of the century.”
  This is the story of truly one of the greatest men in historical record. A man I knew nothing about until reading this long – but amazing – article. If there is one thing you read today, read this.
• The Last American Man
  “Eustace, has been living in the woods for twenty years now. He makes, builds or kills anything he needs, so it’s somewhat difficult to buy the guy a house gift. Still, my mama taught me never to visit anybody without bringing a present. This caused a dilemma: What do you give the man who has nothing?”
  If you read this article, I guarantee you’ll come away with a new thought on the way American culture has been shaped by its frontier roots.

Catching up on more “Gori Blogs”

There’s still more to go!

• Double Puja Day from Married to the Masala
  I found this detailing of the pujas that Hedei and her husband did fascinating.
• The Indian Way and the American Way from The Dosa Girl
  A description of the “scripts of life” that we’re handed by our various cultures. I do think it’s important to remember that these scripts vary not just across countries but within them as well, though. It’s too easy to think that the way you grew up is the way that everyone grew up!
• Old newsreel about India and Pakistan’s Independence from IndianTies
  Props to Heather for finding this supercool newsreel on YouTube!
• Thoughts on “Nine Lives” from Minnesotameetskarnatak
  I’ve been thinking about picking up this book for awhile, so this review was very welcome!
• Anthropology 101 from K&D
  kaurd writes on her anthropology background… and the teasing she gets for it.
• Sorry! from Miscellany from Metroland
  D. Jain apologizes for being MIA – just like me. Maybe it’s something in the air in DC…
• How Long Did You Wait and Why? from My Indian Love
  MDG’s question, prompted by her own relationship, has gotten a lot of great responses and differing points of view. Really interesting stuff!
• Multicultural Food from Samba Meets Sambar
  Samba is a Brazilian living the post-doc life in Norway married to a South Indian she met in the US who is getting his MBA in Paris. I have no surprise that they’ve had food issues. (And I’m very glad to find another economist gori blogger!)
• The Great Hindu Wedding Adventure from The Milano Has Landed!
  NeoKalypso finally had her big ol’ bash in India, and blogs about it here.
• Being a Woman in Nepal from white girl in a sari
  A thought-provoking post on the gender inequalities in Nepal
• Memories from My American Life
  This is one of the ways Aditya ruins food too. Le sigh…
• Hindi Breakthrough from Pyari Buaari
  Ah, we all have our learning the other language stories and woe, right? I could really relate to this post!

In the process of packing up and shipping all of my office files, notebooks, computer equipment and such from Virginia to San Francisco, I noticed that a few Indian accessories have crept into my desk knick-knacks over the years. In celebration of completely unpacking all of my office stuff (fist pump!), I thought I’d share some snaps of the various items with you guys. We have plenty of Indian accessories at home, too – you can expect a celebration post for finishing unpacking the house in maybe five or six months…

The first picture, at the top of the post, is an Indian folk art painting that Aditya and I received as a gift at our Hindu wedding. I snapped it up immediately for my office – it just adds such a nice spot of color to the rather bland walls of corporate America cubicals!

My favorite item, though, is the smallest of the bunch: a little Ganesh statue which sits under my monitor. No conclusions yet on whether he removes excel errors – the biggest obstacles keeping me from getting home at a reasonable hour – from my spreadsheets or not.

And then there’s the obligatory picture of Aditya and me on my desk. This one is of the two of us in Indian clothes for Halloween (yes, lame, I know – we were feeling lazy) a whole six years ago – back when we were in college! Aditya looks a little younger in the face, but otherwise he hasn’t changed much at all.

I always have a few packets of Maggi noodles on hand for days when I forget lunch, and an Indian shawl for when the office is more freezing than usual, but I’ll spare you pictures of those rather mundane items. Then there’s a lovely little Indian textbook on actuarial statistics that has saved my butt a time or two – it’s better than my graduate texts in econometrics for some things! But I try not to inflict my bookshelf on anyone who hasn’t already expressed an interest in multivariate analysis.

Rounding up my desk knick-knacks are two European items – one German, one Italian. First, there’s my German mistake-of-the-day calender for language learners that I purchased the last time I was in the country. (Yes, mistake-of-the-day, not phrase or word-of-the-day. This is the culture that is Germany).  I also have a cool figurine from the Vatican that Aditya got me. But he suffered a flesh wound en route from Virginia, and still needs to be patched up.

(To learn more about flesh wounds, watch the following clip.)

This is the fifth post from my ten question series on questions and discussions that are particularly important for intercultural or interracial couples to have. All of the posts from this series can be found on the series index, The Ten Questions Every Intercultural Couple Should Discuss.

A few days after moving into our new home in Silicon Valley, Aditya and I sat down to figure out what household items and furniture we would purchase to replace things sold or given away back in DC. Aditya’s list was about six lines: three electronics of some sort, trash bags, trash cans, and “food”. Mine was a little over two pages – typed.

After Aditya recovered from the stupefaction induced by seeing my list, he started to give me a mathematics lesson – specifically, how the dollar value of the items on my list was a number much larger than the value in our bank account. It was a fascinating lesson, but, in the interests of time, I interrupted him to explain that my list was created with the expectation that we’d only be getting some of the things – we just had to figure out what we both agreed were the most important. In other words, it was a classic “Asker” list.

The Asker vs. Guesser paradigm was first described in an obscure comment in a metafilter thread, and has since been discussed in articles across the web.

In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it’s OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.

In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t even have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.

All kinds of problems spring up around the edges. If you’re a Guess Culture person… then unwelcome requests from Ask Culture people seem presumptuous and out of line, and you’re likely to feel angry, uncomfortable, and manipulated.

If you’re an Ask Culture person, Guess Culture behavior can seem incomprehensible, inconsistent, and rife with passive aggression.

While anthropologists describe this difference in the classical breakdown of high-context vs. low-context cultures, I believe the Asker vs. Guesser idea is much more useful for those of in intercultural relationships.

Digging into the question

This question, like “What Are Our Biggest Communication Challenges?” is about communication, but instead of focusing on how well (or not) you communicate with each other, this question’s focus is on how each of you prefer to communicate in general.

It’s easiest to understand Asking & Guessing as a continuum, with extreme direct Asking at one end of the scale, and Guessing at the other. Askers say things directly, and Guessers mention, hint, and hedge. As some of you might have guessed (hah!), I’m a pretty die-hard asker – which can often come off as pushy or too demanding, even to people who have managed to stand me for a long time, like Aditya. In comparison, Aditya looks much more like a Guesser, even though he can be quite direct when he wants to be. Of course, we all operate like Askers some of the time, and Guessers some of the time – but, just like other personality traits, there’s one mood we tend to be strongest in.

Frankly, I think a fair amount of the marital tension between Adtiya and me can be tracked down to this one major dimension of how we think of communication. I will put out a statement: “I think we should do do this!” or “I think it would be better if we did this!” In my mind, those statements are still tentative - I’m asking them as questions, expecting to hear rebuttals or a different point of view from Aditya, and I’d be okay with a potential “no.” But Aditya can’t stand it, because he reads those statements as my final marching orders, and feels upset that his voice isn’t being heard in our decision-making. In a nutshell, he thinks that I think I’m always right, and I feel like I’m always left hanging, waiting for rebuttals which never appear.

Is Asking and Guessing cultural or individual?

When we start talking about Asking vs. Guessing in the arena of intercultural relationships, one of the obvious questions is whether the culture you grew up in influences where you end up on the Asking/Guessing continuum. And, of course, the answer is a big fat yes, although I don’t think it’s so simple as “India is a Guessing culture, America is an Asking culture”. Anyone who’s heard of the Indian Head Wobble - one of the most ambiguous gestures known to mankind – could figure out that India, taken very generally, leans towards being a Guessing culture. And anyone who has been in New York City will realize that some Americans, at least, are very direct Askers. But a comparison of New York City abruptness to “Minnesota Nice” should make it clear that the US is a mix of Asking and Guessing subcultures – just like India, I would suspect.

However, culture can play a big part in what both Askers and Guessers consider unnecessary to say – what is simply presumed to “go without saying.” Now, there is no way to ask the question “What do you presume that I don’t presume?” and get a coherent answer – so I won’t. But as you discuss Asking and Guessing – two ways of communicating – with your significant other, try to think back on how you communicate, and recognize whether it’s the asking/guessing dimension that is affecting your communication, or if it’s your differing assumptions about what needs to be discussed at all.

The bottom line

Asking and Guessing represent a continuum of how people think to communicate with others – it’s about what we expect to say, and what we want left unsaid. Understanding where your significant other falls on this continuum – and how far that is from you – will help you understand why they communicate the way they do, and how you two can communicate better in the future.

Friday Connections: a time when I give links and a bit of commentary to things I’d blog about if I had the time. This week the categories are the geopolitics of international population flows and trend, the Commonwealth Games in India (which I didn’t follow much, to be honest), and “gori blogs” that started up while I was on a blogging break.

International and American Population Trends

I don’t think it’s much of a secret that I’m an economics geek – and love the social sciences in general! Here’s some articles on recent news in international demographics.

• The Global Economic Impact of Immigration
  Immigration is great for the immigrants – they wouldn’t be moving if there weren’t some benefit, right? This paper estimates that “the typical individual who migrates from a poor developing country to the United States sees an increase in income by a factor of four.” However, immigration is also helpful to all of us:  (current) ”migration from Mexico to the United States raises global income by an amount equivalent to roughly one percent of US GDP.”
• Nation’s Foreign-Born Population Nears 37 Million More Than One in Five People in the U.S. are First or Second Generation US Census Bureau
  The US is have a large surge in the percentage of its population with familial ties to other nations - “36.7 million of the nation’s population (12 percent) were foreign-born, and another 33 million (11 percent) were native-born with at least one foreign-born parent in 2009, making one in five people either first or second generation U.S. residents.” Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on whether you believe the article above – and whether you can deal with the increasing diversity.
• As Populations Age, a Chance for Younger Nations
  Another huge trend in international populations is the aging of many Western nations – and China as well, due to its one-child policy. Nations like India, with a relatively high percentage of young people, may be able to grow their economies faster in the coming decades with lower health care costs and more workers in their prime.
• The Gray And The Brown: The Generational Mismatch
  Combining the trends of the last two articles, demographers are predicting another culture war in the US – one between a young brownish generation (mine) that’s in the workforce and the whiteish Baby Boomer generation (my parents) that’s headed towards retirement. If you read any of the articles in this list, read this one.

Commonwealth Games in India

I’ll admit I haven’t been following the games closely – or the hullabaloo surrounding India’s preparations or lack thereof.  NFL football and the Australia-India cricket matches are the main sports I’ve been tuning into lately. But here’s a few links of interest…

• The Big Picture’s XIX Commonwealth Games
  The Big Picture always has amazing photos – here’s their picks for the games.
• As Games close, India ponders a deep-seated ‘it’ll do’ attitude
  If you’ve been following the games at all, you’ll have heard about the complaints regarding India’s preparations, often with comparisons to how China showed off to the world during the Summer Olympics. Here’s one of the many takes on why there were issues, and what it means for India’s future.
• India: making history or living in the past?
  A blogger in Bangalore during the games considers how India’s hosting performance during the games, as well as the multitude of contrasts on Indian streets, are examples of India’s uneven development. It’s a growing stage it seems all adolescent industrializing nations must go through.
• And a video via Aditya – I won’t tell you the result:

New (to me) Gori Blogs

While I was one a blogging break featuring a summer of 80-hour work weeks and a cross-country move, a bunch of new “gori bloggers” started writing about their stories. I’ve been going through them one at a time (as well as catching up with the other blogs I love to read) – if I haven’t gotten to yours yet, it’s because I can only read so much each day! So here’s an interesting post from each of the blogs I’ve been able to read so far.

• This wedding… not “the” wedding from By Two Kaapi
  Meeka contemplates not having “a wedding” but having three of them as part of an intercultural relationship. Right now they’re one down, two to go.
• Butter Chicken: A Love Story from Kya Dekh Raha Hai?
  A story of true love.  Obsessive love. Don’t get between this girl and her butter chicken!
• When Compromising Compromises Yourself from Mr. Brown and Mrs. White
  A conversation about when – and what – to compromise in an intercultural and interfaith relationship.
• Kadi Patta from The Milky Chai Life
  I need one of these in my kitchen! What a neat idea.
• Stick in the Power Struggle from Kat’s Daily Gori Story
  Kat describes a power struggle that I think is common to a lot of  intercultural/interracial couples where the parents are objecting to the relationship, and details how she and her partner are working on the problem.
• Would you join an online book club? from Pyari Ladki
  Jessica is planning on starting an online book club – go to the link if you’re interested too!
• Where it all began from The Bad Bhabi
  If you’re interested in reading about Grace’s story, it’s probably best to start at the beginning with her first post.

Allow me to introduce you to my new favorite artist, Nidhi Chanani. I first stumbled on Nidhi’s work on etsy, which is an online community for buying and selling handmade items. I was immediately in love with her whimsical, joyful drawings. Once I found her personal website and bio I realized why the art brought such a smile to my face – while Nidhi was born in India, she grew up in California, is married interculturally – and infuses her art with the diversity of her life.

From an immigrant mother shopping in an American grocery store…

I followed my mom everywhere, holding on to the edge of her sari. It was soft and silky like the comfort of her love.

…to India’s faiths…

…to a group of friends driving along chatting…

to a tribute for her first wedding anniversary…

… all of Nidhi’s work seems to celebrate pieces of the world that I love too.

I could keep posting more images, but instead I encourage you to browse over to her store or page through her extensive blog obsessively (like I did).

If you want to know more about Nidhi, here are two recent interviews at Septa Mutiny and the Anti-Achievers. Oh, yeah, and she apparently makes a mean paneer and takes commissions for artwork. I’m still working on Aditya to get us a personalized image of the two of us and perhaps the two pups as well.

This weekend a bunch of us “gori bloggers” were featured in an article in the Mid-Day Mumbai. It’s a fun little piece, with lots of different viewpoints featuring some of my favorite bloggers – the questions the editor at Mid-Day asked were pretty thought-provoking for what I thought was a tabloid! I’ve uploaded scanned versions of the article beneath the fold, along with the complete answers I sent in.

Like most popular magazine articles, the editors Sowmya Rajaram and Suparana Thombare had to severely edit my words (and, I’m assuming, the other bloggers) in order to fit everything into the space allotted to them for the feature. But I think they captured my sentiments pretty well, overall.

The other bloggers featured were, from top to bottom:

• The Bad Bhabi –  here’s her post on the Mid-Day article
• A Girl From Foreign
• Gori Rajkumari – here’s her post on the press
• My Indian Love – here’s her post regarding her interview
• By Two Kaapi – here’s her post on the article
• Cyn’s Adventures in India

(click to enlarge)

My answers to the Sowmya’s questions ended up being insanely long, so read at your own risk! I’ve also linked to some relevant older posts for each question.

1) Your blog is wildly popular. What are the questions that readers in similar situations (intercultural relationships) ask most of you? What do you tell them?

The most common sort of question that I receive is about cross-cultural family difficulties – either the couple is trying to figure out the best way to “come clean” about their intercultural relationship to either the Western or the Indian family, or they have told the family and objections to the relationship are flying fast and thick. This doesn’t mean that most Indian families or Western families are prejudiced against intercultural relationships – it’s just that people in that sort of situation are more likely to come seeking advice and end up on my blog or forum.

My advice to these couples almost always boils down to three key points:

1. No (sane) parent wants their child to be unhappy. If parents or other family members are objecting to your relationship, it’s because they truly think that you (or the family as a whole) is better off without this intercultural-ness They’re probably wrong in their beliefs, but their intentions are almost always coming from a good place.
2. Try to figure out why there are objections – or if the family hasn’t been told yet, what sort of objections may arise. And then keep talking to the family about why your intercultural relationship is okay, despite what the family currently believes. Many of these objections arise from simple ignorance or misconceptions about the other culture – that Americans don’t care about family or respect their elders, that India is disease-filled land where everyone always has malaria or typhoid. Each person’s job is to help their family better understand the land their partner comes from – and about the specific values their partner holds too. Be a bridge to better understanding.
3. Remember that you’re an adult, and, ultimately, you’re responsible for your own choices and your own happiness. And the same goes for the rest of your family. I’ve heard about some sad situations where parents have issued an ultimatum: break up or you’re cut off from the family. That’s a horrible position to be placed in, but life doesn’t always give us easy options. I can understand choosing either way, but do recognize that it’s a choice that you’re making – just like it was your parents’ choice to make that ultimatum.

More on initial family issues and Aditya’s advice for intercultural relationships

2) What was the thought behind the blog? Why did you start it? What has the response been like?

I started the blog because my first efforts to find information about Indian culture or intercultural relationships wasn’t very fruitful. There wasn’t much out there on the web, and what did exist was mostly negative. This was very early on in my relationship with Aditya, and it got me both worried and a bit angry. Was my intercultural relationship doomed to fail? And why did all these stories seem to portray India and Indian families in the worst possible light? I knew from my own interactions with Aditya and his family that, while there can be problems and miscommunication, there are plenty of positive things too! So I decided to start blogging to provide a more balanced example of an intercultural relationship – a blog where people can come together to thoughtfully discuss both the ups and downs of being in an intercultural relationship, and work on solving any problems from a positive perspective.

Overall, I feel the response has been very wonderful! I’m very lucky in the thoughtful and dedicated readers and forum members I have. When people come to the blog with questions or problems, well, I’m only one person. I’ll offer my thoughts and advice on an issue, but someone else may have better experience with that problem, and be able to offer better advice. I’m always learning something new about India, intercultural relationships, or just relationships in general from my readers, and I love that.

More on being a “gori” and check out the forums!

3) What has been your most memorable ‘Indian’ experience since you got into this relationship? Why?

Well, I could point to my Hindu wedding in Calcutta – that was certainly a big, fun and very Indian event! But I think the most memorable experience is actually the first time my in-laws came to visit Aditya and me for a few months after we were married. This may seem a bit odd to your readers – after all, it’s pretty normal to have your family for extended visits in India. But for an American, having your in-laws – or any family members – stay with you for months at a time just to visit is very uncommon. American families can be as emotionally close as any Indian families, but we do like to have a bit more distance physically generally! So the experience of having Maa and Baba staying with us was very different, for me. I was a bit uncomfortable at first, since I just wasn’t used to any of it – having chai and biscuits to start the day, Indian food for most meals, coming home from work and finding a loud discussion taking place in Hindi or Bengali… As time went on, I became more comfortable, and now I look forward to their long visits quite a bit.

More on Maa and Baba’s initial visit and a more recent visit.

4) Can you give us a couple of anecdotes about marriage to an Indian man that people may not have read on the blog?

In February, Aditya and I went on our biennial trip to India – we split half our time with family, and half our time traveling around Rajasthan and northern India on our own. Now, my husband, like many Indians, is cricket-mad, so he was quite happy to learn that he could get text updates of the India – South Africa series underway while we were traveling around. See the sights AND follow the game – what more could he want?

Well, we were touring an amazing jewelery museum-cum-store in Agra. And while I’m oohing and ahhing over all pretty baubles, most of which are well over my budget, he takes out his phone, looks at his texts, and starts pacing. Before long, he tells me that we need to go – right now – to the hotel. So I’m pulled reluctantly away to our car – I hadn’t even made it to the second floor yet – and we speed off to the hotel. Once we get there, he tosses his passport at me, tells me to check in, and runs full throttle into the hotel, asking where the television is – because Sachin is at 182 and going strong. After checking in and managing our luggage in the strangely deserted lobby, I go in search of my errant husband.

It was a surreal scene. Aditya is at the bar in front of a big TV, still pacing, joined by five or six of the hotel staff, while the non-Indian hotel guests look on in confusion. The Indians are cursing at Dhoni for hitting sixes and fours while Sachin sits at 198. The hotel manager is sweating. And then Sachin gets his chance, and his 200 and all the Indians in the room are going crazy. And maybe I go a little crazy too. Cricket-fever is catching, after all, and Aditya’s been exposing me to the game for over seven years now.

At least he didn’t drag me out of the Taj Mahal.

More on our latest trip to India.

———————————————————–

My husband calls one of our dogs a lady kutta. He means it lovingly (mostly, anyways… I think), but I hadn’t realized exactly how accurate the descriptor was until I visited India a second time, after we had adopted her from the humane society here in the US. Kajol (our dog, not the actress) is exactly what you would get, both in looks and behavior, if you took a street dog from India, fed it well, and bathed it every once in a while. She is somewhat ill-mannered, responds to Bengali tongue-lashings by looking guilty, but never feels guilty for making a racket in the middle of the night, and delights in knocking over the trash to rummage through scraps. Despite being fed well.

Sometimes I feel bad for giving her the name “Kajol” – it is too dignified for a dog like her, despite the kohl markings around her eyes. “Gobi” was our initial choice, but Maa thought that no dog, however undignified, should be named after a vegetable (even one as tasty as gobi). So she’s Kajol. My undignified little street dog living a life of luxury.

More on Kajol and on Kajol and our second dog, Panda.

5) You have vehemently talked about how much you hate stereotypes on your blog. Still, a woman in a relationship like yours must have to deal with some amount of cultural stereotyping..both in India and abroad. What is that like and how do you deal with it?

I actually don’t mind stereotypes too much – if they come from uninformed strangers. If someone comes up to me and says, “Wow, you’re married to a Hindi person – he, like, prays to every cow he meets, right? That’s so weird!”, then I’ll be annoyed a bit, but I also see it as a teachable moment. Here’s someone who clearly doesn’t know much about Hinduism – I can get angry at his ignorance, or I can try to make it a productive interaction and have him walk away better informed and more respectful about a religion that has one billion adherents. The same thing can happen in India – like it or not, I’m often an ambassador for American culture while in India, since I’m the first American many people have spoken to. I can’t help the stereotypes that strangers have formed about Americans (often from Hollywood movies – which are not representative of American culture), but I can help dispel these stereotypes through both discussion and the way I interact with others day-to-day.

What I do mind is stereotypes that come from people who should know better – people who are in a position to inform themselves about a culture, but don’t. I firmly believe that if you’re married to an Indian, you have a responsibility to go beyond stereotypes in your understanding of Indian culture. The same goes for Indians in relationships with people from other cultures. And, of course, it’s important to remember that even if you’re married to an Indian, you’re only seeing one aspect of Indian culture. India is a diverse place, and it’s filled with lots of different subcultures – just like the US.

More on cultural stereotypes and learning to understand and accept cultural differences.

6) Can you tell us a little bit about yourself… What you do, how long you’ve been married, what your husband does?

I received my masters in economics in 2008 and have since been working as a consultant in energy markets. My work currently focuses on the regulation of pollutants produced by power plants in the United States, but I’ve worked on projects related to India’s energy markets as well. It’s very, very different work from writing a blog on intercultural relationships, but I enjoy the diversity! Aditya recently became the director of product management at a start-up in Silicon Valley, so we just shifted from Washington DC to San Jose, California. I’m originally from the area, and Aditya’s brother moved here from India a few years ago, so it’s been very nice to be near family again. We’ve actually been staying with his brother for the past few weeks while looking for a new house!

Aditya and I have been married for almost four years. We had a civil ceremony in the US, since I’m not religious, and then a Hindu wedding in India a year later, once Aditya’s green card was processed. We have two dogs, but aren’t quite ready for children. We do enjoy spoiling all of our nieces and nephews, though!

More on me and on being an atheist marrying into a Hindu family.

7) Where does Gori Girl go from here? Any plans to move to India? Where does the blog go from here?

We’re both open to the possibility of moving to India. If the right opportunity in India came along for either one of us, we’d certainly move, but right now we’re enjoying our lives and careers here in California. As far as the blog goes, I write when I have the free time – but there’s a lot going on in my life that cuts into writing time! Work, friends, family, and lots of hobbies – Aditya and I love to go backpacking and to travel generally. I’m also working on becoming more fluent in Hindi – learning a language takes up more time than you’d think.

As long as people are still interested in my writing, though, I’ll keep blogging. And if an opportunity comes along to write in another venue, I’d be open to that too.

More on learning Hindi and why I find it difficult.

8 ) Can you give us some tidbits about visiting India, and following some Indian customs… I absolutely loved your post about sindoor… It was witty and sweet at the same time. Some more stuff like that?

I am clumsy when it comes to cloth. I didn’t realize this for the first twenty-odd years of my life, because, really, in the US, unless you sew stuff, you don’t handle cloth (and I am assuredly not the sewing, home-making type; ask my in-laws about my cleaning ability sometime when you need to laugh). In causal California, you grab a pair of jeans, throw on a t-shirt, and you’re done. No thinking for the rest of the day, no worrying about how things drape. But traditional Indian clothes – the sari, the duppatta – Indian clothes are cloth. And my fingers have never needed to know how to pleat or wrap. My shoulders have never had to keep a scarf draping just right across my torso. And, for the love of all that is fashion, I have never, ever, needed to wear something on my head that wasn’t a baseball cap.

That all changed, of course, when I started dating Aditya – and, more specifically, when I started visiting India. In the US I can fit in well enough at an Indian function – as well as a white girl ever will – by wearing a nice pair of jeans (casual California, remember?) and a short or mid-length kurta. In India, I need to wear saris to some functions (like, say, my Bengali wedding), and a duppatta is strongly suggested while wearing salwar kameez, at least in rural areas. Worse, while touring Rajasthani holy sites on our last trip, I felt it was most appropriate (and often required) to use my duppatta has a head covering.

There are not words for how stupid I looked.

Now, I’m sure there are plenty of American women who look excellent wearing a scarf to cover their heads. I know I saw more than a few pulling off the look while I was in India. So it’s not something you must be born to in order to achieve success. But me? I look like someone tossed a duppatta on my head and then I managed to knot it up around my tangled hair while trying unsuccessfully to escape from this evil piece of cloth attempting to suffocate me. Which is, more or less, what occurred at every temple we stopped at. If I could breathe, see, and had 80% of my head covered, I considered it a moral victory, even while it was a fashion tragedy.

After my first visit to India, I promised myself that I would learn how to wear a sari without requiring five people’s help in pleating and pinning. I’ve more or less achieved that goal, although I still need Aditya to do a final straightening check on my pleats. My new goal, after our trip through Rajasthan, is to conquer covering my head with a scarf and not looking like I escaped from somewhere with padded walls.

I’ll let you know when I make any progress.

9) Have you visited India yet? What are your impressions of India and Indian people from everything you’ve seen, read and heard?

Yes, I’ve been to India twice, and spent about a month and a half total in the country. When I first visited India, I was completely overwhelmed. I think that’s a common response from Westerns visiting India for the first time, but I have the benefit of going to visit every couple of years for the rest of my life – I’ve got time to get over my overwhelmed-ness.

I love India. Not because of it’s rich historical heritage, although our trip around Rajasthan was the best traveling experience I’ve ever had. Not because of the food, although I could eat Indian food (from Goan curries to Bengali sweets) every day for the rest of my life and be happy. Nor do I love it for the colorful, spiritual, noisy, dusty, and frankly bewildering atmosphere which it seems all Westerners who love India gush about – although it is true that India has atmosphere in abundance.

No, I love India because it’s what “home” means to my husband. It’s the place where his family – where part of my family – lives. If I wasn’t married to an Indian, India would be an enjoyable place to travel – but there are many enjoyable places to travel in the world. India is special, because India is the place, for better or worse, that I’ve managed to marry myself to.

My most important post on India.

10) How hard was it to get both sets of parents around? Can you tell us a little bit about the early stages of the relationship..what it was like convincing people and adapting to a different culture?

I didn’t have time to address this question, since Aditya and I were moving – we’re thrilled to be back in Silicon Valley. However, I pointed Sowmya to my older post on meeting Aditya’s parents for the first time.

Photo Credit: nickgraywfu

If you’ve never checked out the oktrends blog, you’re in for a treat. The company behind the blog, OKCupid, is an online dating site with a fun vibe and an extremely extensive, mostly young, diverse group of users. Like any other dating site, OKCupid is sitting on a virtual treasure trove of social data – but OKCupid isn’t afraid to use it. The blog’s most recent post focuses on some of the biggest cross-cultural questions out there, in fact, and uses some decent statistics to answer ‘em.

In their own words, with the typical tongue-in-cheek humor of the site:

What is it that makes a culture unique? How are whites, blacks, Asians, or whoever different from everybody else? What tastes, interests, and concepts define an ethnic group? And is there any way to make fun of other races in public and get away with it?

The majority of the post focuses on separating out short phrases and words that show up more often in one (self-identified) racial group’s profiles more than in other racial groups’ profiles. So, for example, sushi is pretty much as likely to show up in a white person’s profile as it is in a black person’s profile – but sashimi shows up in Asian people’s profiles much, much more often than it does in any other racial group’s profiles.

My first three thoughts after reading through the whole article were:

1. Man, Aditya is not going to shut up about the Indian profiles’ average writing level any time soon.
2. No wonder I’m attracted to Asian dudes – Calvin & Hobbes is a statistically distinct “like” for them!
3. Why isn’t cricket in an even bigger font for Indian dudes?

That last refers to, of course, the statistically distinct “likes”/phrases in Indian guys’ profiles. You really aren’t going to be surprised by this list, I suspect:

I’m not going to spoil the whole post for you – go over to oktrends to find out what Indian women (or white women), on average, like, or the best way to tell the difference between black men & white men’s likes, or why you should always laugh at a latio’s jokes. And remember, guys, that it’s all meant with a bit of fun.

NYC Gori Girl Meet-up

Coffee and Yummy Indian Chinese food! I tried to make it an earlier dinner because it seems like most people will be coming from outside of NYC. We’ll make reservations from Starbucks depending on how many people show up!

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

Coffee @ 5:00pm – Starbucks

29th & Park-Park Ave. South
424 Park Avenue South
New York, NY
10016
Dinner @ ~6:00pm – Chinese Mirch
120 Lexington Avenue,
New York, NY

Aditya and I will try to make it up NYC way to say hello to all the folks up there – but no promises right at the moment. And I apologize to everyone for not posting lately – it’s work, work, work or getting out to do some hiking when there’s any free time.

Esther Duflo, a development economist at MIT, recently won the John Bates Clark Medal – which is basically means the economics field is saying “You’re brilliant, doing amazing work, but not quite wrinkly enough to win win the Nobel. Please stick around for 20 more years and Sweden will be calling.”

Duflo’s work is all about figuring out what sort of aid programs work and what don’t, so that our aid efforts end up actually helping the poor – basically, she’s taking development work out of the dark age, “we think using leeches to rebalance the humors will help” era of thinking and into an era where scientifically rigorous experiments will let us know what actually does work. In the video above (from the wonderful TED) she explains the sort of work she does, and the results from some of her studies – for instance, in one experiment in Udaipur, India she was able to figure out a way to increase full child immunization six fold for only pennies per child. It’s a very understandable and clear talk, and I highly encourage you to give it 15 minutes of your time.

Development economics is a field very near and dear to my heart, since I think we all have a duty to help  the absolute poor around the world (but not by giving money to beggars). Moreover, as I’ve written before, it’s critically important to help out in ways that are effective – not just the ways that make us, the donors, feel good. Yes, starting your own charity to help the poor back home (something I see and read about many NRIs doing) makes you feel good (and heck, I’d like to have a charity named after me: the “Jaclyn Chaudhuri Foundation for Malaria”, I’d call it). And, yeah, you’re probably doing some good – but not as much as you could be doing. It’s much better for you to donate your money directly to existing organizations which can leverage your money into their existing – and proven effective – programs. For a list of such programs, both in the US and internationally, I encourage you to visit Givewell.net, an organization which has done all the hard work of figuring out what programs are doing the best job at making real and measured progress at improving people’s lives.