Crash Bang Ow

Yesterday on the way to work, Mr. ATK and I were in our first car accident in India.  On one hand, it’s amazing that it has taken this long. On the other hand, this wasn’t the first accident Bassy the Ambassador was in.  She had been hit by an Indian general in one encounter when we weren’t in the car. The General made sure to repeat the fact that he was a general several times on the phone with Mr. ATK.  He did not pay for the damage to the car. (But it was only scraped paint so it wasn’t a big deal).  The other accident occurred with MamaTK and Best FriendTK in the car.  Bassy hit a motorcycle who turned in front of her.  It was from a stop so no one got hurt.  The car just knocked the motorcycle over and scraped up our license plate a bit.

This time the ATKs were on our way to work when we drove through an uncontrolled T intersection—we were in the part that has the right of way, by the way.  As we were just passing the intersecting road, a car turned right (which is the equivalent to a lefthand turn for us) and hit us in the back right tire.  Luckily, neither car was going very fast, but still there was the big *crunch* resulting in a dented wheel well for us and a cracked headlight and busted bumper for the other driver.

So we pull over and Viki gets out of the car to go confront the other driver.  Mr. ATK is about to get out too, until I reminded him that security briefings tell us to always stay in our car.  You see crowds gather quickly at accidents in India, and even at 7:30 in the morning, ours was no exception.  People pulled over and got out of their cars even—just for a little fender bender.  Folks who were going about their morning business stopped what they were doing and came over.  In our case, since it was really a minor accident and no one was hurt, there was no animus from the crowd, just debates on who was at fault.

Before I get into this any further, let me present Exhibit A—a diagram of the scene of the accident (courtesy of Microsoft Paint).

See? 

I think this shows the whole story. I guess the point of contact may have been up a smidge on our car, but it’s Microsoft Paint. It’s not an exact science.

So, Mr. ATK and I are sitting in the car while Viki the driver is out arguing with the other driver.  He comes back to the car and is like, “She says it’s my fault. She won’t pay.  What do you want to do?”  Now, I cannot think of one example in America where the above situation would play out and the turning driver would not have been at fault*—perhaps if there were a light or stop sign that the non-turning driver ran through.  But this was uncontrolled, so that certainly wasn’t the situation in this case.

Mr. ATK gets out of the car (I stay in, despite the fact that it’s like 100 degrees in the car) and he starts arguing with the lady.  She is all, “I had started my turn when you came through. (If that were the case, I imagine the fronts of our cars would have collided. Not the front of her car with the back/side of ours.)  …More arguing… until finally Mr. ATK calls the Embassy roving patrol to stop by.  So they show up to take pictures at the scene and talk to the folks.  Meanwhile, cars are still trying to drive on the road where this large crowd is gathered.  Hilariously, two different police cars passed the scene but neither stopped. 

In the end the lady who hit us called her brother as she continued to maintain that we were at fault.  I suppose she wanted her brother to come back her up.  I think for a second she was trying to pull the whole, “Well, we were both at fault” thing, but Mr. ATK was unyielding.  He was all, “Nope. You hit us. Not our fault.”  When brother showed up (and he brought their mom too) he was like, “How much do we owe you?” So I guess it didn’t go her way.  

They really were very nice people, though.  They are now doing all sorts of ducking and weaving to get out of paying. Well, she is.  We don't have the brother's contact information.

This reminds me of when horrible person Lynn Marie Eccleston (alias Lynn M. Klug; alias Lynn Rogers) of Baraboo, Wisconsin hit my brand new Ford Focus while it was parked on a residential street in Sun Prairie (driving recklessly, I assume). She did not have insurance and promised to pay and stupidly I trusted her. (She did leave a note. Though in retrospect, I imagine she only did that because people saw her hit my car.) I didn't contact the cops or my insurance (god, I'm an idiot.)  Guess who never paid up the $800 worth of damage she had caused?  Horrible person Lynn Eccleston, that's who. And she strung me along for a long with promises until she stopped returning my calls.  And then I got married and moved to India.

Still I wish I had checked her out on CCAPS before taking anything she said at face value.  Alas, I looked her up too late.

*If you can think of a similar situation where we would have been at fault, feel free to post in the comments. Mr. ATK and I have been trying to come up with some and we've really only come up with two pretty weak  possibilities.

The one where I meet Secretary of State John Kerry and we become best friends

So perhaps you have heard by now, one Mr. John F. Kerry, Secretary of State of the United States of America was in India.  If you haven't heard, you can read about it here, here, and here.

It was a short visit, as many of these often are, but Secretary Kerry took a short break from diplomacy to do a meet and greet with Embassy staff and families.

Last year, when then-Secretary Clinton came, the meet and greet was at 2:00 pm.  This time it was at 8:00 am.  Which means you need to be there and in the room by 7:30 am.  That's pretty early.  So early, in fact, I knew not to even bother to ask Mr. ATK.  But I personally never pass up the chance to meet a Secretary of State, much less one I voted for once upon a time.

After being stuck behind some kids, and well out of handshake range, I might add, at last year's meet and greet with Secretary Clinton, I was determined to get a prime location and a photographed handshake.  So as soon as security gave the all clear I was first in the room and scoped out some primo real estate--right in front of the stage.  I was sure to get a handshake from this spot, I thought.  Heck I could have reached out and shook his hand while he was on the stage.  That's how close I was.

Before the Secretary entered, kids and summer hires (college students working at the embassy over the summer) were pre-grouped because he was going to take a photo with each group.  I considered standing behind the kids, like I did last year, but since I had such prime real estate I thought I would stay put.  After all, I was guaranteed a great handshake photo by one of the many photographers that were around.

Remember this one? Classic ATK.

So anyways, Secretary Kerry enters--after a couple of warnings to "not push" but "calmly shake his hand and move out of the way so the next person can step up and shake his hand." Yes, even a room full of diplomats needs to be told not to push.

Basically, the Secretary greeted us, thanked us for our hard work, and proceeded to become the host of a State Department version of "Kids Say the Darnedest Things."  He asked all the kids to come on the stage with him and he talked some about how his parents were in the Foreign Service and he lived in post-WWII Berlin for a time. Then he started asking the kiddos questions, including:

Kerry (to a kid in the front row): Where are you from, young man?

Kid (one Mr. Zander Burnes): America!

So adorable and it elicited quite the laugh from the crowd! A picture of the interaction made the New York Times' India Ink blog.

Another one that was cute was:

Kerry (to a different kid): How many countries have you lived in?

Kid: Five! Including America!

He addressed the crowd some more, and was very affable and funny.  He thanked everyone for their service and he said something that has really stuck with me.  He said, "We work for peace."  I don't know. I really liked that.  We do work for peace and I am proud to be a part of that.

Anyways, after all that, Secretary Kerry got down to do his photos with the kids and summer hires.  It was handshake time and I was ready!

I think the plan the event organizers came up with was for the Secretary to take pictures with each group and then come down to the front and shake hands and greet folks as he made his way to the door to leave.

But that's not how John F. Kerry rolls. He flipped the script, y'all.  Some say he went rogue.  I prefer to recognize it for what it is--he's a wildcard!

After taking pictures, Secretary Kerry meandered through the crowd shaking hands, taking photos with people, and chatting.  Of course, he was now way behind me.  Everyone who had been in the back was suddenly in the new front row. I think this threw the photographers off as well, because they were down by me.  So they rushed to follow him and take pictures, but he didn't just walk straight through--he was moseying around shaking hands with as many people as he could.

So in the end I did get my handshake, but no picture of it.   Still it was a great experience and I did get a few pictures with Secretary which I will now share with you all.

This is the best picture I have.  It's the one where Ambassador Powell and Secretary Kerry photobombed my picture with my friends.  It's okay though I didn't mind. :)

The arrow is pointing at me. See how mine is the back of the head in front of all others? Primo location.

 

There I am again with the back of the Secretary's head.

There's part of my face with part of someone else's face and the Secretary and Ambassador.

*Author's note: Secretary Kerry and I did not actually become best friends. :(

Ground control to Major Tom

I assume you have all seen the YouTube video of Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut, singing Space Oddity. If you were one of the five people who didn't, here it is:

I like how he changed the lyrics so, you know, Major Tom doesn't die at the end of the song.

Anyways...

So why am I writing about a YouTube video that was popular like 2 months ago? Well, because today I had the pleasure of meeting NASA Administrator Charles Bolden who stopped by the marine house on post for a meet and greet (Administrator Bolden is a retired Marine Crops General as well as a former astronaut.  He was on the mission that put the Hubble telescope into orbit.  Pretty cool, right?)

Anyways, he talked a bit about current NASA initiatives like preventing asteroids from hitting the Earth (which I am all for, given the effect an asteroid hitting Earth likely had on the dinosaurs) and the Curiosity rover's upcoming attempt to scale Mount Sharp on Mars to study the history of the planet and, you know, look for signs of life.  Not like, little dudes running around (though I'm sure they would be thrilled if they found some of those), but just any signs of things like potassium, nitrogen, stuff like that.

Anyways, it was a really interesting conversation.  It's fascinating to hear people who have been to space describe what it's like to be there.  Sunita Williams, an Indian-American astronaut who is incredibly popular here in India, talked a lot about how you can't see borders in space and how easily you can see it's one world.  Administrator Bolden talked about how you see 16 sunrises 16 sunsets in one day and how incredible the burst of light is at sunrise and how dark the darkness is after sunset.  First of all, I didn't know they orbit the Earth every 90 minutes, so the 16 sunrises and sunsets was news to me.  When I was relaying this to Mr. ATK he asked, "How do they sleep?"  We decided they must have bedrooms without windows.

The other thing he said which I found very...moving, I guess, was how from space you can't see people or buildings or anything.  It's similar to what Sunita Williams said I suppose.  He said you don't see the Earth as a little ball, because they don't get far enough away from it, but you can see pretty much the whole thing.  He said when you look at Earth from space there's no sign that humans necessarily live there.  He said you can see linear patterns from far away so roads kind of show indicating some form of intelligent life obviously lives on Earth.  He also talked about how at night you can see the lights from cities, which creates quite the contrast between places like Europe, which is very well lit, and Africa, which is not.  I've seen the pictures of the world at night and you can see that stark distinction between Africa and Europe, or North Korea and South Korea. I think the pictures alone are powerful, but I can't imagine what it would be like to actually look at it firsthand.

See? Isn't this picture of the Iberian peninsula awesome?

It was all very interesting and made me think about how much I liked space as a kid.  I think space is pretty popular with kids in general (surely, I am not the only one who remembers the Punky Brewster episode where she wants to be an astronaut).  Then, of course, you get to high school and college and realize you need to do all sorts of crazy math and advanced science in order to be an astronaut and you switch to something less hard.  Or in my case, less math-y.  Still I can't help but hear all these cool stories and think, "Man I wish I had put more effort into math and science."

Eh, I guess I'll just have to read about all the cool space stuff and hope someone else saves us from any errant asteroids.  I'm not too worried, these NASA boys seem to have this stuff on lock.

Waiting while Administrator Bolden autographs a picture for me. Yeesh, I have terrible posture.

My autographed picture!

 Also, in the Q&A I asked the administrator what he thought about Newt Gingrich's "colonize the moon" announcement during the Republican primary.  He said, "Everyone laughed at him. But I didn't."  Of course, he then went on to explain that if we are going to have humans live somewhere else in the solar system, it's really Mars we should be talking about, not the moon.