I Want To Thank My Agent, My Moustache…

While you bad boys were up late watching the Academy Awards, we were just starting our day at work. Despite our environs and the fact that Brangelina here means "more curry!", thanks to my low-brow weakness for celebrity news, and having dragged Alex down into the muck, you bet we didn’t forget the Academy Awards!

This was cause for great excitement in the Park-Jermyn household. I mean, we’ve been to some pretty outrageous parties, but when it comes to party planning, nothing can top this in Vellore. Our agenda for the evening was to fill out a ballot, then look up the winners on the web and browse pictures of the red carpet. Naturally, no actual viewing was on the agenda, given our lack of tv. When the hour finally arrived, we made our entrance to the festivities in our most elegant clothes – Alex in his finest tuxedo (on loan from the Sharpie Marker fashion house), and myself in a luxurious one of a kind (pool-) dress. Dang! We was smokin’!

The hosts of the Oscars Day-After party arrive on the Red Carpet.

Cool. The papparazzi couldn't get enough of this black tie ensemble.

To build up to the occasion of printing and filling out ballots, we cooked ourselves up a mighty fine and high class supper. We had paneer (pressed milk curd) cooked with Korean marinade (soy sauce flown in -- I mean trained in -- from Bangalore) followed by Basmati rice pudding. Ain’t Oscar shaped cookies, but Mm-Mm: T-t-tas-tee with a capital T.

After dinner, Alex cleaned up while I started the task of finding and printing Oscar ballots without inadvertently learning the results. We spent a few thoughtful moments making our ex post facto predictions, then the festivities began! The computer was turned on ceremoniously, we settled into our seats as the orchestra played our dial-up fax-screech tune, followed by a star-filled gala evening of oohs and aahs, and periodic barks and shouts at the screen: "You nasty!" "Pregnant or fat?" "Thats hot" "Work it Punjabi MC!" and so on until the mosquitoes started biting and it was time to go to bed.

Breaking News! Dial-up has arrived chez Madam and Mr. Alex


After a long month of questions and broken promises we finally have a dial-up connection at home! Many of you have been hearing our woes regarding this issue. Before coming to India, we assumed that we would have a broadband wireless connection and would be skypeing effortlessly with all of you. Alas not, and we have been clawing, scraping, and almost begging just to get dial-up. This morning as we tried for the 3rd time in 4 days, we heard a dial tone followed by that melodic faxy screech beckoning us to such wonders as nytimes.com and perezhilton.com. Almost screaming with joy, we rejoiced in Britney’s new haircut and were concerned about the delays in the Iraq debate in the senate (I guess some things still take a long time back home too) Anyway, we are online now and still have aspirations to achieve broadband status sometime in March.

View from the hills

Much of our blog has been concerned with the quest for daily needs and the progress of our work, however, we have managed to relax and enjoy the soft side of Vellore. Last weekend we ventured from our home on a hike to a nearby hill top. From the street these hills resemble mountains as their treeless slopes belie any discernable scale but at the same time appear docile with a blend of grass and rock. We followed our instincts and took a road through a small village, through a paddy field and began ascending the hill. We quickly found a trail spotted with cow pies and followed it up until it abruptly stopped. We trudged on hoping to find the trail again but it seemed that the trail resembled more a sporadic goat path than an established route. Regardless, we ascended with some trepidation, slight heat exhaustion, and some doubt that Mr. Alex may not be able to sniff out the goats tracks. Fortunately, after a tough ascent up a large rocky slope, we arrived in a more gentle field with a discernable path and a few curious oxen. After a quick visit with our bovine friends, we reached the summit and took a nice siesta under a tree. The view was quite striking and revealed how little development was occurring on the other side of this mountain. Vellore is quite literally bound by these hills and the opposing side was a simple assemblage of villages and fields. Fortunately, the descent was more manageable and we made it home in 45 minutes. Famished, we tapped into our cheese supply from Bangalore and cooked up some grilled cheeses.


Rustic Posh: Vellore’s leisure life

Amidst the power outages, dung-filled streets, and hairy eggs, there is a peaceful oasis called “Swimming Pool”. A 5 minute walk from our home, this pool is more Tahiti than Vellore, and it offers the quiet which you can’t find anywhere else in this ‘honk your horn’ paradise. Constructed 13 years ago by a local woman, the complex has a large (very clean) pool, surrounded by outbuildings with changing rooms, a small snack bar serving pizza and ice cream, and a work-out room with 1 Guns and Roses CD. Whenever you hear “Paradise City” you know some westerner is in there sweating it out and tapping into his inner self. Surely, they have no one to impress with their well formed biceps. Here, men seduce with their thick black mustaches. Jeeyung and I go there almost every day after work and swim laps. It’s also a good place to meet all of the international doctors here for research or clinical work, a mix of Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Germans, and Americans. I don’t know what we would do without this place. As the temperature is creeping up into the mid 90’s it’s good to know we have somewhere to go. Once it gets into the mid 110’s we might look into some snorkel gear to stay under water full time. * By the way, for those of you who are not familiar, you can leave comments regarding any entry. Just click on the comments link at the end of that blog entry.





How much should I overpay for this watermelon?




Dance by young boy. Choreography by Mr. Alex.






Local Metal Worker. Note, sledgehammers and barefeet are a scary combination.



Our future country house. The hill in the background was our hike.





That's our place in the red circle.







Poolside reading A Year in Provence.

Our oasis and our mountain.

Ah Hah! It's all a ruse...

The chocolate here is all FAKE! I knew I smelled a mustached rat! Everywhere I go, whatever I do, my second brain is looking for chocolate -- eyes darting, sideways glances -- in the stores, on the bus, in the street, under udders. Then -- donkey whispers, an occasional lead, crazed bloodshot eyes!, a rise of excitement, a frenzied chomp into ... fake chocolate, withdrawal seizures, and so on.

The chocolate here is fool's gold. It says chocolate, kind of smells like chocolate, even says chocolate or chocolate cake, but my taste buds don't lie. Last night we learned from our neighbors that the chocolate here, even the bars made by multinationals such as Cadbury (tell me if you know otherwise), has much less or even no cocoa butter; instead some other villainous agent is used for it to hold its form and likely because it's cheaper, and I'm sure the cocoa content is miniscule to boot. I should have known, as the chocolate bars are not all melted into sad puddles as they should be ... if they were really chocolate.

PS - It's okay if you tell us about real chocolate. There will be no jealousy or anything. Our friend Jessica wrote to me about yummy chocolate brought to her by European colleagues at work, and honestly I am happy for her and imagine how good it must taste.

*PPS - This is not a hint for all to send packages of chocolate. It would all melt by the time we receive it, if pork pie customs agents do not open the box and eat it as they did with our neighbors' packages.

It's Getting Hot in Here

Sorry for the lack of images; we will post more soon. But for now, the picture above should show us drenched in sweat.

If tomorrow you were to have a man jump out from a trash can, stick barbed arrowheads underneath your fingernails, and twist them around, all with a menacing look, would you want to know now? I'm not sure what would be better. I think about this often, as I think about the impending (and already uncomfortable) heat. Until recently, the days were hot, but relief would come as the sun went down, and the nights were refreshing, allowing for strolls and comments such as "it can really be beautiful here". However, Monday night, in a rude way, it did not cool down in the evening. Waited and waited, but sleep was uncomfortable that night. The following day was perceptably hotter, and again the night was ominously warm, and so on.

Does it make it better that we've been warned by giddy Indians about the scorching conditions that, believe it or not, haven't even started? Maybe yes -- we can pace our sweat glands -- or maybe no -- we're scared and tortured by their giddy omens, in a really bad way. Despite our ceiling fan and every window open last night, I slept in a film of sweat. I know a mosquito sat on my forehead, cheek and temple while I slept quietly, as I awoke with three bites on my face.

Alex had arranged with our go-to-guys at "Bombay Fridge and Electric" to install a rental A/C unit end of February. I had him call to have it delivered ASAP.

We have officially started thinking in rupees, as we still ride the terrifically crowded public bus to and from work, despite the heat. Our options are the more comfortable door to door $1 auto-rickshaw ride or the 6-cents-a-ride/people hanging off the side/oven on wheels, driven by a mustached menace to society who careens through the crowded streets on both sides, middle, or off the road as he alternates like an organist between several options of billion decible horns (options: disco party whistle, thunderous elephant call, amplified cheap car horn -- other horn options likely present but at frequencies only perceptible to snakes and lizards) to warn people and livestock to run out of the way.

Despite the hot (but not really hot yet!) weather, we went out for a tres romantic Valentine's Day dinner at one of the nicer places in town, Bombay Anad Bhavan. It is an Indian chain around for 100 years. It is simple, something along the lines of a deli with seating. The waiters are barefoot, but it is relatively clean and tidy. We like it because their dishes are small, their menu is well labeled, and as we're still unfamiliar with the names of many foods, we'll order blindly and not be in too much of a bind if we don't like it. Our dinner cost two or three dollars, and we ate with spoons since we were feeling so fancy. Back home, I was surprised with a luxurious dessert of Cadbury chocolate bar (surface whitish and discolored from the heat) and watermelon.

We hope all are well back at home. We hear it's really cold in the northeast. A shout out to all who have sent letters and packages -- you can't begin to imagine how much excitement it brings! Again, thank you thank you.

Happy Vermi Day!

It must be Valentine's Day in the states. I question it, as there are no reminders of it here. I suppose it is nice not to be barraged from every which way with advertisements and promotions. Perhaps I will chew off pieces of banana leaf into the shape of a heart and present it to Mr. Alex.

I may celebrate Vermi Day instead. I don't know what Vermi is, but learned of its existence today. We have two small wastebaskets -- red for inorganic trash (paper, plastic, etc.) and green for organic trash (food, dried lizards...). Every morning the Green Cross, ladies in bright green saris, go door to door to pick up trash. They ride around in bikes hauling large metal bins with red and green compartments, reading "Health is Wealth" and "Wealth from Waste." I never thought about what happened to the trash, but now I know. I received an email, copied below:

Dear Friends,
I am happy to inform you that the Exanoro Green Cross is ready to market several of their byproducts generated from our Solid Waste Disposal Unit, the list of which is enclosed herewith along with the price. They have several interesting products which can be used by your household or in your garden.
If anyone is interested in getting any of the products you may please contact 2268000 or send a note through the ladies who come to collect solid waste from your house. The manure or whatever products ordered will be delivered at your home and you can pay the money to them.
Very often, the problem they face is un-segregated waste which is given to them. I request all residents of all the campus to cooperate and segregate your solid waste before you hand it over to them.

With best wishes, Yours sincerely, Dr.R. Sevalkumar, General Superintendent
Here are some of the products listed:
Egg Shell Powder (100% pure calcium for rose plants and all indoor plants; to be mixed with soil/manure)

Vermi –Casting (best natural manure available; rich in nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium; to be mixed with soil or manure)

Vermi-Compost (50% vermicasting mixed with 50% organic manure) Earth Worms Organic
Manure (organic kitchen and garden waste composted with cowdung)

Manure Mix (Organic Manure + Vermi-Casting + Egg Shell powder + Ash (Cow dung) + Panchakavyam + Cow dung Manure + Citric fruit peels powder; to be used directly for plants; covers all micronutrients and NPK)

Cow Dung –Manure (Pure cow dung slurry collected from bio gas plant {methane free cattle dung} will be stored in drying tank for 6 days)

Bio-Vessel Cleaning Powder (Mixture of Seekakai {25%} + 1st Quality Citric Fruit Peals Powder {35%} + Potassium {35%} + Soap nut {5%}; very safe for hands and environment)

Bio-Toilet, Floor Cleaning Powder (Mixture of Seekakai {20%} + 2st Quality Citric Fruit Peals Powder {40%} + Potassium {35%} + Soap nut {5%}; safe for hands and environment)

Ash

Amirtha Karaisul

Panchakavyam Muligai Poochi Viratti (Bio-pesticide. 1 litre to be diluted with 10 litres of water and sprayed on leaves and stem of plant; has no harmful effects)

Guna Panchalam Vermi-Wash

If you are interested, I will ask if they can export these goods. Does anyone know what Vermi is? In the meantime, Happy Vermi Day to all!

Working in India

A few words about what we’re actually doing here other than setting up food and shelter (…stay tuned for “clothing”). The primary reason for our temporary move is my research project as part of Gastroenterology fellowship. I’m studying treatment for dehydration from diarrhea. Specifically, I’m conducting a clinical trial to establish the efficacy of a variant of the standard (World Health Organization’s) oral rehydration therapy for acute diarrhea in infants and young children.

It’s business for me, very cut and dry, but I have developed the awareness of all gastroenterologists that we’re filed by the masses somewhere between doctor and leper terrain. Leper to our peers -- “ha ha ha colonoscopy” – but champion to the older folk, who look at me with knowing smiles and probing glances when they learn what I do.

The setting is Christian Medical College (CMC) Hospital, founded by an American missionary 100 years ago. They adore her like a deity; her stern face floats in the sky in weird photoshopped pictures of the hospital campus. It is one of the most reputable hospitals in the country for its research and tertiary-level care, offering advanced procedures such as organ transplantation. You would never know it from its physical plant. It is a maze of concrete block buildings without any pretense or fancy finishes –often no finishes whatsoever! The nurses wear white saris and antebellum white paper nurse hats, the open wards with concret floors and iron beds have a retro feel as well. The city has emerged because of the hospital’s existence, and it is situated otherwise in a rural, agricultural area dotted with small villages (thatch-roof, clay huts, no electricity) that provides much of the patient base. However, given its excellent reputation and charitable care, patients flood in from as far as Kolkatta and West Bengal. After traveling sometimes days to get here and often selling their livestock (cliché but common) for cash, they line the floors of the open corridors – sleeping, eating off of banana leaves -- waiting to be seen.

My trial is about to kick off; I hope then things will settle down and I can focus more on clinical work. It’s hard to describe what I’ve been doing on a daily basis, but so far it’s been less intellectual and more sweat equity going into the project. Let me give you an idea. Perhaps I should have known, but I didn’t, that the hospital does not supply diapers for infants. They’re not used here, due to the expense and/or the heat; babies are carried around bottomless and do their business wherever. Even infants with diarrhea – no diapers of any kind provided or used by the hospital. I need them for the study, so I ran around to the purchasing department, the main pharmacy with no leads – they have never bought diapers and knew of no suppliers. I was dumbfounded. No one knew where and how to buy diapers. So I ended up visiting the city pharmacies, where diapers are held in glass cases, to study the options and perhaps purchase through them.

Other misadventures include looking for an infantometer, a simple device used to measure infant length, that I again assumed was a matter of fact item. After visiting countless doctors and nurses in different departments looking for one, asking where I can obtain one, and taking pictures of a Galileo-era prototype, I finally settled on having one made. The options were a group of lepers who are enabled by the hospital to make and sell crafts, or a local carpenter. Purely due to logistics (would have loved to have custom leper-made infantometers) I had a man in a moped from the carpenter’s shop meet me halfway so that he could lead my auto-rickshaw driver through a maze of back-alleys and shacks to the carpenter’s shed, where I haggled for the right price to have infantometers made.

Last scenario – printing and Xeroxing. A heroic feat here, and I urge you all after reading this to take your printers and copiers aside and tell them tenderly how much they mean to you. First step, find a computer that has a USB port that will read your flash drive AND is hooked up to a printer (usually one per department), guarded by the department secretary. Make one copy only; if you need multiple copies, even one more, get it Xeroxed, as it is cheaper for the ink. If the department’s Xerox machine operator is on coffee break, which is a certainty, and despite the copier being in front of you and possessing the skills to use it, go to the hospital library and its Xerox man, have him copy one page at a time (collating? Bah!), wait for him to write a bill in his ledger, take the bill to the cashier to pay in cash and have him write the bill number in his ledger, receive a receipt from him, bring back receipt to Xerox man and have him write the receipt number in his ledger. And voila! You now have 2 sheets of paper!

So at the end of the day, having worked tirelessly, I have to stop myself from thinking in U.S. terms what I’ve accomplished. It is too demoralizing to think that the fruits of my day’s haggling, insisting, pleading, hunting, improvising, could have been accomplished in our Garden of Eden in an hour’s time with a phone call, a few clicks of a mouse, and definitely less sweating.

Alex speaks…

Before our departure, I was given some vague inkling of what help I could offer to the Christian Medical College Hospital. There was talk of expanding to a new campus, but the e-mails I received from the director were so politely circuitous that I thought that maybe he just wanted me to feel like there was a place for me in Vellore. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much, and the thought of helping Jeeyung with her study excited me. Who wouldn’t be excited about weighing dirty diapers?

The reality here is that they are in dire need of expansion. As a private hospital they not only service the local clientele, but even folks from West Bengal (northern province by Bangladesh) will hop on a train to get surgery. Indeed, this is medical tourism Indian style, but unfortunately CMC struggles daily to absorb these patients financially as well as spatially. International medical tourism is also a hot topic at the moment. For months now a CMC committee has been exploring the possibilities for growth, and I have landed somewhere in the middle of this inquiry. Although I possess some general knowledge about hospitals, Jeeyung has been instrumental in imparting details about western medicine. My hope is to execute a comprehensive study of their present and future needs as well as help them work with an Indian planner and architect to realize their project. Weekly, we have presentation meetings before the doctors to outline how the process is developing. Unfortunately, these don’t always go down as smoothly as the local gulab jamon. The doctors are passionate about their work and the history of this missionary hospital. The thought of even relocating some of the specialties to another campus met with vehement cries of, “Man, how will our teams be able to cover multiple campuses?” Inserting “Man” sometimes means “You’re full of shit!” Fortunately, I have not been on the receiving end of these remarks, but I am not sure what they think of the pale white guy in the corner with a sketchbook. Hopefully after several presentations, we can have a more productive dialogue.

On the practical side, they have given me a temporary work station in the department of Engineering. At first, I was really excited imagining this technical panacea with high speed internet and flat screen monitors. After having read The World is Flat, I was conditioned to think that although the physical infrastructure was still developing the IT world was flourishing in India. Well, here’s the reality. Engineering Department get’s dial-up, and out of 25 or so computers only the boss-man gets internet connection. Even when I tried to check my e-mail for business purposes the connection failed, so I walked to the other side of campus just to access the internet. Despite these failings, it is nice to have a place to belong. I am excessively polite because I am a pathetic engineer, and I want them to like me. Perhaps we can learn from each other. They will teach me about forces and I will show them how not to swing a door into a toilet. Design mishaps like this happen all over CMC.

Train station in Bangalore


Chapter 2

Blog? What blog? After a long hiatus -- JP and AJ are back in EFFX y’all!!

There are reasons … many versions, in fact… that we can offer as to why our efforts to post were stymied, but there are plenty of other stories to tell. So cozy up now, furry friends, and I will tell you tales of Mr. Alex (as he is called here) and myself and what we’ve been up to in our new home.

When we left off, you had met Egg Man. If it was not stated, we were thrilled to meet him, as we were somewhat unsure of what to eat those first few days. It’s not as if there’s a scarcity of food, but the kinds of food, their names, the manner in which it’s presented were wholly unfamiliar. More specifically, we were not sure how to ask for what soupy mix from which medieval looking cauldron from which sweaty barefoot guy in a roadside stand, and whether or not we should jump right in with our naïve, antiseptic bellies. In that way, we were glad to see Egg Man. Alex mentioned the chicken hair (feather pieces) on the eggs, which leads us to a general theme in our new existence here: we feel much more in touch with what we eat, being reminded always of the origins of our food.

Egg Man also delivers warm raw chicken to our door, warm not from sitting out from the fridge, but from being recently alive. Soon after Egg Man came Milk Man. Not glass bottles 1950s milk man, but our sweet barefoot snaggle toothed milk man! We’re unsure if he milks them himself, but the cows are milked into a large metal container that he rides around town on his bicycle. He rings our 50 decible buzzer at which point we run outside with our plastic pitcher into which he transfers milk with the metal dipper that they used to drink from the well in “Little House on the Prairie”. Mr. Alex Pasteur was the first to boil our milk and discover how the cream then rises for skimming. We were not so adept the first few times and had our cereal with essentially half and half. Now we are down to something like 8%. With some practice we may achieve 2%.

You may be dismayed to read that we’re still eating cereal, that we’ve not been good Indians and eating idlies off of banana leaves for breakfast as we did our first morning here. As much as we’re trying to assimilate, we continue our dirty cereal habit. But back to our theme, we’ve become painfully aware in the case of cereal as well, that poor corns need to sacrifice their lives to become our beloved corn flakes. Just as our milk tastes more flavorful and the chicken fresher, the flakes do taste very corn-y, and there are occasional hard jaw-breaking corn kernels among the flakes to remind us who died for our food.

But let’s go back to chicken for a moment. One evening, we saw an amazing sight. As we were taking an evening stroll, we passed by a parked moped that started squawking. The moped was loaded with stuff as they often are, but this time it was different. There were about 40 or 50 live chickens gathered in bunches by their legs and attached upside down to every free surface of the moped; we wanted to hug the squawking, undulating, chubby hoola skirt made of chickens were it not for their beaks. After we spent some time marveling at the sight, a mustached man looked at us and giggled, “Chicken Fry!”

Our town is like nothing we’ve ever lived in. Addresses are meaningless, half the people are barefoot, and mopeds dodge livestock and battle with ox-drawn carts for road space. Regarding addresses, I remember laughing so hard when our friend James’ address in Nicaragua, when he was in the Peace Corps, was something like “3 and half blocks East of Texaco gas station” and his friend’s was “Behind Home Plate.” Laugh no more, as we are “Opposite Police Station.” In these early days, most of what we do is an adventure, both a challenge and a joy. Of course there are frustrations, having come from the land of schedules, efficiency to a place where “tomorrow” means “maybe next week”, but we recognize that there are things in this world that may be lovelier.

If you’re interested in the weather (Roland) it’s very dry, which allows for very warm days (high 80s) and cool nights (low 60s). These are our estimates, and this is “winter”. In the morning, many people wear ski hats (the kind that goes down to your neck and your face pokes out) and scarves. This is a bad omen. But we need no omens, as every Indian loves to tell us how sickeningly hot it will get in the “summer” -- March to June. Alex was told today it gets “Hot as hell. I mean H-E-L-L. HELL.” Given that in this town the English is not so good, and we rarely if ever come across rhetorical expressions, this one resonates.

Bangalore
Last weekend, Alex and I went on a mission. Banglaore is the IT/outsourcing center of India = modern amenities = these country bumpkins out = See ya Vellore, hello Bangalore! We was pimpin’ out in the big city wearing our best burlap sacs. The sidewalks weren’t paved with gold, but they was paved.

We knew we were in the right spot when we went to an English language bookstore and rocked out to early 90s hits. “Informer” (Snow) has made a big comeback – we heard it in English and Hindi at several hot venues in the city. Let me qualify “hot”. Our mission was to supply ourselves with relative luxuries we couldn’t find in Vellore – a lamp (anything but bare lightbulbs), a printer, a wooden spoon, dried basil, oregano, pillows that were not hard as rocks. So we ended up spending too much time lurking at the Spencer’s and Nilgiri’s supermarkets and going to various malls.

Alex, being white and male, when you put on India-goggles assumes the appearance of a solid gold effigy of himself spewing diamonds, wads of cash, and various sundry items from every pore and orifice of his body. This was much to his dismay and my amusement, as I would step aside as he got attacked and swarmed by every imaginable vendor, beggar, entertainer, or con man in sight. And apparently persistence is the rule, as when we would wave off another plastic snake seller or bongo drum player, “no” meant “try harder, ” “wiggle the snake in a more sultry fashion,” etc.

Our impression of Bangalore was that of a burgeoning, progressively modern city, approaching what I remember Seoul to be appear in the 1980s. From the areas that we saw, there were some interiors, micro-pockets and cells, but no large swaths, that were indistinguishable from the developed world. We know that this will change rapidly. Already there are fewer mustaches. We found success in Bangalore, if that means lugging a suitcase and a bursting duffle bag full of modern treats on the 4 hour train ride back home.

Earth-Shattering Events That Have Occurred Since Our Last Posting:

Monkey stole bananas from our terrace.

Men from an adjacent construction site were using the side of our building as a urinal. I yelled from the window and told them to stop. They did not understand me, nor apparently what might be objectionable.

Our water ran out today. We called maintenance to refill the tank on our roof.

We hired a cook/maid. She started yesterday. She will come a few evenings a week to prepare our dinners and clean the apartment.

Our neighbor has scorpions. Men stripped the palm tree near their home and said the problem was solved.

Alex has stepped in crap twice this last week. This is not a good start. There are dangers lurking in every corner.

Alex attended his first hospital campus planning meeting. Excited to use the new printer for his document, he realized we didn’t have paper. In a scramble, we parsed together scraps of Jeeyung’s diaper and faecal weight forms and printed. To Alex’s dismay, when the office-helper photocopied the document he did both sides. Fortunately, the doctors got a kick out of talking about feces and construction budgets at the same time.