Today I did a lot of things I never thought I would do. There were many moments that I found myself pausing, taking a step back, and thinking "is this my life?" and just chuckling to myself.
The day began early; I woke up before my alarm and made a few calls home. I got dressed and went to the buffet breakfast and was very overwhelmed. There were many curry dishes, plenty of things I had no clue about, and a few "American" dishes that looked like nothing I've ever seen before. There were many delicious pastries and fruits, so I settled for those. I was even able to FaceTime with Katie over breakfast!
After breakfast began the start of our meeting. We had about 40 people present, and most of the preparatory work had been outsourced to an Indian company so we had very little logistical things to do. One thing this company did very well was make formal banners and signs for the meeting - and it was so cool to see Clearside in Colombo hanging everywhere. We took our seats and met many of our Indian counterparts, and then settled into the meeting. All the information covered is identical to what is shared in US meetings, but comparing the questions and general behaviors between attendees in the two countries was very interesting. In this meeting, everyone was much more formal, and there questions were much more thorough. I was incredibly impressed with how engaged everyone was.
My role in these meetings is to teach how to the medical procedure, and to do so requires some unique supplies, namely porcine (pig) eye tissue. In the US this is very easy to come by. We have an arrangement with several butchers to remove the eyes when they are butchering pigs for food. In Sri Lanka...not so easy. We had been working to source pig eyes for weeks, and our Indian meeting partners eventually took over and said they would figure out how to acquire them. This gave me great peace of mine. When I arrived and began working with the individuals that had done the actual sourcing, I realized what an extraordinary thing we had asked for. Apparently directors, ministers of heath, and other notable individuals had to give their approval for us to use the eye tissues. In Sri Lanka, both the Muslims and the Buddhists view pigs as unclean and want nothing to do with them. Requesting to bring in so much unusual tissue was quite the request. But one that, after visiting over 30 butchers, they were able to accommodate. The specimens were delivered in this morning, completely frozen, via tuk tuk, a three-wheeled motorcycle taxi type car. As they were unloaded, everyone wanted to get selfies with me to commemorate their strange arrival. I must say, it was quite strange. I have never had biological specimens delivered in such a unique way, and I've certainly never been so blatantly religiously offensive in doing so.
Finding a place to hold the specimens was another challenge because the hotel didn't want them just anywhere, as you can imagine. We agreed that everything would be stored in coolers in my room, and that I would leave the "Do not Disturb" sign on to prevent any chaos should housekeeping open the coolers. I can only imagine trying to explain that one...
During lunch I had a chance to chat with some of the attendees, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to hear what it was like to work in their offices. Because all doctors they work for are specialists for uncommon diseases, it isn't rare for their patients to travel 1000km for a visit. To me, that sound absolutely crazy.
Meetings concluded by early afternoon, which gave me the rest of the day to work on defrosting the pig eyes. In my hotel room. What a strange thing to have to do. I did have a bit of time to walk along the ocean across from my hotel. No beach, per say, but strong waves that beat against a stone wall. There were many street food vendors selling food - mostly dried shrimp looking patties and breads. The weather was extraordinarily hot. I'm not sure on the exact temperature, but it must have been at least in the 90s and as close to 100% humidity as you can get without raining. I was with a coworker for this walk, also another woman with blonde hair, and we certainly stood out walking around both because of our skin color and our height. The city was preparing for a large Buddhist festival, so lanterns and flags and lights were being hung everywhere. As we walked, one if the many stray dogs that were around the area befriended us and walked with us a majority of the way back to the hotel. He didn't touch us, just stayed about a meter or so away the entire walk back.
I prepped for dinner, which involved trying to tame my incredibly frizzy hair and putting back on my blazer, even though it was far to hot and humid to be wearing it. Dinner was at the top floor of the hotel overlooking the ocean - a really beautiful view. Even though we were facing the correct direction to see the sunset over the water, there were far too many clouds to see anything. As we entered the dinner ballroom we were handed delicious chilled mango juice in champagne flutes, and I mingled with some of the meeting attendees. Dinner was suppose to start at 7:30pm, and about 7:45 we were called to our seats, as expected. But, unbeknown to us, we had an hour and half show of Sri Lankan culture and music, including traditional dance and drumming. It was neat to see, and went on for a very, very long time. At one point there was a ritual exorcism dance, with two men dancing around the room wearing large dragon face masks. I am hoping this did some good to "cleanse" my unclean, pig-cursed room. Once dinner was finally served, it was delicious, even though I couldn't tell you what I ate. Lots of versions of curry and rice, though, as is the theme here. We chatted over dinner about Indian culture. The people at my table were mostly new college graduates, some living at home and some not. The one thing we had in common was American television: we talked about Game of Thrones, PS I Love You, and the table favorite: Gilmore girls. This particular show came up when I was asking what they perceived America to be like. None of them had ever been to the states, so they said they imagined it was like the Hollywood movies they watched (oh no....). I told them that where many people lived was no where like New York or LA or the other big popular American cities. This is when one man chimed in and said "oh I know about small town America, I've seen every episode of Gilmore Girls". So there you have it.
Dinner wrapped up close to 11pm, and I retired back to my room to finish processing the pig eyes for the following day. It took longer than expected, and I finally made it to bed close to 1:30am. As soon as I had fallen asleep, I heard a knock on my door. I groggily got up to answer it, and it turned out to be room service dropping of some rice and curry to me. I insisted that this couldn't be meant for me, but was kindly told that there had been no mistake, this was for my room. I didn't put up any fight, instead I took the tray and set it down and went back to bed. Even my (unrequested) midnight snacks are curry here!
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