Accents

On my first day back in India, a friend remarked that I had a slight accent, which evoked mixed reactions in me. As much as I want to, I can't disown the hint of pride I felt at being foreign-returned and noticeably so. At the same time, I recoil with disdain at people who flaunt their accents as a marker of their perceived superiority.  Many people from a certain part of Mumbai speak with an accent which can best be described as hoity-toity. I have always maintained that it doesn't really matter how little time you've spent abroad--if you want to get an accent, you do. It bothers me that Indians, particularly from my class, put on an exaggerated accent especially while talking to Brits, whom we consider more polished than Americans. I was watching a video of an Indian comedian performing in Britain who was speaking with a strong accent. I checked some of his other videos on youtube, and sure enough, he had a different accent when performing in India.

But, maybe our accents change slightly without us knowing depending  on our audience. On a US trip five years ago, I noticed my friends from India spoke English with an Indian accent with me but effortlessly switched to an American accent when speaking with Americans. After all, when we talk we are mostly talking to someone, so its natural for our tone, inflection and even accent to change depending on the audience. How we speak says a lot about us but it is easy to slide into a mode of judgement, which we need to be watchful for.

Twitter Foil

Yesterday, I wrote about how I am a reluctant tweeter on Twitter, but I spend way too much time on it even so. Just imagine if I was a prolific twitter. I suppose I would go to Twitter every few minutes for that mild burst of validation that every like, retweet and follow gives you. 

My Twitter habit has started to interfere with my work. What makes matters worse it I cannot go off Twitter completely because I need to keep track of what is happening in my research area. My supervisor often tags on Twitter articles she wants me to take note off. I got to know off the past three workshop/conferences that I attended through Twitter.

So I've decided to take recourse to a technological solution to a problem caused by technology. I have installed a plugin that tracks the time I spend on Twitter and is designed to automatically shit down the website after I exceed one hour in a day. I am confident that I will have the self-discipline to not disable the plugin after my hour is up. Eventually, I will have to learn to spend my time on Twitter more judiciously. Twitter has the ability to suck me in by tickling both my  intellectual and gossip-hseeking side, which makes for a lethal combination. Hopefully, this countermeasure will work.

Twitter

Twitter is in an indispensable resource to keep track of academic happenings in my field, so I have no option but to be on it. However, I am an extremely reticent tweeter who usually settles for 'liking' tweets because he feels like a retweet is a significant endorsement that might come back to haunt him when he is famous. The only times I have written tweets of my own is when I thanked workshop/conference organizers. Thank You tweets are probably the most uncontroversial tweets, unless, of course, you miss out on thanking someone. 

My supervisor is an active tweeter, as are many other economists. I have noticed that some graduate students, presumably looking to build a Twitter following, have started adopting the style of more experinced economists in their tweets. I don't mean to be judgmental and can only speak for myself. But I am still at that stage of my academic career when I am stupefied by how little I know. Neither do I have the confidence nor the conviction to express an opinion about a technical topic on Twitter in 280  characters. Maybe that will change as I progress in my career. Or maybe I am too thin-skinned for Twitter. Twitter feuds can flare up in the blink of an eye and get nasty quickly. Even observing  some of them vicariously makes me cringe.

Back to Work

As it turns out, I don't have dengue fever or any of the other nasty tropical diseases. I am fine now, save for a sore throat, which I think is more an allergy than a cold. Now, I have to get on with the business of why I decided to come here for three months.
Tomorrow, I resume work on my PhD. I won't bore you with the details but the decision to come to India for three months rather than one or two was the result of gut instinct rather than planning. It was the amount of time I felt I needed for my research interviews. I haven't done any planning for my interviews, and neither is it clear to me that interviews will be useful for my research. I just felt my research needed interviews, and I wouldn't be satisfied unless I had at least attempted them.
Going with my gut instinct, feeling around in the dark for the right approach, makes me feel like a bonafide researcher. If the research approach is clear, what is the need for research? Most research projects are a leap of faith, and some leaps are more ambitious than others. I will try to remember this when I flounder in my own project.

Sickness Diary

What a way to resume blogging! We got back from a family holiday late last night and I promptly fell sick. I have been under the weather a couple of times over the last year, but never sick-sick. My healthy streak has now ended and I have wounded pride to contend with.
One a positive side, I couldn't have picked a better time to fall sick. We are done with all our travelling and I can afford to take a few days off to recuperate before I begin the Mumbai leg of my research. And, I would much rather fall sick back home in India so that I don't have to deal with the National Health Service in the UK, with its harried doctors and two-week-long GP waiting queues.
 Of course, for me, falling sick in India means I have to deal with some baggage. I have had the dreaded dengue fever twice before, and the second time (in 2016) it was the harbinger of my troubles. Until I was physically healthy, I could get away with ignoring the gathering clouds in my mind. Once my body caved, there was nowhere to hide.
I have resolved my mental issues, and I am confident that sickness won't trigger anything in the top storey. But I was in pretty good shape till yesterday and the fear that the sickness will set me back by weeks or months on the fitness front, is everpresent. On the other hand, I have gone for as long as four years without exercise even though I am a fitness fanatic, due to an unknown health condition which I later realized could have been anxiety. I don't claim to have had a very difficult life, but  when you see challenges you have faced before, you have the confidence that you will be able to put  yourself back again even if they break you.
I also have two tools that I didn't have during challenging times in the past--writing and, once I begin to recover, yoga. I  have a feeling that this illness, however, long or short it is, will be easier than those in the past.

Paper Dreams

Today, I finally submitted my labour of love, the journal article that I  have been working on, intermittently, for the past year and a half. The project started off as something to keep me occupied during the long monsoon of 2017 when I was back home battling my demons. When I was in the pits, working was out of the question, but as I started clambering out, the paper gave me a sense of purpose. And, I was quite proud of my effort, not just because of my frame of mind when I was working on it but also because of the final product. When my supervisor concurred with my opinion of it, I felt proud of myself after a long time. I had done quite well in my master's course in the previous year but as things had started to go pear-shaped up there, I hadn't been able to appreciate my achievements.
Of course, the paper went through subsequent revisions. There were a couple of points where I was quite satisfied by it, but my supervisor kept pushing me to do more. And, it is much better for the extra effort I put in. I also decided to bring my supervisor on board as a co-author, realizing that she had already gone above and beyond what was required of her as a supervisor. I am glad I did because she subsequently rewrote portions of it and made it much better.
The paper is an outline of my early journey as an academic. It was criticized heavily at a workshop last summer, which deflated me. It was praised heavily at a subsequent conference and won a prize at yet another conference (yes, I hawked it to many conferences) which elated me. So, when it drew some sharp criticism right towards the end of the journey, I had matured enough to take it in the right spirit.
Finally, I reached a point where I was sick of it and not open to further suggestions. The formatting and logistical labour took much longer than I had anticipated and there were quite a few moments when I tore my hair out. But, I have finally set it free to seek its fortune in the world of academia. Let us see how it fares.

One Year of Blogging

I missed the one-year anniversary of the revival of my blog, which fell on the 16th of January. Since I am sucker for such anniversaries, I thought it is fitting that I reflect on my year of regular blogging. A couple of things stand out. In the beginning, I had envisaged a strict separation between therapeutic writing and blogging. Over time, I notice I have become more willing to write about stuff that I would have earlier considered too personal. While I am still mindful that anyone could read this blog and avoid writing about specific people, writing is about baring a part of yourself. That is the price to pay if you want your reader's attention. Unless you can come up with brilliant intellectual insights or humour every time you sit down to write, which most of us can't. One gradually becomes more comfortable with baring more. The "baring" could be in the form of details about your life or about how you think, and it is difficult to say which is more revealing.
Another reflection is that I have managed to stay away from meta blogs, or blogs about blogging, for the most part. I  am quite pleased about this. As if we bloggers are not self-involved enough! The only thing worse than navel gazing is navel-navel gazing.
More importantly, blogging has become a firm habit, just like yoga. Earlier, I would keep an eye on the blog view score, but I don't anymore. If I don't blog for more than a day in a row I start to feel restless. Maybe I am addicted, but there are worse addictions to have. All I know is blogging has been a great source of stability through an exciting but difficult period of my life, and I don't plan to stop anytime soon.