Change ...

Apart from the infinitely more momentous change happening yesterday, there is also some change in the air in our little world. The big news around here is that it looks like we may very well be moving to India later this year. Yep. Not London, but Mumbai instead. It’s not 100% certain yet, but here’s what’s going on: Ritesh is in the running for a Fulbright research grant, and passed the first, major hurdle a couple of months ago when he was accepted and recommended by the US government side of things. The Fulbright is a bilateral grant, so now the ball is in the court of the Indian government, who are notorious for taking their own sweet time before they let anyone know their decision. As we were getting a little antsy, Ritesh finally called the Fulbright office to inquire about the percentage of recommended candidates that are accepted, and the person in charge of India explained that all candidates are ranked, and that based on Ritesh’s ranking, he’d be very surprised if he didn’t get it. (Way to go, Ritesh!). There’s no guarantee, of course, but it sounds pretty encouraging. The researchers he would be working with in Mumbai are even more optimistic – they think that based on the strength and the relevance of his project, his acceptance is as good as certain - just paperwork, they said. So again, it’s not 100% for sure, but we’re at about 90%, which is enough to start thinking about preparing oneself a little, and actually talk about it, which I’d been a little hesitant to do – I’d hate of course to make a big fuss over nothing.

However, as it happens, Fulbright or not, we are going on a little trip to Mumbai before then, in Feb/March. Ritesh is presenting at the World Conference on Tobacco OR (sic!) Health which is taking place in Mumbai this year, and yours truly is tagging along for the fun (and the paid hotel room, ha). We’re thinking of this as a kind of scouting trip for the longer stay, knock on wood, and hope it’ll help us prepare. This trip comes at a bit of an awkward time for me work wise, so I had to finally fess up and discuss the whole thing with my boss yesterday. This is the same boss who vetoed my transfer to the London office last year, on account of my being a “pillar of the team”, as I’m told by the London office, so needless to say he was not happy about the possibility of me leaving. In fact, that threat loomed so large in his mind that he didn’t really care that I’m off on a 2 week 2 day vacation at the most inopportune time of the year, when everyone’s presence is so required that we’re not really supposed to take any vacation days whatsoever...

The good thing is it’s all out in the open now, and feeling a lot more real as a result. We have booked our tickets, too – we’re flying out together on Feb 25, which is exactly five weeks away from today!

I will definitely blog from Mumbai – I can’t wait to continue with the Everything I Ate theme over there as I imagine the food there to be wildly interesting and worthy of chronicling. Until then, the thing that’s foremost on my mind here is the fact that we’re leaving LA. If you know me at all, you know that I have been wanting to leave (and go back to Europe) for a very long time. But now that leaving is becoming a real possibility, I find myself a little more ambivalent, and almost a little wistful. I’ve spent 14 years of my life in California, so leaving that behind requires some processing. So I’m thinking I’d like to blog about my farewell to LA, as a way to consciously and mindfully let go of our life here as we move on to different pastures. What’s really going to happen, I project, is that I’ll be saying farewell to a lot of my favorite foods and food places (sorry, can’t help it…) – and then we’ll either not leave or be back in a year or something. But enough already, I’m just afraid of jinxing us…:)

I've been puttering around on a new blog I created on wordpress.com, which is a much cooler host than blogger and lets you do tons of nifty things. Still, and I can't really explain why, I just don't like it all that much. I've changed templates there three times, always trying to find something I'm comfortable with, something that feels like mine, but it just hasn't happened. Maybe I'm just used to my super-simple interface here, and the fact that there's so few options you can pretty much blog in your sleep? Whatever it is, I will try and import some posts from the other blog into a new blog here - but I need a title! I've been thinking Farewell to LA, but that's not going to cover Everything I Ate in Mumbai. Daily Mumbai would be ok, but ahem, we're not there yet and what if we don't go. Decisions, decisions.... I could use some input here! Any ideas welcome!