Alright so, today, big day. Trying to remember it all.

Got up just before 9, went to tea with Harish and Max. Heard a great family story from Harish (he also told us a great story the other day about meeting Paul Newman), had more delicious tea, biscuits, went down, laundry guy finally appeared! And gouged us on the price. Harish negotiated him down to 80% of what he was charging, but still far above what we expected. I mean, cheap by American standards, but meh. Went over to Rolling Beans, had an omelet and a lime soda, Liz paid for me accidentally, spent a lot of time online, wrote a little bit of my essay. Back across the street, chilled, laid in bed for a long time, got up and ready about 4 for a group photo and the Chinai's swami visiting.

Took a bit for everyone to get there and get going, but the swami was actually really interesting. Swami G, the biggest points I enjoyed included the idea that India got modern technologies, but not modern etiquette: there's so much trash because until 30-50 years ago, EVERYTHING was biodegradable, so when plastics showed up they didn't know how to deal with them properly. It's a good explanation. He also talked about the idea that God is in everything, in nature, in every person, when you consider nature mother, you can't pollute or destroy it. He also related God (religion), Truth (philosophy), and Reality (science). Unfortunately, it being many hours later, I don't necessarily remember all of his other points. Talked about India as a nonviolent culture, the historical stuff of India's science and medicinal plants, thousands of years before anyone else really wrote things down, lots of other things. We had tea, watched the sunset, and were invited to see him speak at 7 at a meditation workshop.

Becky, Swaffy, Allen, John, Brenna and I went, Harish provided taxis. Nice of him. He told us to go straight to the front regardless of what was going on, I told John to take lead, that style is more up his alley than mine. We got up front, thankfully there were seats available, the swami showed up not long after. They started with a chant or song in Hindi or maybe Sanskrit, but most of the preaching was in English, interjected by Sanskrit as he read directly from the book or used a specific word that had a specific meaning. The passage was about meditation and controlling one's mind. The term “monkey mind” was used, I heard it 5 years ago at a meditation workshop at my first PeaceJam, which was cool. Obviously the Krishna and Vishnu religious aspects aren't something I can take away from it, but the points about detachment, not being able to detach from desire until one attaches one's self to something higher, something more peaceful, making meditation a daily habit, not giving up after initial failure, general meditation technique, a lot of it I might be able to use. I probably won't try until I get home, too hectic here, but hopefully I'll remember. They also occasionally sang in between, and there was a song at the end, John said it was remarkably like a Catholic mass in format. We headed out, back in the taxis, John and I swapped stories a bit, and back to Daria Mahal.

From there Becky, John and I went to the winery for dinner. Allen joined us not long after we ordered. I had penne al pesto, it had a pesto/garlic sauce, we split DELICIOUS cheesy garlic bread, as well as a bottle of white wine, South Bay something. They were out of a lot of options, so, that was that. We had dinner, talked about the day, cleared the air on a few issues I think which is good. I had a similar clearing the air talk with Nate the other day, I really appreciate the chance to talk with people about shit on the trip because it hasn't happened often until now and I've been really afraid of offending or starting something big. It was nice. Wine wasn't bad either. Covered that on my card, headed back, waited a bit, now we're at the hookah bar. Last time we had silver fox, a minty thing, today raspberry, it's delicious. Nate, Allen and John are playing cutthroat, Becky and I are just chilling with the hookah on the couches.

Saturday, February 20th, roughly 10:55-11:15 PM local time