Katy Dickinson

The Great Railway Bazaar (by Paul Theroux)

I finished one book on the drive home and had to go to Border's for a new book to get me through dinner. I thus interrupted my current naval reading theme with the quick read of a famous and excellent travel book: The Great Railway Bazaar: by train through Asia by Paul Theroux (ISBN-10: 0618658947, originally published in 1975).

My husband and I have a work trip to Bangalore later this month so the description of train travel in India was particularly of interest; however, Theroux's chapters about travelling in Viet Nam in 1973 just before America withdrew were fascinating and sadly in line with current events. Since John and I have a long drive between work and home, I read him funny or specially well written sections of The Great Railway Bazaar. John's favorite passage was:

The romance assocated with the sleeping car derives from its extreme privacy, combining the best features of a cupbord with forward movement. Whatever drama is being enacted in this moving bedroom is heightened by the landscape passing the window: a swell of hills, the surprise of mountains, the loud metal bridge, or the melancholy sight of people standing under yellow lamps. And the notion of travel as a continuous vision, a grand tour's succession of memorable images across a curved earth -- with none of the distorting emptiness of air or sea -- is possible only on a train.

Theroux funded his trip with a series of lectures and seems to have carried a small and superb library along with him. The Great Railway Bazaar is full of quotes and literary references. For example, Theroux includes a long passage then writes: "There is more, and it is all good, but I think I have quoted enough to show that the best description of Calcutta is Todger's corner of London in Chapter IX of Martin Chuzzlewit."

Theroux has strong opinions about people, places, and national character. Here he is writing from Hue, Viet Nam about the local railway stationmaster:

He was certain that Turkey was just over the hill, and the only difficulty he envisaged -- indeed, it seemed characteristic of the South Vietnamese grasp of political geography -- was getting Loc Ninh out of the hands of the Viet Cong and laying tracks through the swamps of Cambodia. His transcontinental railway vision, taking in eight vast countries, had a single snag: evicting the enemy from this small local border town. For the Vietnamese citizen the rest of the world is simple and peaceful; he has the egoism of a sick man, who believes he is the only unlucky sufferer in a healthy world.

The author is no less critical of his own nation, America. In the chapter "The Saigon-Bien Hoa Passenger Train" in Viet Nam he writes of some houses with no drains that he could see from the tracks:

They were appropriate in a country where great roads led nowhere, where planes flew to no purpose, and the government was just another self-serving tyranny. The conventional view was that Americans had been imperialists; but this is an inaccurate jibe. The American mission was purely sententious and military; nowhere was there evidence of the usual municipal preoccupations of a colonizing power -- road-mending, drainage, or permanent buildings.... Planning and maintenance characterize even the briefest and most brutish empire; apart from the institution of a legal system there aren't many more imperial virtues. But Americans weren't pledged to maintain.

Posted at 04:05PM Feb 05, 2007 by katysblog in News & Reviews  | 

2007 SEED Established Staff Term

All 49 of the SEED participants in the 2007 Established Staff Term of the SEED Engineering mentoring program are now matched with mentors.

Seniority

73% of the mentors (36 count) are executives:

14 Vice Presidents (including 1 Fellow)
12 Directors
10 Distinguished Engineers

Since this is an Established Staff term, all participants are Principal level or are even more senior, and all have been with Sun Engineering as regular staff for over 2 years.

Mentors

• 6 SEED Alumni Returning as Mentors (12%)
• 22 Mentors are serving for the 1st time with SEED (45%)
  11 Mentors are in their 2nd time (22%)
  10 Star Mentors are in their 3rd or 4th time (20%)
  6 Superstar Mentors are in their 5th or higher SEED term

Location*

• 31 mentoring pairs are at a distance (63%)
• 18 work in the same area or the same town (37%)

* In the December 2006 SEED quarterly reports, as in prior reports, analysis does not show significant difference in responses to "Q15 Overall Worth of Meetings with Mentor" and "Q24 Overall Satisfaction with Program" between participants At-a-Distance from their mentor and those co-located with their mentor. In this quarter, the difference in reported satisfaction was 5% between the two groups for Q15, 2% for Q24. This is a positive indication that SEED mentoring partnerships are beneficial to participants whether or not the mentoring pair is able to meet in person.

Priority

80% of participants (39 count) were matched with one of their top four priority choices on their Mentor Wish List:
26 with #1 or #2
13 with #3 or #4
10 with someone at #5 or lower in priority

In most SEED terms, 80% or more of participants are matched with one of their top four mentor choices.

Cycle Time

• Matching started on 11 December 2006 and ended 1 February 2007: a 52 day cycle
• Specifically:
  24 November 2006 - 2007 Established Staff Term applications were due
  28 November - 49 participants were selected
  11 December - first 49 invitations to mentors out in email
  14 December - 15 matched (31%)
  18 December - 26 matched (53%)
  25 December - 37 matched (76%)
  1 January 2007 - 37 matched (76%)
  8 January - 44 matched (90%)
  15 January - 47 matched (96%)
  1 February - 49 matched (100%)

Gender

• Gender of Participants
  37 Male, 75%
  12 Female, 25%
• Gender of Mentors
  39 Male, 80%
  10 Female, 20%

  Posted at 11:19AM Feb 05, 2007 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  |