Friday, November 11, 2011

We're Getting Married!

Dear Mumpus and Grumpus Readers,
      Your bloggers are getting married on Sunday and will be in Ecuador for our honeymoon for the next two weeks.  We will return to the US and this blog in December.  Until then, we'll leave you with the story of how we met.  Enjoy!


Everyday, people fall in love in Beijing—rarely, however, are those two people American Jews on their way to IKEA.

It was August 2007, and J.R. Siegel had just returned from a three-month backpacking trip around rural China and Burma and was getting ready to furnish his apartment in a traditional Chinese hutong.  His roommate, Gideon Kalischer, suggested that they take a female friend with them to IKEA to help pick out appropriate decor.  “It was obvious from how dirty this place was that we needed a woman’s touch to make the place livable,” recalls Gideon.  That friend was Allie Lipps, who taught English at the same university in Hebei Province as Gideon the previous year and had just moved into Beijing herself.  

“I had seen the apartment before I met J.R. and noticed he had an old bike rigged for indoor riding taking up most of his bedroom, so I was expecting him to be a little bit odd,” said Allie.  “After their cab picked me up, I remember thinking that he was a little cuter than I was expecting.  The only problem was that Gideon told me he was gay.”

The Beijing IKEA is an amazing place that brings together a melange of people ranging from rich expats to migrant workers who are looking for a nice place to relax and take a nap.  “As we walked around the IKEA, there was never an awkward moment, and I immediately knew that we had something special,” said J.R.

Mr. Siegel decided to ask her to dinner almost immediately.  “I didn’t think that we were on a date until he took me to a really romantic place in a public park, ordered wine and insisted on picking up the check,” said Ms. Lipps.  “Then I began to suspect that Gideon might have been wrong about his sexual orientation.”  

After dating for a few months, Mr. Siegel decided to make a big move and ask Ms. Lipps to celebrate Chinese New Year with him on Koh Lanta, a tropical island in Thailand.  “I knew that Allie had traveled through Southeast Asia before, so I figured that she’d be up for an adventure, and I wanted to make sure that we traveled well together,” said Mr. Siegel

Over a series of candlelit dinners, a snorkeling expedition and an elephant ride, the couple began falling in love.  After four more months in China and witnessing several Olympic events including the finals of men’s water polo, which Mr. Siegel had played at Yale, they decided that they’d had enough of China and returned home to the US.

Following a year in Washington D.C., during which at least one of them was unemployed and squatting in the other’s apartment the entire time, and a brief trip to Israel and Turkey, they decided to move to Boston together.  Mr. Siegel started an international business and energy policy program at The Fletcher School at Tufts University in September 2009, while Ms. Lipps began her Master of Public Health Program at Tufts in January 2010.

Mr. Siegel spent the Summer of 2010 researching the explosive growth of the off-grid solar industry in rural Bangladesh.  “Although I sweated off ten pounds and had a series of wonderful adventures in rural Bangladesh and Dhaka, the trip was missing something because Allie wasn’t there with me,” said Mr. Siegel.  “It was during a meal with an old friend from Australia that I randomly ran into on the streets of Dhaka that I decided to ask Allie to marry me when we met up in India.”  After weeks of searching, Mr. Siegel was able to find a ring thanks to the help of an elderly Bangladeshi couple that took him shopping.

While Mr. Siegel was frantically searching for a ring, Ms. Lipps was in an ashram in Rishikesh, India, practicing yoga and unwinding after a summer spent taking classes and wandering around Boston.  

On their second day together in India, the couple went to the Taj Mahal.  “I decided that I was going to ask her to marry me at the Taj, so once we got there I began looking for someone to take our picture.  I found a backpacker, explained that I wanted to propose to my girlfriend on the count of three, and went back to pose with Allie,” said Mr. Siegel.  “I wasn’t sure why he was talking to this random guy about how to use our point-and-shoot camera for so long,” recalls Ms. Lipps.  When Mr. Siegel dropped to his knee on three, she knew why.

They were supposed to have eight more romantic days together in India; however, two days after the proposal, Allie was the sickest she had ever been with two severe gastrointestinal infections, later diagnosed over a period of several months as Shigella and Giardia.  “Helping her find a bathroom every four hours wasn’t how I had envisioned our romantic vacation, but it was a good indication that I’d always be there for her,” said Mr. Siegel.

On Sunday, November 13th the couple are to be married by Rabbi Jeffrey Summit of Tufts Hillel at the Willowdale Estate in Bradley Palmer State Park, Topsfield, Massachusetts.  The couple is still living in Boston, where Ms. Lipps works as a Project Manager at the Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital and Mr. Siegel works in Marketing for Quiet Logistics.  Since professional commitments are going to limit the couple’s overseas adventures for the foreseeable future, they recently started The Adventures of Mumpus and Grumpus, a multi-media blog that documents their adventures in New England and beyond.  “We’ve learned that the only things we need for a good adventure are a little imagination, something resembling a plan, and each other,” said Mr. Siegel.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Reflections: Life Without Duties in Burma














                         
    During the summer of 2007, I (Grumpus) spent three months backpacking around Asia.  My original plan to travel through Tibet to Mt. Everest base camp fell through when the border into Tibet was closed, so I decided to go to Burma.  The only information I had about the country, as I crossed into the border town of Muse from Yunnan Province, was on a two-inch slip of paper in my pocket onto which a backpacker had scribbled the names of a few guesthouses in Burma.  I had no idea what to expect.  
As soon as I crossed the border I was put to work by the local propaganda machine.  Upon my arrival a General welcomed me to his country in broken English that spewed forth from behind his few remaining teeth as the cameras rolled.   My entrance would be front page news according to the debriefing I got from my cab driver.
Following a black market exchange of US Dollars for Burmese Kyat, I arrived in Lashio.  I deposited my stuff in one of the guesthouses mentioned on my little scrap of paper and headed for the market to get a feel for the town.  The market reminded me of many I'd seen in Southeast Asia—dirt roads, people hawking Chinese-made plastic household items, food stalls and t-shirts.  A man who had watched me from a distance invited me to join him for coffee in his computer shop.  After an hour of chit-chatting in his shop, he conferred with his wife and decided to invite me upstairs to dine with his family.  
Mr. Shein (alias) was a tall, Sikh man whose training as a lawyer was rendered obsolete following the junta’s seizure of power in 1962.  I spent most of dinner talking to his precocious ten year old son who plowed his savings into Harry Potter books, which cost a princely $50 in Yangoon, the capital.
"Why didn't you ride the London Eye when you were in England?" he asked.
"Too expensive," I replied.
"Whatever… So, do you believe in aliens?"
"Yeah, I think that there has to be something else out there."
"Really? I don't."
After dinner, Mr. Smith invited me to the living room so that we could continue our discussion and bring politics, a subject that had been lurking under the protection of innuendo and metaphor, out into the open.

"You know that I can go to jail for talking to you," he began.  With an understanding smile and a nod of recognition that I wouldn't do anything to endanger him or his family, he launched into a lucid critique of his society.   "Without duties there can be no rights; without rights there can be no duties," he began.  "If a man wishes to fix the road in this country, he will not dare to initiate construction nor will he petition the government to fix the problem.  The reason is simple: he has no citizenship rights and is afraid that he will be labeled as subversive to the state if he tries to alter the status quo in any way."
The fear of standing out stifled political life.   "The majority of the population lives in a hand-to-mouth fashion and struggles to survive, so the common man does not have the time to think about the government or democracy—he is squarely focused on his survival.  This is part of the evil of our government," he concluded.
As we sipped from our second glass of imported Whiskey, his thoughts turned to his son, who was sitting with us, listening attentively and contributing as best he could.   "I try to give my son a good education, although it is hard to do in this country," Mr. Shein stated.  In his mind, a good education is composed of three attributes--English, music and golf--all of which have their roots in the British colonial era.

 Mr. Shein proceeded to ask his son to play something on the "piano,"  a Casio keyboard.   As his son played a range of pieces from Mozart to The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, Mr. Shein swelled with pride as his eyes glistened with tears.   He knew that, despite all of his labor and sacrifice, he would not be able to give his son the future he deserves in Myanmar.  That is why he  tells his son to go abroad, to fulfill his promise, to find a better life and to leave his family and country behind. When asked where he wanted his son to go, he responded, "America, because America is the land for dreamers." 



Throughout the rest of my time in Burma and for the following two years, my evening with Mr. Shein was the reason I cited when I told people why I wanted to go to law school.  I wanted to understand how rule of law can be established -- and so easily destroyed.  It was this line of thinking that led me to The Fletcher School.  Yet when I think about my evening with Mr. Shein and my immediate reaction to it now, I'm struck by how much I focused on fitting that experience into a narrative that I'd crafted for myself.  I still believe that the rule of law is vital, but helping countries strengthen their legal and democratic institutions is not my calling.  I've spent enough time in foreign lands to know that, without  a clear understanding of the language, history and culture of the place, the best I can do is offer some helpful advice; the worst I could do is undermine informal institutions that I don't fully understand.  
When I think about Mr. Shein now, two things strike me.  First, I'm amazed that someone put himself and his family in serious danger in order to have me over for dinner.  I wonder what it was about my walk or my face that made him so comfortable with me.  I've experienced this warmth and hospitality from people several times, and to this day I wonder if there is a certain openness to the way I carry myself.  If there is, I hope to keep it. Second, I marvel at how quickly the story became about me.  It was about how having dinner with his family impacted me -- about how the experience helped shaped my desire to work in the rule of law field.  
All of this sounds great, but it rings false.  I took an amazing experience and tried to fit it into a way that I saw the world -- and the role I hoped to play in it.  As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that trying to follow a preordained path that might lead to an end result is the recipe for a hallow existence. 
 Helping to bring about stability and prosperity in Burma through work on rule of law reform would be a great accomplishment, but, for me, I think that living a life in which I'm connected and in tune with my surrounding would be a greater accomplishment for me.  The world is a big, complex, brutal place -- and I think that the first step towards happiness is admitting that we can only make things better my following our passions -- not the passions we wish we had.