So what was I doing anyways? Well.. that will make a pretty long and interesting list. I was trying to do too many things at once. To begin with, I was groping like a blind man in a dark room to become comfortable with a foreign language. And for people who have not tried it, let me tell you that it is quite an uphill task to pick up a new language after a certain age.
French... the language which the french people proclaim as the best language in the world. The language where hundreds of words have the same pronounciation and completely different spellings and meanings (ok, "hundreds" might be a bit over, but you get the idea). The language with 14 parts of speech, where the verb changes based on the subject and.. I dont know.. it is too complicated for me to be able to explain it here. Net net, I found myself trying my level best to survive in this place where people only speak french and they make little effort to help you out even if they know some English. And that brings me to the title of this post.... Well.. what the French and Brits and the Portugese did a few hundred years back, we are doing now. Basically moving in to new geographies to try and exploit (mind it, the word "exploit" has no negative connotations in french) the natural and other resources of that land. So does that make us colonial cousins with the others who passed before us? May be yes.. but there is one big difference. During their "rule" in this part of Africa, the French has successfully uprooted the basic culture, style and even language of this region.. so much so that in most parts, the only language the people speak is French!! However, we, on the other hand are making so much effort to "learn" the local language in order to blend in and work WITH these people. We are Indians after all.. we believe in and practice harmonious co-existense.
Ok, so back to what all I have been doing. The second thing was my efforts to try and learn about a business that is completely new to me - cotton ginning. Well, I had no choice other than go on a steep learning curve moutaineering, primarily because I am supposed ot head this business. And what made it worse was that I was to lead a team of dedicated people who have been at this for the past 40 years or more!! And what made it worst is that all of them spoke only 
French!!! However, it seems that I have been able to make reasonable progress on crossing both these obstacles because here I am - blogging - while the work is getting done relatively smoothly, thanks to me being able to get on top of it and learning how to get things done in the proper manner. What else was I doing? Well, here comes the best part... I got married! Hee Hee.. No actually it is not a funny thing to do, but I liked the look on your face when you came to know the diversity of my activities in the past couple of months!!
Just had my wife move in to Cote d'Ivoire and now starts the tiring yet exciting process of moving in into a new house. Well... for the most part, it is my wife who is having to do most of the part while I get to give her some instructions and advise while I am at work! Marriage defintely has a lot of benefits, and as on date I am yet to experience any of the downsides that other married men keep talking about. I think this is the phase which is so lovingly(?) called as "the honeymoon period".
On a different note, actually, I am still not too clear as to what exactly I want to write in this blog... like what should be the overarching theme for this blog. The theme that I had thought of in my earlier post sounds a little uninteresting the more I think about it. I guess I will keep this a free flow of thoughts and see if anything emerges automatically. To put it in an intellectual sort of way.. I will let the blog decide on its own as to what it wants to become! Wow!! That was deep!!!
Hope be a bit more regular on this blog from now on...
The pic was supposedly painstakingly put together by either NASA or Nat Geo and depicts the concentration of light on our planet during the night. Looking at that pic you immediately realise why Africa might also be known as "the dark continent". If I am allowed to be a little "deep" in my writings, then I would use the cliched axiom "knowledge is light" and that would bring to front a different connotation to the term "dark continent". It is amazing how little we know (or cared to know) about this continent!