Hokay. So here’s the Earth…

Many people from college know that my senior year roommates and I were huge fans of the End of the World flash video. Thanks to Alexa, we even have t-shirts to prove it. These girls will be glad to know that the theme of that skit has now been incorporated into my real life.

You’ll have to see my previous blog post for the full and cumbersome explanation of my job here, but suffice it to say that my work has gotten a little larger than life recently. I am basically in charge of assessing the strategic direction of a large-scale foundation that is trying to solve all of India’s development problems. They have a lot of vision and momentum and enthusiasm, but not necessarily a clear idea of where they want to go or how to go about getting there. (Which is my job to figure out, with my vast 1.5 years of experience in the development industry.)

This leads to a lot of almost comically high-level discussions about how to do things like “alleviate poverty” and “achieve economic growth”. My boss and I actually started a conversation today with, “Okay, so here’s the world. This is where it is now, and this is where we want it to be. So we need to figure out the steps in between.”

This was said with the utmost of seriousness and business-minded logic.

And yet all I could think of was an animated globe floating across a screen, Swiss army knives being thrust into the Chinese flag, and kangaroos standing in blizzards. (If you don’t get it, watch the video.)

WTF, mate?