Just got back from celebrating my friends birthday at a bar. It is exactly a week and a day after my own birthday. At both parties I got drunk, and talked to a lot of strangers, and made a lot of friends, .but only at this party did I get on to one of the tables and start dancing a 'la the bar scene in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. I was super proud of this for exactly eight seconds, which is how long it took me to realize no one had watched the movie besides me.
This weekend we went out to Mahalbashwar and looked off some giant cliffs in the rain. I guess it's a pretty cool place to be at every time but monsoon season. We got up at 4, hit the road at 5, and got to this weird carnival on top of a plateau. It was even weirder because we got there before it opened, so we walked around, found a cave restaurant, and saw some tiny frogs. We also saw a ton of .wagons, but no horses. After a pretty lousy to forgettable lunch, we headed out to see a cow temple, and a temple cut out of a cliff face. The later was pretty cool, except the girls in our group weren't allowed to see it. Whoops.
Chung and Mao also left to go back to Singapore, which is, as far as I can tell, the most amazing country ever. They have a plan called In2015, where they plan on making the city in to a giant sci-fi channel original movie, complete with bad actors.

In their defense, they also have the worlds first night time city F1 race in September, which is pretty amazing, from the sounds of it.

This weekend, I fell down a mountain, fell down a manhole, was hit by a car, and the condom broke.

Tarek and Sebastian took off this week to go on a hunt for tigers in some jungle this week. Fortunately, we were able to get pictures of us all on our scooters before Chung and Mao leave for Singapore on Tuesday. Wednesday will be quiet, with it just being Bobby, Jan, Shah, the new roommate Aja, and I holding down the fort. Anyway, we totally now have a biker gang. Bad ass.


so bad ass.

On Saturday, a couple roommates, Javad, and I went on a temple tour around Pune. The first stop was Gandhi's house in Pune. We got to see where they laid his ashes. He actually had a pretty kick ass house. Rock on, Gandhi. Okay, it was actually where the British kept Ghandi and various other political prisoners, but it was still pretty sweet. Then we went to the largest temple in Pune. Well, I guess second largest, if you want to count Osho as a temple. Osho is a commune/spiritual resort that I think is some kind of sex cult. I'll have to look in to that. Anyhow, I'm not sure what the name of the temple was, as it doesn't show up on any of my maps, but this place was giant. It climbs up the side of a frickin' mountain/hill. The top of the hill over looks all of Pune, and has a nice park on top. While the rest of the group decided wait around and enjoy the view, Jan and I decided to reach the peak of this hilltain. There really wasn't much as the very peak. Just a communication antenna. On the way down, I decided to play the role of the American Hero, and thought jumping off rocks, camera in hand, was a brilliant idea. I managed to get out of it largely scrape free. Just my arms and legs got a little bloody. This is why one should always carry sanitizer.


so bad ass.

Later that night, we went out to the Hard Rock Cafe (again) to enjoy some over priced beer and celebrate the birthdays of one of the girls who works at the NGOs called Wake Up Pune. The night was fun, and they played a lot of classic rock hits, which caused instant flashbacks of when I rocked the bowl cut and this was all I would listen to. Jr. High. Great times. This was fun for the Americans in the group, and Shah, who for what ever reason, knows every thing about American pop culture of the last forty years. As the night wore down, we decided to go to High Spirits for a change of venue. As we were leaving, all I remember is standing next to Aja, who maybe comes up to my shoulder, and the next moment, coming up to her waist. I some how managed to place my leg down the one open sewer grate that just so happened to be the exact size and shape of my foot. Highlight of the weekend, right there. Then it turns out High Spirits was closed. Even better. Instead, we went to Javad's place to relax while my swamp leg dried off.

Sunday we went to visit the Wake Up Pune NGO. They're an HIV awareness group for Pune, which currently has numbers somewhere between 2 to 12 percent infected with the disease. In the Maharashtra district, sex education is illegal in public schools. That's where Wake Up Pune steps in, and tries to tell people the facts. HIV and AIDS has a pretty strong stigma around it, and even at my work, an urban myth about a kid catching aids from a fruit vendor was sent around. Most people don't want to listen. Today, we inflated condoms. It was one of their general information sessions about HIV/AIDS, about the current situation in India, and about safe sex in general. We inflated the condoms to show why not to use petroleum based lubricants with condoms. We also had a discussion about how risky some activities were/were not. We each got one activity to represent. I got rimming. Google what that is, I dare you. My roommate got water sports, and it wasn't talking about playing Marco Polo in the pool. For what ever reason, we got the two most awkward ones. Go us.

On the ride to dinner, I got hit by a car. I was pulling up next to one of the other inters on my bike when WHAM. Some guy in an SUV side swipes my bike. SUV drivers here are pretty much the same here as they are in the States. Fortunately, my awkward and fragile body absorbed much of the blow. I was actually really lucky, as the blow didn't knock me over, but instead spun me around and dragged me across the side of his car. Son of a bitch had to hit me in less than a week of having my bike back. Luckily, I'm fine, and Bobby (he was riding behind me at the time) was also unharmed during this, and my bike is slightly bent, but other wise fine. At least I scratched the fuck out of his car.

Getting hit by a car really isn't something I had been planning on. I had no idea what to say. After he hit me, he rolls down his window and yells “I honked my horn!”

“You hit me with your car!” I shouted, maybe he was unclear on what happened.

“Didn't you hear my horn?”

“You hit me with your car!” I think this time I was trying to explain to myself what happened.

“Why didn't you move when I honked?”

“You hit me with your car!” I yelled even louder. I couldn't think of what else to say. How could he be missing this one little detail? My mind was wheeling in frustration. He sped through the red light and was gone. For the record, he never honked his horn. Somehow, being hit by a liar made things even worse. Had I been hit by a car full of nuns instead, I think it would have made me slightly less angry.

We then bought Kurtas for “Kurtas and Jeans” day at work on Monday, ate dinner, and smoked a hookah. This was a rough weekend.

P.S.

I lost the lens cap on my camera. BITCH.

First trip to Mumbai and the Dharavi Slums

My shoes are caked in shit, and my short lived modeling carrier has come to an end. At least I got to see Outlandish. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

Last week, on Friday morning, my work required all of us interns to get to work an hour early, and pose for a staged photo shoot. The two giant German interns were the photographers. Because our internship is a bit of a sausage party at the moment, we had to pretend that two of the shorter female Extentia employees were interns. When we got to the office, we were presented with a print out of various stock photos downloaded off the Internet. These were the poses we would be using for the photo shoot. At the end of the day, we had a couple hundred photos of nine awkward interns and two Indian chicks pretending to be interested in a laptop that wasn't even turned on.

On Saturday night, we went to see Outlandish. Outlandish is a band that's pretty popular in Europe, best known for it's cover of the song “Aisha”. It's not really my kind of music. Not at all. But we know someone who works at the Hard Rock Cafe in Pune. Yes, Pune has it's own HRC. It's very similar to every other HRC in the world, in that it's a pretty nice place that sells crazy over priced food to old white people, and this, in turn, makes it far different from any other place Pune.

To get to the Hard Rock, you have to travel about ten minutes from my apartment down the main road, and make a left down an unassuming road sandwiched between a shit field and a house made from scrap metal and a tarp. This goes on for about a quarter mile, and then there's a giant pyramid. Yes, the Hardrock here is a pyramid. I think they got their Indians wrong. It actually turns out that the building is owned by some resort that occupies the space next to the pyramid, and just happens to be leasing out the Pyramid to the Hardrock. For what ever reason, we decided to show up three hours early to the show, incase, you know, there was a run on Outlandish tickets in Pune, India. We got there, and had coffee with our friend at the cabana by the pool. I can't think of anything more out of place in Pune than a cabana with a pool.

With our tickets, we get a four hundred rupee (about 8 American dollar) voucher. This buys exactly one chicken burger and a beer at the hard rock. By comparison, you can order more food in than you can ever possibly eat at any other restaurant in Pune for about half the price. It wasn't even good bear. It was a “Tiger” beer, which is, I'm told, the shitty beer kids drink in Singapore. Unfortunately, this shitty beer and burger was enough to make my stomach stall out. Fortunately, the band showed up about an hour late, so I didn't miss anything, anyways.

Sunday was our trip to Mumbai. We caught the early morning train in to Mumbai. The Pune train station smells like shit, which makes sense, as there is, for whatever reason, a large amount of shit on the tracks. We got the cheapest tickets we could find, which actually weren't as bad as I expected them to be. The seats were made of two benches facing each other in the compartment, and was almost comfortable enough to sleep on. Unfortunately, every three minutes is interrupted by a chai monger shouting “chai chai chai! Chai chai chaiii!”, or if he's daring “Chai chai coffee! Chai chai coffeeee!”. We also got the occasional person selling sweets and other foods, but it was the chai vendors we came to dread. After a quick nap, I started to watch the scenery as it passed by. The doors are kept open, which is pretty merciful, as without it, the temperature would be stifling. This meant that people would hang out the doors to catch the fresh air and cool down, while over the steep drops of the hill stations between Pune and Mumbai. This also meant that I could get some nice photo ops while hanging out of the trains.

We got off at the Mumbai Central train station. The place is huge. If you've seen Slum Dog Millionaire, then you've seen the train station we were at. As soon as we started looking for tickets to Dadar station, a man came up to us, telling us the train doesn't run on Sundays. He offered to introduce us to his friend who would drive us there for a hundred rupees a person. This is a pretty common scam in India. What happens is, the person will either take you to where you want to go at some inflated price, or take you somewhere “better”, usually a store or hotel, for a commission from the company. Sometimes it's just to rob you, where the driver will load you in to the car, put your baggage in the trunk, and before you drive off, his friends will steal your stuff before you drive off, without you knowing.

Of course the trains were running on Sunday, so we just kindly passed on his offer, and bought train tickets for six rupees. The price of train tickets are heavily subsidized by the government, so everyone in Mumbai takes the trains, leading to severe over crowding. It took us two tries to get on to the train. The first one left before we could get shoved on. We then knew where to stand when the second one came, and rode the wave of people that shoved it's way on to the train. Dadar station is fairly close to central Mumbai, and is right next to the Dharavi slums.

Mumbai is a giant city, the largest I've ever been to, and Dharavi is it's largest slum. With about one to two million residents living inside, it was once considered the largest slum in the world. We met a guide at the train station, who offered to show us around for a small sum, part of which supposedly goes to a charity. The guide showed us the growing recycling industry in Dharavi. That's one thing the slum has lots of: garbage. They clean it up and sell it back to the west. This has lead to Dharavi being the slum with the largest domestic product in the world. While the government has officially recognized the slum, it still doesn't have any wide spread plumbing, so shit is everywhere here. You walk in it and see wild dogs eating it. The tour lasted about three hours, normally it's longer, but more stuff is closed on a Sunday.

After we finished up the tour, we bought tickets for later that night to get back to Pune, and explored Mumbai. We caught two cabs to Church Gate for the group, but only after the cab driver took a 'detour' to avoid construction. We had to pay four hundred rupees, and the other cab payed around a thousand. That's Mumbai for you. We got over priced Chinese food, and then went to the boardwalk of Mumbai, which was amazing both for the number of people there, and for the size of the boardwalk itself, which stretched as far as I could see, and everywhere on the wall sat someone. Despite the thousands of people, the beggar kids could still pick the white foreigners out pretty quickly. They were persistent, and we were in a good mood, so we gave them a couple rupees and walked to the Gateway of India and explored some of the markets. Walking to the gate, we walked by the Taj Mahal hotel, which has become a morbid tourist attraction, with many of the windows still boarded up.

For the train ride back, we really had no idea where we were supposed to sit. We ended up sitting in the AC compartment for as long as we could, until we got tossed out. Then we sat in the sleeper compartment until we got tossed out of that as well. Then we just kind of sat around by the doors of the train until a conductor made us pay the difference in fairs. By then we were all exhausted, and in desperate need of water and a shower. The heat of Mumbai is oppressive and overwhelmingly humid. After a rickshaw ride back to the apartment, we passed out for the night.

Update:

Yeah, I know, doing a slum tour is just about the most rich white guy thing to do, but that's kind of what I am. Besides, it was amazing. Also, just remembered, on the ride home, when we passed another train, we saw someone possibly fall to their death after falling out of the open door on the neighboring train.

The People I Work With

Happy fourth of July! Alright, it's a little late for that. But still, hurray America! Happy birthday! On the fourth the other interns and I went out to a club in Pune where they played mostly westerner music. It was fun, there was a guest DJ who played mostly house stuff. I swear America's number one export at this point must be Usher. Over all, it was a lot of fun. I danced like I always do, but now I'm a foreigner and a minority, so I'm allowed to be embarrassing.

Tonight we went to a karaoke bar with my roommates (the other interns) and sung some Bon Jovi with a bunch of strangers. While most of the songs were now remixed with hilariously out of key Indian accents, there was one performer who put us all to shame. I swear, it was the most amazing rendition of 'What's Going On' I've ever heard, and I'm not just writing that because I'm kind of drunk at the moment. Who would have thought that this is what I would find in India.

Oh yeah, life is going swell here in Pune. The roads are a mess. In the states we complain about pot holes in the roads and rude drivers. In Pune, no one can drive above 50 km/h because of the conditions of the roads. Cutting people off is to be expected, and isn't even considered offensive. There are no rules while driving. On that note, I get my scooter tomorrow. Look out Pune! Beep beep!

Work is interesting. It's entirely computer science stuff. No electronics, resistors, or anything. Thank god. I needed a break from that stuff. Now it's all web pages and web servers. Hurray.

My fellow interns, in a I'm-still-drunk nut shell:


Bobby: The other intern from Northeastern University. Pretty cool guy, a journalism major with a graphics design minor. He's designing brochures and iPhone stuff.
Mao: I forget where he's from. China? Singapore? Who knows. He rarely comes out with us, but is really nice to talk to. Very laid back.
Chung: He's on a strict diet/exercise plan. Most lunches he passes his food off to other people. His desk is only a couple feet from my own
Shah: Actually Sahyiid, but he goes by Shah. From Singapore. I think he graduated University already, and does some kind of buisness or Finance stuff for the company.
Jan: One of the Germans, along with Sebastian, Oleg, and Tarek. He also started recently, and sits next to me at work. Well, not actually next to me, as that guy I tried talking to once, as he's already an awkward computer nerd, and not speaking the language doesn't help this. I think that guy's name is Voodoo. I'll have to check on that one.
Sebastian: One of the giant Germans. One of the nicest people I've met here. He's been here a while, and knows his way around. He also seems to know half of the people that live here.
Oleg: The other giant German. He's been here the longest of all of us. He doesn't come out with us, as he has to stay around the office until late at night working on projects and his thesis. I swear I've only seen the guy twice in the past week. The hardest worker. Great guy.
Tarek: Always smiles. I swear. Doesn't matter if he's drunk or not, which is good, because that's fairly often.

And that's the nine Extentia interns. We're apparently getting a girl intern to join us later. This is very big news for us.

Arrival in Pune

Due to constant power outages, here is what I wrote about my arrival in Pune, only a little late.

I've arrived in Pune. I got in at 4:30 this morning, and met a couple of the fellow interns. They gave us a quick tour around where we are living, and let us unpack and try to catch up on some rest. For me, that meant three hours of sleep. Due to the late monsoon this season, there is strict water conservation, so we only get water between 7 and 9 in the morning and at night. I got up at 7:30 to fill up bottles of filtered water and take a shower.

The drive from Mumbai to Pune this morning was something that was absolutely amazing. The plane landed around 11, and I left the airport around midnight. There was a mob scene outside of rickshaw and taxi cab drivers looking for fares. As soon as I stepped out of the airport, my glasses steamed up from the mixture of fresh rain and intense heat that is the monsoon season. The noise is overwhelming. People were shouting and car horns were blaring. We had a ride arranged with us from the company, so the driver was waiting for me when I got there. Bobby had gotten in before I did, and so they were both waiting for me.

When the driver brought the car around (it was a white Tata hatch back, every car we saw last night on the road was either a white Tata, or a white Toyota), we put our bags in to the car, and found no seat belt clips. He assured us they weren't necessary.

We barreled down the Mumbai streets. The first rule of traffic is that everyone has the right of way. Intersections become a game of chicken with on coming traffic. We dived in front of a bus that came inches from crushing our flimsy vehicle. Horn honking becomes a battle cry as we speed ahead of other drivers. It was nothing personal.

The second rule: traffic lanes are optional, and often best ignored, if they're painted on the road at all. When people say they drive on the left in India, they mean to expect traffic on the left, middle, and sometimes right sides of the road, depending. We would dart in and out of incoming traffic, and ride the sides of the street if things got too slow in our lane.

Highways aren't very common in India, and one of the largest in the country stretches between giant Mumbai and little Pune. It is a six lane highway, with drivers often creating their own extra lanes between other cars. There isn't a speed limit, with cars being naturally limited by the hair pin turns on the mountain, and by the vast number of trucks. Each truck was painted brightly green or orange, covered in colorful Hindu symbols. From the bright cabin would blast Indian pop music. These whales of the highway would lumber up the sides of mountains, and bomb down the other. No two trucks had the same horn; each had it's own unique song. The cars would have the familiar low 'brrrrp', while trucks would play 'brooop breeep blooop beeep' and 'tweeet toot toot', or 'bradanana branana'. Each truck would play a different short song with different notes. Even in the middle of the night, the highway never sleeps.