Guess who's in Udaipur? Yessir! I have finished my coop, and I'm now traveling around northern India.
But first, let me talk about Thanksgiving in India.
Bobby had the idea of celebrating Thanksgiving day with our boss at their place, so we invited ourselves, our coworkers, and the other interns for a giant feast. We needed to find a Turkey.
Incredibly, there was a lady with a couple birds for sale. Turkeys are nearly impossible to find here in India. It’s either chicken or maybe some mutton. That’s it. But we did find a lady who was offering to sell us a cooked, stuffed bird. I don’t know, maybe she was running some lucrative Thanksgiving gig. Either way, we wanted a 6.5 kg bird. She said she had one.
Our feast was to be a bird, some spaghetti salad, some green salad, apple pie, and potato salad.
Come Thanksgiving day, we get a visit from this mysterious Turkey Lady. She gives us a 4.5 kg bird. What happened to our missing two kilograms, we may never know.
We had two problems: how do we cook this precooked bird, and how do we make up for this missing 2kg?
The first question we posed to the Bird Lady.
“I don’t know, I’m pure veg(etarian).”
For the second, we decided we only had one option: lots and lots of chicken biryani.
We ordered ourselves eight helpings of this delicious biryani and decided to ‘wing it’ with the bird. God I’m lame.
Dinner turned out to be fantastic, and our boss’s wife even cooked some delicious gravy for us. Great success.
As for the biryani, we didn’t end up eating any of it at the dinner, as it turns out, not many people were interested in eating until they felt like they would explode. So while Bobby and I did a good job of clearing out everything in our path, our boss barely touched anything.
We were eating biryani for the next four days.
Since then, I’ve also finished out my last day at work. It was fairly anti climatic. I passed over all my work to Theresa who will be taking over my job. I said a couple good byes, and I left. I’m really bad at goodbyes.
We had a farewell party for Jan, Florian, and I two and a half times. Three people need two and a half going away parties. One involved going out to a club and partying. The other involved dinner at the Beer Garden, the place I had dinner on my first night in India, then some parties afterwards, and the half being drinking at our place until I got sick.
It was sad saying goodbye to everyone. I got used to saying farewell to one person all the time, but when it came time to say goodbye to everyone at once, it was actually kind of sad. Thanks, everyone, it's been incredible living in Pune. All my friends really made it feel like home.
On Friday we boarded a bus to Rajasthan. I got a call from Theresa. It wasn’t a goodbye phone call.
“So Matt, do you have a backup of your site that you’ve been working on? I accidentally uploaded some mistakes to the website, and now I need to restore it.”
And this is the girl my boss takes with him to business meetings in Mumbai. But after she told me this, I realized how good it was to be done with work (and to be done only a week after Thanksgiving, at that). Good luck, Theresa.
Oh yeah, Udaipur is amazing. More on that later.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Never Has a Razor Made Me Homesick Before
First, happy Thanksgiving, everyone, but I'll get back to that in a later post. First, a quick story about last weekend.
“Hey, I know you! You’re Matt from Boston.” She said. I had no idea who she was. All I knew was that she was blond, and from her accent, I guessed she was from Germany.
“Oh, yeah, hey. Yeah, how’s it going?” I decide to try to play this cool. I was in this for the free razor. I was trying to figure out who this person was.
“It’s me, so-and-so, you know, from the club, and Utkarsh’s birthday, you remember, right?”
Right. Of course.
We had just finished up playing paintball, I was sweating balls, and was trying to cool off in the mall next to the paintball field. I had been watching the giant tent set up in the center of the mall passively while eating some waffle with ice cream.
It was a promotion for Gillette, a company based out of the great state of Boston. Looks like Gillette had decided to follow Bobby and I over to India. They had a team of women in short skirts, clear aprons, and a black t shirt shaving guys.
The women working at the tent would have gone unnoticed back home in the US, but here in India, it’s something that is only starting to become common, in a country where PDA is strictly not allowed. But there will still be companies or bars that will ask girls to stand around and look pretty, and hand out samples or maybe make small talk with people at the malls. It’s pretty common to see foreign girls working these gigs, since its easy money and the foreign girls are in short supply. Unfortunately, I’ve never received any similar work offers.
Andreas explained to me the promotion. You go up, sit in a chair, get shaved, answer a couple quick questions, and get a free razor. A free Gillette razor. I was interested.
The razor that I’ve been using (since my electric died out on me months ago) is a simple two blade knock off Gillette that I bought for about fifty cents. It had lasted me a while, but also gave me nasty cuts and fierce stubble whenever I shaved. I knew, then, it was time for me to be shaved. Andreas and Florian volunteered to photograph the occasion.
I had no idea that I would end up being recognized by one of the people working there. It would be awkward enough as is, had I remembered who it was:
“Oh hey Matt, how’s it going?”
“Oh hey so-and-so, I see you’re shaving strangers in a mall while being leered at by strange Indian dudes. How’s life?”
Not knowing who this person was made things only awkward-er. But that’s how it is being an expat in Pune. Every expat seems to know everyone else here. Maybe this is why going away parties are so big here.
Much to my relief and disappointment, I was saved by some boss figure from the awkward moment of being shaved by a stranger that kind of knows me but I have no memory of. He sat me down and had one of the other girls perform the ritual.
I’ve never been shaved by another person before. It was a weird experience. Sharp blades on my neck are not normally something I volunteer for. The girl was also completely inept at giving a shave. C’est la vie, at least I got a free American quality razor out of it, and Andreas got lots of pictures of me looking awkward.
While I was at the mall, I made a conclusion about what I would consider India’s top three most popular Americans.
#1 Obama
Not much of a surprise here. Even when the right calls Obama a socialist, that is hardly an insult in a liberal socialist country. He recently treated the Prime Minister to a fancy dinner at the White House. When I was walking in Kerala, a street vendor asked where I was from. When I told him I was from America, he lit up.
“Ahh! Obama people!” He excitedly told me what a great man Obama was, and that all Obama people love to buy his postcards.
#2 Akon
He’s everywhere. People who never learned a word of English before seem to know all the words to Right Now. Seriously, Akon is everywhere.
#3 The cast of Friends
Okay, so this isn’t one person, but whenever I’m surfing the channels on the TV, I can almost guarantee an episode of Friends will be on somewhere. Every bookstore/DVD shop, from the outlets at the mall to the guy on the street corner will have a boxed set of Friends Season Whatever. It’s like a cult around here. A cult of Friends.
“Hey, I know you! You’re Matt from Boston.” She said. I had no idea who she was. All I knew was that she was blond, and from her accent, I guessed she was from Germany.
“Oh, yeah, hey. Yeah, how’s it going?” I decide to try to play this cool. I was in this for the free razor. I was trying to figure out who this person was.
“It’s me, so-and-so, you know, from the club, and Utkarsh’s birthday, you remember, right?”
Right. Of course.
We had just finished up playing paintball, I was sweating balls, and was trying to cool off in the mall next to the paintball field. I had been watching the giant tent set up in the center of the mall passively while eating some waffle with ice cream.
It was a promotion for Gillette, a company based out of the great state of Boston. Looks like Gillette had decided to follow Bobby and I over to India. They had a team of women in short skirts, clear aprons, and a black t shirt shaving guys.
The women working at the tent would have gone unnoticed back home in the US, but here in India, it’s something that is only starting to become common, in a country where PDA is strictly not allowed. But there will still be companies or bars that will ask girls to stand around and look pretty, and hand out samples or maybe make small talk with people at the malls. It’s pretty common to see foreign girls working these gigs, since its easy money and the foreign girls are in short supply. Unfortunately, I’ve never received any similar work offers.
Andreas explained to me the promotion. You go up, sit in a chair, get shaved, answer a couple quick questions, and get a free razor. A free Gillette razor. I was interested.
The razor that I’ve been using (since my electric died out on me months ago) is a simple two blade knock off Gillette that I bought for about fifty cents. It had lasted me a while, but also gave me nasty cuts and fierce stubble whenever I shaved. I knew, then, it was time for me to be shaved. Andreas and Florian volunteered to photograph the occasion.
I had no idea that I would end up being recognized by one of the people working there. It would be awkward enough as is, had I remembered who it was:
“Oh hey Matt, how’s it going?”
“Oh hey so-and-so, I see you’re shaving strangers in a mall while being leered at by strange Indian dudes. How’s life?”
Not knowing who this person was made things only awkward-er. But that’s how it is being an expat in Pune. Every expat seems to know everyone else here. Maybe this is why going away parties are so big here.
Much to my relief and disappointment, I was saved by some boss figure from the awkward moment of being shaved by a stranger that kind of knows me but I have no memory of. He sat me down and had one of the other girls perform the ritual.
I’ve never been shaved by another person before. It was a weird experience. Sharp blades on my neck are not normally something I volunteer for. The girl was also completely inept at giving a shave. C’est la vie, at least I got a free American quality razor out of it, and Andreas got lots of pictures of me looking awkward.
While I was at the mall, I made a conclusion about what I would consider India’s top three most popular Americans.
#1 Obama
Not much of a surprise here. Even when the right calls Obama a socialist, that is hardly an insult in a liberal socialist country. He recently treated the Prime Minister to a fancy dinner at the White House. When I was walking in Kerala, a street vendor asked where I was from. When I told him I was from America, he lit up.
“Ahh! Obama people!” He excitedly told me what a great man Obama was, and that all Obama people love to buy his postcards.
#2 Akon
He’s everywhere. People who never learned a word of English before seem to know all the words to Right Now. Seriously, Akon is everywhere.
#3 The cast of Friends
Okay, so this isn’t one person, but whenever I’m surfing the channels on the TV, I can almost guarantee an episode of Friends will be on somewhere. Every bookstore/DVD shop, from the outlets at the mall to the guy on the street corner will have a boxed set of Friends Season Whatever. It’s like a cult around here. A cult of Friends.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Seven Days in Fifteen Minutes.
Long week. Long days at work. Long weekends. A lot to say and only fifteen minutes to say it before I have to meet friends for dinner.
So in a nutshell, we dealt with angry guards, worked a lot, and went to Mumbai this weekend. I’m sure I’m forgetting something.
What is now two weekends ago, Jan and I were giving Kara and Amanda a ride home from our apartment sometime around nine. I was let in fine. Jan, on the other hand, got stopped by the guard at the gate. When I came back to see what was going on, the guard wouldn’t stop yelling in Marathi. Despite clearly recognizing that none of us spoke the language, this didn’t stop him from being pissed and loud. I realized what was happening. He was doing the “they don’t understand, so I’ll just talk louder until they get it” approach of translating. Turns out, this doesn’t work. Jan and I figured the guy just wanted us out of there. We hop on our bikes, go around the corner, wait a few minutes, and then give Amanda and Kara a call. They were being locked out of their apartment.
From what I believe, the guard didn’t like the idea of guys showing up with the two Canadians, and giving them a ride home. Why the guard decided to lock the two Canadians out of their apartment, I have no idea. Eventually the landlord and a neighbor were able to set things right, and let the Canadians back in.
I don’t think this will be much of a problem anymore, as this last weekend, we had our farewell party with the Canadians, who are now traveling up around northern India on some kind of amazing adventure before their classes start again in the spring. Yeah, they have a month and a half off from class. What the hell, right? I can’t really complain, I only have two weeks of work left.
We ended up going to Hotel Vulga, god knows why, much like last time we went to Mumbai over night. Much like last time, there was again issues getting rooms for everyone. Even though they were willing to take my learners permit for ID since I forgot my passport, they were giving Utkarsh crap about not having ID on him, despite actually being an Indian citizen. Not having to bring a passport with me whenever I go out of town will be fantastic when I get home.
After we got enough rooms for everyone, we met up with a couple more people from Pune (making about a dozen people total) for dinner at Leopold’s café. I always have the grand idea that Leopold’s, one of the classic foreigner eateries in Mumbai, would be like it was supposed to be in the 80’s, a drug fueled seedy dive where anything might happen. Now it’s just an over priced restaurant next to the Vulga hotel. Lame, but super convenient.
We were still trying to come up with plans for the evening as we finished dinner. First thing first, we decided drinking at the hotel was a great way to start the evening. We just needed to find some beer. After asking a guy on the street for some directions, I found myself walking down a dark, abandoned alley behind some restaurants, smelling of piss and shit. When I reached the end of it, I made a left. Down this second alley was a hole cut in a wall with some guys crowded around it, reeking of alcohol. I buy a couple beers and get back to the hotel in desperate need of a drink.
Amanda, Kara, Udeitha, and I went to the ATM to grab some money. Some guy on the street stops Kara.
“Apparently I work for a club, and I can get you in for free,” he says with a nervous grin.
“What does it mean to apparently work for a club?” Amanda asks.
“I’m gunna be honest with you, we’ve got like, eight more dudes waiting for us, think you can get us all in?” I ask with a grin.
He laughs a confused and disappointed laugh. He tells us that he’ll see what he can do.
The name of the club is Club Redlight, unofficially known as the hardest god damn club to find after having a couple drinks. After a half hour walk back and forth, we find a stairway, a line, and a red light, and figure we must have found the place.
The night went well, and I’ll leave many things unsaid, but I did get to see my first drunk Indian brawl. That was cool.
The next morning, Udeitha and I left early to catch a bus back to Pune. I had to meet my friend Amy who was visiting Sunday from Kerala, where she had been working for two months. Unfortunately, she came during the days of some of the worst weather we’ve had in weeks.
We had fun, and I taught her to ride a scooter without getting arrested by any kind of military or police officer, which was a great success.
Today at lunch the café we ate at gave me two free veg puffs. Great success. And tomorrow is yet another Indian metal concert, and this weekend we go to the beach. Looks like yet another busy week for me.
So in a nutshell, we dealt with angry guards, worked a lot, and went to Mumbai this weekend. I’m sure I’m forgetting something.
What is now two weekends ago, Jan and I were giving Kara and Amanda a ride home from our apartment sometime around nine. I was let in fine. Jan, on the other hand, got stopped by the guard at the gate. When I came back to see what was going on, the guard wouldn’t stop yelling in Marathi. Despite clearly recognizing that none of us spoke the language, this didn’t stop him from being pissed and loud. I realized what was happening. He was doing the “they don’t understand, so I’ll just talk louder until they get it” approach of translating. Turns out, this doesn’t work. Jan and I figured the guy just wanted us out of there. We hop on our bikes, go around the corner, wait a few minutes, and then give Amanda and Kara a call. They were being locked out of their apartment.
From what I believe, the guard didn’t like the idea of guys showing up with the two Canadians, and giving them a ride home. Why the guard decided to lock the two Canadians out of their apartment, I have no idea. Eventually the landlord and a neighbor were able to set things right, and let the Canadians back in.
I don’t think this will be much of a problem anymore, as this last weekend, we had our farewell party with the Canadians, who are now traveling up around northern India on some kind of amazing adventure before their classes start again in the spring. Yeah, they have a month and a half off from class. What the hell, right? I can’t really complain, I only have two weeks of work left.
We ended up going to Hotel Vulga, god knows why, much like last time we went to Mumbai over night. Much like last time, there was again issues getting rooms for everyone. Even though they were willing to take my learners permit for ID since I forgot my passport, they were giving Utkarsh crap about not having ID on him, despite actually being an Indian citizen. Not having to bring a passport with me whenever I go out of town will be fantastic when I get home.
After we got enough rooms for everyone, we met up with a couple more people from Pune (making about a dozen people total) for dinner at Leopold’s café. I always have the grand idea that Leopold’s, one of the classic foreigner eateries in Mumbai, would be like it was supposed to be in the 80’s, a drug fueled seedy dive where anything might happen. Now it’s just an over priced restaurant next to the Vulga hotel. Lame, but super convenient.
We were still trying to come up with plans for the evening as we finished dinner. First thing first, we decided drinking at the hotel was a great way to start the evening. We just needed to find some beer. After asking a guy on the street for some directions, I found myself walking down a dark, abandoned alley behind some restaurants, smelling of piss and shit. When I reached the end of it, I made a left. Down this second alley was a hole cut in a wall with some guys crowded around it, reeking of alcohol. I buy a couple beers and get back to the hotel in desperate need of a drink.
Amanda, Kara, Udeitha, and I went to the ATM to grab some money. Some guy on the street stops Kara.
“Apparently I work for a club, and I can get you in for free,” he says with a nervous grin.
“What does it mean to apparently work for a club?” Amanda asks.
“I’m gunna be honest with you, we’ve got like, eight more dudes waiting for us, think you can get us all in?” I ask with a grin.
He laughs a confused and disappointed laugh. He tells us that he’ll see what he can do.
The name of the club is Club Redlight, unofficially known as the hardest god damn club to find after having a couple drinks. After a half hour walk back and forth, we find a stairway, a line, and a red light, and figure we must have found the place.
The night went well, and I’ll leave many things unsaid, but I did get to see my first drunk Indian brawl. That was cool.
The next morning, Udeitha and I left early to catch a bus back to Pune. I had to meet my friend Amy who was visiting Sunday from Kerala, where she had been working for two months. Unfortunately, she came during the days of some of the worst weather we’ve had in weeks.
We had fun, and I taught her to ride a scooter without getting arrested by any kind of military or police officer, which was a great success.
Today at lunch the café we ate at gave me two free veg puffs. Great success. And tomorrow is yet another Indian metal concert, and this weekend we go to the beach. Looks like yet another busy week for me.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Indian Halloween
Happy belated Halloween, everyone. It’s been a long and exhausting weekend. We didn’t travel anywhere this weekend, but this is certainly one of the longest weekends I can remember. We had to parties this weekend at our apartment, and our floor was still covered in a thin layer of alcohol, filth, and coal this morning, despite my best efforts to clean things up before the maid showed up. Four months in India, and I’m still not used to having servants cleaning up after us.
Friday night started off at the Beer Garden for dinner and drinks with some of our friends. Then it was back to our apartment for a small party that turned in to a ‘bigger than expected’ party, that turned in to a ‘Matt sandwiched between some weird Indian dude who showed up after I went to bed, a drunk Russian girl who smells like vomit, and my downstairs neighbor trying to hook up with the drunk Russian girl who smells like vomit (DRGWSLV for short) all on a far too small pull out couch’ kind of party. I ended up getting about 45 minutes of sleep on the couch, and an extra half hour outside in the surprisingly cold balcony. When I got up, I ended up going out to get breakfast with some friends, to be later joined by the DRGWSLV and the weird guy who shows up at 4 in the morning.
It was a long day. I was very tired, but I had something to look forward to: Halloween. Yes, we were hosting our very own Halloween party in India, and it would be a first Halloween party experience for most of the guests attending. Bobby and I were excited. This party was largely Bobby’s brain child, but we both came up with costumes at the last minute. I made a bed sheet in to a toga, and Bobby went as our former roommate, Tarek (complete with sleeveless t shirt, jean shorts, and a terrible Texas accent).
From what I had been told, in Europe, Halloween isn’t really celebrated by anyone over the age of six, and certainly never by any adults. While they may have been skeptical at first, my German roommates really ended up getting in to the spirit of things, and they pulled off some pretty good costumes. Our Iranian friends also were there for their first Halloween party, and really enjoyed themselves.
Around midnight (which is last call for most places around here), more people flooded in. Soon it became a minority of foreigners wearing costumes at an otherwise normal party. Never the less, it was fun. It was also the last time I would see DRGWSLV before she leaves for the Delhi, and then later, her freezing arctic home. Even weird 4AM guy showed up again, this time around 1 in the morning, and even apologized for being so weird. Apology accepted, 4AM guy.
Friday night started off at the Beer Garden for dinner and drinks with some of our friends. Then it was back to our apartment for a small party that turned in to a ‘bigger than expected’ party, that turned in to a ‘Matt sandwiched between some weird Indian dude who showed up after I went to bed, a drunk Russian girl who smells like vomit, and my downstairs neighbor trying to hook up with the drunk Russian girl who smells like vomit (DRGWSLV for short) all on a far too small pull out couch’ kind of party. I ended up getting about 45 minutes of sleep on the couch, and an extra half hour outside in the surprisingly cold balcony. When I got up, I ended up going out to get breakfast with some friends, to be later joined by the DRGWSLV and the weird guy who shows up at 4 in the morning.
It was a long day. I was very tired, but I had something to look forward to: Halloween. Yes, we were hosting our very own Halloween party in India, and it would be a first Halloween party experience for most of the guests attending. Bobby and I were excited. This party was largely Bobby’s brain child, but we both came up with costumes at the last minute. I made a bed sheet in to a toga, and Bobby went as our former roommate, Tarek (complete with sleeveless t shirt, jean shorts, and a terrible Texas accent).
From what I had been told, in Europe, Halloween isn’t really celebrated by anyone over the age of six, and certainly never by any adults. While they may have been skeptical at first, my German roommates really ended up getting in to the spirit of things, and they pulled off some pretty good costumes. Our Iranian friends also were there for their first Halloween party, and really enjoyed themselves.
Around midnight (which is last call for most places around here), more people flooded in. Soon it became a minority of foreigners wearing costumes at an otherwise normal party. Never the less, it was fun. It was also the last time I would see DRGWSLV before she leaves for the Delhi, and then later, her freezing arctic home. Even weird 4AM guy showed up again, this time around 1 in the morning, and even apologized for being so weird. Apology accepted, 4AM guy.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Red Ls and the begining of the end.
Got pulled over again by the cops on Monday. For god knows whatever reason, they’ve decided that Koregon Park, the tourist central of Pune, home of the famous Osho Ashram, needs constant police security going in to it from North Main Road. They’ve erected barriers to slow down traffic so the police cops can jump in front of the vehicles and force them to stop, or so that they can reach over to grab the keys if the person is on a bike.
I had just finished dropping off our new temporary roommate Sandip at the IT Tower, and was not looking forward to starting the work week. They flag me over, and ask for all the paper work, license, and everything. They stopped me for having a rusty license plate. Clearly, Mondays are my lucky day. It only got better from there; two hundred rupee fine for driving without the mandatory red learner license Ls on my bike.
“Got any paper work for this?” I asked him, wanting a souvenir for my early morning adventure.
“Well, see… You have to go to the… Ahh… Police office and-“ he replied.
“Oh, well, can I at least get something on paper written down?” I wondered.
“Look, let’s just call it one hundred.”
Bargaining with cops in India is one of those experiences that never get written in to the travel guides.
When I got to work, I talked to the HR woman about getting my full license, because while expensive, it would allow me to drive legally on any bike, and I could legally give my friends ride to places. Instead of solving this problem, they decided putting the red Ls on to my bike would solve all my problems. Unfortunately, the office handyman got carried away with the task given to him. My bike is now rocking red Ls on every surface of the bike, including perhaps the largest damn L I’ve ever seen on the back spare wheel on my bike. If I didn’t stand out before, I certainly do now.
I asked him why he wanted to put so many marks on my bike. He shrugged, and grinned at me.
“More Ls, less problems” he laughed.
I've been going to the gym every morning. Normally I run at the treadmill. But first, let me say that we're not supposed to wear non-gym-only shoes while at the gym. Since I only have one pair of shoes, this is a problem for me. I solved this problem by running barefoot at the gym.
A friend of mine back home wears weird shoes. They're shoes that are designed to be more like plastic toe socks than actual shoes.
"It's more natural for your feet to run barefoot. It's good for you." He would tell me. One of the giant blisters on my feet broke open, and one became infected. My friend is a god damn liar (sorry, Hunter).
We’ve also started making plans for our grand trip in December. It’s hard to believe that I’m finally getting to the end of my time here in India. One more month, and I’m done with coop. Then I’m taking a couple weeks to travel the deserts of Rajistan, see the capital, Delhi, and like any good foreigner, spend a day seeing the Taj Mahal, explore the erotic temples of Khajuraho, and finish up my experience of India at the holy city of Varanasi.
Then it’s a train ride back to Mumbai. Then I have to say goodbye to all the amazing people I’ve met on this adventure and to my home for the last six months as I return to the west.
I’m going to need more Ls.
I had just finished dropping off our new temporary roommate Sandip at the IT Tower, and was not looking forward to starting the work week. They flag me over, and ask for all the paper work, license, and everything. They stopped me for having a rusty license plate. Clearly, Mondays are my lucky day. It only got better from there; two hundred rupee fine for driving without the mandatory red learner license Ls on my bike.
“Got any paper work for this?” I asked him, wanting a souvenir for my early morning adventure.
“Well, see… You have to go to the… Ahh… Police office and-“ he replied.
“Oh, well, can I at least get something on paper written down?” I wondered.
“Look, let’s just call it one hundred.”
Bargaining with cops in India is one of those experiences that never get written in to the travel guides.
When I got to work, I talked to the HR woman about getting my full license, because while expensive, it would allow me to drive legally on any bike, and I could legally give my friends ride to places. Instead of solving this problem, they decided putting the red Ls on to my bike would solve all my problems. Unfortunately, the office handyman got carried away with the task given to him. My bike is now rocking red Ls on every surface of the bike, including perhaps the largest damn L I’ve ever seen on the back spare wheel on my bike. If I didn’t stand out before, I certainly do now.
I asked him why he wanted to put so many marks on my bike. He shrugged, and grinned at me.
“More Ls, less problems” he laughed.
I've been going to the gym every morning. Normally I run at the treadmill. But first, let me say that we're not supposed to wear non-gym-only shoes while at the gym. Since I only have one pair of shoes, this is a problem for me. I solved this problem by running barefoot at the gym.
A friend of mine back home wears weird shoes. They're shoes that are designed to be more like plastic toe socks than actual shoes.
"It's more natural for your feet to run barefoot. It's good for you." He would tell me. One of the giant blisters on my feet broke open, and one became infected. My friend is a god damn liar (sorry, Hunter).
We’ve also started making plans for our grand trip in December. It’s hard to believe that I’m finally getting to the end of my time here in India. One more month, and I’m done with coop. Then I’m taking a couple weeks to travel the deserts of Rajistan, see the capital, Delhi, and like any good foreigner, spend a day seeing the Taj Mahal, explore the erotic temples of Khajuraho, and finish up my experience of India at the holy city of Varanasi.
Then it’s a train ride back to Mumbai. Then I have to say goodbye to all the amazing people I’ve met on this adventure and to my home for the last six months as I return to the west.
I’m going to need more Ls.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Four months later, I finally get to see Pune
Nearly four months after getting out of that first taxi ride to Pune, I have finally explored my new city. This weekend, I went to see the many sights around where I live. This includes several old temples and an old fort. That’s what India is all about, temples and forts.
On Saturday I got up early, skipped the gym, and prepared to go out to Parvati Hill with Josef. I hadn’t ever traveled so far south of the city. I checked the map. It looked like an easy drive. Then I got us lost.
Josef and I ended up driving in circles through downtown Pune. Downtown is pretty much what people think of when they think of big Indian cities. Winding narrow roads crowded with people, cows, and rickshaws crawling aimlessly all over the street. If there were dividing traffic lines on the road, no one seemed to notice. I swerved in every direction down streets to avoid on coming traffic. After about twenty minutes of large loops, I finally found a road I recognized, and continued down in what I thought to be a proper direction.
Fortunately, the Parvati Hill was large enough to spot from some distance, and we started driving towards it. When we finally found the temple, got off our bikes, and started to climb, we became celebrities once again. As soon as my camera comes out, people start asking for pictures. Children crowd around and start asking simple question in English.
The temple is about a one hundred step climb to the top. The temple complex is comprised of the main temple, an open air walled temple, a museum, and several smaller temples and offices. Once at the temple, you can pay two rupees and a guard will let you up to the top of the walls of the temple. From up there, the view looks out over all of northern Pune and downtown.
In some kind of architectural cruelty, the temple floors are made of a stone that gets hot in the bright Indian sun, and since it was a temple, after all, the signs posted asked us to take off our shoes. As Josef and I made dashes across the temple walls trying to find places to sit and relieve our feet, the locals looked on with amusement. The views were worth it, it was the most incredible view of the city.
On the way down we sat down in some of the grass to look at the city. We only stayed for a couple minutes as soon smoke started to fill the air. I went to investigate. It was trash burning day in the slums by the temple.
We made our way north to go to the Shaniwar Wada fort, built hundreds of ears ago by the Marathi Empire. What stands today are the walls of the fort, which people can walk around on and look at the gardens that now lay inside. Local residents pay 5 rupee entrance, and foreigners pay 100. I tried telling the ticket sales person that I live in Pune. I showed him my learners permit and everything.
“So you have a voter registration card?” he asked, showing me his.
“Well, no, I don’t but…”
“Then you have to pay 100,” he interrupted. Fair enough, but a lot of actual Indians don’t have voter cards either. Pune had abysmal voter turn out in the last elections. My next task: get a voter registration card.
It’s not that I mind paying 100 rupees, I understand that these monuments take a lot of money to take care of, and 5 rupees a person is not nearly enough. A lot of the other foreigners I’ve talked to have complained that it’s discrimination. I don’t feel this way. This is what it takes to maintain a historic building in a country where a vast number of people live on less than a dollar a day. It is, still, worth it to see the persons reaction to my claims of being Indian. They smile and laugh when I show them my learners permit.
There really isn’t much to see at Shaniwar Wada. You can climb up the walls and look over on to the crowded streets bellow. Over the front gate is the main guard post, and it now guards the fort against the crowd of children and college students playing cricket on the front lawn.
The garden was nice, but there was a large group of children who all wanted me to take their pictures. I still haven’t had this explained to me, why people get so worked up when my camera comes out. After about a dozen photos, and just as many broken promises of just-one-last-picture, I had to break free if I was going to explore the fort at all.
Josef and I did a quick once around, and decided it was time to go home. I’m starting to learn the streets of Pune, a task I figured I would never achieve by the time I left. This left me feeling very proud of myself.
That evening, Bobby, Utkarsh, and I went to a concert. It was a metal band, and Utkarsh knew all the members, called Pitch Black Symphony. They were, I was surprised to admit, pretty good.
The next day I met up with Bobby and Parisa at German Bakery, a local hang out for tourist and expats. Bobby was helping Parisa with the book that she was writing. I had no idea she was writing a book. Who knew?
Parisa joined me at the next stop on my trip, the Pateleshwar cave temples. It’s a temple that’s still in use today, and was first built in the 8th, and was carved out of basalt rock. This is now my new favorite place in Pune. It was a very quiet place, something rare in India.
Sunday night I went to the movies to see Inglorious Bastards (again) with Shiva and Anna. I have already seen it, but it was a slow evening, and the movie was pretty good the first time. I think I liked it even more the second time around. After the movies we met up with a guy from Mumbai that Anna met in Russia. He’s the only Indian I’ve met that speaks fluent Russian. Once again, I was the only person there unable to speak fluently in a second language. I thought it would only be Hindi that I would need to learn while I’m in India.
On Saturday I got up early, skipped the gym, and prepared to go out to Parvati Hill with Josef. I hadn’t ever traveled so far south of the city. I checked the map. It looked like an easy drive. Then I got us lost.
Josef and I ended up driving in circles through downtown Pune. Downtown is pretty much what people think of when they think of big Indian cities. Winding narrow roads crowded with people, cows, and rickshaws crawling aimlessly all over the street. If there were dividing traffic lines on the road, no one seemed to notice. I swerved in every direction down streets to avoid on coming traffic. After about twenty minutes of large loops, I finally found a road I recognized, and continued down in what I thought to be a proper direction.
Fortunately, the Parvati Hill was large enough to spot from some distance, and we started driving towards it. When we finally found the temple, got off our bikes, and started to climb, we became celebrities once again. As soon as my camera comes out, people start asking for pictures. Children crowd around and start asking simple question in English.
The temple is about a one hundred step climb to the top. The temple complex is comprised of the main temple, an open air walled temple, a museum, and several smaller temples and offices. Once at the temple, you can pay two rupees and a guard will let you up to the top of the walls of the temple. From up there, the view looks out over all of northern Pune and downtown.
In some kind of architectural cruelty, the temple floors are made of a stone that gets hot in the bright Indian sun, and since it was a temple, after all, the signs posted asked us to take off our shoes. As Josef and I made dashes across the temple walls trying to find places to sit and relieve our feet, the locals looked on with amusement. The views were worth it, it was the most incredible view of the city.
On the way down we sat down in some of the grass to look at the city. We only stayed for a couple minutes as soon smoke started to fill the air. I went to investigate. It was trash burning day in the slums by the temple.
We made our way north to go to the Shaniwar Wada fort, built hundreds of ears ago by the Marathi Empire. What stands today are the walls of the fort, which people can walk around on and look at the gardens that now lay inside. Local residents pay 5 rupee entrance, and foreigners pay 100. I tried telling the ticket sales person that I live in Pune. I showed him my learners permit and everything.
“So you have a voter registration card?” he asked, showing me his.
“Well, no, I don’t but…”
“Then you have to pay 100,” he interrupted. Fair enough, but a lot of actual Indians don’t have voter cards either. Pune had abysmal voter turn out in the last elections. My next task: get a voter registration card.
It’s not that I mind paying 100 rupees, I understand that these monuments take a lot of money to take care of, and 5 rupees a person is not nearly enough. A lot of the other foreigners I’ve talked to have complained that it’s discrimination. I don’t feel this way. This is what it takes to maintain a historic building in a country where a vast number of people live on less than a dollar a day. It is, still, worth it to see the persons reaction to my claims of being Indian. They smile and laugh when I show them my learners permit.
There really isn’t much to see at Shaniwar Wada. You can climb up the walls and look over on to the crowded streets bellow. Over the front gate is the main guard post, and it now guards the fort against the crowd of children and college students playing cricket on the front lawn.
The garden was nice, but there was a large group of children who all wanted me to take their pictures. I still haven’t had this explained to me, why people get so worked up when my camera comes out. After about a dozen photos, and just as many broken promises of just-one-last-picture, I had to break free if I was going to explore the fort at all.
Josef and I did a quick once around, and decided it was time to go home. I’m starting to learn the streets of Pune, a task I figured I would never achieve by the time I left. This left me feeling very proud of myself.
That evening, Bobby, Utkarsh, and I went to a concert. It was a metal band, and Utkarsh knew all the members, called Pitch Black Symphony. They were, I was surprised to admit, pretty good.
The next day I met up with Bobby and Parisa at German Bakery, a local hang out for tourist and expats. Bobby was helping Parisa with the book that she was writing. I had no idea she was writing a book. Who knew?
Parisa joined me at the next stop on my trip, the Pateleshwar cave temples. It’s a temple that’s still in use today, and was first built in the 8th, and was carved out of basalt rock. This is now my new favorite place in Pune. It was a very quiet place, something rare in India.
Sunday night I went to the movies to see Inglorious Bastards (again) with Shiva and Anna. I have already seen it, but it was a slow evening, and the movie was pretty good the first time. I think I liked it even more the second time around. After the movies we met up with a guy from Mumbai that Anna met in Russia. He’s the only Indian I’ve met that speaks fluent Russian. Once again, I was the only person there unable to speak fluently in a second language. I thought it would only be Hindi that I would need to learn while I’m in India.
Friday, October 23, 2009
I'm Predicting Clear Skies in 2036
Last night I looked out the window and as fireworks once again went off all over the city. Diwali is over and finished, but the celebrations last night were political. India has had it’s major state elections and the INC (Indian National Congress) pulled out a huge lead in Maharashtra and two other states (Haryana and A.P.). This gives the INC a huge advantage over the other political parties in India, particularly the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), who are the previous majority party in Maharashtra. Considering the low voting turn out, people are pretty excited in the streets.
Last night I grabbed dinner with some friends from the university. While dinner alone was fantastic, I truly enjoyed finding out that one of them was actually reading my blog. Even more incredibly, I received a compliment on it. I was starting to believe that my blog was being read regularly by ex girlfriends and the occasional worried friend back home, but no, it’s far bigger than that. Great success! On the way home from dinner, Jan’s horn stopped beeping loudly, so I started shouting compliments at other drivers to compensate (Is that a new haircut? It looks fantastic!).
The criticism of my friend was that my blog complains too much about technology and how it always breaks while I’m in India. Today I will reverse this trend. Today, my bike is fixed. The USS Constitution rides again!
The next morning, in Goa, we ate breakfast at the place across the street from where we stayed. On the front of the Times of India we read about some explosions where we got off the bus in Magao. Two men on scooters carrying the explosives caused the explosions. It’s unclear what they were planning on blowing up, but apparently they got stuck in afternoon traffic with ticking time bombs.
We took a long taxi ride to the next beach up to the north, Palolem. We said farewell to our Canadian guest, Aisha. We found a reasonably nice hotel owned by the shortest and angriest hotel owner in Goa. We decided to spend as much time out of this hotel as possible. On the plus side, it did have a place for me to hang up laundry.
The beaches were gorgeous, and in the modern style of having lots of bars and clubs all along the beach. This early in the season, crowds weren’t a problem. The water was nice, and in the early afternoon, we decided to check out a near by island.
The island was connected by a small land bridge, and we only had to wade through a little bit of water to get there. The island was home to hundreds of crabs crawling over all the rocks. Even the sand had small crabs pushing around even small balls of sand around their home. I had read an article about these crabs, by chance, once. They push the small balls of sand around in geometric shapes, but no one really knows why they do it. When the tide comes in, it always washes away their hard work. Weird ass crabs.
Josef, Andreas and I swam out to a small rock island in the middle of the ocean. The swim wasn’t that bad, but at first I thought it was just a very rough rock in the middle of the ocean. Turns out, it was completely alive. Every inch of the rock was covered in barnacles, coral, or weird sponges that squirt water when you touch them.
In the middle of one of our mud fights on the beach, two guys walked up to us and said hi. I realized that it was the French guys that we haven’t spoken to in months, and here they were, in Goa. We ended up just hanging out for most of the afternoon. Then we split up, with me going off alone to photograph the sunset on the other side of the island that we went to earlier.
The land bridge was covered in water, but I could see children playing in the shallow water. Half way across, the water came up to my knee. I was nearly across. Then one last step, and whoosh, the water rises to my chest.
“Damn it! My camera!” I thought to myself, quickly lifting my camera above my head. “Damn it! My cell phone!” I thought, pulling my cell phone from my now entirely submerged pocket. While my camera lives on for another day of capturing anticlimactic sunsets, my cell phone has gone to it’s water grave.
By the time I got to the shore, the sun had almost set. I had to dash over rocks that were covered by angry crabs bent on preventing me from getting some kind of benefit from making it all the way out to the end of the island. I did manage to get a couple more photos, but I noticed that the water was still rising. In a couple minutes, I would have no way back to the beach.
I dashed to the shore, stripped down to my boxers, hoisted everything over my head, and waded across, and dressed in the darkness. I needed a drink. At the bar where my friends where I ended up talking to a British cop. This is where we celebrated Bobby’s birthday. We now think that this may have actually been a gay bar.
We didn’t realize it at the time. When the guy insisted on dancing with Bobby because it was his birthday, we thought he was just being friendly. When those Australian girls left together, I thought they were just going to get a good night sleep. Then I saw the sign for the bar, hidden behind a palm tree. “Cocktails and dreams” it was called. The picture was of three dudes in hot pants. Sorry Bobby. My bad.
The next morning we went up to the north to meet up with Anna and the rest of the friends from Pune. They spent the whole weekend at this one amazing beach that they found. It was secluded, and there were amazing waves. The sand under the water formed deep valleys and shallow islands, so as the waves rolled in, they would reflect off this sand, creating places where the waves would come from both directions, to and from shore. For a physics major, this was pretty noteworthy. It got a solid “huh, look at that” out of me.
That night, we took Bobby out for dinner. We went to some restaurant where we met the owner. We hung around with him, and he was pretty cool. He took us to some bars that were open all night. The last bar was an Indian sports bar, but there were no TVs, no radios, and just some instruments set up for the patrons to play.
It was the kind of bar I expected in Goa. Old and young Americans (mostly) dancing (kind of) to 80’s music. It was shirtless old white guys dancing to Bohemian Rhapsody, while others were smoking charras, watching stoned from the mattresses laid out in the corner. This was single most typical tourist place in India I have been to.
We had rented bike scooters for the day earlier. We took two bikes, holding four people, and one taxi, holding four more, to go out to the bar. One of the bike drivers fell ill while we were out, so I got a chance to drive the bike back. It was my first time driving a scooter through Indian countryside, up and down hills, and through jungles.
Right before we got back to the hotel, we entered a police check point. They stopped us and asked to see our “international drivers license, not the license from your country.”
“Here’s my Indian learner’s perm-“ I started.
“This is not good! Not from your own country, I need your international drivers license!”
I assured him that it was areal Indian learners permit. It took a while. He was very confused. After talking to the driver of the taxi, they let us go with out anymore trouble.
Goa is the only place in India with no alcohol tax. This makes drinks about half th price here in Pune. Jan took advantage of this and bought two bottles of Old Monk. While three of the eight stayed up to drink and talk until sunrise, I chose to go to bed. When I woke up the next morning, the bottle was almost gone. I felt hung over just thinking about it.
We spent the last day on the beach, checking out, and catching the bus back to Pune. On the bus, I found out why Anna didn’t want to take the sleeper down to Goa. Had she taken the sleeper, she would have had to spoon with some strange Indian dude all the way down. Their sleeper bus was the same style as what we took back to Pune. She also joined us back to Pune, and slept with Parisa. I, on the other hand, spooned the whole way back with Bobby.
Happy birthday, Bobby.
Last night I grabbed dinner with some friends from the university. While dinner alone was fantastic, I truly enjoyed finding out that one of them was actually reading my blog. Even more incredibly, I received a compliment on it. I was starting to believe that my blog was being read regularly by ex girlfriends and the occasional worried friend back home, but no, it’s far bigger than that. Great success! On the way home from dinner, Jan’s horn stopped beeping loudly, so I started shouting compliments at other drivers to compensate (Is that a new haircut? It looks fantastic!).
The criticism of my friend was that my blog complains too much about technology and how it always breaks while I’m in India. Today I will reverse this trend. Today, my bike is fixed. The USS Constitution rides again!
The next morning, in Goa, we ate breakfast at the place across the street from where we stayed. On the front of the Times of India we read about some explosions where we got off the bus in Magao. Two men on scooters carrying the explosives caused the explosions. It’s unclear what they were planning on blowing up, but apparently they got stuck in afternoon traffic with ticking time bombs.
We took a long taxi ride to the next beach up to the north, Palolem. We said farewell to our Canadian guest, Aisha. We found a reasonably nice hotel owned by the shortest and angriest hotel owner in Goa. We decided to spend as much time out of this hotel as possible. On the plus side, it did have a place for me to hang up laundry.
The beaches were gorgeous, and in the modern style of having lots of bars and clubs all along the beach. This early in the season, crowds weren’t a problem. The water was nice, and in the early afternoon, we decided to check out a near by island.
The island was connected by a small land bridge, and we only had to wade through a little bit of water to get there. The island was home to hundreds of crabs crawling over all the rocks. Even the sand had small crabs pushing around even small balls of sand around their home. I had read an article about these crabs, by chance, once. They push the small balls of sand around in geometric shapes, but no one really knows why they do it. When the tide comes in, it always washes away their hard work. Weird ass crabs.
Josef, Andreas and I swam out to a small rock island in the middle of the ocean. The swim wasn’t that bad, but at first I thought it was just a very rough rock in the middle of the ocean. Turns out, it was completely alive. Every inch of the rock was covered in barnacles, coral, or weird sponges that squirt water when you touch them.
In the middle of one of our mud fights on the beach, two guys walked up to us and said hi. I realized that it was the French guys that we haven’t spoken to in months, and here they were, in Goa. We ended up just hanging out for most of the afternoon. Then we split up, with me going off alone to photograph the sunset on the other side of the island that we went to earlier.
The land bridge was covered in water, but I could see children playing in the shallow water. Half way across, the water came up to my knee. I was nearly across. Then one last step, and whoosh, the water rises to my chest.
“Damn it! My camera!” I thought to myself, quickly lifting my camera above my head. “Damn it! My cell phone!” I thought, pulling my cell phone from my now entirely submerged pocket. While my camera lives on for another day of capturing anticlimactic sunsets, my cell phone has gone to it’s water grave.
By the time I got to the shore, the sun had almost set. I had to dash over rocks that were covered by angry crabs bent on preventing me from getting some kind of benefit from making it all the way out to the end of the island. I did manage to get a couple more photos, but I noticed that the water was still rising. In a couple minutes, I would have no way back to the beach.
I dashed to the shore, stripped down to my boxers, hoisted everything over my head, and waded across, and dressed in the darkness. I needed a drink. At the bar where my friends where I ended up talking to a British cop. This is where we celebrated Bobby’s birthday. We now think that this may have actually been a gay bar.
We didn’t realize it at the time. When the guy insisted on dancing with Bobby because it was his birthday, we thought he was just being friendly. When those Australian girls left together, I thought they were just going to get a good night sleep. Then I saw the sign for the bar, hidden behind a palm tree. “Cocktails and dreams” it was called. The picture was of three dudes in hot pants. Sorry Bobby. My bad.
The next morning we went up to the north to meet up with Anna and the rest of the friends from Pune. They spent the whole weekend at this one amazing beach that they found. It was secluded, and there were amazing waves. The sand under the water formed deep valleys and shallow islands, so as the waves rolled in, they would reflect off this sand, creating places where the waves would come from both directions, to and from shore. For a physics major, this was pretty noteworthy. It got a solid “huh, look at that” out of me.
That night, we took Bobby out for dinner. We went to some restaurant where we met the owner. We hung around with him, and he was pretty cool. He took us to some bars that were open all night. The last bar was an Indian sports bar, but there were no TVs, no radios, and just some instruments set up for the patrons to play.
It was the kind of bar I expected in Goa. Old and young Americans (mostly) dancing (kind of) to 80’s music. It was shirtless old white guys dancing to Bohemian Rhapsody, while others were smoking charras, watching stoned from the mattresses laid out in the corner. This was single most typical tourist place in India I have been to.
We had rented bike scooters for the day earlier. We took two bikes, holding four people, and one taxi, holding four more, to go out to the bar. One of the bike drivers fell ill while we were out, so I got a chance to drive the bike back. It was my first time driving a scooter through Indian countryside, up and down hills, and through jungles.
Right before we got back to the hotel, we entered a police check point. They stopped us and asked to see our “international drivers license, not the license from your country.”
“Here’s my Indian learner’s perm-“ I started.
“This is not good! Not from your own country, I need your international drivers license!”
I assured him that it was areal Indian learners permit. It took a while. He was very confused. After talking to the driver of the taxi, they let us go with out anymore trouble.
Goa is the only place in India with no alcohol tax. This makes drinks about half th price here in Pune. Jan took advantage of this and bought two bottles of Old Monk. While three of the eight stayed up to drink and talk until sunrise, I chose to go to bed. When I woke up the next morning, the bottle was almost gone. I felt hung over just thinking about it.
We spent the last day on the beach, checking out, and catching the bus back to Pune. On the bus, I found out why Anna didn’t want to take the sleeper down to Goa. Had she taken the sleeper, she would have had to spoon with some strange Indian dude all the way down. Their sleeper bus was the same style as what we took back to Pune. She also joined us back to Pune, and slept with Parisa. I, on the other hand, spooned the whole way back with Bobby.
Happy birthday, Bobby.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Diwali and a trip to Goa
Note: I wrote this yesterday, but wasn't able to upload it until this morning. It will be concluded later today, hopefully.
Diwali ends this week. Last night I stood on my balcony looking over Pune, watching as people in the streets set off fire crackers and fireworks. I watched as families set off their rockets all over the city, and watching the fireworks from above was one of the most incredible sights I have seen so far.
I spent the Diwali weekend in Goa, a place that a friend of mine told me before I left was “the place white people go to get tanned”. Goa is famous in India for its gorgeous beaches and clear blue water. We had Friday and Monday off due to the holiday weekend, so our plan was to leave on Thursday and come back on Monday night. Both would be over night trips. The way down was in a non AC seater bus, and the return was in a non AC sleeper bus. The Extentia interns plus a couple of friends of ours caught the bus on the way down. One the others, a Russian girl named Anna, hopped on with our group to meet up with some friends of hers that were spending time in northern Goa. I didn’t understand why she didn’t ride with her friends, since they had a nice sleeper bus to go in. The reason would be clear to me later. Our plan was to start in the south, and travel north.
Trouble started Thursday afternoon. We got a call from the bus company. They told us the bus would be leaving an hour earlier than we expected on our already tight schedule. It would also be leaving in deep southern Pune, a place that none of us interns know. Better yet, none of the rickshaw drivers knew how to get there either. We left our bikes at the office for safe keeping while we were gone.
Our rickshaw driver got lost, drove around for a while, and eventually found his way with the help of some other rickshaw drivers to the new bus location. The bus arrived at the same time we did. We thought we were lucky to get there on time. Turns out we still had an hour wait while they strapped dozens of boxes, bags, and all other sorts of packages to the roof of the bus. We cheered with every hoist of a large box to the top of the bus, and as the men half climb and half jumped off the roof of the bus.
The ride down was in the pretty uncomfortable back of the bus. Sleep was punctuated by constant rest stops and no less than two flat tires on the ride to Goa. I think that tires and I just don’t get along very well. When we got in, we said farewell to Anna and went to the first beach: Benaulim.
Benaulim is one of the more laid back beaches in Goa. The south beaches tend to be less crowded then the beaches up north, and so this beach was more like an empty beach on the Cape back home. The water was beautiful and warm. We were all excited to relax. We ate lunch at a shack by the beach, ordered some beers, and went to take our spot on the beach. Then the swarm descended.
This is off season still, in Goa. We were also at a pretty empty beach. The wallahs and vendors homed in on us like a beacon.
“You’re very white” they would tell us. “Want to buy anything?” and they would show us their collection of necklaces, bracelets, CD’s, and bootleg movies. There were dozens of them talking to us. As soon as we stepped out of the restaurant (which was protected a short, angry manager who would hurl out any vendor who stepped inside his restaurant) we were consumed by these women and their goods. They weren’t sure of what to make of us foreigners, but they were desperate for business. One of them wore a Yankee’s hat.
“Are you a Yankees fan?” I asked her.
“Yes of course!” she replied, clearly unsure of what I was talking about.
“Oh, I come from Boston. We’re not allowed to buy stuff from Yankees fans.” Her friends laughed for a while and decided to sit and sell us stuff on the beach. It was fun for a while, and I spoke to an older woman named Rose who sold identical knick knacks to her friends.
“Don’t lay down, take a look at my stuff. Don’t close your eyes!” she would yell at me when I went to lie down on my towel. I was starting to get tired of all the people trying to sell stuff. Sitting up, and before I could tell her off, I had a pile of necklaces, anklets, bracelets and every thing I could never use. “Be friend! Make me small business! Are you married? My friend here is unmarried. Make me small business and maybe you can marry my friend.”
I wasn’t interested in getting married in Goa, so I instead decided to buy a small cheap piece of jewelry to get some time alone, and I went swimming for a while. I ended up falling asleep on the beach. The bus ride had left me exhausted. I ended up with a minor sun burn on half of my face.
We ended up eating dinner on the beach, and having drinks while watching some Diwali fireworks. I tried feni, a coconut based hard alcohol. It tasted as weird as I thought it would. I stuck around on the beach after everyone left. Bobby told me that there was a guy pushing a boat on to the beach that had asked him to push the boat on to the shore. I figured it would be a great chance to get some interestingpictures. By the time I got there, they were still pushing the boat, and had it almost to the top.
“Friend! Friend! Help us push our boat!” they shouted to me. I took my position under the boat and heaved while they chanted something in Hindi. It took a while, even though we didn’t have that far to go. Afterwards, the captain scowled at me that five able sailors would have been enough normally. We were pushing with about a dozen people, and I was the only foreigner. We got along pretty well, so he ended up showing me his catch. It was a giant net that he had inside his boat, and some of his crew were going through it slowly, taking out the fish that they caught. It was mostly small fish and baby sharks that they caught.
On the walk back to the hotel I heard some people behind me speaking German. They turned out to be students from Pune who were down for the holiday as well. It was a short walk back to the hotel, and we talked and laughed. I forgot all their names after about a minute.
Diwali ends this week. Last night I stood on my balcony looking over Pune, watching as people in the streets set off fire crackers and fireworks. I watched as families set off their rockets all over the city, and watching the fireworks from above was one of the most incredible sights I have seen so far.
I spent the Diwali weekend in Goa, a place that a friend of mine told me before I left was “the place white people go to get tanned”. Goa is famous in India for its gorgeous beaches and clear blue water. We had Friday and Monday off due to the holiday weekend, so our plan was to leave on Thursday and come back on Monday night. Both would be over night trips. The way down was in a non AC seater bus, and the return was in a non AC sleeper bus. The Extentia interns plus a couple of friends of ours caught the bus on the way down. One the others, a Russian girl named Anna, hopped on with our group to meet up with some friends of hers that were spending time in northern Goa. I didn’t understand why she didn’t ride with her friends, since they had a nice sleeper bus to go in. The reason would be clear to me later. Our plan was to start in the south, and travel north.
Trouble started Thursday afternoon. We got a call from the bus company. They told us the bus would be leaving an hour earlier than we expected on our already tight schedule. It would also be leaving in deep southern Pune, a place that none of us interns know. Better yet, none of the rickshaw drivers knew how to get there either. We left our bikes at the office for safe keeping while we were gone.
Our rickshaw driver got lost, drove around for a while, and eventually found his way with the help of some other rickshaw drivers to the new bus location. The bus arrived at the same time we did. We thought we were lucky to get there on time. Turns out we still had an hour wait while they strapped dozens of boxes, bags, and all other sorts of packages to the roof of the bus. We cheered with every hoist of a large box to the top of the bus, and as the men half climb and half jumped off the roof of the bus.
The ride down was in the pretty uncomfortable back of the bus. Sleep was punctuated by constant rest stops and no less than two flat tires on the ride to Goa. I think that tires and I just don’t get along very well. When we got in, we said farewell to Anna and went to the first beach: Benaulim.
Benaulim is one of the more laid back beaches in Goa. The south beaches tend to be less crowded then the beaches up north, and so this beach was more like an empty beach on the Cape back home. The water was beautiful and warm. We were all excited to relax. We ate lunch at a shack by the beach, ordered some beers, and went to take our spot on the beach. Then the swarm descended.
This is off season still, in Goa. We were also at a pretty empty beach. The wallahs and vendors homed in on us like a beacon.
“You’re very white” they would tell us. “Want to buy anything?” and they would show us their collection of necklaces, bracelets, CD’s, and bootleg movies. There were dozens of them talking to us. As soon as we stepped out of the restaurant (which was protected a short, angry manager who would hurl out any vendor who stepped inside his restaurant) we were consumed by these women and their goods. They weren’t sure of what to make of us foreigners, but they were desperate for business. One of them wore a Yankee’s hat.
“Are you a Yankees fan?” I asked her.
“Yes of course!” she replied, clearly unsure of what I was talking about.
“Oh, I come from Boston. We’re not allowed to buy stuff from Yankees fans.” Her friends laughed for a while and decided to sit and sell us stuff on the beach. It was fun for a while, and I spoke to an older woman named Rose who sold identical knick knacks to her friends.
“Don’t lay down, take a look at my stuff. Don’t close your eyes!” she would yell at me when I went to lie down on my towel. I was starting to get tired of all the people trying to sell stuff. Sitting up, and before I could tell her off, I had a pile of necklaces, anklets, bracelets and every thing I could never use. “Be friend! Make me small business! Are you married? My friend here is unmarried. Make me small business and maybe you can marry my friend.”
I wasn’t interested in getting married in Goa, so I instead decided to buy a small cheap piece of jewelry to get some time alone, and I went swimming for a while. I ended up falling asleep on the beach. The bus ride had left me exhausted. I ended up with a minor sun burn on half of my face.
We ended up eating dinner on the beach, and having drinks while watching some Diwali fireworks. I tried feni, a coconut based hard alcohol. It tasted as weird as I thought it would. I stuck around on the beach after everyone left. Bobby told me that there was a guy pushing a boat on to the beach that had asked him to push the boat on to the shore. I figured it would be a great chance to get some interestingpictures. By the time I got there, they were still pushing the boat, and had it almost to the top.
“Friend! Friend! Help us push our boat!” they shouted to me. I took my position under the boat and heaved while they chanted something in Hindi. It took a while, even though we didn’t have that far to go. Afterwards, the captain scowled at me that five able sailors would have been enough normally. We were pushing with about a dozen people, and I was the only foreigner. We got along pretty well, so he ended up showing me his catch. It was a giant net that he had inside his boat, and some of his crew were going through it slowly, taking out the fish that they caught. It was mostly small fish and baby sharks that they caught.
On the walk back to the hotel I heard some people behind me speaking German. They turned out to be students from Pune who were down for the holiday as well. It was a short walk back to the hotel, and we talked and laughed. I forgot all their names after about a minute.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
A Quick Post Before Diwali and Goa
So, now my resume can include not just web developer, iphone developer, and stock photo model, but director and actor as well. Yes, work has put me in the lead role of my own iPhone app reviews on Youtube. When they’re finished, I will be sure to include a link.
Happy Diwali everyone. Yes, it’s that time of the year again, so break out your diyas, put on your new kurta or sari, and celebrate the ‘other’ festival of lights. I will be spending my first Diwali in India in Goa. I’m looking forward to this. I need a vacation at this point. It’s been a long week, and it’s not even Friday yet. I actually head out tonight at 7PM, so I have to get out of work early in order to make it to the bus.
For those wondering, or perhaps for those keeping track, my luck hasn’t turned around yet. Last night I went out to dinner with my friend Emma from England. My bike is broken, as I mentioned in my earlier post, so I had to borrow Bobby’s bike.
“Don’t break it this time!” he joked as he handed over the keys. Half an hour later, I was pushing yet another bike down the road with yet another flat tire. I can now stop going to the gym; bike pushing is all the exercise I need.
Besides the bike breaking down, dinner turned out alright. I finally got someone to explain Cricket to me (to the best of her ability, I’m pretty dense when it comes to most sports more complicated than swimming back and forth a bunch of times). It was also a farewell dinner, as she was leaving for Delhi for a while. That’s how India works; the most common way to meet people here is through farewell dinners.
I also now am approved to wander around India aimlessly for the last month of my coop, which is great, and I plan on making as much use of this as I can. My roommates and I are planning on going through the deserts of Rajasthan (the next thing for me to ride will have to be a camel), up to Delhi, see Agra, train to Varanasi, and then I have a couple more days that I’m not sure about. Total travel time: two weeks. Unfortunately, I’m not sure/very doubtful that I’ll be able to see the Himalayas and Nepal this trip. This just means I’ll have to make a return some day.
I’ll be back on Tuesday morning.
Happy Diwali everyone. Yes, it’s that time of the year again, so break out your diyas, put on your new kurta or sari, and celebrate the ‘other’ festival of lights. I will be spending my first Diwali in India in Goa. I’m looking forward to this. I need a vacation at this point. It’s been a long week, and it’s not even Friday yet. I actually head out tonight at 7PM, so I have to get out of work early in order to make it to the bus.
For those wondering, or perhaps for those keeping track, my luck hasn’t turned around yet. Last night I went out to dinner with my friend Emma from England. My bike is broken, as I mentioned in my earlier post, so I had to borrow Bobby’s bike.
“Don’t break it this time!” he joked as he handed over the keys. Half an hour later, I was pushing yet another bike down the road with yet another flat tire. I can now stop going to the gym; bike pushing is all the exercise I need.
Besides the bike breaking down, dinner turned out alright. I finally got someone to explain Cricket to me (to the best of her ability, I’m pretty dense when it comes to most sports more complicated than swimming back and forth a bunch of times). It was also a farewell dinner, as she was leaving for Delhi for a while. That’s how India works; the most common way to meet people here is through farewell dinners.
I also now am approved to wander around India aimlessly for the last month of my coop, which is great, and I plan on making as much use of this as I can. My roommates and I are planning on going through the deserts of Rajasthan (the next thing for me to ride will have to be a camel), up to Delhi, see Agra, train to Varanasi, and then I have a couple more days that I’m not sure about. Total travel time: two weeks. Unfortunately, I’m not sure/very doubtful that I’ll be able to see the Himalayas and Nepal this trip. This just means I’ll have to make a return some day.
I’ll be back on Tuesday morning.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Birthday, Election Days, and Oktoberfests
I’m at work right now. The garage bellow me is empty, the bikes are being hidden behind the office. The front gate is locked and barred. The front guard is at his post keeping watch. I’m in one of the only offices working today in the State of Maharashtra. It’s Election Day, a state holiday here in India. To make employees work today is technically illegal, and there is a huge fine for any non essential business kept open today. We got an email in our inbox today saying that while yes, we are not supposed to be working today; we are serving our democracy better by coming in today. By going against the laws of the state, we’re being patriotic. It seems almost American.
This weekend was Oktoberfest here in Pune. This was my first Oktoberfest that I’ve been to, and I was able to have it here in India with most of my German roommates. While Pune is no Munich, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of expats who have been living in Pune while working for the Indian branch of companies like Volkswagen, Mercedes, and others. I got a chance to try to speak German. I got some sympathetic stares and shrugs. Great success. The music was pretty good, it was some band that travels around the world playing international Oktoberfests. This seems like a very niche market, if you ask me. The food was pretty good, but expensive, and the beer was German. Over all, I probably spent more than I should have, but it we all had a good time singing and dancing. When the band played Seven Nation Army, that was probably the highlight of the night. We also made new friends from England. We were some of the few native English speakers at the party.
But Oktoberfest was not our only party this week. Jan had his birthday on Monday night. I didn’t realize this until Monday morning, when I could check Facebook at work (yes, my laptop is broken again, I’ll explain later). Theressa and I quickly threw together a solid plan to have a surprise party at our apartment. When we let Bobby in on our plan, he replied “so why did you guys put a plan together? Don’t you know Parisa has already planned a party, bought drinks, and got cake?”
No Bobby. We didn’t. Turns out she made the plans but didn’t tell anyone until earlier that Monday. Unfortunately, no one had any idea where Parisa lived, besides “far away and in the middle of nowhere”. So we convinced Jan to go to Parisa’s place under the guise of a small get together, and that I would be the fearless navigator, in charge of guiding us all safely to Parisa’s. Big mistake. Don’t let me lead anyone anywhere. Ever. In my defense, I did get us kind of close to the right place, but kind of means an extra hour of getting lost and driving aimlessly in this case.
On the drive to over, the first thing I lost was the horn on my bike. In India, this is big trouble. The horn is the first line of defense against aggressive bus drivers and crazy rickshaws. The next thing to go were my blinkers. Instead of signaling what I was doing, both lights would blink together in a mad panic. Then went my back tire. Finally, with only one uphill kilometer left, my engine died on me. Then I had to push. Thankfully, Parisa’s brother had come out to find where the hell we were, and was able to give me a hand in pushing the bike. It was a long push in the rain. Déjà vu, right?
Not that my bike is the only thing to kick the bucket this week. My laptop is also now out of commission again. Yes, only a week after getting the power supply fixed, I was sitting in bed waiting for my friends back home to sign on to Skype after a night of enjoying Oktoberfest perhaps a little too much, when my desire for sleep became perhaps just a little too strong, and I fell fast asleep with my laptop on my lap. But this only lasted for a little while. Then it took a quick plunge to the hard floor bellow. So long laptop screen, you served me well. You will be missed.
The surprise birthday party ended up going very well in the end. And my bike breaking down was probably for the best, as I was able to drive Jan a ride home later that night. Soaked and exhausted, I arrived at home. Happy birthday, Jan. Happy Election Day, Maharashtra.
This weekend was Oktoberfest here in Pune. This was my first Oktoberfest that I’ve been to, and I was able to have it here in India with most of my German roommates. While Pune is no Munich, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of expats who have been living in Pune while working for the Indian branch of companies like Volkswagen, Mercedes, and others. I got a chance to try to speak German. I got some sympathetic stares and shrugs. Great success. The music was pretty good, it was some band that travels around the world playing international Oktoberfests. This seems like a very niche market, if you ask me. The food was pretty good, but expensive, and the beer was German. Over all, I probably spent more than I should have, but it we all had a good time singing and dancing. When the band played Seven Nation Army, that was probably the highlight of the night. We also made new friends from England. We were some of the few native English speakers at the party.
But Oktoberfest was not our only party this week. Jan had his birthday on Monday night. I didn’t realize this until Monday morning, when I could check Facebook at work (yes, my laptop is broken again, I’ll explain later). Theressa and I quickly threw together a solid plan to have a surprise party at our apartment. When we let Bobby in on our plan, he replied “so why did you guys put a plan together? Don’t you know Parisa has already planned a party, bought drinks, and got cake?”
No Bobby. We didn’t. Turns out she made the plans but didn’t tell anyone until earlier that Monday. Unfortunately, no one had any idea where Parisa lived, besides “far away and in the middle of nowhere”. So we convinced Jan to go to Parisa’s place under the guise of a small get together, and that I would be the fearless navigator, in charge of guiding us all safely to Parisa’s. Big mistake. Don’t let me lead anyone anywhere. Ever. In my defense, I did get us kind of close to the right place, but kind of means an extra hour of getting lost and driving aimlessly in this case.
On the drive to over, the first thing I lost was the horn on my bike. In India, this is big trouble. The horn is the first line of defense against aggressive bus drivers and crazy rickshaws. The next thing to go were my blinkers. Instead of signaling what I was doing, both lights would blink together in a mad panic. Then went my back tire. Finally, with only one uphill kilometer left, my engine died on me. Then I had to push. Thankfully, Parisa’s brother had come out to find where the hell we were, and was able to give me a hand in pushing the bike. It was a long push in the rain. Déjà vu, right?
Not that my bike is the only thing to kick the bucket this week. My laptop is also now out of commission again. Yes, only a week after getting the power supply fixed, I was sitting in bed waiting for my friends back home to sign on to Skype after a night of enjoying Oktoberfest perhaps a little too much, when my desire for sleep became perhaps just a little too strong, and I fell fast asleep with my laptop on my lap. But this only lasted for a little while. Then it took a quick plunge to the hard floor bellow. So long laptop screen, you served me well. You will be missed.
The surprise birthday party ended up going very well in the end. And my bike breaking down was probably for the best, as I was able to drive Jan a ride home later that night. Soaked and exhausted, I arrived at home. Happy birthday, Jan. Happy Election Day, Maharashtra.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
A Return Home, And A Computer Rises From The Dead
Sometimes I can't figure India out. My laptop has been, as many of you know, busted for the past month. That's why I wasn't able to update anything. Any updates I had been writing were written after staying late at work, which is one of the least enjoyable/most creepy ways to spend a night here in India. After months of trying to get the laptop fixed, my problem is now all gone, all because I tried my damn best to prevent it from getting fixed. Let me explain.
When my laptop died, I tried all the usual fixes. Fiddling with the power button. Unplugging the battery and leaving it over night. Trying to shake it back to life. Making offerings to Lord Ganesha. And when all of that failed, I tried my last resort: my company's IT department. With great reluctance, I handed my laptop over to them. I sat with them as they retried the techniques I mentioned. Nothing seemed to work. With a heavy heart, they said I was out of luck, and that it was likely a motherboard issue. Well damn, right?
As I go to take the laptop back, trying hard to think of some other arcane ritual to perform to bring my laptop back from the dead, the head of the IT department gives me an offer. It's hard to ship things back to the States from India. It's damn hard. He offered to take care of it, and that he would ship my laptop back to Asus, even thought it was out of warranty, just to see what they said. Well great, right?
Fast forward two weeks. I'm back from Kerala. I ask if they've heard anything from Asus. Turns out, they didn't send it to Asus, exactly, but instead gave it to a friend of a guy in HR who has a soldering iron and a screw driver set. I panic. I'm furious. They're letting some half educated guy on the street rip open the guts of my sweet innocent laptop, poke around, put in whatever garbage knock off parts they can salvage, and call it fixed. No way, I tell them. Just give me back my laptop. There is no way I'm paying the fifty American that the guys wants. That's practically what my laptop is worth, anyway.
I tear in to the IT department for cheating me. I tear in to the guy in HR for not letting me know what was happening. I tear in to anyone who would listen to me. Unfortunately, this is, I guess, standard procedure for how stuff gets fixed in India. Go figure. Anyway, the next morning, I get the laptop back. I figure I'll just leave it in some corner and gather some dust. Maybe dust will fix it. Then the HR guy tells me it's all fixed.
What? The laptop I told him I didn't want fixed? Yup. Looks like I now have a working laptop. I feel half insulted and half like a jackass (because the guy did actually fix the laptop, after all). Oh well. This is India. Onward, with part two of my Kerala story.
So our next stop on our trip was Allepey. Allepey is the boat house capital of India. There are some four hundred rice barge captains willing to rent out their boats for a night to tourists who want to explore the backwaters of Kerala. When you get down to Allepey, everyone will seem to have a boat. Guys on the street, restaurant owners, and post card vendors all seem to have a cheap ride available. Unfortunately, yet again, we arrive too late to really do anything that day. We check into a hotel and accept the offer to take the owner's boat out the next day.
At the hotel, I talk to some guys from Holland who were also traveling Kerala, and some Brits who had studied textiles back home, and one of them had just finished up working in a textile factory in Delhi. I guess this is glamorous to some people. The guys from Holland wanted to know how the boat tour was. I said it was alright. That was when I was informed by the hotel owner about the boating accident. Yikes.
The rooms were fairly comfortable and had mosquito nets, thank god. The cockroaches weren't that large, but the ceiling did start spewing some weird dust down on me while I slept. Before I went to bed, I went to get some water with some of the other British girls. Bobby, half asleep, asked me what I got. I explained “I got some bottled water”.
What he heard: “I got some hot water”.
Lord knows how he didn't notice that the bottle wasn't by any means 'hot', and it was clearly marked as drinking water, and that the bottle was still sealed after I took my own shower, but I guess he decided this water was just my little gift to him. Bobby is now one of the few people I have ever met that has used bottled water to shower. That bastard still owes me one two liter bottle of water.
After breakfast, we got on to the house boat, and started the tour of the backwaters. It almost immediately started raining. Rain on a rice barge is fun for maybe the first ten minutes, top. Then the boat starts to floor. Then you're just stuck in your cabin until the rain stops.
It was still beautiful, even if we didn't get the sun that we hoped for. We hired a captain and a cook. The food that the cook made was delicious. We also had two stow away kittens who jumped on board when we stopped for lunch. I'm not sure what happened to them. Last I heard, they were hiding in the kitchen... Oh god.
After the house boat, it was time to head back to Kochi to catch a train the next morning. Our return to Kochi was fairly uneventful. We saw one of the few Jewish temples of India, and walked around the island that we stayed on.
The next morning, we caught the train at 8AM Saturday, and were supposed to get in at 4PM Sunday. 32 Hours. Long, but not bad. What we didn't know was that it was raining for three days straight in Maharashtra, and that the tracks were now flooded. We ended back to the apartment at 4AM Monday.
The only saving grace about the ride home was that we had far more enjoyable neighbors. I became the cool one. Bobby became the Angry one. Jan is still the German one.
When we finally reached Pune, I don't think I was ever more glad to be coasting through the streets in a rickshaw. I felt like I had finally reached home. I think I'm starting to really love this city.
When my laptop died, I tried all the usual fixes. Fiddling with the power button. Unplugging the battery and leaving it over night. Trying to shake it back to life. Making offerings to Lord Ganesha. And when all of that failed, I tried my last resort: my company's IT department. With great reluctance, I handed my laptop over to them. I sat with them as they retried the techniques I mentioned. Nothing seemed to work. With a heavy heart, they said I was out of luck, and that it was likely a motherboard issue. Well damn, right?
As I go to take the laptop back, trying hard to think of some other arcane ritual to perform to bring my laptop back from the dead, the head of the IT department gives me an offer. It's hard to ship things back to the States from India. It's damn hard. He offered to take care of it, and that he would ship my laptop back to Asus, even thought it was out of warranty, just to see what they said. Well great, right?
Fast forward two weeks. I'm back from Kerala. I ask if they've heard anything from Asus. Turns out, they didn't send it to Asus, exactly, but instead gave it to a friend of a guy in HR who has a soldering iron and a screw driver set. I panic. I'm furious. They're letting some half educated guy on the street rip open the guts of my sweet innocent laptop, poke around, put in whatever garbage knock off parts they can salvage, and call it fixed. No way, I tell them. Just give me back my laptop. There is no way I'm paying the fifty American that the guys wants. That's practically what my laptop is worth, anyway.
I tear in to the IT department for cheating me. I tear in to the guy in HR for not letting me know what was happening. I tear in to anyone who would listen to me. Unfortunately, this is, I guess, standard procedure for how stuff gets fixed in India. Go figure. Anyway, the next morning, I get the laptop back. I figure I'll just leave it in some corner and gather some dust. Maybe dust will fix it. Then the HR guy tells me it's all fixed.
What? The laptop I told him I didn't want fixed? Yup. Looks like I now have a working laptop. I feel half insulted and half like a jackass (because the guy did actually fix the laptop, after all). Oh well. This is India. Onward, with part two of my Kerala story.
So our next stop on our trip was Allepey. Allepey is the boat house capital of India. There are some four hundred rice barge captains willing to rent out their boats for a night to tourists who want to explore the backwaters of Kerala. When you get down to Allepey, everyone will seem to have a boat. Guys on the street, restaurant owners, and post card vendors all seem to have a cheap ride available. Unfortunately, yet again, we arrive too late to really do anything that day. We check into a hotel and accept the offer to take the owner's boat out the next day.
At the hotel, I talk to some guys from Holland who were also traveling Kerala, and some Brits who had studied textiles back home, and one of them had just finished up working in a textile factory in Delhi. I guess this is glamorous to some people. The guys from Holland wanted to know how the boat tour was. I said it was alright. That was when I was informed by the hotel owner about the boating accident. Yikes.
The rooms were fairly comfortable and had mosquito nets, thank god. The cockroaches weren't that large, but the ceiling did start spewing some weird dust down on me while I slept. Before I went to bed, I went to get some water with some of the other British girls. Bobby, half asleep, asked me what I got. I explained “I got some bottled water”.
What he heard: “I got some hot water”.
Lord knows how he didn't notice that the bottle wasn't by any means 'hot', and it was clearly marked as drinking water, and that the bottle was still sealed after I took my own shower, but I guess he decided this water was just my little gift to him. Bobby is now one of the few people I have ever met that has used bottled water to shower. That bastard still owes me one two liter bottle of water.
After breakfast, we got on to the house boat, and started the tour of the backwaters. It almost immediately started raining. Rain on a rice barge is fun for maybe the first ten minutes, top. Then the boat starts to floor. Then you're just stuck in your cabin until the rain stops.
It was still beautiful, even if we didn't get the sun that we hoped for. We hired a captain and a cook. The food that the cook made was delicious. We also had two stow away kittens who jumped on board when we stopped for lunch. I'm not sure what happened to them. Last I heard, they were hiding in the kitchen... Oh god.
After the house boat, it was time to head back to Kochi to catch a train the next morning. Our return to Kochi was fairly uneventful. We saw one of the few Jewish temples of India, and walked around the island that we stayed on.
The next morning, we caught the train at 8AM Saturday, and were supposed to get in at 4PM Sunday. 32 Hours. Long, but not bad. What we didn't know was that it was raining for three days straight in Maharashtra, and that the tracks were now flooded. We ended back to the apartment at 4AM Monday.
The only saving grace about the ride home was that we had far more enjoyable neighbors. I became the cool one. Bobby became the Angry one. Jan is still the German one.
When we finally reached Pune, I don't think I was ever more glad to be coasting through the streets in a rickshaw. I felt like I had finally reached home. I think I'm starting to really love this city.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Three Dudes Make a Trip Down to Kerala
Communication skills are not my strong point. This is especially true here in India. I can handle small talk. In fact, I'm a god damn pro at making small talk; I could small talk a man to death. But there isn't any small talk here in India. Once you meet someone, they'll let you know immediately what they're thinking.
“Which one of you is the coolest and which one of you is the angriest?” asked a girl on the train ride back to Pune from Kerala. Bobby, Jan and I laughed.
“I think you're the cool one” one of the girls told us, pointing to me.
“yeah, I'm the cool one, and he's the angry one” I laughed, pointing at Bobby.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Last week, I went to Kerala.
This was a trip that we had planned for a long time. For weeks, we told our selves “when we get some holidays, we're going down to Kerala, and exploring the Jungle, laying on the beaches, and living the life of kings”. Unfortunately, all we managed was to buy some bus tickets, and had no place to stay. I normally preach the benefits of planning ahead. Indeed, we did likely have to pay more because we didn't find our about prices ahead of time. It's pretty hard to negotiate a hotel room at six in the morning after a thirty hour train ride.
That's how long it takes to get from Pune, Maharashtra to Kochi, Kerala. Thirty god damn long hours on a sleeper train. I'm not sure what comes to your mind when you think of trains. For me, I like to imagine long train rides as fun trips in wooden cabins with AC and cakes. This is pretty close to what we had in India. Except it was rusting metal bunks instead of wooden cabins, and there was no AC, and you can replace 'cakes' with 'cockroaches and mice'. We also got the cabin with the screaming child. And to warn those that plan to someday take a sleeper class train in India: never, ever use the latrine (I found out why the train stations smell like shit, though, as the trains don't hold their waste, it's just a drop down on to the tracks, so stations are literally the stagnant septic tank of the trains).
It was three of us taking this trip. Bobby, Jan, and I. The others went up north for the week that we took off, and saw Delhi, Agra, and Rajistan. But we were The Three Musketeers. Two Americans, and one German. On the way down to Kerala, I read Midnight's Children, Jan read All Quiet on the Western Front, and bobby read Schindler's List. I feel like those are the three books that a group has to be reading when traveling in India with two Americans and a German.
We got down to Kochi no problem, surviving off of the chai, water, and biryanni that the hawkers would sell up and down the aisle. Infact, I almost started to appreciate the shrill call of “chaaaiii, chaaaiii” every five minutes or so. By the way, that chai is pretty damn good. When we got in, it was pouring. This rain would continue for most of our trip. We took a rickshaw to the place we wanted to stay, the Vasco guest house (and rickshaws, for the record, can also act as fairly reliable boats up to about 8 inches of water, as was the average depth of the roads when we arrived to Kochi). This is said to be the place where Vasco de Gama died when he was exploring India. Too bad for us, the guy wanted three times the regular price for us to stay there. Instead, we stayed at Oy's guest house. To the best of my knowledge, no famous people died there.
Oy's is a pleasant enough place. The lady who runs the joint is friendly, and didn't mind when we forgot to give back the keys when we left (but we did give them back before we left Kerala, but again, I'm getting ahead of myself). The rooms were clean, slightly small, but had a nice balcony. When we checked in, we were able to get three mattresses, but she only provided two blankets. I still can't figure that one out.
Fort Kochin is the part of the city that we stayed in. Unlike what you would guess from the name, Fort Kochin is by no means a fort. In fact, the main attraction to Fort Kochin is the beautiful sea side view and the old Chinese fishing nets. The nets are huge bamboo structures that stand out in the water, and a team of fishermen are in charge of lowering and raising the nets daily. If you're feeling brave enough, you can buy the fresh catch of the day and have it cooked by one of the street vendors. We weren't feeling so brave. We had heard stories about the fish in Kerala.
We also got to see traditional Kerala dance, Kathakali. It's not really a dance, as it is a play, with music, and costumes. It takes six to eight years to learn how to perform a Kathakali production, which is usually several acts of a 101 chapter hindu epic, and takes about eight hours. Our production lasted only two. The actors use a set of hand gestures, facial contortions, and eye rolls to express words and ideas. My favorite was 'bee getting heavy from sucking the nectar from a flower'. They have an expression for that. Seriously. That shit goes on for eight hours.
Our next stop after Kochin was to go to Kumily. Kumily is home to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, and of course, the Periyar Tiger Preserve. The bus from Kochin to Kumily we were told was only two hours. This is not true. While the distance is only 100km as the crow flies, it's actually a six hour roller coaster ride from hell, with constant stops and bumps that would launch passengers out of their seats. We also had to stand for part of it, after we had to change buses. That was fun. I also had my first experience with motion sickness.
Once we got to Kumily, we stayed at the Coffee Inn, also known as the most rediculously adorable place to stay in all of Kumily. The room was fairly cheap, and it borders the wild life reserve, so you can sit outside while watching the jungle. They also have rooms in tree houses and huts. Unfortunately, our room was hardly glamorous, but it was cheap and clean. After a quick rest and a bite to eat, we decided it was time to take the boat tour of the jungle.
Because we didn't realize that the bus ride would include a free roller coaster ride, we ended up getting in to Kumily very late. We caught the last boat of the day, around 5 o'clock. The boat was nice but fairly crowded. The boat provides the best way to cover the most distance, and is the best way to spot any wildlife. Too bad for us, there were no tigers on this trip, but we did get to see elephants, boars, and several other wild animals. It was pretty good. The next day, on the very same tour at the very same time, we later found out, the boat capsized, killing nearly everyone on board. Comparatively, our tour went very smoothly.
We spent the rest of the evening in town, and had dinner and tea. The next morning we went on an elephant walk through the jungle. We got there early in the morning, and they were still washing the elephants for the day. I decided to watch the spectacle of an elephant shower. After a quick walk through the jungle, I found a clearing where two men were scrubbing down a male elephant, and washing it with a hose. As we watched, I noticed that the elephant was getting a raging boner. I was awe struck. It was like the elephant grew a fifth leg. The elephant keepers were very proud of this, and kept spraying the penis with the hose and giving it a good slap. Like any good tourist, I of course took a picture.
When it was time for us to ride an elephant, it turned out not to be our friend from the jungle, but was instead a female elephant. Riding and elephant is weird, and elephants aren't as nearly as soft as I always thought they were. We made slow progress through the forest, and saw some of the biggest spiders I have ever seen in the trees. Jan and I were impressed, Bobby was terrified. Of course, the spiders knew this. That's why they chose to land on his back, and not ours. Poor Bobby. After the elephant ride, we had to pack up our things one again, and prepare for our trip to Allepey.
“Which one of you is the coolest and which one of you is the angriest?” asked a girl on the train ride back to Pune from Kerala. Bobby, Jan and I laughed.
“I think you're the cool one” one of the girls told us, pointing to me.
“yeah, I'm the cool one, and he's the angry one” I laughed, pointing at Bobby.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Last week, I went to Kerala.
This was a trip that we had planned for a long time. For weeks, we told our selves “when we get some holidays, we're going down to Kerala, and exploring the Jungle, laying on the beaches, and living the life of kings”. Unfortunately, all we managed was to buy some bus tickets, and had no place to stay. I normally preach the benefits of planning ahead. Indeed, we did likely have to pay more because we didn't find our about prices ahead of time. It's pretty hard to negotiate a hotel room at six in the morning after a thirty hour train ride.
That's how long it takes to get from Pune, Maharashtra to Kochi, Kerala. Thirty god damn long hours on a sleeper train. I'm not sure what comes to your mind when you think of trains. For me, I like to imagine long train rides as fun trips in wooden cabins with AC and cakes. This is pretty close to what we had in India. Except it was rusting metal bunks instead of wooden cabins, and there was no AC, and you can replace 'cakes' with 'cockroaches and mice'. We also got the cabin with the screaming child. And to warn those that plan to someday take a sleeper class train in India: never, ever use the latrine (I found out why the train stations smell like shit, though, as the trains don't hold their waste, it's just a drop down on to the tracks, so stations are literally the stagnant septic tank of the trains).
It was three of us taking this trip. Bobby, Jan, and I. The others went up north for the week that we took off, and saw Delhi, Agra, and Rajistan. But we were The Three Musketeers. Two Americans, and one German. On the way down to Kerala, I read Midnight's Children, Jan read All Quiet on the Western Front, and bobby read Schindler's List. I feel like those are the three books that a group has to be reading when traveling in India with two Americans and a German.
We got down to Kochi no problem, surviving off of the chai, water, and biryanni that the hawkers would sell up and down the aisle. Infact, I almost started to appreciate the shrill call of “chaaaiii, chaaaiii” every five minutes or so. By the way, that chai is pretty damn good. When we got in, it was pouring. This rain would continue for most of our trip. We took a rickshaw to the place we wanted to stay, the Vasco guest house (and rickshaws, for the record, can also act as fairly reliable boats up to about 8 inches of water, as was the average depth of the roads when we arrived to Kochi). This is said to be the place where Vasco de Gama died when he was exploring India. Too bad for us, the guy wanted three times the regular price for us to stay there. Instead, we stayed at Oy's guest house. To the best of my knowledge, no famous people died there.
Oy's is a pleasant enough place. The lady who runs the joint is friendly, and didn't mind when we forgot to give back the keys when we left (but we did give them back before we left Kerala, but again, I'm getting ahead of myself). The rooms were clean, slightly small, but had a nice balcony. When we checked in, we were able to get three mattresses, but she only provided two blankets. I still can't figure that one out.
Fort Kochin is the part of the city that we stayed in. Unlike what you would guess from the name, Fort Kochin is by no means a fort. In fact, the main attraction to Fort Kochin is the beautiful sea side view and the old Chinese fishing nets. The nets are huge bamboo structures that stand out in the water, and a team of fishermen are in charge of lowering and raising the nets daily. If you're feeling brave enough, you can buy the fresh catch of the day and have it cooked by one of the street vendors. We weren't feeling so brave. We had heard stories about the fish in Kerala.
We also got to see traditional Kerala dance, Kathakali. It's not really a dance, as it is a play, with music, and costumes. It takes six to eight years to learn how to perform a Kathakali production, which is usually several acts of a 101 chapter hindu epic, and takes about eight hours. Our production lasted only two. The actors use a set of hand gestures, facial contortions, and eye rolls to express words and ideas. My favorite was 'bee getting heavy from sucking the nectar from a flower'. They have an expression for that. Seriously. That shit goes on for eight hours.
Our next stop after Kochin was to go to Kumily. Kumily is home to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, and of course, the Periyar Tiger Preserve. The bus from Kochin to Kumily we were told was only two hours. This is not true. While the distance is only 100km as the crow flies, it's actually a six hour roller coaster ride from hell, with constant stops and bumps that would launch passengers out of their seats. We also had to stand for part of it, after we had to change buses. That was fun. I also had my first experience with motion sickness.
Once we got to Kumily, we stayed at the Coffee Inn, also known as the most rediculously adorable place to stay in all of Kumily. The room was fairly cheap, and it borders the wild life reserve, so you can sit outside while watching the jungle. They also have rooms in tree houses and huts. Unfortunately, our room was hardly glamorous, but it was cheap and clean. After a quick rest and a bite to eat, we decided it was time to take the boat tour of the jungle.
Because we didn't realize that the bus ride would include a free roller coaster ride, we ended up getting in to Kumily very late. We caught the last boat of the day, around 5 o'clock. The boat was nice but fairly crowded. The boat provides the best way to cover the most distance, and is the best way to spot any wildlife. Too bad for us, there were no tigers on this trip, but we did get to see elephants, boars, and several other wild animals. It was pretty good. The next day, on the very same tour at the very same time, we later found out, the boat capsized, killing nearly everyone on board. Comparatively, our tour went very smoothly.
We spent the rest of the evening in town, and had dinner and tea. The next morning we went on an elephant walk through the jungle. We got there early in the morning, and they were still washing the elephants for the day. I decided to watch the spectacle of an elephant shower. After a quick walk through the jungle, I found a clearing where two men were scrubbing down a male elephant, and washing it with a hose. As we watched, I noticed that the elephant was getting a raging boner. I was awe struck. It was like the elephant grew a fifth leg. The elephant keepers were very proud of this, and kept spraying the penis with the hose and giving it a good slap. Like any good tourist, I of course took a picture.
When it was time for us to ride an elephant, it turned out not to be our friend from the jungle, but was instead a female elephant. Riding and elephant is weird, and elephants aren't as nearly as soft as I always thought they were. We made slow progress through the forest, and saw some of the biggest spiders I have ever seen in the trees. Jan and I were impressed, Bobby was terrified. Of course, the spiders knew this. That's why they chose to land on his back, and not ours. Poor Bobby. After the elephant ride, we had to pack up our things one again, and prepare for our trip to Allepey.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Alright, so my laptop has finally kicked the bucket. The battery is completely toast. I've been trying to find some knock off Indian replacement, but no luck yet. Not that I would really trust an Indian knock off battery, as the knock off brand batteries here usually last no longer than fifteen minutes in my roommates camera. I've never seen a man go through twelve batteries in a single day before.
Anyhow, I've been traveling a lot, and I really haven't had a chance to go in to much detail about the details. Here is a brief recap of where I've been so far in my slightly more than two months I've spent in India:
First we traveled to Aurangabad by rented bus and driver, home of Bibi Ka Maqbara, also known as the poor man's Taj Mahal. Like the Taj, the Bibi Ka is a giant white mausoleum, but is made from cheaper materials, and was built by Azam Shah to rival Shah Jahan's Taj. While cool, it's a quarter of the size. There was some other info, but I don't really know what our guide was saying. He had a heavy accent and he may have been drunk. That's what you get for Rs 60. I do know he said something about girls jumping off the spinnerets, and therefor we couldn't climb up them.
The main reason we went there was the close proximity to the Ellora and Ajanta Caves. They're old cave temples/world heritage sites. Ajanta was set in some incredibly beautiful scenery, but the temples themselves were pretty much all the same. When they were first carved, every surface on them was painted with stories about Buddha, but the paint has mostly faded. Ellora was far larger, but by the time we went there, we only had enough energy to see about half the caves. There was also a large temple in the middle that was truly amazing to explore.
Later, when we went to Alibag, we rented a the same bus and driver again. The bus driver both times was half asleep while driving, and possibly drunk. I think him and the Bibi Ka guide would have gotten along pretty well together. We took a larger group this time, and had to break up in to two groups. One group had to pay 600 per person per night. I thought this was outrageous. My group ended up having to pay 1000 after looking for two hours. Oh well, so is life. Right after we checked in, my roommate started having horrible chest pains and had to be brought to an Indian hospital. Indian hospitals are what nightmare are made of. After spending the night at the hospital, we all headed out to the beach. What better way to relax after having some kind of heart problems then spending it drinking on a beach. We also drank on the bus, which is weird from an American perspective, but I guess very common in India. Warning: put on sunblock before you start drinking at the beach. My sun burns took three weeks to finally heal, and my back was pretty much all one large blister by the time I got home.
This last weekend we went to Hampi. Hampi is one of the most amazing places we have been to. Five hundred years ago, it was a giant Hindu trade city, and is said to have originally been home of a Monkey god and his Monkey army. The rocks in the area are all stacked in incredible positions, and the story is that they were made that way by this monkey god. Anyhow, the place is now largely inhabited by old Indian guys offering to sell us magic shrooms. We spent the first night in the charming city of Hampi. The next night we crossed the river that runs through Hampi, because it's supposed to be cheaper over there, and you can buy alcohol there. We did get alcohol, and the rooms were only Rs. 50 per person. Unfortunately, we ended up trapped on what turned out to be an island after the waters started to go up the next day, and had to take a glorified basket to get back across. We also discovered the wonders of a sleeper bus. It was far nicer than a crowded mini bus and an angry old man driver. Unfrotunately, on the way back I got food poisoning after eating at a truck stop. That made the ride home the longest 10 hours of my life.
Yup. That's what I've been up to lately. At work I've made a website.
I've now moved in to the other apartment, and now have a room all to myself. I am now living the life of a king here in India, and my German is coming along pretty well. Time to eat dinner.
Anyhow, I've been traveling a lot, and I really haven't had a chance to go in to much detail about the details. Here is a brief recap of where I've been so far in my slightly more than two months I've spent in India:
First we traveled to Aurangabad by rented bus and driver, home of Bibi Ka Maqbara, also known as the poor man's Taj Mahal. Like the Taj, the Bibi Ka is a giant white mausoleum, but is made from cheaper materials, and was built by Azam Shah to rival Shah Jahan's Taj. While cool, it's a quarter of the size. There was some other info, but I don't really know what our guide was saying. He had a heavy accent and he may have been drunk. That's what you get for Rs 60. I do know he said something about girls jumping off the spinnerets, and therefor we couldn't climb up them.
The main reason we went there was the close proximity to the Ellora and Ajanta Caves. They're old cave temples/world heritage sites. Ajanta was set in some incredibly beautiful scenery, but the temples themselves were pretty much all the same. When they were first carved, every surface on them was painted with stories about Buddha, but the paint has mostly faded. Ellora was far larger, but by the time we went there, we only had enough energy to see about half the caves. There was also a large temple in the middle that was truly amazing to explore.
Later, when we went to Alibag, we rented a the same bus and driver again. The bus driver both times was half asleep while driving, and possibly drunk. I think him and the Bibi Ka guide would have gotten along pretty well together. We took a larger group this time, and had to break up in to two groups. One group had to pay 600 per person per night. I thought this was outrageous. My group ended up having to pay 1000 after looking for two hours. Oh well, so is life. Right after we checked in, my roommate started having horrible chest pains and had to be brought to an Indian hospital. Indian hospitals are what nightmare are made of. After spending the night at the hospital, we all headed out to the beach. What better way to relax after having some kind of heart problems then spending it drinking on a beach. We also drank on the bus, which is weird from an American perspective, but I guess very common in India. Warning: put on sunblock before you start drinking at the beach. My sun burns took three weeks to finally heal, and my back was pretty much all one large blister by the time I got home.
This last weekend we went to Hampi. Hampi is one of the most amazing places we have been to. Five hundred years ago, it was a giant Hindu trade city, and is said to have originally been home of a Monkey god and his Monkey army. The rocks in the area are all stacked in incredible positions, and the story is that they were made that way by this monkey god. Anyhow, the place is now largely inhabited by old Indian guys offering to sell us magic shrooms. We spent the first night in the charming city of Hampi. The next night we crossed the river that runs through Hampi, because it's supposed to be cheaper over there, and you can buy alcohol there. We did get alcohol, and the rooms were only Rs. 50 per person. Unfortunately, we ended up trapped on what turned out to be an island after the waters started to go up the next day, and had to take a glorified basket to get back across. We also discovered the wonders of a sleeper bus. It was far nicer than a crowded mini bus and an angry old man driver. Unfrotunately, on the way back I got food poisoning after eating at a truck stop. That made the ride home the longest 10 hours of my life.
Yup. That's what I've been up to lately. At work I've made a website.
I've now moved in to the other apartment, and now have a room all to myself. I am now living the life of a king here in India, and my German is coming along pretty well. Time to eat dinner.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
laptop is working again. Kind of
My laptop is working again! Yes, my laptop has been shit out of luck broken for the past month. The charger for it refused to work until a couple of days ago. It used to just buzz and not charge the laptop, so I figured it was toasted. Just for shits and giggles, I tried it out again, and lo'! It works! Great success!
So, what I've done in the past month: traveled to two world heritage sites (the Ellora and Ajantha caves near Aurangabad), made a beach trip that ended up with me spending most of the night with an Iranian at the hospital (and I would later get the WORST sun burn of my life; lesson learned, never mix the beach with vodka before putting on sun screen), and it's Ganesh Fest '09.
Yessir, that's right, it's time to welcome the annual return of everyones favorite elephant headed deity (I think the real name is Ganesh Utsav, or Ganesh Celebration). It means that on every street in India, there will be at least one giant shrine built for Ganesh. Sometimes there is a large stage for people to say prayers and bang on the drums. Other shrines are a small tent with a statue of Ganesh next to giant speakers playing Rihanna and 'Dance Pe Chance'. That reminds me, I was also in a Bollywood dance.
Our work celebrated Indian Independence Day by having all the employees dress in kurtas matching the orange, white, and green colors of the flag. Thus I had to buy a new kurta. Great. We also spent a week practicing a Bollywood dance to the song 'Dance pe Chance'. The song is a huge hit here. We were marvelous, of course. I think there is supposed to be a video floating around of us somewhere, but I'll have to look more in to that.
So the whole Ganesh thing is really amazing. Every night there are prayers to Ganesh, and then usually dancing and/or games. Yeah, it puts lighting the town Christmas Tree back home to shame. I'm trying to explore the city to find all the largest shrines, but taking pictures of everyone praying to Ganesh feels kind of weird, but no one seems to mind me doing this.
I'm sure I'll think of more stuff that I've been up to later, but now, I have to go to bed. Ich bin muede.
So, what I've done in the past month: traveled to two world heritage sites (the Ellora and Ajantha caves near Aurangabad), made a beach trip that ended up with me spending most of the night with an Iranian at the hospital (and I would later get the WORST sun burn of my life; lesson learned, never mix the beach with vodka before putting on sun screen), and it's Ganesh Fest '09.
Yessir, that's right, it's time to welcome the annual return of everyones favorite elephant headed deity (I think the real name is Ganesh Utsav, or Ganesh Celebration). It means that on every street in India, there will be at least one giant shrine built for Ganesh. Sometimes there is a large stage for people to say prayers and bang on the drums. Other shrines are a small tent with a statue of Ganesh next to giant speakers playing Rihanna and 'Dance Pe Chance'. That reminds me, I was also in a Bollywood dance.
Our work celebrated Indian Independence Day by having all the employees dress in kurtas matching the orange, white, and green colors of the flag. Thus I had to buy a new kurta. Great. We also spent a week practicing a Bollywood dance to the song 'Dance pe Chance'. The song is a huge hit here. We were marvelous, of course. I think there is supposed to be a video floating around of us somewhere, but I'll have to look more in to that.
So the whole Ganesh thing is really amazing. Every night there are prayers to Ganesh, and then usually dancing and/or games. Yeah, it puts lighting the town Christmas Tree back home to shame. I'm trying to explore the city to find all the largest shrines, but taking pictures of everyone praying to Ganesh feels kind of weird, but no one seems to mind me doing this.
I'm sure I'll think of more stuff that I've been up to later, but now, I have to go to bed. Ich bin muede.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
I meant this to be about paintball, but it's actually about fast food in India.
Happy Friendship Day. Yes, that's a real holiday here. I don't really know the details, but I guess it's traditionally a holiday that little kids celebrate together, or for college kids to get drunk. I guess it's like Indian Halloween. Except instead of costumes, bracelets are exchanged. Since I got no bracelets, I'll take this to mean I have no friends. To celebrate Friendship, we got a group together for paint ball at the Mariplex, the most American place in Pune. In addition to paint ball, they also have a McDonald's and KFC. I was expecting a McDonald's in India, but I was kind of surprised to find a KFC here. The KFC is super popular as well. I think it's become more popular abroad than it is back in Boston. The French and Germans who tell me over and over how much they despise McDonald's secretly admit to liking KFC. Go figure, right?
While I haven't had any, fast food here is pretty similar to how it is back in the States, except there is no beef. Instead, it's all chicken burgers. McDonald's even sells a vegetarian chicken burger here. Wrap your mind around that one. McD's and KFC are the only only two actual chains that I've seen around here. There is a Burger King, but there is no relationship to the American counter part. I tried it out today. It was pretty bad. It's incredibly cheap, and the only place I know of where you can get actual beef hamburgers. At least, I think it was beef. I'm not really sure. It wasn't anything to write home about, but I guess it is notable enough to blog about.
I haven't really found a reason to eat fast food here. First off, there is nothing fast about India. Everything takes a very long time. Secondly, food here is really cheap. A good meal at a decent restaurant costs Rs. 150, about 3 American. A good lunch can be had for about Rs. 50. People eat out here usually five or six times a week. The places that I've gone to have all been amazing, despite my roommate contracting pretty horrible food poisoning a week ago. Lesson learned: don't drink the milkshakes. Milkshakes are kind of weird here, they're insanely popular, and available in any flavor you could desire. Mango is very popular. In fact, most things are available in Mango flavor in India. I'm becoming pretty partial to Mango corn flakes.
While I haven't had any, fast food here is pretty similar to how it is back in the States, except there is no beef. Instead, it's all chicken burgers. McDonald's even sells a vegetarian chicken burger here. Wrap your mind around that one. McD's and KFC are the only only two actual chains that I've seen around here. There is a Burger King, but there is no relationship to the American counter part. I tried it out today. It was pretty bad. It's incredibly cheap, and the only place I know of where you can get actual beef hamburgers. At least, I think it was beef. I'm not really sure. It wasn't anything to write home about, but I guess it is notable enough to blog about.
I haven't really found a reason to eat fast food here. First off, there is nothing fast about India. Everything takes a very long time. Secondly, food here is really cheap. A good meal at a decent restaurant costs Rs. 150, about 3 American. A good lunch can be had for about Rs. 50. People eat out here usually five or six times a week. The places that I've gone to have all been amazing, despite my roommate contracting pretty horrible food poisoning a week ago. Lesson learned: don't drink the milkshakes. Milkshakes are kind of weird here, they're insanely popular, and available in any flavor you could desire. Mango is very popular. In fact, most things are available in Mango flavor in India. I'm becoming pretty partial to Mango corn flakes.
Friday, July 31, 2009
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 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.
Monday, July 20, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
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.
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.
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