Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

There’s something terribly wrong with the transportation system here in the U.S. I live about 30 miles south of New York City. My family lives just south of Washington, D.C. The distance from my house to theirs is about 200 miles one way. The cost of tolls and gas makes the total round-trip cost of visiting my family about $75. The drive takes me just under four hours with normal traffic (that means two slow areas and the rest smooth sailing).

Now, if I want to take public transportation from here to D.C. it costs me almost TWICE what it costs to drive. The round trip tickets are $130 and that doesn’t even get me all the way to my family’s place. I still have to take another train to get within 20 miles of home and then have them pick me up there. After all the driving to train stations, parking, taking a second train, and driving the rest of the way the total time is nearly six hours one way and the total round-trip cost is about $140. That’s just ALL WRONG!

It should be backwards. The cost of the slower, public transportation should be half of the cost of driving. In fact, in most countries the train would be faster, but that would just be a miracle here. I look at the Japan train system as a stellar example of an advanced economy that has managed to build a cheap, fast public transportation system. I wish the U.S. had done the same.

The thing that really annoys me the most is that, if we had a train system similar to the Japanese one, I could live in D.C. and commute to New Jersey every day for work and it wouldn’t take me more than an hour and a half to get to work. I drive nearly that amount of time today and would gladly commute that far if it meant living in my home town.

I’m baaaaaaack…

Note: I wrote this post back in the middle of November using Word. Just never posted it until now.

So, I haven’t written in a long while. I’ve been back from India for almost exactly two and a half months. In that time I’ve been all over and done a ton of stuff. Most of it had to do with getting settled here in New Jersey and in my new job. I managed to fit in some really fun stuff in between though.

The first hurdle to jump upon getting back from India was the housing hurdle. I actually found the place that I was to end up in on the first day I looked but the guy who owned the place dragged his feet about letting me move in so I had to wait a week and a half before I could move in to my new place. That pretty much bit the big one, as I felt like a vagabond for the whole time I was “homeless.”

Once I got settled, in I started to work on feeling comfortable at my job. That has taken some time, and I honestly don’t think I have “arrived” yet but I feel much better about what I do and my work in general than I did when I was just recently returned from India, so that is good.

Wow, this blog entry is like, SUPER boring. I’m sitting here typing it and I’m bored. That’s just terrible. Here, lets change gears and see if we can’t make things interesting.

The other day I was at Taco Bell and I ordered some food and a drink. When I went to fill up my drink I tried the ice machine once, and nothing. The second time…again nothing. Now, usually I only want a few cubes of ice, as I don’t like my drinks really cold; I prefer cool. I could hear something rattling around inside the damn machine so I tried a third time thinking, “Third times a charm, right?” Well, on the third try the machine decides to make up for the two previous barren attempts by spitting out enough ice to drown in.

I grimaced as the ice almost filled my cup and thought to myself, “I HATE these damn machines.” I swear they were designed by some nerdy, demented engineer who had no friends and nothing better to do than design a machine that will torment poor innocent people like me who are just trying to get a few cubes of ice in their cups.

There, that was much more interesting. I suppose you could say it's pretty sad that my rants about different things I hate are more interesting than the last two and a half months of my life. If anything, that probably means that I lead a boring life. Hmm, if the realization that I lead a boring life really fazed me at all I might change my life, but it doesn’t so I won’t.

India - Bathroom Hazards

NOTE: If you are queasy in any way, shape, or form. DO NOT read this post. It deals with things better left unsaid. I, however, have diarrhea of the mouth and have to say it anyway.

Today seemed to be all about the bathroom. Things started off normal as I went into work and finished my first project after only an hour. That was making it seem like a great day. After a while I had to use the restroom so I went over there to do so. As I was walking into the bathroom I clipped my Blackberry on the corner outcropping (my Blackberry is holstered on my belt...yes, like the geek I am) and barely caught it before it dropped to the floor.

Later, back at home, I was standing before the pot doing my usual "Mother Nature requirement" thing and I happened to glance down into the toilet as I reached forward to flush it. This turned out to be a mistake. You see, what I saw at the bottom of the toilet bowl both scared the hell out of me AND brought back terrible memories. Memories I thought I had repressed.

There was something small, cylindrical, brown, and MOVING at the bottom of the toilet. At first I thought it was just leftover debris from some business I had taken care of about half an hour previous, but it was too small for that. And the fact that it was moving gave me pause. The object could only be a worm. It was about half a centimeter long and scared me more than a large North American Grizzly Bear.

I promptly flushed the toilet again because I couldn't stand to look at it anymore. All I can do is pray that it didn't come out of me and that it came up through the pipes or something.

The reason this brought back bad memories was because while I was in Panama, I contracted various different types of parasites during my stay there. One of those types gets killed by a pill that you take with food. Then when it dies, all of the dead bodies (and larvae) get expelled out of your system...and not through your mouth.

If you have never sat down to do your business, got up, and saw that you just gave alien birth then you cannot possibly fathom the horror.

As I left the bathroom after washing my hands something else struck me as odd. My shower curtain is missing. I guess the housekeeping staff decided that I don't need one because I am so tidy when I shower....? Riiiiiigght!

So yeah, it was just a day where I should have stayed out of the bathroom altogether.

India - Magic Alarm Clock

Since coming to India (I have been here five weeks as of yesterday), I have had to get up at different times depending on what I was assigned to do during the day. When I started training here, I had to get up around 6:30 am to make it to work by 8:15 am or thereabouts. Later, when they assigned me to train with my Business Unit, I didn't have to wake up till 8:30 am because my Business Unit was a five minute walk away on the other side of campus. Why am I telling you this? Good question.

You see, every single day that I have been in India (except for one, but I'll get into that later) I have woken up between 5 to 15 minutes before my alarm when off. The one day that I didn't wake up before my alarm was when I was terribly sick the day before and I was up all night "praying to the porcelain gods." Every other day I have woken up well in advance of my alarm, usually about ten minutes.

Now, my alarm happens to also be my work cell phone. This is because of the whole electricity situation and also because there are no clocks in the entire guest house. The people here are on "India Standard Time" so I guess that precludes having any form of time telling device around.

The thing that baffles me, is some times I will even stay up late and I still wake up before my alarm. Also, I have purposely changed the time on my alarm to a few minutes before or after the usual time that I get up...to no avail. I still wake up before the alarm. I've never had this happen to me before so it has been kinda freaking me out. I mean, what is going on inside my head to make me wake up before my alarm every time?

What pisses me off is that this would have been great many times in my life before now. I can think of a few situations where waking up before your alarm can really be useful. In my case it was times when I had finals or school related stuff, or a plane to catch and I needed to be absolutely SURE that I got up. What better way of getting up to an annoying alarm than actually waking up before it so that when it starts going off you are already awake. So, instead of waking you up, the alarm just ends up annoying you. I don't know about you, but I know I can't sleep and be annoyed at the same time.

So...yeah, it's very strange but true. I guess that is true of many things in life...

India - Two is company?

This past week, I got extremely tired of eating any type of Indian food whatsoever. As such, I decided to look for alternative places here on campus to get decent non-indian tasting food. One place that I found was the Barista Coffee shop in Tower 17.

It is a two minute walk from the Guest House to the Barista Cofee shop, so it is convenient enough. I went down there looking to get something sweet like a strawberry frappachino or something similar. As I perused the menu I saw that they also sell grilled sandwiches and other pastries.

I was happy about this because as I looked at the sandwich selection I found a couple that looked non-indian. There were some "Tikka/Masala" type sandwiches but I stayed well clear of those. I decided on the Grilled "BBQ Chicken" sandwich. I put the "BBQ chicken" part in quotes because this sandwich was almost exactly a "Chicken Salad" sandwich that you would buy in the states. There was no BBQ sauce and the chicken didn't have a BBQ flavor.

As an aside, let me tell you about Indian versions of many trusted foods that we know and love. Here a "Pasta" can be any number of things. For instance, when I was at U.S. Pizza the other day I ordered the "Chicken Pasta" for lunch. What came out as my order could only be described as a bowl of soup. To be fair there was noodles in the bowl, but the sauce was brown and the taste was a mix between "Super Spicy" and oregano. The chicken had taken on the spicy oregano flavor and to me tasted nasty. It had a very strange aftertaste. We would have called this "Chicken stew" back home, but the Indian's called it "Chicken Pasta." I had a similar experience at the resort we went to in Mysore, where I got the "Chicken Casserole" and was instead served "Chicken Fettucini Alfredo" that looked like something you would order from Olive Garden. It was VERY good, but I would never call it a casserole. So yeah...the Indian idea of American food is very skewed.

Anyway, back to the Barista Coffee place. So I ended up ordering two sandwiches because I was hungry. I also still wanted something sweet so I ordered two Strawberry Frappachinos as well. Now, the drink sizes here at the Barista coffee are considered "Large" here in India. This size is just a tiny bit smaller than the small Straberry Frappachino you can order at Starbucks. That is why I ordered two of them, because the Large here is super small for me.

So the guy taking me order at the cash register told me to have a seat and he would bring out the food. I obliged him and was engrossed in chatting with friends on gchat on my Blackberry by the time he came out with food.

The guy brought out one sandwich and one drink. I looked at him funny and he said to me, "I will bring out the rest of the food when your friend arrives." I just started shaking my head. These damn Indians, I swear! I looked at the guy and I said, "All the food I ordered is for me alone." He looked at me with this incredulous look, like he couldn't imagine one person eating two sandwiches and drinking two "Large" drinks. Then he said to me, still with that incredulous look on his face, "Oh ok, then I'll bring the rest of the food when you finish this." Hmm, ok thanks 'Mom', and can I have dessert if I finish all my food?

Needless to say, being as starved for non spicy food as I was, I scarfed that drink and sandwich in about five minutes. I had to wait a few minutes for him to bring the rest of the food out, but I devoured that stuff too. It was pretty good, at least to my jaded, mistreated tastebuds.

This whole experience just makes me laugh. I wasn't really laughing at the time, but I get quite a few chuckles out of it now as I recall the situation. Most of my friends laughed too. The portions in this country are quite a bit smaller. The people here probably eat alot less than in the U.S. too. I have seen many out of shape or overweight people though. Interestingly enough, I actually agree that many of the portions of food in the U.S. ARE too large. However, I happend to be starving that day and incredulous looks and slow service were NOT going to stop me from eating my fill.

India - Writer's Block Over...

Hell yeah! Finally, I can sit down and post.

No, the irony of my last post being about what a writer uses as source material and the length of time between that post and this one is not lost on me. I meant to write about many different things I have seen here in India but for the past week and a half I have been pretty depressed, for reasons that I won't even get into here.

But I'm back, and that's the most important thing. Now for a few random items in this post (then I will post a more focused topic later today).

First random observation, the traffic. I noticed today as I walked around Bangalore that the traffic has stopped seeming abnormal to me. I was walking down the street with Bill (one of my co-workers) and we were crossing streets full of traffic while still having our conversation. Neither of us so much as blinked. It was hilarious!

The interesting thing about traffic here is there are very few stop lights. I have only seen three or four in all my riding around in cabs and such. So when you want to cross a street you usually have to just wade out into traffic and cross. Now, this sounds very dangerous (and maybe it is, I dont know the statistics on people getting run over by cars here) but if you know the "system" then you won't get hurt.

First thing to remember crossing the street is: Pedestrians do NOT have the right-of-way. This is important, let that sink in for a second and try not to cry...ok. Now, when you get out into the middle of the street and cars do not stop for you, do not panic. Instead, just stay very still (like the veritable "Deer in headlights") and the cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, and trucks WILL NOT hit you. They will simply see you as an obstacle in the road and go around you. Now, when you see an opportunity to move further across the street (like when there are less cars passing in front of you) then you move a few more steps across and repeat.

Using this process you can safely cross any Indian street. It is important to note here that, while you are standing in the middle of the street, you need to be very still and pay attention. If you step forward at the wrong time you WILL turn into road-kill. However, if you are careful and stay still at the appropriate times, standing in the middle of a busy street is as safe as standing on the sidewalk. I'm not joking.

Second random observation, the weather. In Bangalore the high here is around 85 degrees and it is not too humid. It makes for very nice weather most of the time. When you are downtown with all the traffic and people and it is sunny out side it can get quite hot but that's just the nature of summertime. Now, when it rains the temperature drops down to around 65 degrees. The Indians all make me laugh when this happens because they start putting on windbreakers and parkas and such. They also start saying things like, "Ooooo, It's cold outside!" Cold? Don't make me laugh!

When one of my co-workers said that last Thursday I told him, after I stopped laughing, "Do you see snow on the ground out there? No? Then its not cold!" He just chuckled and said, "Well this IS cold for Bangalore." Pfft! Pansies!

Third random observation, the office. Most of the time I work either at the Sarjapur road Wipro campus or here at Electronic City Campus. Both campuses have buildings that are pretty nice but nothing to write home about. However, this past Friday I spent the whole day in a client meeting, as an observer.

When I walked into the room where we were going to have the meeting, I thought I had left India and walked onto a Movie Set. The room looked like a boardroom in a high rise building that someone like Donald Trump would use. The room had a large bay window along one wall showing the immaculately landscaped Wipro technology campus and the two largest buildings on the campus. The other walls had a high quality oak wood look to them. The large centerpiece of the room, the meeting table, was a HUGE oak wood affair with leather board room chairs that were so comfortable it made you want to go to sleep (and as I saw later, some people did). The table had microphones set into the tabletop for each chair around the table so that when you spoke everyone in the room could hear you just fine without you raising your voice. The projection screen at one end of the room was a Huge ice-glass panel that you could walk up to and touch and such without your shadow showing up because the projector was located BEHIND the ice-glass. Next to that was a 32 inch plasma screen TV that can be used to show movies and other figures or just mirror the current presentation. Any way you look at it, the entire set up just screamed MONEY! It made me wonder why our offices are so mediocre and yet what we present to the client is just PHAT. Especially since our company made $700 million profit last year.

That's enough for you to chew on for now. I will post some more in a little while. I've got plenty more to write about...

PS. I put up a new movie quote...let the guessing begin.

Writer's source...

Most books on writing that I have read tell the writer to write what he or she knows best. I always thought that meant you should write what you have experienced in your life. Whether it is work or life experience doesn’t matter I don’t think. I look at authors like John Grisham, who used to be a successful lawyer, and I see where most of his stories are originating.

Then you have authors like Stephen King, who writes mostly horror or authors like R.A. Salvatore that writes only Fantasy Fiction. Where does the “experience” come from to write these wildly fantastical things? I think much of this can be attributed to creative ability mixed with writing ability.

If you believe that an author should write what he or she knows, or write from experience then the best way to find more things to write is to go experience more things. I think Ernest Hemmingway was a great example of this. He is said to have traveled the world and have had numerous jobs. He was probably trying to expand what he can write about.

I suppose if you go by this definition then there are many things that I have done that would add to what I can write about. I’ve experienced both the first and third world. I’ve been sick and healthy at times. I have seen, heard, felt, and smelled so many different things that I’m sure all of that would add to anything I chose to write about. It’s kind of interesting to think about all the things I’ve experienced in my life and how that colors the way I write and what I write.

Of course, writers the world over are different in how they go about writing things. Some writers need an outline to do a writing project, others have to just start writing and then let the story evolve as it gets created. One writer said it best though when he said, “If you want to write the most important thing to do is: WRITE!”

Hmm, I should remember that…

India - "I haaaaaave the POWER!"

These words were uttered by He-man as he would turn from his “normal” mode into the hero known as “He-Man.” He-man must have never been to India.

Here at least twice a day the electricity simply turns off. Every single day at work it has happened and many times it happens while I am at the guest house as well. Now, at Sarjapur Road (where I work) the company has a generator that kicks in after twenty seconds to a minute. At the guest house however, there is no generator and so when the power goes out you usually have to wait for it to come back on. This process can take anywhere from a minute to fifteen minutes (so far).

This whole thing just makes me think of Panama. There were so many times while I was in Panama that the electricity would cut off and I would be left to lay there in the dark and heat without the aid of my fan. It was the closest thing to air conditioning we had, but the worst part was that the fan was the thing keeping most of the mosquitoes away from you, so when the electricity went out it was like thanksgiving dinner for all the mosquitoes.

Luckily this didn’t happen very often, even in Panama. When it did happen it never lasted longer than three hours. Which, granted, was a looooooong three hours! Anyone who has ever lived in a third would country probably knows what I am talking about (and is probably laughing at this post).

I know I laughed…

Strange Dreams...again!?

Last night I had a strange dream. I do not know if it was stranger than my other dreams that I usually had, but it definitely stuck out in my mind when I woke up.

In the dream I was in Utah. My brother was there too, and we decided to sneak onto a nearby airport and steal some planes. He chose to steal an older style plane and I stole a new supersonic jet plane. No explanation was given as to how we learned to fly these planes, but we knew and takeoff was fine. We flew around for a while and then decided to head out of the country.

We ended up in the Netherlands (I know because when I landed near an airbase there I saw a sign) at some evil military base. They were evil because they were keeping people prisoner on the base. So, Andrew (my brother) and I decided to help. We snuck onto the base and tried to free a bunch of the people there. However we got captured.

At this point the main bad guy (who’s face I can’t seem to remember) started torturing us for information. We didn’t really tell him anything because we didn’t know anything. After that, this woman who was part of the base decided to help us and freed me. I got my brother out and the rest of the prisoners. They left via a bunch of military trucks that the lady who helped us had arranged. We went to our planes after that, but the military people had found and seized our planes.

So, we had to sneak back onto base and get to our planes. Unfortunately we could only find my brother’s old school style plane (it was a WWI type two-seater biplane looking thing). I was furious that they had taken my plane but there was nothing I could do about it.

Then we flew away. Yeah, that was it and then I woke up. Crazy eh?

India - A matter of some 'weight'

So, I go to the gym on a regular basis here (when I’m not sick that is). The gym set up here is like this: There are two weight rooms and two yoga rooms. Where we live in the guest house is at the halfway point between the two gyms, so I can walk to either in about the same amount of time.

The gyms are open in the morning and at night. In the morning they are open from 6:10 am to 9:00 am. At night it is open from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Because of the hour long commute to work I have to leave for work by no later than 7:30, this makes going to the gym in the morning almost impossible. Also, I don’t like working out before eating and breakfast doesn’t start in the cafeteria until 7:00 am. So I don’t work out in the morning.

I try to go to the gym six days a week. Three of those days I do weights and the other three I do aerobics (mainly treadmill running). The problem with the aerobics here is that in the Tower 17 gym you are only allowed to stay on the treadmills for 10 minutes at a time; more on this later. In the Arena gym, you can stay on the treadmill for 20 minutes at a time. So, on aerobics days I go over there, cause even though 20 minutes isn’t enough, its twice as much as 10 minutes. To supplement the 20 minutes, I do jumping jacks and other forms of aerobics after I finish running. That way I get a full workout.

Now, as to the time limit on treadmills, it was put there because of the severe overcrowding of the gym and the shortage of treadmills. It is true that the gym is always busy, but these crazy people here think that ten minutes on a treadmill is enough to do you some real good. It boggles my mind when I think about it. I have seen Indians come into the gym, get on the treadmill for ten minutes and then leave. Obviously ten minutes is better than zero exercise but these people aren’t in great shape as it is and they are trying to lose weight (usually, from what I can tell by looking at them) so someone should wake them up to the fact that ten minutes is not doing squat.

The funniest part is that these people are some of the smartest people I have met. They all have very technical jobs that require tons of brain power to be successful. Yet, here we are with this ridiculous gym situation.

As I stated before the gym is very overcrowded. Around 14,000 people work on this Wipro campus and there are two gyms each with a maximum capacity of 50 people tops. If you add in the yoga, there can be about 200 people in the gym at any given time. That is just woefully deficient. So from 6 pm to around 8 pm the gym is super crowded. There is a bus that leaves campus around 8:30 pm so the gym clears out around 8 pm because people are trying to catch that bus. The gym is still busy after that time though since so many people work nights and go to the gym before work or live here.

The really funny part is how the way Keith and I work out differs from the Indian workout. Keith is my only American co-worker who goes to the weight room on a regular basis. The Indians follow the “Low weight, many reps” work out plan. Keith and I are on the “High weight, less reps” work out plan. So, when Keith and I do bench press, it is pretty funny to watch. Since we do quite a bit of weight, we literally have nearly every weight plate in the gym on the bar at one time. There are about 12 weight plates in the entire room and we put 8 of them on the bar so that we can have enough weight to do bench. Everyone in the gym stares at us funny as we lift that much weight and do not just one or two reps but a full set worth of reps using that weight. They look at us, and we are not too much bigger than the largest of them but we are doing a ton more weight.

Anyway, I’m pretty sore today after the workout yesterday, but it’s a good sore.

India - Birthday Blues

Today was my birthday. I got up, went to work, worked all day, came home, went to the gym, paid some bills, and then sat here thinking. It's somewhat strange to go through an entire birthday and not have any of the people you come face to face with wish you a happy birthday. I guess there's a first time for everything. I have a VIOP phone in my room though, so I was able to call many of my friends and family. That was good, because it was nice to hear them wish me a happy birthday.

I spent most of the day lost in thought. The training today was on Program Management, and since zero percent of my job deals with program management I paid that same percentage of my attention to the training. Instead, I read some comics on my computer and thought about this past year of life and the new year ahead. It's been a decent year. I managed to finish an MBA, which for me seems like no small feat. I also got my first "big break" of a job in the form of this BDM position with Wipro Technologies. I have many things to be grateful for and life is good.

So why am I so glum today?

I suppose it could be the "normalcy" of the day. I mean, the entire day just felt like any other, there was no special attachment to the day, no party, and no celebrating. Instead, there was work and much introspection. They say the "Unexamined life is not worth living," but maybe I should have picked a different day to do the examining.

I told my best friend that it was a happy birthday for me because I was still "alive and kicking," and to an extent this was (and is) the honest truth. I feel that every day I have on this Earth is another chance to prove that I deserve to be here. That opportunity is not one that I take lightly. The question: "Have I done any good in the world today?" comes to mind. I hope that we all can answer with a resounding yes.

Anyway, I'm getting older, and the older I get the more I realize that we are not just celebrating our age, we are celebrating life. That most precious and capricious of things, that sometimes eludes and sometimes overwhelms us. A Neurosurgeon that we spoke to today told us "Plan for tomorrow, but LIVE for today."

I couldn't agree more...

India - Dirty Shopping

I went souvenir shopping on Saturday. Although I must admit I would have traveled into Bangalore on Saturday even if I had no souvenirs to buy. The need for American style food drives me into town each weekend regardless of the two hour drive.

This particular Saturday I had a few things to get done though. I got my hair cut, which was a strange experience because it was the first time I had a professional cut my hair in more than four years. I do not have hair clippers here though so I had to go to the salon. The guy who cut my hair, his name was Mani, did a decent job of it though. I was happy with it and it wasn’t too expensive either. I spent 350 rupees, which is just under nine dollars. The company is going to pay for it anyway.

Before getting my hair cut I ate at McDonald’s. I know this is a cliché for an American to go to a foreign country and then eat American fast food, but I don’t care. I needed food that wasn’t Indian and McDonald’s happened to be the first place I found. An interesting thing about McDonald’s here in India though: there is no beef in the entire store. Also, half of the items on the menu are vegetarian items. Since most of the country here worships cows (about 80%) and half the country is vegetarian, many of the American places do not carry beef at all, so all the burgers at McDonald’s are either chicken or vegetarian burgers. Needless to say, I got the McChicken Combo. It tasted just like home, albeit with “normal” size portions. The drink and fries I got were “medium” but are the same size as the “small” back home. You can thank McDonald’s for helping to make America fat.

After that I went out to M.G. Road. In Bangalore, Mahatma Gandhi Road is essentially the “center” of town since you can get to many good shopping places from M.G. Road. I wandered around that area buying souvenirs for friends and family as well as exploring a bit. I got most of my souvenir shopping done and for that I am glad. I really dislike shopping, and here in India it is even worse. The streets are full of dust and dirt and after an hour or so my eyes start to burn and I feel like coughing. The crowds of people, especially on Saturday, are packing the sidewalks and you have to fight your way through them to get where you are going. The selection of stores does not leave you wanting though, especially in that area. There are plenty of places to buy most things you could want.

After shopping, I ate dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s. The food was good, but still no beef. I was craving a hamburger, but ended up getting Chicken Alfredo pasta instead. Oh well, T.G.I. Friday’s has beef, and I’ll probably end up there next weekend.

All in all, it was a good shopping day, and I look forward to NEVER having to do it again!

India - Clubbed to death!

Yesterday as I left work some of my co-workers were planning on going out instead of returning to the Guest House. I decided to go with them because in the past few weeks I've spent way too much time at the Guest House doing essentially nothing. I also knew that if I went back I would never catch up with them again. This requires some explaining.

You see, the guest house we live in is in a place called Electronic City, or EC for short. EC is located aproximately four miles south east of the Bangalore city limits. The trip from where we work to where we live takes about an hour either way during the first part of the morning and afternoon rush hours. I say "first part" because the traffic in Bangalore gets progressively worse for three hours after the work day ends, and then it wanes down to "normal" levels again by about ten p.m. Bangalore traffic doubles every fifteen minutes during the rush hour build up, and then drops off in about half the time it takes to build up.

So, with that information its time to do some of what I call "India Traffic Math." If I were to leave work (Point A) at 5 pm (the beginning of rush hour) to go to EC (Point B), it would take me an hour. Then I would need to get ready, which could be done in a half hour. Then if I wanted to catch up to my co-workers I would have to leave EC at 6:30 pm (Point B) for wherever they happen to be (Point C). Usually they venture deeper into the city than where our work is when they go out. So, getting to them would take aproximately two to two and a half hours. I would arrive between 8:30 and 9pm hungry and wanting to eat.

Meanwhile, my co-workers would not only have eaten, but would be well into their cups and at a club somewhere. I would spend another hour finding food, then make it to the club at about 10 to 10:30. A note on the Bangalore Club scene: All clubs here close between 11:30 pm and Midnight. So, our "India Traffic Math" tells us that we would spend four hours traveling, one hour eating, and one hour dancing. Thats no good at all.

So instead, I just went with them.

We left work at 5:30 because the Taxi took forever to come get us. We headed for a restaurant called India Joes. When we got to within 100 yards of the joint (we were actually on the off ramp of the highway) the police completely closed the road the off ramp exited onto. So there we were about 100 yards from our destination stuck in completely stopped traffic. So we did what any good adventurous Americans would do: we got out and walked.

Here in India the Taxi drivers (Cabs) hike up the price of their services after 10 pm to two or three times the normal rate. To avoid this problem, we hired a cab for the night. This works out well for both parties as Cab drivers are not guaranteed to get the late night business anyway. We told our cabbie that we would call him when we were done with India Joes.

To our dismay India Joes was closed for a Muslim holiday, fortunately for us T.G.I. Friday's shares the same building as India Joes. I cannot describe my ecstasy as I bit into that hamburger, munched on mozzarella sticks, and ate those fries. It was too good to be true.

My co-workers started their first drinking game of the night about the time I finished my appetizer. The goal of the game was to drink more liquor faster than anyone else. I barely payed attention as all of my energies were consumed digesting wonderful tasty food.

Shravan (one of Indian my co-workers) had his brother meet us at Friday's and we all left together after eating. Shravan wanted to stop at his house to get ready for clubbing (shower and what not) but his parents are so traditional Indian that we wouldn't be welcome there after hours (it was like 8:30pm) so we went to the coffee shop on the corner (Coffee Day its called) to wait for him.

He took forever, but finally we headed to the first club of the night: Fuga. Fuga was a wonderfully clean and spacious club, the house music was decent and the atmosphere was friendly. Only problem: it was nearly empty. Shravan, genius that he is, had timed things wrong and got us there too early. We arrived at 9 pm and the clubs dont start getting full till 9:30 or 10.

Our group at this point had ten people in it, as we had picked up more of Shravan's friends. They were drinking but getting antsy at Fuga. We went down and started dancing once more than five people were on the dance floor. At this point Shravan decided it was time to go hit another club.

So we spent fifteen minutes getting everyone OFF the dancefloor (it was retarded, I know) and out the door. We drove another ten minutes to a club called Nyx.

Nyx is on the fifth floor (the top) of a medium rise building in downtown Bangalore. The setup is a bar open to the night surrounded by tables and lounge style chairs on one side of the roof and an enclosed dance floor on the other side of the roof. It had a vaguely Indian-Hawaiin theme outside, but the inside of the dancefloor was all business. Hardwood floors and sound padded walls to keep the outside feeling more relaxed than the hard-core house music going on inside.

Fuga was much nicer than Nyx, but the DJ at Nyx was WAY better than the one at Fuga. I danced for over an hour and the DJ never let me get too tired, he would drop the beat just at the right time and then pick it up before too long. When the club finally closed at 11:45 or so, I was sweat soaked, tired, and happy. My co-workers were not too drunk to dance, but they were drunk enough to dance and be hilarious to watch! I think I enjoyed that almost as much as the music.

The Bangalore Police showed up about fifteen minutes after closing and the Nyx manager started telling everyone to leave before the cops started beating people. As a funny aside the cops were drinking cocktails next to the bar while they waited for the beatings to commence, and from how slow people were moving to exit I am SURE someone caught a beating. I, however, did not stick around to find out who.

Our group split up at that point as some people wanted to go sit and drink at Shravan's brother's spot while others (including me) wanted to call it a night. Dancing and socializing and a full day of work before that had taken its toll on me and I was almost literally...clubbed to death.

The trip back to EC took about 40 minutes. The same trip that takes 2.5 hours during rush hour. Gotta love the nightlife...

India - End of Week 2

Two weeks down, four weeks still to go. Two of our group is actually leaving tonight to go back to the states. They are both consulting employees; they are not BDM’s (that’s Business Development Managers). I must say that I envy them. There are many good things about India, but none of them can really outweigh the glaring fact that India is not my home.

I am enjoying myself a lot more though. I have felt much better lately after my brush with deathly sickness last week. The thing that bugs me most is that I am still essentially living out of my suitcase. I have unpacked everything into my room, but I can’t help but feel that I only have ten percent of the useful things that I own here. I’m living a paired down version of my life. The worst part of the whole “suitcase” thing though, has been the struggle with the internet at the guest house. When we first arrived we could not access most of the websites we wanted to access. Anything that had to do with entertainment, games, social networking, or blogs was blocked. In fact this blog entry that you are reading right now was written in word because Blogger was still blocked at the time. We managed to complain enough to get a handful of sites unblocked but most of the wide world of the internet is still blocked.

This has been a sharp point of contention with me vis-à-vis Wipro. When I was in the states and asked them if I would have internet here they told me “Yes.” The internet that I use, with about 99% of the internet blocked, does not count as the internet at all. I can now use face book, gmail, and blogger but that’s about all of the really useful sites that I can use. Google still works, but most of the sites you can find on there won’t open. It makes me so bitter.

Today is Friday and I am excited. I’m sitting here at work in a training meeting on Lean Processes and Six Sigma Processes. I’m dressed down for Friday with jeans and a short sleeve collared shirt on, so the fact that this presentation is ridiculously boring doesn’t make me so sad. This weekend we are going to head into the city and I am planning on doing some serious shopping. Not only am I looking for souvenirs but also for good food. I spend each week trying to survive through terrible breakfasts and lunches by ordering food for dinner from different places around here. Then on the weekend I have a chance to go out and get good American style food from restaurants around Bangalore. So far the only real American style restaurant that I have found is the T.G.I. Fridays here in Bangalore. This weekend I plan to try to find some more restaurants.

Next weekend I am going to, hopefully, take a trip out to somewhere beyond Bangalore. I havn't decided where yet, but we'll see...

India - Smell-icus Rex: Terror of Bangalore

India’s culture is old and many faceted. This entry will take on one part of the culture that drives me crazy: Personal Hygiene. To do this topic justice there is some background information that I should cover here.

In India there are a few social systems that differentiate people. One of those systems is called the “Caste” system. Another of those systems is the “Upper, middle, lower class” system common to any modern culture. Now, everyone in India belongs to some level of both of these systems. The Caste system has much to do with what part of the country you are from and who is your family. The class system has much to do with where you work and where you went to school. Now, what does this system have to do with personal hygiene? Glad you asked.

People here at Wipro are all middle class (or higher) members of society. Most of the people in the IT industry in India are middle class or higher. Here middle class means you live a modern life. You have a laptop, internet at home, a nice home, a car, and other things like that. Now, Wipro runs multiple Technology campuses here in Bangalore. Most of these campuses are supported by outside contractors.

These contractors are the focus of my gripes. You see, these contractors handle all the service activities for the campuses. All the grounds keepers, the security, the house keepers, the laundry people, the construction workers, and the cafeteria workers are provided by these contracting companies.

Now, all of these workers that I have met personally have been very nice people. They do their jobs well and take pride in their work. They are all smiles and helpful all the time. When I was sick they even went and got medicine for me and brought me water. However, almost without fail all of these people smell STRONGLY of body odor. These people are paid very little per hour; they make less than five dollars a day, maybe even less than that. These people would be considered “Lower class” by modern standards.

These people smell. It’s as simple as that. They probably do not have the funds to purchase deodorant and they probably do not have running water where they live, so taking a shower or bath is hard to do. As long as you don’t stand down wind of them you can’t smell them at all, but sometimes it’s bad. The worst experience I have had is after the housekeeper came (who is male for those of you thinking of a female housekeeper) and my desk area smelled like body odor for two days afterward because he was watching TV in my room (in my chair) for a while. I walked in and found him sitting there chilling. It made me laugh until he left and I smelled the odor. I had to turn the ceiling fan up all the way just to mask the smell. It went away after a few days, but it was still disturbing.

All of this may be just my American sensibilities bothering me, but the smell is bad. My foreign friends might find my complaints naïve and close-minded, but I don’t think I am being unfair. In all fairness, I have actually noticed that some of the Wipro people that I come into contact with smell faintly of body odor too. This disturbs me since these people are middle class and can most definitely afford all the trappings of personal hygiene. I have no idea why they would smell like that, but they do. So in all fairness the smell is not just from the low class workers, middle class Wiproites also smell sometimes too (hell, I probably even smell sometimes, but I swear I try to mask it as much as possible), but the incidence of odor and the strength of the odor is much less with the Wiproites than with the service workers here.

I still am not sure why some of the Wiproites smell funny, but I don’t ask questions either. So, those of you who are coming to India are forewarned that some of the people you interact with my smell strange or bad. Don’t let it bother you, it’s just some people, most people smell just fine.

India - Day 3 "The Browns win the Super Bowl"

I arrived on Sunday in India, jet lagged and tired. Monday’s work day was long and grueling because I was still feeling tired. Tuesday was a little better because I wasn’t so tired, but that was the least of my worries.

Sunday I started eating Indian food, and it was ok. I say ‘ok’ meaning that the food was palatable but not necessarily tasty or good. Most of it was spicy but not too tasty, which isn’t my favorite type of food. I love spicy food, but it has to taste really good, meaning it has to be spiced for taste and the heat of the spice just comes with the territory. Here it seems that the chefs spice the food for the heat and the taste might as well not matter. It’s actually kind of sad because I was expecting all this tasty food and instead I got bland, hot food that is barely palatable.

By Tuesday I was no longer feeling so tired, so that was good. However, at lunch the food just smelled strange to me and about an hour after lunch my stomach began to feel very queasy. We had a meeting in another building after lunch and as we walked to the other building I felt like throwing up. I mentioned this to my co-workers and they offered advice like, “You’ll be alright,” and “Grab some Imodium later.” Such a big help they are…not! I managed to make it home to the guest house before anything really bad happened though.

When I arrived home I lay down on my bed and tried to focus on my stomach. The pain there felt like small explosions in my intestines, both upper and lower. I thought a face hugger was going to rip itself out of my sternum and start laughing at me. So, being nearly delirious with pain, I was essentially paralyzed on my bed. It was at this point that I had the sudden, urgent need to go use the restroom.

For the sake of decency I won’t document all of the horrible things that happened in that bathroom over the next eighteen hours. I will say, however, that I was constantly moving back and forth between laying on my bed suffering to being in the bathroom suffering. I much prefer lying on the bed, by the way. The whole time I was getting more and more dehydrated, so I managed to get some bottled water from the guest house staff.

An aside about the bottled water they have in the guest house. This stuff tastes REALLY funny to me. It always tastes like it has a strange aftertaste. I have asked everyone else about it and they tell me it tastes normal to them, which makes me think it must be either in my head or in my taste buds. It tastes nasty though.

Anyway, I didn’t go to work the next day due to my need to stay very close to the bathroom. I spent most of the day finishing the Harry Potter book, lying on the bed in pain. It’s amazing what a book can do for you when you are in pain. It helped me to not feel so alone and so sorry to be in India. I just realized that I read five of the seven Harry Potter books in foreign countries. The first four I read in Panama and the seventh here in India. That’s so strange.

While I was sick something interesting happened: I missed home. When I was on my mission and got sick, I always ended up thinking “I wish I wasn’t sick.” Here in India however my main thought was, “I wish I wasn’t in India.” The mission is very different than a business trip, but I never realized that till now. I felt well enough to function by the end of Wednesday (the day after I got sick).

There has been one side effect that has stayed with me though. Every time I walk into the cafeteria here I feel like throwing up from the smell of the Indian food. The food here is mostly South Indian food (most of the Indian food that Americans know and love is North Indian food, about a thousand miles away from here), which has a very distinct smell to it and is very spicy. Too bad spicy doesn’t equate to tasty as well; a shame really. The smell makes me sick because it is the same food that made me very sick originally. So now I can barely eat any of the food they cook here. I have since discovered a few of the restaurants around the area and the FabMall (like a convenience store on campus here). I eat most of my dinners from places like those. Its kind of expensive but I can expense most of it, so it should be ok.

India - First Impressions

I arrived this morning, feeling hung over without ever drinking anything. Total fly time to India was just under 20 hours. I got just under 3 hours of sleep the entire time. So when I landed I had slept 3 hours of the last 34. The plane was delayed at three separate points along the way: taking off from Paris after refueling, landing in Mumbai, and taking off from Mumbai. The last three or four hours we flew through a monsoon filled with heavy sheets of rain and lightning bolts. Thank goodness for two foot thick synthetic plastic and metal walls, because if I could have heard the thunder I might have been scared (and I don’t want to ruin my track record)..

The most eventful part of the flight was a tie between two things. The first was the four year old Indian boy traveling with his nice old grandmother. He kept kicking the back of my seat and being generally loud. My noise canceling headphones canceled his noise, but repeated baleful glares of death at the child and his grandma did nothing to belay the repeated kicking over the course of three hours. The second event was when, during the Mumbai landing, our plane did a fishtail move that had my stomach and liver exchanging places. My life didn’t exactly flash before my eyes, but many movie memories with large exploding trains and planes did. The runway was slick, but I still think something else was going on up in the front of the plane to make that happen.

Once here customs was an exercise in pure patience. There were four lines with four separate checkers. Each line had about a hundred people in it and none of them looked to be moving. An hour and a half later I walked through the first checkpoint expecting to just grab my luggage and go…nope. I still had to wait about fifteen minutes before my bags came out. Wow! The Bangalore airport security is the model of inefficiency.

As we left the terminal I remember two things in particular. The first was the walkway leading out being lined with taxi drivers and chauffeurs trying to get my business. The walkway was lined with railings on either side, but you could hardly see the railings because there were so many people lining the rails. The second thing that caught my eye was a slightly overweight Caucasian woman (white people stick out like sore thumbs here) arguing with a security guard at the door to the terminal. Apparently no one can enter the terminal through the exit door, but people were standing as close to it as possible. I guess this white lady got a little too close according to the security guard because he was steadily pushing her back. In reality she wasn’t any closer than anyone else but she was maybe more agitated in her waiting, as I saw her almost jumping up and down shortly before the security guard confronted her.

We found our bus driver about halfway down the main walkway. He lead us to a middle age looking bus that just barely fit all of us with our stuff (there were 14 of us). The bus came equipped with a hydraulic door that didn’t work (the 2 bus attendants had to force it closed), a slight moldy smell (that could have been the general India smell though), and mosquitoes ready to eat.

The trip to the Wipro campus took about forty minutes. The sights along the way could only be described as “third world country meets modern accoutrements.” There were shanties on either side of the street, run down looking stores, and many businesses that looked modern in every way. The building style is concrete and tall; many high rise buildings dot the area. At one point in the trip, we got behind a garbage truck carrying wet organic materials that smelled like a decaying road kill carcass. We could see the rotting leaves hanging over the side of the truck, and the smell…oh the horror!

Upon arriving we were ushered through security relatively quickly, and shown to the guest house—where we will be staying for the next six weeks. The guest house looks much like a hotel with open air walkways instead of indoor hallways. The structure is a square with the corners and center courtyard all open to the elements. The room has ceramic tile floors and a muted brown and maroon color scheme. The bed is probably harder than the ceramic floor, but there’s no way to tell short of a stress test. The bathroom has a shower, but no bathtub associated with it. So, when I took a cold shower this morning (no hot water up here on the first above ground floor…yet) the water just got all over since it had no tub to keep it in place. The bathroom DOES have toilet paper though, and believe me—much happiness ensued when I found that out.

One last interesting note about the room that I should mention is the electricity situation. The key to the room came attached to a plastic keychain with the room number on it. When I first got into the room the electricity didn’t work no matter how many switches I flipped. Finally, I saw a small plastic thermostat looking thing next to the door with a slot in it. It turns out that you have to insert your plastic keychain into the slot to get the room’s electricity running. Also, you can’t lock your door from the outside without the key, so it’s a pretty nice system they got going. It makes it nearly impossible to lock yourself out by accident.

After I got my room (and figured out how to turn on the electricity), I decided to walk around the campus. I will take pictures of the area so you can see what I’m talking about here. The area enclosed by the fences is called the Wipro Campus and it consists of about 10 buildings in all. The area is very well landscaped and the buildings are nice and new. It essentially looks like a semi-tropical college campus with large buildings dedicated to all sorts of different things. In this case the buildings are Offshore Development Centers for various accounts that Wipro handles. Our guest house building is the only one that is used for living space. The central building holds administrative offices, the food court, some shopping places, and the gym. All in all the area is nice.

That cannot be said for the area directly beyond the fences though. There is a shantytown not 30 feet from the outside fence of this campus. By shantytown I mean people living in houses made of cement brick and sheet metal roofs. The shantytown starts at the edge of the street across from the fence and goes on for a long distance. It’s a very stark contrast to what can be seen on Campus here.

After exploring and then unpacking some, my group and I went into Bangalore proper via the Wipro Shuttle bus. The trip took about an hour because of Sunday traffic. The city reminded me so much of Panama that I waxed nostalgic and talked with Nisha about my mission the whole way there. We walked around what passes for the “downtown” shopping district here in Bangalore. I found out that things really are cheaper here too. It was amusing to see things that sell for much more in the states sell for a third or even a fourth of the price here. Not everything is that much cheaper, but clothes and food fall into those categories.

After exchanging money and picking up a few things (like the new Harry Potter book), we went in search of a sit down restaurant. We spent about 40 minutes walking around and all we could find was Subway, KFC, and McDonalds. It was sad to think that we flew twelve thousand miles only to eat American fast food. Finally, as we were about to give up, we found an Indian buffet style restaurant on the roof of a shopping mall. The place was called the “Canopy” and served a variety of Indian food. The food was good, but I was disappointed because none of it was too spicy for me. The rest of the group was complaining after a few bites about how spicy it was, but to me none of the food was that spicy. Instead it tasted good, and well prepared but not too hot.

After that late lunch the guys all headed back while the girls went looking for a place to get their nails done. Back here at the guest house I turned the air condition on and laid down for a few minutes…which turned into a five hour nap. Now I’m wide awake and officially jet lagged, because I can’t sleep even though I need to be up for work in 6 hours.

I’ll leave it at that for now. First impression: this place is crazy.

Oh it's ON!!

Wow, blogger is actually working from the Guest House here in India. I've been living here at the Wipro Guest House for two weeks now, and the entire time the Blogger webiste has been blocked. We complained and complained to the program directors and finally they opened up a few sites like "Face Book" and such but not blogger. Then, a few minutes ago, I decided to check to see if blogger was working (no reason for checking, I just wanted to see) and it worked!!! I'm so happy and excited!

For some reason writing my blogs in the blogger "Compose" window makes me more happy than writing my blogs in Word. It probably has something to do with the fact that in Word I know that I'm going to have to cut and paste and post it later, whereas here I know that when I click "Publish Post" its on the web instantly (or close enough to it).

So, I'm now going to go ahead and post the India blogs I have been keeping in Word Documents. Enjoy, comment often and I'll love you forver!