This has been a week of firsts: my first trip to India, and my first blog. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have anything interesting enough to write about to make a blog worthwhile, and after reading this, you may decide that nothing’s changed. If that’s the case, then at least I can save you the price of a bottle of Nyquil. Several of my friends seem interested, though, and interested enough to actually set up this blog for me (ie. my brother– thanks!), so I’ll give it a try.
Preparations
The whole thing started a couple of months ago when my company was looking for someone to go to India to train a partner company’s software development team in the internals of a product I once worked on. Even though I was committed to other projects, this was a chance too good to pass up, so I volunteered for a 6-8 week stay, even though I knew next to nothing about living in India. I just knew it would be an interesting learning experience, no matter what it was like. And, I figured I could stand anything for two months. Time will tell.
I started by getting my vaccinations updated. You don’t officially need any shots to go to India from Canada, but they’re still a good idea. Plus, I hadn’t had anything but the annual flu shot since 1979, so I was way out of date on the ones that are a good idea just for living in Canada. Over a period of six weeks, I had shots for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, typhoid, tetanus, polio, and diphtheria, and I had tests for measles and rubella, to make sure those were still OK. With a prescription for Malarone (anti-malarial) and Norfloxacin (antibiotic), plus an armload of, ahem, digestion remedies, I was ready to go health-wise.
Another concern was a home for my cats. I’ve flown them across Canada, taken them to California when I worked there for a winter, and driven back and forth across the country with them, but in spite of what good travelers they are, I didn’t think a trip to India was a good idea even though the Indian rules for importation of cats are similar to those of Canada. They didn’t get to go to Japan with me, either, the year I worked there. Fortunately, my favourite cat-sitter was planning to stay home for the summer, so that’s where they went. Otherwise, my brother (an even bigger cat freak than me) would have taken them, but that would have meant finding time to do a lot of driving just before the trip.
Next I needed a business visa for India. That’s pretty simple, certainly far simpler than getting one for the US, at least for Canadians. You can download the forms online, and even get it the same day if you live in the right place and have the paperwork (which there isn’t much of) in order.
Travel
Finally, the big day arrived. After calling the banks to make sure my credit and debit cards were flagged not to trigger fraud alerts when they showed up in India, I spent the day at the office getting my laptop set up. Then I went home and packed, and then caught the red-eye to London. Never having flown through Heathrow before, and knowing that I was changing terminals and non-partnered airlines on two tickets (round-trip London, round-trip London-Bangalore), I was doubtful that I’d see my luggage again until I got home. However, it went very smoothly, as Heathrow seems to have this down to a science. It took about an hour from landing to cross the terminals, go through security, and get my boarding pass for the second leg.
Heathrow terminal 4 is full of stores, currency exchanges, and restaurants. Everything’s expensive. A bottle of water, for example, is over a pound. There’s a computer/audio store there that seemed to have OK prices, but everything else, especially the food, was double what you might expect in a “normal” overpriced airport setting. I turned some traveler’s cheques into pounds so I could have an overpriced snack.
The second flight was as uneventful as the first. My main observation of that flight is that flying in the cheap seats on British Airways is a lot more pleasant than on Air Canada. The food was pretty good, and I spent a lot of the flight asleep.
Arrival
I arrived in Bangalore at 04h30 local time, cleared customs, and emerged into India. Job one was to find the driver that the company I’m visiting sent to take me to the company’s guest house. There were a few people with signs inside the terminal building, but the vast majority, including mine, were waiting outside. There must have been a hundred drivers there, all holding up signs with names on them. It turned out not to be too hard to find mine, and we went off to his car.
If I wasn’t awake before, I certainly was after a couple of minutes of Bangalore driving. Even at that hour, driving is a hair-raising experience. I’ll bet the driver used his horn a dozen times before we even left the parking lot. The horn is used not in anger, but rather to let other drivers know that you’re there. It’s used constantly. Scooters, bicycles, three-wheeled auto-rickshaws, cars, ox-carts, buses, cows, you name it, they’re all out there jockeying for position, and they’re definitely more concerned about what’s going on in front than behind. The centre line doesn’t mean anything, though people will usually get over to their own side (the left side) if there’s oncoming traffic. Usually.
By 05h30 I was at the guest house. I thought I’d relax for a couple of hours and then spend a good day at the office since I’d slept well on the plane. The guest house turned out to be very nice: my room is huge, on the second floor of a two-storey apartment in a four-storey apartment building. I have an air-conditioner with a remote control and my own bathroom. Downstairs, there’s a living room with a 27″ TV and a DVD player, a dining room, and patios on either side. There’s a DSL line, and a wireless router that reaches up to my room if I keep the spare power bars away from the router. The connection mostly works, except for the frequent power failures and DNS outages. The apartment has a cook/caretaker/laundryman.
Day One, Monday
After a nap, I got up and realized that not only couldn’t I figure out how to shut off the lights, I couldn’t get hot water in the shower. That was OK, since a cold shower is what I really needed anyway after all that traveling, but after breakfast I couldn’t make it clear to the caretaker what the problem was.
Breakfast was… well, I’m not sure, but it was delicious. I love Indian food, but unfortunately I don’t know the names for very much of it. In this case, it was a deep-fried breaded shell full of potato and onion, eaten with hot pickle and yoghurt. Plus tea, though not tea as I knew it before. This is tea with milk and spices, and here, this is “regular” tea, as opposed to, for example, lemon tea or lime tea. I haven’t seen black tea since the British Airways flight.
At 10h00, the driver picked me up again to go to the office. That turned out to be a relatively short, but again death-defying, drive. I’m sure we’re going to talk more about traffic later, but so far the most striking image I have is traffic-related: women in bright saris, riding scooters helmetless with their hair flying in the wind, darting through traffic on their way to work in the morning.
At the office they had put up a sign in the lobby welcoming me. As soon as I got there, I was shown to a meeting room which is to be my “office” for the next few weeks. It’s big enough for 15 people, with a projector for my laptop, and a large glass wall for drawing on. Almost immediately, the tea guy dropped by to serve tea, and then I spent the morning meeting with the team leader from the partner company, setting out some plans for the next few weeks. We did that until around 13h, which is when people typically take lunch in this office.
Lunch was catered, buffet-style, as it is every day. That seems to be common here, the company has food brought in for everyone. There’s a lot of variety, all Indian of course, though I believe it’s mostly south Indian. It’s eaten that way, at least, on big round steel trays. Many people eat south Indian-style, with their fingers, though since people here come from all over the country, I’m not alone using a fork and spoon.
We eat outdoors on a covered terrace on the roof, which is very pleasant. I haven’t mentioned the weather yet, but it’s very mild. In the summer, the rest of India might be baking and getting drenched with rain, but Bangalore gets something quite different. The high temperature is normally around 30 C, and though it has rained a few times (mostly at night), and is often cloudy, it’s generally dry. So far this week, the only time I’ve been at all uncomfortable from the heat has been sitting in the living room with the windows closed, near the wireless router, debugging my vpn connection.
In the afternoon, I met the team I’m spending the summer with, and started right in with the training.
Almost immediately, the power failed. After minute or so, the backup generator kicked in and I continued. Since then, I’ve grown used to it, though, since it happens at least two or three times a day, and now I don’t even pause, just keep talking with the one emergency light burning.
Most people work from about 09h or 10h to around 18h, the manager-types until 20h. I left work early (17h30) with the IT guys so they could come over to get the wireless router working and show me how to work the lights and hot water. It turned out that the light switches were hiding behind the bed, and the hot water is controlled by a power switch at the other end of the bathroom. You turn on the switch, then wait 10 minutes or so for the tank to heat up, then run the water for a couple of minutes to let the hot water cross to the other side of the room. The hot water in the shower is only a trickle, but once it gets going, it’s HOT.
Dinner was enormous, as every meal has been, and then I went to bed. I’d spent Saturday at the office before traveling to the other side of the planet, then put in a full Monday at the office, so I slept quite well.
Day Two, Tuesday
On the second day, I started settling into a routine. Breakfast at 08h, office by 09h, start training at 09h30. Talk for a few hours, hopefully remember to take a break (several times I’ve talked for three hours before realizing I hadn’t let anyone get up!), eat lunch, talk some more.
After work on Tuesday, though, was a special treat. The partner company team leader’s daughter’s first birthday party was that evening, and he invited me. A child’s first birthday here is quite a big deal: family and friends get together and have a feast. The team leader has a house where he lives with his two brothers, their families, and their mother. A lot of his friends from work attended too, mostly from the project he left to come work on mine, so I had to apologize for stealing him.
The food was amazing. Real home-cooked south Indian food, and a huge variety of it. There was so much of it, in fact, that it had to be served in two batches. My taste buds were in heaven, and by the end I was stuffed.
As the only non-Indian there, and as a recent arrival to the country, everyone wanted to know what I thought of India. After only two days, that was a hard question to answer. After a week, it still is, and I expect it will be difficult even after two months. What I’ve been telling people so far is that what I’ve noticed most is the excellence of the food and the incredible chaos of the traffic.
Day Three, Wednesday
Two guys from the partner’s Japanese office have appeared at the guest house. It turns out that they speak even less English than the cook. My Japanese is very rusty– I can’t remember much beyond “O-haiyo gozaimasu” and “Nihongo-ga wakarimasen, eigo-ga hanashimasu ka?”, so mealtimes are a pretty quiet affair. I don’t think they appreciate the food, especially the spiciness of it, as much as I do. Not that it’s overwhelmingly hot, in fact it’s about what you’d expect from an Indian restaurant back home, but it’s still very spicy. My experience in Japan, though, was that food was rarely spiced at all, and only “hot” when dipped in wasabi paste.
Speaking of Indian restaurants, here, a restaurant is referred to as a hotel. I’ve had several people ask me if there are any good Indian hotels where I’m from. A restaurant that serves meat is supposedly referred to as a military hotel, but I haven’t heard anyone call it that yet. I’m not sure what they call a hotel… I don’t think they call it a restaurant though.
Day Four, Thursday
Today’s highlight was a lunchtime walk to the Citibank ATM, to get some cash. Not that I’ve had any need for it so far; I’ve been pretty sheltered, living in the company house, traveling by company car, eating in the company cafeteria. So far I haven’t spent a single rupee. Still, having some cash is a good idea, and soon I’m sure I’m going to get out and do some unsupervised tourist activities.
The ATM, in case you’re wondering, spits out nothing but Rs 100 notes, up to a maximum of Rs 4000. In Canadian dollars, 100 rupees equates to about $2.50, which doesn’t sound like much, but I’m told that’s about the biggest bill that you can expect someone might have change for. Even though I haven’t bought anything yet, I know that most things are unbelievably cheap.
Day Five, Friday
The rich food has finally caught up with my stomach. Considering that my usual diet is brown rice, pasta, popcorn, and vegetables, and here I’ve gone completely native in my diet, it’s not surprising that I’m having a bit of a reaction. It could be nearly anything, the constant heavy spices, the abundance of dairy content, or maybe even a bug my gut hasn’t seen before. At any rate, it isn’t affecting my appetite, just how fast the food gets processed.
This might be a good time to mention the brand name of the toilets at the office: “Hindware”. I suspect the name is derived from “Hindustan”, but I prefer to imagine that the marketing department has a sense of humour.
The Weekend
Originally I was planning to spend the weekend in Chennai (on the east coast, formerly known as Madras) to meet a friend from work who lives in Australia now, and who is there for a week-long business trip. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to set it up, but it’s just as well. It’s been a hectic week, so my plan for this first weekend is to just sit around, catch up on my email now that I’ve finally solved the vpn issue, and start this blog. I’m here for two more months, so there’s plenty of time.
Next weekend I’ll probably take a tour of Bangalore and do some shopping. In two or three weeks I’m planning a long weekend trip to Agra (via New Delhi) to see the Taj Mahal (the company’s going to help me set that up). Mysore is close by, an easy weekend trip, and so is Ooty, an old hill station south of here. A friend from our old California office is moving to Chennai at the end of July, so I’ll get there eventually too.
Well, that’s enough for now. If I still haven’t conquered your insomnia, check back in a day or two. I’ll be adding some pictures soon.
Cheers,
Gord