India Mega-Post

I haven't posted in a few days since my internet connectivity has been a little spotty. OK, that's partly an excuse. Since I didn't really get a previous weekend, I decided to mostly take it easy, rest, and recover a bit. Here's a mega-post to make up for it.

I tried to add some pictures, but I can't get the stupid things uploaded. Maybe I'll try again later and just edit them into the post.

Friday

Class finished a little earlier, as it often does on a Friday, and I sat around and chatted for a while. I went to the IBM office there and sat around and chatted some more. The IBM office is not that different from any other office I've been to. Space is at a bit of a premium, so the cubes are small, but big enough to drop your backpack and laptop. Like the client site, there are people who work in the breakroom who make your tea for you. I still can't quite get used to this. I feel so lazy.

That night, I went out with one of the students for some Bengali food. The place wasn't too far from the hotel, so I just walked there (about twenty minutes). He had spent some time in Mumbai and while there, went out to a restaurant called Oh Calcutta to get his fix on Bengali food (apparently Bengalis are very attached to their food). The place we went to was called O Calcutta (see the intentional naming difference?) and was not the same restaurant at all. We ended up going to another place upstairs. Bengali food is a little different than any other Indian food that I've had. First of all, there's a lot of fish, and secondly, there's a lot of mustard. Some of the sauces have an almost wasabi-like burn to them.

Saturday

This was my big day to go out and do some siteseeing, but frankly I was just a little bagged. I took it real easy in the morning. I woke up at around 5:30 (as I have been lately), chatted with the fam a little, and then went back to sleep until about 10:00. Delicious.

I grabbed a couple of things to munch on and walked around the gardens of the hotel. After eating and snapping a few photos, I hopped in a cab, and headed down to the Victoria Memorial. The cabby took the back ways to get in to town (we had settled on a fixed fare already, so he wasn’t trying to run up the meter); it must have been busy taking the main highways on a Saturday morning. We drove through a few markets on the way there. Very interesting.

The memorial has beautiful gardens and a museum containing paintings, exhibits, and artifacts all relating to the British Raj. The building itself is impressive as well. I spent some time wandering through the gardens and the museum.

The Victoria Memorial

Me grinning like an idiot.

From the Memorial, I walked to St. Paul’s cathedral. The church was closed at the time, so I just walked around a bit and took some pictures.

From the cathedral, I wandered up Jawaharlal Rd. back to Park St. Indians have a love affair with Chinese food, so I thought I’d try the Indianised version. I stopped at the Oxford book shop to cool off and pick up a Bengali cookbook and then went on looking for the Chinese place I had seen a couple of days before. While here, I saw an Indian version of Erica.

The street kid who had told me his life story the last time I was there spotted me again. He tried to get me to buy him a shoe-shine kit for 2000 rupees (around $60). Nice try, but I’m not that stupid. I gave him some money and got him to take me to the Chinese restaurant. Indian Chinese food is really good. The vegetables were fresh and the flavours were excellent. Actually, I find that in general, the restaurants seem to be really good here. The service is very good, and the food is always very hot and fresh. It’s reasonably priced too (at least by Western standards).

After loading up on vegetable spring rolls, crispy chicken in a chili-honey sauce (beats the hell out of crispy beef any day; I know this is a bold statement), and mixed vegetables, I was in no real mood to walk much longer. It was already getting to be late in the afternoon, so back to the hotel it was, where I settled into a comfortable food coma for the rest of the evening.

On the way back to the hotel, I saw a truck full o’ nuns. Isn’t that a product? No, I’m thinking of Chock Full O’ Nuts. Ha ha.


Sunday

I woke up early and packed to leave for my morning flight to Bangalore. The cab ride to the airport was very quiet and peaceful compared to the rest of my stay there (it was 8:00 on a Sunday morning). I just sat and watched the billboards go by. Just like here, there are billboards everywhere. The only difference is that the people on them are Bollystars, and most of the products are localised (Pogo Potato Chips! Masti Bhi! Crunchy Bhi!).

The flight was pretty uneventful. When I got into town, I went to my apartment to settle in. Compared to the Hyatt, it’s pretty simple accomodations. I have a room with a little bed, a TV and desk, and a washroom. The people running the place are very friendly.

At the time, I wasn’t able to figure out how to call Canada Direct, so I wasn’t able to call home. It also didn’t appear that I had internet access in my apartment, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to communicate with the outside world; especially since I wasn’t expecting to have internet access in the classroom. This was a bit of a low point, since I’d already been away from home for two weeks. I sat around and watched Arnold Schwartzenegger movies.

Later in the evening, I took a walk out to a main road just a couple of blocks away looking for something to eat. There’s not much in the way of restaurants, so I settled on a couple buns from a bakery. I also found a small internet joint and sent an email home.

I think that I was getting ripped off a lot in Kolkata. Most of the shops here weren’t even able to break a 100 rupee note which is what I was paying for cab fares to the office. The two buns cost a total of 6 Rs, and the internet access was 15 Rs per hour.

Monday

I’m only a 5 minute walk from the class, so I had a nice stroll over to the work location. Class went fine. There is a nice open air terrace on the roof of the building where we go for tea and for lunch. Lunch is provided, and although some of the students were complaining that the chatpatis were cold, I thought the meal was generally quite good. I think that most of the people in Bangalore are veg, so the meal was a couple of vegetable dishes. I’m no longer worried about getting food that’s too spicy for me. One of the students commented that he found it a bit spicy, but it was alright to me. I should be fine from here on in.

I went for a walk at lunch with a couple of students. There were about five cows sitting in a no parking zone. I don’t know if they were flaunting their status as cows, or if it was a no parking zone because that’s just where the cows like to sit. I almost tripped over a goat.

After work I took an auto-rickshaw for the first time down to MG road (round of applause if you can guess what MG stands for). The auto-rickshaw is an economical way of getting around mixed in with a heapin’ helpin’ of adrenaline and black lung. Imagine barreling down the highway in a golf cart. Now remove seat belts, the concept of lanes, spacing between vehicles of more than two feet, any modicum of driver courtesy, and brakes. To that, add in random oncoming traffic and farm animals. You now have a pretty good idea of what an auto-rickshaw ride is like. Welcome to India.

I went to a place called Tandoor on MG Rd. which was recommended by one of the students. This was maybe one of the best Indian meals that I’ve ever had; tandoori chicken, mixed vegetable makhani, and garlic naan. Mega-yum!