Out on the town

Well Saturday was incredible. I had a lot of fun with Sachin and company. Although I got very little sleep the night before. My day started at 7:15 am. I packed and check out of my room around 8:45am to meet the driver for the day.

During the day we visited:

• The Museum of Modern Art (no pictures)
• The Parliament building (makes ours look small.)
• India Gate (just wow)
• CP (center of Delhi and a ton of markets.
• Bercos (Chinese food)
• Tombs (can't remember the names of the people...hehe)
• Lucents Temple (didn't get up close....to many people)
• Delhi Hut (another market)

The city is huge and very different from a lot of US cities. At the center of Dehli every single corner was coated in poo. There were people everywhere and although I could have bought things I was too overwhelmed. Street merchants weren't constantly trying to get you to buy and refused to listen to no. Shops were small enclosed spaces with plenty of gift items from India and textiles. (Again I didn't buy anything.) Sachin did purchase two purses for Kirsten. Originally the merchant wanted 450 rubies per bag. (Sachin was after 3 in total.) He managed to work her down to 600 rubies for all three. This took around 20 minutes though. I was till amazed. The longer we stood there though the more street merchants began to cluster and take the opportunity to try and sell us the little things in their hands. In normal stores prices are comparable to the US. On those streets though you could have gotten some good deals.

The architecture here is amazing. I have a lot of pictures i can show on that. Although I don't like taking pictures of people without there knowledge I did get some of the shops and such. The other places we visited were huge and incredible. The steps at the tombs were almost too big for me to make though. If they would have been 4 or 5 iches higher I would have had a hard time just getting my legs up high enough and they were steep.

The entire day was excellent though. We ended at Delhi Hut which is a little higher priced but merchants are showing their wares more freely and no street merchants were hounding you. I was extremely tired at the end of the day but I had a great time.

Oh one thing I did want to mention is at India Gate a crazy person had a cobra which he had drained the posion out of in a basket and was encouraging it to strike him. I took a few photos from a ways off. I had no desire to go near. He also chased us down for money later cause we took his picture. Sigh. I saw a lot though. I wish I could have overcome my fear to buy items but it was still a great experience.

David

T2 Mentoring and Training

Well this week has pretty much been the same everyday. Get up, shower, get dressed, read for 30 minutes, work on training, go to work (for 11-12 hours,) come back, strip, and sleeep. Although when I am at work has shifted slightly the day has been the same. Nothing really exciting is going on. I have arranged to join Kirsten and Sachin this weekend for a tour of Delhi (co-workers.) My plan is to get a tour of the bigger sights arrange for my last weekend in Delhi.

Well off to read, work on training, and go to work.

Sorin

Cab rides

Well an update. I decided to join some of my co-workers for a movie on Saturday. The Adobe office here was providing the movie for employees at 11am. I got up early and got ready to go. I was a little nervous as this involved going out into the great streets of India which are overwhelming to say the least. (I will try to take more pictures. I feel akward taking them from the car.)
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I got my cab at 10:15am and I had to be there at 11am. This is about a 20 minute drive. I took a cab rather than a air conditioned car to save time. Well save time was the last thing to occur. I actually tried to get a cab at 10am but it took 15 minutes for them to decide that a cab was the only way to make the trip happen. Although it is only a 20 minute drive it goes through a tax zone. The air conditioned rental car would go around the tax zone and the 20 minute drive would become an hour and fifteen minute drive. So I took the cab. The only problems with the cab was it wasn't air condition and I was waiting for the floor to drop out. Oh the tax was 20 rubies and I actually paid that out of my own pocket. Sigh.

Well it turns out that the driver had no clue where he was going. He drove to Greater Noida. Which is almost 1.5 hours away from the hotel. There he tried to drop me but my gut was screaming this was the wrong place. So I asked a few times if this was the place and he finally asked and was told it was the next mall. 10 minutes later he asked someone on the street and found out we were an hour away. :( So we drove back. Needless to say I didn't make the movie but I got to see a lot of the country side. I am wishing I had taken pictures but I was too nervous. The main reason I didn't want to be dropped at he wrong place is a car was suppose to pick me up at 3. If it didn't know where to go I would have had to tried to get another way. One of the main rules when traveling here is not to just get a cab but to have a car called for you. :( So I got to the mall where the theather was very late. The cab driver gave me his number and offered to give me a lift back when I was ready. Normally I would have just used the car at 3 but since I was frustered I decided to keep his number and take him up on the offer.

I walked around the mall for an hour looking at shops and discovering that prices are about the same as the US. They currency may be 43 rubies to 1 dollar but items cost a lot of rubies. For example a plain shirt was selling for 1500 rubies, at this one store, which is about $30.00. I finally decided just to go back to the hotel and calm down.

Of couse on the way the driver got rearended and couldn't get his car to start. After almost 20 minutes of trying he finally got it going and we went back to the hotel. That was Saturday. I spent the rest of my weekend in the hotel. I find the streets here very intimadating. Shops are right off of the road and there really isn't a sidewalk. (Malls we actually Malls just like in the US though.) I think i have seen 2 sidewalks and no one uses them. Everyone is in the streets. I did see a lot during the weekend though. I will start getting more pictures of what I see so you can understand.

Oh I have a few pictures but they are on my iphone. Unforunately I will have to get some software installed to get access to them. I might now get that done until later into the week.

David

Cows

I know your going to find this odd but I am loving the cows here. They are small and skinny but there is a humor about them. They seem to be aware that people move around them and don't really care. In the interest of pictures I have taken a picture of a few now but unfortunately I did not get pictures of the coolest cow ever.

So to set the stage...

I tried to go into the office. I went to the wrong office and had to get another taxi to a different office (also in Noida.) On the way there we passed a cow walking down the middle of the road. (That is not the strange part.) So the cow had a cart tied to its back pulling fruit. Which at first I was like, "oh the cow is pulling the cart for its master." Then I noticed there was no master. Just a cow walking down the middle of the road with a cart full of fruit.

This took me back. I had to wonder if this was common. Do people's respect for cows prevent theaft of goods? Does the cow know the way so well that he can be hooked up and he is off? We had to go onto the side of the road to pass the cow as our horn did not encourage him to move. I was busy trying to get my iphone out to take a picture but we rounded a corner and I saw him no more. So I figured I would just be ready for the next cow.

When I got into the office I asked about this event. People had a good laugh because they thought I was joking about the cow. I quickly found out this was not a common occurance. People do hook carts up but they guide them, protecting their wears. This lead to a lot of speculation about where the master was. The best one we came up with was the cow got hooked up, didn't like the weight, so it ran off leaving the human to chase after it, and only slowed down when the human was left far behind. Ah the cows.

Next...

I know, I know, more cow pictures less cow typing.

Sorin

Time zone adjustments

I think my friend Michael said this best, "It is going to be the middle of the day and you are going to have a hard time keeping your eyes open." Yup. That is exactly what happened to me yesterday. I fought it for almost 4 hours and finally took a nap. Naps for me always seem to turn into sleep until the next day and this was no exception. So at 2:30 am on Weds I finally decided to get up. My current plan is to lay down right now and get a little sleep before I go into the office. (I am not actually tired but I am pretty good at encouraging myself to sleep.) Hopefully this will get me more on track. If not, well, I will deal.

I pretty much hid in my room yesterday trying to adjust to the time zone and overcome apprehensions. I did take a few pictures though. The weirdest thing I have seen yet is cows just wandering through the middle of a parking lot. I was told that this was common but seeing is believing (of course I didn't take pictures of that.)

David

Planes can suck brains

Well I have never been on a flight that long before and I am not looking forward to it again. The flight to India was one of the slowest periods of my life. I can't really sleep on a plane (even when I am complete exhausted; only nap.) so the 14 hours of flight went by incredibly slowly. As the restrooms on the plane are big enough for me to walk into, shut the door, circle, and try to make the half toilet work I didn't use them often (did I mention I have confidened space issues.) Thankfully though nothing really eventful happened on the plane. I even had movies to watch on the India flight. (Although trying to watch a movie when you can't keep you eyes open is very hard.)

Customs here sucks. 3 hours of mainly standing in lines. First the swine flu line. (oh yes) where you fill out a questionayre which I don't think they could even read. If you asked questions you got this blank look in return. (blank...this is common. Then off to the customs line (again questions are meet with blank looks.) Next is the baggage line. Finally is the exiting customs line. Sigh. I hate lines. Finally I met up with the cab to take me to the hotel and roughly 1.5 hours later I got to go to sleep.

In the interest of time here is a quick summary of the werid things I have seen.

• Speed is controlled by speed bumps in the old city of Delhi. The bigger the bump the slower they want you to go.
• No one cares about traffic rules. In the words of my driver. They are to help guide you, not restrict you. (In America we are silly.)
• Everyone is looking for a way around any rule. (Including everyone one the plane who are getting up as the plane is taking off to get into the bathroom.)
• Male children are raised much differently here.
• No one in India should be heavy as they would sweet it off. :)
• In general people are very kind.
• There are lots of people here.
• Deoderant is very optional. (very sigh)
  

Well until next time.

Sorin - David off to play wowcrack.

Contacts vs Glasses

Sorry it has been a while since I posted. On Friday of last week I noticed my right contact had started to tare. This isn't a huge problem it just means it is time for a new pair of contacts. Well I was out.

So I called my optometrist and they informed me I couldn't get new lenses until I had an appointment. Apparently it has been three years. >.> Go me! So I scheduled an appointment for today (Tues at 11:30am.) I just had to hope that my contact lens would last until then and be very careful not to tare it in two. Well that lasted all of one day; Friday night as I was cleaning them and putting them away the lens disintegrated. As you probably know I can't really see without glasses and I had to last until today. So I dug up the lenses to my old glasses (mind you the frame broke years ago and I threw them away. So I had to find a way to put the old lenses in to new frames. Well at first I just put the right one, using tape, into a pair of sunglasses behind the lens. This was a royal pain in the butt. I could go into public but inside everything was dark. So I finally popped out the sun glass lens and let the glass lens hang. This looked stupid but temporarily fixed my problem until today. Today I put the other lens in my frame so I could get my eye appointment without having to take a contact out.

The lessons learned: a) contact problems = massive headache (literally) b) I need a backup pair of glasses (grumble grumble...at least until I get lasiks) and c) I guess I can still reconnect with my roots cause I would have worn these to work once upon a time.

Sorin out