“Party” at Doreen

This was quite a busy weekend, so let’s start right at the beginning, Friday evening. I was invited to the Birthday Party of Doreen who is responsible for the relationship of our team at Accenture with our customer and does all the coordination work. She is actually german and the second European (besides me) in our team. Anyway, she invited the whole team and some of her german friends to her 30. Birthday at her appartment.

Not only did she organise a barkeeper for that evening, but she also had a very good cook at her side to help her in preparing a very delicious barbeque experience, even with beef, very rare in India due to the fact, that cows are supposed to be holy animals. So we started with about 30 people, mostly Indians, at around 20:30. Only 1 1/2 hours later, several of them started to think about leaving, not because they wered bored (the party was actually very active at that moment with everyone chatting, eating and listening to music), but because it was time for them to go home. The girls because they presumambly weren’t allowed to party all night and the guys because their wifes were already calling for them. While I was working hard on getting them to stay longer, my well-developed skills to convince people brought no success ;).

It’s really hard to believe, but at 22:30, only the germans, I and those unlucky Indians that had to share a cab with me, were left. Well, that didn’t hinder us from talking endlessly about our experiences in Indian (the others, of course, were already in India for several months up to a year and something). And while they (the remaining Indians) eventually left with a cab on their own (after having realised that I won’t go nowhere anytime soon), I finally went home not before 1:30.

Ah, and I’d also like to introduce you to one of my co-workers, Srivaths. We’re curently working together on several issues and I try to help him wherever I’m able to. He has also been to Europe last year, but couldn’t manage to visit Switzerland so I hope he might do so in the future as I’m very glad to have met him.

There ain’t no strike here

In case you have studied the news papers carefully, you might have been stumbled upon a call for a strike of truck drivers throughout India. If not, there is even an article @ 20 minuten online. You wonder why I mention this? Well, what’s bad for them is good for us because it brings a relief the the never-stopping traffic jam situation around Bangalore although the impact at least in my part are not that visible so far, apparently, there haven’t heared the call for the strike, so we better tell them ;).

Hopefully, the reduced amount of truck drivers will ultimately result in less traffic as traffic congestions already hits its limits. Yesterday, for example, it took us about an hour to get to a restaurant for dinner. Well, actually, it took us more than 1 1/2 hours but the driver had no idea of the direction whatsoever so that we had to call various sources for help and that we also had to take advantage of our whole indian network of contacts (some of them luckily spoke the native language of our driver) to bring us to our destination. This was around 19:00. When we left the restaurant at about 23:00, most of the Indians were already asleep and we reached our residence already after 10 minutes!

Workforce

Have you ever wondered how to keep 5 Million people busy? If you like or not, in Bangalore, you automatically become a little decadent and lazy as almost everything is carried out by a dedicated man or woman.

There is someone who washes our clothes, cleans our rooms, washes the dirty dishes and empties the bins. I mean, there are several people who do this job. And then there are several guards at the entry of every apartment complex, there are two security guards for the entry and exit to the whole complex. In our little store, one guy registers the goods, the other one collects them and prepares ready-to-go shopping bags.

And I guess it’s to no one’s surprise that we have our own drivers which are exclusively at our disposal (except Sunday). Every morning, I’m picked up and dropped at my work place, then I tell the driver when to show up again and bring me back home. In the mean time, the driver has no other customer, he usually just waits until I’ve completed my work.

Never ever Masala again!

Last Sunday, we went to Pizza Hut to get a well-known “european” meal. So far so good, they seemed to have exactly what we needed for our not yet so robust stomaches. On the first page of the menu, an interesting name caught our attention, “Masala Lemonade”, supposedly something to eat. Naïve as we are, we ordered a pitcher (half a liter) as we were of the strong belief “Hey, it’s Pizza Hut, how bad can it be?”. And what’s more, we are here to try something new, something different. Well, at that time, no one of us knew how different a drink can be. When the waiter arrived with the long awaited drinks, our eyes already widened when we saw what we actually ordered. Please be aware that the following paragraph only reflects the impression of 5 truly ignorant and picky Europeans and does by no means want to insult indian cuisine.

Anyway, so we got served with Masala Lemonade which looked like salad dressing. But who are we to judge their drinks by just staring at them? Brave as we are (unfortunately in this case), three of us (including me) overcame our inner voices that yelled in despair “No! Don’t drink it!”, and took a gulp of this mysterious brew. Oh my goddess… it was like… imagine you drink curry mixed with pepper & tabasco and then add some undefined (<- Masala) hot & spicy something to it and your not even close to our drink. Three days later, my stomach is still revolting all day & night (I’m pretty sure it’s because of this “experience” as I refrained from any indian food since). We had literally no choice but to order Pepsi instead and when the waiter came, we kindly requested him to take the remnants of our failed indian experiments away. He did it with a smile…

It’s different but it’s not

No, there is nothing wrong the title. Where shall I start? After 3 days, we have seen a lot that differs very much from what we are used to (what a suprise…) but on the other hand familiar images are just lurking behind every corner. I may start with our residence. We are living in two apartments that are part of a whole complex with several high buildings, full of apartments for travellers and short-term employees as we are. Everyone of us has it’s own room and there are three of them in every apartment so it is much like our “WGs” at home, we even have our own kitchen, but we might not used that very often I suppose ;). The room has everything one needs, separate toilet and shower, TV with dozens of channels, but mostly are indian and one doesn’t understand a single word, Remote Air Conditioning (very important because the temperature doesn’t drop noticeably at night, maybe to around 20° I guess), a phone for local calls and room-to-room calls and an ADSL modem (wohoo!), so Internet is not an issue.

The residence itself is also pretty nice, although you can see that the buildings weren’t renewed for quite some time and it seems that there is some “build it and leave it” mentality. Nonetheless, everything is very clean and the gardens are well-kept. And what’s best, there is a club house nearby with an outdoor pool, Badminton field, Squash, Billard and lots more that allow us to do some exercises. Everything is ultimately being surrounded by a thick stone wall and the entries are guarded by security staff everywhere.

Because one step outside this little island, the world changes. On our way to the next large shopping center, we see everything from the very poor to the very rich. It’s not that we didn’t expect the poverty in Bangalore, it’s just the contrast that really shakes you. Walking along the two streets to the shopping center, there are shabby buildings, rotten vegetables, trash and rubbish on the pavement and the street condition spans from bumpy to smooth, from mere stones to clean asphalt. The noise is extreme, so is the air pollution. Traffic is really at its limits here with cars, scooters and rickshaws literally on any street at any time. And on top of that, to blow the horn is absolutely common here. If you pass a crossing, you honk, when you turn the car, you honk, when there are people on the street, you honk. Actually, you can’t image in it without being here. You here them honking all day. And it’s not even meant to be offensive, it’s just how they drive.

When we finally reached the shopping center (where we have been several times in the past 3 days), you’re once again faced with another aspect of Banglalore, the middle and upper classes or simply put, the richer people. Our shopping center, called “The Forum” is probably one of the most expensive ones due to the fact, that they inhabit some very familiar brands. Adidas, Nike, United Colors of Benetton, Tommy Hilfiger, Swarowski, Apple, Pizza Hut, McDonalds… just to mention the ones we are probably familiar with.

No culture shock so far, in the past 3 days, we ate at McDonalds, had some pizze in PizzaHut, I wash my hair with Head & Shoulders bought in our local store at the Residence, I drink Pepsi, Cola, Fanta, Sprite, have just played Badminton, bought a pre-paid card by Vodafone and write blog entries. But that’s only half of the truth, the differences are slowly emerging. Every crossing of a main street is an adventure, the taste of the food is different (even in McDonalds), we also ordered some local food where we first had to look up every dish because the names didn’t mean anything to us (I finally got some bread with chicken which was called Kheema Paratha, or Tandoori Paratha, or Paneer Parath?, I can’t even remember it) and the “smell” of the city varies between disgusting and refreshing.

Well, these are just our first impressions. I’m sure there will be more. Bye for now!

Forget Rollercoasters

In most travel guides, it is recommended, that you rent not only car, but a car with a driver. There are several reasons to this. First, they drive on the wrong (left) side of the road. Second, it’s always difficult to find your way on unknown terrain. And at last, driving in Bangalore has nothing, nothing at all to do what we understand when we talk of travelling from A to B in a car. This is not about driving, this is street wars! Forget all this nicely formulated recommendations in your guidebooks, just forget about driving there, it’s simple as that. When we moved from the Airport to our residence, we passed several cars, left and right, some with lights, some without anything, some travelling at 100km/h, some almost standing still. So, David asked his driver if there are any speed limits at all. “Yes”, he replied,”I think there are limits, 130km/h outside the city, 60km/h within the city and 50km/h if there is police nearby…”

So stop talking about the unimaginable and show you some real footage. Enjoy…

PS: I do apologize for the bad image quality, there might be a better version in the future. Right now, I have neither the tools nor the connection for better quality. Hope you’ll get the point nonetheless.

The Journey

This must have been my most boring trip ever! Nothing went wrong, no hassle at the check-in, no problems with the tickets, no quarrels with the security control, I didn’t even have to open my bag, no delays, no queues, nada, rien. But we better start at the beginning.

5:30, 19th of June 2008 – Good morning Switzerland: Did I ever mention that I truly HATE getting up early in the morning! Anyway, one last gaze at a familiar landscape.

No problems at the Zurich Airport so far.

7:50 – Goodbye Switzerland, goodbye Zurich, goodbye ETH *snief*:

9:15-11:50 – Hello & Goodbye Germany, Frankfurt: We had over 2 hours to change gates which were about 500 Meters apart. What a stress! On half the way there, we had to buy some coffée at McCafé or we wouldn’t have made it. Ah, and I like to introduce some of my collegues, from left to right: Conrado, David, Me, Shenji. There is a 5th student, Romain, who departed at Geneva and joined as in Frankfurt.

So, off we went, Frankfurt-Bangalore directly. It was a long flight (more than 8 eights), in fact, it was very long, and only two movies were shown, one of them in Hindi with English subtitles. So what do you do when you are bored too hell? Well, just visit my photostream on flickr to see the different stages I went through ;). Luckily enough, for the last two hours, I could borrow a PSP from Conrado, because everyone seemed to be very tired and not that communicative.

0:05 (Local Time), 20th of June 2008 – Welcome Bangalore: Well, there wasn’t much to see as it was already midnight at the time we (finally arrived). Luckily, our baggage arrived as well, although it took quite some time until it was transported from the airplane to the baggage claim station.

Somewhere around 2:00 – Welcome @ Prestige St. John’s Wood: The adventure we missed so much on our flight eventually surfaced when we were brought by taxi drivers from the Airport to our final destination (not THE final destination I hope). It’s a story by itself, so I’ll tell it later. The good news: We are still alive.

I’m in Bangalore!

I’m just writing this from my appartment in Bangalore! They’ve got ADSL in every room, so although being thousands of miles away from home, I’m still connected to the world! Right now, it’s 3:40 here and I’m pretty tired because the whole journey took about 17 hours! Later this day, I’ll sum up our whole trip and try to upload some pictures. Over and out *fall asleep*…

Ready, Set, Go!

One day remaining… it’s time that I teach you something. Today, we learn about compression. Compression is the act of putting some stuff under stress in order to reduce its volume. Yes, I’m talking of packing one’s bags. You all know the problem of putting all of your belongings into just one tiny little case. Therefore, I give you some very valuable advice. To reduce the volume of your stuff significantly, just take less with you. Ingenious, isn’t it? I’m fully aware of the fact that most women can’t live without half of their household but it actually works! It really does, no one needs 7 pairs of trousers or 20 shirts or 5 pairs of shoes, even if 3 months are a bit more then the average holiday durations.

 

With the fairly large case and the appropriate amount of clothes to take with me, the packing was a success. And unbelievable as it is, the whole case weights only 14kg! So there is plenty of space left to be filled with things I buy over there. Shopping paradise, here I come!

A blog’s coming to life

Hey there,

I finally managed to set up my all new shiny blog which accompanies my stay at Bangalore, India. India? Well, just visit my About page (right at the top) if you are one of the few people I didn’t tell about my trip. Although I am employed by Accenture Switzerland to actually work there, I’m sure there is still plenty of time to discover a totally different country. So, whether you are bored to hell or just interested in some of my activities there, I hope my blog may offer you some enjoyable stories.