Learning the ropes

Official day one in Bangalore. I'm calling it that because . . .

Wait for it . . .

I saw daylight today!

That's right, I managed to fall asleep at the right time and wake up just a little bit early, so may I introduce you to the actual, sun-(andpossiblysmog)-lit view from my balcony:















View to the left, view to the right, pretty self explanatory.

Today I went out! Left the hotel, did not go to the office, and went downtown. Well, there is some confusion there. There's what is commonly called 'downtown', which is a central hub of manic activity. Then there's Downtown on the maps, which is the palace. Today I chose Manic-Land, tomorrow maybe the palace and the gardens? We'll see.

It took me about an hour to do with a scarf what Indian women do in about five minutes. There's some complex drapery going on there. Ultimately I will need someone to show me how to do this - in the end I compromised by tucking the ends into my bra straps. Seems to work, appearance-wise. For all I know, that's how the other women are doing it, they're just much, much quicker!

My mission today was to buy a cheap cell phone that I can use while I'm here. The hotel phone, just like any hotel phone in the world that I've seen, makes you sign over a deed to your firstborn before you can pick up the receiver. So, after two hours of wandering around and half an hour of three women trying to convince me that I had to buy a plan for a year, I convinced them (Thank you, Telus, for giving me practice in this) that I could buy a one-month sim card only if I bought the phone outright. I think possibly you can rent cell phones here - ? There were many parts of that conversation that went sailing clear over my head.

So, I have a cell phone! Never mind that I cannot call other cell phones because the network is always busy, I can at least call the office and the hotel.

After that I wandered downtown for four hours. This place is really incredible. During rush hour, I wandered side streets (not the same as back alleys, for anyone who just 'tch'ed at me) because the thickness of the exhaust made me dizzy. But otherwise - well, watching everyone else, I started imitating them. Which looks a lot like ignoring the vehicles and walking wherever you want, except across major roads and intersections. Instructions that I might mail to the Lonely Planet people:
To cross a major road in Bangalore: Find a group of Indian women. Go when they go.
To cross a side road: Walk/duck/run in front of a car. They can't go very fast because of the bumper to bumper traffic, and the cows. Accept the risk that your toes may get run over.
To walk somewhere quickly: You can't. There are too many people. Give up and change your stride.

This last one was very hard for me, but admittedly, it made the scarf stay in it's carefully draped position a lot better than my normal walk did. And my normal walk really only made it five paces.

Some more photos - I can't tell you road names because these roads have no signs or names on my map. I believe one of them is Mahatma Gandhi Road (MG Road, popularily) so, pick your favourite and go with that:

This is not rush hour; as you can see there is a small space between the motorcycles and that car.


My ride home was in an auto-rickshaw. I guess that's pretty self explanatory? They're operated by motorcycle handlebars, instead of a steering wheel, and are mostly self-contained. No doors though. Here is my view from the backseat:

Back at the Taj now and I talked to my new favourite person, Ashish, who explained that my phone was not working for me because I had stubbornly not asked anyone for dialing instructions and apparently there are different codes you have to add, depending on whether you are calling a land line or a cell phone. Oops! When I got back to my room, this was waiting for me:

Impressive!! The wine is red and, well, wine, and I wasn't sure how that went with olives, so I just ate them. (Have I mentioned how terribly spoiled I'm going to be when I leave?)

You can't see the little card there, but it says: "Best Compliments! For assistance in opening the wine bottle, please contact in-room dining." The bottle is a screw-top.

I almost called them. I really did. Settled instead for giggling to myself and putting in some blog-writing time.

I think I've got the autorickshaw thing down, and my rusty haggling skills that took me so long to develop in Spain are starting to come back. I think I'm ready for this city, knock on wood! Tomorrow I will try to see some sights, etc., assuming I can get this 'sleep' thing working for me tonight.

Love to all!

On the road again!

. . . Air-road. Cloud-road. Am not driving to India, is the point.

I'm in Bangalore now, but I'm going to create tension and suspense by forcing you to read all the dreary details of my journey, starting in Calgary. Well, I suppose you could skip this. But that wouldn't be nice, since I'm taking all this time to type it . . . (Did the guilt work?)

Calgary has not changed it's airport since back when I moved there. I was greeted by the same 900-year-old woman wearing a cowboy hat who greeted me then. Really. 900.

Anyway, I had plenty of time to kill, so I wrote a little 'starting out' note. Here 'tis:


"After a tearful goodbye at the security counter –I used to roll my eyes at people who cried in airports; but now I see airports are clearly designed to cause this - I’m waiting at the gate for my flight to board. I have window seats for all three legs of my journey! So, for those of you who are details oriented…. I will get to Calgary at 10:00am local time, hang about for three hours, fly to Frankfurt (9 hour flight), wander Frankfurt for six hours, then another quick 9 hours to Bangalore. Where I will no doubt arrive bright eyed and weird. Really. Who doesn’t get weird after 30 hours? Plus I am expecting a tiny culture shock at the Bangalore airport.
I think I actually remembered everything . . . probably not; I’ll keep you all updated. I’m sure you’re riveted by this detail. My quest for this week (aside from arriving safely, not calling everyone by the wrong name at work, and other various IBM-related nightmares) is to find out whether everyone in Bangalore still calls it Bangalore? - Or have they switched to the much prettier Bengaluru, a change which my guide book tells me went through in 2006? Has Lonely Planet lied to me? So far no one but me has used the work Bengaluru and I’m starting to think I hallucinated it.
Time to go. More from Frankfurt!"

Well, I lied. I did not write more from Frankfurt. Frankfurt airport is a largely uninteresting place unless you want to buy a huge quantity of expensive perfume, or have the job of stabbing holes in the ceiling with a large stick. There are people doing this. Why? I don't know. They didn't speak English and all I can do in German is introduce myself and count to a hundred. Nevertheless - ceiling hole poker. Backup career? I think so!
On to India!

My flight partner to India was an IBM'er. The person on the other side of the aisle was an IBM'er. I believe that most of business class worked for Big Blue. So - my seat partner slept most of the way and I ate wonderful Indian food and watched Will Smith movies . . . I am going to be such a spoiled brat! At the end of the flight, he and I chatted for a while and he insisted on accompanying me through the airport. Apparently his wife, who is American, has had some problems. Anyway, I brought two laptops into India and so, I was supposed to pay duty on them and stand in a special (read: LONG) lineup in the Bangalore airport. But, because of my new friend the fellow IBM person, there was a rapid-fire exchange at the customs lineup, some shouting, and then we were allowed through with what I'm learning is the Indian phrase for "Please proceed ahead". (It's "Go! Go!")

I never did pay the duty fee or stand in any lineup. I have both my laptops and have just now wiped the stupid expression off my face.

A man waited for me at the exit with a sign reading 'The Taj Hotel Group welcomes GWEN HILL!' The air was hot and muggy but did not, contrary to everything I've heard, smell terrible. The car was air conditioned to the point of, say, northern Manitoba in the winter, and the driver played ("For you, madam!") an English radio station featuring an odd mix of old Blondie and Madonna hits and a lot of Coldplay. In between the radio announcer told funny facts - did you know that it is illegal to import lollipops into Washington? Could somebody research that please? I don't care enough to look it up, but I don't think I believe it. The ride to the hotel was fine, not crazy, but I did notice that there seems to be no purpose behind the lanes painted on the road. It's like it was just introduced, and nobody particularly cares to use them, you know? And the car had no fully-working seatbelts (Either the strap-bit worked, OR the bit you plug into. Not both. Do those things have actual names?)

Wouldn't have been so fascinating if not for the following sign:

Enough said.

The Taj is a gorgeous hotel. If I'm ever awake during daylight hours, I will take a photo of the view from my room. In the meantime, this is my room:



This next one is for a particular person in Victoria, to keep her from mailing me toilet paper. You know who you are.



The balcony there looks out over the pool and garden, which everyone said would be noisy, but the only time I heard anything was when I had the door open. Even then, not that bad! There are four restaurants, only one of which serves Indian food so it's the only one I've been to. It is nice to know that there are other options, in case I get sick of Indian food, which I can't imagine right now - but it could happen.

That's about all . . . I went to the office today, which looks much like all other offices in the world, and sat in on the training rooms while my coworkers in Ontario bravely trained seven people over the phone. It actually seems to be going pretty well - I will take notes tomorrow, choose who I'm training for what role, and start my training on Monday. Wish me luck.

Oh, my quest. Right. I've asked everyone I met about the Bangalore/luru thing.
Here is the general consensus, let's say, out of ten. Highly scientific survey.
2 people had no idea what I was talking about
1 person said, yes, it is Bengaluru now
7 people scoffed and said, yes, sure, they changed it but no one cares

So. Lonely Planet did not lie to me, and that's all that matters. I think I'll call it Bengaluru, because I like saying it. And that's all the reason a girl needs.

530 am here now, so I'm off to try and sleep.

Love to everyone,

Gwen