Sunday Funday

On Sunday we didn't want to stick around campus but we also didn't want to do anymore shopping. So we headed back to MG Road and had lunch at a place called Soul Cafe. They also had hookahs so we had an after-lunch smoke before heading home.

These goats slowed us down a bit:

Soul Cafe:

Mysore

At the end of week 2, the entire batch took a day trip out to historic Mysore. Although only 90 miles from Bangalore, the journey can take upwards of 3 hours. The roads get crowded in the city and it seems that every 100 yards there is a ghastly speed bump. Imagine what a comfortable ride that was!

Our first stop was for breakfast and snacks at Cafe Coffee Day, India's Starbucks equivalent. Then we made a quick stop at the site where King Tippu's body was discovered:

Onward to the temple, Srirangapatanam. Say that 5 times fast.  We could only take photos outside.

These monkeys were up to no good:

For only 100 rupees, this man played tour guide for our group:

Detail of the temple:

Inside the temple, we got dotted:

Fresh coconut juice:

This was Tippu Sultan's summer palace. Indians paid a 5 rupee entry fee. Foreigners paid 100 rupees. What is wrong with that picture? At any rate, this was not worth the entry fee!

We had lunch in Mysore and I had to take a photo of the menu. What exactly is Chilli Mutton Liquid? Needless to say, I did not order that!

After lunch we went to the Palace at Mysore which was very nice. We even got free audio guides. Cameras were strictly prohibited (or risk getting extorted for money) so no photos. :(

We thought that was the end of the day and we'd head back to Bangalore, but we did a detour out to KRS dam. By the time we arrived it was dark and the dam was closed to visitors, so we saw it from afar before the long drive home. We took 2 quick beer stops and 1 dinner stop at McDonald's, yet we didn't get home until after midnight. By my count, that was nearly 5 hours!!

I was glad we went, but it really wasn't as cool as the guidebook made it sound. And I was so tired that I was happy to sleep on my hard bed back at the guest house! Even happier that we finally got data cards for our laptops and I could email B.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Our first full weekend in Bangalore, so we wanted to explore the nightlife. We had a great dinner at Sunny's out in UB City which is an upscale neighborhood where a lot of expats live. If the cab and traffic hadn't made me feel so sick, I probably would have enjoyed my pasta and the local beer, Kingfisher:
We also discovered McDonald's at the Forum Mall. Although none of us eat at McDonald's in the States, this was a welcome sight. Notice, no beef or pork on the menu. Maharaja Mac not recommended.

This is the long walk from the campus gates down to the main road where we catch the auto-rickshaws. There are usually 3 or 4 at the bottom of the road ready to haggle with us.

The next night we tried American food at Twenty Feet High. After our first week of canteen food we were all desperate for a taste of home. So we chowed on chicken tenders and french fries! Yum. After dinner we went to a swank bar called Thirteenth Floor which was really nice and had great views of the city, if only Bangalore was anything to look at.

On our way to another fancy brunch at the Royal Orchid (this time downstairs), we took a back road and passed several of these shanty towns:

With improved weather, we made a last minute decision to go to the safari at Bannerghata National Park which is not like any national park I've ever seen. There's a zoo and then you can buy separate safari packages. For just a few dollars, you can take the lions, tigers, and bears safari and get on a caged bus that drives you around to see all the animals. These were the weirdest looking bears just hanging out on the side of the road:

Beautiful white tigers. They were playing near the bus:

India seems to have all manner of animal just roaming around the streets. So far I have seen cows, chickens, horses, camels, goats, sheep, monkeys, tons of stray dogs, and whatever these creatures are:

A cow hanging out with a pile of coconut shells:

We also decided to check out another shopping area since we had done the MG road thing a few times already. Commercial Road is predominantly Muslim and the roads become a narrow maze of store fronts and outdoor market stands:

A crazy building near Commercial:

The flower lady strings these beautiful flowers into garlands that you can hang on your rearview mirror -- just like the rickshaws!

Our last good meal of the weekend was at Miller's 46, a funny take on an American steakhouse. The waiters were all done up in their best cowboy gear and the steaks came with those little longhorn toothpicks:

Training 101

The weekdays have gone as expected. Normally we meet from 9 to 5 and listen to various high-level members of the organization talk about the company. Sometimes we have workshops which are more interactive and fun, but those have become few and far between. Some days we don't get out until after 6, some days we're done by 3, but regardless, there's always 2 tea breaks and a 1 hour lunch.

After our first week we discovered that we didn't have to suffer the horrid canteen food as there's another cafeteria just across the road with a wider selection. That's when we had our first "grilled cheese" Indian-style and Chinese-Indian food. Hey, it was better than the canteen! Since then we have discovered a little cafe, also on campus, that also does grilled cheese, but does it even better. So we can live with that for a few weeks!

Dinners are catered for us and although prepared by the same horrible canteen, seems to be much more edible. We still try to eat off campus at least once during the week. And for sure we get away on the weekends.

Bengaluru

With jet lag working in our favor, we decided to explore a bit of Bangalore on our first Sunday. One of the guys actually did this orientation last year, so he had some familiarity with the city and places to go. We decided to hit up one of the many fancy buffets in town that does all you can eat and drink (alcohol included) for a fixed price.

We negotiated a price for two taxis and we set off for downtown Bangalore. Here are some random snaps along the way:

There seems to be construction and rubble everywhere. They also seem to have something for digging ditches. Most of it is still done with manual labor. It's like watching kids in a sand box with pails only they are doing it on a much larger scale.


This is the entrance to Ginseng, the restaurant we went to for brunch. Chinese food and Tiger beer. Yum.


After brunch we decided to do a little shopping. The main shopping area in Bangalore is around MG Road (Mahatma Ghandi Road), so we walked around Brigade and MG for the rest of the day. There is some very delicious looking fruit here in India but given the tummy risks, none of us were willing to try it.
Bangalore cops -- kinda looked like cowboys in their uniforms:

The guy here was trying to tell us we could buy that dried up crap to the right, add some water and it would turn into the lush greenery on the left. Yeah right.
The balloon guy. I have no idea what this material is, but it looks gummy, you put a straw in the middle and blow. Voila, rubber balloons!
A line of auto-rickshaws waiting to transport people around town...and of course take advantage of foreigners!

Intro to India

Our travels began on a bad note and has only seemed to improve at a painfully slow pace with each day that we are here. First, the Air France/Delta/Northwest mess created all sorts of problems for us and three of us barely made it to the gate for our flight and with no seat assignments to boot. For whatever reason, the flight from Newark to Paris was brutally long. The airplane was freezing cold and cramped, the food terrible. I did watch a movie and managed to sleep -- the only one in the group to get a little rest.

The flight from Paris to Bangalore wasn't too much better. More bad food, movies, and uncomfortable sleep. But we made it to India in one piece and excited to get to campus and checked into our rooms in the guest house. Alas, it would be some time before we got to that point as:

1. There is a convoluted process when you arrive to get a heat-seaking gun pointed at your head to be sure you don't have swine flu (I mean, H1N1) and then passing through passport control. Of course none of this is very well marked, organized, or communicated so you just let all the Indians push in front of you until you realize you should be doing the same.
2. We all got through fever-free and then onto baggage claim, but guess whose bag didn't arrive? Yup, yours truly. They even had my name on a list saying it would be on the next flight and they would deliver it. Fine.
3. Well the whole lost luggage process seemed to take forever. I was passed along to three different people who never explained just exactly what was happening. Even funnier is that I was asked to complete a customer satisfaction survey for how they handled my lost luggage, but the woman answered all the questions for me and managed to check "Exceeds Expectations" for every single measure. Hmmm, I wanted to disagree but it was very late at this point and the group was waiting.

Luckily our bus driver was also waiting but of course he couldn't pull the bus up to the terminal so we had to drag all of our bags along the sidewalk out to the parking lot. Yup, that's how our company rolls. Here's a post-24-hours-of-travel-standing-in-front-of-our-bus shot:

The drive to campus took about an hour with no traffic. First impressions of Bangalore was that it reminded me a lot of Saigon. I couldn't pinpoint why, just a feeling that I got passing shacks and roadside shops to larger corporate looking buildings and the scale of the place felt a lot like the night we first arrived in Vietnam.

At the campus we arrived at the guest house and upon initial glance, it didn't look too bad. It actually looked almost resort-like. That impression would soon change when we discovered that:

1. The beds are basically a piece of plywood with a sheet on it. Back pain what?
2. The shower is inconsistent with regard to hot water. Some days it's ice cold, some days it's hot enough to take a decent shower, but mostly it's just lukewarm. If you're lucky, you get water pressure that is more than just a slow drip drip drip out of the faucet.
3. There are no clocks, so if you didn't bring an alarm...well, you better find one!
4. There is 1 international phone down in the lobby and the handset doesn't work so you have to talk to your loved ones via speakerphone with the guest house attendant attentatively listening in on your conversation.
5. There is no internet access anywhere...not in the room, no wifi around campus, nada. Actually that's not true. You can access the intranet worksite, but that's it. Goodbye world, I'll see you in 5 weeks!
6. The canteen food tastes like vomit. Even the locals agree.

But it is not all doom and gloom. We still have each other to commiserate with and we do have cable television which includes HBO, CNN, and 2 or 3 other English language programming channels. It's also crazy cheap here so "going out big" hardly makes a dent. Next up, our first full day in Bangalore.

New Joyzee

I won't lie, it's been a challenge since I left New York. It's hard enough knowing you'll be away from home and loved ones for 6 weeks, but it's a whole other thing when you still have no clue just exactly what you'll be doing.

In the end, the 3 days we spent in East Brunswick were the easiest 3 days we would have. Mostly HR activities: filling in paperwork, signing up for benefits, etc...But we did have a chance to meet with some senior leaders and some folks who were hired on last year. It was also a nice chance to bond with the other 8 inductees before we were to embark on the long journey to India.

In total, there are 9 of us: 2 women, 7 men. 4 of them will be based in Atlanta, 1 in Chicago, 1 in Boston, 1 in Dallas, and 2 of us in NYC. Everyone seems to get along and perhaps all of the unknowns have brought us even closer. Next up: Bangalore...