1 October 2000
Gave Wani day off and had blissful lie in until 8.30. Arrived at office at 9 for workers to appear. Left door at 10.30 in disgust with no-one showing, and door still open. If their tools get nicked it’s their own fault.
Bought Indian recipe book couple of days earlier and armed with ingredient list, approached Sunil’s with all the confidence of knowing exactly what I want. Still no beer, but found another useful food name. Jeera is codeword for cumin seeds. Always one thing not available. In my case, its curry leaves.
Tried other Sony store and behold have new stereo piece of rubbish to play CDs and the solitary tape I own out here. Had to tell shop assistance the difference between listening to music for quality as opposed to assuming that one is better than another because its louder.
Inspired by success, walk in direction of airport to see how far it Got caught out in the open when it decided to rain again. Still, you can be fairly certain about two things when it rains here. It won’t stop for hours and if you stay undercover you get wet anyway. So I walked home and got soaked through in the first five yards. Can see why the curbs are so high. It’s like walking through a raging torrent - perhaps Dungeon Ghyll - in a thunderstorm. Have learnt now why sandals are vital purchase here. Shoes will be drying out for days.
2 October 2000
I thought it was a little wet over the weekend. According to the papers 140mm of rain fell into Bangalore over the last four days. River’s looking a bit fuller at least, if not a bit dirtier.
Cows are sacred here in India - they’re untouchable. I think they know that. They can sit at the side of the road and generally do. For the first time today I saw one moving, jogging down the road straight into oncoming traffic in some strange game of chicken. Sure enough - it was winning.
4 October 2000
I am now a registered resident alien! Have to make do with certificate though as no antenna spare or translation of “Take me to your leaders” in Hindi spare at the time.
To celebrate my new status, the phones have given up on me. Seems the junction-cum-exchange box in the basement hasn’t really agreed with the inclement weather of late. Of course no phones at all in office yet. Have solved problem of no-one turning up in the morning though. Seems workers have decided to work from 7am until midnight and then sleep there for the remaining time.
Got first bill today for the flat. ‘Light bill’ as they call it. Met head of residents’ association - another ex-army bloke - who was appalled at how much leccy I had used. Then proceeded to show me his medals for long service and gallantry and his plans for Pakistan. Was happily rescued from perpetual monologue by phone ringing and a quick exit.
The locals still delight in asking me what country I’m from. No peace and quiet in the park this afternoon from perpetual repetition of same question. Maybe I should hang a sign above my head as a pre-emptive measure?
5 October 2000
Phone problem affecting all in the block now. Assume will get fixed by force of will, or otherwise workers will finally get round to it. Other household appliances joined in the strike today. Defrosted fridge, then promptly couldn’t put plug back in socket afterwards. Broke socket in efforts. Will be mended tomorrow. Interesting conversation between self, Wani and electrician, neither of whom speak English very much trying to agree what was wrong, even though it was blatantly obvious.
Used meeting with Novell guys to try out TGI Fridays properly now that it’s opened. Not too impressed with overloud Bon Jovi album laid over our shouts to pass the menu.
6 October 2000
Phones back up. Fridge working briefly then not. Now plug needs replacing too. Fortunately sorted out in morning. Evening saw false alarm as showers seemed to have failed as well. Judicious turning of many and varied taps in general vicinity of bathroom proved otherwise
Indian food supposed to affect western stomachs. Have been totally fine thus far. Ironically, TGI food seems to have disagreed with John.
Went up and saw the grounds for IT.com. They are building twelve aircraft hanger like structures in the grounds of the maharaja’s palace here in Bangalore. They are expecting 250,000 people through the gates - impressive. Linux pavilion in far corner of area however, although next to main food court so not all bad. Interestingly, Micro$oft didn’t apply for a stall in time and IBM, who are also in the Linux pavilion, have a smaller stall than us. Who’d have thought? Added a few photos of the site to the photos page.
7 October 2000
Up v. early to meet Vic on the 5.30am flight, bearing second laptop, clothes, and most importantly of all, pens and blu-tack.
Discover technique to discourage landlord engaging me in mindless idle chat about the house - ask him actually useful questions long enough and he’ll leave because he’s been of service. In this case, he’s resolved the Aloo Bhujia saga mentioned previously. Not in fact mashed potato as Patrick suggested, but base component of bombay mix. Arrrghh. At least I’d eat mashed potato if I was hungry enough.
Down to Shanthi for Vic’s first meal. Decide at table to go to Mysore tomorrow for the celebrations of the end of Dasara. The Eastern form of Dasara is centred around Mysore, so it should be a blast. Guidebooks mention parades with fifty elephants and opulence abounding.
8 October 2000
Decide quite arbitrarily to catch train to Mysore, 180 km away. Set off at 8.00, train arrives at 9.00, leaves at 10.15. Signs around station helpfully tell us to beware of pickpockets and bombs and other random gibberish like ‘10 bogies - push pull to stop’. Initially sit downwind of latrine on train. Someone opens door on latrine and we hastily move somewhere upwind.
Train journey an unforeseen four and a half hours long. Landscape endless groups of palm trees and workers in paddy fields, broken up only briefly by seemingly randomly placed ‘mountains’, other stations and the longest viaduct (possibly aqueduct) that I have ever seen.
Arrive Mysore 2.30pm. Parade starts at 3.00 with 21-gun salute. Of corse, we milled with people who seemed to knwo what they were doing. We saw three cannons behind some railings, army types standing closeby and two cows sitting very lazily in front of the cannons wondering what the large black things were. 3.00pm came and a new world record was set in the bovine 50m dash. Those things is loud.
Follow crowds through streets pedestrianized for the day to see parade. Crowd twenty rows deep held back by armyand air force types in riot gear and armed with batons which they did use on the more enthusiastic onlookers. More sage locals took whatever vantage points the nearby trees could give them. Got a vantage point in soem horsedrawn trap with some Americans and Belgians. Scarily, the yanks knew and had some of our books already. One or three elephants about, but not the fifty we were led to believe. Floats quite nice too.
Caught Chennai Express home - still took three hours. Exited train through scrum of some thirty people trying to get the seats we’d just vacated for the consequent twelve hour train ride to Chennai. And you thought moshpits at rock concerts were bad....
9 October 2000
What the fuck did I eat? Local food finally had its long-awaited laugh and I revisit almost all of it and breakfast. Groan.
10 October 2000
Not fully 100%, try posh restaurant in centre of town. Can’t manage the food, except the starter (hint - chilli pakoora is only for the asbestos’d palette) but do manage to get first gin and tonic in India. Thought it would take ten minutes. Actually took twenty days. Still as smooth as ever thankfully.
11 October 2000
Get dragged down to one of the pubs in town to meet Hari and soem of his friends. Eyes glued to the Pakistan vs New Zealand match on the tv, which the latter wins - thankfully. Conversation goes to cricket and find out Hari went to school with about a third of the current Indian team. Upon further questioning he’s also mates with most of the tavern owners in Bangalore. Probably knows the prime minister too.
Still can’t face spicy food and take good-natured jibes about ordering a plate of french fries from the waiter. Still, plate empties noticeably faster than I’m eating the contents. Pub also strange choice of music for its clientele - from Beatles and Beach Boys to Guns ’n’ Roses and Ozzy Osbourne. My request still gets turned down by the DJ for being ‘too heavy’. Bah humbug.
13 October 2000
Feeling much better at last. Great progress with IT.com. Chances are we might have a stand there consisting of more than two chairs, a table covered in books and a credit card machine for the first time ever that I can remember. Also got a long way designing the network and determining the software base for the office as well. Discover Dell has Indian head office about ten minutes rickshaw ride away.
Ordered in Pizza. Oh, the joys of bland food.
Ill, nauseous or no, am starting to loathe ice cream milkshakes. Office block doesn’t have a cafe - it has an ice cream parlour. Which doesn’t sell anything to drink other than ice cream milkshakes or bottles of water. It’s also the only quiet place to meet with people as the office is still a warzone. We must be the first ‘locals’ that parlour has. As a sidenote, TGI Fridays, though now open for business, has decided not to open at lunchtimes. But why??
14 October 2000
Another blitz to catch up on the week while Vic buys a couple of salwars that apparently she can’t fit her feet into the trousers of. Seek gym for peaceful workout and find to own horror the ladies of Natasha finishing off their weekly workout while listening to ‘The Best of Black Lace’. Tried best to carry on with ‘Agadoo’, ‘The Birdie Song’, ‘Do the Conga’ and the like in the background, but concede defeat in the face of possible mental ill health.
Another excursion planned for tomorrow. Is unlikely to involve nine hours on wooden seated trains like last week.
15 October 2000
Another Sunday, another expedition. This time no trains and no watermelon. Choose Antharaganga Hill, 70km outside Bangalore. Half way up this mountain is a hindu temple with a shrine surrounded by a pool where people believe you can wash your sins away literally. Only person in a pool is a twelve year crying his eyes out because he jumped in the pool without knowing it was only a foot deep.
Large number of monkeys on the hill too. All of them seem to know exactly how to pose for the camera and then walk off just when you’re ready. Managed to target monkey with little newborn clinging to its chest. Success!
Top of the hill range is essentially a plateau of packed dirt and house-sized boulders. If these things have been slowly eroding up here for hundreds of years, I don’t want to know how big they were to begin with. The rest of the plateau is covered in newly sown paddy fields, a couple of natural wells and a four cars wide road still being built to connect six houses and the fields to the rest of civilization. You’d figure that of all the roads they’d choose to fix, it would be the ones in town and not one on top of a mountain.
Forced to pose with locals also up the hill - so now we’re a tourist attraction as well.
16 October 2000
Still hungry after yesterday. Truly stunned when suddenly I’m eating a fantastic steak for lunch. Turns out I’m eating a Halal steak prepared by the muslim community (I think) from a muslim cow, so it’s all fine. Still don’t think many hindis will actually eat there. Full bellies, long afternnon, mostly sleepy when john rings and tells us to take SK and Neel out to dinner and discuss the stall. Big progress here at least with all details finally ironed out. Forced to eat second large meal of day. Bad enough, but at TGI Fridays too - can’t escape bland food today even though I want to.
17 October 2000
Patrick now in seventh heaven with new van and new job - driving exclusively for us. It’s shocking how happy he is to go off and get more and more extras fitted to the van. He asked for a 10CD changer - didn’t get it though. He doesn’t actually have any CDs to begin with. ;-)
For the first time since Mysore I genuinely loved the food once again. It was such a pleasure to chow down on their excellent cuisine. 3 roti, a rice (excessive), Paneer Bhujia (shredded paneer, served with capsicum, beans and chilli - quite hot and like Aloo Bhujia) and Dum Aloo Kashmiri - wonderful sweet dumpling in slightly tikka sauce. Nuts, pineapple, raisins - somehow it works.
18 October 2000
100 square metres of space is a lot, isn’t it? Palace grounds are now filled with workmen on the aircraft hangers that will be exhibition spaces in two weeks time. It’s pretty impressive. Know how we plan to fill our space, but feels like we still have only a few small oranges to fill it. Way back home, found the reason why there aren’t more school buses about. There are twelve kids in this one.
Refined the Linux book list again. Seems I’m going to love the smell of Zope and E-Commerce in the morning, to paraphrase.
20 October 2000
Realise that Vijay’s office in Mumbai hasn’t the semblance of a sensible set-up, and they cap it off by sending Dilip a virus which promptly necessitates a format and reinstall. At least Dilip won’t ignore anti-virus software again.
Still, a good meal and a night out with Hari and Monita down the pub. There’s nothing quite like a Friday night out with friends.
21 October 2000
All I want to do is go out. All I manage to do is wait from phone call to package delivery to watching the rain. Still, ever swum in a pool during a thunderstorm? The thrill is twofold - watching the rain sputter upwards as it hits the pool and wondering how long you dare stay in in case lightning strikes the pool and you die not of the shock but by drowning afterwards. If you can’t bungee around here, you gotta get your thrills somehow.
22 October 2000
Went out with John and family to Bannerghatta zoo and safari park. Safari a little disappointing - tigers were fantastic but lions more than a just a little scrawny and that was it. Zoo meanwhile a real pleasure to visit and walk around. Big elephants and a baby, big snakes, hippos, panthers, bears and so on, all presumably quite happy in the heat and space. Surprising English creatures showed up too - pigeons from Trafalgar Square, geese from any farmyard and probably sparrows somewhere about as well.
23 October 2000
Braincells, IQ points and several hours lost today thanks to having to work closely to the fantastically stupid...
“Have you sent that email yet?”
“Yes, but I’ll send it again with the attachment just in case.”
“How big is that attachment?”
“About a meg and a half?”
(hopefully) “Zipped?”
“No.”
Ten plus meg of attachments at 2Kbps takes quite a while.
Lizard returned and brought friends. Found its kid brother running up wall next to the tv. Opened door to throw it out and another scurried in. Roaches are back too. I’m being invaded by bugs again. What is this - Starship Troopers?
24 October 2000
Braved the Indian cinema experience today. Films here cone out about ten weeks after releasing in the West. Ignoring the reasonably atrocious painted posters advertizing the films, entry is just 55 rupees or about 80 pence. Price low, quality also low and thrown in time warp back to seventies. Seats come from sedentary hell - plastic covered, narrow width, wooden, you get the idea. Pre-film adverts all repeated twice as well in case you missed them the first time. There’s an intermission in the middle of the film to take the suspense out of it for you and the air conditioning can be heard over the soundtrack for its entire length. Still, X-Men remains a good film even after multiple viewings. Can’t wait for the DVD. X-Men painted poster outside cinema features none of the main characters in the film. Biggest billing goes to Mystique - is that ’cos she’s nekkid?
Found English-themed pub in town called the Underground. Aims for entire room to be a bar in a tube carriage. Umm. Where’s the litter on the floor, annoying half-audible train driver announcements and drunk in the corner then? Oh I’m sorry, it said ‘themed’. Still, beer quite nice and saw England beat Pakistan with a score of 306 for 5. Beat that, Razzaq.
25 October 2000
Virus alerts continue with UK office now in loveletter frenzy. Eighty nine posts of the same mail through the net this morning to my inbox. Bad things come in threes so that should be it now at least. However, have lost Patrick. Positive that John had him last.
Electrician slacking as much as possible - may have to sack him before network people come in and cry foul.
26 October 2000
First day of Diwali - Indian mix of Christmas (gifts exchanged), New Year (but no-one’s really sure which year) and Guy Fawkes night (loud industrial strength firecrackers being let off in the streets until 4am every day until Sunday).
Attend street party at John’s place with Mike Burghart from SuSe, who has just come to Bangalore to set up shop here. Gently let him down to earth from his high cloud of thinking that starting a business here is cheap and easy
“What kind of leased line were you thinking of getting?”
“I could manage with maybe a 2 Meg line”
“Got a spare 64,000 pounds then have you?”.
Mike’s also going to make do with his stand next to ours at the show next week - hope he’s got stuff to fill it with.
27 October 2000
Having successfully conquered living with cockroaches, lizards, mozzies and spiders, the biggest pest of all shows itself in the house - the neighbours kids. One lets himself in the back door without explaining why he’s come, changes the channel on the TV while we’re watching it, can’t find the India-Sri Lanka game because it’s not on until tomorrow, dumps the remote, tries to find the games on our computers of which there are none that interest him and then spends twenty minutes playing the snake game on the mobile phone. Having realized that subtlety won’t work and he doesn’t understand the words “Go away”, wish he really was pest-sized for purely self-indulgent need to squish him with sole of boot.
28 October 2000
Diwali day 3 and Diwali party number two, this time with rest of Natasha. Witness the horror that is my landlord trying his best to call out bingo numbers in thick accent and with own calls for the numbers. ‘Spirit of Sharja - 69’. Umm, well, OK.
30 October 2000
Satyam Mail Servers appear to have gone down through sheer weight of gormless Satyam users saying happy Diwali to each other using the universal mailing list as a reply address that the original message left lying around. Am still getting new Happy Diwali mail in my inbox sent on Oct 26.
Stand now half constructed at the show. Will be totally unique and eye-grabbing - almost fun to work under even. Guys from Mumbai also appeared. Will meet tomorrow as they inevitably get under foot wanting to put posters up on walls that haven’t yet been constructed.
Office now has chairs, carpet, desks and draws. Think I’ll need a potted plant and a poster and then I’m off.
31 October 2000
First work in office on laptop waiting for various pieces of equipment to show up during the day. UPS batteries, controllers and racks all show. Server room now half size it was. Network guys also in now to measure up. Figure I should learn PHP as that’s what the books will be on. Run through Chapter 1 of Beg PHP4. Only a few mistakes so far.
What a difference an ‘h’ makes. Gucchi means ‘cooked with mushrooms’......