Drive Dead Slow

I just saw a sign along the side of the road saying "accident prone zone drive dead slow". I'll have to see if I can dig up a picture.

Driving

I wish you could experience the roads in Bangalore. The newer roads have lines, but drivers ignore them, drifting from lane to lane without a thought. There are traffic signals in the more densely populated areas, but if people are forced to sit for too long, they decide it is their turn to go anyway. It can be a little frightening how close they get to one another...

Good Night and Good Luck

Well, the driver got here 45 minutes before I asked him to, and I've already made him wait a half hour while I phoned home to say g'bye to my family. I will be incommunicado for about 27 hours while I go to the airport, wait for my flight, yada yada yada. Most international flights leave Bangalore between 10 PM and 3 AM; I'm in the "late middle" of that, at 1:55 AM. But been reading the paper this week, and the new airport has had its share of hiccups. Yesterday they lost all computers at checkin and had to manually check everyone, ~10 minutes per person. Lines backed up something fierce. I'm willing to leave waaay early to avoid missing this flight. I am eager to get home.

So, this is the last entry until I'm stateside. Probably. They have wireless at the airport... :)

FYI

I've added some posts with pictures in their chronological position, so you may want to scroll through things again looking for pictures you've not seen before.

Just 3-4 hours before I leave for the airport...

The Compound

It's my last day in India, at least for a while. Since I didn't have anyone to go with on an adventure, I've stayed at the house all day and studied GWT. I took a break in the afternoon and walked around Prestige Ozone, the "premier community" in which our Whitefield guest house is located. It's a charming community, obviously catering to transplants from other countries. I saw many different types of families, and I recognized English and German. There are probably other nationalities located here as well.

The amenities here are very nice. It's immaculately kept up, there is a large pool, a sauna, multiple play areas, multiple ponds like the one shown, an amphitheatre, and a big field where the kids were playing.

I walked around for a while to get some sunlight on me before the rains came (they come every afternoon during "pre-monsoon" season). I stopped and sat on a bench for a while to get some sunlight before I resumed my studies. It is so very different here in the community when you compare it to what is less than a tenth of a mile away...

And they don't want it coming in easily...

India is a Service-Focused Country

Every morning, I usually have two brand new 1 liter water bottles waiting for me in my office, along with a glass on a coaster. It definitely makes me feel special. :)


I believe I've mentioned that they take good care of me at the guest house. They serve me at the table, bring me glasses of water on trays, even open the doors for me when it is time to leave. They are very service oriented.

When Indians move to the United States, this is one of the sacrifices they have to make. Here, having maids and cooks at your house is very cheap. Amardeep told me that there is a man that comes to clean his car every day, and Amardeep pays him ~$8.50 per month for this service. Per Month! We cannot even get a single car cleaning in the U.S. for that kind of money. But it is only a matter of time for the edges of that dichotomy to start to blur. As more and more money trickles down from those who have to those who do not, expectations will change on both sides and things will begin to even out.

How do you think the U.S. got to be the way it is?

A long week, a bright future(?)

This second week has been very busy, with me working 12 hours a day just about every day. Add commuting time on top of that and it makes a man tired. But I've gotten to know the people in the Bangalore office a lot better and know that Manhattan's Architecture is in good hands here.

We've had a lot of resignations in the Bangalore office. We've lost 6 of the top 15 people since the beginning of the year, and there are rumors that others will go as well. While it is definitely a blow, no one can tell what the future holds and whether the people that step into those positions can and will transform the India operations into the center of our organization. Not that I'm saying that's what we're trying to do, but one never knows...