Bangalore, Day 2

I woke up around 7 Bangalore time. Spent a long time sitting and just reading or futzing on the internet. At several points I wandered out into the 2^nd room and saw Motih watching a movie. Breakfast eventually came and we had a fairly filling meal of seasoned rice with small veggies in it. Motih also offered to have me tag along with him when he went out this afternoon. Through theh rest of the morning I read, showered, and got ahold of Elaine on Skype (^_^ <3), style=""> When we eventually left, Motih, Raj, and I all walked down to the office and they tried to get me in and show me around. Unfortunately the security guard was a little obstinate and they weren’t able to get me in. Oh well, that’s what tomorrow’s for!

Motih and I then to an auto-rickshaw down to a mall near MG road, where we commenced our wandering. We wandered up and down this 7 story mall, buying a water on the way. Their supermarket is different then ours. More crowded and with different foods (like rice) extremely obvious. I also tried to watch the people around me to see how they behave. It seems like there is always the expectation that people should know what they are doing and there is a considerable amount of non-verbal communication used to accomplish most things.

From the mall we walked up to Brigade(?) Rode, and observed the spectacle of the MG road area, chatting all the time. Manish was right, that Pizza Hut looks like a really upscale joint! My major regret for the day was that I didn’t bring my camera to take pictures :-(. We eventually wandered down a side street (blossom?) and went into an arcade to kill some time. We sat down and watched cosmic bowling for a bit, then played the games in the arcade for tickets. We didn’t manage to accumulate too many, but I found that I am fairly good at a “demolition” game that was essentially wack-a-mole and was quite fun. Motih got a mask for a Indian superhero (I forget the name) that he plans to put up in the office, and I got an Indian children’s story. These were purchased using the tickets we had won.

Interesting tidbit: we stopped by a magazine store that’s major claim to fame is that it has something like 15 cats wandering around freely. Very cute and made me think of Elaine.

The most fun part of the day was the next stop: a bookstore, the stop story of which was used books, and crammed together as used book stores should be. We browsed for like two hours, and for the modest price of 300 rupees (~7 dollars) I got Around the world in 80 days, Watership Down, Catch-22, and Canterbury Tales. We also chatted most of the time about books, good and bad, which was incredibly awesome ^_^.

Afterwards we grabbed some food. We went by a fast-food place for a snack, basically Chicken Tikka and some greens wrapped in Naan (Yum!). Afterwards we went to a fairly famous restaurant that had both Indian and Western options on the menu. I got a Prawn Tikka Marsala and some Naan, which were delicious. We then took another auto-rickshaw back home, with Motih avoiding the drivers that tried to scam us :-). We spent most of this afternoon chatting, and while I cannot remember everything we talked about it was a really fun time ^_^.

Once we got back we made some calls, I started going to bed, then a guy showed up to move me to another apartment (I wasn’t supposed to be living in the one I was I guess). This one is _much_ nicer, cleaner, non-smokey, and more spacious. The guys living here, Sanjam and Nels (who is from America too and is currently going to CMU) are very cool and I stayed up for a while chatting with them. Sanjam also pointed out that Nels is much easier to understand because he projects (and probably is better and articulating correctly). This means that I have a project for the summer: speak louder and more clearly (I’ve needed to do this for many years, but hopefully this will be enough motivation ^_^). The downside of this new apartment is that it does not yet have internet :-O!!!! so I won’t be able to communicate as actively for a while :-(. Now, I have stayed up later than I should have typing this, so I am going to sleep now!

Cheers,

Jason