Day 4

Well, I’ve already said that I woke up far too early this morning and that I spent a while taking pictures (some of which have now been posted on facebook [LINKS?]). Breakfast came a little after 8, and consisted mostly of fruit: a bunch of miniature bananas that were quite tasty (that’s right, I actually ate bananas!) and a huge, football shaped fruit with a sweet and squishy pink inside. Nels and I managed to get out the door by about 8:30, actually caught an auto-rickshaw, and made it to work by 9 (which is the first time that has happened, despite trying to do so for the last several days).

The day mostly consisted of me reading a bunch of papers and trying to figure out what I will be working on for the next 10 weeks. My mentor is still in the states and a little hard to get a hold of (especially with the 12 hour time difference), so I’m really hoping that I’m not off on a complete tangent with all this reading I’m doing.

There were a few fun things that happened. I signed up for my Citibank account so that I will actually get paid (the guy was supposed to get to the office at 10:30, which is when Revi and I went down to meet him, and didn’t show till 11:15. I’m really just starting to expect such tardiness in general…).

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here, but I left a set of clothes at my original apartment and have been trying to get them back for the last couple of days. To this end the guy who manages all of this stuff grabbed me in the middle of the day and sent me off in a taxi, with the nominal goal of recovering my clothing. First, the taxi driver drove me to a different apartment complex than the one I originally stayed in (after I asked the manager if he had been told the correct one) and the people there brought out clothes for me to look at, then when I told them that I hadn’t been to that place before and none of the clothes were mine they threw out a few not-so-polite-sounding things in either Hindi or Karna (the state Bangalore is in is Karnataka, and I believe the local language is called Karna). Next, the taxi driver took me to Land Mark, which was the correct apartment where I originally stayed, but it turned out that there was nobody there! Finally, we returned to the office, unsuccessful, and I ran into the manager and one of his helpers when I came inside. They had apparently been updated on what had happened, and told me that somehow my clothes had gotten wet again (how they new this, or how they knew where my clothes were I don’t know) and they needed to be dried. I’m supposed to get the clothes tomorrow morning sometime. We shall see… On the plus side, I got to take a break for work to be chauffeured around the city and enjoy the view from the car.

Finally, I had a really nice lunch where I met several new people, including a pair of people from Brazil (one of whom plays Ultimate! Unfortunately I didn’t bring any disks… :-( ), and had a fun chat. Apparently India has its own version of “The Office,” more than one version of “Dancing with the Stars,” and all sorts of other reality TV shows (i.e. “Indian Idol”). I was also invited by Lucia (one of the Brazilians) to join them and a bunch of other people the weekend after next to go to Hampi, which is a holy city that is about an 8 hour train ride from Bangalore. The plan is to take the train overnight starting on Friday, stay the weekend, and come back Monday morning. I think that 11 people are coming on the trip and it sounds like its going to be a whole lot of fun.

Miracles upon miracles, we actually got a taxi away from work at a reasonable time today! We saw a coworker who lives near us leaving (meaning that she had a taxi) and we all dropped what we were doing and ran after her. This is why I did not manage to send out more emails or thins like that today. I was just getting to that as we left. However, this did leave us more time tonight at home, so Nels and I took a little tour around the neighborhood. We chatted and saw all the little tiny shops along the main street near our apartment, and actually got some exercise for the first time in a while. All in all a fun day. Oh, and we don’t have internet yet tonight because, “Someone fell and broke his leg.” That is really the excuse that we were given. It may be true, but if we get an excuse like that tomorrow I’ll start to doubt it… I hope I do have internet tomorrow and get a chance to get in touch with you all!

Cheers,

Jason

P.S. I’ve also learned that my surge protector doesn’t really appreciate 240V, 50 Hz electricity. I also learned where the breakers in my apartment are…