Archive for December, 2006
Woke up feeling super fantastic (although, this was my first night with more than 5h sleep, so it’s understandable that I would be doing better). Had a bit of CiCo (curry in-curry out) today, but overall stomach is doing great. Went to several stores — the government store where it’s fixed inflated price and you won’t get to haggle and another place where you haggle a lot. Turns out, I’m not so great at bargaining, I only got about 20% off of the ticket price, next time I think I’ll do better but since it was new terriority I didn’t feel too ripped off. The store we were in also had a lot of chess sets, all of which were hand made. Makes me rethink the original idea I had of getting a custom chess set done of all the RMF characters. It’s costly in North America because only the artisans really create each piece by hand, however, overseas, it’s how they make a normal chess set, so it’s not that much more work to do each piece differently. I’ll have to look into that once I get back. Had lunch with Kirk and Norbert after shopping (where I burned my tongue badly) and talked about the LETS system of localized currency (invented in Vancouver apparently). Back off to the hotel to pack and doze a bit before our 3am flight to Frankfurt.
December 17th, 2006
We went off to Mysore Palace to see some cultural icons of India. You’re not allowed to wear shoes in many areas including the palace and the many temples, so we walked around with a guide barefoot and listening. We hopped on an elephant for a short ride around the palace grounds which was a fun silly thing and then headed off to a group of local temples up on a high mountain. There is a lot of begging and constant payment for services (no matter how insignifcant) that really is tough to deal with if you happen to be a Canadian (as we’re not really used to the pressure sell). I felt bad for the guy who was taking us around the site because he was just shelling out the money constantly (pay to keep our shoes, pay to get a coconut, pay to break the coconut open, pay to bless the coconut, pay to be blessed, pay to have a kid tell us the capital city of Canada). In the end, I ended up donating money too, but I made the mistake of not paying attention to what I was giving the temple monks and instead of 50Rp (about $1.50), I gave them €50 (about $75.00) by accident. But you can’t blame me, if you compare them, they look very similar in colour. In the end, I should get massive karmic blessings for such a donation. The day rounded out by a return home and me feeling like complete crap (either because of too much sun or because my stomach was finally succumbing); luckily the internet had started working again (it had stopped earlier in the week for me) and I quickly checked mail and went to bed.
December 16th, 2006
Had a flight to the small town of Pune (only 4M people). It was interesting, it didn’t seem as well rounded a community as Bangalore nor as much of a good fit for westerners. It was also difficult to get there, even though we flew on Kingfisher airlines which was a great company (better than many North American carriers).
December 15th, 2006
India seems to be a very ’service’ driven country. The class system is very obvious and you feel (as any Canadian would) that you’re are taking advantage of people because they are so willing to serve you. It is kind of uncomfortable in a way because it’s difficult to refuse (seems something the British built into its relationship with India). Travelling with two vegetarians makes it difficult being the only carnivore, so I’ve switched over to pure veggie food too although that has wreaked a bit of havoc on my body. Everyone we’ve met so far, upon our departure has given us gifts of India (again a bit uncomfortable) for meeting with them. If I got a gift after every large group meeting I had, I’d have a ton of crap that I don’t need - glad that we don’t have to meet any more companies. Kirk is happy about it though because he’s going to regift some of them to family members. Overall it seems that Bangalore is quite a good city for a computer business, the streets are all in constant repair and there are no sidewalks, but if you need to push data around, the city has the network capacity to do it. Surprisingly we found out that 25% of the people in the tech. sector were women, which is really good and what we’re more used to in North America, but not at all what I expected.
December 14th, 2006
Bottled water is weird in India — the water bottles are full up to the brim such that, when you open them, they are sure to spill on you. When it happens the first time, you sort of write it off as an accident, the second time you notice it and the third time you realize that they are ALL like that.
December 13th, 2006
Damn! Yet another year goes by and I miss starting the tradition around the Yule Lads. I want to get started with this (especially when we have kids) so that it can be a fun (albeit zany) part of the holidays. For those of you who don’t know, Iceland has 13 Santas and a Yuletide Cat that will eat your children.
December 13th, 2006
Being we landed early this morning, got up a bit later (so we got at least 5-6h sleep). Got hooked up to the internet - the infrastructure is great with high-speed access. Made a VOIP phone call home which sounded like Karen was in the room with me (and was all free). Went off to the office to meet the teams there that we might be working with — an unsual greating we were each welcomed with a bouquet of roses. I guess the customs here are a bit different than back home.
December 12th, 2006
Left at 2pm on Sunday, arrived at 2am on Tuesday morning. It was a VERY long flight and Germany is less than half of the distance to Bangalore. First things I notice when I arrive? It smells a bit like curry in the airport, it’s very crowded and there are power brownouts at the hotel.
December 11th, 2006
Talked to my parents today, they were in Winnipeg visiting Grandma. At the end of the conversation, trading the phone back and forth, I thought I was going to talk to Dad, but instead I hear from the other end “oh no, he hung up, he had to go”. So, then for some reason their end of the phone doesn’t get hung up and I stay on the line (partly expecting that they’ll come back to the phone and we’ll continue the conversation). Instead, I hear Mom and Dad talking about the conversation they had with me, about me planning on going to India, the fact that dad doesn’t want pizza for dinner — Boston Pizza’s too expensive (meanwhile I’m yelling into the phone my support for pizza for dinner and that Boston Pizza isn’t that pricey). I hear Mom come closer to the phone as she is going to call the pizza place and think she’ll hear me because I’m talking continuously to them (as if I was involved in their conversation), but then she walks further away to the other side of the room. After about 2 and a half minutes of the fun one sided conversation I figure I better be prudent and save on the phone bill and hang up. Rarely does that kind of thing happen, it was quite amusing.
December 9th, 2006
Today coming back from New York, I had the worst landing I’ve ever had. It was surreal and I was sure we were going to be in trouble. Two things usual about the landing approach, the first being that we were not flying straight down the runway, we were offset at an angle against the crosswind and were being jostled around quite a bit, and the second (a much more important one) we were in a bank. Twenty feet above the runway I really thought the wing tip would touch down and then we’d be in for an exciting conclusion - but then at the last second we were on the ground, the pilot having put it down hard and fast, but at least we were safe. I can’t imagine that being any kind of conventional landing, but I’m just happy to be home.
December 7th, 2006
So, I’m not so good sometimes when it comes to hygene on the road — that’s mostly because I forget things. On this most recent trip to NYC, I forgot two things, toothpaste and the bottom half of my razor. The toothpaste, I essentially “scrounged the leavings” that could be found in my existing toothbrush (sounds nastier than it really is) as I tend to over-paste my brush at any given moment, but the razor was more difficult. So, there I was shaving holding the razor head and trying to be as articulated as the Gillette Fusion Mach MCMLXXIII - turns out, in a pinch, it works well.
December 6th, 2006
I went out and picked up a slingbox today. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a device that hooks into your audio/video system and allows you to stream the video feed remotely over the network. It was more difficult to setup than I thought (had to look up instructions on the internet for getting my airport express working), especially since you need to connect to the slingbox via local LAN before you can configure it to be accessed remotely. Once I did all that (about 2h of fiddling), it worked perfectly and I can now stream video (from our TV and PVR) from anywhere in the world provided the bandwidth is fast enough. I definitely recommend getting one of these, especially if you travel a lot.
December 4th, 2006
Yay! First snowfall of the season that is staying! We’re getting about 3-4cm of snow (not much), but it sets the mood for the season. Karen and I went for a walk tonight after a get together at Sue-Anne’s and it was very beautiful and silent. Although afterwards we ended up napping in front of the fireplace before bed, so not an overly productive evening.
December 3rd, 2006
We had J+J+C and S+K over for dinner tonight, but I ended up having to work to about 4am trying to have completed org charts for a Sunday morning budget meeting. I am not excited about what my life has become. However, Karen had made a wonderful dinner and it was nice to sit with people and talk about life and problems. It made for a nice evening despite the work intrusion.
December 2nd, 2006
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