Another auto-adventure...

I sometimes think to myself "ok, that's it, i've seen it all, nothing about this country will surprise me now!" And each time again, i am wrong. Earlier today, I was trying to head back from Commercial Street to the apartment on Residency Road. The auto ride should cost about Rps 25. I talk to the first driver: "fly-over bridge on Residency Rd?". "No ma'am". "What do you mean "no"? No as in no, you don't know? No as in no, you don't want?". "No ma'am". Ok fine, next one: "Rps. 50 m'am" "50?! Ha! You're kidding. Nope, the meter, please." "No ma'am, the meter + Rps. 20, lot's of traffic!" Yeah right, it's not like at any other time there is no traffic, huh? Whatever, i am not in the mood to argue. Next one! "M'am come, come, Residency Rd, yes". "Meter?" "Sit, m'am" (with shake of the head...that means "yes, yes, don't worry, meter is fine". Aaaah there we go, see not that hard after all. Hmmm, wait, 2 min into the ride....the auto slows down (in the middle of a huge boulevard)...oho, what now? "No gas, m'am". Argh, I should have known. Ok, no worries, i'll take the next auto. "No, no, m'am, sit down." The guy gets out and stops another rickshaw-driver (although he has 3 passengers with him). They talk, they shake heads (lots of head shaking, it's a good sign!) and suddenly, there we go again. Huh, what, how? Am i seeing this right...yes, the other guy is driving his rickshaw, while pushing our rickshaw with his foot...cool, i call that solidarity...Ah! I see the gas station. But..wait...no, we are not going to the gas station, hmmm...interesting, is he going to push us all the way to Residency Rd? What about his passengers? At this point, i don't care and decide to just sit back, relax and see what happens. One big push, our rescue-rickshaw turn left, my guy jumps out of the rickshaw and starts pushing the riskshaw across the busy intersection (of course, it goes without saying that this is accompanied with lots of honking and swerving of the cross traffic he is blocking). Hmmm what now? You are not gonna push all the way till Residency Rd, are you? Noooo, the next street is down-hill! What a relieve. Driver jumps back in, there we go again...no braking, we need all the momentum we can get. "Get out of the way, you looser" (I feel like yelling at those stupid motorcycles stopping in front of us)...where is my honk? I wanna honk! Honk!...We finally get to a group of parked rickshaws and my driver shouts: "go m'am, go! Other auto!" and points at what, i presume, is his friend. Sigh, does it mean i will have to redo the whole "Residency Rd? Meter"-game? Perhaps. So i start "Meter?". The other auto driver looks at me and says: "Other auto has meter. You pay what is on other meter" and so he too starts pushing the other auto with his foot while driving. What?? You gonna push that other rick all the way, just for the meter? Seriously, i am not that into the meter, you know. Anyway, I must admit, this driver is pretty skilled. It's like an arcade game. On the small streets, he drives next to the other auto, all the while pushing it, then when someone (or something) is coming in the opposite direction, he gives the auto a big push, swerve behind it, and as soon as the other vehicle has passed, he starts pushing again. I am impressed. This is fun! Then he pushes a little too hard, and the other rick is propulsed 3 cars in front of us. He shakes his head and looks at me in the mirror. "yeah I know, it's not your fault the other drivers are not as skilled". Finally i tell him, not to worry about the meter. Just drop him at the gas station and get met to Residency Rd. Which is finally what he does. We get there, and he asks for Rps 30. Really? After all the entertainment you just provided me? I want to give you more!

Moms!

This post is dedicated to all the moms that have worried about me over the past fews days: thank you! :-) I feel much better now, and i am grateful for all the calls i received from you, to make sure i was doing ok. It's nice to know I am not entirely alone, so far away from home!

Berk!

So, it seems that my cooking skills are terrible! Or that is what my own body thinks at least...after my great cooking experiment yesterday, I decided to meet someone for coffee. He'd take me to one of the supermarkets on the ring road...all was fine till i got into his car. That's when i started to feel pretty bad...upset stomach, it seemed like. But, i thought "oh, no problem, it is just the ride" (i tend to get a little car sick when i am not the one doing the driving :-)). So once back, I went out to get a coke, usually it does wonders to calm down an upset stomach. Wrong! From then on, things went from bad to worse...for the next 5 hours all i could do was throw up-sleep-throw up-sleep-throw up-more sleeping-more throwing-up and finally more sleeping. Ouch, horrible night. I cursed the dal, i cursed the okra, i cursed the curd, I even cursed the pickle and swore i would never eat any of those things again!

This morning, the body felt slightly better...it had a craving for bread and chocolate...aaah i recognize my roots at last! I've been sleeping all day long though...and am ready to nap some more...great way to spend a weekend! :-( Luckily there is JJG to get me through this...nobody can keep you better company on those lousy, lousy days!

My first home-made Indian dish :-)

Look, i just finished cooking my first fully home-made Indian meal. It might not be clear from the pic, but i made Urad daal cooked in curd with rice and fried bindhi (or lady fingers/okra in english). It took me about 50 min to have everything ready...the result, i would give it a 6.5 out of 10. Of course i don't know how it should taste, but the okra could have been cooked a little longer, and to my taste the urad daal/curd mixture could have been a little thicker...anyway, not bad for a first time, i would say!
And of course, the pickle made it all worthwhile! ;-)

Cooking experiments

I am very proud! I got my own spice box...I always wanted one of those stainless steel "lunch boxes" that hides 6 or 7 little other pots with different colourful spices...and most importantly the little spoon...i love the little spoon. My spice treasure box has turmeric, red chili, coriander, cumin, pepper, mustard seeds and some unknown spice...maybe one of you can look at the picture above and tell me what it is. So now i am ready to cook...oh wait, small detail, i have no clue how to make indian food! (oh, and before i can make anything i will also have to overcome my fear of pressure cookers...)
Hmmm, since i don't have a mom to teach me how to make Indian food (vegetarian food is really not my mother's cup of tea :-)), I will have to resort to the "teach-yourself-indian-cooking-in-2-months" method. This method involves the 7 easy cookbooks (ha, there is even one that only talks about pickle!!!) and a fair amount of google-the-unknown-ingredient (I now know what methi, hing and palak means). You can now drop me in any (Indian) supermarket and i can recognize Masoor Daal from Moong Daal from Urad Daal...pretty impressive, huh?
Ok, now all i need is practice...and a willing soul to try out my experiments. Any volunteer? :-)

Happy Independence Day!

Yesterday, Saturday August 15th, was Independence Day in India. Look, look, i got my own flag :-). To celebrate, Jesse and I went to Mysore for the weekend. Mysore is a beautiful town about 130km southwest of Bangalore. It is famous for its Maharaja's Palace (or Indian Versaille as Jesse calls it), its colourful Devaraja Market, its carved sandalwood and beautiful silk sarees. It's also soooo much quieter and peaceful than Bangalore. And so green!
We took the 7am train (who actually left 1t 8:30am) and got there in time for lunch. We stayed at a very pleasant hotel called "green hotel". It's an old palace that used to be a summer retreat for the Wodeyar princesses (hmmm, maybe i am a BP after all). Now, it's a hotel with beautiful gardens, a delicious restaurant, colourfully painted rooms with birds and flowers...and it donates all its profit to charity. Not bad, huh? (besides, the price for a double room is very reasonable).
We spent the afternoon at the Palace, climbed down the stairs of Chamundi hill (or at least the part between the temple and Nandi's statue), walked around the bazaar (i love to listen and watch when Jesse bargains :-)) and finally went back to the Palace to see it all illuminated at night.

Oh, i also bought a silk saree...dark purple and green...very pretty! Now i just need a special occasion to wear it...anybody getting married soon? ;-)

Wisdom from an auto driver

Yesterday, I had the most pleasant encounter so far in India. I needed to go from Richmond town to Jayanagar by rickshaw. I had been warned: watch out for rickshaw drivers, try not to travel alone, and if you do, look for an older driver... they are usually safer. Use the meter, make sure you know the way so they don’t take you for a ride,... My rickwshaw driver must have been “l’exception qui confirme la regle”, the exception to the rule. My rickshaw driver was the third driver I flagged down. First, he was honest enough to tell me he knew the general area I needed to go to, but not the precise address, so he would have to ask once we got there. So I asked him for the meter. “Sure, not a problem m’am.” Then he apologetically told me he needed to stop at the gas station to get some gas, but that he would only turn on the meter once the gas tank was filled. Wow, I was impressed. Once on our way, he turned around, looked at me and said: “You don’t look Indian, m’am” (although he did break my heart by saying that, I must admit he was very observant ;-). “No sir, I am indeed not Indian”. “But m’am, you don’t sound American either, where are you from?”. “I am from Belgium”. Then he turns around and says with a broad smile: “Comment allez-vous, mademoiselle?” The expression on my face must have been priceless. So he continues and says: “Never judge someone by his appearance, m’am. Long time ago, when I was young, I studied French. I owned my own transportation business, then retired and was bored staying at home. So now I drive an auto so I can meet people. My daughters are probably your age. They both graduated from IIT. You know IIT, m’am? Very good school. Very smart girls.” I was starting to really enjoy this ride. A little further into the ride, my rickshaw driver turns around again and asks: “So, are you Christian in Belgium?” “Yes, we are”. “But it doesn’t matter, you know, m’am, ultimately we all believe in the same God. You call him something, I call him something else. To me religion is like food. We all need it for the same purpose, but each cuture has it’s own version of it. Each culture add it’s own spice to eat to make it its own.” Beautifully said, oh rickshaw driver of mine.

I wish I had asked his name. I hope I’ll see my favorite rickshaw driver again. And maybe he can teach me more wisdom.

St. Jozephs Evening College

Considering that i will be "living" in Bangalore for at least 9 weeks (I've been wondering how much time you need to stay in one place to rightfully say you have lived there), I think i ought to learn the local language. Some people think that if i am to learn a language anyway, i might as well learn "something more useful", like Hindi. Some say it's a waste of time to learn a language that is only used in one state in one particular country. But then again, there are more people that speak Kannada in the world than there are Belgians in the world, and besides, I learned flemish, so i am not the right person to talk to about the usefulness of a language :-). So, point is, I want to learn Kannada. I've been looking for teachers online, but they are not that easy to find. So I was told to go check out the St. Jozephs Evening College and see if they have Kannada evening classes for beginners. While checking out there website, i stumbled across their mission. I think this is the best mission statement for an educational institution i have ever read.

"The strategies followed in this college are designed to put students in a position to become lucky, to give them an edge, improve their attitude, sharpen their wisdom and deepen their perspective with a healthy self-esteem and thus become less self-absorbed and more sensitive towards the plight of others and more resilient shock absorbers in the ups and downs of life. The College intuitively feels that self-absorbed people have very poor learning curves."

If they are willing to teach me Kannada there, i am definitely taking their class!

Saturday!

I spent my first saturday afternoon off doing some shopping at Fabindia and other clothes shops. I bought some pretty colourful things. Charlene will be proud of me! :-) And she will be even more proud to know that i went to the gym today. Yes, the gym! Gold's Gym! They have a Bangalore branch, right next to the apartment i am staying at. Good thing i exercised, cause i ate soooo much tonight. Malavika had given me the address of this amazing restaurant called Olive Beach. It's located on a side street of Brigade Rd, one of the main roads in Richmond Town, the area of Bangalore we are staying in. That place was really nice. Perfect setting, a nice outside area, very calm and appeasing surroundings (what a change from the loudness around, at times i feel like my senses are overly ). So yes, the evening was a success. Good company, good conversation, good food, good atmosphere. I am a happy person. (Sunil and Sagarika, i think the two of you would enjoy this restaurant...have you ever been?)

Hyderabad Express

Thursday Aug 7 at around 3pm...Sylvie is sitting quietly in the service apartments in Bangalore, sending emails here and there to set up appointments with manufacturers when suddenly her phone rings. It's Linus (her boss :-)).
Linus: "Sylvie, do you have our prototype of the sleeping bag?"
Sylvie: "Euh, I think it is on the table in your apartment, why?"
Linus: "Shit, I am in Bombay and going to Hyderabad tonight. We have a meeting tomorrow, but I forgot to prototype. I thought Tomak had it with him. Wait, let me call you back in a minute, but i think you should come to Hyderabad. Tonight."

tuut tuut tuut (Linus hang up, i think he was in a cab on the way to the airport)

A few minutes later: driiiiiing

Linus: " Sylvie, yes, you need to come to Hyderabad. Book a flight and meet me there at 9pm. Wait, i need to go, call you back in a minute"

tuuuut tuuut tuuut (Linus hang up again, i think he is still in the cab on his way to the airport)

Driiiiiing

Linus: "Sylvie, is your ticket booked yet? Yes, cool, take a cab to the airport. Here is the number. Oh, btw, can you also take the heater, and the wax pouches?"
Sylvie thinks to herself "Euh, Linus, did you take anything to Hyderabad? :-)

So, this is how i ended up changing my plans to go to Gold's Gym and then dinner for a dinner at KFC in Hyderabad. Yes, KFC! Five years in the States and i have never set foot in a KFC, not even a week in India, and here i am...eating a fried chicken meal. What has the world come to? KFC!!! Aiaiaia

Anyway, my short trip to Hyderabad was definitely worthwhile. We visited a rural clinic about 2 hours away from the city. There, we got to interview a few doctors (OB/GYN and Pediatricians) and got some feedback on our prototype. And then...we got to put a couple of cute little babies in the sleeping bag. The first one didn't like it...but the second one loved it.
We also got the opportunity to see their NICU (those babies look so fragile). It's really interesting. I really hope this product makes it to the market and will hopefully save a lot of baby lives. They seem so small and helpless.

Anyway, sleepy time for me...it's been a hectic day!

Indian phones

I need to figure out how to call an Indian phone. I know, i know, half of you are laughing, really how hard can it be...Aha, that's where half of you are mistaken. Now, first you need to get a sim card, for that you need a proof of residency...yeah and most of us were complaining about the US where you need a SSN or deposit $500...well here, $500 won't do (ok, i didn't try bribing the sim card guy, maybe $500 would have done the trick, but then again, they probably just would have given me the sim card and then close the account 4 days later when they would have done an address check on me)...so yes, first a sim card. That was not too much of a problem, since someone was kind enough to go to the trouble to get one for me. So I have the sim card, i also have a phone that works over here (merci papa!)...simple. You put the sim card in the phone...so far, even i can do this. Now comes the tricky part. What if the phone runs out of battery. Oh, no problem, i even thought about bringing my charger (yes, i also know this will surprise some of you, so far I haven't forgotten anything in Belgium :-)), and even better, it seems that the Indian plugs are the same as the Belgian ones...i like this place more and more...but we are moving away from the topic. Charging my phone. Pfuh, easy, you just plug it in. Sure, but then it seems you have to switch on the plug...strange. And how do i know when it is switched on. You try, or you remember the position, but i am bad at remembering, so i try over and over, till it works. So, now the phone says it is charging, cool, i can go to bed, sleep and have a charged phone in the morning. AHA! Wrong again. It seems somehow in my sleep, the plug stopped working. No more electricity out of that plug. Did i break it? Oh, maybe it is because i turned off the light. No light, no electricity? Hmmm, don't know, what i do know is no electricity, no charging of battery, and no battery, no alarm. But then there is always the school band (? this is Linus plausible explanantion :-) ) that plays every morning at the same time to wake me up and realize my phone is dead. At first I thought the phone had a problem. Maybe the Belgian charger wasn't compatible after all. No, no, charger is fine, back to my initial assumption, it's the plug!
So, I switch plugs, and it works. Now comes the tricky part: make a phone call. It's always a random guess whether you need to add a zero or not. Again, i here some of you think: well, it can't be that hard, if it doesn't ring, you add (or remove) the zero, sure...except that there is no such thing as just a ring tone. Sometimes there is, but then it suddenly stops and you get disconnected. Sometimes it's Tina Turner singing the Eye of the Tiger. When it's Tina, i just call again, but oops, it seems that Tina sings when my caller has hung up on me on purpose because he is in a meeting, so he doesn't quite appreciate me calling Tina about 10 times in 15 minutes. My excuses to him, but i like Tina (and I haven't figured out the proper way to call in India!)

"Notttttttt-hing"

:-) Ah, it feels good to hear familiar sounds again.
I have kept my promises, I am back! Back in India within the year (I had promised myself to make full use of my one-year-multiple-entry Indian Visa)...and even better: back in Bangalore. I even saw St. Patrick's church (where Dev and Karen got married) on my second night in town. Who would have thought...

I am going to be working for a non-profit start-up called Embrace. If you have never heard of them, you should check out their website at embraceglobal.org. We make low-cost baby warmers. In short (in case you are too lazy to check out the website), the baby warmer consist of a sleeping bag where you put the baby in, a pouch that contains a wax that melts arounf body temperature and a heater to melt the wax once it is solidified. Pretty cool! I was supposed to conduct product usability tests, but things change. Instead, i'll be working on setting up the manufacturing and production of the sleeping bags here in India and will be researching all there is to know about logistics. How to import things from Europe and the US to India, how to ship and distribute everything from and too Bangalore, etc...so if you know anything about logistics or shipping in India, let me know, I can use some help. Or if you know someone that knows someone that knows someone (I have found out that this is how things really work over here...my dear American friends, you still have a lot to learn about networking!), let me know as well.

Talking about knowing people. This is a call to all my friends out there that have friends in Bangalore that might want to entertain a cool (?) Belgian girl while here, let me know, i'd love to meet people at night or during the weekend. Otherwise it might get pretty lonely here. And even if they are not that enthusiastic about meeting me, just guilt them into doing so ;-).

My trip so far has been filled with pleasant little surprises. This country keeps on amazing me, especially the people i meet here. I don't think i've met so many friendly, warm and welcoming people in so little time. To all my brown friends out there: your country rocks, really! If i hadn't been Belgian... :-)

Anyway, if you get the sudden urge to talk to me, you can always call me on my Indian cell :-). Number is +91 953505 3837 or email me, of course! Looking forward to hear from all of you!

Sylvie