Soooo, this is awkward. I know I didn’t get back to you for a while there but…. think I still got a chance?
Anyways welcome to another riveting addition of Cats and Dogs: Friends or Mortal Enemies? Oh wait…this the blog about me in India, right. To start off my fan in my room is making noises that lead me to believe it is determined to free itself from it’s ceiling restraints, which would of course only happen when I’m asleep. Speaking of memorable wake-ups, I had a job several summers ago working construction. I am the owner’s nephew so some of the guys liked to pick on me. Due to the early hours, I often enjoyed a nap on the way to and from the job site. One evening on the way back to the office I nodded off to a deep peaceful sleep. My boss, who was driving, decided the best way to wake me up would be to slam on the brakes, while honking the horn and screaming upon arrival to the office, nice guy, thanks again Scott.
Back to India
Last week I didn’t do much, we can call it a week to forget. It’s kind of like a “Walk to Remember”, but instead of sweet, sad and Mandy Moore, it was boring, pitiful and just me.
This weekend though I went to Chennai. My roommate, another intern, and I were invited to a co-worker’s wedding. For those unaware an Indian wedding is a multi-day ordeal. As such we couldn’t go to the actual ceremony, the following Monday, but we still wanted to go to the reception, on Sunday. Being the excited tourists that we are we decided to go a day early so we could take in the sites. This meant catching an overnight bus. Seeing how we weren’t familiar with the area of the bus stop, we decided to leave at 7:30 so we could be sure to be on time for our 11:00 bus. When we arrive it was still only about 9:30, and omg do I love waiting. We decided to wait in the definition of a dive bar. Not that I’m complaining, a chair is a chair as far as I’m concerned, but I could have done with a chilled beverage, but hey refrigerators are expensive. Predictably enough, the bus was late. Around 11:30 we finally boarded our bus, en route to Chennai. The bus had fairly comfortable beds, as it was a sleeper bus. I fell asleep after an hour or two, however was rather grumpy after waking up at 6 am the next day to disembark.
Now we come to the point where we did not think our journey through. We arrived in an unfamiliar city, without an address to our hotel, at 6am. Luckily enough there were a couple of Rickshaw drivers by the bus drop, who are always happy to take advantage of a foreigner. We found one who knew where our hotel was, and for 200 INR he would take us there. Turns out the hotel wasn’t more than 5km away, which meant the meter rate for a Rick would be about 55 INR, but then again, what’s three dollars. Once we arrived at the hotel we were relieved. It was very nice. When we walked into the lobby first thing I asked was whether we could do an early check in. After giving him my name and confirmation number, he had some bad news. Apparently the hotel had two locations and we were at the wrong one. So we got another Rick, for another 200, and drove what turned out to be about 4km, damn crooks, and arrived at our hotel. So, again, first thing I did was see if we could do an early check in. We could, but it would have cost 2,200 INR. 50 bucks?, hah forgettaboutit…I sat my butt down and waited. We noticed after not too long though, that there was a nice restaurant, with a decent looking breakfast spread out. We saw a couple people in there so we asked if we could eat. It was 6:45, the person at the front desk said we could, once it opens at 7.
Ok, how about the people in there enjoying their breakfast? They got the buffet. Can we get the buffet? Yes. So it’s open? Yes. Awesome.
After completing the lesson in what open and closed means we went in and experienced probably the greatest breakfast buffet to ever appear on earth. For 11 dollars we could get an endless supply of freshly made pancakes, omelets, fruits, juices, even stews, steamed fish, bacon, yogurt with assorted nuts, traditional Indian foods, pastries; they had a whole table dedicated to pastries, not a small table either but a big one, with croissants: plain and chocolate, banana walnut cake, donuts, muffins, and more. If they have a breakfast buffet in heaven, I’m pretty sure it looks like the one at that hotel.
Anyways, after finally checking in and getting to the room, we decided we were too tired to do anything and slept most of the day away. When we woke back up we went to check out a mall. This mall turned out to be one of the coolest, and perhaps best-designed malls I have ever been to. That being said, I bought nothing and the one person I talked to in a store annoyed me. After getting some dinner there we decided to walk to a restaurant on the way to our hotel, which had a supposedly good pub. This hotel also happens to be where the cricket teams playing in the World Cup stay, if they’re playing in Chennai. Yes there is a sport called Cricket, which has a World Cup, and it’s currently being held in India. The walk to the hotel was about 3 miles. Some creepy, most dirty, and from the 60 feet from the lot to the door of the Sheraton, very well lit. Once there, we found out the Pub we had heard about was more of a dance club, which was only open to hotel guests, but no worry, they had a bar and lounge across the lobby. This was very comfortable and, if I understood cricket, would’ve been entertaining as it was on every TV. After some drinks we walked back to our hotel and called it a night.
The following day we decided to actually see something. So, we went to a Park. This “Park” turned out to be more of an outdoor zoo, which was still kind of cool. We saw snakes, crocodiles, birds of all kind, deer, and more. The interesting part was how they had a large cage of Macaque’s. These are a type of monkey, which happen to be wild in the area. In fact there were wild Macaques in the immediate area. Around the park, and even in the tree opposite the caged monkeys there were wild ones climbing and running around free. I experienced another strange occurrence at this park. When at the bird exhibit a group of Indian girls stopped me and asked if they could take my picture. I can only think of two explanations for this. 1. They’ve never seen a red head in person before and they had to take a photo or no one would believe them. Or 2.) They mistook me for Rupert Grint, from Harry Potter. Later that night we went to a wedding reception. It was pretty cool. We listened to traditional Indian music, ate traditional food, which I’m starting to really like, and we had our picture with the bride and groom to be. All in all it was a fun day.
One thing worth mentioning that I’ve left out is how humid Chennai is. I stood at the wedding, constantly drinking water in an effort to replenish my body, it was just lovely.
Moving on, the following morning we were to wake up for our train, which was leaving at 6am. We arranged for a car at 5, planning to wake up around 4/4:30. Around 4:45 we finally woke up, and packed our stuff; which we didn’t pack the night before because we are guys and that’s what we do, don’t try and change us, just love us for how we are. We arrived at the station around 5:30, plenty of time and were on the train by 5:45. After the train disembarked I tried to nod off, but to no avail. Soon however people came by with water, then later with food, and later again with juice. I had not expected the service, so it was quite a happy surprise. We arrived back in Bangalore at 10:30, and at the office at 11:25. I arrived at work just in time for a meeting, which was mostly about how my boss wasn’t pleased with my team’s performance; of course nothing to do with me, as I hadn’t done much in the previous month. Later that day however I attended another meeting. This was a three-hour meeting, in which my attendance stipulated that I was to run the slides. I am usually ok with this, but when one wake’s up at 4am and has to hit an arrow key for 3 hours they can go a little crazy. The rest of that day came and went like any other.
Today started with me being crammed in the back of our transport in a seat clearly made for someone less than six feet. At work I had to attend the second half of the previous day’s 3hr meeting. Thankfully I didn’t have to work the projector; because I was late someone else was doing it. When I sat down, I opened my computer and was actually able to get some real work done, which was nice. As the bottom of the totem pole, but also an intern I am in an unusual position. My boss gave me a special project, which has a good amount of responsibility and work. As the Rookie however, I get other work dropped on me as well. I am not complaining but when I have 3 reports to finish by Thursday, and no one returning emails, things start to annoy you. A good example of this is right before I was going to clock out today my immediate boss, not my team boss, sent me an email asking me to reach out to a bunch of team leaders, who are notorious for failing to respond to emails, and get them to fill something out. Just the correspondence between these people will take up a good 3 to 4 hours of my next 3 days.
I am happy that I have work to do though, and I enjoy the requirements of my project, though they are temporarily on hold for a bit. This is officially the longest blog I have ever written, if you have stayed with me god bless you, and get a life. Finally…Dad, I know you hate it when I don’t spell out numbers under ten, but get over it, baldy.
Today’s lesson, Never Trust a Rickshaw Driver,
You’re Welcome,
x
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