Category Archives: Daily Scribble

My random thoughts of the day.

Daily Scribble

Toilet Papar

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Before I come to Indian, I heard that Indians don’t use toilet paper, they use their left hand. I thought it was a joke or it is stories from last centuries. Now I am in Indian, I can confirm the story is true. In a typical Indian toilet, you won’t find any toilet paper. Instead, you get a tap and a water bucket in each stall. After you had done your business, you can use the water bucket and your left hand to clean your butt. In some more advance toilet, it has a hose with shower head, so you can wash your butt more thoroughly than using a water bucket. I only find toilet paper is provided in hotels or fine dining restaurants with lots of foreigner customers.

No only that Indians don’t use toilet paper, they don’t even know what toilet paper is. The toilet paper in the guest house is running low, so I asked the maid to get me some new toilet paper. Guess what I got? I got kitchen paper towels! Flushing those thing down will guarantee a flooding toilet. Luckily, my box kleenex save the day. My highest priority task for this weekend is to get some toilet paper for the guest house from the super market.

Daily Scribble

Driver’s job

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A driver’s job is taking you to your destination and back.  I am surprise some of my colleagues feel sorry for the driver doing their job.  The traffic is insane in Bangalore, so we have drivers to drive us around the town.  The driver will come to pick us up in the morning, take us to the office.  After work, the driver will take us to the restaurant, then take us back to the guest house after dinner.  When we finish our meal, we will call the driver’s cell phone and get him ready to pick us up.  Some of my colleagues feel sorry for the drivers that they have to wait outside with the car while we eat.  I really don’t understand why they feel sorry for the drivers.  How tough can it be waiting relaxingly in the parking lot.   While they are waiting, they can take a nap, read newspaper or chat with other waiting drivers.  Sometimes they even get free meal from restaurant.  Why would you will feel sorry for the driver for simply doing his job?  Being a driver is not a bad job in Indian after all.  I rather feel sorry for those of us who got sent over here to suffer.

Daily Scribble

Dinner plan

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I am the unofficial Bangalore food guide.  Whenever I am in town, I will take care of dinner arrangement for everyone staying in the guest house.  It does not take much time, but the return is great.  I only have to spent 5 minutes every day to pick the restaurant, make the reservation, print direction and sent out an email invite people to join me for dinner.  People are glad that some one is take care of the dinner arrangement, they can hop into the car and guarantee a nice meal.  I always pick the expensive restaurants, so that it can never go wrong.  It’s a fun to have some colleagues to chat and chill out with a few drinks.  It is far better than the alternative.  If no one organize dinner, we may end up eating at Indian restaurants around the guest house every night.

Somehow, some colleagues choose to cook for themselves in the guest house instead of joining us.  I don’t quite understand why don’t they come with us.  Granted, the restaurants are far away, it takes time to stuck in traffic.  However, buying glocery, washing and cooking also takes time.  Having a nice dinner doesn’t take much time than cooking.  Money is not a concern, the food bill is paid by the companies anyways.  There is no reason to go cheap on food by making your own dinner.  I just can’t imagine someone can have sausage and egg every day instead of fine dinner.  One theory why they stay home for dinner is they feel guilt spending company’s money.  I tried to enlighten them with the correct value of money.  The company outsource to India to cut cost, so we are just helping the company utilize some of saving by having nice dinner in India.

Daily Scribble

Back to India

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I am back in India for two weeks.  I am not very excited, but work is work.  This time I am taking dragon air and make the transfer in Hong Kong.  The new 777 from Air Canada is pretty comfortable, the seat is wider and it has power sockets.  I can keep my laptop charged and use it for the whole trip.  The wait for transfer is 4 hours, so my dad came to the airport and I went outside of the restrict area to have dinner with him.  On my flight from Hong Kong to Banagalore, I think I am the only Chinese on the plane, except the air hostress.  I can’t believe a flight flying out of HK, running by a HK airline has no Chinese passenagers.

I touch down on the new Bangalore airport.  It is much better than the old airport.  From afar, it is pretty up to world wide standard.  Although things still a bit shady when you look closer.  Like the roof is not properly sealed, the door is kinda flimsy.  There are no hawker trying carry your luggage and charge you a ridiculous fee.  The custom has more counters, compare to only 2 counters in the old airport.  No more tuck-tuck waiting outside trying to fish passengers Any how, it is still quite impressive.  The new airport is far away from the city, so there a nice highway going into town.  The highway is lit and has line on the ground.  Other than occasional speed bump in the middle of no where and stop signs that everyone ignores, it is on par with newly developed countries like Taiwan or Korea.  As I was praising the construction and though Indian has finally start getting better, the highway just ends.  Yes, the highway ends abruptly and become a grave road right before entering the city.  The airport highway is not connecting to any major road in the city, it just ends on the outer skirt of the city that goes no where.  Ok, India is still India.  It’s still not quite there yet.

Daily Scribble

Election debate

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On my way home tonight, I listened to the election debate on CBC radio.  This is my first time listen to any election debate live.  My first impression is we have too many political parties in Canada.  The debate is too crowed with all five leaders trying to talk or yell at the same time.  I don’t think debate help the voters at all.  The candidate simply restating their policy in the debate, voters already know those information from newspaper.  It seems the candidates of all the opposite parties only know how to attack the party in control of the government.  Occasionally they present some bits and pieces of their own policy, but somehow you sense their math do not add up and some of the policies are even contradicting with each other.  The current prime minister is not much better.  He never response to those attack directly, just restating what the government had done in that area.

Each party claim they have a platform, but the platforms are just some empty slogans.  Voters don’t get much information how things will turn out.  All we know is when they are elected, they promise to spend how much money on this or on that, tax cut or tax raise here and there.  Never mind those are just election promises that never intended to keep.  Even if the elected keep their promise, no one knows whether the maths adds up, whether or not those promises feasible at all?  No wonder the public don’t feel much interest in politics, no one is addressing any real issues.  They are not even debating, there is no communication, they are just talking their own stuff.  Maybe we should change the format of the debate.  Instead of having a round table debate, we should have a series of round robin debate, putting the leaders head to head with each other.  Allow them to focus their attack and give them enough time to unmask the bullshit of the other party.

Elizabeth May of the Green Party and Layton of NDP seems to be the best talker in the debate.  It is much easier to irresponsible policy that appeals to everyone than a sound policy that actually works.  Harper of the Conservative may not be the best speaker in the debate, but he is the only one quote real statistic to back up his policy.  Other candidates rely on stories or anecdote to sell their ideas.  I think using number alone worth giving Harper some credits over the other candidates.