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Daily Scribble

2nd day in Bangalore

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Yes, I am counting my days of stay.  I already have home sick and miss the comfortable life in Vancouver.  Anyway, my second day is also full of adventure.  The driver came and picked me up in the morning and drove me to work.  The distance from the guest house to the office is 12km, the ride took me 45 minutes.  The rush hour traffic is very chaotic, buss, people, motorcycle, auto-rig saw, cars are fighting to get the limited road space.  To make it worse, they are building a highway on the road I am traffic.  Roads got dig up everywhere and everywhere is dusty.  And yes, there are cows on the road.  The famous holy cow!

Finally, I arrived at the office, which is located in the outskirt of the city.  It is inside the hi-tech business park.  The office building looks pretty decent, comparable to western standard, but the roads going to the building is just shabby as normal Indian road.  There is nothing around the office, so I can only have lunch in the cafeteria.  The cafe only serves India food.  It is some kind of vegetarian curry.  I heard it is similar stuff everyday, except a slight different favor in the curry.  My work day is not very productive, jut met my Indian team and have a brief introduction.  I can’t remember most of their names, but I am sure I will know they well in a few days.

I took off early and get some rest in the guest house.  The internet is finally working, so I can upload my photo to facebook.  There is a big shopping mall next to the guest house.  It is quite normal, with shops and familiar restaurants like Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonald’s.The McDonald’s in India is quite from a normal McDonalid’s.  They don’t serve hamburger, they only have McChicken and McVeggie.    I am not ready to try Indian food, so I had KFC for dinner.  I was pretty tried and I have to get up at 6a.m. next morning to beat the traffic, so I call it a day and go to bed early.

I guess my adventure will go on for a while.  However, I am forseeing my life will be straightly guest house to work and back to the guest house very soon.  There is nothing else to do in Bangalore and the office is probably the nicely place in the whole city.

Daily Scribble

Welcome to Bangalore

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Bangalore

Starting next week, I will spend my next two months working in Bangalore, India.  That would be quite an adventurous trip, since I will be living in a strange place, probably suffer from a cultural shock.  Before I get on the plane and shipped to India, I start doing some research to get myself psychologically prepare for the new city.  The city is in the southern part of India.  It suppose to be the high tech capital of India, people call it Indian’s silicon valley.  I will tell you how does it compare to San Jose when I get there.

I will be staying in the company rented service apartment inside the city, which is the green dot on the map.  The India office is located in Electronic City, the lower right corner in the map.  The distance is about 10 km directly connected by Hwy 7.  I heard it takes takes 30-45 minutes to travel this 10 km in the morning.  My boss keep saying the service apartment is a pleasant stay.  I found a photo from the net, it looks quite decent from the outside.  We’ll see how it looks from inside.

Prestige Acropolis

I also did some search on Catholic church in Bangalore.  I plan to attend mass every week.  I think doing something that I am familiar with will give me comfort living in a strange place.  The archdiocese of Bangalore is quite big, it has over 20 churches around the city.  I still have to find the one closest to where I live.  The cathedral in downtown is called Saint Francis Xavier, it has the same same name as the church in Chinatown Vancouver.

Only two more days.  I am start getting nervous.  I guess I should focus on packing my stuff and bring enough supply to last 2 months.

Daily Scribble

Immunization

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It is wise to take immunization and vaccines before traveling to third world countries.  Those places are so poor in hygiene that have many deadly diseases.  I just visited the travel clinic today before my trip to India.  I guess India is not a very healthy place, I have to take 7 different vaccines, Tetanus, Diptheria, Polio, Hypatitis A/B, Typhoid and Dukoral.  My arm is sore and numbed for having poked by 3 needles.  The vaccination is not cheap, I have to pay almost $300 just for the vaccines.  The most expensive one vaccine is for Malaria, one pill per day for the whole trip and the pill is $5 a piece.  Actually, there are cheaper vaccine for Malaria, just that the expensive one has least unpleasant side effects.  Luck that the company is paying for it.

There is a parsimonious manager in my company.  He is so cheap that when he book air ticket, he will take a transfer instead of direct flight to save $100 for the company.  I wonder when he travel to India, which Malaria vaccine did he get.  I bet he would take the cheap one over the expensive one.  If he suffer from the side effects, like nausea, vomiting, abdominal discomfort, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, insomnia, would he regret not spending the company’s money?

Daily Scribble

Indian Visa

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Everyone traveling to India need to apply for a visa.  India is famous for their bureaucracy, so the apply for a visa needs to fill out many forms.  First I have to get two Indian passport size photo, which is difference size than a Canadian passport.  Then I have to get two letters of reference, one from my company and one from the company I am visiting.  I also have to fill out a from provide detail information on my trip, answering irrelevant questions, such as how much I make.  I feel that is an invade of privacy, want the Indian government wants my salary for?  On what ground that they think my salary is related the nature of my travel?   At last, I have to fill in the real application from, which ask not only my information, but also my parent’s information.  How can where my dad was born be related to my trip?

India always boast their success in outsourcing in the high tech industry.  They claim they will be one of the major economy power in the world.  If they really want to go global, they really have to reform their traveling policy.  They have to be more welcome to the foreigners.  We go to you place to spend money, why you set up so many hurdles not letting me come?  I can understand why USA have a tight visa policy, because they have the problem of illegal immigrants.  No one wants to immigrate to India.  I am pretty sure everyone travel to India for work wants to go home as soon as possible.  They don’t have to worry about we will be staying in India illegally.  Why can’t they just grant us visa free entry to save everyone’s trouble?

Daily Scribble

Booking my flight to India

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This afternoon, I was booking my flight to India.  There are not many airlines flying direct to Bangalore.  I am not adventure enough to take an internal flight inside India, so my options are limited.

The most straight forward path is taking Air Canada/Lufthansa, making a transfer in Frankfurt.  The connection time is perfect, not much time is wasted in the airport.  The itinerary looks great except it is flying via Europe.  India is exactly 12 time zones away from Vancouver, so flying west should be the same as flying east.

Only Singapore airline have direct flight to Bangalore.  Somehow, the travel booking websites somehow couldn’t route the flight via Singapore.  They always route it through Europe.  I have to print out Singapore airline’s flight schedule and try to work out the connect flights myself.  Singapore airline only flies 3 days a week form Vancouver to Singapore, so I can’t leave on Friday as planned.  The flight arriving at 11p.m and the daily flight from Singapore to Bangalore is at 10p.m.  The timing of the connect flight is not looking good.  I can also fly to San Francisco first, then to HK, then to Singapore and catch the direct flight to Bangalore.  It will be 3 stops compare to 1 stop taking Lufthansa, not very desirable either.

At the end, I book with Lufthansa to save the trouble.  For the 2nd trip, maybe I will stop by HK and try the SFO route of Singapore airline.  Too bad that HK has no direct flight to Bangalore, yet.  Dragonair will have daily flight to Bangalore starting May 1.  Taking Cathy Pacific and Dragonair, stop over in HK would be the best flight itinerary.