Victory for Vegetarians

One great thing about being in India is I don't have to worry that the soup I am eating might contain chicken broth or the cheese I purchased contains animal fat.

All food products with are vegetarian are clearly marked with a green dot and non vegetarian products with a red dot. I thought it was only limited to items purchased in store but look at the menu below from a pizza shop.

It has all the pizzas marked as vegetarian or non vegetarian, note that the chocolate brownie dessert has egg in it and thus it is non vegetarian too (click on the picture for a larger size)


Oh what a relief.

First week at work

So the first week at work is now over, it was only a 4 day week since Christmas was a holiday. Not many people in the office this week so it was a slow week, perfect for a starting week.

My first day at work did not start with a very positive note and gave me the look of unprofessional attitude that people often mention about Indian work culture. But my disappointment did not stay long and was soon lost once I was in the office.

In short, I reached my company's office on time hoping to receive a warm welcome but interestingly no one had a clue that a new hire was supposed to start today. It was a little frustrating for the first hour I was there.

The office is located in a prominent building by a popular builder, great construction, ample space for parking and well maintained. The work atmosphere is just like it is in the US and people attitude towards the work seemed same too. Though the full fledged work hasn't started yet so I will probably comment about the work culture once I have worked here for few months.

Indian work hours are typically 9 - 5 and for most of the tech people they don't start until 10 but end after 6.30 - 7. After coming to the office people usually go for a tea/coffee, lunch is around 12.30pm and then another tea break around 4pm.

For lunch we get coupons here (worth 1000/- per month in my organization), which are valid at most of the locations for ready to eat food and beverages. There is a cafeteria in the apartment complex which has all kinds of food options, pure veg, non-veg, Chinese, pizza hut, subway and McDonald's. The type of the food would determine the price range, you can get a combo veg meal for around 20/- and pizza for 100/-.

The corporations in India are doing their best to keep their employees happy and one of the thing that we have (and I guess many others would too) is a pantry where you get tea, coffee, bread, butter, jam, Indian snacks of few varieties, cookies, biscuits and all this at no cost (as you must have guessed by now this is my favourite place).

Overall a great starting week.

Still hunting for the apartment.

First Day in Bangalore

The first day was good, jet lag kept me home for half the day but still some experiences worth noting. I wanted to take pictures but I didn't have my camera ready but I plan to start posting pictures soon.

I got down at the airport and there was a driver standing outside for me who drove me to my service apartment.

Surprisingly the traffic outside the airport was real bad even at 5 am but while we passed that area, it was all clear road directly to my service apartment

In India there is a trend of offering service apartments rather than hotels. The service apartment is basically a fully furnished flat (2-3 BHK seems to be more common), depending on your requirement and company's budget you may have to share the this apartment. There is a servant there who would keep the house clean and there even is a complimentary breakfast of your choice. One thing to remember in these service apartments is they would charge heavily for anything extra, like local telephone calls, laundary etc. etc. so you are better asking the charges before taking any additional services.

Few of my experiences:

Good: Coming to India is always a great feeling, there is something in the air that makes you feel so elated, after all its my home. Many things may have changed but people still have that welcoming shine in their eyes, the frank attitude and smile on their faces.

The Indian economy is booming, if you haven't been to India in a while you will be amazed at the kind of shops that are here now and even the stuff that is in there (I will not comment on quality and price yet as I haven't really looked at those yet)

I went to big bazaar for some shopping, people throng these stores as if the stuff is available for free. It was a six storey building but all the floors were jam packed.

Eating out is still not very costly, I tried a veg crosissant at the big bazaar cafe for only 15/- there were other snacks like pav bhaji, masala dosa etc for less than 20 bucks.

Talked to my family in Indore for 3-4 times during the day, the cellular phone service is really cheap in India.

Bad:

A huge bill for small stuff: I bought 4-5 stuff at big bazaar and on the checkout I found the bill to be 400 Rs. I was amazed at that price. Looking carefully I realized that 3 items in my bill were 80-90 Rs each and that bumped my bill, these things were 2 juices from tropicana and a small tube of hair gel. Thus not everything is cheap in India, always look at price tag before you buy.

People in India honk a lot which was not a surprise for me, but what I saw was tendency of people honking for no reason at each and every turn.

Worst: This was the worst experience for me and I hope it had not happened the first day of my arrival. I was standing in a queue at Big Bazaar and there was this gentleman in front of me with his kids and had like 2-3 items in his hand. As the line was moving he sent one of his kid to somewhere who came back with 3-4 more packets of some candy. In the meanwhile another man walks ahead of me and starts talking to this guy and suddenly they decide they would like to do their grocery together. And if this was not enough a lady (probably second person's wife) walks and give him some more packets to check and goes back because she forgot something.

So here I am standing in this long queue and the person in front of me who only had 2-3 items now has more than 20 items. He might have gathered more if he had more time.

I haven't had to deal with real bad traffic or pollution yet so wil not comment on that.

A day of ambivalence, a new beginning

So I bid adieu to USA on Friday, Dec 21. It was a day of mixed feeling , with all my colleagues and co-workers bidding me farewell I was a little sad to leave such a wonderful group of people but this sadness was masked by my excitement to return to India. One of the co-worker even commented that she has never seen me this happy in past 2 years as she has seen me in last 2-3 weeks.

Snow from Thursday had not melted yet and Boston covered in white snow reminded me of my first year in US when I saw my first snowfall. As much as I hated the snow (the aftermath) I think I will miss snow the most in India.

At the Airport:
Left early from work and got at the airport almost 31/2 hours before the flight. Even with long lines et al, was able to check in my baggage on time and without any problems. The flight was delayed initially due to boarding and the later due to some other technical issues but we were still hoping to make up the time.

En route:
The flight was ok, the usual vegetarian food et al. Spent most of the time sleeping .

Mumbai:
The Mumbai airport is going through metamorphosis , you see direction signs all over the place, clean restrooms and much less of bothering staff (not to say that they don't exist anymore). Got out of the plane at midnight, cleared immigration and was waiting at the luggage claim area by 12:15, I don't remember clearing immigrations in US that soon.

Just as I was all happy that my journey has ended well I realized that my luggages is missing . Went to the NWA counter and they traced it to Amsterdam but I wasn't going to get it before Monday. One stupid thing that I did was to keep the bangalore contact addresses in my check-in luggage all I had were bunch of phone numbers but the CS guy was nice enough and agreed to take just a phone number so that they can call me once my luggage is arrived.

For people traveling on Jet Airways they have a through check-in facility at the international airport and an airport shuttle to the national terminal, which is a great help.

It seems like people in India trust print outs much more than the passport, here's what happened :
I went to the Jet airways counter and asked for my boarding pass, the lady there wanted to see my ticket and I told her that it was an E-Ticket for which I did not bring the printout. She almost got mad (but kept her smile on her face) and asked me how can I travel without a ticket. I explained to her that when I did an online check in it refused to print a boarding pass for my Jet airways flight and finding my ticket should be as easy as typing my name. She still wasn't convinced but asked me show my previous boarding pass and used the confirmation number to find my reservation.

National Terminal:
The Mumbai National Terminal does not look any less that the US airports, but we'll have to wait a while since it is still under construction. The only thing that irritated me here was the multiple security checks, they first did a security check which I guess is done by the airport security and walking another 500 ft Jet security again did the same checking .

The Jet airways flight was great (with nice breakfast at 4'o clock in the morning). Overall it was a nice trip.