More birthday festivities

Today has already started out really fun and looks to only get better. Kyle slept over in my room last night so we could go to play ultimate at 6:30am. As always it was a ton of fun and also good to have another friend there!

Tonight though, we're celebrating Anna's birthday! Somehow someway it coincided exactly with the premier of the Harry Potter movie which she has been dying to see. So tonight we are going to go to a waffle and ice cream place for dinner and then go see Harry Potter. Fun times!

Last weekend in Kerala

This past weekend Rachael, Anna, Kyle and I visited Kerala on many people's recommendations. Conveniently for us, Siva's friend Sandeep planned out a whole trip for us so all we had to do was follow along and have a good time! Siva was unfortunately unable to come, but I had met Sandeep before and knew he was a good guy so we didn't have to worry. There were 10 of us in the group total and we couldn't have had a better group to travel with. The 6 of them were extremely fun and joking around the entire time. They of course knew each other really well so often those 6 would sit at one table during dinner and talk in Hindi while we were at our own table. But the entire time they made us feel welcome and they never made us feel at all like we were imposing or hindering the trip.

Kerala is the nicest in the monsoon season which is right now. Luckily though, it was cool the entire time but never rainy! It was absolutely gorgeous. If you are curious where exactly we went, we went to some hill stations between Munnar and Thekkady and stayed at a guest house at the cadimum (sp?) agricultural research institute. Where we stayed was not touristy at all, and Siva's friend Murugan works there and graciously hosted us for the weekend. 

To get there, we took a 30 minute autorickshaw to the train station, an 8 hour train ride to dindigul in Tamil Nadu, then a 3 hour taxi ride to Kambam, then a 1 hour jeep ride up to the agricultural research institute. It always takes so long to travel here! Especially to non-touristy places. We did get out of the jeep and walk around to see some nice scenery.

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On Saturday we went hiking to the top of a hill which was fantastic. We could see mountain ranges all around us, wind farms in the distance, dams along the mountain sides. It was the first time we've been able to get out into nature here in India. Almost no trash! 

Staying that night at the guest house was interesting though! The rooms weren't quite the cushy accomodations of Goa... One of the beds was covered in rat poop when we arrived and when we later opened the room, a rat scurried away! Speaking of which, a rat got into most of my food while traveling on the train, and then that night another rat got into the rest of it. There were also massive spiders in the girls' bathroom and Kyle said three of those giant flying ants flew into his ear during the night! Tent camping was sounding extremely luxurious at this point!

On Sunday we went to the peak of another really large hill and that was amazing as well. The weather was beautiful and we could see tons of the Kerala countryside. 

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The group we were with was really goofy and we had many long photo shoots with fun shots. We got involved too so when I get a chance I'll post some fun stuff to facebook!

The trip back wasn't quite as easy because the train was all booked up. We took a 9 seater van all the way back instead. Unfortunately, these were actual seats instead of benches and there were 10 of us so Sandeep volunteered himself to lay on the floor. Thanks to him, the rest of us were quite comfortable! Both Sandeep and Murugan were amazing hosts. Right before we left, they recommended we buy some food just in case we didn't like what we found for dinner and Sandeep and Murugan were actually arguing between each other who should pay for the food we wanted to buy! Recall here that we didn't know them until this past weekend! In fact, Murugan didn't know any of the 10 people who went on this trip. To give an analogy, this is pretty much the same thing as a friend in LA calling me up to say he has 10 foreign friends who I've never met who have plane tickets to Milwaukee and nothing else and then expecting me to drive over there, arrange for rides, food, housing, and entertainment for a full 2 days. Whats more is Murugan was so happy about hosting us and seemed to have a great time himself! It was hospitality at its finest.

Some Pictures of Indian Food

One of the biggest differences between living here and at home is definitely the food. Apparently some foreigners at NCBS can't deal with it and end up eating a lot of cookies and bread. Luckily I find most of it quite good (except the food at B mess which I do not need to eat anymore!). One thing that is still difficult to get used to though, is eating with my hands! Some things like chappathi or pastries are of course easy to eat with your hands, but most things are not. For instance, today at lunch I ate Rice, Chappathi, Yoghurt, an Egg in a bowl of sauce, and masala. And boy was it messy. No one looked at me funny when my right hand was covered in sauce and rice because they were all doing it too! In fact, they are still slightly more messy than me because at the end of all their meals, they pour buttermilk on their remaining rice, mix it up really well, and eat the soupy concoction with just their right hand. Kind of unsightly to watch, but they do it with unbelievable efficiency!

Anyway, here is an example of some Tamil food we had on one of our trips there:

[Edit] The image did not load correctly. Here is a link to someone else's picture of pretty much the same meal: http://www.chennaitransit.com/ChennaiTransit/Gimages//chennaimeal1.jpg

That green thing is a banana leaf. Some guy with three tins of different sauce walks around and continues to scoop more onto your leaf as you eat until you fold the thing closed. It was quite tasty actually, even though I'm not a big fan of their rice here.

What I am a big fan of though, is their desert. This little guy is soooo delicious. Don't know what its called though. I think it starts with a J. My other favorite desert is Mysorepak and I'll be sure to bring a bunch home with me.

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And I should definitely post a picture of that way too spicy Gobi Manchurian. Haven't gotten the courage to try it again but it'll happen since its probably the tastiest food I've had here.

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And this is a typical breakfast over at NCBS. Tea and Dosa with sauce. At IISc we usually have these doughnuts that are spicy instead of sweet called vada with some spicy white sauce.

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And then you have the desert that everyone here seems to prefer:

July 4th Weekend in Goa

This past weekend was quite fun. A little too short though... On Friday Anna, Kyle, Rachael, and I took a 14 hour overnight bus ride from Bangalore to Goa and arrived at about 10am. The busses had AC set to extremely cold but luckily Rachael brought a jacket and I brought a sweatshirt which we put over our faces and it was tolerable. Poor Anna and Kyle though... There were not sheets on the bus and both of them had only short sleeves and shorts. Anna claimed this was colder than the time we wandered London for 4 hours in January without jackets on so I couldn't even imagine their pain! She lost her voice completely from that AC. One good part of the busride though was that when Rachael woke up at night really having to pee (there were no bathrooms on the bus), we walked up to the driver and he stopped so we could go pee on the side of the road. They only stopped 1 or 2 times during the whole 14 hour ride. I guess Indians can just hold it in better than us Americans!

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Goa was really pretty and had tons of really lush forrests amidst a ton of rice fields. It was clearly a place for tourists, as the accomodations were quite nice and had a lot of white people there. We stayed at Anjuna beach at a place called Villa Anjuna in these rooms right outside a nice swimming pool. At this place there was also a cafe that served tons of western foods! Actually, the whole time we were there we ate almost all western food which was fantastic.

Unfortunately it was the monsoon season so we couldn't really lay out on the beach. It was always drizzling and the waves were just massive. It was plenty warm though so we walked along the sand and rocks for a while. Kyle and Anna got adventurous and walked onto the rocks to see the wildlife in the tide pools. While they did get to see a whole bunch of crabs, a wave knocked them down and since the rocks were really jagged, they got a bunch of small cuts on their feet and arms. They're fine now though.

 

Other than that, we didn't do too much there except just relax. And it really was as relaxed as I've been here in India. The trip home though was not quite as much! We took a slower bus home, 16 hours, and it only stopped for a bathroom break once! We realized how little these busses stop so we were sure to drink as little as possible in the hours leading up to it, but Anna still had to pee really badly about 4 or 5 hours in. So we decided all to try to go alongside the road and went up to the bus driver and the conductor to ask them to pee. And the conductor told us to go away. We kept pleading to him that it was an emergency and he just told us to go back and sit down and was kicking at Anna's shoe to get her to move away! So we went back and Anna survived another couple hours until we stopped. What was so surprising though, was that at the last stop when we were getting off and getting our bags, the conductor kept saying "Hello friend! Can you give me a tip? 50 rupees." I don't understand... haha

This is the bus I keep talking about:

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The bus on the way back was also extremely bumpy and difficult to sleep on, so I ended up sleeping 11 hours last night to make up for it! That was sure enjoyable. Tonight us 4 plus Siva are going out to find some Chinese food for my bday which I'm sure looking forward to! Oh, and speaking of awesome luck with food, I got switched by default yesterday from B Mess to C mess because B mess all of the sudden closed for the month for some unknown reason. I had been trying to switch for over a month because the food at C mess was ten times better but they wouldn't let me because their paper book keeping system is so complex/old fashioned you can't really change things so easily. So as of today I have good food for all my meals!

 

 

On first impression, Posterous is cooler than Tumblr

It has no way to set custom themes or make things look pretty, but its
functionality is really fun! And it is faster and much easier to use
than Tumblr after playing with it for only minutes. I thin this will be my main blogging platform for now. If you are curious about the tumbler blog I tried out for a few days it was located at:
 
http://wiscospike.tumblr.com/

4th update from India

So this is my first ever blog entry on my first ever blog… I feel so behind the times that I thought I would give this a shot and see what its like! There is a good chance you’ll see future blog posts from different blogging sites while I get a feel for things. I guess what made me change to updates on blogging sites instead of those mass e-mails is I’ve been quite interested in web development recently and since I’m doing all this research about the new trends in social media, I should really start participating as well!

Anyway, I am posting this now because I’m in such a good mood right now. Today is just going amazingly. I played ultimate for the first time in India and it was as much fun as I had hoped. Ultimate people are just really cool. They are really new to the game so its not quite like playing in the states, but the players were all really friendly. One of the guys gave me a ride most of the way back and gave me his number so I can ask him questions about where to stay this weekend in Goa. Even though they play at 6:30 am, I’m pretty sure I’ll be going to 2 games a week from now on! The only problem with playing there was all of the cricket games going on around us which meant there were always about 5-10 people running around our field at all times which we had to dodge. There were also a group of 4 people just standing around in the middle of our field talking and when one of our players asked them to move they said that we don’t own this ground… That would definitely not fly in the states. First off, no one in their right mind would stand on an obvious playing field just because they can, and second, if they were asked to move, 99.9% of people in the states would get off the field. I still find that behavior shocking.

Anyway, on the way back to IISc this morning after the ultimate guy dropped me off, I took an autorickshaw the rest of the way back and he didn’t try to rip me off! He tried to get his meter working but when it was obviously broken, I suggested 20 rupees which is probably what a meter would have cost and he didn’t argue. We then had to go farther than I originally thought to a back entrance and almost got into 2 accidents while I was giving directions to him and he still didn’t complain about the price. I ended up giving him more than that anyway just because he didn’t try to rip me off. haha, I probably ended up paying the same amount as I would pay an ordinary rickshaw driver who haggled the price with me, only at least this guy knows he was doing honest business.

So recently I traveled to Kanyakumari on the southern tip of India. Siva took us there on a 14 hour train ride. The ride there was really nice. It was an air conditioned sleeper car with reasonably comfortable mats, only 2 levels of beds, and came with sheets, blankets, a pillow, and a curtain for privacy. So that was really sweet. The way back though wasn’t nearly as nice… There was no AC which meant a lot more bugs, there were 3 layers of beds which meant a lot less space, no curtains so there was exactly zero privacy, much less comfortable mats, and no blankets, sheets, or pillows. Somehow I still got a great sleep though!

While Rachael and I were at Siva’s in law’s place at Monday Market (about 20 minutes from Kanyakumari) we were treated really well. They gave us the upstairs guest room which was actually a really nice accomodation. We had our own western style bathroom with hot water for showers too. His mother in law cooked us 2-3 meals a day. Eating there was a little awkward though. Because we were the guests, we were supposed to eat first before everyone else. We would sit at a table with just food in front of Rachael and I and Siva, his Father in law, his mother in law, his brother in law, and sister in law would all be there watching us eat (sometimes not all of them since they would also do other things). His mother in law would stand literally 5-10 feet away and wait for our plates to start getting empty and whenever they reached a certain point she would come over and scoop us some more. So that was sure an interesting experience.

Probably the most shocking experience there was the early morning church. This was a Christian community and there was a very nearby church that held service every morning at 5am-6am. Simillar to the Kenyan churches I experienced last summer, this church had incredibly loud speakers pointed away from the church so everyone in the community could hear every word loudly and clearly. In our room it was significantly louder than sitting right in front of a TV set to normal listening volume. Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep for that hour either morning. The crazy thing is that that church service happens every single morning and the residents don’t seem to mind! And speaking of things similar to Kenya, we found out that Siva’s in law’s move at a speed comparable to our Kenyan friends! Friday night we were asked to be ready to go by 8:30 saturday morning so we were up and ready at that time. We ended up sitting around playing with Siva’s newphew, talking, and really doing almost nothing until leaving at about 11… So then Saturday night they apologized for leaving so late and said we should sleep in until 11 Sunday morning. But then Siva’s mother in law said breakfast would be ready at 9:30 and that we should be ready to eat then and we would leave right after breakfast. So sure enough we wake up and get down there at 9:30 to eat breakfast. But we end up sitting around waiting for people to shower, play with Siva’s nephew some more and don’t leave until after 12! haha its kind of ridiculous, but at least I’m used to it so it doesn’t make me think less of such a welcoming family.

Speaking of inefficiencies, I still can’t get a good grasp on whether or not Indians are fast paced or slow paced. Everyone is rushing around so fast on their mopeds and traffic is outrageously agressive. People are pushing and cutting in lines and always in such a hurry to get their food or any other kinds of service. But then they take these super long lunch and tea breaks every day and don’t start work until about 10 or 11! Seems conflicting so I’m still trying to understand it. haha, I saw one of the most ridiculous wastes of time the other day when I was taking water samples in a village on the border of Karnataka and Andrea Pradesh. Granted, it was not a huge village so life moves slower there but still. We needed samples from a tap and the taps weren’t currently running because the pump had been turned off for the day (people get their water during a 1 or 2 hours of pumping time each day). So we needed to turn the pump back on to get water, but it takes 15 minutes for the water to start up. So we had to wait in the blazing sun for this. First of all, I thought it was incredibly inefficient and time wasteful that all 4 members of our group was standing around waiting for this water. But on top of that, 6 other adults and 5 children were standing around just watching us wait for water to come out of the tap where we would put a bottle under it and be done. hahaha. Seriously, in the US, it would take one person to collect the samples, and during those 15 minutes of downtime (which wouldn’t exist because our water sources are so awesome!) that person would go do something else instead of look at it. 15 people*15 minutes was almost 4 wasted man hours where everyone was bored, hot and doing nothing productive or amusing… very odd.

Yet on the complete opposite side of the spectrum is their unbelievably effecient food service! After taking those water samples we went for lunch at a busy restaurant where there were about 15 tables of 6 people each. Lunch lasted a total of 15-20 minutes from the time we walked in until the time we walked out. Absolutely unbelievable considering how this was a great sit down place. In those 15 minutes, we washed our hands, ordered, got our drinks, got an appetizer (massa vada which was delicious), got another appetizer (jammoon, also delicious), got our main course (mysore masasla dosa, both delicious and filling), got our first desert (curd with lots of sugar), got our second desert (ice cream), drank tea, paid for it all, and washed our hands again. Further, this cost about $1.50. Yes, I was eating about as fast as I possibly could to keep up with everyone, and took my tea so fast I scalded my tongue, but it I enjoyed having such a great meal without wasting a second!

And speaking of food, I had the absolute best meal I’ve had here yesterday. There is a small canteen here for people from outside the campus that I tried for the first time and I had buttered poori with gobi manjuri was that amaaazing. Juicy, crispy, spicy, sweet, flavorful. Sounds a little like panda express right? haha, probably as good as that which is saying a lot considering how much I love Panda. Only problem was, I am getting used to eating meals here with no water during the meals and only taking a drink afterwards. But this meal happened to be one of the two spiciest meals I’ve had here (making it one of the three spiciest I’ve had in my life!) so I was about to die by the end. My face was covered in sweat, my eyes were beginning to tear up, I was breathing heavily, and it was a chore just to talk and order water afterwards! haha, totally worth it though. I think I’m going to get it again today but bring water with me.

This first post is getting long I think. I am going to go now and book some tickets for this weekend. We have a full schedule of weekends lined up to finish off this India trip! This weekend we’ll be going to Goa which is known for its beautiful beaches and almost no crowds during this monsoon season. The next weekend we’ll be going to Kerala which is also known for its scenery and backwaters. The following weekend we’ll be going to Pondicherry which is beautiful and hot this time of year and we can actually go swimming for the first time! And then the last weekend we’ll be visiting Siva’s house again. Hopefully we can also push our flight forward a couple of days to go see the Taj Mahal before we leave. I think I’ll send shorter, more frequent updates from now on. I think I might also add random stuff to this blog in case you want to check it more often. There’s lots of fun things on the web these days that are definitely worth sharing with anyone who cares!