Bees and flowers

There are a few major things that are puzzling me about the culture in here. One of them is women. And, well, the man-woman interactions especially.

As you probably know, interactions with women don't work here quite the same way as in Finland. Things seem to be a bit more complicated. And for European women in here that's not a good thing - it's quite usual for Western women to get grabbed here by their asses or so. Locals seem to think that because the interactions between men and women are 'less complicated' in Western countries it means that they are easy prey and they give anything to anyone who wants. I have heard quite some complaints about these things from female friends.

Today I asked my colleague Gaurav at the office about dating. My plan is to bombard him and Amit with questions about the Indian culture and let you know what I have discovered. So I started this today.

Basically, there are two approaches. Either fixed marriages (which are the most common types of marriages here, still) or the more 'liberal' approach which sounds more normal compared to our ways. Marriages in general are here not about marrying two persons; they are about marrying two families.

In fixed marriages, typically the family of the boy thinks that one girl might be suitable for their boy. (Or, rather, that the girl's family might be suitable for their family.) So they go meet the family. Slowly they decide that their families should get married and the marriage is arranged. I doubt the kids' opinion is asked much.

Look what I found

If you are a renegade, you may try to get acquainted with a girl yourself. You take the girl out a few times and see what happens. It is a tradition that the boy pays for everything when they are going out. Basically, this can go as far as kissing and maybe touching the other, but surely not in any sensual places. And if you wish to go further, you need to marry the girl. Most guide books about India mention that girls are quite well protected before marriage - if they do anything scandalous with a boy before marriage they pretty much lose their face. And this is why their families protect their innocence furiously.

Indian weddings are something interesting also. As an event. Basically both sides have to invite their whole family to the wedding plus a lot of semi-random friends. For example if someone at the office had someone in his/her family who is going to get married, I would probably get an invitation. So, a wedding with 1000 guests is nothing unusual. It's rather small, actually.

So where and how do they have these weddings? If you are poor, you either pick a small street, block both of its exits, put the street full of tables and arrange it there. Or then you go to a public park and arrange it there. If you have money, you arrange it in a special place somewhere around the city.

And the costs? Well, if you organize a wedding somewhere near the city center, the rent for the place can be 25 lakhs. A lakh is 100 000 rupees. If you organize it somewhere not-in-so-center-place, the rent might be around 1 lakh. But that's only for the rent. People also need to eat and drink. Plus other stuff. If you have ever organized a dinner outside, you know how much food and drinks cost per person. Multiply that by over a thousand. Ok, this is India, things are cheaper. But still. It's.. a looooooooot of money. I tried asking how they get this sort of money but I didn't get any proper answers. Or maybe I just forgot.

Considering all of these facts (and Kristīne), I think I will not get a girl from India. Sorry.

Midsummer and India, two separate issues

Yesterday was midsummer day. And night.

As mentioned, we had been thinking of a rooftop party. But the idea kinda died when we couldn't contact anyone and tell them about it ;) Actually me and Tani were totally lost and went to Orca for a 'knowledge beer' (is there such a term in English? 'Neuvoa-antava' in Finnish). Luckily others came there also so we didn't need to spend the midsummer by ourselves.

From Orca we went to a poolparty. Which was great ;) It wasn't like Finnish midsummer but still, it was something. It was a 'bit' different, but still nice. Could've been a lot worse aswell. The extreme heat combines quite nicely with being in a pool. And a few beers to go along with that, combined with some great people, and we have a party.

Some of our people after the regular Sunday pool. Tani in the foreground. Two other Finnish people visible, which ones?

For Tani the evening was a bit more expensive than for the rest of us - he had bought a new cellphone from here 6 weeks ago and now he was dragged to the pool with the phone in his pocket. Well, he was by the pool to throw someone else in there so he was a bit asking for it, but still. The cellphone hasn't showed much signs of life so far, but we'll open it and see if there's anything to be done anymore. But, nice party still. (Cheapest beer there was 150 rupees. Tuborg. So I came to the other side of the world to drink the cheapest beer which is Tuborg? :)

Pool party. Not bad, hmm? Sorry for crappy picture.

One thing I haven't been talking about much is, well, India. When I left home almost two weeks ago I thought I knew a bit what this country would be like. I knew they have a lot of IT stuff going around here and somehow because of that I thought this would be at least a bit civilized country. Oh how wrong I was.

Someone here said that this country is 30 years behind China. I didn't believe it back then but I'm starting to believe it now. If you have been thinking that China is a crappy developing country, this country is 20-30 years behind that. Think about that.

I got in a little...fight with the police at the poolparty. Not my blood, though.

Basically computers seem to be about the only thing that works here. Everything else is just.. uhh... Well, ok, other things 'work' aswell, but they are simply primitive and ineffective. I guess it all has to do with the amount of cheap labour they have, but China also has a lot of that so what has gone wrong here? And Jaipur is the capital of this state (Rajasthan) so one might think this is a bit more advanced than some agricultural villages.

If you look into normal, everyday things you notice that something doesn't quite seem right. How about ironing? They heat up coals and heat up the iron (a piece of metal) with those. What's wrong with using electricity? Next example: cleaning. I haven't seen a single vacuum cleaner anywhere. Just loads of little Indians kneeling on the floor with their brooms, swiping the dirt away. Then how about washing dishes? They don't use any washing liquid and usually don't even rub the dishes with anything. How about buying stuff? Milk comes in plastic bags which of course can't be closed once you open them. And toilet paper? It's hard to find. So let's not imagine how they do their things.

I mean... geesh. These people are of course used to all this. But it all seems just so.. uh... so stupid. Sometimes it feels like living in a nomad village in the middle of Africa. In today's English newspaper there were some interviews of three exchange students in Jaipur. They all complained about the same thing: they can't trust anybody and nothing works here. All locals are nice. Until they find out they're not getting money from you. Simple fact.

P.S. Come on. No I didn't get in any fight with anyone. The blood in the picture is from one girl's leg after she stepped on glass at the pool and nobody noticed it until we got light and saw that the thing on the floor wasn't dirt but blood.

P.P.S. Oh, almost forgot. I accomplished one of the must-do things yesterday at the poolparty. Naked in a public place in India - check. I couldn't be bothered to go change pants in bathroom or so, so I did it next to the pool. I got some loud cheers from (drunk) locals. Locals went swimming with their jeans on as they were too shy to take even those off. Luckily we weren't that shy.

Food and traffic

Some people have been asking about the food here. So let's talk about that.

The problem is that there is not much to tell. As I don't know what I'm eating.
Tani's family always provides the same food which has been pissing him off for quite some time. Luckily my family understands that it would be nice to have some changes in the food. So, there have been quite some variations. Usually the conversation goes like this: "so what is this?" -"that's gjdsigarwjiobndskl" "ah, ok...".

Look what I found! Domino's pizza! And I was told that they also have some meat there (chicken and lamb). Can't wait to try.

Most of the stuff they give me is quite edible actually. Some of it is like paella without any of the meaty stuff, some is made of just vegetables with some spices, some is of some other unknown substance. But there is always the bread - it's like naan bread, but they told me that this one is lighter. It's called something like cabati or something. You'll see it in a picture I attach here.

One of my lunches. This time I had something made of pumpkin. So basically you grab a piece of the bread and catch some pumpkin with it an put it to your mouth. Simple. And, no, there isn't much to eat but not too hungry anyway due to the heat.

The lunch table with people having different kind of stuff. Just don't ask what those are, they are probably gdfsjkoerjaiogds.

And about spiciness? Well that's a bit of a surprise for me. My family doesn't use spices much due to the father having some digestive problems. A guy at work says his food is quite spicy but it doesn't taste too spicy. So I wonder where the spicy food is. Jaipur is supposed to have quite spicy food and I'm sure it is somewhere out there but haven't just encountered it so far.

If you want to live cheap here (without included meals of course), you could buy your food from some of the many food stalls on the streets. Haven't asked for the price, but would imagine something like 20-30 rupees. There is just this one fundamental problem: most of us aren't suicidal. I haven't had problems with stomach so far, but if I tried that food from the street I'm sure I would get the problems. I'd imagine the food might not fulfill Finnish quality standards. Although it would still be an interesting experience (not the part where you run to the toilet, but the food part).

Today we were thinking of organizing a rooftop party for the night. The problem is just that me and Tani don't live with all the rest of the people in these dormitories and we have quite few contacts there. So this might not work too well. But at least we have a plan to go somewhere out and hopefully manage to make it a long night (midsummer!) with all the people.

Yesterday we went eating in an Italian restaurant with 'all' of us, ~30 people. Unfortunately they didn't serve meat there, but fortunately they served beer and otherwise really good pastas/pizzas. After that we ended up in Orca again (the rooftop bar, picture of it is in a post from maybe a week ago). I have no idea what they have been thinking there, because our group managed to drink the bar empty of all beer. And it took about an hour. So we ended the night quite early and went to bed. Looks like Orca is the place to be during evenings. Or, well, there aren't too many options where to be and Orca isn't too bad anyway.

A few words about the traffic here. As you have guessed, it's quite chaotic. They like using horns, which makes it even messier. They have lanes here but they really don't have any use. They also have traffic lights but I have seen them in use maybe 5 times so far. Usually they just blink yellow and the regular chaos follows.

An unusual sight: traffic stopped in a red light. All of those bikes are using just one lane.

But actually, I'm starting to see some sense in the traffic. It's very....flexible. If there is space somewhere, they use it regardless of traffic 'rules'. Horns are used to tell others that I'm coming. It's not unusual to see someone driving the wrong side of the road; if there's more space, then why not :) And many people prefer scooters so it leaves more space on the roads anyway.

P.S. More news about my cell phone. I mentioned earlier that the service (Do Not Disturb, DND) would take 72 hours to active. But, oh, I misheard that. It's not 72 hours. It's 45 days. Yes, 45 days. So I will be receiving advertisements and quiz questions once a minute for 45 days until the service to block those gets activated. Sounds like a lot of fun. I think I just need to get used to it.

Local cell phone number

Hi

As I will be staying here for a while, it's best to have a local cell phone number. And, would figure it's easiest to have a prepaid one as that's easy to get and no hassle. Right?

Well, hell. This is India. Come on. I have already explained what one Finnish girl had to go through here with her cell phone number, but here's how my story has went for me so far:

1. Last Saturday I went to a store to get a Vodafone prepaid. People had already warned me that I need lots of stuff with me so I had all I needed: passport, a picture of myself, certificate from work and some money. After a few photocopies and about five signatures I got the sim card and all was well. As if.
2. On Monday it still didn't work. I went to the store to ask and they told me that it should be 'done' that evening.
3. On Tuesday it worked a bit better. The problem was that I couldn't make any phone calls or send SMS. So, went to the store. There they told me that I also need to charge some money in it. So paying the original 200 rupees obviously didn't include any money for calls/SMS, but nobody bothered to tell me about it earlier. So I charged 100 rupees, of which 14 rupees vanished for some taxes. It seemed to start working.
4. On Wednesday morning my local mom and dad got phone calls from Vodafone (I had been forced to give their phone numbers to Vodafone). They both told me that Vodafone will disconnect my phone if I don't go and give a copy of my passport visa to them. Now what is this, didn't they already take copies of my passport?
5. So, I went to the store again with my passport. I explained the situation to the guy there and after a few phonecalls he assured me that everything is fine. I got the strong impression that he had no idea what I was talking about even though I tried to force the information down to him. Basically at the end of the conversation I told him that I don't believe him, but of course that didn't help much.
6. The same day's afternoon I got a phone call. From Vodafone! They told me that they will disconnect my connection if my visablahblahblah... Surprise! I told them I already visited the store and they said that the guy just didn't know anything of anything at the store earlier. So I went to the store again. They took the copies and I gave some more signatures. And they told me that everything is fine.

Now waiting forward to if this thing works. And continues working.

One interesting thing is that I get advertisements or quiz questions to my phone about once a minute. Which are.. really annoying. Tani told me that I should just get used to them but I refused to. So I called Vodafone. The first time the guy just hung up when I asked if he speaks English. Second time I spent 10 minutes yelling at some other guy about the advertisements and all he could figure out was "so you want to recharge your prepaid?". No.

I gave the phone to my colleague, Amit. He called them and got the same guy. They spoke in Hindi but Amit couldn't understand what on earth the guy was talking about so they agreed that the guy sends the details as an SMS. Well, SMS came, and there was nothing. Amit calls again, spends 15 minutes on phone and finally gets a number where to call for a service called "Do Not Disturb". So that should get activated in 72 hours, let's hope it works. Interesting that I need to order a service to stop receiving crap to my phone (even received phone call advertisements in Hindi).

Oh, and my number. +91967222375X where X is the last digit of my Finnish mobile phone number. I will start using only this number from this evening onwards, so if you want to reach me, contact that number. I need to activate some services (not yet sure how to do that) to be able to call/send SMS abroad, but hopefully I'll manage to do that at some point.

Discoveries and deals

Life is starting to settle. In good and in bad.

It just sucks that there are no Westerners anywhere. There's nothing wrong with Indians besides two things: 1) their accent/English is often quite ununderstandable 2) they live in a totally different world. Although I now live in the same different world aswell, but it's really hard to adjust to the Indian way of living. As I really do not understand what they do around here.

Or, well, I partially know what they do around here. Today I went for a walk around the neighbourhood to see what there is around me. What I noticed people doing: a) either masturbating or heavily scratching their balls openly while walking b) sitting, sitting, looking at me, doing nothing c) having a random meeting in a random place with random people d) begging e) driving different vehicles like lunatics. Actually I was told earlier that I live in a bar area and that's why I went for a walk, to assess the situation. Number of found bars: 0. I guess 'bar area' means that there might be a bar somewhere.

Today I also made one other important thing: I made a deal with a tuk-tuk driver about driving me to work every morning. I was earlier told that it's really not feasible or even possible because some kids need to be driven to school in the morning or something equally silly. Well, after only a few meetings at different days I agreed to have the same guy drive me to work (about 3km) every morning for 35 rupees. (Added the currency course at the right side of the blog). Colleagues at work thought it was a good price. So I think I'm happy, now I don't have to do the same stupid bargaining every morning.

My happy morning tuktuk driver


About bargaining.. Well, I don't think it surprises anyone that you need to bargain here. But luckily not of everything. But the one thing you usually need at least twice a day is ride to some place with motorized tuk-tuk or a leg-powered rickshaw. And for those it always takes a while and a few new drivers to bargain a feasible price. Colleagues at work told me that they pay about exactly the same price for the rides as I do, which kinda surprised me. Somehow that's hard to believe, surely there's a raised price for foreigners... But, in any case, I am happy that I don't now have to start my every day with bargaining for a ride to work. Still need to bargain for the ride back as I leave at random times. So some fun left still!(?)

Idex

And the Idex street from a little further away

It has been a bit hard for me to add pictures here. Because I haven't taken many pictures as I don't know what to take them of. Everything seems so 'normal' to me and kinda boring. But I guess I need to take some general pictures and add here at least. If something interesting happened, would be a lot easier to take pictures of that and add here :) But, let's see.

Slavery in India

Don't remember if I have mentioned, but my local family has a slave. Or, well, maybe they don't call him a slave. But I do.

When I first arrived to this house I greeted all the people. Tried asking this one guy (maybe 20-25 years old) if he's a student or so, but it turned out that his English relies mostly on smiling. And on offering food. So he is the family's own maid/cleaner/gardener/housekeeper/slave.

I have tried asking cautiously from the family if the guy is their relative or something, but I think not. So, whenever I see the guy he is either going behind my window doing different household chores or cooking food. Basically anything I ever need, the family tells me to ask of this guy (yes, he does speak a few words of English). It seems he is never allowed to sit to the table where we eat. Sometimes when I'm eating alone and he has nothing to do he sits on the floor by himself. Even if there's nobody else around besides me and him and there are 5 empty chairs around the table. I hope somebody is paying him something. And a bit extra for having to smile all the time I am around.

Kids playing cricket, their national sport. In the heat. Crazy people.

I general, it seems there are quite some rules about who gets to do what. I bet it has been a lot stricker in the past but something has still prevailed. Basically here first comes the dad, then the mom and then the slave. If slave is around, he does everything. If slave is not around (no idea how he manages to escape sometimes) the mother is the next in line. Ok, I have never seen the mother cooking, the food has always been ready (guess who has prepared it) but dad never moves from the table for anything.

From the pool

In other news. There is a 'tradition' here that every Sunday the international Idex people go to one hotel's pool for the day. So, I went there also. It costs 200 rupees (4 euros) to get in. The place is like a paradise inside Jaipur. Green, nice and most importantly, there's the pool. And by accident that Sunday happened to be the warmest day in Jaipur for 10 years. It's absolutely great to be able to just jump in the pool when it gets too hot (so, all the time). Otherwise there aren't many green areas in the city.

Also from the pool. Not bad, hmm?

Also in other news, we started talking about midsummer today. As there are quite many Finnish people and a few Danish and Norwegians around, we should organize some midsummer celebrations for next weekend. So we started thinking that there is actually a central park here. It will definately get closed&locked at some point, but could just climb over the fence and hope there are no guards and spend the whole night there. We wouldn't have sauna nor a lake nearby, but could buy a few beers at least. Well, will have to keep on planning this.

P.S. Yes, I have now working internet at my room. The family's son had given me the wrong password. Yay!

The party city

There are basically two kinds of people who are here via Idex: volunteers and us internships. The few internships that are here (I only know of me and Tani) live with a local family. All of the volunteers live in the same place in a sort of a dormitory. Except that there are 4 persons in one room. And they pay for it about 200 euros per month, we don't. Which explains why some of them are quite interested to hear about options to move elsewhere.

Actually our (mine and Tani's) hosts get 5000 rupies per month (about 100e) for hosting us. We were told by Ninad that if we want to move live by ourselves, we could both get that money in cash. And Idex pays us salary 5000 rupies a month, so the possible 'own' place would be covered by those amounts.

Some....sight on my way to work

But anyway. We went sightseeing yesterday, some Monkey Palace about 10km off from the city. It was a palace are full of monkeys. Nothing too fancy but nice to see. There I met some of the volunteer people, who (not too surprisingly) were all females. After that we had a shower break and met in the same bar where I was on Friday with Tani (as there really aren't that many places which offer beer). There were eventually about 10-15 of us, which was really great as it was about time to meet other international people around here.

Girls having a spiritual moment at the Monkey Palace with a gayish-looking local spiritual dude

Part of the Monkey Palace

What happened? We ended up being the only Westerners there. Almost all locals left before midnight. Very few of the locals had any alcohol, they mostly smoked shee-sha and chatted. So basically if we go anywhere, we have to put up the party by ourselves. The local people reallyreally do not party or stay out late. Which kinda sucks. Well, the bar closed at 1am so we all headed for home then. But it was a nice evening, although the girls spent the last hour together dancing in a little clubbing room (no locals of course) where the music was about 120dB and me and Tani spent the time outside.

When I headed home, there had appeared a gate to block the entrance to the area where I live. The gatekeeper wasn't luckily too interested in me, just looked at me funnily when I told him that I'm going home and let me pass. And the gate to this apartment's premises was also locked so had to climb over it.

This morning my local dad told me that the gate with the gatekeeper is the only one of the 4 gates to this area which are open at that hour (with a gatekeeper). Lucky me. And of course he was also really worried about me staying up that late. And the local mom called me three times during the evening. The dad also advised me that I shouldn't be outside after 11pm, police start patrolling the city at that time and they might have some tricky questions for me. Like, what the $#"@? It's totally unusual for anyone to stay outside after 11pm? What the hell do these people do? How do they ventilate themselves, how do they have fun? What is this place? Must be one of the crappiest party countries on the planet. Well, it's not like I came here just to party, but it would be nice to not be the only one who is sometimes out later than 11pm. Besides the Idex people of course.

If I move in with Tani we already agreed that we get a fridge full of beer. That would also be a great place for some pre-parties for all the Idex people. Although I have no idea where the 'real' party would then be. Someone please let me know if you know of some nice parties around Jaipur ;)

The first beer

Today, I had my first beer. It was...pleasant! This place isn't really Belgium or Germany when it comes to beers. There's one main brand called Kingfisher and it has a few subcategories like lager, strong and blue. Well, what on earth is 'blue' beer? It's the lager that comes in a blue bottle. Of course. Logical.

This really isn't an alcohol country either. One small (0,33cl) beer in a bar (and there are not too many bars in the city) costs about 2 euros. In a alcohol store it costs maybe half of that. So, not too cheap, almost the same prices as in Finland. In general people don't really consume alcohol here. I'm not really sure why, as the percentage of muslims is not too big (around 10% maybe). Maybe it's just not their way? Many other countries in Asia provide much more alcohol with much cheaper prices, but would be interesting to know why these people really don't use it.

Yesterday's bar

I was led to the bar by this Finnish guy, Tani, who's working in the same office. (Not) surprisingly he knew the closest bar there ;) Slowly the bar started filling with locals, but there was one big difference between us two and them (besides that we were white): we consumed beer while they consumed a few portions of shee-sha (water pipe) per maybe 5 persons. And maybe a few glasses of water. I bet they didn't pay as much as we did, and obviously they either didn't have the money or didn't like beer that much. If it's not obvious for someone already, I happen to like beer.

I also discussed with Tani about the flat that he's thinking of renting. This being India, he had some huge problems getting the deal done. Such as the dealer just disappearing and not coming to the meetings. He also told me a bit more about the place where he lives: he's living in a family just like me, but he doesn't have a shower (uses a bucket for it) and his fans don't work properly. So his place really seems to suck. Aaaaand of course he's really tired of being treated like a little child with all the dinner times and hosts being worried if he doesn't come home etc. I think I pretty much understand him... And maybe starting to feel a bit similar. But we shall see.

My room

Today I had a late dinner and the hosts were really worried about me for being late for over an hour. I was adviced that I should always let them know if I will be late. When did I do that last time? 10 years ago? Oh, maybe a bit more. But, they still understood me and told that they are "ok" if I want to have breakfast later tomorrow as it's Saturday. So they told me that I can choose having a breakfast between 9:30 and 10:00! Maybe I could've personally chosen to sleep still a bit longer, but oh well. I will be leaving around noon, we will meet at 2pm and go see some sights and do other stuff. Before that I will try to organize a local sim card for myself which is not the easiest task to do. I need at least 1) passport 2) a passport picture 3) a certificate from work and 4) fill some forms. One Finnish girl just got her local sim card locked because the company decided that her signatures didn't match and thus she was a threat. Or something. Like, sure, having a local number is such a huge threat to everyone.

My bathroom

But, sightseeing tomorrow. And maybe a few beers. On Sunday the plan is to go to one hotel's pool where the international people have spent their Sundays the past 3 weeks. Will be interesting to meet more of them, so far I know very few (like...3). And I was again told that my hosts' son will come tomorrow or on Sunday, so if I'm lucky I will have a working internet here soon! This post I will try to smuggle to the office tomorrow and post it there. Yes, most of the local people are working 6 days a week at the office.

The work

Well, as you know, I work here for a company called Idex. The company has about 100 workers around India, most of whom are doing an internship I think. If I have understood right, it's basically an organization which arranges three kind of things: voluntary work, internships and educational...umm... 'trips'. Voluntary work means for example working in a hospital in the Himalayas (read some stories, they claimed it was €£$@# cold up there), internships are the kind of things I do ('regular work') and educational trips are for high school kids from different countries who come here for maybe half a year to study in a school in English. That sounds actually really cool, why wasn't I offered a chance to do part of my high school education in India?

The same day I arrived also arrived another Finnish girl Leena and a German guy Denis (or at least something close to that). Idex has only just started these 'educational trips' and Leena's job is to supervise the first group which arrives in a week. 22 kids from different countries. Denis' job is as a volunteer worker in a local school, teaching...something. And my job? Well, I'm the (or THE) IT guy. I am 'the' because I'm the only IT guy in the company. Before me they just oursourced all IT stuff. So now my email is it@idex.org.in. Cool, huh? :) (One of my assignments is to get rid of that .org there in their email addresses.)

Our office. So, nothing special here.

Basically I will be doing all sort of general stuff. Making some feedback forms electric, maintaining the company server, testing some outsourced applications and so on. Of course I don't know yet what all I will be doing, but slowly I'm getting some sort of a picture. I was also told that I can basically outsource almost anything I want - if I want, I can just hire others to do my dirty work and just supervise the thing. Sounds like an interesting option but will have to see how much I want to do that. I guess the costs of outsourcing some IT development are quite low here.

I will be doing most, if not all, of my work at the Idex main office here in Jaipur. The office is actually quite decent, maybe I manage to attach a picture of it here. One of the founders of Idex who is also my nearest boss, Ninad, has a separate office in the building. The building also has some other working rooms, a kitchen, a meeting room and a lovely top terrace where we enjoy our lunches.

My lunchbox, Leena and Denis having a lunch at the top terrace.

My Indian collegues, at left is Gaurav but unfortunately don't remember the other names (yet).

It seems it's dinner time now. Let's see what there is to eat. A Finnish guy who is working at the office (yes, there seem to be quite many Finnish people around) warned me that the meals are always almost the same and he got really tired of that within a month. I hope my hosts have a bit more imagination than his hosts. The guy is actually thinking of renting an apartment with some girl near the Idex office and partially hinted that I could maybe join the place. The total rent was about 400e a month, but the place is something like 130 square meters. An interesting option, at least. He was also complaining that he has been really bored as there's really nothing in his room, no fridge or tv or anything. It's actually the same here. But will have to see how things evolve, hopefully I won't be spending evenings much home anyway. But now for food!

p.S. Thank you for my dearest girlfriend Kristine for sending me encouraging text messages. It has been a bit wild settling here, having at least something familiar helps :)

The arrival

Namaste ji! (=Hello (polite))

Yes, I had a lecture of Hindi. Every week an hour on Thursdays. Well, of course nobody basically speaks Hindi here. All the main regions in India have their own languages which are all somewhat based on Hindi but people from different regions still don't even understand each others' languages. The only common language they have is Hindi, if even that. And, for some, English. It seems to be a big country.

But, something about my arrival in here. I left Helsinki at 23:35 Indian time (which is conveniently GMT+5.5) on Tuesday. Flight to Delhi took 6 hours. After that I had some 12 hours to kill in Delhi - I could've gone to the center and see some stuff but I didn't find any place to store my luggage and I didn't feel like carrying it around in +40 celcius the whole day. And, of course, I was worried that I would somehow miss the flight. So I stayed at the airport for the whole time. Having a book to read was a big plus in that situation.

Delhi airport, domestic flights terminal. 12 hours spent here.

My flight from Delhi to Jaipur was about an hour late. But finally made it to Jaipur. In my emails I had kindly asked if there could be someone meeting me with a sign that says "Mr. Peltonen". For some reason I have always wanted to see that. And so there was the sign. Otherwise it would've just said "Idex". Happyhappy :) So I got a ride to my accomodation which appeared to be with a local family who are quite used to accomodating foreigners. Guess they get some little money for it.

The accomodation includes three meals a day. Breakfast and dinner are served at the apartment but I get the lunch with me in a cute little lunchbox. It looks somehow just so sweet :) The meals aren't too big, but it's so hot in here that I'm not especially hungry either. I guess I will lose some of my precious beer belly, unless I find some nice local beer bars ;)

I have tried to start it slowly with everything weird that could upset my stomach - only drinking bottled water, trying to avoid vegetables and asking for not-so-spicy food. At least yet. So far there haven't been any problems, but probably will get them later.

The transportations here have so far been easy - a guy picked me up from the airport, another this morning from the apartment and a third took me home from work. By a motorcycle. Which was a bit surprising and an...interesting experience. Without a helmet of course. I think you all have an idea of the Indian traffic culture. But, in the future I will have to manage to travel between home and work by my own, the distance is about 5km. I will have to try to ask my 'family' if they could help me with the crazy buses or have some other ideas.

As you can probably tell by the gap in my blog entries, I've had some problems getting access to Internet. There's a wireless network at the apartment but nobody here knows the password, they tell me to "wait for our son who returns in a few days". Well, I am writing this offline now and will publish tomorrow at work as their connection works at least somewhat.

There's also a lot of stuff about my work, but I think I will make a separate entry about that. This one seems to get too long anyway, already.

Incoming departure

Time is running low now - soon it's byebye for me.

I have been trying to think of stuff that I need to do before I leave but I can't think of much. I have my passport with visa in it, vaccinations, knowledge of what will happen to this apartment I live in currently (it will be empty for 1,5 months and then a friend moves here) and my toothbrush. Oh, need to buy a new one before I leave.. But basically everything should be so cheap there that I wouldn't even need much clothes with me. And as it's hot as hell there currently (42-46 celcius) I won't be using much clothes anyway. So, what am I missing? :)

As people keep on asking me about it, I asked the company (Idex) what my job description is. The answer was "After your arrival we will provide you an orientation & in that we will let you know about your job profile & the work which you need to do as an intern". So, eh, what on earth does that mean? They don't even know what I will be doing? Well, I don't worry too much, things will work out in some way. Although could be also in a bad way..

When I was establishing this blog I spent quite some time thinking of how to name it. Of course all the nice URL addresses were already taken especially as I decided to be all-English. So I asked some friends for suggestions. They really had some good recommendations knowing that I will probably get sick of the food there - suggestions like "Shitstorm in India" and "Slave in India". Unfortunately I chose this different (and maybe a bit more conventional) name, "indian-accent". I think I will be writing some (or a bit more) stuff about the Indian accent and how strange it sounds - you all know Apu from The Simpsons. My personal guess is that it will take me two weeks to stop smiling whenever they talk, but I'm hoping I can hide it well during the more official things. I'll let you know how I managed.

P.S. Jaipur isn't 500km from Delhi - only like 250km. Don't know where I got the 500km from.

Teh blog

Hi

I will be doing an internship in Jaipur, India from 16th of June till 25th of August. What exactly will I be doing there? Well, no idea. Something related to IT I was told.

I'm not a fan of spicy food. I'm also not a fan of hot climate. So going to India for the summer seemed like the logical choice.

I will be living somewhere "with other international workers", so the work place offers me some place to stay. Also some meals should be included. The working place doesn't really pay me any salary but I get some support from a Finnish organization called CIMO which organizes this sort of internships in different fields.

I didn't really have any summer job in Finland so I figured I should do at least something during the summer. Then got a mail to my university faculty's mailing list about a possibility to do an internship in either Chile or India and as my Spanish skills are a 'bit' rusty (que pasa?) I chose India. I have never been in India so this should be an interesting experience. So, why not create a blog and share my experiences this way. Maybe won't need to call mom daily for updates if I update this often enough.

My flight will be leaving on 15th of June towards Delhi. From there I will take a internal flight route to Jaipur, which is about 500km from Delhi to south-west. I was told someone from the company I will be working for (Idex) will come meet me at the airport. Hope this is true, otherwise I just may need to go for a beer to ponder the problem. (Do they serve beer there? I hope they do.)

Anyway. I will be making updates to the blog at constant random intervals. Also pictures are to be expected, but I try not to include myself in them so you'd get a more beautiful picture of India.