Lameness and mangos

I'm such a pussy.

Today, I was walking around my neighbourhood again. I walked a bit further than usually (and in a new direction) so I saw a lot of different stuff. And also some interesting stuff. But why didn't I stop and buy and/or look at them?

It's somehow hard for me to participate in the Indian culture in this way. It takes guts to just go somewhere and do something that the locals do all the time. And too often I don't have the guts. It's usually nothing too complicated, just like stopping at a street stall to maybe buy some cheap and crappy shoes. I'm slowly trying to force myself to stop and act like a local and get over my nervousness, but it's not so simple. But, slowly.

Some people doing something on a street. Some dancing, but no idea why. Very weird things happens all the time around here.

Earlier I didn't buy anything from the streets due to fear for my stomach. Now I've been here for over 2 weeks and I've had zero problems. I've slowly started to try different stuff now. For example I stopped drinking bottled water a week ago, now I mostly drink the filtered water. Let's see how far I can go without stomach problems. I'll let you know, don't worry :)

Well, I did manage to buy some drinkable mango thing at a street stall. And it was really great. 10 rupees, although I think the real price should've been 7 rupees. Oh no, I just lost 3 rupees. And another thing I manager to do was notice the signs of "Beer - 90 rupees - self service". For some weird reason it's much easier to go for those places than to go for some shoe shops.

Local traffic. Many intersections have this square thing at the center to mark where to drive. But of course if people are turning right for example, they always drive at the wrong side of the square to cut the angle. So, the square thing is quite useless.

I have to talk to you about mangos a bit. They are simply.. awesome. Nowadays my family usually provides me a mango after dinner as a dessert. And the mangos are simply.. awesome. I have totally fell in love with them, they are sweet and very tasty. Indians say that mango is the kind of fruits, and I no longer wonder why. They also say that there's like 1000 different mango types, but unfortunately I have only tasted a few different ones so far.

In general, please let me know what you wanna hear about. It's somehow difficult for me to know what is interesting for my readers. Somehow most of the stuff here seems normal and almost boring, even though it's far from the European standards, but still. And I'm also a bit afraid of taking pictures of interesting events as some of the locals don't like their pictures to be taken. I think I should just take all the pictures I want and run, but then again........

Ah, and Agra. Well, in the end I didn't go there. The trains were already full and it was really hard to find out about buses. Internet has many different sources and it seemed like most of them were outdated. And the other group left with a 6:30am train, so I should've gone around 6am to the bus station and wonder if there happens to be a bus going to Agra. And the same thing at the evening. So, chose not to try going there. I think I will still have time to go there later.

Yesterday's dinner. From left, clockwise: Ninad (my boss), Vinita (his wife), Pyry, Lena and Tani.

Yesterday we were for some food and beers with my boss, his wife (who also works at Idex) and four Finns: me, Tani, Lena and this newcomer Pyry. It was kind of a welcoming dinner. It was really nice. Today I tried to lure Gaurav and Amit from the office for some beers (so far I have never succeeded in that), but let's see if they manage to come this time. Also need to get Pyry to join, Tani left for Delhi for this weekend.

P.S. Please keep on commenting the blog. It's nice to see that someone is reading ;)