So until this past weekend (April 9th and 10th), I haven't done too much. I wake up every day around 6 am as I still can't get used to this time difference, I watch some Glee, I read some ebooks and then I get ready for my day. I get picked up at 9 am by the driver and head into the office. I work roughly from 9 am til about 10:30 PM when I get taken home. I then eat dinner (if I feel up to it) and watch some more Glee or read until I hopefully fall asleep. I got acclimated to the time difference about mid week. Trainings have been a bit difficult with the language barrier being a huge setback. Although they understand me (or so they say), I can tell by future questions that they aren't asking everything they need to know during training and oftentimes aren't following along. When I do check ins if they are following they all nod, literally like bobbleheads (consistent moving back and forth) and I get a yes that's ok. Following up since I gave them tasks I can see this isn't true, so now that the development training is done and tasks are assigned, I am finally getting the questions they either didn't know how to ask in training or were afraid to ask in training. So, this is still a positive, they are understanding, are now getting a handle on troubleshooting and how the entire system interfaces. Aside from work, I have literally only seen my hotel (until this past weekend). Electricity is sporadic at best around here and we often see outages at least a couple times a day and on a bad day roughly every ten minutes. There are generators but they only last so long and only provide so much power, and obviously depending on where you are determines if they even have this capacity. I lost my internet connection at the hotel on Thursday and it's still not restored as of today. I also lost my electricity several times over the weekend, leaving me to read and or venture out to entertain myself. I had a brief stint of internet on Saturday by going towards and the market and using another computer, but this option wasn't available on Sunday and also was an incredibly slow connection. So to anyone that tried to get ahold of me or that was worried, I truly apologize, but it was out of my control.
My CIO was in India last week, so I did get to have dinners and lunches with her which afforded me the opportunity to speak of the project and the issues I have been facing. The other piece is that since she arrived here on Sunday, I was treated incredibly well, they constantly checked on us and made sure we had food access and anything we needed. We got invited to a dinner at the IT Manager, Sudipto's home on Wednesday. This was unknown to me until I randomly got told at 845 that we were leaving for dinner (after they turned off the servers without notifying me). Dinner was nice but awkward, they eat late dinners here, average dinner time is 10 pm then they do family things til about midnight. Had to remove shoes upon entrance, sat around with the CIO, my colleague lucky, Vikas the head of India Helpdesk, and Sudipto the IT Manager for India. None of us really knew what to say to each other, so we primarily watched Sudipto's 3 year old daughter attempt to interact with us (by us, I mean them, she was deathly afraid of me at first). His wife made dinner, we all sat at the table, the food was amazing, but the interesting thing to me is that she never joined us for dinner, she just prepared dinner and left us. After dinner, the family gave us gifts and we watched his daughter until we left.
My CIO and the heads of IT departed for Calcutta on Thursday. We all had lunch as a Global IT team before they left, which was nice, everyone all at one table eating completely vegetarian (Hindu holiday so they were fasting technically). After they left, you could see the office settle into it's normal pattern. People only worked til about 6 pm that night, people were friendlier and not on edge, jokes were being made and they started to arrange plans for Lucky and I to get out and around Lucknow on the weekend.
On Friday, I taught training, was told I could catch a ride around 6 PM back to the hotel, got to joke with our staff and eat some local fried goodies. Came back to the hotel to once again no wireless and sporadic electricity. Lucky came to meet me and we had beers at hotel bar, before switching to the beer garden across the street. The bars shut down by 11 PM, so Lucky and I just had a few Kingfishers then called it a night with plans to meet up the next day and hit the market.
Saturday, I woke and waited for Lucky's call. Got in contact around 11 AM and went downstairs to try to figure out how to get to his hotel (about 2 miles from my own). I asked the front desk, they then referred me to the travel desk, I asked the travel desk lady to call a taxi for me so I could go from my hotel to his. She tries to book me a taxi for the day and tells me it's going to cost me 1800 rupees (roughly 5o usd), I was like no I just need from here to there. She calls the cab company, has me talk to them, they tell me 150 rupees from here to there, which I agree to, she then tells me I have to pay her 1800 rupees, her fees and the cabs, I tell her this is ridiculous and eventually say nevermind I'll figure it out on my own, cancel any bookings and walk out. I caught a local rickshaw (also called tuctucs), told the driver I wanted hotel bandhan, he pointed for me to get in, we make it half way and he stops, apparently he doesn't understand where I want to go. He then tries to converse with me in Hindi, which I can't understand, he can't understand English. He starts flagging down teenage or early 20s students to see if they can understand me. They understand me but don't know where the hotel is, so the driver is getting frustrated, I'm lost and frustrated and these poor kids are well just confused....eventually I tell the 3rd group he flags down that I think the hotel is in this direction after the market, they convey it to him and using hand gestures eventually head in the right direction. I used hand gestures, finally got to Lucky's hotel (only took an hour! to go 2 miles), and we wandered to the market. Here the stares continued as we shopped, got some presents for back home, got some new sunglasses, helped Lucky pick out items for his family and his gf. Stopped while he had a bite to eat then had a few beers. Ventured back to the hotel at about 8 PM, tried for wireless, tried to get electricity, eventually gave up and went to bed. Lucky was supposed to call in the morning with the schedule from Apoorv that was to be taking us to see Lucknow.
Woke up Sunday morning, shot some photos from the roof of the building, watched some Glee and waited for Lucky. After about 11, I wandered out on my own, took some photos of the area I was around, walked to the local mall called Wave. This is where I really was stared at, had lots of photos taken as I walked past, felt like a superstar or a freak show, still trying to determine that one, eventually walked back to the hotel to settle into some more Glee, since I wasn't sure what to do. All along my walk back was full of people begging, others walk past, but literally by skin color is when they beg for money. The same is true on prices, white skin pays more than brown skin and the natives will actually even tell you this, it's a bit discriminatory (for example Lucky paid 50 rupees for a ride to my hotel, I spent 100 on a ride to his, it's literally double in price). I got home to the hotel made it through an episode of Glee then Lucky called to say Apoorv was bailing on us. Disappointed, I figured I was going to be stuck in my hotel room again for the day as I wasn't sure where to go in Lucknow, had no internet to figure it out and have huge issues with people understanding me. Vikas luckily called and offered to take us to Imam Bargah which is a Muslim building that acted as a place of mourning. It's loaded in history, beautiful architecture and is a religious temple. Vikas came and picked me up from the hotel, Lucky and myself got to go to his home, meet his family and eventually we all wandered to Chacra where this building was located. The building is absolutely stunning, I have photos on FB of it, but it has a labyrinth inside (lacking David Bowie, but still awesome), it's 1,024 mazes internally and the building is made out of no cement or structure , but literally is made out of dal as well as sugarcane, pretty impressive, by it's sheer size. It's hollow which also allows for great communication methods as it has amazing acoustics. Someone can go about 100 yards from you and whisper and with your ear to the wall you can hear exactly what they are saying. A lot of the portions of the maze have been blocked by the government as certain tunnels led to Delhi and also confused the government, so they have been sealed. We made it through the Labriynth, I took a ton of photos and then we got to wander through the garden. Afterwards, the family had ice cream, Vikas introduced me to street fare amazing pastry like substance filled with lentils and mangoes a sauce of flour, water, and chiles. Vikas and his wife and I ate these and then we all headed to their local temple to celebrate Mahashivratri.
The holiday is about celebrating the goddess and giving homage to her and the protection she provides. They fast for nine days, eating only vegetarian and visiting temple. They present presents to the goddess normally saris or other female based goods, they donate money to their temple and they take something similar to communion to link you to her. My apologies for any left out details but my interaction with understanding and language barriers were a bit great (planning on looking more into this when I get back or more internet access). After 9 days, they have a street festival and celebrate and do a final homage to the goddess. Vikas and his family were very compassionate and allowed Lucky and I to participate. Lucky declined, but I entered the temple with them. It's common to ring bells on your way into temple, you remove your shoes at the entrance and then enter into the main hall. You pray to the goddess, Maa Durg, you take something similar to communion but tastes similar to a gingersnap (lot better than communion wafers in my opinion!), and you are marked with the symbol of protection made from a reddish powder mixed with water and placed in the middle of your forehead between your eyebrows (similarly to the Bindi). From here you ring the bells on your way out, and head to the next smaller temple (there were roughly 7 smaller temples/shrines each representing a different god/goddess). You pray at each of these alters and end with an ultimate prayer before going back to the entrance and placing your shoes back on. There are infinite gods/goddesses in the Hindu religion, but they have roughly 33,000 known and defined gods/goddesses. Their ceremonial temples are beautiful and filled with great incense and beautiful flowers. In the second temple, we gave flowers to the goddess, prayed and spoke to the sculpture of a cow that is a symbol of fertility and mothering.
After temple, we ring the bell on the way out and headed to the street festival. The festival has small rides and a lot of vendors and food. Lucky and I picked up some more small gifts and got to see about more culture. We made it back to the car and ended up back at Vikas's house were we chatted, his 7 year old daughter showed us her native Indian dance she is learning and then we got dropped off. Was home by about 10 pm, so had a good 7 hours out of the hotel, beautiful photos and a great time. Upon coming home, had issues with internet and electricity again, just watched an episode of Glee and once again passed out, happy and tired.
Back into the office today, training helpdesk staff, so far it's going well, pictures are being updated to FB and will be available with captions hopefully by tonite.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2386983&id=18415434&l=cc9cfae917
Monday, April 11, 2011
Travels to india
So I have completed more than 11 days of being away from the states. Just wanted to do a recap of what's been going on since my departure.
I left on the 31st from BWI and flew into London. Having a 12 hour layover, I convinced Mougie to come spend the day with me. Luckily enough she's an amazing friend and made the 4 hour hike from Grimsby up to London to protect the foreigner from British harm. I had a hotel room that they gave me for the day, so I came through customs, caught a hotel hoppa (please note the British apparently think their gangsta by calling it a hoppa and not a hopper), navigated to my hotel and dropped off my items. Caught a quick but not refreshing shower considering all of my things are still in my suitcase that was automatically placed in queue for my flight to Mumbai. Mougie and I had some issues attempting to meet up as she had issues with the bus and once I got to London I had issues contacting her. So we finally agree to meet back at the airport and I attempted to take the local bus to the airport because unlike the hotel hoppa (at $20 rate), the local bus to the airport is free. I was told by the hotel staff just to walk across the street and I could pick up any bus that said Heathrow terminal 5, well they sent me to the wrong spot. I asked a local where I could get the bus, she looked at me like I was crazy and sent me to a different spot. Also wrong! so finally, I went to the map at the bus stop and deciphered it for myself, got to the right spot and caught the bus. Met up with mougie at terminal 5 and we took a tube into central london where we had some lunch (only took a couple of hours to decide on a place to eat :) ), saw harrod's (amazing department store) and had a pint at the bunch of grapes. From there took the tube back, lots of traffic, had to jump off and take another local bus, which I managed again because I'm awesome and can decipher the hardcore london maps now and got back to the hotel an hour after I was supposed to check out. Grabbed my things, caught the hotel hoppa back and got to wait as my flight was delayed...After about an hour we got to board and then depart. Flight from London to Mumbai was smooth, landed in Mumbai and had a 5 hour layover with nothing to do and no internet access to be found. Realized I stick out really badly within Indian culture due to my style and my tattoos. In Indian culture it's not rude to stare or talk about you as odd as that sounds so people would blatantly gawk at me, point at me, conversations would start when I walked past, and my favorite is when I would walk pass I would hear the shutter sound of a camera phone. At first this was unnerving, but now after dealing with it for over a week, it's pretty common, I feel kind of like Lady Gaga but with a better looking face.
My flight from Mumbai to Lucknow was a domestic flight, so I had to grab my luggage, take a bus to a different part of the airport then take their local airline Kingfisher air. Their airports are very different in that one can't really check in an hour before the flight. They weren't sure why I was asking to check in or what they expected me to do with my luggage, so I just waited in the terminal and came back an hour before my flight and got it sorted. Needless to say security was a difficulty, they have different entrances for men and women and I don't think they trusted that I knew my own gender/sex. I also found the issue in that people would constantly cut me off when I was speaking, cut me off in line and in general were very rude. From what I've noticed this is a cultural thing and even though they stem from British rule, the same manners/cultural rules do not apply. It's not seen to be inappropriate or even rude, it's just the norm. I finally had every piece of my luggage checked and tagged (yes you need luggage tags even on your carry ons and they check it constantly, this was not fun) and sat around watching cricket with the other passengers. The cricket world cup was playing and India was a main contender so the country seemed to be on edge as these matches last upwards of 5 days and this was the final day.
Boarded the plane to Lucknow, finally caught a couple hours of sleep on the plane. Touched down, got my luggage, had Sharif waiting for me to take me to my hotel . Got to the hotel, yes, I am staying at the Comfort Inn (I think they fear us Americans can't cut it, as my fellow colleague from Sri Lanka was placed in the local Hotel Bandhan (not nearly as nice), but I'm not going to complain). Got wireless set up, got a real shower and clean clothes and faced issues with jet lag. Had issues sleeping all nite and finally passed out the next morning at about 8 am (Sunday, India time). Hadn't slept since I had left on Thursday Night (Bmore time). Slept all day Sunday, woke up, spoke with friends/family and went back to sleep to prepare for my week.
Thus ends the adventures of arriving
I left on the 31st from BWI and flew into London. Having a 12 hour layover, I convinced Mougie to come spend the day with me. Luckily enough she's an amazing friend and made the 4 hour hike from Grimsby up to London to protect the foreigner from British harm. I had a hotel room that they gave me for the day, so I came through customs, caught a hotel hoppa (please note the British apparently think their gangsta by calling it a hoppa and not a hopper), navigated to my hotel and dropped off my items. Caught a quick but not refreshing shower considering all of my things are still in my suitcase that was automatically placed in queue for my flight to Mumbai. Mougie and I had some issues attempting to meet up as she had issues with the bus and once I got to London I had issues contacting her. So we finally agree to meet back at the airport and I attempted to take the local bus to the airport because unlike the hotel hoppa (at $20 rate), the local bus to the airport is free. I was told by the hotel staff just to walk across the street and I could pick up any bus that said Heathrow terminal 5, well they sent me to the wrong spot. I asked a local where I could get the bus, she looked at me like I was crazy and sent me to a different spot. Also wrong! so finally, I went to the map at the bus stop and deciphered it for myself, got to the right spot and caught the bus. Met up with mougie at terminal 5 and we took a tube into central london where we had some lunch (only took a couple of hours to decide on a place to eat :) ), saw harrod's (amazing department store) and had a pint at the bunch of grapes. From there took the tube back, lots of traffic, had to jump off and take another local bus, which I managed again because I'm awesome and can decipher the hardcore london maps now and got back to the hotel an hour after I was supposed to check out. Grabbed my things, caught the hotel hoppa back and got to wait as my flight was delayed...After about an hour we got to board and then depart. Flight from London to Mumbai was smooth, landed in Mumbai and had a 5 hour layover with nothing to do and no internet access to be found. Realized I stick out really badly within Indian culture due to my style and my tattoos. In Indian culture it's not rude to stare or talk about you as odd as that sounds so people would blatantly gawk at me, point at me, conversations would start when I walked past, and my favorite is when I would walk pass I would hear the shutter sound of a camera phone. At first this was unnerving, but now after dealing with it for over a week, it's pretty common, I feel kind of like Lady Gaga but with a better looking face.
My flight from Mumbai to Lucknow was a domestic flight, so I had to grab my luggage, take a bus to a different part of the airport then take their local airline Kingfisher air. Their airports are very different in that one can't really check in an hour before the flight. They weren't sure why I was asking to check in or what they expected me to do with my luggage, so I just waited in the terminal and came back an hour before my flight and got it sorted. Needless to say security was a difficulty, they have different entrances for men and women and I don't think they trusted that I knew my own gender/sex. I also found the issue in that people would constantly cut me off when I was speaking, cut me off in line and in general were very rude. From what I've noticed this is a cultural thing and even though they stem from British rule, the same manners/cultural rules do not apply. It's not seen to be inappropriate or even rude, it's just the norm. I finally had every piece of my luggage checked and tagged (yes you need luggage tags even on your carry ons and they check it constantly, this was not fun) and sat around watching cricket with the other passengers. The cricket world cup was playing and India was a main contender so the country seemed to be on edge as these matches last upwards of 5 days and this was the final day.
Boarded the plane to Lucknow, finally caught a couple hours of sleep on the plane. Touched down, got my luggage, had Sharif waiting for me to take me to my hotel . Got to the hotel, yes, I am staying at the Comfort Inn (I think they fear us Americans can't cut it, as my fellow colleague from Sri Lanka was placed in the local Hotel Bandhan (not nearly as nice), but I'm not going to complain). Got wireless set up, got a real shower and clean clothes and faced issues with jet lag. Had issues sleeping all nite and finally passed out the next morning at about 8 am (Sunday, India time). Hadn't slept since I had left on Thursday Night (Bmore time). Slept all day Sunday, woke up, spoke with friends/family and went back to sleep to prepare for my week.
Thus ends the adventures of arriving
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
India Experiences
So I now have officially cleared my first week in India. I have to say this has been one of the more trying TDYs. There is a huge communication and cultural barrier that exists. As I woman I am far from respected within this country, I'm constantly asked questions as I am the technical expert on the system, but in the middle of a response I am constantly overspoken or interrupted. It's almost as if what I say isn't valid, but what they don't realize is how headstrong I am, so I will continue to talk over you. If you don't want to know the answer to the question, then don't ask the question and leave me work. This has been an interesting experience, most were excited that I was coming here, but I already knew the hardships I would face. I definitely stick out here with there being a huge difference in what is appropriate for women to look like, act like, and say. I tend to have no filter so needless to say I think I'm shocking the culture daily. There is also no sort of ettiquette similar to the states, they stare, they point and then talk about you either in English or one of the multiple native languages (but don't worry they point while doing this). I was warned of this prior to coming here, but I am just amazed at the differences between what is accepted in eastern vs western culture. I do have to admit the food has my heart though. More to post later, more training now.
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