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Published: November 8th 2005
Another day at the office out of the way. Things were pretty quite at work today. Not that there was a lack of things going on. I completed self-audits on Adjusters reporting to me. It is not easy critiquing colleagues work. I don’t fashion myself to be the “best” practitioner of my trade, if there is such a thing, and hate it when someone is viewing my own work through a microscope. Worse, is going through the Audit with the Adjuster and hearing his/her arguments for/against the score. These Adjuster are so committed to succeeding and doing a good job; and put so much time/effort in to there case evaluations you hate to grade them negatively. In my defense, the guidelines are set by the company and not me. As Auditor, I have some wiggle room but not much. OK, enough about work.
Sunday brought just as much excitement for us as Saturday. I had no problem sleeping clear through the night without awakening. I got through to Shoba and an hour later our driver appeared to cart us around time. We headed over to the office and there we met Ashish and started out on our day. Our first stop was Forum mall. Forum is the larges mall in Bangalore. It has four levels and just about every designer has a stand alone store inside. I did not now Addidas had stand alone stores.
My eyes are tired…..It is 5:20 a.m.
We sat on the main level having coffee’s (coffee Day Café) before starting out to look at the shops. This mall is super busy/full. I have seen larger malls than this though in the US easy. No deals here of the kind I/we were looking for. Clothes are cheap in Bangalore. Electronics are very expensive here for some reason. After going through a few shops we decided on Pizza Hut for lunch. I know, Craig at Pizza Hut…..not my choice. I have never eaten at a Pizza Hut before but the food was not bad. My colleague is a vegetarian and we were ready to have some non-spicy dishes. The place was packed and we had to wait fifteen minutes (for Pizza Hut). One of Ahish’s friends met us. The staff kept shouting out THANK YOU’s at the random ringing of some bell off in the distance. So Bennigan’s. The society here is so backwards. The men here are super affectionate to another in public, and comfortable with it, in a way you would never seen in the States. I know I keep coming back to this but for a country where homosexuality is against the law and is Policed, it surprises me to see two men, young/old whatever, walking through the mall/on the street arm in arm or arm over shoulder and around one another’s waist. After two or so hours we decided to go down to another popular street market. It was a site to see 500 or so black & gold rickshaws lining up to taxi shoppers to other parts of the city. I took some snaps and did not get 1000 feet before we were overtaken by two little girls begging for money. They looked as if they had just climbed out of a hole, literally. The one wore an emerald colored crush velvet dress and had crazy hair. She kept tugging at my pocket so as to beg for change. The other carried a tin cup with an image of Budah sticking out. Ashish capitulated which neither liked cause they were looking for more than the 1 R coin he had to offer each of them. They walked along with us for sum 10 or so yards and it broke my heart not to break down with some change. Finally we reached Driver who carted us off to our next destination (I feel terrible at the way this sounds, my shopping and ignoring little beggar girls on the street. You have to be here to understand though. I am not cold hearted).
I don’t recall the name of this market but it is where you can get boot leg everything and the bargaining was thick. Again our local guide proved to be invaluable. Here I let go some of my R’s for movies. I got like 12 DVD’s for under $10 US. I picked up a set of cool shades as well. I did not pay much and probably won’t have the shades long at the rate I loose/break them. A local woman made Diane uncomfortable as she did nothing but stare at her the whole time we were there. The stench from B/O got to her so we were not there for too long but I was ok with that. We did not want to keep our hosts out too long so decided to head back home early. I now know that there is no Hennessy in all of Bangalore. I got back and ate left-overs for dinner and crashed on the couch at like twelve, earliest I have been to bed since hitting Bangalore.
No bar hopping as one would expect. They are called Pub’s here and I am sure I will get to do that one night I am here but it isn’t really an interest.
I woke today at around 1:00 in the afternoon. We went over to Citibank on MG Road to take care of a banking issue which was a waste of time. While Citibank is a popular bank here, they can do nothing about getting one a replacement ATM card on the spot (and no I did not loose my ATM card). There was no organization at this branch and after some time we decided we would just go and resolve it over the phone. We were hungry and decided to try lunch at the Leela so instructed Driver to head there. After thinking about the cost, which will not be all that bad, we decided to compromise and just go to TGIF. TGIF is just down the street from Leela but try getting Driver to understand that. We had to resort to calling Ashish and have him tell the Driver. I had the imported ribs. Sound strange calling them imported. Diane had the vegetarian enchiladas. The food was good. The waiter made a point of telling us that they followed the same recipe as the US. He also told me I could not have a menu for a souvenir (sorry KB).
No snaps to share. I have lots in the camera but am still working on the UbSB port issue problem. I forgot to get the IT guys help me out as I was so busy today.
Air quality here is poor….very poor. And cows are every damn where. The dogs are bold here too. There asses don’t even get out of the way of oncoming cars. We have a dog in the middle of the road at the head of the block that we are staying on every day we come home. Does he move, not always, he just lays there. There are so many stray dogs here that it stands out. The people feed them which does not help matters. Diane wants to pet them so bad. I told here she would not get any sympathy from me if she did and got Rabies or bitten.
I am going to try to call my hon and head to bed. Thanks for checking out the BLOG guys and I will try to have snaps from the weekend soon. I think I may have to do a BEST PRACTICES training while here. Crap.
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Rlw
non-member comment
hey
what ever you do, do not pet those damn dogs!Hey have driver take you to the street markets and try some of the barbeque goat on a stick, fried nuts and corn on the cob. they are great!