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View from my apartment
This is the view from my apartment. The apartment complex itself is very nice but just outside the complex walls there is clear signs of poverty. However, my driver told me that this area is middle class. I arrived in Bangalore shortly after midnight which was two calendar days after my journey began even though it was about 23 hour journey. I completely lost one day of my life traveling! When I arrived at the ATL gate for my flight to Frankfurt a woman named Sandra approached me and asked if I work for the same company as her. It turns out that we were both headed to Bangalore. I was happy to meet someone on the same journey as me.
My trip was fairly uneventful until I arrived at Bangalore. I cleared the first two customs checks without any problems before I retrieved my checked luggage. After I got my luggage I had to have it scanned. I brought two laptops with me - my work laptop and my personal laptop. The customs officer noticed the laptop in my checked luggage and I was honest and told him that I had two laptops (the other one was in my carryon luggage that had already been scanned by customs). He made me wait around for 30 minutes before he came back over to address the situation with me. He told me that I would have to pay
1/3 of my laptop’s value or leave it at the airport. I think that he was purposely trying to confuse or scare me. When I was totally confused (and exhausted from 24 hours of traveling) he then asked me how much cash I had. He said that if I paid him $100 directly he would let me bring my laptop into the country without paying the duty on it. He made it very clear that he was expecting a bribe. I thought about this for about a minute decided that I would NOT pay him the bribe.
Because I would not pay the bribe I had to pay the duty. This involved me having to use a personal credit card (they would not take my corporate AMEX) to withdraw the cash (I did not have any rupees with me), I had to pay a 5% fee to get the cash, then I had to wake up some guy sleeping in a booth to pay the fine. Overall this whole ordeal took about an hour and over $400.00 that I will have to expense.
Luckily Sandra had team members meet her at the airport with the same driver that was taking me to the corporate apartments. It was very nice to have people greeting me at the airport, even though they were strangers. They helped us find our driver and get our bags to the car. It was raining and by the time I was in the car I was soaked.
The first thing that I noticed when I exited the airport was the group of people loitering outside of the airport. I guess one of them "helped" put my luggage in the car and he insisted that I give him some money. I was exhausted and had a dollar in my pocket so I gave him that. Immediately he demanded additional money for his friends who he claimed also helped. I refused. This taught me a valuable lesson - even if you give a beggar money they will want more!
At this point it was after 2:00 AM so the roads were mostly deserted. On the way to the apartments I noticed several large office buildings for the major technology players in the West - AOL, Microsoft, Avaya, and HP. The only difference was outside of the office property there was signs of poverty.
When we arrived at the apartments I was too tired to notice much of anything. I checked in at the Hub - an apartment on the bottom floor with the resident manager for the corporate apartments used by the company. I got my keys, took my luggage to my room, and immediately attempted to take a shower. I did not have any hot water but I did not care.
The next day I woke up around noon. My DSL connection was not working and my blackberry could not get a signal. I felt very vulnerable - I am not used to not having multiple means of communication with the outside world. I went downstairs to the Hub to notify the resident manager and he contacted a technician for me. While I was waiting I ventured down to the grocery store in the apartment property. To my surprise n yogurt was for sale - only milk curd - and no cold milk was available (I later found out that I would not want cold milk because I would have to boil it before consuming it - they do not pasteurize milk). I purchased a few items and charged them to my credit card (I still had no rupees) and went back to the room to wait for the DSL technician the rest of the day.
Once my DSL was fixed I went to the Hub to have dinner with other people from the company. It turns out that a cook prepares both continental and Indian meals for breakfast and dinner Monday - Saturday at the Hub for less than $4.00. The dinner was baked fish and macaroni and cheese - but I could have never known this without being told. The fish was brown and had a round bone in the middle of it. The macaroni and cheese was a flat small noodle with a creamy sauce and mixed vegetables. By mistake I ate some of the tomato and cucumber salad that was also served with the meal.
The next day was Sunday and I woke up around 4:00 AM in spite of the fact that I took an Ambien. By 7:00 AM I was vomiting and had a horrible headache. I am not sure what caused my illness: the salad, the malaria medicine, or a bug that some other team members had. Unfortunately I spent the entire day in the apartment watching television and trying to keep down some water and bread.
The next morning I was still sick, but I could not stay in the apartment any longer because I was so excited. So I got dressed and went to the office.
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Holly
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Trying Trip
Oh my goodness! What an ordeal for your first days there. I can only imagine that the ordeal at the airport was frightening to say the least. What did the guy act like when you told him you would not pay the bribe? Was he angry? It sounds like you have seen what I have only read, that India is indeed a VERY poor country where the majority of the population lives in abject poverty. What is the apartment like? How is your working environment? Best wishes and I can't wait to see the next installment...lol