My first day in India

Bangalore, 8:AM Wednesday morning, India Standard Time.

I was picked up by the airport transportation service on Sunday afternoon at about 5:15. They had called ahead to say they would be a bit late due to Boston traffic. It turns out that this was only the first of many such indicidents. For the first time (maybe ever!) I actually had TWO suitcases. I took two pairs of shoes (one a bit dressier...my wife will laugh at me saying this, and one pair of boots for dealing with rain/mud/etc). Shoes take up an enormous amount of space. Plus I need more shirts than usual; T-shirts are my normal attire even at work, but things are are less informal. Even laborers wear shirts. Not really knowing how the laundry would work, I also brought extra pants and stuff.

We got to Logan with no problem. The new International terminal is
pretty nice! Last time I was there, you had to walk around scaffolding,
follow temporary signs, etc. This time you walk in and there you are!
I had not trouble checking in, but that was when I found that my flight
had been delayed from 9:05 to 10:15 or something like that. Luckily
there was not going to be connection problem. I had 4 hours or more in
London. Security was somewhat more stringent than usual, but not really
troublesome since I had not packed any liquids, and I already knew stuff
like separating my computer from the rest of the luggage and taking off
my shoes.

I decided to book aisle seats this time. As much as I love looking out
the window, when flying alone, having some space on one side and the
ability to get up, walk around, and go the the bathroom at will becomes
more important. Plus there is not much to see over the Atlantic. This
was a very good move, especially on the second flight. On this flight,
there was a man with very wide shoulders in the middle seat. It was
difficult to avoid bumping shoulders, but neither of us minded that
much. He probably had more problem than I did, although his wife was at
the window seat, so he should share some of her space.

Two meals, many pages of a new book, and maybe an hour or 2 of sleep
later, we arrived in London. They had made up most of the time! Turns
out we had a helacious tail wind. The screen showed a ground speed of
more than 700MPH sometimes (fast than sound, except it was not because
the air was moving with us) It never ceases to amaze me how such an
ENORMOUS plane as a 747 (-400 in this case for you affectionados) can be
so powerful and gentle. I always get goose bumps when it takes off
thinking about what it looks like from the outside. And the landing was
as gentle as I have ever seen. How can that be?!

London Heathrow has apparently gotten out of crisis mode and into "we
can deal with this" mode after the arrests in August. We did not go
outside of the secure area, but in order to LEAVE LHR, we needed to go
throuh an extra security check. It was again no real problem. My
backpack was well within the size reqirements.

When I got to the gate, I found that <SURPRISE!> the flight was delayed
an hour. When we finally got on, they said they could make up a lot of
the time. But then we sat around for another hour. First the on board
video system was down so after fiddling for a while, they gave the
safety demo by hand. Then they missed their air traffic slot and hand
to wait for another. All in all another hour on the ground. After we
took off, they re-booted the video system and all was well. They did
make up the first hour, but we still ended up one hour late.

It was a bit spooky to see our course on the map. Although we were at
40,000 feet, we were still fairly near if not over Lebanon and either
Iraq or Iran. We may have flown over Afghanistan too...at least we flew
along the west side of Pakistan before finally crossing into India in
the vicinity of Mumbai.

This flight was very nice, actually. I was seated one row behind the
bulkhead, so while I did not have the legroom of a bulkhead seat, I did
have some of the visual space that it affords. It did not feel so
crowded. In addition, the middle seat was unoccupied, so my row
companion and I both used to to put stuff on. The food was surprisingly
good too. My row companion (an woman, probably from India) would
disagree, but I was surprised. Dinner was a choice of chicken or "Asian
Vegetarian". Now I would have though Asian Veg was "oriental". No, it
was Indian. Makes sense, but I suppose they did not want to call it
that since it could also have been Pakistani or any number of other
countries. It was rice with some Dal (lentil soup) on one side and some
sort of okra-based spicy sauce on the other. Very tasty and not too
salty (the biggest problem with Indian food in the US, IMHO). Breakfast
consisted of a samosa (potato in a dough wrapper, deep fried), pakora
(vegetable fritters), and something I could not identify which was the
best of the group. I asked my row companion about it; she said it was
Paneer Cutlet and not a very good example of it. (Paneer is cheese).
She thought all the food was insufficiently hot, crisp, etc by her
standards. I don't disagree, especially with the pakora, but still
thought it was pretty good for airline food.

Being late had an advantage...apparently we were the only plane that
landed at that time (about 5:30AM) so the lines were modest. I got
through immigration, got my bags (both arrived...yay!) and got through
customers (green line, no waiting) in record time. I got out into the
more public area and found ... No one that I recognized. Oops. I dug
out the phone number of my contacts (Nil and Prashanth), called, and it
turned out that they had found out the flight was delayed and were
waiting off-site for a bit. They were caught off guard by how quickly I
got out. I just waited in the building by the door until they arrived
in about 10 minutes. No problem. Luckily the mobile phone that they
gave me at work actually worked and I figured out what part of the
number to dial :-)

Nil and Pras took me to my apartment to give me a chance to drop my
suitcases and wash up a bit, and then we went out for breakfast. Did I
want Indian breakfast or cornflakes? Ha ha! Silly question (to me at
least.) When in India... So we went to a restaurant that was serving a
breakfast buffet. However, we ordered off the menu. What an
interesting bunch of stuff. I'm not sure I can remember the names.
However, there were three sauces that we dipped all items in; one was
called chutney (which means "mix of stuff", (my Dave Barry imitation,
but really pretty close to the truth) in this case it was different from
mango chutney that you might have at US Indian restaurant). There was
also a yoghurt sauce, which was NOT raitta; it was minty but also spicy.
The other was a dal-like curry/lentil/other. And what we had to dip in
to it were: 1) Things are like donuts, but not sweet. In fact they
have some peppers in them. 2) Hmmm. I can't remember. 3) I think Pras
said it was poori; however I am familiar with one kind of poori and this
was quite different. Mine was a flat flour-based (fried?) circle maybe
6 or 8 inches in diameter topped with onions. Really wonderful! Pras
and Nil both had versions of the same thing that were a glossy brown and
curled up from cooking and had some sort of filling.

By now it was maybe 8 and they took me back to the apartment to relax
with a promise to come for lunch. I took a shower, set my alarm for 11
("just in case" :-) and lay down on the bed to read and relax. My
thoughts drifted off... :-) Luckily I woke up about noon and realized
that while I had set the alarm (1) it was set for 11PM and (2) I had not
turned it on. Luckily(2) Nil did not come until 12:30 or so. We went
to a Chinese restaurant for a pretty light lunch (wonton soup and some
veg dish on rice. And then went to visit the office where I will be
working.

There is one HP office within 5 minutes walk of the apartment, and there
is a shuttle (they call it a taxi; I had to get clear that it was not a
car-for-hire but rather an HP thing). In fact there are HP buildings
all over the place! Lots of different engineering groups, call centers,
etc besides VMS. The buildings have names (I think this is not internal
HP names, but somehow that is common all over). The nearby office is
"Emerald". The one where I am working is "Embassy Icon". They sound
like military operation names. Anyway, we took the shuttle to Embassy
Icon and went up to the floor. What a neat thing to see. The whole
floor is given over to VMS Engineering. There were signs with familiar
product names hanging all over the place. A lot of celebratory
decorations were still around for the 10th anniversary of VMS in India.
I tell you it just felt SO good to see so many people working on VMS.
There were also a lot of familiar faces around. Of course with 17 (or
is it 27?) currently in Nashua, I did not really see the whole group.

They are giving me an office to use; there is a conference room nearby
for discussions. I got the impression that long conversations in the
cube are frowned on. This makes sense given that many cubes have more
than 1 person and the walls are pretty short.

Then off to the grocery store (Food World; Nil said "Food World feeds
India" somewhat tongue in cheek). I suddenly realized that I was tasked
with getting stuff that I could prepare and eat. A challenge since I
did not know what a lot of things were and I was not entirely
confortable with what would be ok for a western-acclimated digestive
system. (Not to put too fine a point on it, one must be careful of tap
water, raw vegetables, etc etc). I finally got some mini-bananas
(plaintains?) which can be peeled, some bread, cookies, milk (ultra high
temp pasteurized), green beans, rice, yoghurt, noodles, and a clove of
garlic. What I forgot was oil, so the garlic won't be much use yet. I
also need to get some cheese or something at some point. There was no
meat at the grocery that I could see other than canned tuna and some
sort of spam-like thing. That's ok for the moment. Kind of a pathetic
array of food, but I'll figure out more later.

I had had a lot to eat, so I did not really need much dinner. I made
myself some noodles and a plantain (yes I had Ramen noodles!) It was
delicious! By that time I was really ready for bed, so off I went.

More later...