The next installment: Geysers, restaurants, and money

Before the break for an essay on pollution (note: If you ever want to
see a successful US government program, look at the Clean Air Act), I
had described my first day (when I was not very acclimated) and the
second day (when I dutifully stayed in the apartment due to the Bundh).
It is now Sunday morning and I have been to work for three days and had
a few more adventures.

First, the apartment: The first day or two I took a shower with very
good results. The water is hot, the pressure is adequate, etc. The
third day I turned on the hot water and it was...warm. And it did not
get warmer. Figuring something had gotten messed up, I finished up
pretty quickly and hopped out before things got too cold. After a while
I found out what the problem was:

Scattered all over the apartment are electrical switches. In many ways
they do not make sense to me, and the fact that (1) the switches work
backwards from US switches (up is off; that is actually more common in
the world) and (2) not all the lights work in the first place makes it
difficult to figure out what is what. You CAN always tell a three-way
switch. They have little dots on them. However, not all of them run
lights. In the bathroom, for example, there is a switch outside and
inside to control the fan. So I did a lot of turning switches on and
being sure to leave them off if I could not figure out what they were.
One bathroom switch in particular had a red pilot light on it. Oh-oh.
Some kind of heat lamp, or heated towel-rack or floor or radiator
or...??? Nope. It controls the hot water heater. You can guess the
rest. I actually found a sheet of paper admonishing guests to turn off
the "Geyser" when they leave. I think a Geyser is the hot water heater.
Actually there is one Geyser in each bathroom (why do I need two
bathrooms, you ask? Answer: I don't. That's what they gave me.) There
is no hot water piped from them to anywhere but the shower. Again, I
have seen it in other places that there is only cold water in sinks and
stuff. This was obviously planned that way.

The first couple of days I cooked my own dinners. It was pretty
pathetic till last night, when I whipped up a pretty good fried rice.
What a pain though! All those stupid little cloves of garlic to peel
and they keep skidding out of your fingers! At least I can deal with
onions and carrots and beans and rice pretty well. And I bought oil so
I was able to stir fry. Yay!

Finally Friday night I was tired of cooking and energitic enough to walk
around a bit. I went by several places that were just windows onto the
street. I did not know how to deal with them, and was not sure about
the safety, and besides I wanted to sit down and be waited on. I was
limited in where I was willing to search because it was dark and I
really did not want to get lost. There are no street signs! So I was
only willing to keep turning the same direction. (That's a simple AI
stragegy for getting a robot through a maze and it was moderately
effective for me. I think it is guaranteed correct but not optimal or
something like that). Anyway, one place I came too was very fancy
looking. I went inside the lobby and there were apparently several
restaurants inside, but there was not a soul around other than the guard
outside. (Every building has a guard, btw.) I went on. The next place
was called "Desmond's". I went in and it too was empty (we're talking
about 7:30PM now...) but the staff was there to greet me. This was
actually quite fun. The maitre d' was happy to talk to me about the
menu and about the lack of crowdedness for a Friday evening (the bar
crowd comes in later). They have BEEF steak as well as Indian, Chinese,
Italian, and maybe Korean food. Sorry, I refuse to eat beef in India.
It just seems wrong, not to mention wildly insensitive to the
predominant culture. I got Indian food...some Tandoori-cooked chicken
as a starter, a delicious curry dish, and garlic nan. (No, not NaN or
NaT. Sorry, in joke with some of my co-workers). And I got
**LEFTOVERS** to put in the fridge. Maybe I'll have that tonight,
depending on what else happens.

Speaking of food etc, very close to my apartment is a coffee shop called
"92 Degrees C", with the slogan "We Know Coffee". I suspect that 92C is
what they consider the ideal brewing temperature for coffee. I did stop
and get a cup of cappucino which was good. That brings up two
additional topics:

1) Coffee. The office has a "pantry" with powered coffee, cocoa, and
some other flavor to put in beverages. They also have a dispensor with
spigots for hot water and hot milk. This is pretty neat. Essentially
all the coffee I have had in India so far (except the cappuchino) is
instant. That's really more because I have not tried very hard to do
anything else, though. Brewed-from-grounds is available, just not
universally. But I have to say the instant is not nearly as bad as I
remember instant being.

2) Money. The unit of currency here is the rupee. There are 1, 2, and
5 rupee coins and 10, 20, 50, 100, and 500 notes. There may be more,
but that's what I have seen. The conversion factor is easy. A rupee is
about 2+ cents (exchange rate, not compared to how average salaries), so
you move the decimal left by 2 and then multiply by two. So 500 rupees
is 5.00*2 or 10 dollars. The interesting thing (and my friend Jeff who
was here for 3 weeks a few months ago warned me about this) is that many
small vendors will not accept larger bills. For example, at the coffee
shop, my cappuchino was Rs 40. He could not (or would not) take Rs100.
Luckily, I had a 50. People also typically round and/or play games with
change. I don't think it is thought of as cheating or stealing. It's
just normal. The coffee guy was very up front about it. I gave him the
fifty and he said the cappuchino cost 40, so the change was 10. How
about 5 for me and 5 for you? I think he may have been unusually
straightforward from what Jeff told me. I have been careful to
explicitly ask for change.

You know the thing is about the change, I don't care. The guy takes 10
cents and I'm going to be upset? But yet I also don't like giving the
impression that I'm an easy mark; I'd do things the way everyone else
does. But if you don't know...

The other thing about change is that there is kind of a impossible
situation there: The only way to get small bills/coins is by change, but
if no one can take large bills, and you don't always get all the change,
that's hard. I think the solution is to buy a few things in a large
store like food world.

-----

Today I had tentative plans to go with Ashlesha (one of the Indian
engineers whom I had taken to a baseball game in NH) to an Ashram
outside the city. There was some sort of special thing with music etc
going on. However, she was unable to get tickets, so instead she is
going to show me around the city today. (BTW, an Ashram is a kind of
spiritual retreat place. This one is run by a pretty famous guy; I
think there is one that he runs in Massachusetts too.) Ashesha
explained that you don't have to go there for the religious aspects; you
can also go just for the peace and quiet (an important thing missing in
Bangalore life, I might add).

By the way, I have taken only a few pictures and not many of general
interest. I was trying to show a picture of a rickshaw in the previous
blog entry but that did not seem to work well. After I take something
(maybe today?) I'll post them and let you know the location.

That's about it for now.

Namaste

Burns