Here I am again!

Well, here I am again in India. I've been here for 1 week now, and I am only getting time now to write very much. I'm here with two co-workers, Lenny and Richard. Lenny arrived almost 3 weeks ago. Richard and I just arrived last weekend. Lenny will be leaving this week, Richard and I are just starting our stay.

As usual, the trip from Boston to Bangalore was l*o*n*g. It is approximately 24 hours from the time you leaving Boston to the time you land in B'lore no matter what you do. There are a number of connection possibilities. How about this one: Boston->Chicago. Chicago->Delhi. Delhi->Bangalore. I did not chose that one. I went the conventional route of Boston->London->Bangalore on British Air. Richard chose Lufthansa and went via Frankfurt. This time I got the chance to see the much-ballyhooed Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport in London. I was actually not very impressed; it is surprising that for a brand new terminal they seem to not have thought much about passenger comfort. For example, there is no nearby place after clearing security to put your shoes back on!

I arrived in Bangalore at something like 4:30 in the morning at ANOTHER new terminal. Actually, not just a new terminal, a whole new airport. For years, Bangalore had been using an airport within the city limits which is actually owned by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). The airport is perhaps suitable for test-flying aircraft, but the terminal building is FAR to small for the commercial airport of a growing (well, it was anyway) city like Bangalore. See my previous blog entries about the travails of meeting people or seeing people off! The new airport (sometimes called BIAL, Bangalore International Airport Limited) is really quite beautiful! There was plenty of room to get around. Customs was easy. And best of all, there were parking lots, busses, taxis, all pretty orderly-seeming, and even some places to wait for someone to pick you up. The latter was my case. Arun was to meet me and take me to my hotel. That was especially nice as this is my 4th trip here, so I probably could have managed. But it is nice to see a familiar face, and I appreciated it that he came. I was a bit early and customs was so fast that he had not arrived yet when I came out of the airport. After looking around at all the faces and signs of people waiting, I phoned him, and we met up pretty easily.

The place I am staying this time is a hotel. This place is far closer to my work than either of the apartments I stayed in earlier. However, in some ways it is not as nice. The room is smaller, there is no living room with chair and sofa to relax (or to type exciting dispatches such as you are reading now). And worst of all, it is not in an area that I am familiar with. Both apartements were within walking distance of restaurants, stores, ice cream, parks, palaces, etc. This hotel (and my office) is in a "new" area of the city. I quote the word new because this is not what you think: While the city of Bangalore is expanding outward and taking over what used to be farms and fields, what is built there does not look fresh and new with some exceptions. There are certainly new-ish buildings like this hotel, the office and other things. But between them everything looks like any other part of Bangalore. In other words, bumpy dirty roads, little shacks housing people and small businesses, dust, honking horns, you name it. But what is NOT here is what I see as the heart of Bangalore. Note that the hotel is perfectly fine. It has a restaurant and what they call "The Unwind Island", an thatch-roof, open-wall bar surrounded by a dry "moat". It has a pool, a gym, a breakfast buffet (complete with omlet-making chef). And best of all, the commute to work is 15 minutes rather than 45 or 50 minutes.

The commute arrangement made when Lenny first arrived, he believed, was for a taxi to take him both directions to work. This seems to have morphed into a more-or-less regular driver named Satya who usually meets us. Occasionally there have been substitutes. We don't quite know what happened, but we are certainly ok with that. But it goes to reinforce the notion that you should not expect to control all the details.

Good Friday is a public holiday in India, or at least at my company, so we had the day off. We decided to go to a restaurant back closer to the center of the city called "The Royal Afghan". I had been there in 2006 with Chuck, Jayesh, Doug (I think) et al and liked it very much. I remember why now. It is located outdoors in a small part of a large patio at the back of the Windsor hotel. They had very good food, and the location was very nice...a bit cool, not much breeze, and reasonably quiet.

More later about our lunch with Prashanth on Friday, and our obligatory trip to Mysore Saturday...