Fri, 10 Feb 2006
AA Adding Flights to India
On the way back from TX, I was reading American Way, the in-flight magazine, for American Airlines. In the CEO's column he noted that due to demand, they were finally adding flights from the US to India. I think just one city, for now, and I thought it was Delhi, but I can't recall. In his column he explained how they'd fly from Chicago O'Hare to India and due to inclement seasonal weather their route would take them over the North Pole to Asia. Holy Crap. I don't know why, but that makes me queasy just thinking about it. Let me see if I can find his column ----five minutes pass---- Here we go:
We are proud to offer the only nonstop service between Chicago O.Hare International Airport and Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, India.That's a difficult flight. I went on lovely Singapore Air, and I was still ready to tear my hair out due to the flight length. But at least on Singapore Air, I had my own tv monitor and on-demand movie selector thing. AA doesn't have that. Unless they're offering that flight at a substantial discount, I'll stick with the hot
..... New markets always bring new challenges. In this case, seasonal winds, along with our desire to conserve fuel, mean we will fly over the North Pole during certain parts of the year, and over Russia and Northern Europe at other times. Of course, serving a new market well requires more than a plan to get there and back. Fortunately, we have a group of experts at American who have helped us tailor our product offering to the Indian market. Our Indian Employee Resource Group played a critical role in planning several aspects of our Delhi service. The group helped us develop a special menu that features Indian, Indian-inspired vegetarian, and Western meal selections. Also, in addition to our more traditional entertainment programming, travelers will be able to enjoy films from Bollywood . the Indian film industry . in Hindi with English subtitles.
Thu, 15 Dec 2005
Another update
A lot of you asked a lot of questions about the trip. Here are my replies. What were your hours in the office there?
I was working the 5pm-2am shift, but usually was there a bit earlier and later. It actually helped with the jet lag. Did you like the trip?
Yes, but I'm glad I wasn't paying for it. I had a good time. I (usually) enjoy traveling. It was very interesting. I think I can sum it up by saying the work experience was extremely frustrating (the hours, the office experience there) but outside of work it was great. Would you go again?
Yes, although on my list of desired travel places/sites to go to, it's come down quite a bit in the rankings. If work wants to send me again, I'd go without hesitation. If I were paying for a vacation, then there are other places ahead of India in the queue to see first. Did you like the food? Are you sick of the food?
I like Indian food, I eat it a lot in SF. There are a ton of places in the Bay Area to choose from too. The 'real stuff' in India was even better. The spices seem brighter and fresher. That said- I quickly got tired of the heavier 'gravy-type curries' and turned to the tandoor specialties quickly. And I remembered to order the naan (if I had any) without 'butter'. Am I sick of it? Not really, but I'm not going to have any for quite a while. As an aside- most of the food there doesn't seem healthy at all. Another note- just because something's vegetarian doesn't mean it's lighter/healthier/better. )(That goes to the tourists I overheard in the city one day) You know what though- their Hyderabad Briyani with lamb kicks ass. How was the hotel?
Great. Almost too great. I was staying in a really nice place. But there aren't a lot of hotels in Hyderabad so they have the foreign travelers between a rock and an expense account. Was the pollution bad?
Holy shit yes. I thought I had been to polluted cities before but . . .On the first night after work when I was going back to the hotel in the car (at 3am) I thought- ah how nice, the temperature's cool enough here for fog. Then I realized it wasn't fog. Not only is there a lot of car pollution, but they're burning stuff constantly. There are always (intentional) grass fires and trash fires. Or charcoal fires for people to huddle around because it's so cold (68F) - like the security guards did outside a lot of the office buildings. You can see some of the grass fire smog in my pics from Golconda Fort. Oh, and I think I wrote about the other kind of trash/pollution here. Were the chix[sic] hot?
What chicks? I only saw a few in the office. They're all married too (which means they're invisible to me). Otherwise I didn't see any. I'm sure there are some hot ones around, but the whole place is like a giant gay bar (not that there's anything wrong with that - they're like Saudis- they (the men) hold hands, constantly touch each other)- no women around. There are some hot ones I'm sure, but in general the ladies stick together, or they're with their husbands, or they're stuck at home. How were the bars/pubs/clubs? See the above gay bar comment. The few bars I saw were like very lame gay bars (not that there's anything wrong with that). No women. Bad drinks. Bad drink 'specials'. Bad DJ's who were a bit full of themselves. Dorky guys who were all wearing the same outfit really- The outfit there is dress shoes, faded jeans, untucked Kurtya or dress-shirt, goofy Bollywood sunglasses (yes at night) and of course the 3 day stubble is de rigueur. Like this guy. So basically- the bars are goofy. But then again, it beats sitting in the hotel room. But then again, who gives a shit- I'm not a big clubber/bar guy anyway. Were there really cows on the road?
Yes, and goats too. Why aren't your pictures on this site?
Because I was having problems accessing the computers at my apartment (I think the power went out) and I usually organize them and then upload them to this site. So I tried to use flickr.com instead. In a way that might be better because my coworkers are always asking to see my pics. It may be better if they're not on this site in case they stumble onto this blog and then take offense at something in one of these posts. Disclaimer- yeah, I'm over-generalizing, so what. I'm not trying to be mean or offensive or make the US seem better, etc. I'm just trying to answer your questions. 15 Dec 09:17 | /travel/india | 0 comment(s)
Wed, 14 Dec 2005
A bit more. . .
Jim Rogers style - business ideas/thoughts (yeah right- I wish I could write as well). re US businesses:
overhearing about Franklin Templeton in the hotel lets me know that they have a big presence in HYD. But their office seems chaotic from what I overheard. They probably don't need their HYD office. Their Florida team seems crazy too and probably feeds into the HYD team's problems. Note to self- never use Franklin Templeton unless I'm dealing with their Singapore office. Overhearing GM people from the US just re-enforces what everyone knows- GM sucks and has no clue about what people want or how to run a business. I can't believe some of the garbage they were feeding each other. And these were mostly US-based exec's! Overhearing Dell staff shows that Dell tech people from the US are more detail oriented than I would have guessed, and they have what seems like a tight run ship- on the other hand, they aren't as up on the latest tech things as they should be- thinking that a sling box is brand new technology shows that they don't know what techblogs are. . . They should hire more linux people too. They're too Windows-focused. re Indian businesses
the best opportunities here would be to
1) open a hotel catering to business travelers from the US and Europe, there's a shortage and their rates are high
2) construction construction construction- wow tons of it going on
3) opening a limo service (for out of town execs) and a taxi-service has a LOT of potential. All of the offices here provide rides for their staff via cabs- especially the call centers. They aren't efficient and there's a need for more that can handle a medium to large size office. The ones that are here are having problems yet due to demand outweighing supply they can continue to be late dropping off their workers because the companies have no other services to turn to.
4) infrastructure problems abound though- they need better power management- (electricity, backup generator companies, etc). But then again, so does SF.
5) one big problem though- you have to pay bribes out the ass here to get anything done. You'll have to have one Indian National to technically own the India-based office, as a separate corp/llc. You'd better really trust that person, or you'll get burned. Oh, and then you'll pay more bribes. See also Parties suspend Indian MPs filmed in TV "sting"
14 Dec 13:50 | /travel/india | 0 comment(s)
Thu, 08 Dec 2005
I'm back in the US
I got back to SF on Sunday night after spending two (1.5 really) days in Singapore. [I had a great time in Singapore and got to hang out with one of my buddies- one of the original CyberSoürce Cruë, Mr Jason Chang.] Like an idiot I went straight back into work bright and shiny on Monday morning and I've been paying for it since- I've been just slightly jetlagged, but really I'm feeling more run down that anything - and of course am worried about the small cold/flu I seem to be fighting. I have some more posts to add about India and Singapore and I'll try to add those this weekend. One of the posts I had already started working on was a Jim Rogers-type blurb about what investment/business observations I noted on the trip. I had written a paragraph lamenting the infrastructure in India and I think I complained about power outtages being a possible weak link in the tech offices over there. But Sunday night in SF, I noticed the power had gone off at least once in my apartment when I was gone- and it went off again on Sunday night/Monday morning. How do you like them apples Alannis? But it's good to be back in my messy apartment. I just wish it weren't so chilly! After India, and especially Singapore (85-89F & 85+% Humidty) the temp here is a bit of a downer. But as they say in my homeland, "Walk it off!" 08 Dec 09:51 | /travel/india | 0 comment(s)
Thu, 01 Dec 2005
Wheeee
Yesterday I did some dumb things. One was that I walked across the street at a "crosswalk". Traffic here is nuts and for a minute I didn't think I'd make it across the street. But I did. Then later I went shopping. That's not the dumb thing- well, spending more money than I planned to was, but anyway, after shopping the store owner asked how I had gotten to the store. I said I had taken an auto rickshaw and then walked across the street. He rolled his eyes at that, and laughed, then asked if I would like a ride back to the hotel. I said it wasn't a problem as it wasn't too far and I'd just take another rickshaw. He said- don't worry, my boy will take you. Quick note- everyone here has a 'boy'. Whenever I go to a store, the owners will chat with me and say "my boy will go fetch the items". Or in the hotel, I had some shirts to be washed so I called downstairs and the woman said "I'll send my boy up later." The kids at the cafe who bring the tea to The Transporter are "his boys" where his is either The Transporter or the Cafe owner depending on the sentence structure. So back to the store story- Anyway, I said, well, okay since you're offering I'll take a ride. We go outside and it's about rush hour time, which is apparently 6am-midnight from what I can tell. The shopboy points to his.... scooter. So I hope on back- both of us sans helmets- and we proceed to go to the hotel in the rush hour traffic. It was fun, but scary fun. My knees were inches from other cars as we went along, but as I said, it was fun. A bit of a rush. In hindsight it was stupid, but oh well. The whole time I've been here I haven't worried about getting sick from food, or getting sick from mosquitos (I've been taking malaria meds every day for the past month)- I've been more worried about getting in a car wreck (even if I'm walking). But you know, you gotta go with the flow. If I had access to my personal email right now, I'd copy and paste Kevin's email signature quotation here, because that's what I was thinking of on the scooter. So later in the day The Transporter took me to another store. First we went to Niloufer, the cafe in the Arab quarter, then out and about. I really liked it but didn't buy too much. I know I'm a bit uh, can I say 'husky' instead of 'chunky'? It sounds more flattering. Yeah whatever, I could stand to lose a few pounds. So shopping for clothes in a place where the prices are tempting, but the average XL is meant for a person about half of your weight (in kilos), it's a bit tricky. Well, I had heard shoes were good buys, so that's what I was looking for that day. Well, it turned out I had the same problem. They don't have anything approaching sizes over 11 1/2 US [I wear a size 12-13 depending on the brand]. Arrggh so frustrating. But that's fine. I was also trying to keep an eye out for gifts for The Transporter. I finally took him to the music shop and said I'd get him some cassettes which he was pumped up about. Long story, but he's hard to shop for and I didn't want to just give him a tip (which I will anyway) when I leave so I was glad to get him excited about the music. So he carefully selected some Hindi movie soundtracks, looked in vain for some Eagles tape (while rejecting my recommendation of Creedence instead), and also selected--- Crazy Frog's Crazy Dance Hits. Good lord. This has thoroughly changed the commute. Read that link if you don't understand what I'm talking about. I'm pretty sure that Crazy Frog was mentioned in Dante's Inferno. So, I'm coming to the end of my trip. It's Thursday/Friday now and I leave Hyderabad for Singapore on Friday night. I arrive in Singapore late Friday night (really Saturday morning) and then I'll spend Saturday and Sunday there before leaving Singapore Sunday night. I plan on meeting up with Jason Chang, another ex-CyberSourcer for food and drinks. It should be fun. Then I'll be back in SF on Sunday night- I don't lose any time on the flight back from Singapore. When I get back I'll move the pics from flickr.com to my pic section and add captions and better descriptions. I'll probably vent a bit about work too because despite having a lot of fun outside of work, work itself was very frustrating. But that said, I'm grateful for the opportunity to travel here. Maybe I'll get sent back in 2006. We'll see. 01 Dec 14:36 | /travel/india | 0 comment(s)
Mon, 28 Nov 2005
Nagarjuna Sagar
The Transporter asked if I would like to take a road trip this weekend to see Nagarjuna Sagar. I knew sagar meant lake, but I didn't know what Nagarjuna was. He explained in a bit of broken English that it was the where Buddha was from. At Nagarjuna I'd see Buddha's home. Well, it wasn't actually Buddha's birthplace, but I didn't think the Transporter was trying to mislead me. He told me to eat a big breakfast and get the hotel to pack me a sandwich and we'd head out. He said it would take a while to get there because sometimes "the highway" was busy. It turned out to be about a three hour drive down a (barely) two lane road. It was actually pretty thrilling because The Transporter kept trying to open up the Chevy and he got to practice his evasive maneuvers around slower traffic- and even oncoming traffic at times (why do trucks and busses like driving at oncoming cars?). Eventually we got to practice high-speed livestock aversion driving. It was kind of interesting to finally see the countryside. There were a few villages on the way and I knew that the language had changed from mostly Hindi and some Telegu to exclusively Telegu- even the road signs changed. We finally got to the area we wanted to go to and it is a huge lake. I thought for some reason it would be like the lake between Hyderabad and Secunderabad, Hussain Sagar. But no, this was a huge lake that looked manmade. There was a big earth dam that we couldn't drive across so we went around it to an even bigger dam. That's how they made the lake on the Krishna River. We parked the car and took a boat out to the island out in the middle of the lake where the museum was. It was about a 30-45 minute boat ride, and I got to hear from some passengers who wanted to practice their English with me more about the lake, the dam and the museum. The conversation was a bit surreal though:
... there's more to read here ...
28 Nov 03:02 | /travel/india | 0 comment(s)
Tue, 22 Nov 2005
Pimp my Tuk-tuk
So today I wanted to escape the confines of the hotel. So after my normal wakeup and exercise time in the hotel gym, I showered up and decided to wander off the hotel grounds. I grabbed the nearest autorickshaw, which is their name for a Thai tuk-tuk. The driver of mine had done his up in quite a fancy manner. He had put a velour type of header on the inside of the canopy with a pretty cool pattern. There was also the custom mirrors and some custom seat work. There was also a pic of some popular actress on the inside of the canopy as well- so I could stare at her if I didn't want to stare at the traffic. The best part was the kickin' stereo system, which the driver promptly cranked up with the most recent wicked rad' bumpin hindi tunez. Boo ya. Pimp my Tuk-tuk. Como se dice 'enchulame la maquina' en hindi? Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so I don't have any pics. I wound up going to this mall/department store and wandered around for a while. I didn't buy anything though. I did like the "food court" area at the top of the mall. I just followed the people up there- it seemed to be pretty popular. I grabbed a really nice kebab-n-roti combo plate. Afterwards I just wandered around the neighborhood for a while. It's a little dicey walking in the street though with all the traffic, so I just tried to walk in the middle of a crowd, if there was one. A different autorickshaw took me back to the hotel, it wasn't as tricked-out as the first. By now though it was the early afternoon and there was much more traffic on the road. I felt like I was going to pass out when we were at any stoplight- the pollution is that bad. Now I know why other Indian cities are trying to get the autorickshaws to replace their two-stroke motors w/ four-stroke CNG. I think getting the busses to do that would help a bunch too. But all in all I was glad I got to get out and see some of the city, even if it was the parts of town around the mall as it were. It was good to be out in the sun again- even if I did get a massive headache and respitory problems from the smog. Don't get me wrong- I'm not bitchin' I'm just trying to paint an accurate picture of what it's like here. The smog really makes an impression- and I thought Mexico DF had a lot of pollution. . . . I guess now that I have my sinuses back (hopefully it's not just temporary) I'm more aware of this. Well, I'm off to the office in a bit. I'm working over Thanksgiving, but I'm going to try to have a group dinner on Thursday. Yesterday I asked the team to confer amongst themselves and pick a restaurant. They emailed me back saying we were going to The Olive Garden. Fortunately I found out later that it's an Indian restaurant and has nothing to do with The Olive Garden in the US. Wheeee. 22 Nov 03:55 | /travel/india | 0 comment(s)
Sun, 20 Nov 2005
Charminar and Golconda Fort
I put up some more pics on my flickr account. I'm not sure I like flickr, but it'll do for now. I'll move the better pics to this site when I get back to the US. Anyway, the pics are of Golconda Fort, Hussain Sagar, Birla Temple and Charminar. I spent most of Saturday tooling out at Golconda Fort. It's a pretty cool site. I'd highly recommend a visit out there if you ever get the chance. After the sun goes down they have a "light show", which is a show consisting of the telling of the history of the fort with music (from a tape/cd) while they light up the various parts of the fort with floodlights. It's actually quite nice. I got to see the sundown from up top which was great. The only downside was the smoke from the day's grassfires. I think you can even see the smoke in some of my pics. But all in all, Golconda's a very impressive place. Oh, there was another weird bit- when you're at the very top building of the fort- you can climb up to the roof terrace. But there's only one stairwell. So when you go in the stairwell (which isn't lit- remember you're up there as the sun's going down) you have to mind the people trying to come down the stairwell. Now there isn't really a nice sense of decorum with crowds at sites here. Let's just say a guy my size, trying to go up a tiny stairwell displaces smaller people who try to pass by in the stairs. I hope they liked the free belly rubs. It was a bit scary though, but I made it both up and back. Today I spent most of the day at Charminar, which is also impressive, but in a different way. It's in the historic center of Hyderabad. I've heard it referred to as the Arc de Triomphe of the East. In a way, it's quite similar. Fortunately at Charminar, there are separate stairwells for going up and down to the top. A queue does build up to go back down though, so you still have to be careful with all the people. Oh, one cool thing- Abdul the driver (aka The Transporter) took me to his favorite tea shop for a quick cup. The place was packed, so we had tea and biscuits in the car. It was great tea. I can't remember the name of the place, but it rhymes with cauliflower (Neaflour? Neiflour?). I'll get the name and remember it though. I'm pretty sure it was an Irani type cafe and our tea was either Indian or Irani with a bit of sugar and milk. Quite nice. I had asked The Transporter about the type of tea where they pour it from pitcher to pitcher in extended arms to whip it up with air and make it thicker. He was surprised I knew about it and promised to take me to another cafe before work sometime to try that kind. Unfortunately I'm back to work tomorrow which means I won't be able to do much touristy stuff. But I'll try to do some things during the daytime this week. 20 Nov 11:28 | /travel/india | 0 comment(s)
Fri, 18 Nov 2005
Feeling a bit better
I'm almost recovered from the cold/flu/cough. It's been tough to get rid of whatever it is I caught. Today's Friday, last day of work. Well, I work until 2am Saturday morning, then I'll go home. Tomorrow I'm supposed to switch rooms at the hotel for some reason, then I'll go out with Abdul, my driver, to finally see some of the tourist spots- Golconda Fort being the main one. I'll try to get some shopping in too.
... there's more to read here ...
18 Nov 02:00 | /travel/india | 0 comment(s)
Tue, 15 Nov 2005
Update from HYD
Just a quick update tonight. I caught a cold last week and a had a sore throat as well. I'm mostly recovered. A lot of people in the office have been sick and I think I caught "the fever" from them. They attribute it to the sudden change in weather. By that, they mean the recent shocking drop in temp to 85F-ish during the day and 77F at night. I'm not sure about that. . .but okay. Due to me being ill, I haven't done anything since getting here. I don't think I left the hotel at all this weekend. I should be getting out more this week though so I'll be getting a better image of where I am. So far all I've seen is the nice hotel and the office. Speaking of the office- my hours here are a bit odd as well. I'm working from 5pm-2am while I'm here. So not only am I jetlagged, I'm just flat out tired too from being up late.
... there's more to read here ...
15 Nov 17:24 | /travel/india | 0 comment(s)
