First Thanksgiving in Bangalore

I'm a big fan of Thanksgiving. I've missed it two times in the last seven years and was pretty bummed both times. Fortunately, we decided to close the office for Thanksgiving and have a proper feast. We spent several hours on Wednesday doing prep and cooking and managed to sit down for dinner at 4pm on Thursday.

I find that cooking really helps me to unwind, so I signed up for four dishes. The first was a chocolate-zucchini bread (cake is probably more accurate) from my old Peace Corps cookbook. It did not start off well. As I grated the zucchini, I quickly realized that I had actually bought cucumbers. Ah well. I asked someone else to go to the vegetable stand and get the correct produce. It came out pretty well (the zucchini makes it very moist), although it tastes better when it has more orange zest. I was surprised by how poor (and expensive) the oranges were.

I also made mangosauce, which is basically applesauce except that it uses sour (unripe) mangoes. This one was pretty straightforward (after peeling, chopping and then boiling the mangoes, you just add sugar and cinnamon) and I liked it. Normally I would add more sugar, but the desserts were already pretty sweet.

The only non-dessert that I made was the mashed potatoes. Since one of our party is lactose intolerant, I replaced the milk/butter with coconut cream (canned, which is a little hard to find here). It gave the potatoes a nice texture, but had a hint of sweetness that was somewhat out of place. Still, I added enough garlic to even it out.

And then it was time to prepare the most important dessert: the apple pie. I found Granny Smith apples which was a big break (there are plenty of apples, but most are mealy and not great for baking). I made the pie crust, which I hadn't done in about four years, but it turned out pretty well (I made the base and cover for the apple pie as well as a base for the pumpkin pie, but I didn't do much for the pumpkin pie other than the crust).

Whoops, I guess I should have made a little more pie crust. Still, it had a nice finish after baking.

All in all, it was quite a feast. We had a guest from the US who brought canned cranberry sauce (though we also found some frozen cranberries which meant that we got homemade cranberry relish as well). The turkey came out really well and the stuffing was wonderful. We even had green-beans in a sesame sauce (well, there's always one semi-healthy dish at Thanksgiving). And the first course (pumpkin soup) was a great way to start the meal after many hours of cooking.

I think that I'm still full from the meal. Oh, and I was way too tired to get a picture of the dessert table with seven desserts (to feed nine people). I made one mistake on the apple pie, which was not adding anything to thicken the juice from the apples, which made for a lot of liquid in each slice. I guess I'll just have to keep making pies until I get it right.

My Frisbee Team

I've been playing Frisbee [1] in Bangalore for about a month now. There are actually a handful of teams around the city, and fortunately one of them practices at a field about two miles from my house. The teams periodically play one another and then there are tournaments here in Bangalore as well as in other cities in south India (recently in Goa and Chennai, and one coming up in Ahmedabad).

The team (our name is Air Traffic Control) practices at 6:00am four times per week (weather permitting), which means that I leave my house at 5:30 to make it on time. Fortunately, our office has a shower, so I can go straight to work and grab a quick shower before the rest of the staff arrives.

The field doesn't have any grass, it's just sand. This is what it looks like at 6am:

By the time we finish at 8am, it tends to look more like this:

We usually do an intense conditioning routine, which is good, since I haven't done much cardio in the last few months. It'll be a while before I can keep up with the rest of the team. And after conditioning, we usually scrimmage which has been lots of fun.

There are two big challenges with the field. First, there are lots of shards of broken glass all over the field. No one has gotten hurt on them, but it feels dangerous. (There's also a decent amount of cow manure, but that's par for the course here.) The other problem is the crowds that you can see above. Typically different games will encroach on one another's space. Usually there's a mix of cricket, soccer and field hockey players running through our games (plus the occasional middle-aged person who is walking laps around the field). Today's game was particularly difficult, since there were players from not one, but four cricket games standing in the middle of our field.

The Japanese guy is the only Frisbee player in the picture. The rest are playing different cricket games.

The team is mostly Indian, but there are currently three international players (one from Japan, one from Switzerland and me). We are typically the only expatriates on the field. Frisbee is also usually the only sport on the field that has female players. Normally 2-4 women out of ten players--there are about 20 people on the team, but it's hard to make it to every practice.

I'm really enjoying the group and am definitely getting back into shape. I look forward to joining them for a tournament in the coming months. I also look forward to my circadian rhythm adjusting to this, but so far it's been a hard slog. At least it's easy to get out of bed at 5:15 to play Frisbee.

[1] Yes, I know, I've actually been playing Ultimate, but I typically refer to it as Frisbee. If that offends you, you should probably question your priorities in life.

How long does it take to get a sim card?

3.5 months.

At least that was my experience. Thankfully, my friends let me borrow a sim card for all this time. The card was on the bad network (Aircel) and I was happy to switch to a much more reliable network (Airtel--yep, just one letter different).

The last time I traveled to India (2007) I managed in a couple of days. Back then, I was staying in a hotel, and after a few trips back and forth between the phone store and the hotel, I got all of the paperwork that I needed for my sim card.

This time, I've been living in a house, so I needed to get documentation from my landlord. All in all, it took more than three months to cancel the previous rental agreement and obtain a new one that includes my name on it (plus getting all of the requisite stamps to make it proper and official). I took all of this to the Airtel store along with a copy of my passport, visa and a passport-sized photo. They asked me for my proof of residence, which apparently is not my rental agreement or my visa. When I told them that I didn't have any, they told me that I could only buy a prepaid sim card (as opposed to a postpaid), which was fine with me.

During this time, I've been hesitant to give out my number since I knew it was temporary. Several people suggested that I just download some paperwork online or use Photoshop, but I declined, though if I went back and did it again, I'd almost certainly go for that shortcut. I also had to hold off on getting business cards, which made things awkward at a couple of meetings since business card exchanges are important here. Now I feel much freer and am very happy with the service so far.

Also, I bought a new phone. My old one cracked a couple of months ago when I dropped it on our hard floors. And then it cracked much worse earlier this month when I dropped it off the roof while hanging my laundry on the line. It's the right time to buy a phone though, since lots of stores are offering big Diwali sales. (So that's one thing that I like about Diwali.) My new phone is amazing and I'm really happy to have a good camera and lots of other upgrades.

Apparently I'm becoming crotchety

So Diwali celebrations have started here in Bangalore. This is my first time in India for Diwali and I'm not exactly getting into the festivities. In the last week or so, there have been more and more children running around shooting cap guns.

Today there have been fireworks all day. All day. From early morning to late at night.

I haven't seen many of them. For one thing, fireworks set off during the day are not particularly visible. Also, my house is in an area with lots of apartments, so even nearby fireworks may be obscured by buildings. Fireworks are much more unsettling when you can only hear them but not see them.

There are lots of people setting them off nearby. The booms and pops have been setting me on edge all day. Fireworks are part of most festivals here (and there are plenty of festivals), but I am excited for the end of Diwali and might just plan to travel someplace else next year at this time.

Load Shedding

On Wednesday morning I got a call at 10:01am. It took me a moment to understand the voice on the other end of the line. It was one of my co-workers and he was saying something about the lift. And then I knew what the problem is. Most mornings, the power in our office goes off at the stroke of 10:00am. That means that if you arrive at 9:59am and climb in the elevator, it just might get switched off while you're between floors. I ran down to tell the security guard that someone was in the elevator and he hurried to turn on the building generator. Two minutes later, my co-worker was in the office.

Load shedding are planned power cuts to manage electricity demand. For most of the city, power is cut for four one-hour blocks during the day (at our office, we usually lose power from 6-7am, 10-11am, 2-3pm and 6-7pm, but different parts of the city are on different schedules). Since the building staff doesn't like to use the generator during the day, that means that we don't have power for two hours of the workday. Fortunately, the office has a UPS which serves as a power backup (check it out on wikipedia), so that runs the wireless router and we stay connected to the internet during that time. In general, we just need to make sure that we have our laptops charged before the power cuts out. It can be a little uncomfortable without the fan on, but other than that, I barely notice the cuts. Unless, that is, I'm still at the office for the 6pm power cut, since it's usually pretty dark by 6:30, sometimes we use a solar lamp to light the office.

At home, we have an even fancier set up. My roommate bought a battery system and an inverter which runs the low-power outlets at our house (the battery charges during the times when the power is on). So, the washing machine, refrigerator, microwave and electric cooker don't work when the power is out, but we can run lights [1] and fans, charge computers and phones, and use the wireless. Still, this ends up being a bit of a hassle, since the power is out from 7-8pm, which means that if I'm cooking dinner, I need to either finish by 7:00 or start after 8:00. I like having the electric cooker, but gas would probably better since it's not reliant on electricity. Still, this is much nicer than the 8-12 hour power cuts I used to deal with in Tanzania (those were the scheduled ones--sometimes it stayed off for more than a day). And to date, I have successfully avoided getting trapped in the elevator at our office. ::Knock on wood::

[1] Still, I am a little concerned about draining the battery system before the power comes back, so I've switched most of the light bulbs in our house to LED bulbs. It's better for the planet anyway.

The movie theater experience

A friend recommended that I should read The Martian. Last Friday, I was feeling pretty lethargic after hearing about the Umpqua Community College shooting, so I downloaded the book and started reading. (Friday was an Indian holiday, so the office was closed and I could just stay home and read.) I really enjoyed the book and ended up finishing it before going to bed that night.

Then, last night, I went to a mall in town to see the movie. (I also checked out a grocery store in the mall and discovered that they were selling A&W Root Beer--Victory!!!) It's definitely a different experience than seeing a movie in a US theater. First off, there are no previews for movies. There are about ten minutes of commercials before the movie (things like jewelry, cologne, undershirts, leggings and rice). Then, during the movie they dubbed all of the f-bombs (Matt Damon swears quite a bit during the movie). Also, the movie had an intermission. This was not actually built into the reel, they just seemed to pick a moment about halfway through the movie and stop it so that people could buy concessions and so that they could play more ads (even though the movie was in English without subtitles, nearly all of the ads were in Hindi).

The most annoying part, however, was the assigned seating. This made it easy to get good seats by buying tickets early. However, there were people walking in 10 or 20 minutes after the movie started, shining the flashlights on their phones all over the theater to try to find their seats. That was rather distracting. Still, the movie had good picture quality (we watched it in 3D) and definitely good audio (aside from when the dialogue track was cut-off momentarily so that we couldn't hear Matt Damon swearing). And the ticket was about 300 rupees ($4.50), so that's a pretty good deal.

Long day in the field

Yesterday I woke up at 5:30am and left for the office at 5:45. I got to the office by 6:30 and we started our trip to our field office in the city of Anthiyur. It's important to leave Bangalore early so you don't get stuck in city traffic.

We stopped on the road for breakfast and with that 30 minute stop and made it to Anthiyur right at 11am. I got a two-hour nap on the trip. In Anthiyur, I met with managers from each of Essmart's field offices. It was great to meet most of the team, since most of my work outside of Bangalore has been at the Krishnagiri field office.

The view from the office in Krishnagiri (it's up a flight of stairs, so it mostly looks at electrical wires)

The team had a 3 hour meeting, most of which was in Tamil, so I wasn't really sure what was going on. (My Tamil is coming along slowly, but they mix some English into the conversation, so I knew what was being discussed at points.) Still, I thought it was better to remain attentive than to pull out my laptop and work, so I listened and watched who had the most input and who seemed most likely to disagree with various points.

After that, we went out to get lunch before heading back to Bangalore. It was about 2pm. My colleague from Bangalore couldn't start his car, so we pushed it until he was able to throw it into gear, and was able to run it to the restaurant. While we ordered, he called a mechanic, who said that he was on his way. We finished our lunch and waited for the mechanic (I read during that time).

Waiting to sort out car trouble

After three hours, the mechanic showed up, and said that there was a problem with the alternator. Our colleague concluded that he couldn't drive the car, so he helped us get to the city of Erode. From there, we got a bus to the city of Salem. Our bus left Salem at around 8:30 and didn't reach Bangalore until 12:30am. Then we had to get an auto-rickshaw (they insisted that we pay double the meter price at that hour of night) and didn't get home until 1am. Hopefully next time transport will be a little less complicated.

I don't take many selfies

But I was pretty proud of the one that I took today.

That's me doing a headstand. I can do pretty good headstands (I recently stayed on my head for five straight minutes). I had to use the wall to balance myself while I took the picture, but still. I thought that it was pretty cool.

I did not get mugged today

Today I was traveling to one of our field offices for a trial that we are working on. Unfortunately, I live on the north side of the city, and the buses drop me off in the southern portion. It's a one hour ride in an auto-rickshaw, after three hours on the bus coming back, so today I decided to only take the auto-rickshaw halfway, and grab dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. They didn't start serving until 7pm (it was a little past 6, so I went to a nearby Starbucks to have a hot chocolate).

I left the Vietnamese restaurant at 7:45, so it was reasonably dark, but still plenty of people on the streets, so I felt comfortable walking the last three miles home. It was 8:20 when I reached the railway crossing at Baiyapanahalli. It was only my second time walking this route, but I knew where I was going, so I walked at a deliberate pace. However, it's pretty dark near the railroad crossing. After I was across the railroad tracks, three teenage boys approached me and told me that I was walking the wrong direction. I told them that I knew where I was going. They tried to get me to take a "shortcut" which looked pretty sketchy, so I shrugged them off.

Then one of them grabbed my bag, another one reached into my pocket and a third one demanded my mobile phone. I've been mugged before, and this did not seem like a dangerous situation. Just some kids who wanted to be bullies. I shoved them off of me and kept walking (I knew that it was better lit and more crowded about 100 meters ahead). They didn't follow me.

I had another 30 minutes before I got home, so I got to stew in my anger for a little bit while I remained on high alert. But as I walked, people were nothing but friendly. Although I'm sure that I was scowling, plenty of people offered me kind smiles and greetings as I walked along. I passed a police station and thought about asking them to talk to those kids, but I didn't expect that they would do anything about it, so I left it alone. I just decided to shrug it off and avoid that area after sunset.

Not sure what was happening today

Here's the view from the balcony in our office:

So, sculptures being driven the wrong way on the highway with people walking in front to clear a path. I don't know what's going on, but I thought it was worth sharing.

I ate something that I shouldn't have

So I got food poisoning this weekend. I spent the weekend getting caught up on The Economist, watching movies and spending quality time in the bathroom. Starting at about 3am on Saturday morning, I was going to the toilet every 1-2 hours, and I threw up at 5am (I was glad I had eaten peanut butter and jelly for dinner--an Indian curry probably would have been even more unpleasant coming back up). I was also dealing with some stomach cramps.

This felt worse than most episodes of food poisoning, but I talked to a doctor who told me to give it 24-48 hours, and sure enough, by Sunday evening, I was back to normal. I was glad that it's easy to get gatorade here and mostly subsisted on that and bananas.

I'm not totally sure where the food poisoning came from. I've been eating lots of concord grapes (80 rupees per kg makes it easy to eat lots of them), and it's possible that I missed a spot when washing the most recent batch (I'm usually pretty careful, but it's a hard surface to wash). I'm also planning to avoid the restaurant up the street where I got mushroom fried rice the day before. It was pretty good, and I've eaten there a few times before and not gotten sick. Still, there's plenty of dinner options in the area.

Most importantly, I was getting stomach bugs nearly every month when I lived in Tanzania, so I'm pretty happy that this has only happened once in nearly two months.

Visiting Krishnagiri

We are starting a new trial at our field office in Krishnagiri. The city is in Tamil Nadu, but it's only 90 km from Bangalore. Still, traffic determines whether that's a 2.5 hour bus ride or a 4 hour bus ride (the bus moves pretty quickly, it's just that it makes a handful of stops along the way). I took the bus out there yesterday morning to meet with our researcher and also to talk to the sales team. This was my first time taking the bus during the day in India.

The trip went well and I'm excited about the trial. We got caught in some pretty heavy rainstorms in the afternoon, but after a break in the rain, we went back to the bus station. We got on a bus that was nearly full, which meant that it was about to leave. Unfortunately, that also meant that we got the seats that no one else wanted. I ended up in a seat where the rain was dripping in. It didn't rain during the middle hour of the ride which was nice. But by the time we reached Bangalore, I was happy to be off the bus. Unfortunately, it was still raining pretty heavily and we were on the south part of the city about 10 miles away from where I live. We couldn't find an available taxi or auto-rickshaw, so we just decided to grab dinner. After an hour, my co-workers husband drove down to pick us up, which was a huge relief. 

What I've been eating

Food here is pretty cheap, which is wonderful. I've been eating a good amount of fresh fruit. Mango season ended pretty quickly after I arrived. Same for jackfruits. But there are plenty of grapes, oranges and pomegranates (okay, the pomegranates aren't cheap). Oh, and custard apples too (that's what they're called here, though Wikipedia says that I should call it a sugar apple).

Image from Wikipedia, covered under GNU Free Documentation License v1.2 . Photo credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim 

I've eaten quite a bit restaurant food, since it's so cheap and easy. There's a nice restaurant near the office which can best be described as Chinese/Thai food with an Indian twist. There are also some small restaurants near my house where I can get pretty good Indian food for 100-200 rupees ($1.50-3.00). I had expected that I would eat more vegetarian food here, but I have been eating meat about ten meals per week, which is even more stark considering that my breakfast is nearly always vegetarian. In the mornings, I like to stop by a little shop near the office for a glass of fresh-made papaya juice. It's my new favorite breakfast.

I haven't cooked much so far, though I did make chana masala (spiced chickpeas), which was pretty good. I don't have too many cravings though I will probably need to make pancakes soon and get into cooking up stir-fries. (Is that the correct plural?) The biggest things that I miss are root beer and Cherry Coke (I'd enjoy a Dr. Pepper instead, and I think I can probably find that at the super-fancy grocery stores).

I also discovered that if I go to the next neighborhood (an area called Kammanahalli about 30 minutes walk from my house), there are two ice cream shops, McDonalds, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Domino's, Pizza Hut, California Burrito (basically a knock-off Chipotle), a couple of Korean restaurants, some ice cream shops (including Baskin Robbins) and much more. I'm glad it's not any closer, though I will probably take regular advantage of the easy access to pizza and burritos. Kammanahalli is definitely a fancy area, but it's pretty far from the beaten path (right at the north edge of the city) and not quite at the level of some of the other ones that have microbreweries and restaurants with fancy pasta options.

Plus, when I walk to Kammanahalli, I get to pass this really cool temple

There are lots of supermarket options here. I have pretty good access to ingredients (I bought some maple syrup and balsamic vinegar--cheese selection is limited and pricey, but I might cave soon), but the biggest disappointment so far is the peanut butter selection. They have Skippy and some wannabe American brands, but they all have added sugar, palm oil and emulsifiers. Hopefully I'll figure this out.

The commute

My house is about two miles from work. Most days I walk both ways. The evening is nice when it's cool, but I often leave later than I want to in the mornings when it's starting to get hot, so I often show up to work a little sweaty. Here's what a normal commute looks like for me:

My street; the blue house is the one right in front of where I live

Then I turn left and walk up this street

This is the same street, I just wanted to capture how it gets even narrower when cars are parked here

Then I take a right and walk down this street

And I get to admire this building under construction. There's lots of construction in the city

And then I walk past the cows. The smell definitely wakes me up in the morning.

A lot of women create sidewalk art in the mornings. This house has some of my favorites. (Usually it's just plain white, but there's a holiday coming up, so she got really fancy.)

Sorry, this is a lousy picture (I have to keep my eyes on the road when walking), but this is a scrapping facility where they go through waste and salvage plastic and metal.

Then I get to the main road (Banaswadi). But right where I meet it, it is passing over the railroad tracks, so I have to walk under the road.

And on this morning they train was going past as I approached.

Also, cows always have the right of way on the roads here

It's a bit dank as I walk across the railroad tracks. There's not really a path, but lots of us walk this way everyday.

It's a pretty nice view this way.

But the view can't distract from the smell. This one stays with you for the whole day.

Then, after leaving the railroad tracks, I'm back on the main road (you can see it coming down the ramp). This takes me almost all the way to my office.

This mall (with movie theater) is under construction, but it's going up pretty quickly. I might be able to see Star Wars Episode VII here in December.

Up ahead there's a cart where a man sells coconuts for people who want some coconut water on their way to work.

And a vegetable stand. Can't beat that fresh produce.

Lots of scooters and auto-rickshaws on the road. Not as many cars or trucks.

Across the street, you can see posters for the latest Kannada language movies. (Kannada is the language of Karnataka state where Bangalore is located, though within the city, many people speak English.)

At that blue cart, a man is making sugar cane juice. Behind him, there are a bunch of fruit stands.

Bangalore has a lot of trees. I really like all the green in the city.

Then Banaswadi Road hits another set of railroad tracks, so it has another ramp over them.

This one has a pedestrian footpath, though. It's actually really nice. Still, some people hop the fence to walk over the railroad tracks and shave one minute off of their trip

I really like this sign: "Loco pilot no backing without permission". I know that it is a direction to the pilot of the locomotive. But I prefer to think of it as addressing a crazy pilot.

As I come down the footpath, this is the view. More cars and fewer scooters. That means it's a more affluent part of town.

And here's the last road that I cross before I reach the office.

And right outside the office, there are food carts and fruit stands, which is very convenient.