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.