Reports From My Nanocosm

I posted photos to three sets in my Flickr account:
Bangalore: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geodanny/sets/521621/
London: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geodanny/sets/534167/
New York: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geodanny/sets/576820/

I returned home from New York on Sunday night. I had a good time catching up and discussing my [mis]adventures with a college friend over dinner Friday night. It stopped raining after dinner, so he showed me a little around midtown Manhattan, pointing out the Chrysler and Empire State buildings, providing a little history and information about each, and taking me to a very bright and gaudy Times Square and to a newly restored Grand Central Station. I met my first crazy New Yorker on that walk. That crazy guy accused me of murdering Luther Vandross and followed us down the street, screaming about how evil I was and that I was going down for my crimes. We ignored his tirade, crossed the street, and picked up our pace. He eventually gave up a block later after crossing the street to intercept us. I think he found someone else he wanted to harass.

I then did the touristy thing Saturday and Sunday with another college chum and his extended family; our group totaled nine adults, a teen, two children and two toddlers. Saturday was spent riding the subway around Manhattan and visiting various sites. At one point, the door closed when only half the group had unloaded from the subway car. Unfortunately, those of us left in the train car had never taken the New York subway before and had limited experience with public transportation elsewhere. The look on everyone’s faces must have been classic, along the lines of ‘Oh God, now what!’, as the train sped away with half the group, including me. We got off at the next stop and studied the map for a good ten minutes trying to figure out the station and line we came from and what line we could take to return. We were able to get back but that wasn’t the only excitement for the weekend.

Sunday was spent at Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately, we didn’t make reservations ahead of time to get into the Statue of Liberty Museum in the statue’s base. But I did get some nice pictures of Lady Liberty and her surroundings. I’ll be sure to go back with reservations.

My plane flight was scheduled to leave JFK at 6pm. We thought it would take an hour to 1.5 hours to get to JFK airport but it took just over two hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I ran into the airport at 5:15 and used the self check-in line. When I got to the kiosk and started to pull out my wallet, I realized I still had my buddy’s walkie-talkie in my hand; I’d kept hold of it after saying my goodbyes to the other car. Realizing I still had it was my first ‘F#@!’ moment. I’m shipping it back to him tomorrow.

Then the computer said I missed the cut-off and that they stopped checking in 45 minutes before flights; I’d missed it by 2 minutes. I asked the American Airlines employee walking around the self check-in area what that actually meant and what I needed to do now. He told me I needed to go stand in the main cabin line that was reaching back to the door.

Instead, I went into the business class line, waited for my turn (there were only two people in that line), and told the desk agent that I wasn’t business class but have a full fare ticket, needed to make my six o’clock flight to SFO, and missed the cut-off by two minutes. I threw in the full fare bit because I remember Joe saying something about full fare tickets  being more valuable to airlines. I guess some part of my plea worked because she was friendly and asked her supervisor for his help. He OK’d my boarding pass. She then directed me to take my check-in luggage to the front of the line for the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) checkpoint for a security check.

The TSA lady didn’t buy the desk agent’s direction, saying condescendingly that everyone else in line had a 6pm flight, and made me go to the back of their line and wait my turn. And wait I did; sweat too. The conveyor to the airport’s inner sanctum wasn’t working so the TSA didn’t screen any bags. They stood around twiddling their thumbs and watching the passengers stare them down. At 5:35, they started collecting suitcases and piling them neck-deep along a partition. I realized then that my suitcase was taking another flight West, and I wasn’t in a position to argue with the TSA. I bid my luggage farewell and sprinted towards my gate. Luckily, the passenger security screening point only had a couple people. I made it to the gate and into the waiting airplane at 5:57. My shoes were still untied and laptop was in my hands. A final boarding call with my name was made as I was getting to my assigned seat.

I don’t understand how or why check-in luggage requires passengers to stand in a second line. It is inefficient. Shouldn’t that security screening happen someplace inside the airport, between the check-in counter and the airplane?

American Airlines promised my suitcase on Monday afternoon at work. I’d wanted to pick it up at SJC but they wouldn’t accept. At 4:45pm, they called me and asked if they could deliver it to home between 7 and 11pm. After a few assurances, I changed dinner plans and told them I’d be around. At 11pm, I called to ask where they were and was told it’d be delivered within half and hour. Still in between London and New York time, I crankily told the lady on the phone they’d need to deliver it to the office the next morning, I was going to bed. She tried to get me to reconsider but I wasn’t budging. She told me it would be there between 8am and 11am. It showed up at 11:15am this morning. I really don’t mind not getting my suitcase until Tuesday. I was, after all, mostly to blame for it missing the flight. But I do mind setting time aside to wait for a delivery and it not arriving. They did a terrible job of setting expectations.

Some things I’ve been meaning to comment on:

• The thing I like least about London is that restaurants and pubs allow smoking. Some restaurants try to please both sides by having both smoking and non-smoking sections. Don’t people realize that smoke doesn’t obey boundaries with the non-smoking section. So why do restaurants even bother? As a country, England should follow California and Ireland and enact more strict bans against smoking in public. The negative effects of smoking are well documented along with the stresses those health problems cause to the overall health system. I won’t even get into the added incentives England has because of their socialized health care system. Everything in my suitcase reeks of cigarette smoke.
• I don’t think New York had a chance to get the Olympics. It is filthy. The subways were nasty, particularly compared to the London Underground. Only one or two stations looked restored. The rest of the stations I saw were literally crumbling. I also saw rats climbing around the tracks.
• Bangalore had bug repellant smell that pervaded everything including my closed suitcase. Even my clean clothes had that smell. I opened my suitcase today and was almost knocked out from the fumes. I hope they wash out easily.
• Maybe we’re too hygienic. What if using anti-bacterial soaps actually harm us because they lessen our actual immunities?
• India may actually pass our economy in my lifetime. Indians are very optimistic about the future and things only look up for them. If we are to compete, our society needs to start actually giving a damn about education. I’ll post more about this another day.
• I will probably go back to London without fear of further terrorism. I’d go tomorrow if the boss asked.

I’m in New York City now, here for some meetings in one of our offices and to spend the weekend. It was pouring when I arrived. I was up at 4:30 am in London to make my morning flight. I expected heavier than usual security; I was wrong. I’ve seen tighter, more stringent security at Burbank airport.

I have to commend the London emergency response; they did a terrific job dealing with the attacks yesterday. I can tell they were well prepared. Other governments should visit to see what they did right (and wrong).

It was eerie to be under lockdown and see the streets mostly empty for that short while. Also it was unnerving that Police cars with sirens blaring and lights flashing kept flying down the city streets late into the night. I kept wondering if something else had happened.

By dinner time, the busses were running again and people were out and about. Taxis and other cars drove around. Restaurants were open (a good thing for me;) and pubs mostly full. I think that Londoners won’t be beaten this easily. I even walked up Regent to Marylebone and then down to Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and the Parliament Building (with Big Ben). A longer walk than necessary because I didn’t bring a map.

Things I want to note about my London visit:

• British people pronounce “Leicester Square” as “Lester Square.” I don’t understand how a ‘c’ can be silent.
• Being ‘chav’ isn’t a good thing.
• London police drive BMWs.
• London streets are part of an elaborate maze.
• I found out that Cheddar is a place outside Bristol in South West England. Thanks Morgan.

I’m still in London. A few cowards decided to bomb the tube and some busses today. Our building is locked down right now; nobody will leave until we get an all clear from the police.  

Luckily, I wasn’t near the blasts and my coworkers are all safe and accounted  for. One of my friends, Todd, saw a double decker bus blow up about 100 yards in front of him and was shaking when he came into the office. The bus was packed with people because the Underground had been closed down. He’d tried to get on busses at Kings Cross but wasn’t able to because they were too full. I borrowed the picture from the BBC. It is the bus he saw bombed. They have very good coverage of this and other major events.
 
I don’t think these types of attacks have the intended consequence. If anything, it will make people more fearful and less sympathetic towards the plight of the Palestinians, Iraqis, or whatever other group the bombers purport to represent. If anything, the people they think they are trying to help will be hurt by these actions. 

I recovered and the weather became ill. It rained a good part of the day. Drizzle, pour, stop, sprinkle, deluge, stop, mist, cats and dogs, rain, and so on. I went in a little early to provide ample time to visit the Kew Gardens in the afternoon. Considering the weather, I instead walked the few blocks to the British Museum during one of those breaks in the weather. Unfortunately for me, I read my map wrong and was looking for it on the wrong street, one block too soon. After back tracking most of the way to the office, to the Tottenham Underground station, I was able to find it. Yes, it had occured to me that I might stop and ask directions, but I thought I was on the right street and was surrounded by others toting maps of their own.

I really wasn’t interested in the museum; seen one, you’ve seen them all. It was plan C. But I was mostly incorrect. There were a few cool things to see: Great Hall, Rosetta Stone, Assyrian carvings, Rosetta Stone, and Parthenon pieces. The museum is housed in an old building with a gigantic courtyard in the center. Recently, they built a round building in the center and covered the courtyard with glass. They did an excellent job and made the whole building more inviting. The wing I entered first is dedicated to Egypt, Greece and the Near East. I nearly walked into the throngs crowding one piece; it was the Rosetta Stone. And though it is still a rock, it has a magical hold on the imagination. That one small chunk of rock holds the key to the hieroglyphic code. They also have quite a few beautifully carved pieces stolen long ago from the Parthenon in Greece. What I found most fascinating were Assyrian wall carvings and statues. A few of which were featured on the cover of a text book I had in high school.

Other than those few pieces, it is just another museum chock full of many nice, small trinkets that resemble the collections in countless other museums. Blasphemy, I know. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them, I do, but I sometimes suffer from information overload. I still dropped some money in the pot and bought a museum guide. Ultimately, I hope the British Museum returns the stolen pieces back to their rightful owners. Or, at least works out a deal with them to provide a reasonable fee to retain them, such as charging an admission fee and splitting the proceeds with the countries of origins for restoration of other works of art and local cultural programs.

Speaking of museums, if you’re ever looking for a museum off the beaten path, I recommend the Detroit Institute of Arts. They have an amazing mural by Diego Rivera regarding the balance between labor and management. It is two (or three) stories high and takes up a glass-covered courtyard. They also have a great collection  of modern and impressionist art. Ironically, Edsel Ford paid for it.

Being in SoHo, heart of the West End theatre district, it would be hard to avoid seeing a show. I got a chance to see Burlesque, a comedy Tuesday evening. Funny show. In case you’re wondering, most of the viewers were women (not the butch lesbian kind).

I discovered hand-pulled beer for the first time. Yum! This stuff is good. The lack of carbonation makes it go down more smoothly. More bars in the U.S. need to provide this stuff. There’s a business need.

London would be a fun town to live in for a while, even if it is expensive. Everything is so close together and the tube goes most places you might need to go. The problem is that much of the food and a lot of other items are priced in pounds similar to U.S. dollars, but when you figure a 1.81 USD to 1 GBP conversion rate, it is actually almost twice the price.

Jolly good, old London, England is swell. Unfortunately, I’m not. The Jet Airlines food, or the food transition, has left me with a case of ‘Dehli belly’ yesterday and today. My bet is airline food. I’m feeling better already with help from a vial of po ji yeen (little brown Chinese herbals pills), bananas, and tums.

That still hasn’t stopped me from straddling the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory (also home of Greewich Mean Time), walking along the Thames, and getting into the office. I’m fairly corny in that I really only care about riding the Tube, and visiting the Prime Meridian and Kew Gardens (Royal Botanical Gardens). Two down.

More pictures on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geodanny/sets/534167/

Wow, what a journey! I’m in London now. I left my hotel Saturday morning about 6:30 for a 9am flight. I arrived at my London hotel around 2am Bangalore time. The Bangalore hotel had tried to convince me that I could leave at 7:45 and still make my flight. I’m glad I didn’t listen to them. I was there with time to spare but that was only after a lot of confusion on my part. A little bit of traffic might have been disasterous if I’d left later. It was interesting to see them xray, seal and bind my check-in suitcase right at the entrance to the airport. I was glad to be reassured my suitcase wouldn’t be plundered. My plane boarded 30 minutes earlier than advertised, an hour before the flight, and we left on time. The Bangalore Airport is a little smaller than Burbank (if you’ve been there, you know what I mean) and only has two boarding gates. For the rest of the flights, like mine, you board a bus that takes you to the waiting aircraft and you walk up the stairs to board the plane.

I sat next to a pair of cousins from Oman on the flight from Bangalore to Mumbai. They were extremely nice and convinced me that Oman is a place I should visit. They said the best time to visit is now, between June and August. Their country is more than just desert and has a thriving ecosystem, particularly in the South where it is green and lush, in a place called Salalah.

The real adventure started in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) where the domestic and international terminals are a mile or more apart. Jet Airways, the airline I flew, lacked the service Singapore Airlines gives at the gate and lacked post-flight directions. They didn’t have a staff member posted to answer questions from clueless travelers, which there undoubtedly are. They must assume everyone knows what they’re doing and have done this a thousand times.

Like Bangalore, the domestic terminal in Mumbai was small which required us to exit the airplane down stairs into waiting busses. Mumbai has been drenched by the Monsoons this week and was wet and warm. It wasn’t raining but must have had 99% humidity. The captain told us it was 27 degrees (83 F). The few minutes I was outside felt nice to my skin. Eventually, it did poor down like cats and dogs once I was in the boarding area for my next flight.

Off that tangent. It wasn’t obvious, but for transfers to other flights you need to stand by the baggage carousel to claim your check-in luggage, deliver it to the ticket counter, and catch a shuttle to the international terminal. I found out by asking a few different people how i find the gate for my transfer to London.  

Our flight path took us over: Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and Belgium.

Friday night, I went with a coworker to the Commercial street area of Bangalore and walked around looking at all the wares being sold by the street vendors. This is the area to go if you want to haggle. He’s been there before and thought it would be worth seeing. He was right. It was also the first time I got in a motorized rickshaw (three wheeled taxi). Quite the experience. There are some powered by liquid petroleum which we took. Hank Hill would have been proud. It must have been obvious from my fashion and camera that I was American because “American, buy! American, see this!” echoed for much of the time. The giant bats were out in force but unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a good picture of one. I did get a picture of a cow lying down in the street; it didn’t move too fast for me I would have taken more pictures because there were quite a few interesting subjects but at one point the camera battery seemed to have died; it hadn’t. It started pouring sometime during our trip and, without umbrellas, we were soaked by a warm rain. I hadn’t felt warm rain in a long time; California rain is cold.  

This same coworker also told me that Bangalore is a hideout for Islamic terrorists. They have some sort of arrangement with the police in which they won’t be bothered unless they cause problems in the state. Knowing this made me a little uncomfortable in the Commercial Street area which seemed to be heavily muslim, with a very large percentage of men wearing their skull caps and women in burqas (full body coverings). But nobody bothered us. I didn’t feel threatened, just a little uncomfortable knowing that my government is possibly despised by some of the people in this crowd and that someone may take it out on me, even if I too despise and disagree with my government. I wouldn’t have felt that as much without the terrorists among us comment. I also had a chance to see the inside of a mosque close up when we passed one with open walls. He has some knowledge of Islam and pointed out the washing and prayer areas. Interesting to see.

I’m not much of a haggler so I didn’t buy on my jaunt through Commercial street. The few things I bought on this trip were from government owned stores which have prices marked and guarantee you’re buying what is advertised. No haggling allowed. Even then, goverment store employees were very pushy with me, particularly one selling silk and wool rugs from Kashmir. They were beautiful but expensive ($140 USD for 2′x4′), even for a “rich American” (ha!), but they don’t take no for an answer. I was tempted but left without buying.

Well, I leave Bangalore early tomorrow morning. It has been a valuable experience. I wish I’d have stayed over a weekend so I could take more time to explore the city and visit the Mysore Palace, South West of Bangalore. But Sunday in London isn’t so bad.

I’ve been noticing the local wildlife more now that I’ve adjusted to the cacophony and bustle of the city. There are stray dogs everywhere; small healthy looking dogs that aren’t mangy or all bones. But they’re stray nonetheless. Opposite of L.A., I’ve only seen one stray cat. The bats here are gigantic, some of them appearing to be twice the size of big crows. I didn’t really notice them at first until I took a closer look at the flocks of big black birds flying around at dusk. I haven’t been able to get a good picture yet. They’ve been deft at dodging my camera. There are pigeons and ravens everywhere. I didn’t realize Ravens are carniverous until I saw one attack and eat a pigeon outside the window where I sit. Previously, I’d thought of them as just carrion.

I found out that some of the worst fumes I keep smelling aren’t auto related but are from bug foggers used in our office and the hotels. They’re used to chase out the roaches and mosquitoes. I’ve luckily seen few roaches and no mosquitos while I’ve been here; now I know why. Zul told me yesterday about the foggers after I asked why the building lobby and stair wells always smell like kerosene. The pungent odor is so strong that my stomach is wrenched in violent ways and makes me feel sick.

I’m convinced the locals are right that J-walking across M.G. Road, the main thouroughfare, being safer than crossing at signals. At least you can see traffic coming. It seems to be the case with other roads in Bangalore as well. I’m a regular j-walker now. The craziest though has been crossing Residency Road at night where it meets with M.G. Road, next to the courthouse (pictured above). But my coworker convinced me it was the best way to cross. He’s probably right; it was just as harrowing when I crossed using the signals.

The other night I ate a masala dosa at what I can only describe as a local dive. When I pointed the place out to a coworker I had dinner with last night, he was astounded I wasn’t sick and exclaimed: “You must have a stomach of steel.” He doesn’t take chances eating at places like that. The dosa was good.  The only difference I can tell between the Indian food I’ve eaten in Bangalore and in the San Jose area is the diversity of choices in Bangalore. The flavors and the strength of those flavors is the same. I wish I could eat mangoes (allergies); they look so good and are around every corner.

My coworkers here have been great hosts and helpful about getting around.

Next stop: London.

Update: I did forget to mention that there are downed power lines all over the city center. I can only imagine what it’s like outside this more affluent business district. I even found orange extension cords substituting as power lines. I’m not kidding; check my flickr pics.