Death by Rickshaw

4 accidents in 30 mins has got to be a record.

First of all, whilst waiting for a rickshaw to get to work, a car ran over my foot. It hurt.

When I was on the way to work, we were crossing a busy highway and a car clipped the rear of the rickshaw, sending me flying sideways. I was pretty lucky not to get run over. Escaped with dirty clothes and some bruises. Thankfully my glasses survived intact.

Then, heading down a road, another car hits the back of the rickshaw, sending me flying forwards and giving me whiplash.

Finally, within shouting distance of the office, the rickshaw crashed into a parked car. Thankfully I saw it coming and was able to brace myself.

When you take into account all the bites, the crappy accommodation and the illness, it seems blatantly apparant that India is trying to kill me.

A couple of points

• I am *covered* in bites. They itch. Alot.


• I have read the first 6 Harry Potter books over the last 11 days, and am about to start the final volume. Yay.


• The shower at my accommodation has broken, and I smell.


• I hate India.

Two weeks in

Well, this second week has gone much, much quicker than the first. We (Betsy, Clarali, Anne-so and I) went out to dinner to celebrate making it through the first week, and then went to see Die Hard 4 (which, while awesome, wasn't really a Die Hard movie). On Thursday, Betsy and I went down to Hyderabad to prepare for an Alumni event on the Saturday, and a Board Meeting on the Sunday, both of which went really well. Flew back to Delhi late Sunday evening.

I spent Monday morning trudging around DLF Phase III in an attempt to find someplace else to stay, as the trainee accommodation I've had for the last 2 weeks has been awful. I went to a few different places, and found one really good one, but it was Rs8000, almost twice as much as what I'm paying now (Rs4500) and as such was unaffordable.

The internet has been down at the office for the last few days, meaning I haven't gotten much done. Betsy and I spent the whole afternoon yesterday strategising though, and things are looking good. Also, I've hopefully found a temporary place to stay that's better than where I am now, which I can move into on Friday (woohoo), completed my FRRO registration (woohoo) and started the procedure for getting a bank account (woohoo). So that's three wins for today.

o/~ It's been, one week...

It's been one week since I arrived here in India, and today I made it to work all by my lonesome. Woohoo! After being ill since pretty much last Thursday, I finally began to feel better yesterday afternoon, and was able to keep my dinner in. So yay for feeling better. I still have some enormous bites on my back and legs though that are refusing to fade. Big ugly red things, they are.

Anyway, lets see. I'm getting accommodation sorted, so hopefully in the next few days I'll be moving to someplace that doesn't have cockroaches all over the place (I spent most of Sunday evening chasing them out of my room, and woke up in the middle of the night with three of them on me. I did what any sane person would do, obviously, and jumped up and down, ran around, and screamed a bit).

On Friday I "organised" my first event here, which basically involved phoning some restaurants to try and get a good deal, then sending out about 200 SMS' to various Alumni to try and get them to come along. Obviously, part of my job will be to improve that process.

Saturday, I spent the morning/afternoon at the office (where there's A/C and internets!), then went and saw the new Harry Potter movie with Clarali. The cinema we went to was quite cool; we were sat in the second row, but the seats reclined. Really comfy, and a great view! And the movie was pretty darn awesome.

Sunday, I read slept and read Harry Potter all day. Got through the Philosopher's Stone, Chamber of Secrets and half way through Prisoner of Azkaban before the end of the day.

Yesterday I went and registered at the FRRO, did a bunch of transition stuff at the office, went with Betsy to buy flights to Hyderabad for the Board Meeting this weekend, got food and watched Curse of the Golden Flower on Betsy's laptop. Straaaaaange plot, but stunning visuals, as usual.

And now, to work!

:(

I gots me a Delhi Belly.

Post for 12th July

I'm conscious of the fact that I haven't really written anything about my first few days here in India but, in my defense, I've been quite busy, and internet access is limited. So what I'm actually doing is writing this in notepad at home this evening, to upload whenever I next get net.

So where to start. There's a lot to talk about, so this could get quite long!

After chilling out on Tuesday afternoon, I was taken to an AIESEC DI (there are two AIESEC chapters here in Delhi: Delhi University, or DU, and Delhi IIT (a tech university), or DI. I'm officially a trainee through DI.) event in the middle of Delhi (at the American Embassy, actually). It was a thing to promote awareness of AIDS and HIV, and was actually quite amusing. There were descriptions of quite a large number of sexual activities, and what kind of HIV risk they each carry.

After that, I was put in a taxi and sent to the trainee house where I'm supposed to be staying for the next year. I was less than impressed, for reasons I'll go into later, with the accommodation.

Wednesday I was picked up by Betsy and Clarali, and we went shopping! I got a cell phone (3 didn't enable roaming on my UK account, and my UK phone couldn't be unlocked, grrr), although it doesn't work just yet. We were also going to go to the FRRO to register me (so I can pay taxes, woohoo!), but got sidetracked by having lunch with one of Betsy's contacts at a nice Chinese restaurant. We headed back to the office after that, and I familiarised myself with the place.

Thursday (today) I went to the office in the morning to carry on setting stuff up (email, and the like), and then went into Delhi to attend the second half of a day long HR summit that AIESEC DU had implemented. There were some very interesting speakers, and it was nice to meet more AIESECers.


A bit more about where I am. I don't actually live or work in Delhi itself, but in Gurgaon, a city just on the outskirts of Delhi. As I mentioned before, I'm currently staying in a "trainee house", where AIESEC houses it's trainees (funnily enough). However, the place is *barely* habitable. You *need* A/C to be able to sleep here, and only one room has it, so there are three of us on camp beds there. There are frequent power outages though, and although the house having a UPS powered by two batteries it's only enough to power a couple of lights and the ceiling fan. Which means no fridge, and no A/C. Which sucks. As you can imagine, three sweating guys in an enclosed space also doesn't make for a pleasant smell.
The kitchen is adequate, but dirty, and the living room is nothing more than a large empty square with two chairs in the middle.

So yes, I'm fairly disappointed with the accommodation. I'm an introvert (believe it or not) and I *need* space to myself, and I just don't have it anywhere here.

In addition, to that, there's lots of stuff that AIESEC were supposed to tell me about the place that they didn't. I had no idea where to get food and water (tap water is unsafe), and was dying of dehydration on that first night. There's no washing machine, so I had no idea how you're supposed to wash clothes. Turns out that you leave them in a bucket and someone comes and washes them. But still, is that included in the rent? If not, how much do I pay? I'm thoroughly unimpressed with the way in which AIESEC has treated me here. They were supposed to put me up in home stay, where I stay with an AIESEC member, for the first few nights until I found my feet here in Delhi, but instead they put me in a cab and send me packing on my first night here. They were supposed to take me to get my cell phone and get me registered at the FRRO, but Betsy ended up doing that instead. It's just so frustrating. Other fun on my first night here involved killing cockroaches. How's that for entertainment in a house with no electricity?


In other stuff... the weather is hot, but above all it's sticky and humid. Almost unbearably so, especially at "home" in the evening where there is no way to cool down. Which is stressful, which doesn't aid keeping cool. Also, traffic here is every bit as bad, if not worse, than anything you see online. There truly are cars *all* over the road. You don't feel safe in a car, let alone perched on the back of a bicycle.

Anyway, I'm going to try and get to sleep. I haven't really slept since I've got here, partly for jet lag and partly for the heat. I'm continuing to force myself to get up in the morning and stay awake during daylight hours (except for a nap in the taxi this afternoon :P), so I'm sure I'll settle into a pattern sooner or later.

And the A/C is back, yay. I wonder how long it will last this time...

(ADDITION: No more than 10 mins. Boo. And it didn't come back on until about 4am. >.<)

Je suis dans Delhi.

After complaining to my mother about how she booked a really early coach to Heathrow, I have to eat my words as the extra time came in handy. In fact, I wouldn't have caught my flight if I hadn't arrived so early. See, it turns out that STA Travel lied to me when they sold me the ticket: They said it was an e-ticket, when it wasn't. The paper ticket was supposedly mailed out on the 3rd July, but I never got it. End result, I can't check in!

Needless to say, I'm not happy about this. Props to STA though, as soon as I called them they sent someone from Covent Garden out to Heathrow with a replacement ticket. They made it with 45 mins to spare, so it all worked out.

Now, when I booked the flight I thought that the airline, Jet Airways, was going to be operating rickety rust buckets. If they are, I certainly didn't fly on one! It was actually one of the best Economy class seats I've ever had! There was plenty of leg room, lots of tasty Indian food, and free alcohol. Very, very pleased with it.

I've actually only been in the country for 4 hours... it took about an hour to drive from the airport into Delhi. I don't actually have any idea where in the city I currently am, nor who I'm staying with. He's an AIESECer though, so it's all cool. Oh, and everything they say about driving in India is true. So, so true.

As for work, I appear to have this week to get over jetlag as I start work on Monday. I do have a couple of things to do this week though, including registering my visa, getting a bank account and mobile phone, and having a few introductory meetings.

So far, so good!

Travelpower!

It's not the longest travel time I've had, but it's close to the top. I'm leaving Southampton at 1445 on a coach to Heathrow, where I get to sit around for 3 hours or so. My flight leaves at about 2030, and I'll be arriving into Delhi at 1000 tomorrow morning (0430 BST). Delhi is 5 hours 30 mins ahead.

Next time I post, I'll be in India. Fantoostic!

Spending Spree.

I've just spent about £100-£150 of my parents money on stuff for India. Lots of clothes, as I had no smart office stuff at all, lots of hayfever medication, and a whole bunch of plug adaptors. And a snazzy moleskin notebook and diary.

Despite having been away from home for the last 5 years, and spending one of those years abroad in California, I'm feeling much more excited/nervous about going to India for a year. I think it's simply the fact that it will be such a change of lifestyle, going to live in what is essentially still a developing country. And I haven't really fully gotten around the fact that I'm going in just 2 days time.

Tomorrow I shall pack my bags (thankfully, Jet Airways said I could take 2 of them), and try and figure out what else I need. I'm still short a Union Jack flag... maybe they'll sell them at the airport?

Also, does anyone know whether you can take Indian Rupees into the country? A Bureau de Change told me today that it was illegal, and that I needed to take Sterling with me and change it once inside the country. True? False?

Livejournal, eh? Whats that again?

Well, with the redesign of my website (and the fact that I'm off to India for a year in 5 day days), I thought I might as well start posting on my livejournal again.

I'm actually considering a number of blogging/journal options; I have friends on a number of different blogging sites, and ideally I'd like to get some kind off RSS thing going, where posting an entry in one place would cause the same entry to be posted on all the other sites. I'm also thinking about using this journal as a person diary kind of thing, and having a separate blog attached to the website as a place to splurge thoughts, ideas, philosophies, etc.

Talking about the website, it's been a while in the making, and while there are still a few things to do I'm quite happy with the way it is now, so I decided to open it up to the public. It's quite a departure from the blue/orange design of yesteryear (and I need to update my livejournal scheme to match it!), but I'm quite proud of it. It's totally standards compliant (XHTML 1.0 Strict), but sadly the CSS doesn't validate because of one single IE max-width hack I needed to use. And other than in the photo albums, there are no tables anywhere! It's spans and divs all the way.

It's also the first website I've written in PHP, and I'm quite proud of that too. The photo albums are particularly good. Although, I'm trying to use 800x600 images as thumbnails, so loading times and bandwidth use are through the roof. But resizing about 6,000 photos just doesn't appeal to me at all.

So yup. I'm back.