Juxtaposition of Religion in India

India has a very different feel when it comes to religion. I don't just mean that there are Hindus here--that's obvious. It's more that you see all the major religions represented all over the place. Autorickshaws may have a Ganesha on the dashboard or a Jesus Rocks sticker on the windshield. Women dressed nearly in a burhka will be riding on the back of a two wheeler. There is religious tension in India but it's still very different than in the US, where you really don't see a Mosque often.

This is a small park dedicated to the Christian minister portrayed in the statue with the temple just across the street (there are little temples like this all over).

Not sure how Siemens figures with the Bible Society or Bible World, but they are all in this building I guess.
This is one of the Mosques I have past--it's right on the edge of one of the shopping districts I like to go to.

Barbie in India

This is just all kinds of wrong.

American Chopsy

Amrut told me and Jay about a dish in Chinese restaurants in Indian called American Chopsy and how he thought it was funny that you can't get it in the US. Yesterday we went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch and ordered it. Turns out it's American Chop Suey--but that doesn't make it anything you would recognize. The sauce was sort of like the sauce on spaghettios. Hmm...

Bore Da! and other things you can learn in India...

One of the cool things I found out last time I was here (Thanks to Revathi) is that there is a GREAT bookstore in Bangalore called Blossom where you can find just about anything (see my earlier post about it from 2007). Last night, I stopped in after dinner to browse--and I only stopped on the first floor. This bookstore is one of those hilarious places where there are books stacked and shelved floor to ceiling, and yet the staff can find you just about anything. I took these two shots as a quick example.


But the funniest part was that in walking through, my eyes landed on this book, which I just HAD to buy. My friend Eleri has promised to teach me some Welsh and lo and behold, I find a "Teach Yourself Welsh" book in Bangalore. Globalization just continues to make the world a little stranger all the time. =)

I think the cover picture is very appropriate, since Welsh really resembles none of the languages of the countries around it (or at least, as near as I can tell). After studying French and German, I can decode some meaning out of a lot of other European languages, but not Welsh. It could be Hindi for as much as I can gather from it and Hindi is written in a different alphabet. Bore Da is good morning. And for those of you who think that Da must be like "day", it's not--it means "good".

Road work

India is still one of the places in the world where manual labor is cheaper than machinery. The other interesting thing about this scene to me is that the sign is completely incidental to the roadwork. In general terms, India is one of those places where you are expected not to be stupid, unlike the US. For example, on the sidewalk near my hotel, there's a stretch of concrete rectangles that are covering about a 2-3 foot drop into a rain drain. Only there are at least 2 missing rectangles. No signs, warnings, no orange cones--if you are going to walk on the sidewalk, you should be smart enough not to fall into the gaps.
In the top picture, there is no yellow barricade tape to warn you not to back into the big hole in the road (let alone run over the guy working on the hole). If you are going to drive in India, you should be smart enough not to back into big holes in the street. Apparently we have exported many things but we have not exported the notion that you can sue someone else if you have done something stupid. I find it kind of refreshing. =)
The next day there was a barricade around the place where the guy was digging. Not to protect the guy or the hole, but to make sure you don't ruin the wet concrete.

Where am I?

One of the interesting things that has changed since I was in Bangalore last year is that Google Maps now knows that Bangalore is more than a relatively uninhabited forest of green blur. It's actually pretty cool because it means that I can see where I am and where I might want to go and if that's walking distance. Well, at least mostly. In the above map, I am staying at the Oberoi Hotel which is either 1 or 2 on the map. Still, it's a lot better than it was. The A and B points are the Cauvery Emporium on Brigade Rd and Commercial St, two great points for shopping. Yesterday I was out on a quest for pashmina shawls and silk scarves for Anne and Lynn (armed this trip with shopping lists) and those were the best places to start.

Jetlag

This morning I got up early to take a walking tour of Victorian Bangalore at 7. I went out to the meeting place at Holy Trinity Church but there was no one there. Finally about 7:20 I came back to the hotel and went to have breakfast (idlis, uttapam, curd, and 3 cups of coffee) then headed back to my room when it hit me that I was still a bit tired, so maybe I would just have a wee little lie down. About 3 hours later, the floor butler came to check the mini bar and I stumbled to the door to let him in. Then I flopped back into bed and slept until there was another ring at my doorbell. At this point, I decided if I didn't force myself out of bed, I could potentially sleep the rest of the day. Now I'm sitting on the balcony listening to the rain and trying to wake up, or at least resist the urge to go back to bed again!

Random Shots from my hotel

My balcony at the Oberoi plus some pics from my balcony...

Traveling through Hong Kong and Singapore

For some reason, one of my favorite parts of traveling is the signs in other countries. You can laugh about the funny mis-translations, but that's not really what I mean. What I like are the things like icons, which might not seem standard or cautionary signs that seem hard to understand. Here were some of my favorites from Hong Kong and Singapore...


Ok, that just seems logical, but then there's this one:



That just seemed more like a general social policy statement.




I really couldn't figure that one out. Temperature check? Was there a "gut check" coming afterwards? How are we all feeling about this?



Not just Exit, but run like your A$r$ is on FIRE!

This last one is just in the funny icons category. I'm not sure what the motion is supposed to accomplish. And if you have to tell me, then it was too complicated.

Singapore

Well, I'm sitting in the Singapore airport listening to REM and drinking a tasty malted beverage for my first international post this round. Pictures will have be be added later because I put the cord for my camera in my suitcase....

This time I came via Singapore on Singapore Airlines, and I highly recommend this. Yes, your flight is a bit longer. But the planes are more comfortable, have great options for entertainment, and the food is restaurant class. No mystery things that claim to be chicken--these are fresh, very tasty and you get a whole menu of options. But that's not even the best part. When you get to Singapore, it's like being dropped off at a high end mall. But what knocks it out of the park is the massage and shower services. I got a 30 minute massage from a singaporean massuese not much taller than Maddie, who straddled me on the massage table to get a good elbow into the spot that has been locking up on me until it totally relaxed. It was a heck of a massage--at one point, she was saying "can you relax?" and I wanted to say "Um, not with your elbow grinding into my shoulder, no, not really." But it turns out, I could.Then I got a nice long hot shower. And now I'm quaffing a pilsner in a brewpub and blogging about it. This place rocks. On the way back through (when it's not POURING rain) I'm going to take the city tour.

There's more I will have to put in tomorrow when I can upload pix because, as often is the case, my sense of the globalization of the world has to do with pictures which are really funnier than the words I could write about them.

So on that note, more tomorrow (or the day after or the day before, depending on how you look at it).

Going back to Cali, to Cali, to Cali.

No. I don't think so.
(name that tune)

Going back to India. I leave tomorrow night, lose Thursday someplace between here and Singapore, and arrive in Bangalore Friday night.

My (almost) brush with fame

This morning there were all these people lined up outside when I was leaving. They had flowers and incense and kept watching the door. I found out the Dalai Lama stayed in the hotel this afternoon when I got back. But I missed him. Rats!

Of course, Richard Gere is in town also, and it's possible he's staying here too....

Elephants and Monkeys

Maddie likes monkeys. Amelia likes elephants. In the US, you can get all kinds of things with monkeys on them--blankets, shirts, jammies, purses, earrings, etc. But elephants are harder to find. Not here. There are elephants whereever you turn. Carvings, statues, figures of Ganesh, etc. But I did finally see two monkeys today in unusual places, so Maddie, these are for you.

Mia, you are cleaning up on elephants when I get home. =)

Why don't we have these?

At the airport, in the cafeterias at work, at some shopping centers, you can see these charging posts where you can plug in your phone if the batteries are running low. This rocks! Why don't we have these? They have different plugs for all the different models they sell. This one was at the Hyderbad airport in the main waiting room.

Bookstores

Rule no 1 for travelling to India. Don't bring books. I've been to several great bookstores and books are much cheaper here. Revathi and I went to a terrific bookstore called Blossom. Like a lot of stores, you go up a steep set of stairs, but then it's like the Bookworm on steroids. And if you have something you want, you just ask and they go find it for you. This store was a combination of new and used. I saw a Japanese anime graphic novel series on Buddha. I would have gotten it, but the series would have taken it's own suitcase!

Revathi was looking for A Prayer for Owen Meany, and they had not 1 but 3 copies. Two in mass market paperback and one hardcover. They had everything from new releases to antique books.

Here are a couple of things I got. The top shows some of these funky Hindu stories in comic book format that I got for the girls. They are hilarious! I also got a little cookbook, a book of hindu wisdom, buddhist teachings and a really funny little "Thus Spake The Christ" (INR 5= 11 cents). I picked up a couple of other interesting things too--all small, like matchbook-sized Bhagavad Gita and Vedic Stories books...

If and when I come again, I'm not bringing any books with me. I'll get them all here.

Stores in India

I decided that rather than make myself nuts trying to cram everything into my small second bag, I'd buy an inexpensive suitcase here. This is sort of a typical store on Commercial St. It's packed floor to ceiling with stuff. The rest of it was up a curving staircase with just enough room to get one foot in front of the other. Even by the standards of the store we looked in, that was pretty tight but the rest of the store looked like a lot of the stores we were in. Very narrow, packed to the rafters and lots of staff. There are a couple of guys who worked there that aren't even in the picture.

We put our bags into the suitcase and then one of the guys carried it several blocks to where our driver was parked. Can you imagine a clerk in the US helping you carry a $30 suitcase 4 blocks? It had wheels, but he carried it. And they were pretty insistent that Revathi and I shouldn't carry it ourselves. It wasn't like we filled it with 200 lbs of stuff--just some books from the funky bookstore we went to.

Bangalore Palace part 3 The hunters

I should have taken a picture of the really bizarre painted golf statues, but somehow I didn't. I did take a picture of the dead things. Apparently the Maharajas were big into hunting. Here were some of the things we saw.



The footstools just seem like a really weird 30's thing. These are Elephant and Water Buffalo stools.

This trunk was actually a planter, but I accidently cut the top off in the picture. It doesn't look like it's lasted all that well.

Bangalore Palace part 2 The Outside

The building out there is the kitchen...

The old green house.

The palace grounds are rented out for weddings and parties. This was being set up for a fashion show later in the day.


Not really sure who this guy is, but apparently he died in the Afghan War. He's not a Wodeyar, so I can only surmise he was pretty respected. He's right in the main entryway!

Bangalore Palace

The Wodeyars of Mysore ruled this area of India from about 1399. In Bangalore, they had a summer palace. The palace is still owned by the current King of Mysore, although the title is only a formality. The other palace, in Mysore itself, is now owned by the state, and is pretty spectular. You can read more about the Wodeyars here: http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/deccan/wodeyars.htm

The palace is pretty funky. It has fallen into disrepair, and they are doing a lot of renovation on it. They have the funding pretty well figured out--for Indians, INR 100. For tourists, INR 200. If you want to take pictures, it's INR 500. Smoooooooooth.

Blogger will only let me put 5 photos to a post, so I'll break these up into a few posts. I think I read that the palace was based on Windsor castle. It's pretty impressive, even where it's not completely fixed up. Near as we could tell, it was probably last used as a residence regularly around the 30's or 40's--there was a lot of furniture of that era in the Queen's Residence and the King's residence.

The outside of the palace:


Some of the Kings of Mysore:


This is the great receiving hall, and one of the few pictures from this trip that I'm actually in, so I included it here. This is where the people came to see the King, and the little structure behind me is where the Queen sat. The King received people while sitting on a golden throne. It's not still there though... =)


This is the King's courtyard.
This is the Queen's courtyard.

Technology and not technology

Before she left, Madhuri gave me a cell phone that you "recharge" periodically with more rupees. I went to the Airtel shop to recharge it. I ran into this thing I have now seen in a variety of ways--a weird hybrid of technology and 1900's bookkeeping. To add rupees to my cell phone, they call it and enter a code. They can't do a big amount all at once, so they did it in 4 INR250 increments. They don't use computers and you can't do this from home. They pull out a ledger and handwrite the information about how much they recharged your phone with, and what codes were used. The ledger and the phone they called my phone with to recharge it are shown below.

For some reason, no one here seems to think this clash of technology and not technology seems all that strange, but it seemed pretty amusing to me! I can beam cash to your phone, but I don't have a computer to record the transaction on.