suburban blues
My guess is that you probably will not be able to see me on MSN anytime soon. The worst has just happened: my laptop seems to have given up on me, and my biggest worry is that I will be able to recover the information inside. i have been in Mumbai since Wednesday, having moved from Pune. If anything, i like Mumbai better because everything moves faster, its a super cosmopolitan place unlike sleepy Pune, but the weather is terrible. It is hot and humid, just like in Singapore, but the pollution here is infinitely worse.
Now I have started work at the Tatas, which is this big-ass organization in India dealing in everything from trucks to hotels to tea. I have been posted to their IT firm, and I will be in charge of maintaining the content in their web portal. The organizational culture is great, it seems like an efficient and dynamic place to be in, and everyone was pretty excited to see a fresh new face working with them. So they're all pretty nice to me.
On the downside, my accomodation is some damn ulu-mama place in the suburbans of Mumbai. Which means I have to travel like, 2.5 hours to get to my office. Outside my apartment are mostly slums, and its pretty far from the train stations, and since I'm a foreigner (or expat, in this case, haha), they like to cheat me of my money. the auto-rickshaw guy likes driving me in circles before i arrive at my destination. but i'm not familiar with the place, damn it, so there is just about nothing i can do right now.
i have to tell you about the trains. its crazy. i would like to swear, but my parents are probably reading this right now as well, so i shall refrain. ****. but the train is crazy. its so crowded, i think about half of india's 1 billion population is crammed into that rickety train. and then i have no bloody clue how and when to get off. being lost here is no joke. i was going to buy my train tickets, but there was this long queue, right? actually there were a couple of long queues, so i joined one of them to wait for my turn to purchase the tickets. then suddenly, without any indication, the ticket counter guy decides to take a break, leaving everyone in my queue stranded. see, india is like that, full of surprises. and see, when people queue for such a long time and then find out that they are not going to get their tickets, they get bloody pissed. so there i was, trying to buy my tickets, with a lot of very angry indians around me. so people started pushing and shoving around to try to get to the next available counter, so it was total chaos. chaos. chaos. chaos. somehow i managed to wrestle my way among all these angry people to get my tickets.
if you're wondering how i managed to post this entry with my dead laptop, i'm now at a super-rundown internet cafe in the suburbans. i'm not even complaining about win98, man, this is screwed up. the keyboard is DUSTY. my fingers are turning sooty black as we speak. and i'm surfing on 10mpbs. i'm so exasperated, i'm finding this funny. i think i shall take a picture of the internet cafe and post it when i am able to.
love
van.
Now I have started work at the Tatas, which is this big-ass organization in India dealing in everything from trucks to hotels to tea. I have been posted to their IT firm, and I will be in charge of maintaining the content in their web portal. The organizational culture is great, it seems like an efficient and dynamic place to be in, and everyone was pretty excited to see a fresh new face working with them. So they're all pretty nice to me.
On the downside, my accomodation is some damn ulu-mama place in the suburbans of Mumbai. Which means I have to travel like, 2.5 hours to get to my office. Outside my apartment are mostly slums, and its pretty far from the train stations, and since I'm a foreigner (or expat, in this case, haha), they like to cheat me of my money. the auto-rickshaw guy likes driving me in circles before i arrive at my destination. but i'm not familiar with the place, damn it, so there is just about nothing i can do right now.
i have to tell you about the trains. its crazy. i would like to swear, but my parents are probably reading this right now as well, so i shall refrain. ****. but the train is crazy. its so crowded, i think about half of india's 1 billion population is crammed into that rickety train. and then i have no bloody clue how and when to get off. being lost here is no joke. i was going to buy my train tickets, but there was this long queue, right? actually there were a couple of long queues, so i joined one of them to wait for my turn to purchase the tickets. then suddenly, without any indication, the ticket counter guy decides to take a break, leaving everyone in my queue stranded. see, india is like that, full of surprises. and see, when people queue for such a long time and then find out that they are not going to get their tickets, they get bloody pissed. so there i was, trying to buy my tickets, with a lot of very angry indians around me. so people started pushing and shoving around to try to get to the next available counter, so it was total chaos. chaos. chaos. chaos. somehow i managed to wrestle my way among all these angry people to get my tickets.
if you're wondering how i managed to post this entry with my dead laptop, i'm now at a super-rundown internet cafe in the suburbans. i'm not even complaining about win98, man, this is screwed up. the keyboard is DUSTY. my fingers are turning sooty black as we speak. and i'm surfing on 10mpbs. i'm so exasperated, i'm finding this funny. i think i shall take a picture of the internet cafe and post it when i am able to.
love
van.
posted by van at
4:02 AM
1 Comments:
hey you, the worst is probably over, and you've made it through one whole month!! Glad to hear you're enjoying your stint with TaTa, we'll organise some bigass return party for your...return!
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