Safari!

This post has taken a while to complete, mostly on account of all the pictures that I have included. The internet in the apartment is relatively slow at times, and I have not had the patience (or time) to upload them all in one go. Thus, this post comes out a little late. Oh well :)

Last saturday, the ITP group from Norway took a trip to Bannerghatta national park, only 40km outside of Bangalore. Within the national park is the Bannerghatta Biological park, where there is a zoo, a butterfly park, and the option of going on a safari.

We went for all of the above, starting off with the zoo.

The zoo was nice, although unfortunately the cages were not good for taking pictures of the animals. In spite of this I did get some good photos, and there were many interesting animals to look at. I have included some pictures below.

There were some black bears in a cage, think Baloo from the Jungle Book. They seemed quite bored and a little unhappy inside their cage -- the one in the picture here was pacing about non-stop.

A strange owl, sleeping with one eye open.

This beautiful leopard spend almost 10 minutes lying right next to the fence and showing off for the camera. Take a look at some more pictures below.

One pen contained a bunch of crocodiles. Some of them were snapping at each other, although most of them were just relaxing in the morning sun.

There were lots of pretty birds at the zoo.

After a walk around the zoo, we went for a jeep safari in the national park. The safari went through a few larger enclosures, each with different animals. The first enclosure was called the Herbivore park, and was for the most part not so exciting -- however we did see several elephants, and were allowed  to take pictures with an elephant (if we paid 200 rupees to the keeper). 

Next, we went to the Bear park, where there were lot's of black bears like the ones in the cage at the zoo. They were mostly sleeping by the side of the road, although one apparently hungry bear came all the way up to the car and stood up on two legs. leaning against the car. Unfortunately I was on the wrong side of the car and did not get any good pictures of this. However, I did manage to get some pictures of a very fluffy bear taking a nap:

The next stop was the Lion park. There were quite a few lions there, but most of them were inside smaller enclosures within the park, and thus did not come close to the car. We did see a female lion hiding in the grass just next to the road:

Finally we arrived at the biggest attraction, the Tiger park. There were several tigers walking loose within the enclosure. Some stayed away from the car, but one tiger came all the way up to the car, to the point where we had to pull inn out cameras and close the windows before it took a bite.

We also saw two white tigers. Unfortunately they were quite far away and did not move about much, but the one below did look into the camera at least once :)

At the end of the safari we had some trouble with the jeep driver, who demanded that we each pay him 200 rupees as a tip for taking us to the elephants (we were 8 people). Considering that the price for the safari was 4000 rupees in total, the tip he demanded was rather large, and was not something we had been informed that we had to pay. After a lot of arguing, including at one point the driver holding our ticket to the rest of the park hostage until we paid him, we got away with the ticket. It was a slightly disappointing end to an otherwise very nice safari -- you get used to the fact that a lot of people here try to trick you, all the time, but it does get more and more frustrating each time it happens.

Luckily, a trip to the butterfly park soon made us forget the incident with the safari driver.

 After a long day out in the sun, we made our way back home. In typical Bangalore traffic style, this took approximately 4 hours, although this included a detour through the city centre to drop off some of the others. Although it is tiring to spend so much time going to and from places, I have started to get used to the long commutes and feel that the time is passing fast even though it takes a long time to get anywhere. More on the craaazy traffic in a different post.

The upcoming weekend we are all going to Pondicherry for some beach time -- will come with an update from that trip when I'm back!

Work, work, work!

It's been a week since my last post -- my attempt at writing smaller posts more often has failed for now. I will keep trying, but for now, here comes a post about work!

I have now been working in Bangalore for nearly 2 weeks, and I think I am starting to get the hang of it. The office hours are divided into shifts, which can, in theory, be at any time during the day (or night). Most people work either on the early shift (0830-1830) or the late shift (0930-1930). There is not really much difference between these...

Very many people, including me, use shuttle buses to get to and from work. The shuttle buses go all over Bangalore, and mine stops right outside the apartment complex. I am very lucky in that my apartment complex lies very close to the office, and the shuttle bus only takes 10-15 minutes to and from the office (if traffic isn't too bad). Many of my colleagues spend and hour or two, morning and evening, on the shuttle bus to get to/from work. This is almost entirely due to the traffic, as the distances aren't that big. I will come back to the traffic situation in a different post.

I work the "late" shift, along with most of my team. This means that I arrive some time between 0930 and 1000 (or possibly later if there is a lot of traffic), because that is when the shuttle bus arrives at the office. The working day is 9 hours plus lunch/breaks, so arriving a little late is no problem and seems to be the norm -- if I get to the office at 0930 sharp, there's usually very few people there.

Upon arrival, some time is spent chatting with colleagues and saying good morning, and then it's time for breakfast! The first break of the day usually comes almost right after one arrives at the office. Hmm. So far I have eaten breakfast at home before leaving, but I suspect I will start joining for breakfast at the office soon.

Lunch is usually around 13-14, and while it may not last an entire hour each time, it usually comes close. There is a canteen on the ground floor of the building, and another one in one of the other buildings. I will come back to lunch in another post as well :)

Finally there is usually a tea break some time around 17. I have skipped this a few times, feeling I have work that needs to be done, but it is nice to take a little breather in the evening when the day is so long, and I think I will have to get better at joining the evening tea breaks.

In between all the breaks, everyone works hard. So far I am still learning about the system and technology I will be working with, so my tasks are designed for my learning and not for me to be productive. Most of the time the tasks are interesting and challenging, but I have learned that things take time here, and when I complete a task I usually have to wait anything from an hour to a day to have the task reviewed and move on to a new task. People are busy and thus I am not the first priority, but it does get a little boring just sitting at my desk with nothing to do. Hopefully I will be able to become productive and useful soon so that I can work on some real tasks related to the project!

This has been a small look at my working day. Unfortunately I have no pictures of the office -- they are very very security conscious, and it is strictly forbidden to take photos in the office. I will try to get some photos of the outside and add here at a later stage. Again, I will try to add smaller posts more often. Now I'm off to work!

Arriving in India

I arrived in India on Monday morning, and it's finally time for my first post!

I arrived, together with my colleagues Tina, Frederikke and Helene, at 0500 local time monday morning. As you can imagine, we were pretty tired by the time we had gotten through immigration and customs.

Our driver picked Helene and I up from the airport and took us to the apartment that is to be our new home for the next 6 months. Originally, we were told that we would have one small apartment each -- however, after we finally found someone who could provide us with keys, it turned out that the two small apartments were actually one larger apartment, on the 13th floor.

 

This is my bedroom, in the middle of unpacking. The bed was extremely hard -- fortunately the manager for the serviced apartments is very helpful and agreed to replace the bed with a softer one, which arrived on Tuesday.

This is the dining area and living room.

This is the living room.

The kitchen is quite big, but there is practically no content in any of the cupboards -- we have 2 forks, 2 knives and 4 plates. In addition there are a few pots and pans, and that's about it.

The bathrooms are ok, although there is no hot water in the shower at the moment, so showering in the morning is a real wake-up call!

The apartment is in a huuuge complex, I think there are 20 apartment towers, each with 15++ floors. I took a walk around the complex Monday afternoon -- it takes 10-15 mins just to walk around!. There is a swimming pool (or two?), a small supermarket, a coffee shop, tennis courts, and apparently a pharmacy / medical clinic inside the complex, and probably much much more. Pictures below.

 Our apartment tower.

 The complex is very big - this is just the "inner ring".

 The swimming pool.

Nightfall.

I have now been to work for 3 days, the days are passing very quickly. The workdays are from 09:30 to 19:30. This includes a 1hr lunch break, as well as various small tea breaks if there is time. The project team has been amazing at welcoming me into the project. Everyone is so friendly and helpful! My "buddy" in the project, Pooja, has helped me with everything from buying lunch to opening a bank account and getting an Indian sim card. I will come back to life at work in a later post.

Because of the long hours at work, we have not had much time at the apartment, resulting in this post being a little long and all over the place. I will try to post regular updates on life in India, hopefully I will manage some smaller posts quite often. Now it's off to bed, and another day at the office tomorrow!