A little adventure...

So, I’ll start this one off with a little adventure I had the other day. My office itself is about a 25 minute walk from my apartment, and I as wrote in the first post, I really like walking to random places, seeing different stores, dhabas, parks, buildings, PEOPLE, etc. But this was a walking adventure taken to the limit!

Part of my first project for work heavily involves something called ‘valuation’ in finance. Why is this at all relevant? (I actually tried explaining why it is relevant, but realized it was putting me to sleep, as I’m writing this..) Anyways, long story short: there’s a lot of grunt work involved in a certain part of my project so I’m working with this other firm, on the other side of the city, to speed up the process.

I left my office at noon time on Wednesday last week, with 70 rupees in my wallet (About 1.50 dollars). I hadn’t gotten paid yet, and I’ve been converting whatever dollars I have for sustenance (aka Subway). I was running incredibly short on time, and didn’t want to arrive late and look bad, so I didn’t think to stop by the foreign exchange place close to my work before leaving. The auto ride to the other firm was 47 rupees leaving me with 23 rupees in my pocket. The other firm’s also in a busy part of the city, so I figured that there had to be a forex place that I could use after work, to get enough dough to get home. Boy was I wrong. I conveniently forgot about finding a Forex place because I was just plain tired/distracted with work all day. Everyone left at around 8, and we all had great laughs leaving the building. Happy times. Good moods. I pulled out my phone, threw on some tunes, and walked to where I could find an auto. I pulled out my wallet, and there I saw a crumpled 20 rupee note, and a few coins. Ish mang. It would be at least 75 rupees by auto, and I wasn’t familiar with buses in this part of the city.

This is where something beautiful happened. I had borrowed my sister’s Blackberry before I came to India because she couldn’t stand that it was a touchscreen, and I thought it’d be useful to have a phone with international email capabilities. I opened up Google Maps, to try to figure out where I was. I knew it had a GPS feature, but it could only ever tell me my location within a 1000 meter radius, which is not too useful.

Not this time. I saw a tiny flashing blue light that I had never seen before. I walked to the end of the street, and rechecked my phone. The little blue light that could had moved with me. For you long-time sassy Iphone and Blackberry veterans, this is commonplace. But man, being in India, on tiny roads, and having outstanding GPS service is just baller. I swear this is not an ad, haha.

Honestly, though, had I been so desperate, I’m sure I would’ve found some alternative to walking. But it’s good fun. So, I quickly mapped out a route looking at the map. I saw that I would be going on some really tiny roads, and given that it was about 8:30 and dark, I thought twice. But man, the opportunity was too good. All I ever really get to see in Bangalore, is main roads, malls, fancy stores, blah blah blah. Tourist attractions are tourist attractions.

Checking the map, and my position every so often, I started walking, going on smaller and smaller roads. Small temples, hole-in-the wall stores selling everything from shoes to jewelry, pani-puri carts, people chilling on stoops, small construction projects, COWS, huge rocks, and tiny restaurants lined the streets. One of the most interesting things is seeing tiny stores that are attached to people’s houses. Wake up in the morning, take a bath, grab a bite, open a door and you’re at work. There’s tons of places like that. The place is alive, and it’s not the Bangalore you see on Google images. I’m not attempting to romanticize anything. But do you really want to read about the same, trite descriptions of poverty? There are serious problems and they need to be addressed, but there’s no insight I can or will add on this platform.

Anyways, in the middle of all the interesting sights and smells that I was enjoying, I unceremoniously stepped in a huge pile of *****. Haha, no, it wasn’t actually any animal excrement. I mistakenly walked into a construction site, where there apparently was still a ton of wet mud. Effed up my shoe mang. A sign perhaps? Who cares, that’s why you buy cheap shoes, haha.

Door to door, it was about 2 hours. I got back, exhausted, at around 10:30, and just passed out. I’ve gone to the other office twice more, and actually had the presence of mind to get some dollars converted. But, I’ve walked home both times. I’ve posted some pictures. Not the highest quality, though, my apologies. Hope y’all are having good summers. Hit me up, I’d love to know what you’re doing.

Musings n' More

So, I finally got an apartment. The address is...well, I actually still don't know what the address is, or what the name of this apartment complex is, BUT it's located at the intersection of Vittal Mallya Road and Lavelle Road, next to the huge Cubbon Park.

It's funny, whenever venturing from Penn, everyone always comments on how nice it is to leave the 'bubble' for a while. I totally agree. One of the best feelings you can get is when you're jogging by the Schuylkill, running by the huge boathouses, looking at trees and statues, watching people picnicking, etc. It's a treat for the eyes, just to see something different.

So these last two weeks in India have been the same thing 10x over. It doesn't have to be anything visually appealing, just the novelty of seeing new stores, roads, dhabas, statues, parks, greenery is good fun. Bangalore itself has to be the greenest large city in India. Particularly the area where I live is covered with tree-lined roads.

After work, which usually gets over at 7 or 8, I like finding longer, more roundabout ways to walk home. It's a 15 minute walk home if I walk straight back, but door to door, I usually take about 2 hours, haha. I have a pretty good sense of direction, and haven't managed to go anywhere where I couldn't eventually find my way home...I've taken pictures, some funny, some jaw-dropping, some plain ordinary; I'll post them soon. Anyways, one day when walking home I ran into a guy (foreigner) I met when searching for apartments, and he had been in the same situation earlier so he gave me a few pointers. He was hanging out with a few other guys he had met while in Bangalore, and before I left, a friend of his suggested I come by to a promotion launch event his company was throwing for one of their new products the next day. I almost didn't go because I was at work till 8, and was absolutely beat, but grabbed an auto and took his directions. 20 Minutes later I arrive at the 'event', which happens to be a ginormous party in a huge club; his company is SABMiller, and the new product is a high-end beer. Haha, it was pretty awesome, and met a bunch of chill guys. More importantly, they played bhangra for quite some time, which made my day. Good fun, overall, though it had to be on a Wednesday...



Haha, and a few days before, Prasanna, from Dhamaka also happened to be in Bangalore for a day, so we had coffee. In addition to arriving late, he bored me with how his family was visiting relatives and temples and how he wasn't having fun, blah, blah, blah.

Haha, jk. Mr. Swaminasty did indeed come to Bangalore, single-handedly rekindled my faith in the human spirit, and then gave a long talk about how to face adversity with gusto. Happy Prasanna? Hahaha.

Work is fairly hard. For the first few days, I wasn't sure if the other employees were speaking in Hindi, Kannada or English. Later, I found out it was indeed English, but infused with heavily venture-capital-specific terminology, and some Hindi for kicks. I have my own projects, the first of which involves 'valuing' the companies they've invested in. But man, it's damn interesting listening to management teams of the companies in which they've invested come and talk about their operations, ideas, growth prospects, etc.

My colleagues are absolute no-nonsense types, but I've gone to dinner with them a few times, and they're real nice dudes.


Anyways, again, fingers are tired, so until next time....peace mangs

The first, hopefully not last, post....

· Hey mangs,

As some of you may know, I'm spending a big chunk of my summer (about 11 weeks) in India, specifically Bangalore. I actually got to Bangalore about a week and half back, and have promised myself every day to start a blog before a I went to sleep, but that didn't materialize. So, finally, here I am, in front of a computer, ready to write about my own musings on life here for you to enjoy/make fun of. I hope I can keep this going, and update it as often as possible because I think blogs are great ways to keep in touch with people, and jot down thoughts that I can laugh at ten years later.

Anyways! I left my city, Boston, on Friday May 26th, and flew to London, and got a connecting flight to Hyderabad. There was one difference between my flight to London with the one to Hyderabad. Namely, Indian people. LOTS of Indian people. Upon arriving at 26D on the flight, I was happy to see that it was an aisle seat and that it was right behind the bathroom. This, as I would find out shortly after the first meal, is a really bad thing. The bathroom is sort of a hangout spot for Indian people, where you can chat, hold your crying baby, fiddle with the airplane door, etc. 8 hours of that later, I was in Hyderabad, where I chilled with my grandma for a few days before I went down to Bangalore.

I got to Bangalore about 12 in the afternoon, and took a cab into the city where I had arranged (by gchat, sorta sketchy) to meet up with a real estate dude. I call him ‘dude’ and not agent because the guy was two years older than me, and his ‘office’ was his cell phone and scooter. He took me around the city, showed me a few places, and at the end of the day, I couldn’t make up my mind, so without a place to stay, I slept in park. It was awesome. The squirrels are much less aggressive than the ones in Philly.

No, I kid. Apart from the fact that there are absolutely no squirrels in Bangalore, my aunt and uncle also live in the city, so I went there, had a warm meal, great conversation and most importantly, a bath. The next day I took an auto back into the city to meet up with another real estate agent…and then another. They both showed me a few more places, but the more places they showed me, the more I realized that the best deal I had was from ‘Real Estate Dude’. I called him up, we arranged to meet a day later and negotiate. The next day I went to my office. Though it wasn’t my first day of work, I thought I’d go in, and settle all the logistics of my work. Also, for the next 9 weeks, I’m working for a venture capital firm in Bangalore. The firm has a four story building in the center of the city, but it’s nice in that they’re on a small, secluded road where there’s not much traffic, so it’s quiet mostly. There are 9 total employees in the office, including me, and we all sit in one room. Everyone has pretty decent desk space, and I guess it’s a pretty open environment to encourage’ collaboration’ (aka, I can see how much time you’re spending on Facebook, go do some work).

The firm was enough to send an ops guy to ‘negotiate’ on the apartment with me. Me and him went to the apartment, sat down with ‘real estate dude’ and the owner, and after about a half hour of throwing out numbers, I finally got it down to my target price. I took the keys, and that was it.

A few minutes after they left, I was like, ‘whoo, my own place’. A few minutes after that, I was like, ‘man, its really quiet’. Haha, the first couple days were incredibly boring aside from work, which is incredibly hard, but things got better. Anyways, my fingers are cramping up, and I can’t do this stream of consciousness thing much longer, so there will be another post soon! Miss all you guys…