Toto, we're not in Boston anymore...

Here I am in room number two of the trip. Bangalore, brilliantly, does all its road construction at night. Traffic is bad enough during the day, they don't need road construction adding to it. However the Taj hotel, in not such a stroke of brilliance, gave me the room with the window right on top of the construction. So last night instead of making a dent in my sleep debt., I wound up channel surfing pretty much all night long. And let me tell you, it's a little disconcerting seeing Billie Mays hocking his wears on late night television in India. I don't know which was worse, knowing that he's dead or the bad dubbing into Kannada.

Part of the reason I'm in such a sleep debt, besides the 36 hours that it took to get here (crammed into coach like a sardine on two very crowded planes) is that you arrive in Bangalore at 1am in the morning. There's just no way to recover from that and get on a normal sleep schedule in one day. My driver said that all the international flights arrive after midnight and leave after midnight. He said this is to help cut down on city traffic. I think it's so that visitors arrive under the cloak of darkness so they can't see the slums that you pass on the way into the city. They can't fool me though. One, I've seen Slumdog Millionaire, and two, I recognize that silhouette anywhere. It's the same silhouette I've seen in Cairo and Mexico only substituting Kannada for the Arabic and Spanish written across the buildings. I can't decide which country does poverty better, us or them. After all their poor live in shanty towns without sanitary living conditions where as ours are out in the fresh air, in cardboard boxes, on the streets. It's a toss up I guess.

On the plane, I met two other IBMers coming here to audit one of the other divisions. I just thank god it's not mine. It was great to have someone to hang out with since all my coworkers are all staying at different hotels. I probably would have just rotted in my hotel room all day yesterday, but they invited me to tag along with them to the botanical garden which was just lovely. http://www.horticulture.kar.nic.in/lalbagh.htm but it was such a spontaneous invitation, that I completely spaced on grabbing a hat, sunscreen, or even comfortable shoes. I had a little sweater with me which I draped over my poor bald head trying to at least protect my scalp. My coworkers tried to convince me that we were attracting attention because we were American, but I'm pretty sure the woman with the purple sweater on her head was the topic of many a dinner conversation in Bangalore last night.

Speaking of dinner, apparently Valentines day is a pretty big thing here. I wonder if they know it's SAINT Valentines day? We panicked about getting a dinner reservation somewhere, but thanks to a trusty list of choices one of my coworkers gave me before I left, we found a great little restaurant that managed to squeeze us in on the patio. Eating outside was a very strange experience, because it was warm, and I'm definitely not used to that. Because Bob Dylan was playing on the sound system which was a little disconcerting. But ultimately, because they put us under this tree where things keep flying in and out of it. It took us about 20 minutes to realize they were bats. The waiter confirmed, Fruit Bats, "nothing to worry about ma'am." Of course that didn't stop me from flinching every time one left the tree. I was pretty darn proud of myself for containing the scream that I really wanted to let out.

The food over all has been excellent. Although I have been avoiding traditional Indian cuisine for fear of my allergies and digestive system. I have been playing a pretty fun game after each meal called, "I wonder what's making me itch this time?" I'm trying to be pretty careful about what I'm eating but clearly there are just somethings I'm not aware of. Like the granola this morning had an awfully strange crunch to it, and I started to think, "I wonder if they ground the shells up with the nuts?"

So, today it's Hi, Ho, Hi, Ho, off to work I go. I don't think I'll be doing anything during the week, because of course, my team here works second shift and therefore, so will I. Everyone else I've met here is working a normal day shift. Tonight I'm not going to mind because I absolutely have to get some sleep. Later in the week, it might get a little lonely.