India update - 4 days left

I'm in the home stretch. First time being away from the states for a month, and it wasn't so bad. 4 days left and I'll be heading home. At least work has been keeping me very busy and Nicole's heading back to Seattle today. It was great to have her here for a week. I'm really looking forward to getting back to my American life back home.

I'm positive I'll be back to India again. There's no doubt in my mind about it.

Awesome!

Yes, that was sarcasm.

India Declares Arrival of Avian Flu Where 50,000 Birds Died

Well, I'm here for another two weeks, and I'll be flying through Mumbai on the way back to the states. Joy!

Awww, fuck.

My iPod just took a shit all over itself. It thinks it has no music, and iTunes agrees. Just great for this to happen with two weeks left here.

All the music's there, but now I have to manually copy it off of the iPod back onto the computer from /Volumes/Swishy McJackass/iPod_Control/Music

Yes, my iPod is named Swishy McJackass.

AppleCare in a foreign country

Having AppleCare is a good thing. My power adapter on my 15" PowerBook bit the dust last week. I took it into the local Apple office here in Bangalore and got it replaced. First time I've had to get a repair on this computer outside of the normal 1yr warranty. AppleCare will expire on this computer in September. Very good purchase. I'd highly recommend it for anybody that has an Apple laptop. It's that whole, piece of mind thing.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1532

Office party in India.

My driver needs to seriously stop making me drinks. Seriously.

Had a great time. Now trying to head off the inevitable hangover. I keep telling myself tonight was a bonding exercise. Yeah, that's what it was.

Stare, gawk, laugh.

Being an American isn't just enough.

Being fat isn't just enough.

It's when you're on your way towards your ride back to the hotel when you slip off the curb, trip, and land on your hands and knees in the process, in front of the people on MG Road in Bangalore. That's just good entertainment, folks.

I was quite the show today. Even before the tripping incident on MG Road (in front of the Spencer's Super (formerly Food World)), I had plenty of people staring, gawking, and laughing at just me. I'm a freak here, I know. It's fun at first, but like Japan, it gets old after a while. I had to, somewhat angrily, turn down the group of guys at the botanical gardens that wanted to take a picture with me. Argh.

The whole day out and about started with me needing to find a battery charger for my NiMH AA batteries. I brought a 240v-110v converter so that I'd be able to use my Energizer compact charger. So I plugged it in, and about 5 minutes later, pop and a poof of smoke comes from the charger. Not gonna mess with that pile anymore. The new charger supports 110-240v 50/60Hz so I'm set now. And I'll be able to buy the right type of plug when I get back to the states (or just use a converter).

The helpful room service order taker

So last night I decided to go outside my comfort zone a bit and order Indian food for room service. My choice - Garlic Naan and Tandoori Murg (chicken). These are two things I really like, so I wanted to see how the hotel would do them.

As I made my order, the order taker said, "Are you sure you want it to be spicy? Foreigners usually don't like it very spicy." This is true - I have a hard time how spicy food is here in S. India. So I asked for it to be less spicy. He said he'd be able to do that, and we ended the call.

A short while later he called back. "We can only make it medium spicy," he said. Adding, "If we make it less spicy, it just won't taste the same." So I agreed to medium spicy, and when the food arrived, it was actually great.

I just thought it was interesting how accomodating they were for my palate.

Watching the Super Bowl in India...

...is a nice break to all of the cricket matches.

Go Hawks.

(it's Steelers 21-10 Seahawks right now)

You're welcome, hotel guests

Yes, it's true. I fixed the Internet.

(The wireless router is right outside my room - a quick power cycle and the Internets work now.)

Bangalore - 4 February 2006

Another 28 hour trip from Seattle to here is complete and it's now 4pm in the afternoon in Bangalore. The sun is out, it's probably about 80 degress outside and I have my usual post-arrival headache. Flights here (SEA-AMS-BOM-BLR routing) were pretty uneventful - some European chick on the SEA-AMS flight was singing whatever music she was listening to. I just turned up the volume a bit more. It was nice to have at-seat 120v power on the NWA flight (A330).

I slept through most of the AMS-BOM flight, and the BOM-BLR flight was actually a lot better than last time I came through because the armrests go all the way up on the ATR 72-500 aircraft. The KLM attendant in Amsterdam complimented me on the fact that I get two seats (I'm a passenger of size, in airline terms), and Jet Airways in India had a hard time understanding that I was getting two seats for myself. Oh well.

I was met by Prakash, my driver, at BLR airport and I'm staying at the Hotel Ramanashree, which is much cheaper than Le Meridien and maybe 1.5 stars less than LM.

Nicole's up in Bhubaneswar and will be coming to BLR on 23 February. So I'll have a week with her here before we both head back to the states. That's still 19 days away, but it's not all that far away. At least I can talk to her a lot more frequently now.

So anyway, I'm in Bangalore for the next month.

370HSSV-0773H

Programming note: tomorrow I leave for India. I'll be there until March 3rd.

Osama contacts Bush

After numerous rounds of "We don't know if Osama is still alive," or "I
really don't think about him much anymore," Osama himself decided to
send George Bush a letter in his own handwriting to let him know he was
still in the game.

Bush opened the letter an it appeared to contain a single line of coded
message:

370HSSV-0773H

Bush was baffled, so he E-mailed it to Condi Rice. Condi and her aides
had no clue either, so they sent it to the FBI. No one could solve it at
the FBI so it went to the CIA, then to the NSA.

With no clue as to its meaning they eventually asked Britain's MI-6 for
help. Within a minute MI-6 cabled the White House with this reply:

"Tell the President he's holding the message upside down."