• India 07/08
• Spain 09
• Central America 11
• South East Asia 13/14
• Myanmar 17

Hotel California

The Gujarati tourists came in a rush and left in a rush. After the 31st, all hotels were cheap again, you could rent all types of bikes and no people wanting photos of, with or from you. Paradise! ;) Only I couldn’t relax then too much because I had to work on the 3rd. So somehow, I had to join the rush out of Diu which was of course a futile undertaking. It was impossible to set a foot out of Diu for all trains were fully booked. (And we didn’t want to cover a distance of about 1000 miles with Indian busses). In fact, we already checked out the trains on the day we arrived in Diu, foreseeing this. But no way out. Do you know the song Hotel California?

“Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year
You can find it here
[…]
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
‘Relax,’ said the night man,
‘We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!’”

Even though my longer stay in Diu was not about drugs, I felt a bit like in the song ;). We decided to make the best out of the situation and enjoyed the extra days we had. I rented a moped and explored the island.¹ The island is not big, it took only 45 minutes to reach the other side. To drive on these empty roads that lead through villages, pine forests and tropical swamps tastes like a nice cup of freedom. :)
For some time, I headed directly towards the sunset. The sun dyed my surroundings in reddish colors, the coast with it’s beaches and cliffs looked stunning in this light. by that time, I found out how to use the horn and that the left indicator doesn’t work. Well, nobody uses them anyway. So I just honked all the time like Indians do :P

I passed some villages where one can still see the remains of the Portuguese culture and visited some old churches there. Later I sat down on another seemingly abandoned beach to to watch the wooden fisher boats return home.

When I arrived in a fisher village on the other side of the island, some kids were approaching me and demanded ballpens from me at once. Pretty straightforward. However, that reminded me of a tiip a friend of mine, Jens², gave me: I should give beggars ballpens instead of money for they can be pretty persistent if I don’t give them anything. Well, it seems like this tip is more widely known that even these children think they can get free ballpens from Westerners. I guess they must believe now that Europe is the country where the (free) ballpens come from.
Well, I gave them my second pencil and hastily said goodbye because they were already beginning to feel my pockets if there is more to get from the Western money pig. ;) I guess that is what happens when they get too used to receiving gifts from foreigners.

But I enjoyed that tour very much, so much that I think I’ll save money to buy a moped when I am back in Germany. You are just not so dependent on public transportation or other people anymore. This is freedom :)

If I remember correctly, we managed to get a train on the 5th from Baroda which is only 250 km away from Diu and arrived on the 6th back in Chandigarh – “City beautiful”…haha :D.

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¹ I have no drivers license, left my German license in Germany. But actually, I dont’ think that anyone cares here.

² He already travelled Thailand for a month and wants to visit me here in March. :D

Drunken Invasion

In whole Gujarat, locals are not allowed to drink any alcohol unless a doctor approved that they suffer from some kind of illness and will die if they are not allowed to.¹
But this is not too bad, I mean, like in Rajasthan, they have smoke. The only bad thing is, that there is an exception rule for Diu. In Diu, it is allowed to drink alcohol. So – where to go for a cool New Years party? Right. Half Gujarat comes to Diu.²
In other states of India, it is not forbidden but usually too expensive for most of the people.

So, on the 31st, loads and loads of drunken Indian tourists were in the town, young people like us but they never saw white people before and never drank alcohol before (it seems). And of course, they could speak as much English as most Indians do (“What is your country name”,…). They wanted to shake hands, know your name and country but basically just have an excuse to glare at you. We were the main attraction – it was a bit like at the wedding. And hour after hour, there came more into the town. The police set up barriers to control the traffic, blocked the town center. And of course, the Indian tourists couldn’t handle the alcohol – oddly enough, Indians already get drunk after half a bottle or so. It was not horrifying, it was just ridiculous.
Later I talked with the Diu policeman Sonu about this. I met Sonu at a beach where I stayed overnight, he joined us at our campfire for some time. He told me, that the police was very busy that evening.
Most western backpackers were now on the church for this was the only place that was more or less fair-priced. A part of the former priests quarters plus the roof belonged to a small hotel. They organized a small party next to the church. So in the evening, there were a dozen backpackers or so.
While we were talking, chatting and drinking, we were surrounded by more and more Indian tourists who would stand in some distance, forming a circle. They wouldn’t even try to mix with us, didn’t talk much either but just quietly stand there and glare at us. Some made photos. Like an audience. When I asked Babu (the Indian backpacker) how he feels, he said “I feel like in a zoo.”. It didn’t bother me so much for I was playing Go (a Chinese boardgame) I made out of cardboard and shells of different colors. However, when it was getting more extreme and they piled up in already three lines, we decided to join the catholic mess in the other church at midnight.

Phew, the first and possibly the last time I celebrated the holy mess. It was utterly boring, though, because it was Indian, funny. The hymns which were apparently recorded earlier, sounded like “Happy dance music” – a nine-year-old playing and singing with some kind of synth-keyboard. It was hard to contain myself to not burst into laughter. Between the hymns, the priest would speak. But it made no sense, not even in a didactic manner. It was like
“…and if all the families here are as peaceful as us, this town is peaceful and if all families are peaceful, the world is peaceful – look at Bhutto, she is like Maria but look now at Pakistan, all this bloodshed that is going on there – and abortion too. Ambitios people…”
and so boring that I constantly blended in and out of what he was saying. Well, we left earlier and were followed by some old man who seemed to be rather busy during the mess. He was running around here and there, going out, coming in etc. I assumed that he is somehow organizing it and was therefor a bit in an unrest. So when we came out, he asked us “You have smoke? I search for smoke the whole day but can’t find!”. I wonder why he searched in the church. So I replied “No, we don’t have, but certainly you’ll find something in the church. Keep looking!”.

On the way back, we saw sleeping wasted Indians lying around everywhere. We joined in a bit on the party of the backpackers which was now on the roof of the church and went to our beach afterwards to sleep at 4 AM.

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¹ So Gujarat is possibly the country with the highest percentage of population that suffers from a kind of strange alcohol illness.

² Probably the other half to Daman, the other former Portuguese enclave ;)

Christmas in Pushkar

Our travel has begun. Our destination was Diu but we didn’t reach it till Christmas. Instead, we were in Pushkar during Christmas eve.
The atmosphere is unique… because it is so small, you don’t have to walk far to see a bit of rural India. It’s stunning that so close to a tourist centre, there are still these kind of villages. The town itself is built around a small lake like you would expect of an Oasis-town.
We spent Christmas eve at a restaurant which organized a Hindi devotional music group which I believe were some kind of gypsies. Otherwise, it was really funny and interestingly decorated: Balloons and other colorful stuff hang from some trees, some firework volcanoes were started and a big “Happy Christmas” was laid on the ground with orange flowers. It all felt a bit like “Happy birthday, Jesus!”. ;)
I don’t like Hindi devotional too much (a Christian chorus is singing of angels as compared to that) so I wanted to leave fast after we finished our dinner and drank our lassies.

We walked around the empty streets of Pushkar at night. The feel is completely different – it looks like another town, no, even another world or time. This applies to other Indian cities at night as well. Only without the noise, the sellers, tourists, beggars, the traffic and the light, one can experience this monumental and solemn athmosphere. Which looked so ordinary and normal at daytime, appears then so alien and exotic again. Esther wrote a very nice poem about that:

“She is another country by night.
She resists us,
Wrapping herself in her cloak of history.
She sings the silent songs
Of past lovers and lives,
Wars and wides of worships.
That have swung between the silence
Of her nights.
Her face regains it’s mystery
in with the inscrutable shadows;
moonlight on water;
a distant day; The echo of footsteps
The plash old sigh of the lake.
A private solemn dance with herself
And we are, again, foreigners.”

Later I talked with a Canadian and an Indian backpacker. The Westerner thought that bhang (blend of Marijuana) is actually not forbidden in Rajasthan. But the other one corrected him and said that it is illegal there, but no one cares. Actually, every family has a bit in their household. This is a very small difference, really.
This reflects in the way bhang is distributed in Pushkar: Many restaurant have “Special Lassi” or “Special cookie” even on their menu. When I asked what precisely is in there, the waiter replied “Well, do you know this plant,… Marijuana?” and added a little bit uncomfortably “… actually, it is illegal so we have to write ‘special’ instead of ‘bhang’.”. He seemed to be more concerned with not being allowed to write bhang in the menu than that bhang is illegal. ;)
The owner of the very small hotel we stayed in named his Lassi “Megic Lassi” (inclusive the spelling mistake). A very small and cosy hotel, the owner is very friendly.

Vagabonds

“I love being a vagabond, having no place to stay!” (10 seconds later:) “Hm, I need a bathroom” – Esther

On from Pushkar, we spent about 18 hours traveling in buses till we reached Diu.¹ The last bus drove on so bumpy and nearly non-existent roads through vast steppes and a jungle-like reservation that the bus nearly fell apart. No kidding. The bus was not one of the best or newest, you could see provisional fixes to it everywhere. The whole left side of the bus inclusive all windows were actually loose. The back windows were gone and replaced by cardboard. During the travel, we lost some parts of the left side and one pole which you could grab hold of fell down. I expected the windows to break every second because they were just hopping up and down in their frame. Otherwise, the bus was not too bad… ;) (Yes, I like to write about buses. I mean, we spend about half the time of traveling in a bus. India is just so huge.)

But all that traveling was worth it. Not only that I saw more of rural India on the way but Diu itself is just beautiful. The Portuguese conquered this in very early times and it was only conquered back by Indian military in 1961. So, you see the Portuguese influence everywhere and it feels a bit like (I imagine) the Caribbean. Except that the water is not turquoise but Northsea-like, there are no white beaches and not quite so much palms. And you are nearly never alone, I guess India ist just too crowdy to leave the beautiful places un-crowded (and therefor not full of garbage). Even though it is in the middle of winter, its still about 30 degrees during day.

When we arrived, we found out that actually all hotels were more or less full and these greedy hotel owners would charge about 3-5 times as much from this day on.
So, we decided to just sleep somewhere for zero Rupees. Perhaps on the beach? Esther and me rented two bikes and were free but “homeless” :)
In the town center of Diu, there was a big bazaar where we bought some blankets for the night and where I ate one of the weirdest Indian meals I have ever eaten in India. Esther described this meal accurately as “Soggy cornflakes [and popped rice] with some spicy sauce”.
In the evening, we ended up accompanying a Canadian guy, Mag, and his Indian friend Babu sleeping on the beach. He spent already three days there and built a Robinson-Crusoe-like “tent” (a roof out of a blanket) with a little stove out of a pillar of a bench. They cooked some seafood and Indian food. I think it is the first time in my life that I tasted Shrimps – man, if you overcome the disgust, they are really tasty!
Anyway, the night at the beach was really rather cold. On top of that, there were a couple of stray dogs roaming at the beach. While we were all awake and eating, they were pretty peaceful but later, they started growling at each other (or at us), and woke us up again and again by barking and howling loudly half a metre from our heads. The Canadian guy who stayed up longer had to shoo them away again and again – they really went mad. I guess they were fighting over a big kingfish that we didn’t eat up.
So, the next day we joined some other backpackers who slept on the roof of a Christian church. The view is awesome and the backpacker atmosphere is unique.

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¹ The distance from Chandigarh to Diu is about the distance from Spain to Poland.

Christmas plans

Till about one week ago, I had no plans for Christmas. Which is, especially in India, very very late. Actually, for ANY activity here: Indians make plans for everything far in advance. For example Christmas holidays about half a year before.
I originally wanted to go to the beaches of Goa on Christmas – all trains are booked. Goa is a very popular destination for Indians to spend their Christmas. Well, screw it. Some other trainees want to go to Nepal (and left today 2:00 AM). But after I had a small taste of the cold in the mountains in Manali, I don’t really want to go to deep into the Himalayas during the coldest season in the year with NO FUCKING HEATINGS in the hotels! Ahem.

And since I can’t be home this Christmas, I decided to go into the desert (Rajasthan)! I go with a fellow trainee from New Zealand, Esther. And perhaps, if we are fast, we can reach Diu. A former Portuguese enclave on a small Island in the South of Gujarat :). (That means beach, dude! BEACH!)
I’ll leave on the 22nd late in the night.

By the way, the parcel my parents sent to me about 2 months ago, finally arrived. I hope my Christmas-parcel for Gisela, Wolfgang and Daniel will arrive before the 24th. Well, actually I hope it will arrive at all but if it is not ripped open and will even arrive in time, it would be a nice bonus ;).
I put the presents in the old parcel and taped it very tight, wrapped it in two posters (so be cautious with that – the motives are very cool) and stitched up textile around it – which is recommended by the Indian post itself. “It’s more difficult to rip it open”. Hi hi.

However, merry Christmas!

Celebrities at an Indian wedding

Oho, normally I have to run after my boss all the time and ask “OK do you have some work for me? I am idling right now” and normally he can come up with something. But this afternoon, he couldn’t come up with anything after I finished a lot of work simultaneously yesterday and today.
So, I can finally talk about my first Indian marriage! It was the marriage of a colleague of a friend of mine, Albane. Indian marriages go on for several days and I visited only on the second day, the day when they are already officially married. And it was big. It all looked like a small fair. A large buffet and a Ganesha idol (“The remover of obstacles”, you pray to him traditionally on weddings), a stage etc. on the fairground.
But actually, I didn’t experience too much of the wedding, the traditions and so on so I can’t tell you too much about it: We were constantly surrounded by locals who wanted to shake our hands, make photos with us, ask the same questions like “Which country you belong?”, “Your good name?” over and over again or just stare at us in one metre distance. This was really exhausting but funny for a time. I haven’t experienced this admire-phenomena so extreme, yet. Not even in slums where Westerners are (even) more rarely seen. Now I know how celebrities feel. Over all, I think we really stole the groom and the bride the show.
But we were really innocent, we just had to stop somewhere and talk to each other (or answer the singleton questions of the locals) for less than one minute or so to see how glaring locals stacked up around us in one meter distance.¹
One guy who could speak a little bit more English than just to ask the standard questions constantly wanted to drag and pull me to dance with him, another small child nudged me the whole time to get some attention.
And there was this old guy who seemed to kinda pity us in our situation but still wanted to shake hands with us. So he came to us several times during the wedding while the walls of people built up around us, shook our hands, asked “Any problems? Any problems?” – “No no, everything is alright.” – “OK OK”, shook our hands again and wouldn’t go away till we shook his hands again and said something like “OK thanks, bye”.
But it was definitely worse for Albane. (And I guess it would have been worse if most of the locals wouldn’t have thought that we were a married couple.) During the ceremony with the groom, the camera with it’s flood light lasted longer on her than on the groom: As soon as the groom finished to do something interesting, the cameraman would immediately turn back to her just sitting there. It all looked really ridiculous to me.

But definitely an experience I won’t forget.

¹ It is a very little known fact that the favorite sport of Indians is not Cricket but Glaring

Manali

My usual travel plan to decide on Friday where to go on the same day, basically just toss a second t-shirt¹ in my backpack and go to the bus stand totally backfired when I went to Manali.
We were four, Flavio from Brazil, Jakub from Poland, Costas from Greek and me. And well, apart from freezing my ass of, it was otherwise a very nice and funny weekend trip.
For example there were those saffron-street-sellers. I know, it’s easy to get hashish in Manali… but saffron?! One approached me exactly in the same way I expect hashish sellers to approach me. But he did not pull out a bag with small packets of brownish powder. Instead, he pulled out a bag with small packets of red powder, urging me to buy his “good quality” saffron. I met several of those people during my stay – no people trying to sell other stuff on the street… So, of all things you can possibly huckster on the street, WHY SAFFRON?? I asked the saffron-seller if he perhaps sells salt, curry, pepper, too. But he didn’t. Too bad. Hashish neither. I’m still not sure if this saffron-selling is just a cover to sell drugs?
Whatever. I bought a lot of CDs on my last trips and these are really not very cheap. But I found a cheap way to acquire Indian music: Search for music on the PC(s) in a cyber cafe (Internet cafe) and copy it to your USB-Stick. Or: Ask the owner of Chopsticks if one can borrow a CD for 10 minutes. :>

We went to visit some nice temples, Solang Valley to do paragliding, Old Manali & Vashisht and a small fair which turned out to be a fair graveyard, a toilet for dogs and garbage pile. :)

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¹ plus camera, travel guide and my notebook and NO TOWEL

The world capital of yoga

On Friday, after extensive reading of Harry Potter, I started to see a small aura like before having a migraine headache (Not around trees though, that is to note ;-P). At the same time I got a heavy headache but I was quite sure that it was no migraine because the aura didn’t advance but stayed there. That worried me and I decided to stop reading. After a few hours of hanging around bored, I fetched my backpack and walked to the bus station, got a (ordinary) bus to Rishikesh. (It took about 9 hours to arrive and cost me 130 Rs = 2 Euro) The travel was not too bad because I got one of the front seats with more legroom and my neighbor could speak proper English.
Before I reached Rishikesh, I met some other Westerners that turned out to be practitioners of Yoga. I am really glad that I met them, I learned a lot and attended one Yoga class with them and they told me a lot about Yoga and that it is much more than stretching. Now, I bought a lot of books and am eager to read them through. There are a lot of Ashrams and course offers in Rishikesh, the atmosphere is unique.¹ It invites you to stay and learn more about spiritualism, meditation, yoga etc. and it is hard to just leave there again in such a rush. (Only spent one and a half days there.)

Of course, for such a religious person as me, it’s sort of difficult to believe in things other than science. But I am trying my best to be as tolerant and curious as possible. After all, it is not about the ultimate truth (whatever that is) but about what I want to believe and how I want to live my life.
Spiritual things like mystic energies, chakras, waves contradict mostly to modern science for it can be scientifically proved that there are no mystical waves flowing through the body etc. However, I think you can’t take those things literally. You have to view them as (abstract) models (every software engineer or natural scientist should know what I am talking about). They just attempt to describe certain processes and reactions (inside our body) and make predictions. Just as models in “proper” science, these can turn out to be more or less correct, exact and useful. For example it is proven that Isaac Newton was not right with his classical mechanics – You can’t go faster than light. Nevertheless, it is considered as sufficiently precise to describe most movements.
If we try to describe our body physically, we will end up with a big and complex biological machine whose exact mechanics are yet to discover (because it is so complex). That is a pity but shows us that we still got a lot to research an learn about our body in the future.
But well, as said, there are partly ancient sciences that have researched the human body, describing it effectively by various models. I think it is no wonder that sciences like this already existed in so early times (see the Vedas) of human history. The center of all science should be the human, after all.

Ah, and by the way, the auras either vanished or I learned to ignore them.

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¹ A bit – but only a bit – like certain parts of Altona or Schanzenviertel in Hamburg only that it is more “alternative/esoteric” than “alternative/punky”.

LASIK, Thanksgiving and Harry Potter

No update for quite some time now and this had quite a good reason. I am surprised why no one thought it was odd to see the inner of my eye in the last post… :) The reason was my lack of vision for I had gone for LASIK!
About a month ago, another German trainee, David, who works at the Chandigarh tourism department told me about tourism here. He told me that medical tourism is very strong here because it is whilst with the same standards, much cheaper than in Europe.¹ I wanted to do LASIK anyway but planned to do it later when I earn (more) money since I can’t afford it right now. However, I can afford LASIK in India – a great opportunity since I am already in India :-)
I informed myself about institutes which do LASIK in Chandigarh and settled for the Grewal Eye Institute which has a very good reputation.

I had no chance to post anything during the first days, so I’ll post the things I wrote into my notebook in the first week:

Friday (16.11) – Surgery

The surgery was at 8:30 AM. I had to swallow a lot of medicine and apply some eyedrops the day before the surgery. I decided to do Epi-LASIK. As I understood it, LASIK was not egible for me since my cornea is too thin. In LASIK, they cut into the front layers of the eye with a blade and then just open it like a cap before applying the laser. After the surgery, they would just close the cap again. However, this cut would have been too deep for my eyes. The alternative (Epi-Lasik) which takes longer to heal (3-4 weeks instead of 2-3 weeks) is to scrab open the surface of the eyes before applying the laser. After the surgery, I’d receive protective contact lenses as a patch for the eyes to avoid an open wound.²
This sounds painful and yes, it is. Imagine a graze in your eyes.
During the surgery and some hours after this, my eyes were numb of course. I was awake during the surgery and my eyes were hold open by some kind of metal ring (This was the only thing that actually hurt). It took just about 10 minutes or less per eye.
There are nice videos and descriptions of the techniques in an article on “The eye digest”.
After the surgery I had to lie down for 4 hours were I should keep my eyes closed. I took a short glimpse and was astonished by the already much better view than I was used to without glasses. :-D
Only later in the evening, my eyes started to be not numb anymore. It didn’t really burn yet but was very discomforting – I could hardly open my eyes without the reflex to close at once again.

Saturday – Day one

Uff, I had the worst night of my life. I got into bed about eight o’clock and just couldn’t sleep because my eyes burnt like hell and I had such a big headache that I could have hammered my head against the wall all the time. I tried to get up at 8:00 AM to meet the next appointment on 9:00 AM in the institute but couldn’t open my eyes at all. My eyelids were so heavy that when I tried to open them, they’d immediately fall down again – I guess partly because of reflex. How was I supposed to get the eye drops (2 eye drops four times a day, 1 eye drop every wake hour) in without being able to open my eyes?? I still felt horrible and even caught a cold (which added to my headache and closed my nose).
However, after some calling around, I found out a number for a cab service and finally got to the institute at 10:30 AM, nearly blind cause I couldn’t open my eyes for longer than a second and was extremely sensitive to light (The cab cost me 50 Rupees < 1 Euro ;-)). My eyes were examined and they figured everything is OK so I could go home. The doctor told me a trick to insert eye drops when you are not able to open the eyes: Drip it onto the lacrimal gland (where the tears come from).
When I got home, I immediately fell into bed and actually managed to sleep till about 4:00 PM. And – I could open my eyes! Happy happy!
My fellow housemates were very caring, Sally even cooked something for me :-). I hadn’t eaten since the day before so this was even more delicious than it was anyways.

Sunday – Day two

I got a lot less difficulties to open my eyes then, even though it was still too blurry to read anything and I was extremely sensitive to light. My head and eyes still hurt but on a scale one can bear up against. Normally when I am ill and have to lie in bed all the time, I read something – now this was not possible. I was so bored that I started to first develop a turn-by-turn strategy game like Dark Crusade and later a general 3D engine for Clonk in my head.

Monday – Day three

I feel a lot of better now and can even write (with big letters). I slowly recover from the cold and eat more regularly again. No complications were found on the examination on this day.
Now, the key difficulty of the 3Dengine is really the order in how to draw the objects, which objects are in front and which are behind these. Not to do it at all but to do it fast. Clipping and collision detection is not so much of a problem if I don’t make it too complex or precise.
After all, I guess it will boil down to having a list of all objects for each camera in which the objects are ordered in the distance to the camera. This list has to be updated on even the slightest movement of an object. If the camera itself moves, even all objects have to be updated. To use an array instead of a list would be fatal since for every reorder of an object half the array would have to be re-sorted. The bad thing is, that I’d have to code a list for Clonk first without using (too much) objects since objects have a huge overhead in Clonk.
I really wished to write that down then, but I couldn’t yet.

Tuesday – Thanksgiving

Today, my protective contact lenses were removed. It was really a pain in the ass to remove them since I have so small eyes. But in the end (after 20 minutes of pressing and pushing my eyes), he got them out. The burning of the eyes now turned into itching which is nearly worse than hurting – I constantly have to resist the urge to rub my eyes.
Today, our Americans in the house, Shannon and Dave organized a Thanksgiving feast and told us about Thanksgiving, the history and what it means to Americans. Really really nice, gotta do this for Nikolaus, I just have to sneak in everybody’s room in the night before ;-). I helped with the cutting and cooking and the food was delicious – chicken, carrots, mashed potatoes and green beans, pie and ice cream after thatm. Mhh.
However, my in-head-development of the 3D engine has finally found it’s way into my notebook… now I long for really coding it, hrm. My fingers itch.

Wednesday to Friday

I’m on the way to be better, really. I don’t wear my sunglasses all the time anymore and I can read already. I went to the AIESEC office and wrote some of my notes in text files and got a virus on my usb-stick (which does not affect my usb-stick). This virus which spreads through removable devices has been on one of the two AIESEC PCs for nearly two months now and some idiot managed to transport it to the other PC to. They got no awareness at all for viruses at all! They even access their Gmail accounts, AIESEC network etc. from the infected PCs even though they know that there is a virus! And of course, nobody knows the Administrator password, no Windows CD in the office and no one cares anyway. I tried to explain to them that viruses are not just there to mock a little (virus prevented me from opening firefox, taskmanager, msconfig, even cmd together with a nice comment), they are programmed for a purpose!³ However, I don’t have any motivation to reinstall the systems for them when they don’t care (and I don’t have time), anyway. This ignorance just makes me angry.
Anyways, while the others troded off to the Pushkar Mela, a huge camel market and the biggest festival in Rajasthan, I stayed back home because all that dust in the desert and on the big bazaar might not be good for my eyes right now. A pity, for I’d have really like to have joined them! But I started to read the last Harry Potter book and have the best chances to read it through in 2 days time. :-)

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¹ I met a German eye doctor at the Grewal eye institute who spent his vacation to study at this institute for some weeks. He told me that with those standards and know-how, I’d pay about 4000 Euro in Germany. About 5 times the price I payed.

²There is a third technique which has just (September 2007) been introduced to this institute as the first in this region: Intralase. The corneal flap is created with the help of another laser, so no blade is used at all. The eyes will regain 100% eyesight in 3-4 days (as opposed to 3-4 weeks) and it is (almost?) painless. However, I couldn’t afford this technique for it was double the price and Dr. Grewal assured me that the outcome will be the same. There are no additional risks in EpiLASIK as opposed to Intralase.

³“Imagine some stranger breaks into your house and just lives there from now on. Every now and then he punches you in the face and whenever you try to open the fridge, he bangs it shut and shouts ‘DNT U DARE U DUMB!’. Would you leave the house knowing that he is in there or even write mails and do you bank business while he looks over your shoulder? Are you hoping that this virus is a fellow nice chap after all?” – “laugh… I’m not in the office so often anyway. I just access my google mail and the AIESEC network from here.” – “OK forget it…”

My home

I stayed back in office today to have a bit of online life again and now it’s 21:30. That means that the last bus already left so I can even stay longer ;-)
Just chatting with Felix who remarked that I only write about my travel and not really about the office, the daily life, AIESEC and the trainees. He is right, I should write more about it. So since I can’t get home now anyway, I can start right now ;-)

I live in a house in sector 21 with fifteen other trainees. But sector 21… well, basically sucks. The only good thing is that it is close to the center (sector 17) and the bus stand, but since it’s so near to the center, it’s pretty expensive while the house is pretty bad. There is only one 3mx1.5m kitchen and the house is not in a good condition. For example we got power cuts (more than the neighborhood ;-)) all the time until recently when an electrician came by. What he did was to re affix some cables that were hanging loosely in front of the main door by hang it on the holder for the (non-working) lamp over the door. It’s not that bad as the cable salad in Delhi but I realized that the cables hanging around on that image are actually as much in use as the cables hanging over our front door! Ohmygod. But a good example for Indian care for proper maintenance.
But I stay there because I got good company there and don’t want to waste the time on the weekends to search for new flats. I’ll rather travel.
There are almost no interesting shops in sector 21, only biker shops, some sweet shops and workshops. I don’t understand the tendency for equal shops to pile up all at the same place: If you opened up a shop where one can buy helmets, would you go to a place where there are 5 other shops or rather to a place where there is no helmet-shop? Anyways, there are some useful shops that I can easily reach on foot, too. Just around the corner, there is a barber shop and something like a telephone box and copy shop. OK, the barber shop is actually a mirror hanging on the tree with a chair in front of it but honestly – it does the job, right? I got used to those kind of shops ;-). The telephone box is the front room of a flat where there are 5 telephones on the table and one copy machine in the back – that’s the place from where I have been calling you guys.
So I normally go shopping in Sector 22, there is much more. Even a (for Western standards) very very small super market which is… CLEAN (Oh my god)! Other department stores literally stink of dirt, if you’d see such a shop in Germany, you will never ever go shopping in such a shop. The good thing about that super market is, that you can buy fruits and vegetables there. No other department stores sell such things, I’d have to cycle to the vegetable bazaar in Sector 20. In (the middle of) Sector 22, there is a big clothes bazaar where you can buy reaally cheap clothes and other textiles if you bargain¹.

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¹ A dialog. Me: “OK, honestly: This is not original, it’s a copy right?” – Seller: “Haa, yes, it’s an original duplicate copy!” (in a tone that suggests that this is a very good thing) :-)

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