Bangkok

I left Bangalore Friday night through the new airport. My flight happened to be only the second leaving from this airport ever. I was kind of anxious things would go bad with the airport opening but I made it only 2 hours late to Bangkok.
The new airport is far north from the city but it took us only 75 minutes to get there ( we had planned for 2 hours). It seemed all cops of Karnataka had decided they wanted to be there, and obviously too many of them can only create traffic jams which they were successful at. Once arrived at the airport it was like a full battalion of 2000 cops with bellies and wooden sticks roaming around a bit lost with that "Idunowhatamdoinherebutamhere" look in the eyes.

The building itself is gigantic, ultra modern, and looking great, nice duty free shops and cafes in the international area so once the workers will be trained it will be fine. Sree even succeeded at getting me interviewed about what I though about the new airport ! ;)

Once in Bangkok, I checked in my hotel by the river, and as I arrived early my room wasn't ready so I got upgraded to the before last floor, with complimentary business lounge, great view unlimited booze etc... Ok I took advantage of the deal quite a bit ! And I love The View:


During the 3 last days, I took a lot the shuttle boats cruising on the river to go sightseeing around the city. The main temples and the royal palace are really very nice and I was pleasantly surprised. The rest of my time I've been walking in markets and narrow streets enjoying the city and its great spicy food.

What Pho Temple

Who said HOT! ?

Obviously I didn't find enough time to sort out all the pictures from Sri Lanka and here, plus the laptop screen is giving artificially warm color tones and I don't like developing the pictures on it so I'll do all this when I am back home (maybe tomorrow :).

Flying for the weekend

As usual when I travel to India for work, I take advantage of a weekend in the middle to visit some place not too far from Bangalore. That way I traveled to Cochi, Delhi, Agra, Madurai, Munnar, Madras and Pondichery during my other trips, via car, bus train and local airlines. This time I decided to fly to Colombo in Sri Lanka, it's realy close and plenty of things to see and picture.

India, Cricket and IPL

It is difficult to talk about Indian culture without talking about food and spirituality (I probably got the order right) but the third, maybe second item on the list is definitely Cricket with a capital C. Cricket is here what Football is to Latin America: almost everything.
I know my interest into sports is usually pretty limited outside of world cup this or that where I'll watch a game or two with friends because it's fun. So during my first trips here I kind of watched this passion for cricket with amusement more than anything else. This time I made the step, thanks to IPL and my colleague Mrinal.

IPL ? This is some kind of Indian championship of Cricket that is brand new from this year. The nice thing about it (for me) is that the games are played in less than 3 hours, instead of 2 to 5 days !!! So following and understanding the game is not as demanding for an ignorant like me. Obviously many are shouting "Sacrilege", the game is loosing its soul, etc, etc... They even have lightly dressed (for some teams) Pom Pom Girls ! Scandalous ! I'll pass the topic but it's of a big interest for tabloids and many in a quite conservative country in regards of legs exhibition (outside of Bollywood).

Why starting a new league of Cricket in a country that has been playing the game for what seems forever ? Well this is my own interpretation, but last year there was the first world championship of that new fast kind of Cricket, and after loosing miserably at the standard world championship India won that one. So I suppose it was the right time to start a league of the same game. The amount of money that is revolving around is probably the second reason.

So what's this game ? I'll assume that, like me you're totally ignorant and know only that cricket and baseball are games where people are slacking on a field with a bat and a ball. Well, that's not this far from the truth, but there is more about it, I actually found myself enjoying watching it for some time on TV and bitching about advertising interruptions (and Indian advertising is quite entertaining to me). So you got 2 teams of 11 guys, 1 bat and 1 ball. Each team will throw the ball 20x6 times the second starting when the first is done (6 balls is an "Over"), while the other tries to slam the ball away with the bat enough to be able to run back and forth as much as they can between the batsman and the ball-thrower position until the other team brings the ball back (where another of your teammates runs to exchange position with you). If you exchange position once, you score 1 point, if you exchange 2,3 times you score 2 or 3 (3 is quite rare). If you throw the ball out of the field before any of your opponent catches it, but it bounced on the ground first you score 4 and if there was no bounce you score 6. If an opponent catches the ball in the field before it hits the ground you're out. and another of your teammates takes your spot. It's fairly simple but there are lots of subtleties and nice things.
The most elegant thing in cricket is the way they throw the ball, it is quite impressive, and there are guys that throw this piece of wood and leather consistently above 140km/h, other that spin it more like a ping pong ball, other that rub it so hard against their pant that they manage to get it asymmetrical and follow weird trajectories, etc... Besides that some guys on the field do pretty impressive dives to catch the ball in flight, and the batsman can show some nice skills, but nothing that me ignorant French would find as athletic as the throw.

There is quite some strategy involved in selecting who is throwing when and who is batting, etc... and it succeeds at making a 3h game quite entertaining. You can also learn the referee gesture which in some case would look like a dance, lurk on the pom pom girls, watch the enthusiasm of your colleagues in front of the TV and enjoy a Kingfisher, the local beer, and so successful that the owner also has an airline and sponsors almost half of the teams of the IPL.

Cricket bat and ball

The 3 standing poles are the point to bring back the ball before the batter completes his run, if you make them fall before he gets back he's out (or if the thrower manages to slam them down with the ball directly).

If you want to know more about the game, and its British roots, that just commonwealth countries are playing it etc... have a look at the wikipedia entry.

And this entry was completed while listening to Linda Lemay singing about the damned French with her delicious accent. Enjoy (no relationship whatsoever with cricket, don't search;).

And Forth

I am leaving this weekend for India where I'll spend the next 3 weeks in Bangalore. More indian news to come soon ! I'll also be stopping for a weekend in Bangkok on my way back. Expect some news here during the trips.

Some pictures from Kerala

My camera was not on vacation despite what some are pretending, I am slowly going through all the pictures. The gallery is being populated on zenfolio (and some portraits added too). For the lazy ones, a few first samples here:

Wedding procession in Tamil Nadu


Tea gardens near Munnar, Kerala


Tea everywhere


Pouring my Elaichi tea

Tamil Nadu and Kerala weekend

Last weekend I went on a trip with Ashok around southern India. As my visa got delayed we didn't book transportation long enough before so it ended up being an interresting part of the trip. We left Bangalore by bus and reached Madurai 9 hours later after 450km through the countryside of Tamil Nadu. This was a bus similar to the one I took to go to Dharwad: air conditionning, reclining seats etc...

And this time as it was a day travel I had the pleasure to watch 2 whole Tamil movies ! The best part of it is that I had all the explainations from Ashok in parallel. It seems there is a common storyline between pretty much every Indian movie (don't shoot me if you're a fan, just correct me;): The hero gets introduced, time for a song, the hero meets the cute girl, time for a song, the hero meets funny guy, time for a joke, the hero falls in love with the girl, time for a song, the hero beats the crap out of a bunch of villains that are getting on his way to mary the girl, time for a song celebrating the victory (every single fight happens to be"Matrix" like... without the sci-fi explaination), after a bunch of other fights, other jokes and other songs, time for the wedding of the hero and the cute girl and a final song, YAY!

In the end the 9 hours were not that long. I also learnt a lot about Indian politics, and especialy Tamil politics (as Ashok is from Madras). More about this later. We slept in a Hotel downtown Madurai and left the next morning early for Munnar with a rented car (and a driver). The 160km took us almost 5 hours, the road wasn't too bad but the usual slalom between cows, rikshaws, trucks, buses, pedestrians, bikes does not help, and half of the travel was on a very narrow mountain road where driving faster than 40km/h would have felt like being in a rally car. The scenaries all along the mountain area were stunning, I will post pictures once I am back, but just this section of the road was worth the trip. Once we arrived In Kerala we drove through 50km of mountains covered with tea gardens. The greens that you see there are amazing, vivid, bright, and understandable as it seems rain rarely stops there.
Once in Munnar we ate in a small crowded restaurant that serves food on banana leaves instead of plates and where you eat the rice or dosa, sambar, chutneys and curries all with your hand (the right one!). I got better at tearing breads and dosas with just one hand but I still need some practice (you really don't want to use your left hand to eat!). I got a lot of surprised looks as if it was the first time they saw an occidental eating with its hands and without a plate (I was obviously smiling proudly). The hotel we had booked ended up being full and saying we never booked anything, so we stayed downtown instead of in the middle of the tea gardens.
We spent the next afternoon and next morning going around the local mountains and lakes with the car and stopping when the weather was permitting it to hike around and enjoy the scenaries. I took lots and lots of pictures that I hope will turn nice. We then drove back to Madurai stopping on the way to buy tea.

That day happened to be the day the ruling party of Tamil Nadu was having a Bandh (general strike). The whole thing started with some project of digging a canal through Rama's bridge (set of high underwater mountains between Sri Lanka and India). Because of its importance in Hindou religion Mythology some religious parties oppose the project, and tension started to raise between them and the ruling party in Tamil Nadu (atheist). That day the ruling party had declared a general strike (commuted into hunger strike because the supreme court juged the strike unconstitutional) in the state. So on the road to Madurai we saw lots of political meetings where something stroke me: the speakers were always turning their back tothe crowd... I still don't get it. anyways that was pretty fun talking about local politics on the road.

We then spent a few hours in Madurai visiting the very large Shiva temple there. Ashok gave me a detailed visit of the importance of each part of the temple and that was an interresting dive into Hindou culture.

We took a night train back to Bangalore, but because of the last minute ticket thing we ended up in relatively cheap compartments that were not designed for people my size. Probably 300 people bounced on my feet that were extending 20cm after the bed during the night... I went straight to bed once in Bangalore, before having a nice brunch at the Leela with Ashok, Aravindh and his family. That concluded a pretty nice weekend trip.

Flying again

I started to schedule a trip to India at the beginning of this month and was planning to stop by for a weekend in Paris to visit the little monkey and his growing family. For once I even had started all formalities early, that was without counting on bureaucrats creativity. The visa process for India got changed, now they request a criminal record to the French autorities, which are well known for their speed. I was supposed to fly 3 days ago and got the visa delivered today...
So I am still going to India but will have to skip on France this time, I am very sorry, especially for my dear little monkey. I'll try to hop by to visit you before Christmas still. I hope things will be fine for me also as it's not even sure I'll get seats on my return flight...

All the news aren't bad though, next weekend Ashok and Aravindh are taking me to Madurai and Munnar, I am excited just at the thought of hiking in the tea gardens :).

Indian food

Last month, when I was in Dharwad, Rajani's mother cooked a delicious dish for us. I enjoyed it so much that I asked for the recipe. Rajani sent it to me and I promised myself to try it before publishing it.

For half a kg of fish, you need:
- 1/2 a coconut (grated)
- 10 red chilies :)
- 1 onion (chopped)
- a piece of ginger an inch long (chopped)
- 1 small green chili (chopped)
- oil
- 1 tsp tamarind paste (squeeze a lemon if this is not available)

Saute onion, ginger and green chili in the oil till the onions are transparent. Blend together the coconut, red chilies and tamarind paste with some salt to a paste. Mix the paste with the sauteed onions, ginger and green chilly. Add some water (based on how thick you want the gravy to be) and bring to a boil. Add the fish and boil till the fish is cooked.

So, I tried this yesterday. Obviously I did not have all ingredients available so I had to adapt a little bit. I didn't have fresh coconut to grate but I used a can of coconut cream. I did not have the proper red and green chilies so I replaced the 1 Indian green chili (very strong) by 2 Israelis green chilies (it was too mild I think I needed more). For the red chilies I had some dry red chilies that are ok, and added a chunk of a red bell pepper and a bit of red chili powder. I did put the cream and the red stuff and a tea spoon of tamarind paste in the blender and got a nice orange cream (but I did put a little bit too much tamarind). I used a sea bream (dorade in french, ajaj in Arabic and denis in Hebrew) for fish as it is one of the best and cheapest ones available here. I used olive oil (I don't have any other oil anyway).

So in the end it looked very different because of the orange tint given by the bell pepper, was more sour and less hot than the original dish. I preferred the original version but I believe my version was more adapted to the western taste and still tasted really good (next time I'll put less tamarind and more chili though).

Oh and as I had too much coconut cream I did a "punch coco" with it and some rhum, vanilla, muscade, cinamon, and sugar.

Leaving Bangalore

I have been self mailing blog entries every few days because blogger is blocked in China.

Flight decided to leave late from Bangalore, I caught my Beijing plane in Singapore by -15 min (yes it waited for me). I love Singapore Airline I have to admit: lots of leg room, very tweakable seats, and the cutest flight assistants ever in a gorgeous dress. Now I understand where the reputation of fligh assistants came from :).

Dharwad

I spent last weekend in and near Dharwad, Northern Karnataka, thanks to Rajani that took me to her hometown for the weekend. She definitely saved me from a boring weekend in Bangalore, instead this has been a weekend of discoveries. Among them many fruits (and other foods) discoveries. I had 3 premieres between chiku, djam (this was the fruit to guess), and acerola. Why speaking so much about food beside my big tendency to like everything associated to it, Rajani's mother tried to make me explode with lots of great discoveries (I am hoping to get the reciepes :).

We went around Dharwad, a quiet "little" city (little according to Rajani, 750000 population according wikipedia) and visited the very nice university. I was amazed by the way Indian administration "works" when Rajani went to get her international driving license (keywords here are middle-man and bakshish).

On sunday we went to a jungle resort on the way and not too far from Goa. We hiked in the middle of plantation and in the forest, swam in the river, napped in a hamac, went on a boat tour and spotted a few kingfisher flying around.


Just before leaving some official came in the resort with his personal escort and friends, and we piggybacked on their bamboo raft tour.


This weekend was not about visiting some known place of India but it was definitively the best weekend I ever had in India.

Answer

There was really nothing special behind I just liked the picture :). But anyway here what was behind :


Besides that I arrived today in Portland Oregon after a day of travel, but my luggage wasn't as lucky as me and didn't made it. I guess some redhat gnome is trying to steal little monkey christmas presents :). Well anyway I hope I'll get my bags back as I kinda need clothes.

What's behind

Maybe you'll know soon :).

Speciale dedicace

He will know it's for him !

I'm still around

Hey, I know this place is dead for a long while but I am still around. Work has been stealing most of my free time and motivation to post stuff here. I am in India right now and am just coming back from a weekend in Delhi. Enjoy Delhi by night...

Inside the red fort (I know lights are pink :):

Or at the Taj Mahal in Agra:

Kerala

This weekend I decided to get away from noisy and hyperactive Bangalore for a trip to Cochin in Kerala. The trip was pretty quick this time as I flew, 1 thing you'll notice quickly with India domestic flights is that the service quality is extremly nice (cute and smily flight assistants included :).Second thing is that I took an airline operated by the biggest beer manufacturer of India, but hopefully the ATR was flown by a sober pilot.
I am waiting this from a cyber, waiting for my plane back to Bangalore, so you'll be waiting for pictures a little more ! Yesterday I had a trip around Fort Cochin, successively ruled by the portugeses, the dutchs and the brits, followed by a boat cruise around the backwaters. No engine noise to trouble the quiteness of the ride in the middle of coconut "fields", here they use bamboo sticks to push the boats around. Don't expect to go far but the ride is still great.

Today I went to visit an elephant training place and some waterfalls. I wasn't as lucky as yesterday as it did rain heavily almost all day (yes I know, it's monsoon period, but I still had hopes). So I got soaked and muddy but the tour was still enjoyable.
The little "annecdote" of the day happened after the driver told me about what they called "arak" here. In the middle east that is a strong anis alcool, so I wanted to see what it was exactly here. When I asked him to get some I didn't realize exactly what I was asking for :). Alcool production is illegal in this state, mainly to fight rampant alcoolism. So we ended up roaming in the villages asking around if we could fill our bottle of water with arak for a few roupies. Obviously my driver being well dressed, hair cut, and nice shoes got mistaken for a policeman by most of the persons he asked to, but eventualy we found a group of men that were ready to help, probably drunk enough to not care much :). So I got this precious arak ! This is obviously a sugar cane distillate (tastewise it looks like it s above 40%), but the interresting part is that it is mixed with cashew nut tree fruits (the part that is not the nut) giving it a pretty sweet taste. In 2 monthes I've been able to get illegal "puro de cana" in Puyo equador and Arak from Cochin vincinity to be added to my collection of rhums, Yummeeeee!
So I got some indian "hot" water in my bag, as well as a huge pack of various spices and coconut oil grabbed directly at the exit of the mill, as well as lots of tastes and reciepes in mind and on paper.

PS: still no moon pictures, but moonsoon pictures soon (ok jeu de mots a 2 balles). Anyway the rain has eaten the moon here.
PPS: et pour les mauvaises langues, je suis sorti du trou noir !

Looking for the moon ?

Well, I have some nice moon shots but they are on my computer at home (sad excuse I know...) so Mr Little Orange Monkey will have to wait a little bit more before seeing the moon here.
To fifille: I will not publish such compromising pictures ! Imagine, people that do know me might get on this page :)...
And Jyby, the weather was so hot that I could barely carry myself around, so I don't see myself carrying a giant bunny around :). I was emptying coconuts every other block, and the rest of the time that was sugar cane juice with lemon (and it was non distillated sugar cane, for those that would pretend otherwise :).
In the mean time, one more shot from Pondichery to enjoy.

Pondichery

I took advantage of the weekend to go to Pondichery (ex french "comptoir" in India) and Chennai (Madras). I spent quite some time on the road as the traffic always ends up being pretty slow here. That was a pretty nice trip but I got cooked by the heat :).
I didnt meet anyone fluent in french in Pondichery, however everybody was pretty proud to make me hear their few french words. Finally, I didn't met any non indian for 2 days despite going to places I thought were touristic.

On Chennai beach, being the only tourist in the middle of thousands of indians led to pretty funny situations. I basically got stopped every 100m by groups of youg indian boys trying to get pictures of me with them (holding my hands or hugging me). The first time I thought that I met the gay indian community (they were also commenting on how cute i was... etc, it was pretty odd), but after the 5th or 6th group of youg men, asking for my email adress or those pictures, I think that they just don't have the same social codes than us on that subject, and that it was their way of being nice and chatting a bit with the only foreigner around. But well, I had a few good laugh, especially when I was changing my pants and a group of them came to shake my hand and hug me while I had only one leg on :). Done for the laughing part for today, and sorry no moon pictures, they were too blurry.

Bang alors !

Yeah, I am back in Bangalore India for a while (for work). I am enjoying the trip, meeting new people, making new discoveries, eating new stuff... 2 days ago returning to my room the sunset was fantastic, enjoy the natural colors of Airport road in Bangalore around 6:30.

Bangalore city of trees

One of the things that impressed me the most in Bangalore is that all the streets of the city are surrounded by beautyfull giant trees. Those streets are also one crazy place to drive on, a third of motorbike, a third of 3-wheels, and a third of cars, all of those not really following any kind of rule besides that they tend to drive on the left side and relatively slowly. The main safety feature available is the horn, that most people use pretty widely to signal their presence and their intentions. So widely used that many trucks have huge signs on their back saying "please horn", "sound horn ok"...

Bangalore first impressions

I am pretty tired and I didn't do anything else than going to work but lots of things, details or not have already striked me.
First thing last night, here you cannot rent a car without a driver, so waiting for me in the middle of 200 other drivers was mine, with a sign stating Mrs ... yeah he was expecting a girl :), what disappointment :). It is still quite exciting to sit on the front left of the car and seeing no wheel, especially in India style traffic. But I have to say that driving is not as wild as Cairo.
Second this morning, a few signs in the bathroom explaining how many litters of water various things like cleaning a towel were using, and that huge plastic basket in the shower so you can reuse water and consume less.
The view from my appartment is really nice, towards the countryside, I ended up in a very high end apartment complex because all the hotels were full (nothing special, just the fact that high tech industry is growing here faster than they can build hotels).
At work I noticed lots of efforts about hygien, lots of signs in the bathroom explaining in what order to do things and so, at the cafeteria, the fact there are lavatories on the way to get out so you can not avoid to wash your hands, you directly sort your trash between plastic, paper, food, and cleanable. In the US they tend to try to do the same kind of things to promote a better work enviroment, but here it is done far better and much further.
Tonite, coming back to the hotel I chatted with my driver and we ended up talking about living standards. I have rarely felt so guilty of earning my life well, probably because in other poor countries people I talked with were too shy to ask (and obviously I do not tend to start the subject). So to summarize, my driver makes 100$ a month if he works the default hours which is 12h/day. Yes you can eat for less than a dollar, and you can get a small 1 room appartment for 40$/month, but in the end he has to work overtime (over the basic 12h/day) to make ends meet.
Outside of that, the contrast between the people living in tents on the side of the road, right next to high tech buildings that are pretty similar to the silicon valley ones is strange and shocking.