The Bangalore Diaries

Sunday 8 September Liora and I left for Bangalore. A face to face meeting like this enables us to see, hear, talk, feel, understand, explain, act, react, interact, take a stance in a way that no e-mail nor t-con can do. To be there - is professional.

Door to door the trip takes about 17-18 hours and contains three hard working days. This diary is not about that. It was supposed to tell about what happened out of office hours. For fun. It turned out to be about Indian hospitality.

At the Team Leaders'

Ganesh is the team leader of CQC. Murali is the eam leader of the SAS programmers. Both invited us to their homes.

Murali just bought a new home close to the MAL offices. Tuesday evening his wife spoiled us with fantastic food. We were rather full when we reached the restaurant for team dinner which you can read about under "Dinner in Bangalore".

Thursday, the last day of our stay, we left MAL early to have lunch at Ganesh's. He lives with his parents in law in a village not far from the airport.
Also here we were served delicious food, sweets and a tour to the family vineyards. Ganesh's father in law is the big man in the village. He has a huge house and lives of agriculture. He invited us to stay whenever we come back. When he heard that Liora just got married he performed a traditional blessing for newly married women. Smelling of sweet sandal wood, with tikkas and her hair full of rice, Liora returned to Israel.

Kani's Wedding

Kanimozhi, one of the biostatisticians, invited us for her wedding. We left Bangalore for a 4 hour ride south into the state Tamil Nadu. We took a shortcut and tried to avoid the traffic jams on the high way. Along the road were small villages with agriculture, like rice and grapes. Some parts were jungle. Liora asked if there were any wild animal living there. No, was the answer. But after clearing out the definition of "wild", we came to know that except for tigers, the jungle contained quite a lot of animals.

When almost there, we were stopped by road works and had to enter the village from the other side. Doing that we had to get out on the high way. The road entering the high way only let us go north. Instead going back north and find a way exit going south, the driver drove against the traffic. And to really make it exiting he didn't use the road shoulder but drove in the fast lane in the middle, using the horn and flashing the light. After about 5-6 kilometers driving 70 km/h meeting traffic in 100 km/h, he found a way to get to the right side of the road.

Finally we reached the town of the wedding, which I mistakenly called a small village. Indian wedding lasts 2-5 days. The first day, when we participated, is when the bride receive the groom. This is what we experienced.

The bride and her groom
The ceremony Colorful women
A man traditionally dressed in white

The food, all vegetarian. Served on a banana leaf, it's traditional, it's beautiful and it also work as a spice to increase the flavour.

CQC

Reviewing Alstar CRFs.

Breakfast in Bangalore

A little bit of this...
A little bit of that...
And some sweets.

Dinner in Bangalore

At first a little stiff. But it turned out to be a great evening!
With me as a serious smoker

and Jayanti enjoying it.
Reji, our newest team member, well a little bit foggy. On the right Santhosh. And the rest of us just having fun. Liora and Bopanna with Mogul hats.

Lunch in Bangalore

Sometimes a picture says more than 1000 words. In any case I can't remember the names of the dishes served. It was very tasty, but a bit spicy though.

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi

Ganesh Chaturthi was celebrated last Wednesday.

An idol of Ganesha is put in every area and every neighborhood of India and people will come to pray. This is the first festival following the Indian New Year. It is a happy holiday and contains good food and sweats. Regularly the idol remains in its place for ten days and then they put it in the water. The idol is made of clay and is supposed to dissolve.

Mrs. Carlquist

In my previous visits to Bangalore I have been called Mr. Adam in the hotels. I guess it is easier to spell and pronounce Adam than Carlquist. This time though, I was surprised that Carlquist was spelled correctly. However I was titled Mrs.

The only two Mrs. Carlquists' I know of is my wife and the actress of Ingmar Bergman - Margit Carlqvist. Maybe they hoped it would be her. I informed the receptionist that she unfortunately passed away 1977 and that they'll have to do with me.

Double Delight

After a looong trip we finally arrived in Bangalore - or Bengaluru which apparently means "the village of boiled beans". This is a picture of the new airport. It was suprisingly clean, quite and comfortable. You can see the taxidrivers dressed in white waiting calmly next to the exit. But the trip did not end here. Now waited a 1 1/2 hour trip by car. Bangalore is developing fast and there are road works everywhere. We past our time with cow spotting, discussing traffic jams, cursing the bad telefon connections and watching coloful cars.
When finally arriving to the hotel not one but two good news hit us. The hotel seems really good and India beat Australia in cricket. That is what I call double delight!

Ben Gurion

An hour ago we arrived to Ben Gurion. Liora showed me the duty free, she really feels at home! But not as home as another of my collegues (no names).

Now in the lounge we are enjoying it. But work comes first!
Best regards from the King David lounge.

Back to Bangalore

Back in Bangalore and MAL again. A trip that takes about 18 hours door to door. We'll I guess I won't look like the hunk in the picture when I arrive.
The weather forecasts says 28 degrees celsius and rain. When searching in Goolgle for 'weather in Bangalore' you get 2 410 000 answers. The weather seems pretty important over there.

Bangalore, the capital of the Indian state Karnataka and India's third largest city. The major language of Karnataka is Kannada. Several of the employees of MAL comes from Tamil Nadu south of Karnataka and speak Tamil.