Maybe the glory year is back...

I've had quite a few clothes made since I got here. Two suits, six shirts and two pairs of trousers. The shirts are great but the suits, hmmm, I'm not sure yet. I love the material I've chosen but there's something about the cut of the jacket that I don't think I like completely. I tried to raise it at the second fitting but I was persuaded to trust "the master" and as he'd proved to be completely right about the sleeve length of the shirts then I thought I ought to. Well I'm still not convinced but it's not too bad: I shall certainly wear them on my return.

The trousers however are fantastic! I have a pair of old baggy French Connection drawstring cotton trousers that I love but are sadly no longer available. I showed them to the people who made my suit and asked them if they could make me an exact copy. They demurred (and I wasn't surprised). But at the next place I tried they were more optimistic. They looked closely, asked some questions and said they could do it! I chose two colours - dark and light, left the original pair and went away. To be honest my expectations were low but for £25 all in I thought I could take a chance.

Yesterday I picked up the finished goods. The tailors did an amazing job!
They are perfect reproductions of the originals and in some respects even nicer: the pockets are better, the material is lovely and now I have a pair in another colour too. I'm dead chuffed!

Gah! I've just come back from the theatre and I'm too bamboozled by what I've just sat through to keep sitting and give you a blow by blow account of our TWU outing to Mysore. Suffice to say that it was lovely: great to take a break from Bangalore, see the countryside and find a town that's a bit calmer and easy going.

Plenty of pics are up on flickr but I wanted to post this one here - my new friends from Mysore:


I was talking to these kids for about 10 minutes - mostly about cricket of course. I can exclusively reveal that young kids in Mysore today want to be Mahendra Dhoni. All my prejudices were proved wrong as well - I sort of expected them some of them to start hassling me for money, or pens or something but they never did. We just talked cricket and I signed them all up as ThoughtWorkers because they said they were smart. They were too. First question they asked when I told them I worked with computers was "Hardware or Software?". Blimey.

Advice for Taureans from this week's Deccan Herald:

A good week generally, but do be careful of strangers in travel. You could catch some serious infections. Your legs are your sensitive area now. An old friend could misunderstand you. Romance is on the cards.

Listening to PM via the magic of the Interweb has been one way I've been staying in touch with home. So it's great to find that the incomporable Eddie Mair has a blog. So far his posts have been titled: "Crap", "Woody" and "Balls". That's my kind of a newsman - there must be an Eddie Mair t-shirt out there....

He has a sensible attitude to blogging as well:

By the way, I've noted some concern in the comment columns that some people think bloggers have nothing to say and that this will be a waste of everyone's time. Let me make this quite clear. I have nothing to say and this will be a waste of everyone's time. Really.

+1 for this site too

mmmm. love that Channa Batura

Here's the view from my balcony:


It all looks very splendid but there's something about the pool that's not so tempting from ground level.

Anway - workwise it's been a busy week. TWU has kicked off so its longish days now (8am-7pm) but great fun. So far I've taught one session and got good feedback on that. I was very happy to crowbar a quotation from Milton in there - not bad when you consider the subject was "Consulting Economics". I've also got a cracker from Robert Louis Stevenson for tomorrow's class on Business Analysis. Pics of some of the sessions are up on flickr

Last weekend I took a trip down to the main bus station in Bangalore. I wanted some information about buses for some weekend trips I'm thinking of taking. Big mistake: huge. It was one of the most overwhelming experiences I've had in India! So many people, buses, languages, the noise and all the endless hustle and bustle. I asked for some information at the information desk but left little better informed.

One thing did stick out in my mind though. Something about the platform numbering looked a bit odd. They were numbered as follows: one, two, three, four, five, five, five, five A and six.

This place is crazy - but somehow it works.

TWU kicks off in anger next week. The participants have all arrived in various states of exhaustion but people seem to be settled in now. There are 36 "grads" taking part in the training - 12 from the USA, 12 from India, 6 from the UK, 3 from China, 2 from Canada and 1 from Australia. Within that there are at least 10 different nationalities so it's going to be a fascinating group to be part of.

This week has been mostly preparation: course material and training techniques largely. The trainers take on 6 people each for "coaching" so I've also had my first sessions with the UK grads to set expectations for the next 6 weeks and find out what they are thinking. I've got a final bit more prep I need to do today and on Tuesday (which is Independence day in India so no work) and then I should be ready.

I haven't had much time for more exploring. I did go back into town to see my tailor on Thursday: I'm having a suit and some shirts made to measure! The shirts were finished and looked wonderful and the suit needed some minor alterations - it'll be ready on Monday. I think dad would have been so chuffed to hear the tailor's was my first port of call in Bangalore.

Amidst all this I have had a bit of time for more photography. Here are a couple of favourites:

Maybe I'm getting carried away. But this picture says so much about the England I want to live in.

Dinner last night. 1 North Indian Thali + Pepsi: 50p!

I tried as best I could to eat the whole thing with my right hand only. I'm getting quite good at ripping the bread into pieces but I still make a terrible mess trying to eat rice in my fingers!

Had my first taste of an India that isn't all hi-tech business and TGI Friday yesterday. KP (that's my boss - not Kevin Pietersen) showed me around the City Market in central Bangalore. It's a sprawling mass of classic Indian images: sacred cows, piles of chillies, shapely cones of coloured pigment and the press of humanity you might expect to find in the worlds largest democracy. Most memorable were the flower stalls. Hundreds of stalls selling exotic blooms and blossoms for devotional or decorative use. Women were smelling and squeezing the loose flower heads like you might size up a melon in the grocery aisle at Sainsbury's. Other stalls were nimbly preparing garlands and other floral tributes. It was wonderfully colourful and aromatic: nice to be away from the smell of the traffic and the drain outside our appartment. A digital camera proved to be great way to win friends and influence people too - everyone wanted to see themselves on the screen.


Unfortunately a lot of shots were too dark. However a bit of computer magic later and I've come up with some quite atmospheric shots. To whit:

I've seen some bumper stickers in my time. Typically they boasted about windsurfers doing it standing up or small-bore rifle shooters doing it laying down. But seeing a car sticker amidst the hurly-burly of Bangalore traffic saying "Eschew Obfuscation" sums this place up. These Karnatakans are crazy. It's certainly full on but a fascinating place to be and time to be here.

Take our office. AOL have two floors in the same building and WalMart do something on this floor. Across the road a massive engineering project is trying (and by all accounts failing) to build an elevated roadway. In the shadow of the construction site are tin-shacks with washing strung between them. On the next block is TGI Fridays and half a mile up the street the insanely luxurious Leela Palace hotel. Round the corner the cows "graze" on the street in front of the mobile phone shop. It's all going on.

Between us runs Airport Road, a solid mass of traffic like some automotive dry stone wall. It's as if some master mason has taken the large vehicles, the buses and vans, distributed them around the road and filled in all the gaps with progressively smaler "stones": cars, auto-rickshaws (henceforth reffered to as autos), motorbikes, scooters and bikes. The end product is a solid mass of traffic through which brave pedestrians must take their chances when they come.

The traffic and the attendant pollution seems to be the biggest drawback. Taking an auto into the centre of town today we choked all way on the fumes as we crawled through the gridlock. It's not a pretty picture. Otherwise the weather at least has been very pleasant. So far we seem to have been spared the worst of the monsoon that's bringing floods to Maharastra in the north. It's been overcast most days, about 30 degrees, but with quite a stiff breeze that makes the outdoors (and away from the road) most agreable.

Myth 1: You don't get Chicken Tikka Masala in India

Yes you do! I had last night and it fair took me back to the old country I can tell you. Of course it's probably only on the menu at fancy joints like the place we went to last night in order to appeal to foreigners like me but there you go. If this is globalisation I like it :)