My second week in India.:
Chennai is SOO MUCH nicer than Delhi. Both cleaner, and easier to breath. To my nose, Delhi smelt awful for most places. You can't get used to that "yesterday's hotpot" smell overlapping with soot, and petrol. That was total Naraka.
Chennai's roads are narrower, but feel much better maintained than in Delhi as well. I see more people here opt for scooters over regular motorcycles.
I noticed, fewer people speak English here, and fewer Hindi as well. Taiwanese Hindi translator was for a nasty surprise when he realised that.
We started work with Indian staff today. Taiwanese on other teams were for a big surprise: they encountered partially/fully illiterate persons for the first time. And they got a total heart attack when I told them there being more people in line being like that, and that Tamil Nadu was actually better than the rest of India on literacy.
They also got a batch of village boys who couldn't speak well pretty much anything. They only conversed in what I was told was very basic rural Tamil variety. They had to work with them pretty much using gestures, and trying to use other Tamil speakers to interpret.
I was a bit surprised too. I though that at least people younger than 30 in India must be all fully literate by now.
That's how we work.
Given your kind's economic status here in US,
The only security detail in India affordable for you would be a BSF escort to the nearest migrant detention center
Now back to horror stories. A Foxconn Taiwanese American employee who was about to join my team got detained in Mumbai over the weekend. He wandered into Colaba, and clicked a photo of the Afghan Church there. He got 3 weeks detention + deportation + 5 year visa ban. Americans can't read I guess. It's written in bold letters on Indian visa application: "I obliges not to enter restricted/protected areas under the foreigners (protected areas) act of 1958 without a prior written approval of Ministry of Home Affairs"...
Today was a bad morning for me.
- For once, I decided to walk to the campus from a hotel on foot. I slipped on a random puddle of concrete in the middle of nowhere, and felt on it. Landed on my bag, and hands, little splashed on my shirt. I had to walk few miles with my hands in concrete before I got to a water outlet. A minor concrete burn on right hand left.
- Went to buy groceries into Star Bazaar. I was heading for a checkout, and in front of the checkout there was some kind of a Diwali display. I was passing by it, and hear BZZZT: a nail sticking out of it tore through my new Uniqlo tshirt I bought in Delhi... It left a finger sized hole, and a bad scratch. Cursing it, and proceeding to the checkout anyways, to total indifference of the staff, and passerby. Waiting in line, then I hear BZZZT again, and I see a lady got her dress ruined by the same nail. I finally reached the checkout, and I see another woman coming, and almost hitting the same nail as I shout be careful.
- Day sucked, and I decided to not to wait for OLA, and try a regular taxi instead. Was going back to my hotel room, and noticing something black smeared on my t-shirt. It was a trace of the taxi's seatbelt...
- It only been 3 days, and my new t-shirt is ruined.