The flight home.

As was to be expected, my bags were too heavy (Air Canada used to give you a 32kg limit, now it's a 23kg limit, and the ability to pay for up to 32kg). To make it even better, security scanned both my bags but didn't properly tag one of them.

Okay... that last statement needs a bit of an explanation. India takes baggage screening differently than we do here. Instead of bringing the bag to the check in desk, and handing it over, you have to take it to a security scanner. They run the bag through an X-ray machine with you standing there. If you pass the screening, they wrap a chord around the bag, which supposedly prevents the bag from being opened and shows that you got through security. With some bags they put a sticker over the zipper to prevent you from opening it without breaking the seal on the bag. That's what they did to my suitcase, but the Air Canada people wanted the band around the bag too. So off I went to get the bag rescanned (security wouldn't let me hop the line to fix their mistake either... they told me that they didn't care that they missed banding the bag, they said it was my fault for not demanding the bag be banded earlier), and then back to the check in desk, where they gave me my boarding card and sent me through to immigration. (while checking out my hand baggage they failed to find the waiter's corkscrew that someone from Argentina gave me at the conference... the Swiss also missed it).

The family in front of me had the typical traveling baby. The child was temperamental, and didn't want to be there. The kid would cry, the father would pick the child up, and magically the crying would stop. If the child was put down the crying would start again. 45 minutes later, I was less than impressed that the family was getting on my flight.

Despite having a direct flight to Delhi, I couldn't get one back. Apparently, after an initial surge of interest, Air Canada realised that it couldn't fill an Airbus A340 to Delhi with the high fuel costs, so they've got the flight going to Zurich, so that they can combine the passenger load with the Zurich Toronto run. This results in a longer flight time, plus a 3 hour layover in Zurich (which is not a low cost place if you want to buy a bite to eat). I had some fiends before the flight started, and made some more in Zurich. Single serving friends are always nice to have. We had to leave the plane in Zurich and take all our carry-on off the plane with us... then they scanned my bag and missed the corkscrew again. In all honesty, with the amount of stuff in my bag the fact that they didn't see a corkscrew on the X-ray machine wasn't that surprising.

Neither leg of the flight was particularly full (although Zurich to Toronto was a bit busier), so I was able to occupy two seats (window and aisle) in an emergency exit row where the arm rest was movable. It was easily one of the most comfortable flights that I have been on as a result. By the end of the flight, I was feeling better than I thought that I would have.

Now come the more difficulty thing to do. I have a couple of thousand photos to sort through. I don't think that I'll be doing that in the next few weeks, as the priorities will be getting the office stuff under control, packing and then moving. I'll probably get my desktop computer working again some time soon, and will probably look at getting a decent sized LCD monitor so that I can start the photo review process. I'll get some photos up here, and in my gallery too. But I was thinking about trying to do an album of sorts so that I can actually have a paper based set of memories so that when people want to see the photos I don't have to start up a computer.
The next challenge for me is the move. I'll do some house photos for before and after so you might see some ranting about that type of stuff coming up here in the next little while.

dilip

Killing the Golden Goose

We all know the story of the goose that laid the golden egg, so I won't bother retelling it here.
India is blessed with a couple of geese laying golden eggs. Sure enough, everyone wants instant money, and can't keep their eyes on the prize long enough to realise that they're starting to kill their geese.

Tourism is a huge business in India. I'm really finding that it isn't just backpackers, there's a lot of people with money coming to see the country. If you have enough money, you can tour the country with a level of comfort that would verge on obscene. I'm not going to talk about those people, instead let's talk about the people coming to India as either backpackers or as more upscale tourists.

The first scene that people face when they arrive in India is taxi touts trying to forcibly take their luggage and direct them to beaten up old cabs. All this for the hope of a couple of rupees. Fine, there's a service of questionible value being provided here, but when you give the guy a couple of rupees he starts to berate you for not tipping well. Some of the taxi drivers (especially the ones who don't take the prepaid taxi chits) try to direct you to alternate hotels. Even if you do go to the prepaid booth, the supposedly fixed prices aren't all that fixed. Upon my arrival, I was first quoted Rs. 650, and then a moment later someone else said Rs. 850. This was not a good start. (BTW, when I went to the same hotel from the prepaid booth at the domestic terminal the fare was about Rs. 250)

Every taxi driver and tour guide spends most of their time (to make it worse, the meter continues to run while the taxi people try this) directing you to shops where if you buy something at the overinflated prices, they'll get a commission. My tourguide in Agra spent more effort trying to get me to buy crap at overpriced stores than he did showing me the sites. When I said that I wanted to see the Taj at night, from across the river, he seemed to be put off by the fact that I wanted to do that, but didn't want to go see shops instead. No matter how many times I told him that I wasn't interested in buying a carpet or marble inlay work, he wouldn't let up. Finally, I told my driver that if we stopped at another shop, he was to leave as soon as the guide got out of the car. That eventually ended the shopping excursions.

When you pull up at a train station, people jostle you, and try to grab your things claiming to be porters. If I want to carry my own bags, that's my business... If I'm already carrying my bags, there's no reason for anyone to try to grab them from me.

A lot of this seems like nickel and dime stuff, and it is. But it's grating on the nerves of a lot of the tourists. The number of people that have said that their trips were being ruined by the constant hassle is surprising. India is a land that can really capture a person's imagination, but if everyone continues harassing the tourists to try to get their slice of the pie, the tourists won't return. Or at least the profitable ones won't.

But it extends past the tourism business. High tech businesses have offshored a lot of development jobs. The companies that have brought the jobs in are now in the targets of the politicians here. Unfortunately, India is a country divided, there's the prospering booming urban India, and there's rural India in which not a lot has changed (in a long long time). Rural India, unlike rural parts of the west, is the center of the population. Despite having huge cities, India is a country where most of the people are in villages. Village life hasn't really been improved by the arrival of high tech jobs to the city. Politicians are now trying to play to the crowds by imposing roadblocks on the development of new high tech areas in cities like Bangalore. This seemingly plays well. What is really despicable about it in my mind, is that the arrival of high tech has increased the taxation base for the country.

High tech hasn't changed village life, but it isn't some sure fire cure-all magic fix. It's just another industry like steel making. The difference is, when there's a drought, people from the villages come to the city to get jobs. They can aspire to a job at a steel refinery, but everyone knows that they don't tend to have the education required to become part of the tech-elite. The tech employees are getting more money than other sectors, and in turn are becoming more western in how they handle cash and their lives. Women tend to marry a bit later if they are in tech, and they tend to be pickier about grooms. Men and women tend to spend more money on enjoying life, instead of the traditional saving that Indian society embraces. These excesses and deviations are seen as problems caused by tech. Instead they are changes that tech has afforded. The politicians cynically rail against the building of new technology parks, but eventually back down after posing for the cameras (and probably taking a bribe).

The political grandstanding would be understandable, if the politicians could show that tech was hurting village life, instead of simply complaining that it wasn't helping village life. Corrupt politicians attack businessmen with reputations of honesty, and allege that they are lining their own pockets with missappropriated funds. It's a matter of the pot calling the kettle black (possibly an electric kettle nonetheless). The corruption that is rampant in the country is like a cancer.

Civil servants withhold approval for otherwise acceptable requests until a bribe is paid. Cops pull people over for no apparent reason with the expectation that they'll be bribed. If you get caught speeding, the fine is payable on the spot, which simply encourages police corruption. Cops are filmed taking bribes and it isn't always possible to get them thrown off the force. Judges have been shown to have accepted bribes, but can't be removed. There is now the expectation that most of the civil service is on the take. Government officials too.

All of this comes down to one thing. Personal and immediate greed. There's nothing wrong with greed per se. As Gordon Gekko said, Greed is good. It inspires us to reach further, which is good as long as you're not reaching into other people's pockets.

I'd be a bit wary of launching a business in India. I think that most people get over the hesitation because it's a market with a huge upside potential. But to realise the potential of this country, all of the country, city and village alike, people need to stop trying to grab as much as they can immediately. This isn't a game of Hungry-Hungry-Hippo. I know that there are poor people just trying to make ends meet, but it stretches well past that point.

Unless the corruption that has become systemic is removed, there is no way that India will ever become anything other than a cheap place to develop things. And the problem with only differentiating yourself on cost is, that there's always going to be someone cheaper. To succeed in the long run, India will have to innovate, and the biggest problem that it has right now is that innovation is stymied by greed and corruption.

So would everyone, tout and civil servant alike, just cut everyone a little slack and give us some breathing room. You might not get it all today, but everyone will be better off for it in the long run.

Goa was kind of cool...

I'd say that Goa lived up to my imagination, but that wouldn't be honest. The parties in Goa were a lot of fun, but right now the cops are really cracking down on the party scene. There are local noise laws that shut a lot of the bars down at 10pm. Before 10pm, the place is awesome. As more people pour into Goa for the Holiday season, I can see how it ends up being a great place. But right now, the cops are killing the vibe. Bars will be sporadically open because the cops will randomly shut places down. My second night was party free, because lots of bars were closed, and some of us figured that trackign down a party was going to take a long time, and it just wasn't worth it.

The next morning (after something in excess of 12 hours of sleep) I headed off to the train station, and made my way to Bombay. The train from Tivim station in Goa was an hour late, when you figure that we were the second or third stop, it didn't bode well for the timeliness of the trip. The train was supposed to leave Tivim at 10:56am, and was due for arrival in Mumbai at 9:30pm. We rolled into the station some time near midnight. I checked into the hotel, and after grabbing an internet connection I booked a room in Delhi (the city is full up on conferences) and went to the hopping hotel bar.

The bar was filled with Bomaby's pretty young things, all dolled up and ready to be seen. The dance floor was really funny. Just like bars in Canada (or more appropriately grade school dances) the guys were no where to be seen on the dance floor and seemed intimidated by the dancing thing. Until Hindi flim songs came on of course. At that point then entire floor looked choreographed as everyone re-enacted a scene from the latest Bollywood hit. I thoughtfully backed off the floor when I realised that there was no way for me to keep up. After the Hindi flim songs stopped, the local guys went back to standing off the to side. I decided, after dancing for a while longer, that some of the looks that I was getting probably weren't good, so I left the bar and went to my hotel room to crash (it had been an incredibly long day).

From Mumbai, I proceeded to Delhi, where Expedia had managed to fail to inform the hotel of my arrival. I had to run off, find an internet kiosk, print out my reservation, and then come back to the hotel. I wasn't that impressed with either Expedia or the hotel (who should have given me a room, and let me find the reservation later). But it was just 1 day in the hotel, and then an incredibly long flight back to Canada.

I had checked out of the hotel at noon, so I had 14 hours to kill before the plane left. I used the time wisely. I sat and killed an hour getting coffee. Then I did some shopping. Then finally, I tried to get to the National Museum, but settled for the National Gallery of Modern Art. After that I headed to Humayun's Tomb. Humayun was the second Mugal Emperor, and the tomb is magnificent. From the tomb, you can start to see some of the architectural features that became a part of the Taj a few generations down the road. The tomb was peaceful and serene, and the land around it allowed me to enjoy some peaceful serenity without hearing honking horns and shouting drivers.

On my way out of the tomb, I tried to chase a peacock for a couple of photos, which I didn't really get. I never knew up to that point that peacocks could fly. They aren't as graceful as the hawks that seem to be soaring everywhere in Delhi, but they certainly can fly off the ground to get up into trees and over walls. It's quite the sight, I just wish that the photos reflected the magisty of the magnificent bird. Now I know why India has it as the national bird. I never did see a bird fan its feathers, but even taking flight is an amazing sight.

dilip

The conference is over... and I'm in Goa baby....

I've got a bunch of stuff that didn't make it up during the conference, but once again, it'll be added to the list of stuff that I have to post from my laptop.

The conference was a lot of fun, but was draining in so many different ways. I made it to 3 parties on some days, which is just exhausting, since you have to be "on" for the full time. Some of the people I was meeting weren't interested in exchanging pleasentries, and instead were far more interested in grilling me on minutia of Canadian Patent Practice. An odd thing happenned... I realised that I'm probably better on the minutia of U.S. Patent Practice, which isn't really all that surprising when you figure that that's what I spend more of my time doing.

I met lots of really cool people from all over the place, and I definitely think that I'll be keeping in contact with a good number of them.

But now on to the fun stuff... I stayed in Delhi for an extra day to do 3 parties on the Wednesday, and this morning (at an ungodly early hour) I left the hotel to head off to Goa. Unfortunately due to the vast quantities of food that I had been served last night, I didn't really get to sleep until about 30 minutes before I had to wake up. I ended up being able to catch a later flight out of Delhi and connect to the same flight from Mumbai to Goa, so I ended up with about 90 minutes of sleep. I slept on both flights and the drive to the hotel here.

The hotel is pretty cool; and is well situated. I'm not on the beach (meaning that I can get sleep when I want to without disturbance), but I'm only 5 minutes from the beach. I'm also about 50 feet from the hotel swimming pool so my swimming trunks that I bought at Deerhurst planning to use them there finally got their first use.

I'll try to report back tomorrow to let you know if the night life in Goa lives up to the reputation. I'm going to head off and see if I can meet some of the other guests and then get some decent seafood.

dilip

It's a good thing that I came to Delhi before the conference

So I've been in the fortunate position to be able to introduce people to each other largely because I've met lots of the Indian firms before. That's been cool.

But I've figured out the best way to get to know people from other firms. At some of the social events, a group of younger people has clustered together. When the topic comes around to shopping, I get to act as a ring leader and set a shopping agenda. Since I've already finished a lot of my shopping, I can help people comparison price things.

We tried to hard today to bargain with the prices on pashmina shawls, and ended up walking away from a good price, in the hopes that they'd chase us. Oh well, looks like I'll make a trip there tomorrow and see if I can snag a couple of good deals. Shopping during the conference isn't that easy... I need to figure out a way to get shopping done while not missing the sessions (there's too many fun people to meet).

dilip

Buying spices...

So after my little driving diversion in Tamil Nadu, I hopped over to the other side of India and have paid a visit to Cochin. A city in Kerala state, that was the center of the spice trade.

Before I forget... I've finally kicked this cold. It was brutal. My sinuses were under so much pressure that I was experiencing toothache type pain. I had run out of Dayquill because the combo Day-Night packs they give you have equal number of day and night pills. Too bad you need 2 doses in the day, and 1 at night. This is worse than the hotdogs in 10's and buns in 12's things... the medicine is sold in one box. When I got back to Chennai I bought some local drugs, and they made it all better. I was only in Chennai overnight, but the drugs, sleep and time all worked together to make me better before the flight to Cochin. That was a good thing, after a bad experience on the way back from New Orleans 2 years back, I never want to have sinus issues while boarding a plane again... it's almost a fate worse than death.

Unfortunately, on the way to the airport coming over here, I left my red knapsack in the back of the hotel car. Thankfully, the hotel ended up with the bag, and I was able to convince them to bend their rule by faxing them instructions to hand the bag over to one of the people that I know in Chennai, who I'll be seeing in Delhi tomorrow.

As a result of being separated from my bag, I'm temporarily without my laptop. You can imagine that I was getting a little bit worried when I didn't have the bag, and that my blood pressure came back to normal when I managed to get the bag picked up from the hotel. It'll all be back to normal by tomorrow.

I was originally, going to set off to Amritsar before the conference but Megan's little sister, Johanna, is in India, and we figured that we could meet up in Cochin. One of the issues with traveling alone is that meeting people can be a bit difficult (and sometimes the people that you meet can be just annoying), so I leapt at the chance to meet up with a friendly face.

I spent most of yesterday hanging out with Johanna and her friend Carolyn. I met the girls at their hotel, and we headed off to catch a ferry to another part of Cochin. Without a map of the city, I'm having some issues figuring out if the ferry took us to an island, or just to a peninsula, but that's really neither here nor there. We had lunch at some cute little artsy bistro, and then wandered around the old parts of Cochin. The area was built up by the Portuguese, and the buildings really show the influences (red roof tiles and all). We wandered through St. Francis Church, the oldest European Christian Church in India (and I think Asia). It was a really simple structure, that in many ways was beautifully elegant. From there we wandered around, and saw old Chinese designed fishing nets, which were originally brought to the area by Chinese traders well before the Portuguese came by. These cantilevered nets are pretty cool (and when I went back this afternoon I got to see them in action).

We also visited the synagogue here. That's right, there's a small Jewish population here, that's unfortunately diminished to about 4 families. The community was a lot stronger even 20 years ago, but lots of people have been enticed to move to Israel, so the community is faltering. It's kind of sad to see. The girls and I all realised that up until that point in time, none of us had been in a synagogue, and it was odd in some sense that it took us coming to India to see one.

To get to the synagogue, we wandered through the city (too stubborn to hop a rickshaw), and basically fell into some dumb luck to find it. On the way, I managed to find some of the historic spice shops that the locals still use. So, I've satisfied my desire to buy pepper. I have 1 kg of black peppercorns, 1 kg of white peppercorns, 500 g of cardamom pods and 500 g of cloves. I figure that I'm pretty well set up now.

I realise that I'm starting to get near the weight limit for my luggage. When I get to Delhi, I'll have to figure out how I'm getting all of this stuff home. I still wanted to buy a carpet while I was here too... This might take some creative distribution.

So tomorrow, I'm off to Delhi. I'm still waiting for the plane ticket, but it has apparently been issued, and now it's just a matter of delivery. The flight runs through Bombay, and is supposed to start at 8:30 and get me to Delhi by 12:55. By my count that's a 4:30 flight. I don't think that I get let off the plane in Bombay, so it might not be pleasant.

I hope that things are going well for everyone back home.

dilip

Posting to my blog from email...

Okay, this is painful. For the past two days, I've been restricted to
high priced internet access by dialup. This is killing me, but I
shouldn't have expected anything more, after all I'm now in a place
(Swamimallai) that I can't find anything written about in the guide
books.

I saw lots more temples today, got to snap off some shots of people in
rice paddies, and spent my 5th consecutive day in a downpour. From
now on, I won't trust Lonely Planet and other such resources, instead
I'll have to do some deeper digging to find out what the weather is
supposed to be like.

The reason for the stop in Swamimallai is to see a minor temple (after
all, I'm seeing the temple towns of Tamil Nadu), and to see a place
where they do lost wax casting of metal statues. "What's lost wax
casting?" I hear you ask, well bear with me a few minutes and I'll
explain.

Have you ever seen those Indian statues that are made of a hard metal
or amalgom like brass? Well, you can't really chisel the entire thing
out of a solid block, so there must be a better way of doing things.
What they do, is make the statue out of beeswax mixed with a resin.
They can put relatively intricate things together fairly quickly, but
for really detailed pieces, it takes a long time. The wax moulders
work pieces with their hands, and heat either their bare hands, or the
wax over coals. The wax statues are then encased in a clay. The clay
is then fired to make it hard, and in the process, the wax drips out
the hole left for it in the bottom. Now you have a rough negative.
You then heat the mould, and pour in molten metal at about the same
temperature as the mould. Then let it all cool and break the mould.
What you have is the overall statue, and it can then be painstakingly
polished and chiselled.

The end results are truly one offs, as they can't reuse the broken
moulds. Some guy set up a workshop here in Swamimallai, and has
gained an international reputation for his work. The Indian
goverment's Archaeological Survey has even misclassified some of his
works as antiques becuase up until recently no one else did things in
the same manner that he did (using the same metal amalgom etc).

The resulting pieces are a bit pricey, but if anyone wants custom
pieces, these are the guys to use. They've spent 10 years putting
together a 21 foot diameter Nataraja, and figure that it's going to
take them another 9 years to finish. There's no client for this
piece, the guy running the shop, Rajan, just wants to make the Guiness
Book of Records. Since they can handle shipping things, it seems to
me like they're the perfect people to do 6ft. tall Ganeshas, if you
know anyone interested in one.

I hope that this gets published, I can't get into blogger, so I'm
emailing blogger my blog post in the hopes that it publishes. By
tomorrow night I should be back to the world of fast connections, and
reliable service.

Bye for now.

The roads here are hilarious...

So, I'm further along in my journey through Tamil Nadu. Once again, I awoke to the sound of fierce rain pounding down. I had wanted to wake up early and get some photos of the sun rising over the Bay of Bengal, but I slept in. My cold has wiped all my energy (though I'm still deluding myself into thinking that I'll be better in the morning). Not that sleeping in hurt my chances at getting that elusive sunrise, the cloud cover was constant today. The rain wasn't as fierce as yesterday, but it was far more constant.

I visited a bunch of temples today. Some of the temples here are fantastically painted. I always thought that it was plaster covered in paint, but I discovered that lots of these places are actually painted stone. Some of the stone work is just outstanding. I hope that my photos do it all justice.

Every temple that I find is filled with people wanting to serve as a guide. From now on, I'm going to take a pass. Every temple is the greatest this, or the biggest that. Every city is the central location of devotion and artwork in the region. And at the end of every tour, people always want to know if I enjoyed the temple. To be honest, and bear in mind this is partially being sick speaking, but they're all so similar, it's hard to tell them all apart. Final review of the guides in general, is that they tell you a bunch of obvious things, occassionally show you something kind of nifty, but are rarely worth your while if you can do some reading in advance.

The condition of the roads here are really ridiculous. From Chennai to Pondy, the roads were okay. Some of it was really well paved and very smooth. Unfortunately, as soon as you leave Pondicherry, the roads decay dramatically. Think of a really badly potholed road, now make it worse. Unfortunately, the rain was pretty bad, so I didn't hop out and photograph the immense potholes. Hopefully tomorrow will bring some sun and some more chances to show you the worst paved roads that I could possibly imagine. In some places (I'm talking 100m segments) there were clearly more potholes than roads.

I'm checked into a pretty swish place tonight, a bit of river resort, that's at the end of a 10km road with nothing else on it. I commented to my driver (who has decided to pocket his accomodation allowance and sleep in the Chevy Tavera instead of going to a hotel) that as bad as the road to the hotel was, it was still better than the highway out of Pondy. I think it was the first time that I saw him laugh. (He's appalled at the fact that I'm not married yet... He flat out said that my life was meaningless without a wife and children).

Tips for travellers:

I hate internet cafe's. I never know what kind of software is running in the background logging my keystrokes. So I've found a bit of a workaround. Open up notepad, start typing in gibberish, but use the mouse to move stuff around. Then in notepad you can create a list of your userid's and passwords (or even better store it on an USB memory key if you can). Then when you go to sites, you can copy and paste them from the document to the login screen. If you use the mouse for everything, key loggers are pretty much out of luck. In the future, I'm going to create a webpage for my travels, so that I can simply go to one page and then get a list of links to all the sites that I need (work, bank, email, etc.) Basically, I don't trust any public terminal.


I'd better get moving, but stay tuned for my "Killing the Golden Goose" post that I've been putting together today. I'll polish it off tonight, and then post it as soon as I have a better internet connection (I'm on dialup right now.)

Off on the wild roads of Tamil Nadu

I've left Chennai for a few days, and decided to tour through the southern state of Tamil Nadu. I hired a car and driver (actually an SUV and driver - despite my dislike for large vehicles, if you saw the state of the roads here, you'd understand why I want a big vehicle, sometimes driving the highway is offroading).

I went to Mallahapuram (okay, I'm confident that I spelled that wrong), where there are really cool stone temples and carvings. This one series of 5 rathas is a set of 5 small temples, each apparently carved from a single block of stone. These things are huge in scale when you realise that one slip up and everything has to be replanned.

From there I went off to Pondicherry. Pondy is an old French colony south of Chennai. The guidebooks tell you that there's something subtlely different about Pondy. I put my finger on it within 2 or 3 minutes of trying to check in. Instead of broken English, the hotel staff spoke to me in accented French. I wasn't ready for it, and I wasn't paying close enough attention at first to realise what was going on. In the end, the staff are amazed that I, unlike most of the tourists, can converse with them in French (although our conversations are pretty rudimentary).

I went wandering around the streets to soak in the pseudo-French feel of the city. Unfortunately the darkness comes quite quickly (especially when coupled with the rain). By 6pm it was pitch black. The streets here aren't really lit by anything other than the headlights of the cars and rickshaws. The street signs are just painted onto the side of buildings at the intersections. Needless to say, I spent a good 45 minutes or so stumbling around in the dark trying to find my hotel (I should have done something simple like remembered its name or the street that it was on). Eventually, I found my way back to the hotel, changed out of my soaking clothes for the second time in a day, and sat down to warm up and read a book that was just given to me. The book is engrossing... but more on it in another post. (BTW, books are incredibly cheap here... I'm getting paperback books for less that Rs. 100, which puts them at about $2.50 CAD... not bad for the entertainment, I'll try to grab some on my way back that would be suitable for my coffee table... That's right, no illustrated Kama Sutras).

Now here's the fun part of the past few days...

What I didn't' know, because it hasn't happened in the past 4 or 5 years, is that this part of India gets hit by a second monsoon season, right about now. The reservoirs in Chennai had been so depleted by the failure of this monsoon, that the city had discontinued daily piping of water to most places. You'd get running water every 3 days or so. This meant that people would have to conserve water, and store water when you could (which probably did nothing for controlling mosquito populations with everyone having pots and buckets of standing water around). Just before my arrival, the monsoon hit the city, and caused chest deep floods in some parts. Now that the flooding has subsided, the monsoon rains are continuing.

Last night it looked like the rain was coming down in sheets. This morning, some of the same. When I left the hotel this morning, the streets were water filled. It's all pretty interesting. It would be cool if the rain was sudden, hard, and done, so that the sun could come out, but apparently this monsoon gives hard rain for short periods of time, and then constant rain for a lot of the rest of the day. Today while wandering around the Shore Temple and the 5 Rathas in Mallahapuram, I was soaked to the bone. My new orange kurta was soaked, although my Tilley hat (ugly as it may be) was amazing at keeping the rain off my face.

Thankfully before I left, I read a photography site that recommended that I not baby my camera in conditions like rain. As long as I don't allow it to get pelted by direct rain for long periods of time it should be fine. If I had remembered, I would have grabbed a shower cap from the hotel before I left, but since I forgot, we'll find out how the camera reacts to the water (hopefully no worse than it did to the sand that got all over it when I did the night shot of the Taj). If I hadn't followed the advice, today would not have been nearly as fun. If I took a couple of days off the life of the camera it's worth it (if the camera dies before the end of the trip, I'll be writing an angry letter to Canon and deleting this part of the blog).

The scenery here is amazing. Tomorrow, I've told my driver that he'll have to pull over a couple of times so that I can photograph the countryside. With my cold still kicking around I wasn't overly interested in doing anything today, so other than the big sites, I just contented myself with seeing things from an SUV window and sleeping during the long driving stretches.

I should be back in Chennai on Tuesday night. I'm thinking about flying to Cochin (Kochi) on the morning of the 9th to meet up with a friend's sister, but that plan hasn't been confirmed yet. I'll be in Delhi for the 11th for the conference, and then after that... It's all about Goa (and a quick return to Mumbai). There's just a touch of office work that has to be done still, but that's coming along quite well, so it shouldn't get in the way of my rest and relaxation.

So long for now, I'm heading back into the light rain to find a restaurant that serves something comforting.

dilip

Chennai... This city is trying to kill me...

Okay, two trips here, and twice I'm starting to fall sick. Thankfully, this time I haven't woken up so miserable that I just wanted to die... Instead it's just a touch of a cold. I'll down some Nyquil tablets tonight, some Dayquill in the morning and I should be better by the end of the weekend.

I'm in Chennai meeting a patent firm that I had met on my last visit. The head of the firm that I met last time passed away shortly after my last visit. His wife is now running the show, and they've started to branch out into serving the local clients (which is good for me).

The firm has always been good to me, and since they found out that my trip to Sri Lanka is off (Ruwi is tied up with moving into a new place, and although I'm welcome, I'm not going to impose... I can save that for my next trip), they've helped me plan out a bit of a trip through the south of India for a couple of days. That should put me back in Delhi before the conference. I figure that a relaxing trip with a bit of rest will help me get over the cold before I get to the conference (that an all the folk remedies that people will be pushing on me).

I'll have to get a photo of myself in some of my new threads. Between the khaki pants and the kurta, I might pass for a local (until someone sees either the camera, or until I open my mouth).

I haven't snapped photos for about a week. Hopefully I'll get some more photos tomorrow. Apparently I'm going to an architecture museum where they've bought houses across the south of India, and relocated them to the museum ground so that these interesting old styles don't just crumble away. It's a cool idea, and I can't wait to see how it all works out.

traveling food...

Lots of people have told me about the food that you can get at different train stations in India. Different stations have different specialties, so one place might have good Biriani, while another would be good for Pakoras.

Since I haven't been using the trains a lot this time, I can't really comment on the station food, but I can comment on the food that you get on Indian planes.

Normally food on a plane is horrible. When I travel on a plane, I usually try to pack my own meals so that I have a bit of flavour.

The service on the planes here puts anything that I'm used to in Canada to shame. On hour long flights, you get a meal something to drink and a pleasant smile. On an hour long flight in Canada, I sometimes get a flight, depending on where I;I'm sitting and how quick the drink cart moves.

The food on planes here has flavour. I'm not saying that everything is to everyone's taste, but no one will call it bland. I've had amazing food on the flights so far. Service also comes with a smile. I can't complain about the food. It even comes with real cutlery and a cloth napkin.

Actually it came with real cutlery on Jet airways, and high end plastic cutlery on Sahara Air. Until today that is. Today, I got a plastic knife with a metal spoon. Once again I ask: Who on earth can take over a plane with that knife? If they can do it with that knife, what makes you think that they needed the knife in the first place.

I'm off to sleep.