a grand day out

My two favorite Mumbai neighborhood names are Cuffe Parade and Breach Candy. Breach Candy? Excuse me to please?

Anyway, we spent some time today downtown, in Cuffe Parade and Churchgate and Fort. We walked around and ate some good food (paneer tikka, I wish I could quit you) and had posh drinks at the posh Taj Mahal Palace hotel and enjoyed the luxury of having a hotel room (at the Gordon House) where we could stop in periodically and even take showers and partake of the mini bar.

Here's my favorite new photo:



And here is a very cute photo of Misti:

true concessions

You might not know it from some of my posts, but there are some things about this country that I really like. My Indian colleagues are great, for starters. When people ask me what I like best about India, that is always what comes to mind.

But I also like how so many of the trucks and buses are painted with colorful designs, and lovingly kept clean--in Bombay, a Sisyphean challenge if ever there was one. Here's a good example:



I also love people's names. Here is a sampling of the first names (in India this is called your "good name") of people in our office: Devahoti, Manasi, Kulajit, Anuradha, Siddhant, Neeraj, Sumit, Vinay, Anuja, Anilkumar, Shyamesh, Punit, Sneha, Ksheeroda, Pinkey, Sudarshan, Deepa, Jasbinder, Chandni, Puja, Chhaya, Shikha, Vishal, Irfan, and Sushmita. And that's just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

freak show

I got to the Bombay apartment around 11:00 p.m. local time last night, then hung out with Casey and Misti for a while (Dan was already asleep). Fell asleep sometime after 3:00 a.m., so needless to say I was not up and ready to go to work at 7:30. So, my first day back at the office will be Monday. Luckily our next batch of hires won't be there till Tuesday.

I walked down to the supermarket just now and was reminded that in India, more so than usual, I am a giant freak. Especially now with my super short hair I am getting even more stares than before.

In keeping with tradition, the portly little Indian Delta gate agent at JFK called me "sir." They like to start reminding me early that I am super feminine and pretty. Thanks, India.

The weather is probably the best it's been since I started spending time here last June. It's not even sweltering, and in the mornings and evenings it is almost cool and pleasant. However, the entire city, including my bedroom, smells like a campfire. This may have something to do with the fact that the entire city is, in fact, a campfire. At least the smoke helps to mask some of the other smells. I'm talking about poop here, people.

foodie happiness

I know I keep talking about this and it is of interest to no one but me, but I set up this damn blog, so suck it up. It is SO much easier to stay vegan in San Francisco than in Bombay. There are lots of vegan restaurants. I can buy things like nutritional yeast and cashew butter and vegan margarine and cheese and fresh leafy greens that won't kill me with E. Coli (usually) and tempeh and gluten flour and seitan and soyrizo and soy yogurt etc. etc. I have a blender and a food processor. I have heavy pans that have real non-stick surfaces that don't scrape off in shreds into your food when you have the sheer audacity to use a plastic spatula on them. You get the idea.

James is visiting, so this morning I made us vegan omelettes (recipe at Fat Free Vegan Kitchen) and tempeh bacon:



Quoth James, "That was fancy!"

And also we got to drink coffee that was neither instant nor disgusting nor carried by hand from 10,000 miles away just so you can get a cup of decent coffee in the morning for god's sake is that too much to ask.

And also? I get to take showers that are warm and involve more than a trickle. And I don't have to watch for roaches when I walk around my apartment.

baumer's index*

Number of round trips to India since late June: 3
Total number of miles flown: 61,316
Number of those miles seated in coach: 59,730
Frequent flier miles earned: 119,735
Approximate number of hours spent traveling: 180
Number of those hours in business class: 6
Number of standard work days represented by 180 hours of travel: 22.5
Total number of days spent in India: 110
Number of those days sick with traveler's illness: 0
Number of Indian linguists hired for last month's start date at the Mumbai office: 7
Number of linguist job offers accepted so far for January 2008 start date: 6
Target of new hires for January : 8-10
Percentage of DA Team expats who kick ass and without whom I'd have been lost: 100

*pace Harper's Index

what's been stolen from *your* wallet?

About a month ago, Alex noticed a bunch of unfamiliar charges showing up on his online Visa statement, and when he Googled the name of the business he discovered it was a place that specialized in selling calling cards that could be used by inmates in the United States. Needless to say, Alex had not actually been investing hundreds of dollars in order to chat more freely with his incarcerated friends, but rather these were fraudulent charges and indicated that his credit card number had been hijacked. He had to call the US and cancel the card and arrange for a new one to be sent to India--no small feat considering that Visa's system only allows mailing addresses about half as long as the typical Indian address (which always involves a nearby landmark, the name of the closest intersection, the nickname of the building, a description of the dog that hangs out on the front steps, and so on--anything but a street number, because those do not exist, seeing as they would actually be useful and efficient, and that shit don't fly in India).

Anyway, Alex had to live without a credit card until his new one showed up in the mail the other day (miraculously enough--the "address" was so condensed as to be nearly unintelligible).

Today I happened to be checking my online Visa statement and noticed...can you guess where this is going? A ton of fraudulent charges for calling card purchases from a couple of different companies. So then I also had to call and cancel my card and tell them which charges to dispute and so on. Luckily I am going home tomorrow, so I can just have them send the card to my house in San Francisco. Also, I have an Amex card I can use in the meantime if I need to. Still, it's a huge pain in the ass, and I'll have to make sure to change the number on any accounts where I have recurring automatic charges (which is a lot these days, because I live in India for chrissake and can't be sending a $14 check to PG&E every month, for example).

I have noticed that receipts here typically list credit card numbers in their entirety, which...hello? Who does that anymore?

This place makes me crazy.

does not register

We have this recurring problem where Indian web sites will not accept US credit cards. This has caused irritation on a grand scale every time anyone wants to book non-business travel, reserve a hotel, whatever.

So today I noticed that the registration is finally open for the Mumbai marathon. The web site makes it very clear that if you live outside India, you must register online (as opposed to in person or by mail). Except, guess what? The only way to pay online is via credit card, and the site won't accept non-Indian credit cards. I.e., they require you to do something and then make it impossible to do it. I LOVE THIS COUNTRY.

EDITED TO ADD:
As usual I had to solve this problem by imposing on our incredibly sweet office manager, Punit, to use his personal card and pay him in cash. But I am now officially registered! Well, supposedly. (For a second I forgot what country I was in. We'll see what goes awry from here.)