Arrived Bombay after a night flight in First class. Concorde room very nice but trip marred by the recent break-up so was in no mood to enjoy another trip alone.
Road journey from Bombay to the Westin hotel in Pune a real eye-opener. Road actually pretty good in places, but the driving truly abysmal. On one long hill the road had 3 lanes, but slow-moving lorries were distributed across all 3 lanes. The car then dodged around these almost stationary obstacles in what seemed like a 1980s video game.
Hotel very nice and the service really is first class. You want for nothing. I had my shirts ironed, my shoes shined. When you arrive at the pool they bring towels and lay them out on the sun lounger for you. IF you are walking down the corridor and a staff member is hoovering or something they stop, get out the way and bow so low they practically touch the ground.
There's a couple of good bars in the hotel, and on Saturday night you can sit in the restaurant and watch a stream of scantily clad young Indians streaming in, then a couple of hours later they're not so much streaming as steaming...
Superb restaurant Kangan serves Indian food. They pour your drink for you, lay your napkin across your lap, etc. And Olaf who's already been here a week has been eating Indian food 3 times a day, with no meat. With the flavours in the food you don't really need meat.
We get a hotel car to the office every day. The drive takes us past an interesting selection of Indian society. People sitting on street corners selling cigarettes, a guy who's set up an awning on the pavement and is cutting hair, mobile phone shops, beggars, a family of goats, and guys pushing hand carts full of random stuff like giant piles of cardboard. At one point there is tree (looks very old) growing in the slow lane. You wonder how you build a road without removing the tree first.
And whole families will travel by motorbike - helmets strictly optional. They undertake, go the wrong way down dual carriageways. The tuktuks, or auto rickshaws, carry up to 8 people and the drivers are also pretty fearless. People will pull out straight into 2 lanes of oncoming traffic, and somehow nobody gets killed. We did have a motorbike hit (a glancing blow) the car on the way home but our driver wasn't bothered and the motorbike didn't even stop.
The daily routine consists of waking up about 9, having a superb breakfast, then lying by the pool until about 11, when we get cars to the Vodafone offices. At 7 or 8 in the evening we will get cars back to the hotel, have dinner and go to bed about midnight.
A strange set up in the office. For 6 days we struggled to get permissions to do simple things like run linux in a VM, or connect to the internet. They are completely unempowered and every little thing needs to be checked with the gods of infosec.
My 2 guys Vivek and Prashant also can't believe how difficult it is to do things in Vodafone here. They've worked for other big IT companies like infosys, so they have a perspective which I don't. Things got so bad we ended up moving out and working from a hotel where we could at least get the connectivity we needed.
At the weekend I had thought of going to Goa, but in the end I thought I would try and relax a bit. Got my hair cut for 600 rupees then went to stay with Vivek on the Sunday, who had invited to 'play Holi' with his family and friends.
We had a drink at an awesome rooftop bar on top of the seasons hotel on Sunday night, then ate at Mainland China (where I attempted to teach 6 indians how to use chopsticks, without success). Their flat is somewhat bare and they live on the 7th floor of a faceless concrete tower surrounded other similar towers, with a nice communal park in between.
On Monday morning we put our old clothes on and went down to see loads of kids running around with water pistols. Vivek's friends produced coloured powder in bags and liberally adorned each other with colour. Then we joined in the throwing water and paint around for an hour or so, until we were all completely plastered in colour and soaking wet. Not a typical Monday morning then.
Road journey from Bombay to the Westin hotel in Pune a real eye-opener. Road actually pretty good in places, but the driving truly abysmal. On one long hill the road had 3 lanes, but slow-moving lorries were distributed across all 3 lanes. The car then dodged around these almost stationary obstacles in what seemed like a 1980s video game.
Hotel very nice and the service really is first class. You want for nothing. I had my shirts ironed, my shoes shined. When you arrive at the pool they bring towels and lay them out on the sun lounger for you. IF you are walking down the corridor and a staff member is hoovering or something they stop, get out the way and bow so low they practically touch the ground.
There's a couple of good bars in the hotel, and on Saturday night you can sit in the restaurant and watch a stream of scantily clad young Indians streaming in, then a couple of hours later they're not so much streaming as steaming...
Superb restaurant Kangan serves Indian food. They pour your drink for you, lay your napkin across your lap, etc. And Olaf who's already been here a week has been eating Indian food 3 times a day, with no meat. With the flavours in the food you don't really need meat.
We get a hotel car to the office every day. The drive takes us past an interesting selection of Indian society. People sitting on street corners selling cigarettes, a guy who's set up an awning on the pavement and is cutting hair, mobile phone shops, beggars, a family of goats, and guys pushing hand carts full of random stuff like giant piles of cardboard. At one point there is tree (looks very old) growing in the slow lane. You wonder how you build a road without removing the tree first.
And whole families will travel by motorbike - helmets strictly optional. They undertake, go the wrong way down dual carriageways. The tuktuks, or auto rickshaws, carry up to 8 people and the drivers are also pretty fearless. People will pull out straight into 2 lanes of oncoming traffic, and somehow nobody gets killed. We did have a motorbike hit (a glancing blow) the car on the way home but our driver wasn't bothered and the motorbike didn't even stop.
The daily routine consists of waking up about 9, having a superb breakfast, then lying by the pool until about 11, when we get cars to the Vodafone offices. At 7 or 8 in the evening we will get cars back to the hotel, have dinner and go to bed about midnight.
A strange set up in the office. For 6 days we struggled to get permissions to do simple things like run linux in a VM, or connect to the internet. They are completely unempowered and every little thing needs to be checked with the gods of infosec.
My 2 guys Vivek and Prashant also can't believe how difficult it is to do things in Vodafone here. They've worked for other big IT companies like infosys, so they have a perspective which I don't. Things got so bad we ended up moving out and working from a hotel where we could at least get the connectivity we needed.
At the weekend I had thought of going to Goa, but in the end I thought I would try and relax a bit. Got my hair cut for 600 rupees then went to stay with Vivek on the Sunday, who had invited to 'play Holi' with his family and friends.
We had a drink at an awesome rooftop bar on top of the seasons hotel on Sunday night, then ate at Mainland China (where I attempted to teach 6 indians how to use chopsticks, without success). Their flat is somewhat bare and they live on the 7th floor of a faceless concrete tower surrounded other similar towers, with a nice communal park in between.
On Monday morning we put our old clothes on and went down to see loads of kids running around with water pistols. Vivek's friends produced coloured powder in bags and liberally adorned each other with colour. Then we joined in the throwing water and paint around for an hour or so, until we were all completely plastered in colour and soaking wet. Not a typical Monday morning then.
