First thing though, I know I'm not going to talk about ThoughtWorks India or TW University right now. That can wait. Second, I do know that I want to tie up some loose ends from my first weekend here. If you've read all of these posts, then you may remember my first Bangalore impressions as we drove in from the airport and the fabulous exotic building called the Leela Palace. Second, you may remember some issues I had with the hot water (not having any in the shower) and trying to get an internet connection.
To bring all of that up-to-date, here's what I found out....That first weekend, after getting some shopping advice at the Royal Orchid Hotel and before meeting Mr. Murthy, the local rickshaw kingpin, I was surprised to see a lot of firecracker detritus in the street outside the Royal Orchid. It looked like I had walked into the remains of a Chinese New Year. Imgaine that. I was so tired from the trip in, I had missed all of this commotion in the neighborhood.
Well, once I got in the rickshaw and onto Airport Road, I found out that a local religious temple festival had been going on all morning and there had been a parade of floats that represented various gods going down our stretch of Airport Road. I managed to see the last two -- they were decorated in gold and red and ivory, the ivory color coming from live jasmine flowers. Cool! but my camera was back in my room...doh!
And the fabulous Leela Palace that I thought was maybe some restored historical place? We passed that again on the way back from shopping. It turned out to be a luxury hotel with an attached shopping mall. Doh!
Meanwhile, the hot water heater. Well, like I said, after my first cold shower, I noticed there was a wall switch that turned the heater on; I tried that the next morning for about 10 minutes before using the shower. Still cold. I went to work and when I got home that night, I turned the heater on all night. The next morning, still cold.
So I asked my roommate, Deepali, if she had hot water. Of course, she did. She called the maintenance manager and two guys came over that night for about an hour and fixed something or other. One of them showed me that there were two lights on the heater and if the cut-off light came on, it meant no hot water. Well, that was good up to a point, but what makes the cut-off light come on? Once it is on, it stays on forever and you have to call the maintenance crew.
It was coming on pretty much once a week until about two weeks ago. I suspect it has to do with leaving the heater on one minute--or maybe thirty seconds--longer than it wants to be on and it overheats. Anyway, the last time it came on, I called maintenance four days in a row and they never got it fixed. Apparently, if I call in the morning before I go to work and say, "I'm calling from apartment A-77-PH and there's no hot water in bathroom number one, the cut-out light is on," the person on the other end can't understand what I'm saying and nobody is able to figure out the problem since I've gone to work for the day. So I've given up. Cold showers in India can be quite refreshing.
And the internet connection? We fooled around with that for about three days, too, before it came to light that the garbled-up password written on the modem in the apartment was wrong by two characters.
Now I feel all caught up and the next things I want to tell you about are the gardens and parks I've visited in town -- Lal Bagh, Cubbon Park, and Cariappa Park.
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