Royale with cheese

There's a constant queue when McDonald's opens in Whitefield mall. Had to go in and try the Maharaja meal, which seemed like the closest thing to a poultry Big Mac.

The most interesting part for me turned out to be the background soundtrack. I guess the McDonald's brand in India tries to represent western decadence, because during my brief stay I listened to "smells like teen spirit", "the wall" and "cocaine"...

No more sleeping on the floor

Now finally there's a bed to go under the mattress. Functionally this is still the same thing, but the feeling is of something a lot more organized. On the downside I was expecting a celebration of wonderful woodwork craftsmanship, but the details dont really stand up to close scrutiny. Live and learn, I guess...

Anyway the adventure of having a euro-size bed & mattress tailor-made in India has reached the finish line and I am happy to report they fit!

Power, uninterrupted

A couple of days with the broadband connection were enough to convince me I need an UPS. The backup power takes about 30-60 seconds to kick in and once the outage is over, there's another power cut when the compound is reconnected to the main power grid.

There were 3 outages during a lengthy meeting I took part in remotely on Friday. That meant that I had to drop out 6 times, wait for the router to come back online, reconnect the VPN and so on. Really annoying. Let's see if this setup works better.

It just occurred to me that people are forced to use a lot more power here because the network is so unstable and unreliable. In the western world there is concern over standby power with home electronics, but here all appliances of any value are protected with power regulators or UPSs out of necessity that consume at least 10x more juice. Not very green...

Ant eater?

I noticed today that there are a couple of really small geckos sharing the house with me. Cool!

I've had a slight ant issue that seems to be improving by the day. I wonder if it's these guys keeping the population at bay, or is it due to me squashing every ant I see? Probably it's due to the house being kept clean now, but the idea of geckos feeding on the ants is much more appealing :-).

Broad broad band

After 2 weeks of waiting, having ordered broadband access from 3 different operators one finally came through. To my great surprise, this thing is really speedy. All my previous "broad"band experiences here in India have been a trip on memory lane with download speeds up to 100 kbit/s or so. Not so with this one - I am paying for 2Mbit/s symmetrical connection and based on the test results, I'm really getting what I am paying for. Fantastic!

The next obvious question is the Internet links out of India - well, while some speed is lost it's another happy surprise. I tried a speedtest site in Finland a few times and the results were between 500 and 1200 kbit/s. The previous connections I've had in serviced apartments, hotels and even at work struggled with SD video from YouTube - this plays HD without any need to buffer beforehand.

The incredible Hulk

Yesterday on the way to the gym I almost stepped on this dude playing frogger on the main street of our gated community. He was so slow that I could snap an image even with my phone camera (focusing in the dark takes ages).

I am predicting reincarnation very soon after a brief encounter with an Toyota Innova (the official expat-mobile) front tyre.

So close, but yet so far

In the middle there is Bogmallo Beach in Goa, where we spent a few days a week ago. Or a month ago, who knows? The days are so packed at work that it feels like the mini vacation happened in a previous lifetime.

It wouldn't be India if the holiday happened without incident. Our original destination was the Zuri further south, but on the morning of our departure we suddenly had no reservation anymore. Now I'm told this happens quite often in India when the later comers pay more and on a long weekend the hotels in Goa were fully booked.

Note to self: from now on insist to get hotel confirmation id from the travel agency and double-check it's valid with the hotel after reservation. I am still looking for any example of a working and trustworthy service in India - so far no luck...

LH 754 Arrived

Here we are, in the middle of the night. Some waiting for customers and others, like me, to see a loved one for the first time in ages.

Rendez-vous...