Helping Hands Orphanage, Bangalore, India

Helping Hands Orphanage

I went to this orphanage with a friend and my daughter this Saturday.

It was stunning. 52 beautiful, happy healthy children living in a house about the same size as ours. 20 children to a bedroom. 17 girls, and the rest boys. No real beds, just floor covers that the spread out. It must be a scene at bedtime...

The vibe was energetic, and the kids were really well-behaved. The owners were really putting themselves out for these kids.

My daughter raised some money with her birthday last year, and we gave 1/2 the money to this orphanage. We'll probably give more in Feb when we're back and can spend more time there.

If you're looking for a place to send some cash, these folks will make sure it goes to good use.

Bengaluru International Airport Sucks

Bengaluru International Airport

I'm sitting on the floor at the ONLY working power plug in this whole damn place.

There is one pole in the middle with 6 power plugs, all of which are broken. When I asked why, the guy tells me "they were turned off because people were using them."

But I found an ATM in the corner (out of order of course) that had working power. It's probably out of order because everyone unplugs it to use it.

There is a guy manning the Airtel booth next to me whose feet smell so foul I thought the bathroom had overflowed.

The "security" here is pathetic. They have this ridiculous outpost as you drive in, complete with men in black bandannas holding antique rifles behind a sandbag bunker. I swear it looks like a scene from a cheap kung-fu movie. A really cheap one.

Once inside, you are offered the privilege of paying 150 rupees for a breakfast that would cost you 30 outside the airport.

September 09. It can't come fast enough.

t r u t h o u t | India's War on False Antiterrorism

t r u t h o u t | India's War on False Antiterrorism

Why is it that writing in India is so poor?

I mean, just read the first few paragraphs of this rant and tell me what the guy is trying to say.

The entire Times of India is full of this writing. I had to cancel my subscription because it was just making me angry to have to read it every day.

Chicken Gift

 

Riding through the village, my daughter saw some chicks cross the road and pointed and screamed.

Stopping to look at the baby chickens and their parents, the owner of the house came out and offered us this juvenile chicken to take home. Pet? Dinner? I wasn't sure, but I was sure our neighbors wouldn't approve of the squawking.

Gateway Drug

The Gateway Drug




$30 plus shipping is a little rich for my blood especially since I have a lifetimes supply of t-shirts already.

But it does make a lot of sense... Certainly how I feel about giving my kids a bicycle... ;-)

But no, I'm not giving them titanium tricycles. Just cheapo Indian-made MTBs that last just long enough for them to grow out of them.

The Tricycle aimed at Wall Streeters

Lynskey Performance - Tricycle

This just in... An $800 dollar tricycle for kids who really need a titanium ride. (double butted no less)

The market for this probably just disappeared with the 4 trillion dollars wiped out of the market last week.

But you know someone is going to skim enough off the top of the 700 Billion bailout to gift their little ones with the best trike that other people's money can buy.

Me? I'm kinda disappointed in the components. I mean what's the point of titanium if you can't also put some carbon rims on it?

New Tranny in the old steed

Together with my two mechanics-in-training (aka kids) I replaced the rear cassette, the front chainrings, and the chain today on my old mountain bike. While I was in there, I gave it some new rubber (Dart and Mythos XC), greased up the WTB front hub, and gave the bike a decent cleaning.

The drivetrain had the original parts from when I first built the bike. The chain had been replaced once or twice, but the rest (rings and cassette) is original. They have 18 years of abuse in them. Mountain biking in Austin mud, Colorado grit, and Moab dust. A fully-loaded tour from Seattle to Guadalajara down the west coast. Rusty rain in Amsterdam. Beach riding in Zandvoort. Poor cogs.

While dismantling the poor abused chap, I realized just how much paint I have removed in the past 18 years. (Yes, this poor beast is now that old.) It could really use a new paint job. But putting real money into it for that right now just isn't going to happen. I suppose I could find a painter here to do it, but the quality is pretty bad here. I had some motorcycles painted here in Bangalore and was pretty miffed with the result.

I'm pretty psyched to get it back on the road, but unfortunately the old Rock Shox Mag 21 gave up the ghost last month. I have a new fork here but no star-fangled nut for the headset. I have a new Mag 21 that I picked up from flea-bay, but it's in California, not here, since the shipping was one day too slow last time I was there. So until I either make another trip to the US or find a nut here in Bangalore, I get to just look at the bike with all it's shiny new parts on it.

Sure looks purty.

Further proof I'm getting old and crochety

trackosaurus rex - Nice one...

So friggin what! A guy pops a 180 and a bit of a lip off a tiny little ramp.

This kind of lame shit reminds me when 20 years ago kids discovered skateboards again. First they all ran around trying to do a simple flip-kick. When they finally pulled one off they acted as if they'd actually landed on Mars.

This dude, wearing a friggin pink t-shirt and jeans, gets posed in front of some flood lights and pulls a wheelie off a lip.

In a couple years, they'll be riding pools, getting some real air. Then someone will attempt a back-flip and they'll make it to the X-games.

And he calls himself Sexy Sushi. I'm sure his mother is proud.

I guess I just live too damn far from NYC. heh. yeah, that's it.

XDRTB.org | Spread the story. Stop the Disease.

XDRTB.org | Spread the story. Stop the Disease.

Hosakote Photos

Flowers on the way.

Stopping for a rest.

Cooling off

Long slow ride.. Lots of water

Out to Hosakote and back at a very relaxed pace.

Flooded fields everywhere.

Things that show up on Google Maps as lakes were actually lakes. I guess there are some folks suffering due to flooded apartments. As you travel around that area (Kodugadi) you notice that most of the land is low-lying flood-prone, and then there are some apartment complexes rising out of the swamps.

We took a swim in an irrigation tank. Taught a local how to dive. Water felt great.

We took some photos of a flooded cemetery and some locals washing their goats in the floodwaters.

Pics later.

One of the best rides yet.

Friday I rode really fast, but today we just cruised around, avoiding all roads where possible. Good group of people and a relaxed ride.



And I even got a swim in.

Out and back. Zzzzz.

Legs tired from the start after two days of riding earlier. A day of rest would have helped. The south african and the belgian rode away from me at the end. It felt just like in high-school. I'd get within 3 miles of home and just watch everyone ride away. Mental? Physical? Probably both.

Oh, and my new saddle is KILLING me. I'll give it another couple rides before I burn it.

American Beef in the Tour!

American Beef signs on as co-sponsor of Scott squad

Someone in the American Beef industry has a wicked sense of humor or is incredibly stupid. I don't know which.

American beef is roundly suspected of being full of hormones, antibiotics and other nasties. Sounds like they need a marketing plan!

So they decide to sponsor a team that was just disgraced out of the Tour de France for taking drugs.

Anyone else think this is going to end badly?

Back in the saddle again

I survived the return trip from SFO on Jet Airways happily, as the plane was nearly empty and I had three seats to stretch out on.

I was able yesterday to take my new bicycle out for the first time. While I didn't intend to go far, and didn't take tools, phone, water, in fact NOTHING with me, I ended up riding through some of the normal routes for about 1:20. It was muddy, and lots of fun.

The new bike, my first with good suspension, just cruises. Lots of fun in the bumps, though I'm still not comfortable with the slow-speed and technical sections.

I'm happy again...

Jet Airways Bangalore to San Francisco

The ticket was cheap.

The Mumbai-San Francisco plane was a new 777 with LOTS of legroom in economy.

That's about all I can say positive...

The Mumbai transfer was all you expect with a transfer in India. 2 hours was just enough time to cover all the extra insane security checks and the bus ride from one terminal to another. Said bus ride was on what is quite possibly the filthiest bus on the planet. The Mumbai airport is nicer than when I was there 2 years ago, but still not a nice place to spend time.

The 2 hour stopover in Shanghai for refueling was an absolute bummer. You are guided off the plane into a glass jail cell to sit. No wandering the airport. No lounge. No TV. No amenities. The most horrible piped-in muzak you can imagine. It's like 2 hours of water-torture. And I'm not a smoker, but I felt sorry for the smokers, cause in this layover, there is no smoking area.

So, would I take Jet Airways again to SFO? Probably not. Singapore Airlines is much better in every respect. Lufthansa is not a better on-plane experience (it's the worst), but at least you get a break (pretzel and a good beer) in Germany. Air France is better and you can smuggle nice cheeses back into India on the return flight.

swimming hole...

Nothing better than a good swimming hole. And this one is literally a hole in the ground. That's me, shortly after having jumped from the launching pad at the top there. It was a hot day out on the bicycles so when we found the locals enjoying this spot, I had to join in.

It's an irrigation well and the water is at least 20 feet deep. Those stairs continue down another 10' at least underwater.

It was certainly dug by hand (imagine the effort) and probably a long long time ago. It's completely lined with stone.

As far as cleanliness, there are fish living in it, no algae or other signs of nutrient issues (fertilizer or waste), and well, a month later, I still don't have any rashes or skin diseases.

Local motion

A very typical pile of fresh veggies at the Madiwala market in town.

Locovore's make a small difference

I used to read ES&T regularly in grad school, but haven't seen it in years. Here is an interesting article on what it really means to only eat foods that come from a short distance around where you live.

Do food miles matter? | ES&T Online News

Bottom line is this: for an average American eating locally makes as much impact on greenhouse gas emissions as switching away from red-meat for one day a week. Red meat production represents 30% of the greenhouse-gas emissions, while shipping food to market is about 4%.

So what does this have to do with India? A couple things.

First, I suspect that the vast majority of Indians are locovores already. They simply cannot afford to buy food that has been trucked or shipped around the globe, let alone across India. In Bangalore we do see apples from Shimla in the north, but the vast majority of the food that is normally eaten in Bangalore can be grown within a 250km radius of here. We can reach the coasts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu to get the most tropical of things, even though bananas and coconuts grow right in town. So we're fortunate in that respect. This part of India is VERY wealthy from a food-growing perspective. Lots of rain, mild climate, no frost, and some good soil in areas.

Second, the majority are vegetarians. And those who are not vegetarian typically don't eat much beef. They do eat goat (mutton) which qualifies as a red meat but isn't industrially grown like cows are in the US. I have never seen an industrial goat farm here. I have seen single herders tending to their herds of 30-50 goats. I have seen goat markets in the medium cities like Hosakote where it seems these herders bring their animals for sale and shipping to market. But I'm not sure there is a "feed-lot" concept in the production of mutton in India. This is probably why the mutton here is very stringy, chewy and rarely thick and tender like New Zealand mutton (sheep). And just outside of town (east of Whitefield, for example) you see many small chicken farms. These are what would probably qualify as "free-range" even. Certainly they're not "organic" but I doubt they're pumped full anti-biotics like the super-industrial chickens in America and Europe. And they don't travel far to market.

And with oil prices climbing higher, the economic drivers for local eating are even stronger.

My only real complaint about the veggies in Bangalore is the lack of variety. It seems that if it doesn't go in sambar, they hardly sell it.

Pain Killers May Delay Bone Healing

Pain Killers May Delay Bone Healing

Now they tell me.

I've been taking some NSAID painkillers for my broken collarbone. I took them pretty regularly for the first week, and then after that only when it was really bothering me.

Now, I usually look upon chiropractors as "Quacks", (See Penn and Teller's show for some info on that), but this article at the Chiropractice Research site actually cites university studies on rats which showed much slower bone recovery in those who were given painkillers.

I think I'll do my best to lay off the tablets for a while...

I really want this bone to heal and my shoulder to get back to normal. It is making me very very grumpy.

Crack! No more riding for a while.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I forgot how old I am last Saturday and fell while out biking with some friends, breaking my collarbone. It was an absolutely asinine maneuver, which I had no possibility of pulling off. The only thing missing from the event was the Redneck's Last Words: "Look Ma! Watch this!". Fortunately I didn't say that. I may have said "I think I can clear this." Hopefully I only said it to myself. I don't know.

Walked to a village and called to get a ride home, then to the hospital, x-rays confirmed it. Fortunately no dislocation which is what I also feared.

Now, 7 days later, I'm still sore, with a nice disgusting yellow bruise on my chest. Sharp pains if I move the elbow a little more than a smidgen.

I'm mostly off the major painkillers, but Mr. Motrin and Ms. Aleve are still in the house. Señor Cuervo and Sri Kingfisher are also helping with the recovery.

Of course, like all house-bound bikers, instead of hitting the trail I hit flea-bay and well, let's just say, a nice shiny new bike is on its way to me right now..

Think of it as a rebound relationship.... ;-) Old shoulder on an old man, and a hot young bike. Yes!

India not popular with the Chinese...yet - Radio Netherlands Worldwide - English

India not popular with the Chinese...yet

"'The Chinese are not like Europeans,who like the adventure of travelling around. The Chinese are like Americans. They want good standards and value for money.'"

No wonder they don't come here.. India is today generally not value for money and the standards for most goods and services are, well, pitiful. Only at the top end is there a semblance of quality, and for that you pay more than you would in say...Paris or Shanghai.

And then there is the chore of trying to find decent Chinese food here in India.

Smoky jalebis

These are the fresh hot jalebis cooking just up the street from our house. I love to ride the bikes up to this place in the evening with the kids. 10 rupees gets us a big pile wrapped in newspaper. Then we have a battle to keep from eating them immediately. They stay a bit warm even through dinner, and then we devour them.

I may be imagining it, but I swear they taste better when cooked over a wood fire. I think the sugar solution has a real caramel flavor and a smokiness you don't get at the gas-fired places in town.

The Weavers

Less than a kilometer from the outer ring road lives a colony of Baya Weavers; they have built about 20 of these nests in trees overhanging a swampy area.

Normal life goes on for some in Bangalore.

When everything else lets you down, count on your bike

Another weekend, another ride. If it weren't for my mountain bike and the off-road riding that I have recently discovered here, I'd be crazy.

I took 4 friends out on my usual ride in the countryside east of Bangalore.

It was in the words of one person "the best day I've ever had in India" and that's from someone who's lived here for a year and also spent 4 months backpacking around in younger days. So I guess he liked it well enough.

Now I just need to find a way to get a ride in more than 2 or 3 times a week. Every day for breakfast? Uh, yeah, sounds like the ticket. I just need to find a way to not show up for work until 11am. Oh wait, that's what everyone else here does..... Hmm.

Future of India

On the way back from a semi-business semi-social long lunch today, our car passed a small paper and scrap colletor's shack, and next to it was another new small building being put up.

As the car passed, I noticed a small child out in front, struggling to mix the concrete for mortar. He couln't have been more than 6 years old and was probably 4 or 5 years old.

Certainly he should have been in school today.

That's the future of India there, scratching out a living, borrowing from the future generations. Is it so much different than the US borrowing dollars today to be paid off in the future? In India they borrow the kids of today, only to support them as illiterates in the future.

Encomium

Why is it that in India whenever any organizational change happens and an announcement via email is given, there is a flood of people rushing to reply-all to the announcement with "hearty congratulations" and "felicitations" and sometimes even a few crazy encomiums filled with flowery language about the "indelible impact" and "true leadership" that the person has provided.

Even when the announcement is essentially a demotion.

Party politics...

I was in a number of villages this weekend as the election was going on. The "buzz" was pretty amazing.

I know nothing really about the history of voting in Karnataka, and some folks had warned me to "stay home" and avoid trouble. I do know that alcohol was forbidden for the day before and of the voting. I guess there were some conflicts in the past.

What I did see in the villages was a fairly calm gathering of nearly everyone in the town square, most for some reason dressed in white (alignment with a particular party?), and enjoying some tea, coffee, and in one village at least free food.

When the gringo on a mountain bike showed up, there was the usual interest and curiosity from the kids, but in two of the villages you could sense a bit of apprehension, as if anything out of the ordinary on that day was unwelcome.

I did notice that people were wearing their lapel-pinned badges for their parties with price. In one crowd you saw BJP party members standing side-by-side with Congress party members, both politely quizzing me about where I was from, how my SPD pedals worked etc.

When I pointed out that there was a mixture of parties in the crowd, it was just a polite razzing of one side or the other. No animosity or even real unpleasantness about it. Each person felt free to associate with the party of their choice without feeling that the other party was "evil".

Try that in America!

Try that in China!

Obsequiousness

When you visit the Foreign registration office in Bangalore for the second time to "get the signatures", you visit one Mr. Muthanna. He sits in his all-blue office in front of an absolutely hilarious floor-to-ceiling poster of some Swiss Alps or Maroon Bells.
The whole poster is faded from sunlight, and since there is no sunlight in this room, it must astonishingly old. Or the air is particularly oxidizing in there.

As I sat there for an hour waiting yesterday, I got to observe one of the remainders of the old British Raj days: obsequiousness.

The Police Station on Infantry Road is full of people standing around doing essentially nothing. That's not special in India though. There are folks in fancy hats standing with rifles from the 1940's. There are the obligatory 5 gentlemen at the gate who are waiting to blow their whistles at the traffic.

What is special is the man who keeps order outside the office of Mr. Muthanna. This poor chap is dressed in a police uniform, but for all intents and purposes is a doorman.

Over the course of an hour, he opened the doors 10 times. Each time some bureaucrat would leave the office next to Muthanna, he would jump up, step to the side, and open the door to Muthanna's office. Now this door is actually a pair of swinging saloon shutters. The pair of doors hasn't seen soap or paint in 50 years. It's covered in hand-filth. And yet, he opens them each time as if it's a solemn duty and honor to do so.

In addition to opening doors during my hour of observation, he saluted entering and exiting "officials", and opened the doors to their cars. All in a particularly submissive fashion.

He carries no weapon so he can't possibly be there for "security".

At one point, he even picked up the doormats and shook them out against the pillars of the building, creating a nice cloud of dust appreciated "cough, cough" by all the people waiting outside. Now, I've been in India long enough to know that cleaning floors is not something someone like him would normally do. It's just "below" them so to speak. You hire people to do that. But do it he did...

I'm left with the impression that this poor fellow worked like crazy through school to "get a good government job". He probably even paid a bribe to get in, a bribe he borrowed money for and is still paying off. He gets up every morning and puts on a police uniform, tells his kids he's going out to catch bad guys.

And then he starts work as doorman.

Movie Review - Jodhaa Akbar

I wrote this back in February but never published it... Ooops.

---------

Let me preface this with the statement that I speak maybe a dozen words of Hindi. I know two phrases: "My name is ___." and "Bring one more beer please"


But I had some colleagues visiting from the US and I thought it would be a fun team even to take my Bangalore team out for a movie and dinner with them. I let the team pick the movie and this is the latest mega-hit, so we booked it even though the movie is nearly 4 hours long.

The stars Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai (I can't add the Bachchan to her name...I'm in denial) were stunning. When Hrithik hits the screen for the first time, all you see is his chin, and still the ladies in the audience started hooting and howling. Likewise when Aishwarya arrives, there was silence, then a hoot and a whistle. They are simply stunning on the big screen.

Filmed all over north India's desert in Rajastan at lovely old forts and palaces, the scenery is amazing. Some of the interior shots are similarly breathtaking.

The story itself is one big 4-hour tease. You just can't believe it takes 3 hours for this couple to actually hook up. So much taunting and teasing and then denial. Painful to watch.

As with most Hindi films there are the requisite 5 songs and two fights. In this case, though, there are some truly captivating musical scenes, especially the Sufi scene.

I can't wait for the DVD to come out so I can see it again with English subtitles. The cinematography won't be nearly as impressive on my little TV, but I bet I'll still like it.

Another 3 month sentence -- my fifth in a row.

After probably another 10 hours of work on my part over the course of 3 months hassling and hammering on our HR department to actually do something, I submitted the paperwork for a visa extension (against my better judgment at the time actually). Then I was given the pleasure of dragging the family downtown (90 mins in the traffic) to be "seen" (not questioned or quizzed) by several bureaucrats for signatures (while generous amounts of money changed hands behind the scenes I promise). Then another few days to wait while said bureaucrats decided what to do with me. I was granted permission to stay here in India for another 3 months.

The joy. The thrill. The emotional outburst that it brings.

This is now the 5th time these folks at the immigration consultancy have told me they were getting a one year visa.

You can imagine how pleased I am with the "service" they are providing.

Aw crap, and I thought I was going to be "happy" on this blog again. Arrrgh. It's just that it's therapeutic to rant it all out!

As Rocky would say: Next time for sure!

New Year, New Attitude

I spent the last couple of months really not liking India, and then for the Christmas holidays I was stuck here due to an amazing combination of incompetence on the part of my HR team and the bureaucracy of the Indian government. So the past month has been tough. Missing family, friends, and festivals.

But, I'm stuck here for another couple of years, so there is no bloody use in having a bad attitude about it. Let's have some fun.

I do have some nice things to write about. Today's positive thinking is brought to you by a bicycle ride. A friend from work came over and we did a 13-mile loop through the villages east of Whitefield.

You only have to get out of Bangalore to understand how someone can come to India and love this place. Bangalore is the Cleveland of India, I'm convinced. If it's not, then it's possibly the Odessa (TX, not Russia). But get out into the villages, and wow...

We were riding along one road/dike and it was early in the morning, the mist was still kind of hovering, and the fields below were all green and freshly cut (rice? wheat?). I really felt like I was back in Holland for a minute. A bit later, we turned the corner into a village of thatch-roofed huts, stopped for a couple bananas, and did our best to chat in Kannada. Turns out the dudes were from Tamil Nadu and don't speak much Kannada. So I was apparently teaching them Kannada.

Further up ahead, the fields were all irrigated from the river, and everything was just so green and beautiful. It's January and the fields are blooming and producing. The scent of cows everywhere. The sight of people working fields by hand. The sound of birds..

Dreamy I tell you. And definitely not Bangalore, that's for sure.

I think I want to go home...

Just one of those days...