Things you kinda had to be there for: miscellaneous observations of every day life in Bangalore.

My coworker, John, never served in the military.  He spoke to me the other day and noted that every veteran he knows does not really talk about their military experience, except with other veterans.  He realized why.  There are some things in life that need to be experienced to believe.  Living in India is that kind of experience.  Nevertheless, I will do my best to shed a little light on what it is like to be here.

We saw it!  On Christmas Day 2011 Nancy, the kids and I saw the "fabled 5" people on a motorcycle.  We have heard rumors a the "mythical 6", but I have never seen photographic evidence.

One night my coworker and I were driving home late after a department get-together.  We were on a major road in Bangalore called Airport Road.  We passed a forklift driving full speed in the dark.  Where else would you see such a thing?  Incidentally, this was at night on a very busy road and forklifts do not have head, tail or brake lights.  I thought you should know.

Every single day I have been in India I have seen someone driving the wrong way down the street.  If memory serves correctly, I have seen that 3 times in the US.

I saw someone who was cutting guavas at a roadside stand wash their hands in the urine stream of a cow.  Read that again if you have to.

Very often I see children that I suspect are as young as 6 helping 3 year old children across the street in traffic that has no comparison anywhere in the US.

I was riding home one day in my co-worker's car and we hit a dog.  Dogs roam freely throughout the city.  They sleep in the road and motorists just swerve around them.  This one, however, was crossing the road and decided to abruptly turn 180 degrees and got hit by our front bumper.  The driver stopped, and I was about to get out and tend to the dog.  She was wailing something horrific and other dogs materialized out of nowhere and were running toward her.  John, my co-worker already had his door open and I grabbed his arm.  It was no longer safe.  The other dogs had come, I am fairly certain, to finish her off to her death.  A few minutes later we saw her again laying on the side of the road.  She was dead.  I was relieved, and quite sad.

One of the entrances to the office park where I work lies where the city of Bangalore has decided to run new water and sewer pipes.  These pipes are 3 metres in diameter, made of reinforced concrete.  They're HUGE!  There is, I estimate, a 500 metre stretch of the access road to my office building that has been torn up so that they can lay the new pipe.  This project started in July.  Since October they have made a diversion for our road allowing us to avoid the 5 metre trench in the ground.  The first week of January they closed the diversion and now I must take the long way to work.  Some days it is 45 minutes.  Some days it is 100 minutes.  There is no rhyme or reason as to why.  Nonetheless, think about this for a minute: it has been nearly 6 months to lay 500 metres of pipe!  I am 100% certain that if this happened in New York City that they would have ripped up the old pavement on a Friday, laid it all down over the weekend, and it would have been paved over as if nothing happened for the commute on Monday morning. 

I am certain that someone could earn a Noble Prize in mathematics of they could understand and quantify the decision making process of the Indian driver.  There are seemingly no rules, yet somehow I always get to where I need to be.  I have often commented that every decision made here in Bangalore follows the same rules.  As a manager and project / program manager for international projects, my mind is boggled constantly.  Tracking projects here can be likened to catching a butterfly with chopsticks whilst wearing a blindfold.  Also, the typical Indian, if I you will allow me to make such a sweeping generalization, is polite and reserved.  Put them behind the wheel of a car, and their aggressions come out.

There is always a species tree flowering in Bangalore, and Bangalore is covered with trees.  The visual beauty and fragrance of these is unlike anything I have ever seen anywhere. 

I invited my team out for an evening of fun.  We first went bowling and then to a very nice restaurant in downtown Bangalore.  I had not been bowling in years!  The bowling alley played hip hop music - which I thoroughly detest - so loudly that nobody was able to speak to one another.  When we got to the restaurant everyone was very quiet.  Nobody was having a good time.  I ordered a drink, and everyone quickly followed.  Still, no talking and no fun.  Then it dawned on me, I am the senior person in the room.  They were waiting for me to do SOMETHING.  Being a novice raconteur I started to tell stories and I got a few laughs.  Then the waiter came by and I ordered everyone a second round of drinks, and told more stories.  Soon, everyone was talking, laughing and had a great time.  I learned a valuable lesson that day about management.  Side note: I get zero budget so I put the entire evening on my personal credit card.  There were 12 of us, we all had 2 or 3 cocktails apiece, hors d'oeuvres and a main course at a very nice restaurant.  The bill was $220 USD.  Money well spent!  Another side note, I asked each person a question: how many languages do you speak?  The fewest amount was me.  I speak English and rudimentary conversational German.  One other person spoke ONLY 3 languages.  Most spoke 4 or 5.  One person spoke 9.  Man, I am such a slacker.

Every day a man rides through our neighborhood on a bicycle with a blower contraption attached.  This blower emits a fog of malathion and kerosene to kill mosquitoes.  Many of our roads are cul de sacs, which mean that he rides through the noxious fog on his way back and forth.  He wears a surgical mask.  I paid attention during my safety classes in the navy and recall that he, at bare minimum, needs a tyvek suit covering his body and needs to have a respirator with organic vapor cartridges covering his nose and mouth.  Goggles are a must, too.  Again, he wears a surgical mask.  He will not see his 40th birthday, for certain.

Our maid is a wonderful lady that I estimated was close to 60 years old.  She is unbelievably polite and hard working.  We pay her 10,000 rupees per month which is above the norm.  For the uninitiated, that is fewer than $200 USD.  For entry into our neighborhood she had to apply for an ID card.  We handed in her application and discovered she is 48 years old.  People age quickly here, I surmise.  We have just been invited to her daughter's wedding.  I have no idea what to do and will ask a trusted local co-worker what to do. 

While enroute to my 2nd deployment to the Persian Gulf, my battle group stopped in Singapore.  Singapore is the anti-Bangalore.  Everything on the small island nation is orderly.  There is no trash, everyone obeys the traffic laws and even spitting is illegal.  We are planning a weekend get-away to Singapore for therapeutic reasons.  All of this might make you think that I do not like India.  You are wrong.  I love India, but we all need a break.