After settling in with the office and receiving my badge and power converter, a few of us decided to go on a little walk around the neighborhood. Fu Yong from China, Steven from Chicago, Sherry from San Fran, and I headed out of our little gated community known as the Diamond District and explored the surrounding area. Right outside our gate (which is always open and the guards don't seem to check anyone) lies Airport Road. On the other side of Airport Road is a straight path that leads to a series of parallel alleyways with small shops and grocery stores, which eventually leads to a more significant road, 100 Foot Road, with recognizable western shops along with the local ones.
However, we still had our first feat to overcome - crossing Airport Road. As I mentioned before, there aren't really any traffic lights here. Now, it's pretty cool to be in a car and never really have to stop for a light - imagine driving on the highway except none of the exits have street lights either, so a bottleneck never really forms. Instead there's just a steady, albeit aggressive and dangerous, flow of traffic. As a pedestrian, this sucks. You can't just sit around and wait for that green man to tell you that you can cross safely. You stand on the tip of your toes, looking for that one driver that hangs back a little bit too far from the crowd, then you run like hell. To the middle. Then you look the other way and do it again. It can take some time to find an opening, but it's not too terrible. Also, after watching elderly folk and parents with small children cross, pride starts to kick in and you make a dash for it.
After making it across, we took a nice stroll and took in the view. Along the side alleyways were grocery stores, merchandise shops, an internet cafe, and small food shops. On 100 Foot Road were stores like Wrangler, Levi's, and United Colors of Benetton mixed in with the local ones. One of the differences that's often mentioned is the number of stray dogs on the street. There weren't as many as people described there would be (I imagined at least 6 on every city block), but we still ran into quite a few of them during our walk. There were maybe nine dogs during our ~1 hour journey. On the way back, we encountered a cow walking down the street. Chillin. Doing whatever it wants just because it can.
Anyway, once we got back, we hung out for a bit in Steve's room. Turned on some Indian MTV and browsed the internet. But then I realized - every time I looked up, I could have sworn the exact same music video was playing. Sure, the people and music and a little different, but every Indian musician made the same video.
They're at a club - dancing. Ooooh and now the guy does a chest pop. Then the camera does a series of awkward angles on the girl's face. Now there's some random guy breakdancing. Suddenly the entire club begins a synchronized dance composed mostly of wrist movement.
Oh, and the best part was finally noticing the name MTV gave this series of music videos - Torture Tunes.
The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. We had some dinner at a local restaurant within the Diamond District complex - I ate Murgh Tikka Mahkhani (basically butter chicken?) and Veggie Biriyani (a fried rice type of dish), which totaled to about 300 rupees. After that, some of us went up to the ThoughtWorks office and played ping pong.
Today was nice and relaxing - got some things done, and I managed to stay awake the whole day and adjust to the time here. Tonight, two other Chicagoans that I've been working with, Kyle and Derek, will be arriving. Then tomorrow we begin our orientation, do icebreakers, and even have a treasure hunt! Yay!
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