update number two!

From: Inna CHANDIKA
Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 16:38

Hello all,

It’s been officially a week of me in the office now and BAM!, the reality sinks in. I have deadlines to meet to make sure that I can finish my project on time. Unfortunately (or not), my project requires interviewing a lot of the employers about their work etc. Maybe it’s the combination of my intern status (intern usually means just-ignore-me-I-will-be gone-soon-anyway) and language barrier and them being genuinely busy – but the responses I’ve been receiving so far is less than stellar. One more day and I’ll be following the previous intern’s advice on sitting across the person whom I want to interview until he responds. Let’s see how this goes tomorrow. For now, I’ve been resorting to doing online research for the 2^nd stage of my project. Nearly all the interns seem to be of the opinion that it’s a massive waiting game. Patience wins.

Last week, I also discovered how easy it was to make me happy in India. Give me MEAT! I don’t think I can be a vegetarian after all. The guesthouse where I stayed only cooks vegetarian and the closest thing I came to eating non-vegetarian was a dish of Egg Masala. I was craving for MEAT! Haha so last Wednesday, we decided to go out to a nearby restaurant for MEAT. All we had there was rice and two MEAT dishes (of course we refused to order vegetarian dishes!). I think I went to sleep smiling that night. Haha.

Also, there’s an Indian sweet shop nearby my place. We aim to try every single piece of sweet available in that shop (as shown below) before we fly home. Yum yum yum. It’s painfully obvious that I’m not going to lose any weight while I’m here unless I get food-poisoning aka Delhi Belly and TOUCH WOOD, I’m not going to get any. Haha.

Moving on – I had a blast over the weekends! To the extent that since Monday, I’ve been looking forward to the weekends. On Friday night, the NDPL interns, which includes me, went down to Old Delhi (yes, the opposite of New Delhi silly!) for a dinner at Chow Bizarre, as recommended by Lonely Planet (easily the most revered book during the journey so far – the eating spots never disappoint even though they put a strain on our very humble budgets).

We dressed up a bit to meet up with the Tata Chemical interns who were also based in Delhi. It was surreal to be nicely dressed, sitting in an auto-rickshaw (open window and no air-con), navigating through the miniscule alleys of Old Delhi with a sea of people walking at the sides, humongous trucks coming from the opposite direction, cows strolling so close you could smack their butts and the ‘melodious’ horns to complete the atmosphere.

The restaurant was located in an old-school Hotel Broadway and it was sooooooooooo gorgeous and sooooooooooo eclectic.

Chor Bizarre means “Thief Market” and everything they got in the restaurant did not match because well, they were bought from the thieves. Haha.

Our table was easily the coolest in the joint – a converted four-post bed, complete with the canopy of curtains hanging down.

Everything was so old-school, so warped back in time. At the corner, there was a REAL vintage car that had been converted into a table for the buffet spread.

The Sharabi Kababi Tikka Masala we had was crazily delicious and the 5 of us had such a good time eating (there was MEAT!!!), drinking (India’s own Kingfisher beer which is very nice, even for a non-beer fan like me) and talking. A great way to end the working week.

Then Saturday came and obviously we went out! This time it was the heart of New Delhi or Connaught Place. We had a grand plan of grabbing lunch at another joint mentioned in Lonely Planet but at the same time, we had a Bollywood show to watch. The latter won and we ended up eating KFC (yes to more meat!). Poor Bert nearly couldn’t join me for lunch because his driver was lost. Haha. My 2^nd Bollywood movie is called Shootout At Lokhandwala – an action movie based on “true rumours” (???!! look at the poster below) of a Mumbai shootout in early 90s between the local police and some underworld dudes.

I enjoyed this movie more than my 1^st one, despite its rather violent content. The bad guys would break out into a song and dance, complete with hip gyrates and “orgasmic expressions” as I quote a fellow intern called CHANG QI. I can’t wait for my next Bollywood flick even though I have to resort to guessing the plot due to the absence of any English subtitles. ;) During the show’s intermission, we got to know some Singaporeans who sat just in the row after us (they heard our Singlish conversations). They had been in India for a month, trekking all over the place – they were super tanned and toned, which is something I’ll never be. :P How small is this world!

After the show, we visited Wenger’s, a legendary bakery as Lonely Planet claimed, where we bought dessert for our dinner party at the dwelling of Tata Chem’s interns.

Then the Bharti interns had to scoot off to their palace in Gurgaon...

Next we proceeded to Khan Market, Delhi’s own Holland Village. The atmosphere and the vibe was uncannily similar and it made me miss the tea sets (oh scones, glorious scones with cream, butter and jam) at Foster’s Café. Found out that Bush, Clinton and some other big shots dropped by Khan Market when they came to Delhi. Bought my very first Indian clothing at fabindia – think Island Shop but much cheaper! J

For dinner, we bought Khan Chacha Kabab (thank you Aman for introducing us to this!!!) where all the kababs filled with mutton sheesh or tikka, chicken tikka are superb. Slurp. To complete the meal, we proceeded to buy some beer (but of course!). The liquor shop was scary – people (okay, men - the only girls there were Arvinder and I and we kept receiving stares) were streaming in and out non-stop as bottles were flying off the shelves. A guard was seated right in front of the entrance; every person who walked out would be examined (a.k.a groped) to ensure that he hadn’t stolen anything.

Armed with kababs and beers, we were ready to party! To cut a long story short, we ate, we drank and we talked until it was time to leave before we missed the metro. But at the garden of the apartment, there was a big party in full swing! I was sorely tempted to sing out a birthday song from the balcony so that we would be invited to the buffet also. ;)

Alas, we had to rush for the metro because the last train is at 10 pm. We did catch a commotion outside the gate though. A group of the security guards was surrounding this fellow in suit who was carrying a briefcase – they were bombarding him with questions about what he was doing there etc as one of the guards held on to his wrist. The fellow looked like he stepped out of the 70s – big wavy hair, thick moustache and aviator sunnies. Haha once again, I was tempted to stay to watch how the scene would unfold but we couldn’t afford to miss the train (Delhi's new metro which is so much like MRT in Singapore as shown below). Sob. The Tata Chem interns decided to stay over at our place in North Delhi because they had wanted to experience the cycle rickshaws and cows (they got their wish!) and we played cards until the wee of the night.

Sunday came and we had rented a cab to bring us around Delhi for the entire day. We visited the Red Fort

Akshardham Temple (no cameras allowed inside this one so I cheated by googling this)

Lotus Temple

At first I thought that this was a Hindu temple - but it turned out to be a Baha'i temple. I've never heard of this religion before, which is supposedly very global and recognized by the UN. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1'%C3%AD_Faith. I met this Malaysian Chindian girl who was there to volunteer at the temple. Hmm.

Qutb Minar

There was an iron ore pillar which did not rust over centuries - it's up to today, no one can figure out what was the alloy composite used. Kang Wei stupidly called it stainless steel... -rolls eyes- I've yet to get pictures. ;)

and Sarojini Market.

Sorry no pictures because we were too busy shopping. We found really gorgeous stuff like a BRAND NEW WITH TAG ripcurl top for a magnificent Rs 25 (SGD 0.90!!!), a victoria's secrets dress for SGD 9 and other things. That visit is only the first of many to come I tell you.

The most exciting part of the trip was trying to passing ourselves as local Indians. Hahahaha yes – I passed even though I’m so fair! I purposely wore an Indian top and tied my hair in a low ponytail that day. At these places, locals only have to pay Rs 10 per entrance while foreigners, between Rs 100-250. Being the cheapskates we are, we refuse to do so! Our modus operandi is always the same – Vamsi or Arvinder would buy the tickets, all the Chinese fellows to wear our sunnies, walk past the guards like we’re locals who obviously knew what we were doing. Changqi was stopped once and the guard asked “which part of India are you from?” and without skipping a beat, Changqi calmly answered “Sikkim” which was readily accepted. (To check where on earth is this place – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikkim)

Prior to coming here, I had no idea that India has such an ethnic diversity. Every day, I would see Chinese or Cambodian or Thai or European or Middle-Eastern-looking people who turned out to be local Indians. Amazing indeed. It’s not uncommon for Indians from different parts of the country to not being able to communicate with each other – which makes it rather easy for us to pass off as Sikkim people who can’t speak Hindi. x) The greatest challenge of all would be the trip to Agra this coming weekend where Taj Mahal is. Locals pay Rs 20 while foreigners have to pay Rs 750! The guards there are much stricter. Between now and then – I’m going to try to Indianize myself by tanning and wearing more eyeliner. Haha. Plus to make more convincing – we will be tourists from Nagaland this time round (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagaland). Note that the official state language there is actually English and Christianity is the majority religion. Sounds good eh? :)

This is Miss Nagaland in case you're wondering how the Indians in Nagaland look like.

And that’s all for now. I didn’t send any photos through email because I would have maxed out your inbox capacity. I posted up all the shots taken at http://innainindia.blogspot.com/ Please tag or comment so that I know who actually reads my crap haha and enjoy the Bollywood video alright? J

In His love and mine,

Inna

PS: SORRY for those individual emails I’ve yet to reply! Soon soon!

PPS: We're ordering NON-VEG pizza from domino pizza tonight! WHOOPEE!