Monday

Tuesday, July 24th 2007

Getting a connection at Dukes was considerably harder than expected. I moved over to the bar and sat right next to the wifi transmitter and it still would not connect. The bar guys called the front desk explaining the problem and they told me to go outside, so I did. Still no luck, but it kept getting a little better signal. Finally I went to the front desk to show them the problem and just as I pointed to the problem on the screen it connected and gave me a prompt to log into the net! The desk guy says "you cn sit ower der"... in the waiting area. Thanks buddy!

I've been pre-formatting the pics to 640x480 to reduce the upload time and typing out all the text beforehand, so once I do finally get a solid connection I can post everything up pretty quickly. I don't spend much time with anything else online because I only have an hour but I do read the comments and highly appreciate them. :-)

We hit the road at 6am headed for somewhere? Places and directions are already starting to blend together into one big "India Experience", one I don't plan on repeating if I can help it, so I don't really care about all the roads and tiny towns that we drive through.

I initially found it amusing that some of the trucks have "horn ok please" painted on the back because everyone honks the horn all the time. I thought it might be a joke, but as we drove further I noticed that all of the trucks have this on the back...







So it must be a sort of warning that the driver needs to be honked at or something. Still amusing.

We stopped at a roadside stand to get some sort of unique fruit, called Peru Fruit, to give to the customers. My guy said it is ok to eat and I should try some so I took a slice. First thing I do is take a bite right out of the center like a water melon only to learn that the center is all seeds about the size of lemon seeds, so I stand there spitting seeds out all over the place! Stuff was quite good though, I can't begin to describe what they taste like, totally unique...





Here's our our India-Mobile...



Driving further towards the customer location I took a few more pics of local stuff...













Most of the road signs and billboards everywhere are in perfect english.

The sacred cow. "What provides milk the same as a mother, is something that shall be cherished and allowed to live out it's life happily."
Or something like that...

I'm relishing the Beef Jerky that I brought with me, it's the only beef I'm going to see here.

Some school kids playing a game where they have to hold their breath and say some "loki loki" thing until they tag another kid, or if they run out of breath they are out of the game...

We arrived at the guest house of the company first and dropped off our luggage. It's kind of a split room bungalo, but it hadn't been lived in or cleaned in quite some time. I was less than thrilled with the many large spiders hanging out around my toilet...

Here's some Indian wasps hanging out on the back door...

We went out to the paper mill and met with the guys who requested my trip over here. They were rather lost on how to best run the instrument, but they were running it quite often anyway. I simply needed to clarify many things on how it is supposed to work...


After several hours there I was getting very tired from jet lag so we left for the guest house to rest up. I didn't get much rest however as a couple of the managers wanted us to have a meeting over some snacks and beer (Kingfisher, of course), so why not.
A couple hours later we finally went back to the rooms so I could get some much needed rest.
My bed had but one blanket, which I had moved around to check for bugs before we went to the mill, but was now surrounded and crawling with fleas! My guy had already went to bed in his room so I just left all my close on and went out and crashed on the couch. It pretty much sucked, but I got some sleep and didn't get eaten alive by fleas. I had to explain and show the whole flea problem to my guy in the morning, he was not thrilled about it and politely informed people at the company.

Here's my bed and some fleas the next morning...




The view out the back...


The paper mill from afar...



I heard my phone ring at about 6am but wasn't able to get to it in time. Of course it was Dana, and she left a voice mail, but I still cannot check my voice mail!
My time is very very limited so far. It's is very rough here, driving takes a long time, and we are always on the go. In fact I'm trying to type this in the car on the way back to Dukes so that I might get a tiny bit of time to relax this evening.
Dana, you might catch me at 7am my time, I'm usually up and getting ready about then. But that is about the only time that I'll be able to answer.

I'm now back at the Dukes, and it looks like I'll have to go to reception to post again. That sucks, but the room is nicer this time...except the power just died on me and I had to rewire the stupid key tag - power on for the room thing because a wire broke. Shoddy, very shoddy construction, wiring, internet, everything... Oh well.

I'll have two more posts tomorrow I think. Back at the BAWA and I should get some time to get caught up on all the pictures I've been taking. :)

I miss USA construction, even the road construction... hell, ESPECIALLY the road construction!!!1

-Scott