It still looks like I am facing the Big Decision in the near future. For a moment there was a chance of everything going my way, but the opportunity was tackled down by – surprise, surprise – corporate bureaucracy. Although work conditions are in favour of both me and my GF living in Bangalore, policies don’t allow her to work abroad.

The past two weeks have been a real strain for me, both physically and mentally. Office hours are long, nothing can be done without forced interaction with other people, there’s no sense of privacy whatsoever and the noises of the city are a neverending cacophony right behind my door. If I’m coming here again, I need a more peaceful place to have my downtime in. Seems like I’m not that fond of cities after all.

It’s easy to see from here how ideal my home back in Oulu is: new, clean and in a peaceful neighbourhood located near the office. My places of living in Bangalore may have been new(ish), but the other aspects have been less optimal. I am still looking for the places here where I can just relax in my own privacy, but without luck so far.

The predominant mentality of living in India is immediate survival,while my view is the complete opposite: I tend to make a larger initial investment to save work in the future. For example, I just don’t understand the local habit of filling holes in the road with sand instead of patching them up properly. The work has to be done over and over again, and the only apparent reason I can point out is to keep workers occupied. Maybe they will stay out of troublemaking if they can feel themselves necessary?

No matter what the reason, I need to create my own bubble of smooth routines in the middle of all this short-sightedness. In a hotel or a serviced apartment life is pretty much dictated by outsiders, which is okay for a while, but six weeks is too much of that. If I am to go for a longer period, I really need to consider where to live and what to take with me.

This whole thing still calls out for a lot of thinking.

Tags: accommodation, culture, friends and family, hotels, oh bugger, people in india, planning, practical stuff, time, travel, ways of working, what is different

Sometimes it is beneficial to stand out of the crowd. I was walking towards the office in the morning when a seemingly random Bajaj Avenger pulled to the side of the road. I didn’t recognize the driver, but it was enough to see the neck strap of the Corporation over his shirt to understand what was going on. No doubt he recognized me (I wonder how?) and offered a ride to the office, which I gladly accepted. I was already prepared to take a rikshaw, but this helpful dude saved me the trouble. Thanks again, even though I don’t remember your name

I found out yesterday that January 14th is a public holiday in India, so all of a sudden I have only two early mornings left in Bangalore. Time flies at unbelievable pace when you’re far away from home.

Just a quick side note: the Finnish police has done one of its biggest mistakes yet by collecting a secret list of child porn sites. Apart from completely useless filtering system for implementing the list, its content has been proved to include a lot of legal sites.

And now the list has been published in Wikileaks, helping people find stuff that the police wants banned. Great work, guys!

Tags: colleagues from India, internet censorship, motorbikes, time, traffic, transportation, why I wanted a change, work

I figured out one of the major things that greatly reduce my comfort while living here, but luckily it’s something non-permanent.

In fact the problem is exactly that: everything is non-permanent. Even though the hotel room has a kitchenette, it doesn’t make sense to collect a full-blown storage of foodstuffs just to throw most of it away when I leave. So I eat out or buy my snacks the very day I intend to consume them, because I don’t want to leave a heap of uneaten food behind next Friday.

On top of that, shopping is usually a real pain in the butt. Supermarkets of the city are far away from the hotel, my only means of transportation is taking a rikshaw and on average it takes a hell of a long time just to get through the cashier queue. Finding more specific items (like razor blades) usually takes visits to many stores, making it even more tedious to keep the stock up.

To make things worse, leaving the hotel is not that simple either. All valuables must be kept behind locks, so I have to disassemble my workstation every time I go shopping or to find something to eat. This may not be a problem on shorter trips, but after five weeks it’s more than annoying already. I need a place where I don’t have to destroy all evidence of my life every time I leave the premises.

I want a home.

Tags: accommodation, food, people in india, practical stuff, shilton suites, shopping, time

Roaming around the city and reading the newspaper carefully gave me some interesting insights to the Indian culture about relationships and marriage.

I have known for a while that arranged marriages are common in India, but only today it really struck me. I was skipping over some classified ads in the Sunday Times, since I don’t feel the need to buy a house or anything like that. After three pages I happened to take a closer look, only to realize that there wasn’t a single ad about real estate or goods, but boys and girls of all ages.

At first I thought these were personals, but none of the ads included anything… personal. Instead I could find detailed descriptions of education, work and family background, classified by religion, caste and profession. People looking for other people. And the page title?

“Matrimonials”.

Tags: culture, people in india, religion, surprises, what is different

Some words of wisdom from my dad gave me quite a lot to think about. For clarification I want to say that I haven’t received an offer yet, but there seems to be a solid consensus between my managers that the first half of 2009 is the most critical one for me being here. Of course the same first half is the one during which my GF has to be in Oulu for work, and there is also a possibility that her contract is going to be extended beyond the beginning of September. Things will have to go really smoothly for Her to be able to move in with me without doing significant damage to Her own career.

Extra money is not one of my motivations as such and I don’t really expect to come back with more cash than I left with. I am merely concerned about keeping up my Oulu home, being able to cope with all the expenses in both cities and having enough money to keep up the quality of life I am used to. During these five weeks I have spent more than I have earned, but I have compensated for that by putting some money aside during autumn. Apparently that won’t be an option if I stay for a year, and I don’t want financial stress on top of being far away from all my friends and family members. So the money issue will be an important factor in the sense that I can lead my life without worrying too much about my bank account. On top of this, there is a possibility that the offer does not guarantee repatriation back to Finland and may force me to find a new job after coming back.

So what about India then? It’s nice and warm, eating out (among other things) is reasonably priced and there is a lot to see, hear and experience. India is ok, but being here alone is not significantly better than being in Finland with my family and friends. Living here can be better than this if I find a suitable place for living, develop some routines and build a new way of life for myself, but it will take time and experimenting. This short assignment didn’t really motivate to do that, but a longer one should. After all, now I at least have an idea of what is possible around here.

My wits tell me to get going already, but my gut is not fully into it. I am having second thoughts about pursuing every challenge as opposed to living an easy and safe life close to home. The more time I spend here, the more appealing it seems to settle down for something less spectacular and to be satisfied with what I already have.

I guess these are the crossroads in life where rock stars are separated from ordinary people. If going later is not an option, I’ll just have to arrange things around an earlier visit. There’s always a way.

Tags: friends and family, oh bugger, planning, time, travel, what?, work

It seems like I am facing a huge decision somewhere in the near future about my work, my place of living and the most important of them all, my relationship with my girlfriend.

The problem is that the Corporation wants me to travel back here latest in March, while my sweetheart won’t be able to go before September. Her work situation will most probably not allow any kind of long term travel before that, so I am in a nasty situation between missing my loved ones and wanting to move abroad.

On the other hand, an expat deal would be a great career booster, bringing both international and leadership merits to my resume. The pay would probably be good and I could even earn some extra by putting my Oulu home for rent. I would also be closer to Thailand and other such places and could visit exotic places even over weekends. It would be almost everything I have dreamed of, except that I’m not the wild and free bachelor I might have been when setting those goals.

Although the past four weeks have been a thrill, they have also been missing something. I have been missing my GF like hell, regardless of all the new and exciting stuff I still see almost every day. Nothing compares to the feeling you get when seeing something cool, pointing it out and making someone as excited as you are. Words and photos can rely only a fraction of everything I see, hear, taste and smell every day, and I would really like to share all this with someone special. It just doesn’t feel the same without her.

If the pay isn’t extraordinarily high, I think I want to turn down the offer.

Tags: colleagues from India, friends and family, oh bugger, time, travel, what?, work

I have settled down to the new apartment is Shilton Suites, which is quite a nice place almost in the middle of the city. I’ll let the photos talk for themselves:

The living room area is quite the standard hotel type, but with an especially nice dark wood floor. The chairs are not very comfortable, but they do their job. There is a small kitchenette in the other end:

Not very large or well equipped, but enough for basic needs. The shower is promising:

Unfortunately the massaging shower setup leaks far more than it showers, so I will stick to the overhead one – after running water for a couple of minutes to get it warm. The real treat of the place, however, is right outside the door:

I practically have this whole balcony to myself, since the other penthouse is presumably empty and there isn’t anyone else in the whole top floor. The noise of the road underneath is a bit disturbing, but nothing unbearable when you take a good magazine and a cold beer in there.

I have less than two weeks left in Bangalore and I wonder how quickly the last month has passed. Interesting to see if I get to live here for a longer time in the future.

Tags: accommodation, photos, practical stuff, shilton suites

I promised more photos from Goa, so here goes. First I want to introduce the command vessel I spent several mornings on:

The ride was sometimes a bit bumpy, but luckily the guys from Barracuda always carried seasickness medication with them. The sense of balance is one of those things that don’t change over time very much, so I should get some of those for myself too.

Apart from diving I did some exploring around north Goa by bike. One of these was the Aguada fort near the jetty:

The sun was just about to set when I reached the fort, sothe views were quite spectacular. The camera does not bring justice to wide angle scenes, so here’s a little something from the fort:

I wonder what this building was when it (presumably) had a roof?

I’m running out of interesting photos here, so I’ll conclude with a scenery from the bay below:

You can find a cropped 1920×1080 image of the last photo here.

Tags: diving, holiday, natural beauty, photos, transportation, travel

I finally managed to get all the photos from my trip uploaded to the gallery. There are some I want to show here, the rest can be found from my gallery.

I spent my Xmas Eve in the hotel poolside, enjoying a complimentary dinner and cheap entertainment before going to sleep early. The place looked actually quite nice in all its glory:

Of course, being in a tourist joint, I immediately made some new “friends” to pose and take pictures for me:

For a few photos they wanted a donation to one of their temples, showing that “all the others” had given a thousand rupees or more. Being a selfish capitalist, I opted to donate a mere 300 without feeling sorry for it. I like to decide how much money I give and who it goes to, but sometimes we have to make concessions.

Further down my explorations I found I nice cliff at the end of a road, north from Calangute beach:

The altitude of the place doesn’t show at all, but the view was really spectacular. Sandy beaches were located on both sides of the cliff and the whole area was really quiet in the morning time.

Next I took a couple of extra turns before reaching Charpora fort on top of the next cliff. Not much to see there, but the view was again worth the climb:

The previous cliff is just behind my left shoulder here. The photo was taken by a drink salesman whose prices were 400% over MRP, the maximum retail price defined by the Indian Government. He still had a business case there since the climb is quite steep and heavy, and at least I had to go for refreshing drinks after that.

Seems like I am still missing some of the photos, so I conclude this post with this photo from our diving site:

This is the east end of Grande Island, a popular SCUBA diving place among people visiting Goa. I have done all of my nine dives around this island, but hope to expand my horizons beyond that.

I’ll try to find the missing photos tonight and post some highlights from them as soon as possible. Stay tuned.

Tags: diving, holiday, hotels, natural beauty, people in india, photos, travel