a day @ work

this is what i usually start off the morning with. a glass of water and a plate of new assorted biscuits :) every desk here comes with its mandatory bottle of water every morning. the pantry boys place it here and replace it everytime it empties. thus i dilligently try to finish 2 full bottles or more of water everyday. i like this system alot. it ensures that i drink my water. i tink im gonna be spoilt when i go back to corporate sg without the pantry boys ;p

here's a shot of my desk at work. pardon the blur shots, i din use the flash..

we've 2 tt(table-tennis) tables at our cafeteria, and we usually play a game of 3 sets before lunch :) hopefully i pick up at least one skill from my stint here - tt :)

ok here's a shot of my typical lunch. its so standard that melvin and i chant it. join me now.

"rice, daal, potato. rice, daal, potato"
the following are shots taken of my office compound. its called Unitech Cyberpark. Unitech is one of the larger Indian property developers and Cyberpark is one of their many projects.

and now, i end off with shots of the posters put up around my office. the bad quality of the photo does injustice to these really vibrant and nice posters that captured the hearts of 40 million indians when it was first launched.

Airtel. Express Yourself.

journey to the ganges.

and so the weekend came, i was finally going to make a trip out of Delhi and up north. thanks to nil and his frens, Celine and i embarked on our trip to Rishikesh, the holy land, for some white water rafting on the ganges! our journey began at 2.30am saturday morning, damn early, but no choice. took the car down to nil's place before we got picked up by his frens in his 7-seater car. it was the start of a loong looong journey...

this was one of the worst part of the trip when we got stuck in a jam! omg.. u cant imagine the agony my butt was going thru. the photo above shows the view from the back of the car where i was sitting.. imagine staring at this for a good hour, without space to move about.. gah.

here's nil and his buddies, all happy in front cos.. celine and i were stuck at the back!

ok, this picture doesnt depict the superbly cram conditions at the back of the car. so you can imagine our joy when we finally reached the mid-point stop. Cheetal Grand! Cheetal Grand is this really nicely done up stop-over for road-trippers going up north. As you can see from the photos, it kinda reminded me of cameron highlands with all the bright flowers. the toilets were nice and clean, and it was a nice refreshing pit-stop for the long ardous journey..

what really tickled me were these signs that you see above.. hurhur.


first sight of the ganges!

after a good 8 hours on the road, we finally reached our destination! Rishikesh, and our hotel, Rajdeep, who proudly claims to be recommended by Lonely Planet. But as we were to find out later in the night, it was certainly lacking in some aspects! more on that later..

and so after plonking our stuff down in the hotel, we were all ready to set off for our raft adventure. we had to walk quite a distance to get to the car, but it was a pretty picturesque route. the long hanging bridge u see below stretches across the ganges river, and is heavily communted by pedestrains and motorbikes alike.

it was indeed a sight to behold, as we see throngs of people just jumping into the river to cool off from the heat wave. nil and i were having this conversation on civilisations and water bodies.




finally after we got high enough in the hills, our rafting adventure began! had a short brief on what to do and what not to do if we do fall into a whirlpool. was taught the technique of paddling, which is very similar to dragonboat, so not much of a problem there. rafting was really fun, but i must say the best part was when we jumped into the waters! haha.. it was FREEZING cold! like really really cold.. you get the point. felt really refreshing, especially good respite from the heat.

here's the gang. all 6 of us. really nice guys who took good care of Celine and I. And of cos they were super persistent in getting us to teach them chinese swear words, which Celine and I discovered were quite few to begin with. seems that all our swear words are in dialect? not many in chinese we could think of.. haha. we thus proclaimed our language to be one of finese. hurhur.

after a good 1.5hrs of rafting and playing in the river, we finally made our way for lunch/dinner at this restaurant called Chotiwalas. And lo behold, there were TWO chotiwalas side by side, both claiming to be the original and real one. Very identical to those spats we get back in sg, i.e. the rochor road tau hway.. heh. food there was pretty good. celine insisted on having mushroom fried rice, the only chinese thing we could find. they took so long to serve it that we figured they might be googling on how to cook it. lol.

here's the "restaurant" that we have in the hotel. looks more like a living room if you ask me.
doesn't look as appetising here, but it does taste good! mac and cheese, with mushrooms once again, as requested by celine.

me looking stunned and sleepy in the morning.. this was "breakfast" at 12 noon on sunday.

i shall end off here with some last thoughts. have realised by now that im not exactly a very good blogger.. haha. i kinda miss out the essence when i try to put down my thoughts into words here. the trip was a really good one. the company was great. of cos there were times when we didn't know what was going on cos when they banter rapidly in hindi, but they never fail to make us feel at ease. admist all the jokes, the highlights must be the non-stop jibes on daal (a staple in indian food) and how Celine and I are so meat-deprived that we go ga-ga whenever we see cows or chickens. on our way back, we actually ordered 4 different dishes of chicken. namely butter chicken, chicken tikka, chicken tandoori and chicken buryani. hurhur. you get the point.

our return trip was a very intellectual one as we discussed the merits and demerits of our sg education system in constrast to india's. nil's point was that it was extremely unfair for us to screen and segment our kids when they're 12(at PSLE) when they barely know whats going on. i begged to differ. though i do agree that 12 is a pretty young age, i tink that the streaming does bring out the best of meritocracy.

though at times i did feel that i might have been irrationally defensive of my country. ah well.

its week 4 now. time flies. and yes, i do miss home quite a bit by now.

rafting down the ganges.

haha yes you've read it right, im heading for white water rafting on the ganges over the weekend! cool right, im equally excited. We're heading up north to Rishikesh for our adventure.

Rishikesh is a small town in the northern state of Uttarakhand in India. Popularly adored for its scenic beauty dotted besides the holy Ganges, Rishikesh is traditionally known as the spiritual capital of the globe. From the music legends like "The Beatles" to new age celebrities like actor Kate Winslet - everyone wants to come down to this city of Yogi's and Temples. Rishikesh is also the Gateway to the Himalayas. The Char Dham Yatra (Four Shrines Sacred Journey) ideally begins from Rishikesh.

gonna set off at 2.30am tomorrow morning! be back with more pictures :)

From the streets to the food court

Interesting..

An article from "The Times Of India" - 6th June

The Delhi administration has decided to follow Singapore's lead and will soon come up with 272 food courts where you can gorge on your favourite street food. And minus the health worries!
All of us who have been worrying about how we will get our fill of street food after the Supreme Court ban comes into force have reasons to cheer. The street food will come to you in a global avatar at a venue near your home, and will be hygienic to boot.

Taking a leaf out of the book of Malaysia and Singapore , the Delhi government has decided to come up with 272 food courts at various places in the city where you can have your fill of chaat, kebabs, chola-bhatura … the works. The best part is that it will be a one stop destination and will come minus the health worries. Says Delhi's mayor Arti Mehra, “To accommodate street food vendors, we have constituted a committee in each of our 272 wards. The job of this committee is to decide a spot where vendors can be accommodated.

“This was how Singapore also set up street food havens in the early 1980s. All hawkers were shifted to licensed food courts to ensure cleanliness and environment. Each food court there has at least 20 stalls, and their hygiene record is enviable. Meanwhile, in Kuala Lumpur and Penang - considered to be the hawker havens of Malaysia - the most delicious food requires you to wait at al fresco tables. Served from special carts, it is considered to be hygienic. Delhi will be adopting this move as well.

“We plan to provide vendors with newly-designed carts, which will be both hygienic and eco-friendly. They will be attractively designed and will be properly covered with nets etc. They will also have arrangements of water for drinking and cleaning as well. This will not only give Delhi's street food a new look but will maintain perfect hygiene as well,” asserts Mehra.

the weekend

my 2nd weekend here in delhi started off on a good note on friday. after work, we went to pizza hut for dinner, a welcomed change from the usual indian fare that we get back at the guesthouse. the set meal for 2 was really affordable too. it was Rs. 250 for a 2pax meal, comprising of a soup, garlic bread, a personal pan and a scoop of ice-cream. it works out to be about Rs. 160 (after taxes) per person, which is about S$6. A very affordable pizza hut dinner I must say.

at this point, I feel compelled to talk about the VAT, India's version of our GST. its 12.5% and that is really quite significant if you think about it. together with service charge, the total tax per meal everytime we dine out comes up close to 25%! the tax is really the culprit for the higher costs here, since the basic charges are always pretty decent.

after dinner, indranil (good fren n colleague whos been taking care of me) and i headed out to south delhi where we met nil's frens for some food and drinks. we went to saket, its kinda a market with a cinema, surrounded by eateries and shops. reminded me very much of serangoon gardens, chomp chomp! the place was pretty nice, but what really caught my eye were the books/novels that were going for Rs. 50 (S$1.90)! How awesome is that. I didn't take time to browse that night, but I'm definitely gonna stock up on my books soon. after drinks, we headed to nil's fren's place for a game of PicCharades. its a combination of pictionary and charades, really quite fun. stayed overnight at south delhi, in pranav's place as it was way too late to get back to gurgaon. and did i mention that gurgaon's 1hr from delhi? yup.. thats far.

saturday noon (the morning was spent sleeping) saw us head to Palika Bazaar for our dose of games and dvds. its an underground market thats kinda like sim lim square plus queensway. dvds go for Rs. 50 each, but the quality leaves much to be desired.

after that, we went to this nice restaurant called United Butter (something, i cant remember) for lunch. it was AWESOME. we had butter chicken and butter naan. the food was really good, and the ambience nice too. shall post pictures when i get back tonight. price was pretty affordable too. i look forward to going back there for more butter naan :)

i must mention that it was REALLY HOT that afternoon too, its all over the papers today. Delhi hit a record 44deg celsius that saturday.

hung around cp (connaught place) for a while more, chilling out in this cafe called Cafe Coffee Day before I met Inna and Arvinda (the tata interns). we took a ricksaw down to Khan market, where we met Kangwei, Changqi, Ben and Cipto (the other tata interns). Khan market is very similar to holland village, with shops and eateries. they introduced me to kebabs that we fantastic. i had two.. heh. mutton something and chicken tikka. it was nice catching up with them and sharing stories, realising how lucky we were with our living conditions. didn't manage to stay with them for dinner (they went to Chonas, another lonely planet recommendation) as I had to get a ride back with vikram. it takes me an hour to get back to Gurgaon, so I can't stay out too late.

sunday was a pretty decent slack day. went back to cp to change the faulty dvds (they still don't work now btw) with melvin, celine and vikram. it was another equally hot day, 44deg again, but the saving grace is that its dry heat, so its not as uncomfortable as back home in sg where its humid. after cp, we went to Sarojini Nagar market by recommendation of Inna. This market is a large sprawling market similar to a big pasam malem, with clothes, trinkets, luggages(?!) etc. I bought myself an ethinc shirt-like thingy for Rs. 100.. shall wear it one day i hope.. haha..

thats pretty much it for the weekend, still pretty much in delhi, shall most prob head out of delhi this coming weekend.

meat.

after that mail from innamama i felt like i had to have my say on the meat crisis here as well. crisis? haha.. there seems to be an ABSOLUTE lack of meat in the diet over here. not sure if meat here is expensive or is it the lifestyle over here. here's how a typical meal here would be like.

Lunch at Airtel Cafeteria:
Soup
Rice
Potato
Dal
Yoghurt
Assorted vegetables (ie. cucumber/tomato)

x 5 days a week.

the composition of the meal's like
80% carbs,
10% fats (from the oil),
10% protein (from the beans)

hence this is why we get really.. and i mean REALLY happy when we get chicken :D

but did i mention that the chickens here are really small? yes.. somehow there isn't much meat on the bones, and every piece seems minature.. like spring chicken size..

ah well.. the good thing is that the chickens here have no fat on them either..

moo.

But before I head to those awesome sites below, here's something more common that I see everyday, everywhere..

Good ol' cows.. They're all really skinny though.