Friday, August 10, 2012

Day 7 - Jack Knife


Day 7 – 7th of August

8 am is really a good time of the day to wake up, and socially acceptable in India.  It is also a load better than waking up at 4am.  The week days are not super interesting this side, they tend to be the slower days in a social sense.  We started missing the South African flavour today, so we went for KFC as lunch.  I know, I know KFC is not South African, but it is the closest thing we have to home in a sense of food.
We got the news that it was snowing back home today… I think we heard it like 400 times before lunch.  Considering that it was around 25 degrees Celsius in Pune at 8am with a humidity of 84% we didn’t enjoy hearing about the snow back home.  And yes, snow is not a regular occurrence in Johannesburg… so it is just a little bit sadder than it would have been for someone who is missing Canada or Belgium. 

At around 2 I took a walk with some of the guys leaving the rest of the SA team behind.  This was the first time that I couldn’t make a joke in Afrikaans, ‘cause no one would have understood it.  Suddenly I got a glimpse of what the guys around here must be feeling when we talk in our own language when they don’t understand:  The six guys that I took a walk with were talking in Hindi almost the entire time… can I hear you say “Lost in translation”?  It was fun though, and for the first time I went to a shop and got what I was looking for in less than 10min and without explaining it more than once.  Rahul (one of the guys on the development team this side) showed their hot food… not too hot, only very rich in spice.

On the way back, we suddenly noticed that the traffic was at a standstill.  It wasn’t a big problem for us as we were walking, but strange none the less.  Eventually we saw that it was a truck that jack knifed in a very small street.  This caused almost 4 streets to come to a complete standstill.  The people around here are very friendly and helpful so the guys that were standing around quickly helped the driver to get out of the predicament.  What made the scene a little more strange was that everyone just drove off… no police, no traffic officers, no reports to fill in, just curry on with your life…  strange yes; efficient – double yes.

For the rest this was a chilled day (super ‘slang’ I know) but that was this Tuesday in India.
7/31…


-this was thought about on many levels including novice, beginner and awesome

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