Feeling happy!

I have completed one whole month in India, and I feel great! I enjoy my work, I love my colleagues, I adore my flatmate, I have fun with friends during the weekends, I have no time to stop and think, but I don't care, cuz I love my life!!!
Some time back I was chatting with a friend, and she commented: "You are always in a good mood these days, is it grass?" But no people, no grass for me, but I do realize that I might seem high all the time :)
Mumbai was good, didn't go out much, didn't shop, but enjoyed the company of the guys from the office, and the events we organized, and met up with some old friends. God, it felt good!!!
And yesterday we had an office party! I didn't expect much, but it was above all possible hopes, it was good fun, people getting drunk, dancing all the night long, staying overnight, mmmmmmmm Quite a surprising party for an Indian office :) My friends from Sweden can imagine how it was if I say - reminded me our crazy house parties! But with 70 people :)

Still to do:
- couldn't get time to buy stuff for the house, should be doing it sooon
- couldn't properly think about Goa trip for the new year's
- still didn't inform friends about my new address and didn't plan friends' visits, as well as my own trips
- can't find time to join the gym yet!!!
So many things to do, and time flies!

Accommodation

My life in Bangalore is shaping up well, and I’ve collected enough will to deliver another story to you – the story about my house hunting. It took me 10 days and 10-15 apartments to understand that the whole renting is gonna be a worse problem than I initially was prepared for. Before coming here I was told that the rent here is so low, and the flats are so big, that I had nothing to worry about. I did not do much, just arrived and started checking the places. One, it turned out it’s nearly impossible to get a house for less than 10 months, and to prove your stay for at least 10 months the deposit of the equal amount is required. Two, it’s very rare the house is advertised and shown by the owner, you get to go via broker, hence another expenditure – the broker fee (a monthly rent). Three, there is nothing like a studio in India (or at least in Bangalore), the smallest available place would have at least 2 rooms – a living room, and a bedroom – so you can’t decide on renting a studio, as it’s cheaper, there’s no option like this. Four, even one-bedroom apartment is very rare, more often there are 2, 3-bedrooms, ie you are bound to share with somebody (which was my last wanted thing). And finally five, if you require some furniture (even the minimum of a fridge and a bed), you gotta pay some 20% more to your monthly rent. Not speaking about the six, the fact that “decent place” for me is in “luxury-super-expensive” category for the brokers here.

So in the end, all my requirements were impossible to meet… I was getting upset and frustrated. Here I also must mention that I’d have never done any progress in the search without a friend helping me, sacrificing his time, calling up the brokers, driving me around on his bike from one place to another. And I’d not have settled so soon if all possible ways to find a place (read: all friends’ connections) hadn’t been tried so quickly. So thank to my beloved friends, who are here (physically or virtually) when I need them so much, thank to common efforts I have found a corner in this strange to me city! It’s a 2-bedroom place, which a colleague of mine has been sharing with a friend, who has moved out recently. It has a good interior, but a little empty inside, though it is only good for me, as I get to decorate the space upon my taste and imagination, have been always dreaming about it!

My flatmate deserves separate attention. He is one of the kindest guys I’ve ever seen! He made me feel at home and comfortable during the first days of my stay here, so that I decided not to shift anywhere else. Yeh, initially he just offered me a shelter for the timebeing while I was searching for a place. But I liked the experience so much, that decided to stay forever :) Plus to his kindness, he is also very chilled out, very modern and cool person. Kind of a character you feel easy with. And he gives me a lift to the office and back, so I’m saving on the rickshaw costs and saving my nerves to bargain with the drivers :)

Well, enough about housing I think. This Sunday me together with Neel (my flatmate), like a little family, go for shopping for some stuff we need at home. Hope to have some pictures of the place taken for you some day. Or better, you come and visit me here!

Next post will be on the city itself!

Read the previous post before!

But this is India, here the bad is side by side with the good.

So here there is another story for you:

I've been put up in a hotel till now. Every day when I come from work back here I find my soft toys (a horse and a small elk) lying on the bed in different poses and with TV and AC remotes somehow incorporated into the composition. Like if they watch the TV and change the channels, or if they speak on the "phone", or just lied down tired holing the remotes in hands. I'd take a picture, but too bad I don't have a working cam :(

It calls smile every time I enter the room, it is soooooo sweet and cute by the guys who clean the place every day (and by the way they are also men, no female staff here).

The good story is always shorter than the bad one, isn't it? :)

One big thing

I've been eager to share one big thing with you, a story happened on Monday, my first working day.

Me and a colleague of mine were trying to hire a rick after the office closed. We were on the road, in front of the building, some people from the office were standing at the entrance. Some people in India means 15-25 guys. So we are trying to stop a rick, and then a drunk man passing by us hits my colleague at her face. It wasn't a hard hit, still she swayed a little. I personally thought it was somebody she knew whose joke was too bad. After some seconds, when I understood that the guy was just a drunkard, and the girl got really pissed off with what happened, we saw all the guys from the office running after that idiot. They reached him just 10 meters away and immediately started to heavily beat him up. I WAS SHOCKED. I couldn't believe my eyes - 20 formally dressed office workers turned ruthless and mad in few seconds, and with no reason! You agree! And I just stood there, in shock. The poor drunk was small and defenceless. The action lasted for at least 10 min. But nobody left, in fact much more people came, some joined the beating, some just stared. Then beatings repeated every 5 minutes. The cops were called. We were waiting for them to come, not being able to leave.

At some point, I was still standing next to the "victim", I was approached by some men from the office with a general comment: "See, how protective we are towards our women! You should not worry about your safety here!". I was speechless. I could only say - leave the guy, he's just mentally sick, but you are inhumane. But my words were not heard. The crowd was in a rage, and I could not find any excuse for that.

When the cops came, they beat the guy with the thick sticks to make him get into their car, which was completely unnecessary, of course.

Next day the whole office was only discussing how badly the drunkard hit the girl (nothing was there on her chick, she was fine!), and how brave our guys were.

A friend of mine says it always happens, and people would bang up against a kid, if the moment comes. His explanation is that people here are suppressed so much, that given a chance they go mad and express their fear into beating. I want to emphasize - beating, not fighting. They are "brave" when there is no power against them. How sad is that?

This episode reminded me one story from "Shantaram". There the character saw the same street fight during his first days in Mumbai, and was shocked, and wanted to help the victim, but was stopped. Being a stranger to the place he couldn't interfere. But after spending several years in India, at another street fight he jumped into it, defending the beaten, and still there was not much he could do against that mad mob. And therefore I am sad...

Disclaimer: I don't intend to accuse my colleagues in anything, I still adore them as much. The situation is just a good example to picture cultural differences, and was not brought to the public to blame anybody for their behavior.

I am back!

I am back to India and I am back to my poor blog, who already forgot how I look like (or write like).

To start without any intro:

I got back here because I really loved the place, the people, the way I felt here when visited it in the first time. After my trip I became fascinated by everything I saw as a tourist, and decided that I must come back to see how the business world is in here.

After a short search of a "job of my dream" and a long almost 3 months waiting for my visa to come through, I landed in Bangalore last Friday! And soon after landing I went to the office of naseba, the company who chose to be my employer in India. It's an event management company, who call themselves a business information company, because they are not simply making events for other companies, but creating everything from the scratch in-house. To put it in simple words: if people from naseba see, let's say, "tourism in Lebanon" as a promising and rapidly growing area for investments, they make an event where they invite companies interested in investing into this area and developers, travel operators, airlines, etc. to meet each other and to find the points of common interest. So naseba in this case provides the platform for the two sides to meet and have a deal, therefore it provides the information from each side to another, thus business information title :)

To tell you a little more, the company has several offices across Europe, Middle East and Asia, Bangalore being the largest one, as it hosts some departments which are servicing events all over the network (not only in India). This includes CRO (client relations operations) department where I am gonna work, or in fact am already working. My role is pretty simple for the beginning: to take care of all the communication with the clients (sponsors, speakers, delegates) from the moment when the contract with them is signed, and to take care of them during the event; later on (after my first events) I will be also responsible for arranging of the venue, servicing companies, visa support, etc. The exciting part is that: 1. I get to travel to the events (not all the people working on the event travel there, in fact only 5 out of, say, 40), 2. The events are not in Bangalore. My first event in the end of Sept will be in Mumbai, then I might be allocated into the team working on any event from Egypt to Kuala Lumpur! 3. The profile of the delegates is always very high, there are only CXO as they are called here (X - being anything), so that's the right place to get to know how the business world and culture is in India :)

Apart from my job description, which I totally love, as it has proper part of working with computer, databases, emails, and working with people, plus travelling!, so apart from that, the people at naseba are just amazingly great on the first, and already second sight! I got some trainings from some of them on different topics, got to meet the General Manager, got to know my teammates and my direct manager, and I fell in love with all of them! They are very positive, helpful, to the point, work-oriented, smart, everything together! I have very good impression of them!

Well, what else to tell you... The office has over 100 people, all of them are indians. My working hours are from 10.30 to 19.30 with an hour break for lunch. The lunch is served on the top of the building by a boy who brings home-made food. One meal costs 20 Rs, which is like 50 cents. I got a laptop, thinking if I'll get a blackberry too, as a lot of people in my office have it :)

Finishing on this topic, I am really happy that the main thing I came here for - the job - is indeed up to my expectations! It would have been really disappointing, if it wasn't so, right? :)

Stay tuned, as my next post will be about the accommodation hunt (much more tragic topic)!

Movies time

Apart from reading books I've also got spear time for movies.

Welcome to Nastya's movie review!

Alice in Wonderland (imdb 7, me 2)

Don't watch it unless you intend to be disgusted. I still remember quite well Alice's bleeding scar, some strange animals' teeth covered with saliva, ugly faces of main characters (really ugly!), dark circles under Alice's eyes, princess' pale to transparent skin, grey and dead landscapes, vomiting, etc. I wanted to vomit after that movie myself. I mean, you don't just turn a fairytale upside down and show it as if it's a background for Quake!

17 again (imdb 6,5, me 9)

This (who-the-hell-is) Zac Efron is so cute that you can just stare at him the whole movie and that's how it becomes 10 scoring movie, but then you understand the whole story suck, so it the end it's 9 points :)

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (imdb 6, me 8)

Same with McConaughey - he's hot and it makes you watch the movie, but the plot sucks even more then 17 again, so 8.

Urban Legends: Final Cut (imdb 4, me 9)

I love this kind of very fake horror movies, where people are just randomly killed one by one (the type of Final destination or L'Auberge rouge or Big nothing).

The Great Buck Howard (imdb 7, me 4)

The main character, both of them do not win over my heart. And on top of it I am generally afraid of the magicians/mentalists in real life, it thrills me off.

Dogma (imdb 7,5, me 0)

The movie is way overrated. I didn't expect it to be such a waste of time, and why the hell were all those cool actors in it?!?! :(

Как я провел этим летом (me 8)

A new russian movie. It's a little depressive and slow (well, as all good russian arthouse), and fake at some point, but I'd advise you to see, those who are russian here :)

The Girlfriend Experience (imdb 6, me 8)

Sasha Grey casting, for those who are not familiar - a 22 yo porn star. The movie is decent, nicely cut and generally my kind of a movie.

L'Auberge espagnole and Les Poupées Russes (imdb 7,3/7,1, me 6/4)

French movies about young people leaving together during Erasmus exchange, and then gathering together again in 3 years. Well, I could say our life on aiesec exchange is a lot more fun and weird, which is 1) true for me and 2) can't be really claimed as I didn't make it to the movie :)

Bollywood/Hollywood (imdb 6, me 9)

Indian movie. I am not a fan of Bollywood, and I didn't like any of the movies I watched during my stay in India, but this one is actually good, and reminded me of my beloved country, I'm missing so much :(

Well, it might be not complete list of the movies I managed to watch for the past 10 days, but these are at least the ones I remember :) Again, share what you've recently seen!

Books

I've not spent more than a week in one place since I left Belgium (i.e. for the last 3 months), but here I go - I did manage to spent 10 days at my grandma's place. Well, can't really say 10 days at her place, but in this city. Thus not wandering around for a while I've had enough time to selfless (or you can say selfish) reading. Lemme share some of my recent discoveries with you.

Welcome to Nastya's literature nerd club!

I started with buying 4 books in a nearby shop the day I arrived here (obviously expecting my grannny to be way entertaining): "City" by Alessandro Baricco, "Where Rainbows End" by Cecilia Ahern, a book by Jorge Bucay, and "The Death Ship" by B. Traven.

1. I bought this book because I like the author, I didn't bother checking the content. Having bought "City" I immediately thought of gifting it to a friend of mine after reading, who is also fond of Baricco. I understood I had read this novel as I opened the book and went through the first page. I also remembered that I had gifted it also before. To the same friend I thought about now :)

2. A friend of mine advised me to read anything of this author. I came across "Rainbows". It turned out to be completely out of my preferences but nonetheless held me on till the very end. I kinda feel I consumed the product of a popular scribbler, feel poisoned in a way, but hell I liked the story and it made me pour real tears more than couple of times during reading. Well, I can admit she has a talent in creating a story the mass will swallow with pleasure, but she doesn't have a clue about the talent to make me enjoy reading the way I want it - enjoy the language, enjoy the complexity of the plot, and its integrity!

3. This guy is a psychologist, and it didn't help him. The book was crap. Stopped reading it in 3 pages.

4. 'Never-heard-about-him' writer produced a nice, but a little boring (at some point, but gets better in the end) and quite depressive story. Worth reading though.

Having finished this bunch I moved on to a book lying on my bedside table since I was in India: "The 3 Mistakes of My Life" by Chetan Bhagat. Btw what's with the numbers in the title? He has it in each and every book he released. Has anybody noticed?!

Started reading with a tag 'worth book of Bhagat' in my head given by a friend, thus not expecting much. In fact it earned 'the best book of Bhagat' tag given by me. This is a great story, with religion and politics issues, business, love, death, friendship, insanity, cricket, real historical events, all together mixed and put in one short novel. Though I still think he could have been less 'real' about the whole 'based on a true story' thing, it looks a little cheesy on the last page, but the first 250 are just great!

Yeh, there is really no accounting for taste...

Another journey to the bookstore added 2 more items to my collection of the week: the last unfinished novel by Bulgakov (haven't started it yet) and yet another masterpiece of my favorite Milorad Pavic - 'Paper Theater'! I am in the middle of it, but I can already say: He is great, he was great, and I once again understood what I am searching in every book I read, what I want them to be like, and why I fail to enjoy most of them! Pavic has an extraordinary imagination, memory, language, and he does have a message in everything he writes. I love this dude!

That's all for books now. Feel free to share your recent findings on this topic! Anything I must not miss reading?

Something that you like, but never think you'd miss abroad...

like sweets!

Sweets are something that the one wouldn't think to be the first (or at all) thing to take with you abroad as you expect it to be replaceable. But after some time (read: some experience) one understands that he misses his own country sweets, so widely available at home and not presented abroad.

So do I, it's been some time I am out of my country, and it's been way too long I am out of my favorite sweets!

Missing them, and in memory of them, and foreboding to have them soon, I am posting this: the list of my favorite russian deserts.

Just one more disclaimer: there isn't actually anything 'russian' in the deserts, and for most of them I wouldn't even think they are typical russian, but a posteriori - you ain't find it elsewhere.

1. marshmallow, which is called 'zefir' in russian. it's pretty much the same ingredients but much better taste :) Pieces are bigger and look like the ones on the picture down here. I also love it covered in chocolate! yummy!

2. profiteroles. Also never found it abroad, though I'd never thought they would be a russian invention! The ones on the pic have the cream coming out, but usually it's not.

3. cottage cheese rings. They are made of the same dough as profiteroles, but stuffed with sweet cottage cheese! Yummy! BTW cottage cheese in Russia is also different from what you have in Sweden, Belgium or India. It's like paste, and it's mostly sweet.

4. cake called 'Muraveinik' (which is translated as Anthill). It's made of crashed cookies connected together with very sugary boiled condensed milk (some kind of caramel). My favorite cake ever!

5. meringue (also known as 'kiss'), also my favorite. It has just 2 ingredients: egg white and sugar scrambled together and baked for 5 min only!

6. russian chocs. I still don't understand why it's not something common for other countries! And It is not pralines! The difference is that the chocs itself would have other ingredients apart from the chocolate - nuts, and cookies, and waffles, and whatever, and they would be wrapped in a cover each. The name and the cover would be basically the same no matter what company produced it, as it would tell consumers what kind of choc is it. And you buy them by weight. I know it still sounds like something you have all over the world, but it is not, it's different! My fav ones are on the pictures: Belochka, Karakum and Alenka.

7. scherbet (didn't find equivalent in english). Basically it's some sugary paste mixed with a little bit of peanuts. They have it in turkey, but I never saw it anywhere else. The funny part is that they don't call it "scherbet" in turkish, but scherbet for them is what we call

8. halva, which is mixture of sugar, nuts and oil. In the end it resembles soan papdi (hindi desert), just less sweet and made mostly of peanuts or sunflower seeds.

Borivali National Park

Yesterday was a nice Sunday in the city. Most of it we spent in Sanjay Gandhi National Park (Borivali Park), which is located within the city and is a place annually visited by 2M people. Nevertheless it's a calm place to visit on Sunday's morning after partying the night before :)

Alyonushka

"Untouched" nature

And a lot of flowers! I love this winter!

Women selling fruits

Kids queuing to catch a train which goes around the park

Gandhi Temple

The guys I went to this park with (mostly aiesec interns)

The view on the city from that hill

Monkey - necessary attribute of any park in Mumbai, but never saw them on the streets here... yet!

Jain Temple - very neat comparing to the other Temple I visited recently (haven't written about it yet)

I must write a separate post about this religion later.

The most beautiful train station award goes to...

Mumbai!

Who said that the train station in Anwerp looks like a temple? Who thought that it's the best building in the city and something all antwerpeners are proud about?

Check this out: Mumbai train station - way more beautiful, grand and stunning.

Elephanta caves

Today we made a trip to Elephanta Caves which are on an island close to Mumbai.

View Larger Map

To reach it we took a ferry pretty much like the ones we were taking in Turkey some years back:

departing from the Gateway of India, which is just opposite Taj Hotel (you might know it for being attacked by terrorists in 2008) - two main highlights of Mumbai:

After one hour trip along the cost we reached the caves. They are full of sculptures devoted to the lord Shiva and made 12 centuries back. My camera couldn't capture them properly as it's quite dark inside and the walls are not illuminated. So the picture is taken from web:

That's how it looks like from outside:

Luckily we join a nice guide who was making a private tour for a couple from the US. We dared to ask for permission to join and it wasn't a bad move! Otherwise the alternative option was to hire a local guy in a baseball hat which looked rather suspicious than academic and I wouldn't rely not only on his knowledge, but on him in general. So if you ever end up there - make the right choice :)

Plastic cards

One thing that I didn't want to forget to write about, which still surprises me:

plastic cards (visa, etc.) are widely accepted here, at least in the restaurants/bars/clubs and in the shops. It is very convenient as the fee for these transactions is only 1,65% of the amount, when withdrawal fee is 3,5 euro (for my bank).

Still to improve: my swedish bank card doesn't seem to work for booking flights. I was told it might be because the card is issued abroad. So far nobody helped me with this issue. So if you know the way to book the tickets here with a foreign card - please let me know!

New Year's Eve in GOA

I left for Goa with some other 30+ people on 30th of Dec and came back just yesterday. It's impossible and it's a shame, but I haven't taken a single picture being in Goa. I'll try to get some from my friends later and update this post.

To start with, Goa is nothing I expected. Nothing I could imagine, and still felt familiar and as if I have been there before. As per overall stereotype Goa is "a place to be for the new year's eve", is " all about drugs-sex-rave", is "people high on weed and hash throwing up on the beach". I thought it would be exhausting. In reality it was chilled out, very much chilled out.

"a place to be for the new year's eve" didn't happen because I literally couldn't feel this ny's eve when it's +35C outside. I kept on forgetting about it before 12 am and I forgot that the new year began right after 12am.

"drugs-sex-rave" didn't happen due to different reasons. Perhaps I wan't looking like looking for drugs, so none of the drugdealers approached me at all for all 5 days of stay. From what I heard "you can't walk 10 meters in Goa without being offered some weed"- never happened to me!

Sex was rather something you'd initiate than coming naturally with the wind thing.

And I don't know where all the rave parties were held, but I heard anything but rave in there. Which is still fine, as I am not a big fan.

"people high on weed and hash throwing up on the beach": people were throwing up a lot, A LOT, but the reason was too much heat, not alcohol or bad food or smoking.

That's basically it.

Just few more things: we spent a lot of time on the scooter, driving around from one beach to another. It was awesome!

There are really tons of Russians. That's one of the stereotypes about Goa which is correct.

Pictures with (more interesting) comments to follow.