Of Indian Temples and Palaces

As our first week of work ended, we decided we should get to know a bit more of Bangalore. Romain organized a tour with the most important places, got it checked by some colleges at work, and we went out Saturday morning at 9:30.

We visited the Bangalore Palace. It was very nice, though nothing very especial if you have visited other places like Alhambra in Granada or the Windsor Castle, but in the same style as the latest. This Palace was constructed for the Maharaja of Mysore, in 1884. Every piece of glass has been imported from Belgium, and every painting on its walls has been painted by Raja Ravi Varma, a very well known Indian painter. The fotographs on the walls (which are hand painted and do not have any wallpaper) remind you of the different Maharajas (High Kings) of Mysore and their lifes.

After this, we visited the different goverment’s buildings in Cubbon Park. They were impressive, and even more impressive the security, which did not allow us to enter the gardens to take pictures. On another note, the sentences written on the facade of the buildings were all very peculiar.

We ate something for lunch at the Lido Restaurant, located at the Ista Hotel, which I found amazing and enjoyed very much.

And finally we visited the Bull Tempel, with its huge Bull sculpture, and got some pretty weird blessing :-)

You can use everything sir!

We are staying at the Prestige St. John’s Wood. Of course with such a name you would imagine an enormous complex with everything in it, and that is what I imagined. The night we came we realized it was big: four or five buildings each one with 10 or more floors. But that was all. Today we realized it had everything.

Until now, we have been going to the Forum Mall for our necessities (power cords, fast food, etc). This morning, after having gotten the permit to use the club from the HUB administrator, who had to contact the club administrator and he had to contact somebody else, we though about having a look at the club, as we did not have anything else planned. To our surprise, before even entering the club in its first floor we found a very good supermarket. There is microwave food, and fruits, and milk, and bread, and almost everything you would normally need.

After buying the necessary shampoo and some food, we went ahead and inspected the club. In it we could find a squash court, a big gym with treadmills, a card room, a Ping Pong table, a party room, a coffee shop, a billiard room and a pool, well everything.

Finally, on our way back, we met the security guard, who manly asked us in which apartments we are staying. He checked all his papers, correlated some information from some of them and said:
Ah, yes sir, well, you can use everything here!

Hello everyone, still in Switzerland

Well, just next week, on Friday 19th we will be flying to Bangalore. Me and four other guys. We will be working at Accenture as part of our summer Internship. Three of us have just finished the second year of Computer Science at the ETH Zürich. We are all studying at the ETHZ, the others being master students. Mr. Kossmann is the professor who organized this internship. He contacted Accenture and convinced them to take us for an internship. We had the pleasure of having him as a professor in the lecture Introduction to Databases, and I know he would love to come with us and do the internship himself, so I just want to thank him for giving us the opportunity.

I will be keeping you updated on our experience about the internship and about the people and culture in India. I have never been to India before, not even Asia, so this is really going to be a first for me. I have been reading Kulturschok Indien this last week, which is a really nice lecture, but I have been warned to take everything in the book with a pinch of salt, as Bangalore is a very modern city, and the book is mostly based on the rural life.

I would like to write here some of the clichés I have read, just to make a comparison at the end of the internship and be able to see how much of what you normally read about a place is true.

• India is overpopulated, you will see children everywhere
• People are very outgoing, they speak a lot, and they will invite you to eat very often, even if they do not know you very well
• Bureaucracy. Everything takes longer than expected
• It is normally very filthy, on the streets and even in restaurants.
• You will surely have stomach trouble at some point.
• People prefer talking than answering emails.

The only experience I have had so far has been with the visa. I sent my visa application together with passport, copy of residence, payment receipt, pictures, letter of invitation and payed return envelope on Tuesday 3rd, and received my passport back on Friday 6th. In it I found the business visa for India. So that was my first very good impression of Indian bureaucracy. I just hope it stays that way for the whole summer, though something tells me I will have many more opportunities to prove my hypothesis.

I will be writing as often as possible, however if I do not have enough time I will try to write min twice a week.

Hope you stay tuned, see you in two weeks.