So I smoke a pack a day

Oh, crap, I'm here for 6 months already. Time goes fast in here. Damn.

Doesn't seem like half a year at all. Wake up, eat, work, sleep. Then repeat. And during the weekends get drunk or not do a shit. Is this what people do once they get a job? Fuck, I'm screwed.

We all are.

--

So... let's be honest: I am not that active with staying in touch with people. I find it kinda weird to talk over Facebook or that kinds of stuff. Doesn't feel real. It's like talking to someone else. Not that much emotions, I guess, and I am also talking different way than face-to-face.

But when I talk (hey, write me!), people usually ask me how it is. India and all.

I am not sure what I wrote before (yeah, I am lazy as fuck, so I haven't been writing lately), so let's summarize some stuff. I mean to answer question: What the fuck is going on with India?

1. Mumbai
 
Oh, Mumbai, you god-damned city! Dirty like fuck, with people shitting and peeing in streets, with smell like dead rat and trash wherever you look (as people somehow don't care where they throw their trash). And some nice places that I need yet to find.(All right, I am pessimistic like hell... ) (And yeah, I am using European standards...)

Well, small intermezzo here: There are two possibilities: you will learn to accept how India is, or you can pack your stuff and leave. Because otherwise you might make a new genocide or loose your sanity. Just saying, so you can more understand da fak?! I'm pissing about.

But let's get real:

"Breathing Mumbai’s air, reports the Lonely Planet travel guide, is equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes a day. Comparable air quality wraps New Delhi, Bangalore, and 69 of India’s 70 principal cities year-round, according to a 1997 study by India’s Central Pollution Control Board."^

(Ah damn, once I'll come back, the fresh Slovak air will kill me.)

I have to admin that I do not like it. And I have no problem to admit it. Why should I love it, anyway? Can't really accept that dirt. At least where I live.

slum outside my building

Hey, but that doesn't mean that I am not happy here. I am (kind of) happy here. I pretty much like my job, I have fun with other interns, travelling is very interesting... So, yeah...

What I mean is: take the same people and job, put us to Florida, and things will be at least 1000 times better. By things I mean air and stuff. Pretty depressing that first thing I see when leaving my building is air full of dust. And street full of trash.

Holi 2014

So they have Holi, some kind of some holiday where they throw colours at each other and splash with water and so.

And yeah, it's been some time ago, but I am lazy to write and so. Anyway, I am writing because maybe one day this will help me to revive some memories. And I am not sure, what will I remember now...

As I mentioned, not sure what did holidays suppose to mean, so google it. It's kinda not important to me, right now. Every year it's different date, this year it was monday. Week ago? Might been. Or two.

It's been Monday, of that I'm sure. Because I was not working. With other interns here we had discussion before how to do it, and we came to conclusion it's better to go around 10, because later it will be probably too much traffic. And yeah, we decided to go to Juhu beach first, to see how locals are doing it and join them. Right?

Right. So around 11 we left Evershine and went Juhu. But obviously our planning failed as there was not so much people, doing not so much anything. But we managed to get coloured a bit. It wasn't funny (now I am comparing to doing this colour thing in Korea), but that was just start of day, we don't loose hope so easily. So we took riksha and moved on.

During way we stopped and bought some more colours. Then we stopped somewhere I-don't-know-where, where we met some AIESECers. We were slowly moving to some society where we were supposed to play again. And we stopped for beer as well. 

 Playing at next location was fun, as it included a lot of people and water. Best part was Indian people saying "Happy Holi!" with their funny accent. Fuck yeah.

And then we went eat and back home. It was around 4, I think. The sun and so can makes you really tired really fast.

Getting rid of those colour from all over me took me like 20 mins. Argh!

And we drunk some more beer. Because that's what we do ;]    

Mumbai beach

There are for sure more, right? But I don't remember name of this one, so let's just say that it's around 5 and half km from my home.

Yeah, it's dirty. Never seen the sea of that colour before. Dark. Not blue. Weird.

Anyway, if you wanna just go and sit, you can do it. Kinda...

They are trying to make it cleaner, but it needs to come from people, not some gov company, right? And can you see the colour of the sea?

Talking about people, it's really hard to not to get noticed. And by noticed I mean all the time be "visited" by some sellers, tattoo makers, beggars and that kind of people.

This girl followed us at least like 1-2 km. Until I gave her a candy. But she was not the only one.

Hana tattoo ladies. Bunch of them. This particular one about the same time as babygirl, until she got angry and said: "Why do you come to India if you don't have money?". Kinda true, or not?

And food ;] And some nice views.

And yeah, some people do swim in that sea.

I'm lazy

Yeah, so lazy.

I mean to write. Fucking lazy to write, but one does not put f-words into title, ha?

Anyway, I thought I would write at least once a week, but somehow...

Today I went for vaccine.

Typhoid and Hepatitis A and B. I know I should before but... Kinda I don't like needles. They are gonna rip your body in half and stuff like that. Pretty dangerous.

But then I seen something about shit that can happen to you and I changed my mind. Fuck being ripped apart, I need that.

What I've seen? People defecating in the bushes etc.  And in general India is fucked up dirty and so. I'm not gonna write about that, because there is not enough space here, but it's pissing me off so much. Damn.

So vaccination went OK. I called them yesterday and made appointment for today. Company was really good. Clean and shit. I mean no shit. Doctor spoke really good English and was in Ukraine so also Russian. And he recommended me not to eat spicy food. That's my man! Company takes care for a lot of foreigners so high standard. 

I didn't wanted to go some local doctor (could be not so clean), so I might paid a bit more. Maybe. 600rs for Typhoid and 2500 for AB Hepatitis.

Typhoid is for 3 years. AB will be forever when I will take 2 more doses. So yeah.

About malaria pills: he said no point as I stay here. Not good take some shit for one year so I just use shitload of anti-mosquito creams. 

Trains, part II

There was no part I, but who cares anyway?

I took some more pics I wanna share, so that's it. Lazy to write, and not good net at home to write poems and shit. Yeah...

So this is how you can make difference between first class and that stuff.

And this is how empty train looks like.
Can you see all those handles? That's Art. Seriously, looks like some modern art.

Someone asked me: "Trains got people on roof?". Nope. Not this electric ones.

And a video from last weekend ;] It's not always so crowded, but pretty much it's what you got to see here ;] Kinda fun.

 Yeah.

Soon to be week.

Like today or so. Doesn't matter anyway.

So what had happened?
I tried to understand how India works, to get my luggage back and I've been to work.

Good news first: I got my luggage. Sweet. I've already said goodbye to it. At the airport I waited like 2 hours and taxi drivers screwed my money, but who cares? Damn, I got it back. Thousands of lives saved. I mean one. Mine. I love my luggage so much, you can't even imagine.

Job.

So far I like it. I will learn Ruby on rails and do that stuff, but right now I am creating website for company with bootstrap (pretty much just changing template a bit and putting content, but good for start). Something that I wanna learn, so cool.

Company has like 25 employees, 10 or so coders and rest. 3 years old startup.


And trains.

Because that's how I travel to work.

I don't know how to describe it. Well... Trains don't have doors as you can imagine. And the closer you are to the place where doors should be, the more people. If you go to back of current wagon, you will even sit. But they don't care about sitting. You ether wanna get out, or get in the train. There is no such a thing as traveling. 2 constant movements. In, or out.

Trains stops normally, but they prefer to jump out (or jump in) when it is still moving. And if you did not manage to get to the rear part of train, someone will "help" you getting out. even you don't want to. They do it even train is empty.

First day they kicked me out pretty nasty (I was not prepared), but people at the station are nice, they usually try to catch you. In general, when they see that I am foreigner, they are not pushing me so hard like they do with each other.

Monthly tickets are cheap. 

Ahh, and they have extra wagons for women and people with baggage.

Rickshaws.

This is how I get around (eg. to station). Hunderds of them everywhere. You come to one and say the location, if they know, you go. 3 people can fit in. Can't imagine how it's gonna be when rain will come, but right now it's fine.

You start at 15rps and slowly go up depending how far you go.

So.. Yeah....

One does not simply walk into India

Or fly in that matter. Or whatever.

But as always, it all starts in Korea. Everything starts in there, right? I mean end. Damn, I don't mean anything. I guess I am still out of order. And I don't mean culture shock, I am a bit pissed off, and all that stuff that happens when you come to new place and things goes wrong.

But I'm a bit ahead, let me start again.

In Busan all went OK: I checked in and all the stuff. And I was also emailing with agency that I booked tickets with, because I found that my flight from Delhi to Mumbai was changed so I got only 5 minutes in between. Fuck yeah, 5 minutes to take my baggage, go via immigration and stuff. Ridiculous- even checking is not working anymore 5 minutes before a flight. What idiot could do such a dumb change?

So agency said they need some confirmation and bla-bla so they recommend me to talk straight to flight operator company, that they can do it faster and without me paying extra money. I had some more questions, but they did not bother to answer me. How nice. Student Agency, in case you are wondering about the name. Flight operator was China Eastern Airlines. And then Jet Airways for domestic flight in India.

So in Shanghai I talked to China Eastern, because I had more free time that I needed. Answer: nope, sorry, I can't change. So I was like WTF. I calmed down and seen that there is manager or so, so I went ask again. Few minutes of clicking and the same answer. Somehow they can not change, I should talk to agency, which recommended me to talk to them. But at the end we managed to agree that I should be able change it once I arrive in Delhi. Because that's how it should work:  they give you hotel, and put you on next flight. (That's how it was done in US, when I missed flight because of airlines.)

I was not satisfied, because I know those people usually don't give a fuck about you, but still... I was like: come on, you should trust them, it's not first time someone missed the flight, try to be more optimistic...

So I come to Delhi, kinda happy because plane was a bit earlier so if I am fast enough I might catch the next plane. So I run like crazy to take mu luggage, being first there, but also the last one leaving.

My baggage did not arrive.

I'll be damned, but that was exactly my thought before traveling. I was afraid that they will screw something, and here it was happening. So I filled the paper and run to try to catch the plane. It was about 7.20 or so, but check-in was already closed. Of course.

I went to Jet Airways but they told me they can only sell me new ticket, that I need to talk to China Eastern about getting new flight, as they are flight operator. So I went there (actually that's what they told me  to do in Shanghai), but they were like: go Jet, we can not do it, we don't have office here, you might wanna try to call some number next day after 10am. And screaming at me that it is my mistake that I have 5 minutes to change. Damn, I am flight operator or they? I did change my flight or them?

Fuck. 

So I ended up buying new ticket, because they said like you don't have ticket so you can't stay here (the airport) and bunch of crap. I still don't get what the fuck happened and shit, but...

Yea, I just don't get it. It happened pretty fast, and most of time they were screaming at me like it's all my mistake that they fucked up my tickets, and most of all, I was freaking tired. And I just wanted it all to stop.

So I had ticket for next day, around 6 in the morning. Another night at airport.

Flight was OK, except I fall asleep after check-in. But someone woke me up. Imagine Indian accent say: "Sir, Mumbai?".

I was tired like shit. But finally something good - they woke me up and I did catch the plane. I slept like baby and arrived to Mumbai. The AIESEC guy was waiting for me at airport. So we took taxi.

Taxi.

Seems like you pay before taking ride. And you need to keep ticket because you might change the car. We did once. At the airport you don't find taxi drivers, but guys who seems to be like pimps for taxi drivers. In taxi you got paper with prices and locations. And you need to have some navigation, because you navigate taxi driver. At least in this case we did.

We went to place where I should be living. Another story.

As I mentioned I really had bad feeling about my baggage before traveling, so I asked AIESEC about my address like week before. And for some reason they really had hard times to tell me. Later I found out why: they should be someone leaving before my arrival, but it changed so they didn't know where to put. I don't wanna make troubles, so I said: ok, I can do 2 nights at couch.

But when I arrived at place it changed to till 5th. No one really knows. And the person is girl, so other girls wont want me living in girls room, right? Tonight I slept on ground, because that's more comfortable than couch.

Place I will live.

Before arrival they told me name of building is "Evershine cosmic". If you click you will see some pics and text like:

Our galaxy comprises vast spaces, and Evershine Cosmic is designed with the same objective, to create an airy space for residents to take pleasure in and give you a slice of fine living. Evershine Cosmic is installed with a garden, swimming pool, health facilities, etc, and is ideal for residents looking to own a piece of Andheri, Mumbai’s most prosperous suburb.

Looks awesome, ha?

Yeah, but that's not what it is in reality. I don't have pics yet, but I shall have some day soon. So what it is, is not finished building surrounded by slum. No pool and stuff. Indeed. Flats I've seen are kinda OK, they have kitchen and so. But I still don't know where I will be, so let's save it for later.  

I will write something then.