The God Ramesh

Well, that was interesting. We thought the ride to Ooty was fun filled with it's identified 36 switch backs. Surprise, surprise, surprise. Sunday was filled with wonderful and rare things.

Ramesh took us to the train station at 8:30 for the historic train to Coonoor. Karen wouldn't ride the train, so I was alone. And what a wimp. There were hundreds of people queueing for a ticket and then standing in line for first come, first served seating. I told Ramesh I wouldn't go. He paid some money and got an assigned seat for me. All the station hands took pity on this pathetic woman and got her where she should be. KJ rode up the hill with Ramesh.

Do you know that I have blond hair and am white and am pretty darn big (and obviously from out of country?) I don't know which of these things catches people's fancy here. First thing I had to do was take a picture with a lovely family. This is not the first time this has happened, nor was it the last today. I had my picture taken an additional 5 times today. The fact that I would never see those pictures was comforting. The family insisted that I wear my big white hat. Yep, chic.

The ride was amazing. I used up my camera battery taking pictures of the tea plantations and farms houses and people along the way. Oh my, it was amazing. Pictures here after I get home after midnight tomorrow and load them to the laptop. I also took a "movie" of the people yelling in the tunnel. The one I got was pretty mild compared to the first. The woman behind me just screamed. I guess it's a tradition because bridges were sort of an escalating mild whoop. So I had assigned seating, but not all people in the car had assigned seating. Not all in the car had seating. That had been my concern. Some sat 3 to a seat. My seat partners kept switching so they could slyly snap a picture. I guess that is more than 5 times.

KJ and Ramesh were waiting for me and we went to the Dolphin's Nose photo opportunity site. Oh, the roads. Single lane, pot holed (big), rutted. Ramesh was amazing. I have no pictures of this, but KJ will give me some of hers. This was worth the trip. Lots of pictures with people.
Then we stopped at a tea plantation. The guide was the driver from another car. His father used to work there. Who knew. He seemed knowledgeable, but I only caught every 3rd word. We drank tea afterwards and two of my new best friends (photo op) emerged from the tea factory. We had a nice chat and then we bought tea.

Ramesh suggested we go to the highest mountain by Ooty. It was okay. More pictures with strangers, pretty scenery, no pictures taken by me. But, man, did I need a restroom. We overpaid (4 rupees instead of 2) and got to squat for the first time. Have I mentioned my arthritic knees. They are the oldest part of my body. Squat. Modified squat. A plea to the gods to have all that needed to be in the hole go into the hole and no place else. Prayer works. Happy camera wasn't working, or you would be seeing a picture of that hole pre-Peggy. Women rushed in after me to make sure I hadn't done anything sacreligious. Didn't they know I was praying? And I know how to pour water from the faucet down a hole.

So, it was off to Mysore to see the lights at the Palace. It was pretty late to start out. Bad road, switchbacks, bad road, then open highway. But wait... there's more. Seems there was a traffic death recently on the Mysore Highway so residents decided to close the road. We were detoured into a town with no futher instructions on how to proceed around the problem. Sorry, all of India. All I could think of was a detour with the cars, buses, motorcycles, and bicycles being driven off a cliff. Everyone was helpfulish, but how did we know for sure? I don't know how long it took, but we eventually found the way out of this mazelike village. We saw bunches of pigs, goats, cows, horses, bicycles; they all knew where they were going. Home.

When we got to Mysore, I was exhausted from the stress. The spot in front of the palace was jammed with people. I don't do well with people jams, even if I've had a perfectly calm day. Even if I've had lunch. We were okay with no lunch until we got to the hotel. Then it was all about food. And beer.

When we were leaving the tea factory, we saw an altar to the god Ganesh. He is the elephant god. I always call him Ramesh. So our driver Ramesh became our god Ramesh. He took care of us always. He has become a friend. When we were stuck in the village behind a truck that wouldn't move and all the villagers had to come see the big blond listening to her Ipod, he got out of the car and went to the trucks. I didn't see what he did, but soon the trucks parted and we moved on. I don't mean to be flip about a Hindu diety, but I'm pretty flip about a lot of things. This would have been a lousy day without Ramesh to guide us and to part the trucks. As it was, I thank the gods that we got to see all we saw. This is one beautiful country, filled with amazing people and sights.

We're on the Road to Ooty

Must be sung to the tune used by Crosby and Hope in their old Road movies. Too young to know them? Sorry.

Our Magnificant 7 have been dying to get us out of the city, to see more of their beautiful country. Now that KJ has settled in, we decided to sample some of the close to Bangalore sights. Ramesh drove us to Ooty today. This is a 7 hour drive. Why 7 hours? The road. You will not believe what an experience it would be to drive this route. Fortunately, Ramesh is unflappable. He has driven up here often and knows the ins and outs of the route. Some of the road is free and open. It is amazing after the heavy traffic of the city to speed through the country-side. Lots of rice paddies, sugar cane fields and orchards. Lots (but many fewer) people going about their daily lives.
At one point we saw 20 or 30 women walking down the street, looking beautiful in their saris. Ramesh said they were going to work or school. They walk purposefully, but it's difficult to see exactly where that number of people would be going. We saw women washing their saris, at one point I saw 6 saris, in any little body of water, then lying them out on the ground. KJ and I decided that it would be easier to brush off the dirt when they are dried.

Then the road dwindles down to one lane. The Indians are always polite, even when battling for space on the road. I asked Ramesh if they never wanted to use a hand gesture to express their feelings about a road hog. This did not compute. It may be up to me to do the obscene, but I will control myself. But this is not the worst part of the road. If finally is filled with switch backs. Ramesh sounds his horn at every turn, alerting speeders coming down from our mountain destination.

Along the way we drove through Bandipur, a wild animal preserve. We see only deer and little monkeys and one tamed elephant deep in the wood. This is okay. A few tigers live in the woods and you can see elephants walking across the road if you drive late at night. Probably won't happen. We stopped a bit later and saw some monkeys up close. KJ got some great shots. Mine were more timid. So happy that KJ the bold is here.

Ooty is at the top of the mountain. It is so peaceful and beautiful. And it started to rain the moment we got into town. That was no problem. Ramesh wanted to show us some of the sights, but at this point we wanted to get into the hotel. The sights are primarily outside. Want to go boating? Um, in the rain? Not so much so. Want to visit the rose garden? Um, probably not. The joy of being away from the city in the midst of such beauty was good enough for us. And we are going to visit a tea plantation early tomorrow morning. The hotel is a Holiday Inn. It is set at the top of one of the hills. I will take more pictures of my view tomorrow morning. And I will post many of the pictures on Monday.
For now, good night from the peace and beauty of Ooty.

The LAT Team

I've been trying to get pictures of the group who will be supporting LA Times into my blog for the past two days. Finally, I found a way to do it. Here is a website that has the pictures. http://picasaweb.google.com/pnorman811. If you go to this site, you will see and hear the team. Honestly, I didn't prompt them to say nice things about me. Okay, maybe a little. The sound is a little faint. That's because I'm still learning how to use my camera.
I'm going to put up more albums, including a food one for Lynda. This will come slowly.

We've been struggling to get Citrix stabilized. It's up for today. Teena is teaching our room how to use ITSM. This is a ticketing system that we use to record all calls. The class is practicing now and getting to know all the in's and out's. The hardest factor will be to get user's names right, to select the correct caller. I'm sure our names sound as foreign as their names do to us.

Finally resolved our dispute with the landlord. He way overcharged me for April. We've been arguing for a week now. Today he came to get payment for KJ's room for April. I had the figure I wanted to pay and he accepted that. Avinash (the project manager from India) had primed him with the correct daily charge (after a LOT of discussion), so it was easy for me to get my way.
This transaction pointed out one of the hardest things for me to understand here. When we were getting to the correct figure, I asked if he agreed that this was correct. He did the head weave. I looked at Avinash and asked him if this was correct. He said yes. I have no idea wat the head weave means.
There are many things similar to US here and there are slight but signifigant differences to the sameness. There are huge, beautiful buildings, just like in the US. Right next door are people in an encampment, next to that a little row of shops, then something totally different. I guess the thing is that they have no zoning. How would you zone an encampment? How do you close a deal with a head weave? I'm beginning to understand things better and get around better. Watch out though. If I come home weaving my head, slap me.

KJ Cometh

KJ is from the Orlando Sentinel. I have known that she is a Mac expert. I've learned that she is from their Tech Support and has excellent hardware knowledge all around. Most important to me is that she is a dream to work with.

Of course, nothing was exactly right at the apartments. I had her on the wrong floor. The apartment two doors down is incomplete. It is becoming more complete every day. And she is okay with the transition. She made a list for Deepak (our house boy) of all the things she needs. They are doing pretty well. She still has my couch, but I may learn to love the black one.

We decided not to see everything in the city in one swoop like Harriet and I did. So Monday, on the way to work, we stopped at the Tipu's Palace where the temple next door had been painted and spruced up for a holiday. I love the bright orange trees. I call them the flame trees of Thika from an old PBS show, but I think they are really a different color of Jacaranda. The Tipu continues to impress. He was very progressive for his age, but lost out to the superior British fighting power.

Then we went to the Bull Temple. So this bull was eating all the crops, according to our driver Ramesh. He wandered on to this plate, sat down and took root. He kept growing until they put something over his horns. The Dravidians worship him. I gave the guy some money as we walked in the door and he gave us jasmine blossoms. They smell amazingly powerful. I thought they'd put some essential oil on them, but I've been told that they are the real deal.

This tree is outside the Tipu's Palace. If you look closely in the trees I will see big hanging pods. I'm not sure what those are. I thought they were loofas in the wild, but I think those are a squash. Our last driver said he majored in repairing cars, not identifying trees. I guess I'll have to do some research on line.

The teams took their assessment test yesterday and did not do well. Karen and I think they may have focused too much on the wrong things on the software test. They have now covered our two main topics, the issues that we get the most calls on - Outlook and Domain passwords (Active Directory.) I'm going to ask this morning if I can tell them more about what those calls will sound like and how they should work with the users. If they can do these things easily, they will have 50% of their calls handled.

15 minutes to finish dressing and off to work.