Observations in Mumbai

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

I just stupidly deleted a post I spent the whole afternoon writing. So now I have to recall what i wrote.

Observations In Mumbai:
1) (As observed by Winnie) There are three categories of poor people in India.
a) Those who have no homes and sleep on the streets.
b) Those who have single-storey homes built from wood.
c) Those who have double-storey homes built from zinc. We were especially fascinated with this category as the houses appear really sturdy despite the use of such flimsy materials.

2) Labour is so cheap here that the office can afford to hire people to do odd jobs like making coffee, moving furniture, getting stationery, etc. No wonder the slightly richer Indians are so high and mighty. I'm really not used to this. They call you mam even when they just bring you a pen. If we try to do things ourselves, they look at us like we are taking away their jobs.

3) People here spend more time chatting than working. No wonder they always take so long to get things done.

4) Different areas of Mumbai are closed on different days. We should have found out about this before we came. Last night, it happened to be Bandra's turn to close. So when we called all the restaurants in the area, there was no answer. In the end, Winnie had biscuits and I ordered room service.

5) Stationery is really scarce in the office. When I asked for a highlighter, the staff rummaged through the drawer and found only a red marker. Then he got someone else to search throught the whole office before he found 2 green highlighter, 3 black pens and a notebook for us. We don't even have a ruler and stapler now.

6) Blackouts are getting frequent. This afternoon alone, there were 2 blackouts. Last night when we returned home, our apartment had a blackout too. I wonder if it's because of the coming monsoon or because we were here. We haven't heard of blackouts in the Indian office for a long time when we were back in Singapore.

We finally got the first glimspe of monsoon rain this afternoon. There was thunder for awhile then it started raining cats and dogs. Luckily it lasted only for about 10 minutes. Anyway, I foresee a tough time ahead teaching the new Indian schedulers. just keeping my fingers crossed in the mean time.