First post!

So now I'm in India. I've been waiting for this for months now, always uncertain about when it would actually happen. That's probably why I never got too worked-up about it; I didn't even buy my tickets until a week or so before the flight, so I just never knew for sure what the plan was.

Anyway, now I'm here, and I've got about another week here before I head back. The "work" part of this trip is mostly over - I just have two more days left, tomorrow and the day after, but the training sessions on those days should be pretty minimal. And then it's off to Delhi!

I'm really looking forward to uploading the pics I've taken so far - almost 200, and while most suck, there should be some gems. But most of the things that I'll mention should just be a google search away. But enough meta-posting!

Airplanes

Qatar Airways flew me from Washington, DC to Doha, Qatar to Hyderabad, and I was half-expecting that experience to be one of the highlights of my trip. Trapped inside a 5-star tin can for 25 hours one-way isn't something that happens every day, of course, but the reality was far more boring than I expected. No jacuzzi lounge deck with piano bar and in-flight yoga. Instead, my seat was in the vicinity of several young children and babies (there were a lot of families on all my flights, for whatever reason) and it was about as cramped as most economy class seats.

Still, it was pretty nice, even if it wasn't dramatically different from standard economy: there was free food, it was somewhat better than what I'm used to on airplanes, and there were a decent number of cheap plastic freebies (toothbrush, comb, headphones, eyemask). But the real standout reason to fly QA is the seatback entertainment system: dozens of movies, two or three times that many tv shows, games (you can even allegedly play some with other people on your flight, but none that I tried had any other players when I looked) and...well, that's basically it for the cool stuff. You can order more food as well, or learn about the aircraft - whoop de doo. But it was pretty tight to be able to watch one of at least a dozen Bond movies, all three recent Ocean flicks (Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen) and some other stuff. And the selection was pretty international, another nice touch.

4 a.m.

Nothing much to say about the airports, but one thing that struck me about Hyderabad's was how insanely packed it was at 4 in the morning. Not just from the arriving planes, which is what one would expect, but just how many people were around, waiting. Every possible area where you could stand to wait for someone was completely jammed, a solid mass of people. The barriers over which people were leaning created the effect of literal walls of people, straight the way only a large number of something packed into a geometric figure for a long time can be.

I found my driver (he was holding a sign that said "Abe Epton" on it, which was pretty cool - made me feel important) and he took me outside. It was quite hot, and there were yet more people, people all over the place. I found out later that many flights arrive in HYD at around that time, so my experience is not uncommon, and that it's not that busy during the day. But this was my first taste of just how many people there are here. It's one thing to know it's a country of over a billion people, it's another to see the airport slammed at 4 in the morning.

Anyway, as we drove home, this fact became even more apparent. At 4am, not only were there a lot of people in the airport, there were folks everywhere - on the road, both walking and driving; in construction sites (I think people tend to live in unfinished construction sites) and just generally out and about.

Driving

Some words about driving. First, if you haven't already, check out this YouTube video, which pretty accurately depicts what it's like (UPDATE: As Sridhar pointed out, the video is somewhat sped up - you can tell by looking at the people walking. Boo... but it still gives an idea of what it's like, if not literally the pace of it.) At first it seemed a little manic, but over time a few things became apparent:

1. You never see any accidents, or even any signs of accidents. I have yet to see any dented bumpers or doors, broken glass, ripped up tires or cars pulled over on the side of the road with drivers yelling at each other. Just doesn't seem like it happens much - I'm sure it does happen, but never seeing any of this evidence makes it easier to be pretty calm about the whole thing.
2. People don't go that fast. Most cars are pretty small, and at least half the traffic is composed of autorickshaws and bikes - mopeds, motorcycles, pedal-powered two-wheelers - and that, combined with the fact that traffic snarls are commonplace, means that top speeds don't seem to go above 50 or 60 kph, and are often much slower than that. So even if there were to be an accident, it wouldn't be that bad.
3. This kind of follows from the first two, but: everything turns out to make sense. The first time you encounter the traffic, it seems too chaotic to be workable, but once you start to understand it, you see all the subtle rules in place. For example: people make U-turns constantly. This is in part because most roads appear to have solid medians, meaning in order to get to a destination, you usually have to overshoot and turn back. At first, the maneuver seems a little dangerous, since traffic is always coming - there are almost no stoplights. But really, since everyone does it, everyone's on the lookout for it. Same thing with pedestrians crossing the street - it's expected behavior, so drivers are never caught unaware.
4. Horns help. In the US, horns are a way of venting frustration; here, they seem to be triggered when you press the gas pedal, and are a handy way of letting others know roughly where you are. It's like the cars have sonar, like everybody's secretly a bat or dolphin or something. So you hear horns every second, but they do turn out to be a good way of not getting hit by other cars.

One of the highlights of my trip so far was when Sridhar gave me a ride on his moped to a nearby market. The market was nice enough, but riding through that traffic on the moped was freaking awesome - it always felt perilous, but never too perilous, like you were staying just on the safe side of the line, even when we ducked and weaved through traffic.

Work

Google actually has two offices in Hyderabad. One is a 5-minute walk from the guesthouse I'm staying in, and the other is a 5-10 minute drive away. Both are super-sleek new buildings, with substantial security presences. They check the trunks of cars, and even have little mirrors on wheels they roll under cars to look for anything suspicious. In general, the security, which extends to the guesthouse, has the effect of feeling like the chaotic outside world is being kept at bay. But apparently it's not without some reason: a few months ago, there were a few bombings at major tourist centers in Hyderabad (normally a pretty calm place), so people are on alert these days.

The people I work with are extremely nice and capable, none more so than Sridhar, my main contact here. At first, it was a little tough because I was pretty nervous, and had to get used to the team, while they had to get used to me and my accent (plus I tend to speak fast when I'm nervous). But they've been great, super-friendly and quick studies, so the training that we thought would take seven days really only took 5, and now I'll have two days to make sure everything's going well. Not to mention that I now know how to insult people around here (in Telugu, the local language), and at least have a picture of what my name looks like in Hindi and Telugu, from which to practice.

Otherwise, working at Google here is like working at Google anywhere - delicious food, good recreational opportunities (ping pong and lessons on understanding cricket in the break room) and bright colors everywhere.

Food

The main event :) The first thing I should say is, I've been lied to about what Indian food is like. While I still need to reserve judgment until at least Delhi, where I'll get to compare another region's cooking to this one's, I now believe that any Indian main dish that isn't at least pretty spicy is just flat-out inauthentic. Everything seems to have this base level of spiciness; it doesn't usually jump right out at you, but it builds up over the course of the meal, until around the midway point tiny little flames are dancing on every part of your tongue. This has been true of every single meal I have had while here.

I'm finding that I kind of like it, though. I think if I were here for too much longer, I might start to get annoyed at always having my mouth singed (before I just got used to it), but it's kind of fun to sweat a little while eating. It also means that it's impossible not to focus at least somewhat on the food you're eating, which is good since I often am doing something else entirely while eating and don't really take the time to enjoy it. But here, I have no such choice :)

Hyderabad's famous for its biryani, which is basically a rice dish with seasonings and either meat or vegetables. One of the advantages of being a tourist is getting to eat at all the best places, so Saturday my driver, Gopal and I had lunch at Hyderabad's best biryani place, called Paradise. It's the kind of place Gopal's dad used to take him to, and his dad..., so I was pumped for it, and it didn't disappoint. I don't really know how to evaluate biryani, but this was pretty tasty stuff. I had to eat a lot with my hands, though, and I didn't have any of that antibacterial stuff, so I was sure I was going to be sick later. That, plus the coke that came from a fountain instead of a can, had me worried. But so far, so good! And it was a pretty tasty price, too: as I recall, it was around 600 rupees, including tip, for Gopal and I, which is about $15. And it was a TON of food - 2 biryanis (chicken and mutton), 2 cokes, some roti (mmmm) and paneer masala. Plus some sweets that come with the bill, to help with digestion, and taste kind of like nutmeg-spearmint or something. Maybe not, since I can't really remember what nutmeg tastes like.

I also had a really delicious lunch today as well, perhaps the best thing I've had yet. It was a mushroom and baby corn masala (which is just a gravy, in this case somewhat sweet), and I got to experience the sublime joy of mopping up sauce with yummy bread (roti). It might also have been nice because I discovered the restaurant on my own, coming across it after walking by the side of the road for half an hour, just to see what was around.

Touristing

Unfortunately, the whole story of my Saturday adventures will probably have to wait until I can get my pictures uploaded, which probably won't be for another week. That's because it was mostly sight-seeing; some very beautiful locales, but not much in the way of interesting stories. I spent the day with Gopal, which was cool, but the language barrier made it a little tough to have in-depth conversations. We went first to the Seven Tombs, which is where a series of rulers of the Golconda Fort are buried, along with their family members and mistresses. They're pretty imposing, you're-not-in-California-anymore structures, and the fact of having a cluster of them in one place, in what's basically a garden, makes for a very cool effect.

Then we went to Golconda Fort, the largest fort in southern India and second-largest in the country, and for anyone who's ever wanted to run around in an ancient castle, it's a pretty neat place to be. One of the coolest things, at least for now, is that nothing is walled off, inaccessible or encased in glass. For example, when you enter the Fort, you pass through the gate of an outer wall. The gate structure itself still contains the spiky trap that could be unleashed upon an enemy elephant wandering through, and it's just there, if you wanted you could touch it, scrawl your name on it, whatever. Which is really cool for right now, but I'm not sure it's the wisest strategy to preserve the structure for the next several generations.

Still, the Fort is very cool. It's huge, some parts of it are still in quite good condition, and it's elevated, so from the top of the Fort you can see all around the Deccan Plateau, including the nearby Seven Tombs. Total awesomeness.

From there, we went to Charminar. I'm still not entirely sure what Charminar is, though from the tour guide at Golconda I gathered that it was something like a meeting place, or house of parliament, for the local government. It's basically a very tall structure that you can climb, in the heart of the old city of Hyderabad. A picture is worth a thousand words here, since all I really did was take pictures and climb up (it was closing when I got there.)

After all that, Gopal and I caught a movie at a pretty nice theater. The movie, "Superstar," was an action-comedy with a silly plot about lookalike actors, one of whom, on the cusp of a promising career, dies and is replaced by the other. It was in Hindi, so I have no idea if the dialogue redeemed it at all, but it was pretty fun anyway. It was even more fun to be in such a big hall, with the crowd, which jeered, cheered and whistled at the screen loudly and often.

Poverty

The elephant (heh) in the room. The nature of poverty here is completely different from anything I'm used to. First of all, people live absolutely everywhere - in construction sites, in open spaces between construction sites, by the side of the road, everywhere, in tin- and tarp-roofed shacks. Garbage lies uncollected, stray dogs roam the streets, human waste lingers (and appears to be fought with powdered limestone) and ads encouraging people to get their children vaccinated against leprosy are just facts of life. Beggars are more persistent than I've ever seen, holding out their hands and tapping you and asking "Sah?" for an eternity, well past the point you would think they would decide to move on.

The pollution on the roads can be pretty bad as well, what with all the 2-stroke engine autorickshaws and motorized bikes of various kinds, and yet people live less than a few yards away from that dirty chaos. The pollution is bad enough that my throat was dry, eyes watery and I was coughing and sneezing after I got home last night, and people live in the midst of all that - I even saw one guy sleeping, in broad daylight, on a median (he was in his sleeping bag, and a cop was right there and not giving him a hard time.)

And all this in the midst of the gleaming new office buildings, with their brisk security guards, armies of cabs, well-manicured grounds and legions of well-paid employees, like me, leisurely strolling about. I'm not sure what, if any, larger point there is here, but it's a bit jarring.