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Rubbish collection in Gurgaon

pgagliar — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 04:57:13 +0200

It took a few days to understand how this thing works over here. Initially I was looking for some garbage containers along the roads, but I could not find any. In the meantime some very nice and smelly bags were packing up in my backyard, for the joy of my nose. Finally a little man came, with a pick-up bicycle, yeah one of those riscio with three wheels and a flat panel instead of the passenger seat. Anyway, this man is my rubbish collector. The thing is that he comes when he wants (all Indians do so), then sometimes, when there is nobody in the house, the smelly thing will remain there for another day. I also wanted to understand whether or not a 1.1 Billion people Country does any kind of differentiated garbage collection, like we do in Europe. Actually they do, or well they don't but they do. I mean that we perform this task at the top of the chain, when each of us is using different buckets for different items: glass, paper, organic, etc... They put everything in the same container and then there are people (I have been told they are children but I cannot be sure...), who will separate the garbage at the bottom of the chain. I am sorry guys, I know in my bags there is my dog's shit too...

Pubblicato da pgagliar | Commenti Tag: life in india, garbage collection in india, public services in india

Unexpected Visit

pgagliar — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:41:32 +0200

Today my house was visited by an unexpected guest. A one meter long Bengal Monitor. It's a lizard, similar to a small scaled Komodo's Dragon, but not at all that dangerous. In fact, this Monitor is solitary and usually inoffensive, but its saliva can be very infective for humans and pets. With the help of my good neighbors and some security guards, several attempts to catch it were unfruitful so, unfortunately, the animal had to be eliminated. I feel very sorry for this!

Pubblicato da pgagliar | Commenti Tag: bengal monitor, animals in india, big lizards

I am losing my temper with this "engineers"

pgagliar — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:11:20 +0200

I am starting to wonder whether or not there is anything in India that works. In this house (brand new, just built, never used), there is nothing which works properly. And every time I complain, the answer is "you know sir, it's new". This concept hardly fits me. In my mind, something new should just work like a hell! Then, maybe, when something starts to be a little bit old, then it requires some maintenance, or even a replacement. But a new thing must work as a new thing. Here, taps and pipes have problems, air conditioning leaks gas, some windows are not keeping the water out, the generator goes on "fault" every now and then. And all this, after you call these so named "engineers" who work for hours and keep you in for hours (during weekends of course!), and when they leave, the problem is still there, still the same, if not amplified. Today, once again, I have a bunch of people in my house trying to fix some stuff. In all this beautiful and amazing experience so far, what I really can't bear is when these "engineers" think that I am stupid. I don't know why this happens, maybe it's because I don't speak Hindi or just because I am white. When finally the "engineer" supposed to fix the generator managed to reach my house (they come when they want, they are unable to fix an appointment), he, as always, tried all the available switches and he gave his sentence: "sir, now it works". I replied that the story was old, and that I had told him already the fault message is completely random, but when that happens, I have to go to the generator (very often around 2am in the morning), and press the button "RESET". His reply: "Sir, but now there is no fault message...". There I started to warm a little bit up, and I told him that if there was a "fault"message coming out, there had to be a problem somewhere and that he had to investigate. Of course I was not calling him to my house just for the pleasure of dealing with an ignorant. He was about to reply with the same fantastic statement, which would have very likely attracted my hand towards his nose, when God came to support me. The "fault" message materialized on the display! "Now, what do you say idiot? Nothing eh? See the bloody message? Now you stop bullshitting me and you stay here 2, 3 days, whatever it is required to fix this problem!". He called me back after 20 minutes to inform me that the problem happens when there are some peaks of energy, and the solution is pressing RESET!!! I spared his life only because he promised to send a "senior engineer" on Monday morning... Please, anybody, get my out of this nightmare, before I die or kill anyone!!

Pubblicato da pgagliar | Commenti (3) Tag: life in india, quality of life in india, repairs in india, maintenance in india

National Geographic introducing... Ferarri (not a typo)

pgagliar — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:50:20 +0200

A couple of days ago I saw on the Indian National Geographic Channell a short trailer, informing that in the evening they were going to show the Ferrari's factory from inside. Nice! Unfortunately I caught a very silly mistake, see for yourself below. I am sorry for the poor quality, but I took the shot on the fly with my 2 Mpx mobile phone.

Pubblicato da pgagliar | Commenti Tag: ferrari, national geographic, typos on tv

How to eat an ice cream in India

pgagliar — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:34:34 +0200

Today I have realized who difficult eating an ice cream in India can be. It's quite hot outside, so from the moment I opened it, the whole thing started melting down immediately. So I started walking and eating and keeping the ice cream on my side to avoid having it melted on my shirt. I think I broke one record here: I finished it in 1 minute :-)

Pubblicato da pgagliar | Commenti Tag: life in india

In Sri Lanka once again

pgagliar — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:08:41 +0200

I landed Monday night, after a horrible flight with Sri Lankan Airlines. Unfortunately only them fly directly from Delhi to Colombo (Indian Airlines does it in code sharing with Srilankan Airlines), so I have no choices. I am hoping that Kingfisher or Jet Airways will activate a direct flight too. Anyway, I reached my hotel at 1am and I went to sleep at 2am, so the day after (yesterday) was quite hard, since it was also very busy. However in the evening I felt sick and I had a tough night. Today I feel quite broken to be honest, but I can't afford resting because I have too many things to do. Sri Lanka is a beautiful land, in this period the weather is nice, it's not too humid and there is a fresh wind. Colombo city is quite clean, the average cars are acceptable as well as the driving style. There is traffic, but this is quite common across any major city on the planet. I am staying again at the TAJ SAMUDRA, it's a beautiful hotel (all TAJs are), food is excellent, room is very comfortable. I have done 50% of the day now, some interesting meetings held here and there, across marketing and operations. In the afternoon, we are going to give a demo of some working products to the customer in the live enviroment. Wish me good luck!

Pubblicato da pgagliar | Commenti (2) Tag: colombo, sri lanka, airtel, business trips

H(indi) P(rinters)?

pgagliar — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:52:10 +0200

I went to a Reliance Digital store yesterday, looking for a good deal for a multifunction printer. As always somebody materialized from the void, asking how he could assist me. For once that I was looking for some advice, I was glad of having that guy standing in front of me. I gave him my requirements and he started with showing me some printers: Canon, Xerox and Epson. Then he moved a few steps ahead and said: "Sir, I want to show you this one, it's a Indian printer, it's a very good one". I was just wondering about which kind of Indian brand that I wasn't aware of could have started producing printers, until I found myself in front of a HP device. So I told him that HP is not Indian... and he replied: "Yes, it's a very famous international company!". "Of course", I replied, "but it's American!".

Pubblicato da pgagliar | Commenti Tag: indian printers, reliance digital, hp multifunction

LinkedIn: 50 groups is the limit now

pgagliar — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:22:46 +0200

I have just been notified by LinkedIn, they implemented a new policy for Groups. They have set a limit of 50 subscriptions per user, I had 52, so I had to select two groups and leave them. It's actually no issue, because following all those discussions is a full time job, and I don't have time. But I believe, in most cases, one will join a group just to express support and sympathy, more than willing to be an active member, at least not for 24 hours a day. But my point here is why? Why setting that limit? There can't be any technical reasons, hence it must be money. My guess is that very soon they will introduce one additional feature into their pricing policy, which says that, depending on your membership level, you are allowed to join X groups, where X will go from a small number for a free membership, up to possibly as meny as you want for the most expensive subscription. Wanna bet?

Pubblicato da pgagliar | Commenti Tag: linkedin groups limited to 50

Links and Rings

pgagliar — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:12:31 +0200

I have been told, more than once, than when opening this blog, some trojan and spyware stuff will try to attack the user's system. I informed my provider and they said this has got nothing to do with their server, therefore they suggested me to trying removing some javascripts populating my page's features and gadgets. I have started with removing "Links" and "Rings", not sure whether it will work. I will keep watching.

Pubblicato da pgagliar | Commenti Tag: spyware, trojan

In order to get things done...

pgagliar — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:40:49 +0200

... you need an infinite patience in India. I have a pool, yes I do have a pool, so what? When you need to fill your pool in (of water!), you have two hours a day, 1 hour from 6am to 7am and 1 hour from 6pm to 7pm, that' all. A pool of about 8 tons of water and with one single pipe delivering the precious liquid takes days. OK, with patience you do it. Then you need to keep it clean, for which you need chlorine, PH tests and some fancy stuff like this.b You go around Gurgaon, asking for this stuff and you can't find it. Then what do you do? You are a clever guy, so you go to a big hotel, where for sure they must have a pool, and you ask to talk to the man who operates the bloody pool. You are lucky, the man is the chief engineer, he will tell you everything and he will also give you the telephone number of a vendor who can give you what you need. You call the vendor, he sends you an email with a quote, you respond "ok, now please deliver" and you wait until nothing happens. So you call again: "what are you waiting for, where is my stuff?". "Sir, you need to send me a confirmation". "But I did send the confirmation already to you, however never mind, I'll send another one". And the waiting process re-starts from zero. This is today by the way and I am still here, with a pool full of dirty water. Then you would also like having a DSL connection in your house, yes why not? You are lucky again, you have a friend at Airtel (which also happens to be your customer...), who is so kind an available that while you are still on the phone with him, an agent will materialize from nowhere into your house, and do the contract in 10 minutes. Then you wait... somebody calls you, takes an appointment with you to do the cabling, and then you wait... you go through this process 4 times and you keep waiting. Until you are fed up, you call the agent and you discover that, in order to bring the cable to your house, they need to do some digging, from the box on the road to the box in your house. And that, of course, the owner of the place, a company called Ansal, which is one of the three main constructors over here, is saying no. And you wait...

Pubblicato da pgagliar | Commenti Tag: life in india, services in india, chlorine in india, dsl in india