Letter from India...

Namaskaar,

Here are soome photos that I promised, I actually do not have much photos with me now as most of the photos are taken by my photo-happy fellow interns. The first photo is part of the famous Taj Mahal Hotel and the other one is that of the 'Gateway To India'. Two over-photograhed structures of Mumbai. Without been to disrepectful to my indian brothers in the mailing list, you will go "wow' when you see the buildings, 5 mins later you will struggle to stop yawning. In addition, you have to stop touts from selling you everything from ice-cream to photographs to postcards and to binoculars to see god knows what.

It seems to me that Singapore is one of the few countries in Asia that uses toilet paper. Just like our friends in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, the locals here traditionally used water to clean themselves up , with their left hand. So just like our neighbours, the left hand is considered 'dirty' and eating and shaking hands are all done with the right. Makes you wonder what if u are born left-handed.

The moonson is coming to India. I got the first taste of it 1.5 weeks back. Bombay's infrastructure is not built to support the millions of people and I heard from my flatmates that they have friends who are stuck in office because the trains are down, or the cabs are moving so slowly at a speed of a 1m/min that they rather stay in the office.Luckily my workplace is only a 5 min walk away. The rain was so bad that night that the whole central railway line was disrupted.

I went to the local multiplex called 'Inox' to watch Xmen3. Impressive, it can give PS and cineleisure a run for their money. Just like Thailand, they played the national anthem before the movie start. Was enjoying the movie when suddenly the screen went blank and this pop up ---'10 Mins Intermission'
What the heck man, movie also must halftime meh. It sounds a good idea for those cursed with weak bladders but still I have my reservations bout it, personally I want to watch my movie un-interrupted.
Luckily for Xmen3, it stop at a non-action pack moment, I heard that for the Da Vinci Code, the movie was stopped in the middle for the car-chase sequence and that definitely is not impressive.

Also, I think it will be very useful to throw in a survivor tip bout cab-taking in Mumbai, even though it probably holds true for the rest of India. The cabs run on some sort meter. I say some sort because its not electronic, starts up turning a knob clockwise but works rather accurately as you weave through the traffic. Then comes the payment part, you are suppose to take the number from the meter and then compare it to this chart that every cab driver should have to dervive the correct amount. Failure to do that will see that you probably pay enough from south mumbai to central mumbai. The cabs here starts at $0.50, so you can take a 10min journey and the bugger quote u the eqivalent of $4, you can smile sweetly at him saying 'KNN ah neh, can you show me ur chart please'.

I usually scroll my eyes , snap my fingers and say 'chart'

Will tell more Singapore-style survivor stories next time, including that of how I got a fine by the local railway authorities, which is enough to pay for all my local train rides in india :( , with probably some change for a chai and chicken briyaini.
Shall end this email by plagarising this from a magazine that I kop from the hotel where I'm working at.
'May your life be like the toilet paper -- long & useful !'

cheers,
(for privacy sake, the person shall be left anonymous, but this guy is a good crap)