i have two and a half hours to kill while i wait for this SuSE ISO to download

[rone]

In Foster City, we have an automated espresso machine, and one of those near-boiling taps.  Here, the office has a guy fetch coffee and tea with milk and sugar, once in the morning, once in the afternoon.  I wonder how much it would cost us to get a coffee service going in the US; god knows it's much nicer than having to get up, walk a few steps to the kitchen, and make my own drink.

I haven't had a carbonated beverage since i left the US.  It's very weird.  I almost opened one from my room's minibar the other night, but i stuck with water.

I've been reading my boss's grilf's short fiction.  It would've easily fit in talk.bizarre's heyday.

If George Bernard Shaw thought that England and America were two countries separated by a common language, i wonder what he'd've said about India.  Because cultural borders here happen every time you walk over a hill or cross a river, English is the lingua franca de facto, but i'm having a hell of a time understanding most people, and i wonder if someone from Chandigarh has as much trouble understanding someone from Chennai if they're nominally speaking English.  I find myself asking people to repeat themselves almost every time, and i've had to just give up and nod like an idiot a few times.  It doesn't help when people make poor assumptions; i asked my driver how much his car cost, and he replied, "5 lack."  Leg?  "Lack."  Turns out a lakh is 100000 rupees.  How am i to know that?  And spelling here is an almost Elizabethan adventure; two examples are Lakshmi/Laxmi and sari/saree.

I've just about wrapped up work here, which guarantees i'll have Friday free for, i dunno, something.

Comments

[tinellaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I noted that as well, mostly from reading the newspapers. Somehow, reading aobut a 180 *word I don't understand* rupee bribery scandal doesn't quite have the intended impact.

Either Bangalore is less of a transportation nightmare than Delhi, or you're understating the scariness of traffic. I'm curious as to which.

The campus where I was working didn't have a coffee run. It had a room with machine that produced, on demand, tiny cups of overly sweet milky instant-coffee-like-liquid. There was a guy whose job seemed to be to just sit in the room with the machine and perform machine-related functions - passing you cups, wiping up spills, keeping the apparatus stocked with whatever substances it required to do its work.