May summary

Today I returned from work a little bit later (correct, working week lasts from Monday to Saturday), as I decided to discover some nice bakeries close (meaning up to 3 km) to my office. I received recommendations for 2, but eventually have time to check only one of them. It was definitely worth it. I tried a slice of onion pizza and bought a blueberry danish as a dinner dessert! BTW last summer, we haven't found them in whole Rajasthan, nor in Uttar Pradesh, but obviously they are available in Chandigarh:)

Enough to pastries... me and few other trainees are about to leave to some club/disco in a while, so I just want to post something really short and concise - so what about a summary of what happened so far? Here we go...

Campus of Panjab University (web)

Week 1
- Sun 17th - leaving from Prague
- Mon 18th - arrival to Chandigarh, having a beer*, being put up at Rahul's place as part of my home stay* (living with AIESECer's family for first few days), seeing my first cricket match*, going for the second beer
- Tue 19th: sleep in, lunch with Aman (my boss), Sahil (TN manager) and Deepit (OCP), not feeling well in the afternoon, taking rest, going through some old pics and being nostalgic, listening to music
- Wed 20th: first day at work*, cricket, back to Rahul's place, tired, sleeping till the morning
- Thu 21st: at work, at cricket, at Rahul's place, going to a fine club for some beer
- Fri 22nd: at work, moving to a trainee flat*, setting of for a trainee-party
- Sat 23nd: at work, general meeting of all the staff, hanging around the city centre*, going back to the trainee flat, going for a common dinner*, having some shi-sha
- Sun 24th: sleep in, deciding not to join the others for a trip and just chilling at the flat, in the evening attending coctail dinner organized by the company, staying at Rahul's place again

A round-about close to the trainee flat

Week 2
- Mon 25th to Sat 30th - at work, the exploring city centre during lunch breaks, finding different transportation options of getting from work to trainee flat (ca. 1 hour), trying to work but usually ending up doing something else, e.g.:
- Mon 25th: going for another common dinner to our favorite place* (kind of bigger Indian fastfood)
- Tue 26th: shopping at local market*, writing comeptition summary
- Wed 27th: starting this blog
- Thu 28th: playing games in the small shopping mall nearby the flat
- Fri 29th: kind of party at the flat, me finally working:)
- Sat 30th: searching for bakeries, going to a club
- Sun 31st: it's actually tomorrow, we are setting off to Shimla*, former Indian capital

* I can never promise anything when it comes to blogging:), but the plan is to dedicate a post to the starred topics. Let's see...

Inconvenience regretted.

"Inconvenience regretted" is very popular phrase to be seen on road signs of any kind, most typically accompanying diversions and construction site warnings. However, when I saw it in Delhi for the first time, I didn't expect it to be "the phrase of the day".

In brief, they lost my luggage. Better to say it got stuck in London, where I was boarding my second connecting flight. The third flight was a local one from Delhi to Chandigarh. There is not much to say about it, just that it got quite complicated, which made me interact with Indian people right from the very beginning. If you want to know more, go ahead. Otherwise just check some pictures below.

The story
The check-in officer in Prague asked me if I would like to have my suitcase delivered directly to the last destination. I agreed. However, when I wanted to check-in on domestic Delhi airport, it turned out that I need to get my luggage security cleared separately, so I was told to go back to the international airport (ca. 30 min) to collect it. Well-trained from last-time in India, I hadn't left nothing on chance and was actually waiting at the baggage claim before leaving the international airport to make sure my suitcase was not there = was successfully transferred into my connecting plane. Well... ?!

When I managed to persuade the airport staff I was not kidding (which was the tough part, as they were not getting the point of why the hell had I left the international airport without luggage), then they started to investigate. Soon they found out the luggage had never reached Delhi. During the 3-hour process I spoke to approximately 15 officers, had to get back to the international airport anyway to do the paperwork, and managed to eventually check-in 40 minutes before take off. Nice.

They are mostly those little cultural differences that did the whole experience a really interesting one, but these would be hardly shareable without profound (mostly Indian) context, so I skip it. Anyway, I have to admit I was surprised, as they more or less smoothly managed the whole operation with ease, calm and satisfactory results. The luggage was delivered to my place in Chandigarh after 2 days.

The lesson is...
The lesson is to always fly with well-established airlines, who are more likely to have an office on major airports, and never fly on weekends when these offices are closed. Luckily none applied for me, otherwise it would have been a real headache, I suppose.

Now, there are just few pictures from the day...

In Prague
(on the left: descending to the metro station Dejvicka on the way to airport, on the right: the most probable cause of the "inconvenience" - there were some troubles with another plane arriving to Prague, therefore emergency cars gathered in front of our gate and made the flight 25 mins delayed, which didn't provide enough time for luggage transfer in London)

Czech lands

Circling above London. Literally - see the left picture.

Delhi airport.

Arrived in Chandigarh! :)

Namaste!

Last Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 13:50 local time (GMT +5:30) I successfully landed in Chandigarh, India. Yep, it has already been 8 long days I'm here...

Just landed in Delhi, 8 days ago.

Not much time at the moment (finishing a report for Google Online Marketing Challenge* to be submitted in couple of hours), so just 3 important things** to start up with:
1. The incredible is here, I'm in "Incredible India" again... well... different time, different place, different people, different goals, different expectations... simply "different, different, but same", this is how the famous saying goes, right?;-)
2. Thanks to everyone who got in touch with me during last couple of days. And my apologies for not replying accordingly.
3. Greetings to my parents, everything is alright. I watch out for cars!

In Chandigarh.

Cheers!
M.

* These should be the right keywords to help my blog gain some good click-through-rate at the beginning:)
** No worries, it will be structured!

Czech corner
Zdravim, po uspesnem zkusebnim provozu na kanadskem blogu mohu s radosti konstatovat, ze se budu snazit zachovat ceske okenko i nyni. Opet verim poskytne vhodny prostor pro pikanterie nejruznejsiho druhu. M.