Recent Travels (Goa, Kerala, Raipur)

Posted on May 9, 2009 by amit

It’s been a busy month, I had a few friends come in from US and we took a much needed week off to go to Goa and Kerala. It was my third time to Goa since I’ve been here and I feel pretty comfortable there. I know my way around, I can recommend some good places (stay at Anjuna Laguna, eat at Fiesta in Baga, party at Shiros in Candolem) and I pretty much have the feel for what to do (eat mangos and goan fish curry, drink watermelon juice and vodka, lay on the beach and never, ever drink feni). The highlight of the trip was taking a bike ride to old Goa, I love riding bikes and if I wasn’t totally scared of the crowd in Bombay I would get a Bullet.

Although Goa is a great time, we don’t really get the “Indian experience”. The areas we visited could easily be any beach town in the world (northeast Brazil, Ibiza, Phillipines, Mexico, etc…), in the sense that it’s beautiful but it caters to a sort of generic, globe-trotting, hippy, crowd. Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome, it’s just not culturally authentic.

We then headed down to the south east of India to Kerala. We first went to Periyar which is a big animal reserve. We got to see some elephants and monkeys which I was really excited about but unfortunately no tigers. Periyar was aight, but my expectations were too high – I was expecting to see some lion king shit and instead got a glorified zoo (the elephants were chained up). On a positive note – we stumbled into a martial arts show, which was surprisingly cool and involved rings of fire.

Next we headed to Allepy to cruise around the backwaters on a houseboat. Before going I was a bit nervous about this, what are we gonna do for two days on boat? We’re a group of young, slightly aggressive, attention deficient Americans, there’s no way we’ll enjoy this. In reality it was incredible, what’d we do? Nothing – played a lot of cards, drank a bunch of beer, ate gigantic tiger prawns, and observed life on the backwater. It was pretty surreal (one of those “I can’t believe I actually live in India” moments), and was the most relaxed I think I’ve ever been. It was a really beautiful place and I think almost anyone would enjoy it.

After my friends left, my good friend Aju invited me to his wedding. We took a 20 hour train ride (AC 3rd class) to Raipur. The ride out there was pretty intense. Everyone says traveling by Indian trains is something you have to do, though I’m not sure – it was a mess. The numberings for the seats were all wrong and there were people with unconfirmed seats also in our compartment. It was cramped and uncomfortable – I’m glad I did it, but it’s unlikely I’d do it again (unless you bump me up a class or two). The wedding itself was great though, I had no idea what was going on. I was told I needed to wear a kurta (traditional Indian garb), and bought one before I left Bombay. I changed into my clothes and went downstairs and everyone else was wearing slacks and shirts, I felt pretty ridiculous until my friends came wearing native garb as well. We also all got turbans… which was awesome. The wedding started with everyone on the groom’s side dance-marching to the wedding (20 min away) in a procession with a band, people carrying 70′s style colored lights and stopping every three minutes to light fireworks. Did I mention Aju was riding a horse? People kept trying to steal his shoes, and I think a little girl tried to bribe me. It was a really cool experience.

Tonight is the second part of his wedding in Bombay, more pictures to come soon…

I'm Purple

Posted on March 11, 2009 by amit

Today is Holi and a buddy of mine from work was nice enough to invite us over to celebrate. The city looked like some bizarro war, there were gangs of kids running around pelting people with water balloons and colors. There’s not much to say other then it was a great time,and I’m still purple. Thanks to cbas for taking pics:

Rolling Stone

Posted on March 10, 2009 by amit

Things have been pretty hectic lately, I’ve had 18 flights in the last 2 months and I’m still not done. Next week I’m going for my last set of MBA interviews at ISB in Hyderbad. I think it’s safe to say after the 800 interviews we’ve done in the last 6 weeks, I can now accurately gauge the level of talent of the top students in India. These dudes (and chicks) are all ridiculously smart academically, in order to get into the IIM’s (the top B schools), you need to literally be in the 99.9th percentile. What’s amazing though is how little they know outside of their immediate studies. It seems like so much emphasis is placed on studying for the exams, that they have no time (or desire) to learn what’s going on the industry. One of the major difference between the students here and in the U.S. – there’s no concept of being well-rounded. So few people had an understanding of topics not covered in their curriculum (but essential to our business) like internet advertising, emerging trends on the web, and traffic monetization – out of 800 we only gave a handful of offers,

Outside of work I agreed to volunteer at an elementary school for slum kids. One of the things that’s really tough about living here is seeing extreme poverty everywhere. Kids/women/old people living on the streets, coming up, asking for handouts. It’s hard to say no, but I’ve heard a lot of stories and how you never know where that money is going (a la the intentionally blinded kid in Slumdog). I try to hand out food whenever I have it, but my goal was to do something a little more meaningful to give back while I’m here. I planned to go in this past Saturday and give my first basketball lesson. On Friday I get a call, “we’re really excited that you’re coming in tomorrow, just wanted you to know, there’s no balls and no hoops.” Hmm, makes my job a bit tough. I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, but it ended up being a lot of fun and way easier then I expected. There was an Aussie guy teaching english, I just helped him out a bit, reading and talking to the kids. They were all really attentive and excited:

Afterwords, I had brought two basketballs, and just did some basic passing games and dribbling races:

The kids loved it and were all asking me, when I was coming back next. One of the things that took me by surprise was that the school is segregated between Muslims and Hindus. They don’t have classes together and the kids (from the little I saw), don’t really interact. They said they are planning on integrating the school, but it was still unexpected, especially since Hindus and Muslims seem to be in such close contact and proximity everywhere else. All in all though, it was a really good experience and I hope I can keep at it.

Tomorrow is Holi – I’ll be going to a friend’s apartment with some super soakers full of colors. Will post some pics tomorrow (assuming my camera makes it out alive…)

3 Month Recap

Posted on January 30, 2009 by amit

So I’ve been in Mumbai for about 3 months now. They say it takes that long to acclimate to a new job, I think the same can be said about getting used to a new place. Surprisingly, I’ve started to feel at home here. A lot of things that bothered me when I first moved here (pollution, heat, vegetarian food), I’ve pretty much gotten used to (alright I still sweat a lot a crave bacon).

Generally my life is pretty awesome. I work my ass off (today was my 19th consecutive work day), but I like my job so it’s been cool. I’ve been doing a lot of recruitment flying around the country visiting the top business schools. It’s great talking to the top students here, but grueling. We’ve done about 400 interviews in the last 2 weeks and have about 300 more in the next week. Intense. Sometime soon I’m gonna write a post on things not to do in an interview (like repeatedly emphasize your dance skills, or force your interviewer to read 3 of your poems – true story).

I’ve met a lot of really good people, and go out whenever I can. I’ve started pluggin’ into the Yahoo and Facebook Bombay expat groups though I haven’t attended any events yet. Not sure how I feel about that whole scene (seems kinda weird to come all the way to India to hang out with other “westerners”).

Sometimes I feel like a minor celebrity. I went unannounced to the bank last week, introduced myself to the branch manager, his response, “yes I know who you are.” Kinda creepy, though in my ‘hood there aren’t too many non-Indians around.

Anyone knows me knows my favorite thing is eating, followed closely by playing basketball. I’ve been playing ball a few times a week and finally made the official Andheri West YMCA team! We played in a tournament last week, where we won two games but lost in the quarter finals. My first game we won easily against the Mumbai police (though as my dad warned: “beating the police team may have it’s own dangers”). We then proceeded to get smoked by the Maharashtra Railway. Apparently these guys “work” in the sports department, are recruited to the company cause of their athletic skills and get to play ball 8 hours a day (note to self: get a job at the railway). We had a crowd of 100 or so people which was the biggest crowd I’ve played in front of. I also got heckled a bit which is awesome (I’ve always wanted to be heckled).

Though I haven’t been studying as much as I should, my hindi is getting better. I can at least pick out words in conversations and say really basic sentences (Hahm kab party jayenge? When are we going to the party?) It’s almost time for another poem… Any time I try to say anything in Hindi people get a huge kick out of it (probably cause I make at least 3 mistakes). My goal is to be able to tell a good joke and not only have people understand what I’m saying but also laugh, so far I’ve been wildly unsuccessful.

Finally I’ve decided to give back to the community and get involved in some sort of volunteer work. I met with a group Atma, and in our conversation they randomly mentioned they want to start an after school basketball program close to where I live. Perfect! I can do that. I’m meeting with some people next week to get it going.

I’ve been super busy but I think my time will free up soon. I will continue to try and write weekly. In case you don’t hear from me, you can always follow my alternate persona “the chef” at the other blog and twitter.

Till next time… main snanalay mein gatha hoon (I sing in the bathroom).

CodeChef launched!

Posted on January 30, 2009 by amit

For the last 2 months or so I’ve been working on setting up an India specific, online coding coding contest: www.codechef.com. The goal of the site is to identify top technical talent, promote our brand and foster technical competition. It’s a cool project for me ’cause I get to use my existing web project management skills, as well as manage the marketing side (which I’ve never done before). I’ve taken a real interest in social media marketing and am pretty pumped to test out some ideas I’ve had. We will be building a Facebook app, integrating with Facebook Connect, running Twitter contests and doing some other new media-ey stuff.

Last week we soft-launched at a big student festival at the top engineering school in Mumbai IIT’s TechFest. We setup a booth and asked students the output to three code snippits, if they could answer and explain, we gave out some t-shirts. It turns out people will do anythig for free stuff. The booth was packed the entire time. It was a really great experience, interacting with students, talkin’ up CodeChef and walking around wearing a giant chefs hat. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and I’m looking forward to seeing how big we can make this.

Some random pics from techfest below (look for the cool chef’s hat)…

Only in India…

Posted on January 12, 2009 by amit

I just returned for 2 trips, first to Goa for New Years, then to Israel for my cousins wedding. The trips were complete opposites though I enjoyed them both very much, Goa was one long party, and Israel was (mostly) wholesome QT with the fam.

Goan highlights included:

hammerheads for sale:

cows on the beach:

and awesome parties:

This morning I arrived back in India, decided to take a prepaid taxi to my apartment (not sure if this is cheaper or more expensive then using the meter). The guy told me the price was 250 rs, then charged me 240 and handed me a receipt for 220. What I got a real kick out of though, was the second bullet point on the receipt:

“In case of breakdown on the way driver will arrange another taxi for onward journey and pay part fare to next driver”

Only in India…

The Events of the Last Few Days

Posted on November 29, 2008 by amit

I stay in the Northern Suburbs of Mumbai, about an hour from downtown where the terrorist attacks of the last few days occurred and left over 150 people dead and many more injured. The last few days I’ve stayed holed up in my apartment and the office (3 blocks away), and aside from ruining my thanksgiving dinner plans, I’ve been largely unaffected. It will take some time to put together all the pieces and figure out how and why this happened. I’m not one of political commentary but here are some observations:

I haven’t been downtown since, but everyone’s saying the streets are empty. This is inconceivable in a city of over 15 million people. Even up here the roads are not car to car with traffic, for the first time since I’ve been here.
People are complaining about the slow response time of the Indian government. I’m not sure why this ordeal took over 3 days, maybe it had to do with fear for the hostages or the inexperience of the local police rushing in. What I’m wondering though is how is it that the anti-terrorism squad chief and commissioner of police were killed within the first few hours of the operation? While I don’t know anything about them, and I’m sure they are hero’s and extremely brave, if you are in a position of command, isn’t it your job to lead your forces and not rush into battle? Could the poor response have something to do with confusion over who was giving orders? This is total speculation.
This is a really great article describing the importance of the Taj to Mumbai and it’s people.
It’s awesome to hear about the bravery of the hotel staff.
With India’s general elections coming up in May, the recent attacks throughout India have set off speculation that national security will be the campaign focus and shift the political landscape. I don’t know anything about local politics, but I just hope that people here do not elect hawkish leaders, who are jumping at the opportunity to go to war with Pakistan.
My brothers in Israel tried to convince me to come to there for a few days till things blow over. I never thought that I would consider going to Israel to escape terrorism.
Lastly, it’s amazing the power the new media outlets (Twitter, Wikipedia, Blogs) have at disseminating information. I was following the Mumbai Twitter channel before any of the major news outlets caught wind of the situation. There is something hypnotic about reading first hand accounts mixed in with people’s reactions of the traditional media news accounts. While this is definitely great and a step in the right direction towards empowering the masses, it is also extremely dangerous. People were tweeting information that blatantly wasn’t true and had potential to cause panic (not that this is any different from the incorrect accounts reported by the sensationalist, traditional news outlets). I was also shocked at how quickly the wikipedia page for the event was put it up and how well researched and referenced it was (sourced from over 130 accounts).

My friend Mary is currently living abroad in Thailand (and experiencing a coup first-hand). In a recent post, she asks, “What is going on in the world? Or am I just seeing it with wider-open eyes by virtue of my location outside of my home country? Tragedies are occurring around the world with alarming frequency, but perhaps we don’t pay attention unless our loved ones are affected? Is this part of what we seek when we travel and live abroad – an expanded perspective that can only be obtained as an eyewitness to such occurrences?” While I’ve only been in Mumbai a month, consider my perspective expanded. Over the last few days family, friends, colleagues in India around the world have all shown extreme concern and support. Often overcoming difficult situations leads to a renewed appreciation of what you have. Thank you all for your kind words over the last few days, please continue to stay in touch.

Every Tom, Dick and Harry…

Posted on November 25, 2008 by amit

People here use really antiquated, ambiguously British phrases, here’s a short sampling I’ve recently heard:

When I miss a shot in basketball people yell out, hard luck! A good shot is lovely!
I’m often asked, What’s your good name sir?
When Indians refer to their hometown it’s called their native place
Older, unrelated people are often referred to as Aunty and Uncle
Fortnight is used frequently (I still have no idea what this is and refuse to look it up)
Men are referred to as gents
We have guys who take care of logistical stuff who are called office boys and peons
Saw this on a resume I recently checked out: Born on the 17^th day of July, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty
And my personal favorite: Every Tom, Dick and Harry was at the restaurant. This one especially doesn’t make sense since wherever it is they are referring to, there is undoubtedly no Tom, Dick or Harry present.

Tomorrow I’m starting Hindi lessons and very excited. Here’s a short email I got from a tutor I contacted:

Hi Amit
It seems you are an Indian.Why do you want to learn Hindi?Lets know then accordingly we will arrange.
Regards,
Sandhya

Breaking all the rules…

Posted on November 19, 2008 by amit

Since I’ve been here I’ve had to break two fundamental rules that were drilled into my head from early childhood:

1. Don’t eat with your hands (unless you are at Medieval Times in which case you are required to mercilessly rip chicken apart and demand more beer from your wench) – Eating with your hands is the norm, very satisfying and way more efficient (except when eating rice).

2. Don’t call people “Indians” (They’re Native Americans!) – I constantly pause before I refer to people as Indians, in fear that I am going to accidentally offend someone’s cultural heritage.

On a totally unrelated note, they have cricket batting cages here:

Officially Indian

Posted on November 12, 2008 by amit

Today I went to the Foreign Registration Office and got my Indian Residency papers. I’m official. I had to take a train there, in my “first class” car:

it was crowded. At the station:

It was also crowded (click on the pic above as it was taken with my friends camera – good quality). We went to the government office where they hate spitting:

In the pic to the right, the dunce cap is actually an old school fire extinguisher. No idea how it works but it looks 60 years old.

After a few hours filling out forms in triplicate, they told me to come back in two hours to pick up my documents. So we took a walk around town, here’s Victoria Station:

And a Mosquito Proof Well.

More pics (in better quality and not from my iPhone), coming soon…

Amit Klein

Figurin' it out…

Category Archives: Life

Recent Travels (Goa, Kerala, Raipur)

I'm Purple

Rolling Stone

3 Month Recap

CodeChef launched!

Only in India…

The Events of the Last Few Days

Every Tom, Dick and Harry…

Breaking all the rules…

Officially Indian