Oktoberfest in Bangalore

Yesterday I went to the Oktoberfest in the Taj Residency Hotel here in Bangalore and it was great. There was Beer, Bretzels, Sausages and a Bavarian Brass Band ( Reisbacher Musikanten). We went with some Indian colleagues and had lots of fun.

Andaman Islands

From Port Blair we planned to take the ferry to Havelock, however the plane was delayed and so we missed the ferry and had to stay one day in Port Blair. We visited the Aquarium there and had a late lunch. After watching some TV we went to Bed early, becuase we had to get up at 5am to catch the next ferry.

Aftern arriving to the Island Dennis started to prepare for his Open Water Diver course whereas I relaxed a little. Around lunch we drove to Beach Number 7 for some snorkeling, however we weren't very successfull. Afterwards I went for a night dive which was amazing as usual ;)

The next days we spent diving, relaxing and chatting to the other people at the dive station.

After three days of training Dennis finished his open water diver and at the last day in Havelock we did a fun dive together.

The dive crew and the management of Dive India were excellent and very friendly as always.

Afterwards we returned to Port Blair, stayed another night there and returned to Bangalore.

[20081010] Andaman Islands

Agra

From Jaipur we drove to Agra. There we had a nice hotel with a revolving restaurant from where you could see the Taj Mahal. However we didn't dine in the hotel but went to the Local Mall, where Dennis had his first Maharaja Burger at McDonalds :).

The we also had got frightened most, cause they didn't have returned our passports in the hotel at Jaipur. Luckily another driver could bring them to Delhi where we picked them up at the travel agency.

The next morning we had to get up very early to see the sun rise at the Taj Mahal.

After the Taj Mahal we visited the red fort and returned to Delhi, from where we flew to the Andaman Island via Chennai.

[20081007] Agra

Delhi and Jaipur

After arriving in Delhi we took a prepaid taxi to our hotel. As we approached closer to the hotel (which was close to the red fort) we got a little bit suspicious because the surrounding area didn't look very nice to put it polite. However the hotel was good and clean. The next day we planned to take the train from Delhi to Jaipur and from there to Agra. However it wasn't possible to get any tickets any more and due to our tight schedule we decided to rent a taxi for the three days.

In Delhi we just visited the India Gate, the Humayun Mausoleum and the Shri Lakhsmi Narain temple.

In the afternoon we continued to Jaipur were we were able to make some pictures of the fort during night. The hotel there was also very pleasant.

In Jaipur we visited Hawa Mahal, Jantar Mantar and the fort.

[20081003] Jaipur

Munnar

After visiting Mysore we drove back to Bangalore and flew to Kochi in Kerala. We stayed the night in the airport hotel. At 9 in the morning we continued to Munnar and in the early afternoon at the Deshadan Mountain Resort. The resort is very nice and the staff is excellent. Food is also quite good and therefore we were very pleased. One of the staff members, Fagen, showed us the area and explained showed and explained Coffe Plants, Cardamon and other plants. The next day we started early and visited a tea-museum and lots of nice viewpoints. Most exciting adventure was riding and feeding an elephant. We also took a speed boat ride, but this wasn't to exciting. After a very pleasant and relaxing night we drove back to Kochi and started our Backwaters tour.

[20080928] Munnar

Kerala Back Waters & Kochi

From Munnar we to Allepy and stayed two days on a house boat on the kerala back waters, a net of lakes, sweet water channegls and rivers. We had a house boat for ourselfes (except a caiptain and a cook of course ;) ). Driving through the rice fields bordered with Palm Trees and watching the people who are living on the banks of the river is extremely relaxing. But the most amazing views you have during sun rise and sun set.

Afterwards we drove back to Kochi and visited the chinese fishing nets. In the afternoon we flew to Delhi.

[20081001] Kerala Backwaters & Kochi

Mysore

Staying in the Brinavan Garden Hotel (Royal Orchid) was definitely the best idea we had so far :) We had amazing views to the Brindavan Garden with all its fountains and lights.

[20080927] Mysore

Travelling Sri Lanka (2)

The second day brought us to the Botanic Garden in Kandi and to herb garden that specialist on natural healing. On the way back we saw fruit bats and lots of water buffalos. The nature there is amazing.

On the last day I went Scuba Diving. Unfortunately the conditions were bad and you couldn't watch further than 3-5 meters.

[20080901] Sri Lanka 3

Travelling Sri Lanka (1)

We booked a two day trip to Kandi and back. On the first day we visited a pineaple plantage and an elephant orphanage. Afterwards we took an elephant ride. We continued to Kandi and after a late lunch there we visited a local dance and singing presentation and afterwards we visited a buddhist temple.

From the hotel you could overview whole Kandi.

[20080830] Sri Lanka 1

[20080831] Sri Lanka 2

Sri Lanka

It is time for some vacation and so I decided with my room mate that we should go over the long weekend. First options were Goa or Singapore. Finally we decided to go to Sri Lanka.

The flight with Sri Lankan Airlines were very pleasant. The hotel (Ypsylon hotel is lead by a german lady) organized the airport pickup.

The hotel is excellent and the staff very friendly and speaks german :)

Unfortunately it was raining the first day, so that we only went to the town and to the sea turtle orphanage.

For the next days we planned to discover the island.

California

Looks like business related travelling has become my new hobby ;)
This time I went to Sunny Vale, California. Fortuntantely I had some to discover the more natural Areas in the bay area, after doing all the "tourist" things during an earlier visit. I really love the bay area and I'm looking forward to visit again.

[20080728] Business Trip Sunnyvale

Lego...

I haven't played with Lego for about 20 years, however this changed as I browsed Amazon recently and found the new star wars models. I have always been a big star wars fan and having the millenium falcon as a lego model with over 5000 pieces switched me back to child mode and I had to buy it. Luckily I had two good friends who helped sorting and building ;) Enjoy the pictures....

[20080707] Millenium Falcon

Milan

Not many posts recently. Business makes me travelling a lot and I'm allways somewhere around India, Europe or the US ;)

Here some pictures from Milan.

[20080622] Business Trip Milan

Running Water

Yipppii! Finally they replaced the geysers and after more than two month I have water again in the master bathroom. Miracles DO happen :)

Bannerghata Zoo and National Park

Today I went with Florian to the Bannerghata Zoo and Nationalpark which is about 30 minutes away from Bangalore. We arrived about half an hour before they opened, which turned out to be luck. As we left about 2 ours later the line was approx. 400m long...

We had plenty of fun there although many of the animals have way to small cages. Especially the hipos looked really sad.

Talking about Hippos... there is definitely a "dirty job there". One of the guys was emptying the drainage for the hippo cage, removing all the hippo droppings by hand :)

After the zoo we took a short "Safari" (pictures) where we saw lots of bears, Lions and Tigers.

After the zoo we went to the Bay Leaf restaurant and had afterwards a nice evening at my house.

[20080501] Bannerghatta - Safari and Zoo

Paying the phone bill

Some things are way more complicated as in other countries. For example paying the phone bill.

I have now my bank account for some time and already registered for ePaying of the bills. However so far the bills do not show up there and I cannot pay via the bank account. So I decided to just go to their office and pay it directly. Arriving at the office they told me that it is only possible to pay bills below 1000Rs (25$) by cash. For bigger amounts you need to pay by check. So I went back home just to get told that the repair of the geysers will take another month, since there are none available. Well, already in a bad mood I went to work and tried to deposit the money for our phone bill, which turned out to be not that easy. With every deposit you can deposit a maximum of 10 bills in the ATM. Having more than 60 bills (the phone bill included internet for the whole year) that turned out to be a problem. Not only because it was cumbersome, no, because there were only 3 deposit slips available. So I decided to go to the main branch and deposit the money there, which worked out fine after I had to fill out another deposit slip and making a copy using manifold paper... A lot of stamps later I finally had deposit my amount.

So on monday I'll have to write a check and get to the phone office again...

Sightseeing Bangalore

Today Florian arrived and we decided to do some sightseeing in Bangalore. We visited the Bull temple, Forum Mall, Russel Market and Lal Bagh. Afterwards both of us were very exhausted and relaxed at my house.

Diving the Andamans 2

The last two days were filled with dives for my Advanced Open Water. It included a deep dive, Underwater Navigation, Underwater Photgraphy and Underwater Naturalist.

All dives were quite interesting and helped to feel more comfortable under water.

I was really sad to leave, because I met a lot of interesting people. The dive place was really great and the people there very friendly and helpful.

I'm looking forwared to go there again.

[20080409] Andaman Islands_Diving 2

Diving the Andamans 1

The following day I made again 2 fun dived but this time took the camera with me.
Can you find the octopus and the sea horse in the pictures?

During the first dive there was a strong current and I got pretty exhausted. We surfaced about 200m of the boat and had to swim against the current in addition the waves were getting higher and went sometimes over you... Luckily the boat crew threw out some ropes and pulled us in direction of the boat. I was very happy to be back on board after "drinking" a couple of sips of salt water ;-)

[20080409] Andaman Islands_Diving 1

Vacation - Andaman Islands

A long weekend was coming up and so I decided two take two additional days and make a short vacation. Definitely I wanted to go diving again and the first choice was Goa, due to the short time of only five days.

Looking at availability and prices @ Goa I decided that there must be other places. A little bit of googling showed me that there are nice dive sides at the Andaman Islands (DiveIndia.com) and that accomodation can be quite cheap (500RS / 12$) per day. So I called and confirmed my booking and finally arrived there. The accomodation is very basic (see pictures) but everything was very clean and well maintained. I definitely can recommend them.

Thinking of getting a little bit more serious about diving I decided to make my Advanced Open Water Diver.

During the first day I made 2 fun dives to get used to the water again and in the evening a night dive.

The night dive was definitely the most amazing dive I ever did. In addition to seeing different behavior with the fishes it was just interesting to dive in darkness. Close to the end of our dive we turned our lights off and all around us were fluorescent algae. You were hovering in the water in complete darkness and all around you were this shiny colorful dots....

Once we surfaced we relaxed and looked up in the night sky, filled with million of stars while floating on the surface of the ocean...amazing!

[20080409] Andaman Islands

Finally Internet

Yippiih!! After more than two month of waiting I finally have internet at home again. So I can continue blogging and also communication with my friends have become easier again. In the next couple of days I will try to add all the events that have happened since January.

Today I spent most the time with finalizing the internet setup. Everything is at the place it is supposed to be and everything works well.

Hyderabad

This weekend I spent in Hyderabad. The main reason was the job fair there to hire some people. However, since it was a long weekend I decided also to spend the Friday and Sunday there.

Friday I visited the Film City. They have a couple of really nice parks were many of the Indian music videos are taken. The shows and attractions are more relating to Hollywood, however with some Indian influence. I liked the Cheerleader in the western stunt show :)
All in one a very pleasant day.

Saturday I went to the job fair and afterwards went with the colleagues from HR to some of the pearl shops (hyderabad is famous for that). Afterwards we had a nice party. Everything came together, nice people, good food, good talk and plenty of drinks.

On Sunday I visited the salarjung museum and took a city tour.

The flight back happened from the new hyerdabad airport (see next post).

[20080321] Hyderabad - FilmCity

Fun with the driver

The road that we normally take back from work was blocked today and so we had to take a dirt track. At some points that put some gravel on the road and at one point there was a lot of gravel. During the first try to pass it the car got stuck and I had to help to push it out of the gravel.

Thinking that my driver would see that with our Indi Car we did not have any chance to pass I went back to the car. Well, I was wrong... my driver was thinking that with just enough speed he could pass, so he pushed down the pedal, slided on the gravel and ended up in a small ditch. After I checked whether he was OK I had to lough really hard because that maneuver had looked REALLY funny.

Since we had the incident with the police at the same route and since he is a little superstitious I cannot convince him to drive this route any more. This results in a 20 minutes longer way to work every day.

Black roads

Today my driver was telling me that all roads are black... what he intended to say was that many roads blocked due to the arrival of a minister and that we have to take another route to work.

Unfortunately we weren't the only ones and so it happened that at one point an intersection was completely jammed. The police tried to solve that problem by creating a corridor to let cars that were already on the intersection to drive by.

My driver took this as his chance to bypass all other and block the intersection again. The police men were not to happy about that and started hitting our car with sticks. At first I was very shocked, but now I'm thinking of it as a new experience...

Shopping, Shopping and Shopping

This weekend consisted mostly of going shopping. On friday I went to MG Road to buy a new PC (parts). The rest of the evening was spent on assembling it and installing the software. Ourdays you only need a suisse army knife and a big bed to do that :)
The most surprising think I noticed it that there was neither an English nor a German version of the manual...

On saturday I went to the huge market near commercial street. First thing I did was finishing up the rental of the furniture. Afterwards I went shopping for the essentials (Linens, Towels, some kitchen stuff). Surprisingly this task which in Europe or the US is done in two or three hours took me the whole day. The good thing is that my comforter was hand made exactly to my demands. I selected the fabrics and it was finished till the evening. Afterwards I relaxed in a theater watching "National Treasure 2". I liked the theater a lot, although it is a little bit more expensive than the usual Indian theater. However there fit only about 30 people in and you have a LOT of space around you. The seats can be moved into a laying position eletronical and there is a button to call somebody who brings you food and drinks. Kind of the businees class of theaters :)

The next day I needed to go shopping again. Again to the market and than to EZone to order a fridge/freezer. In the afternoon I walked around one of the tanks that is nearby (pictures).

The only essential things that are still missing are shower rods.

[20080119] Building PC and Park

The new house, Lalbagh and Nandi Hills

Finally it looks like I can move into the new Villa. Therefore we measured the sizes of the different rooms on saturday in order to get an idea where we will put the furniture and I took the chance to take some more photos of the house and the development. Afterwards we went looking for furniture to rent and after that we went to the Lalbagh Park again to relax.

On sunday we visited the Nandi hills which are about 2 1/2 hours away from Bangalore.

[20080110] Haus_NandhiHills_Lalbagh

Lalbagh Botanic Garden

And another weekend is nearly over. On saturday I first went to the Lalbagh Botanic Garden which is maybe the most relaxing place in Bangalore. I walked for about 1 1/2 hours through the garden, enjoying the lake, the palms and the huge bamboos. Also I could observe I group of monkeys playing in the trees. After the hike I relaxed in the shadow of a huge tree, reading some Science Fictions.

Since I planned to go to the movies since I arrived here, I though this is maybe the perfect day for doing that. On the internet they said that they play "I'm legend" in the Forum Mall theaters. Therefore I went 2 hours earlier to get tickets... Well, its like most things in India, time is stretchable. This means the movie was running at 11:00am (weird time...). Fortunately "The Golden Compass" was running at 8:00pm and so I spend some time shopping books and eating my first burger here in Bangalore at McDonalds. I decided on a Chicken Maharadja Mac. Tasty! In general don't expect to get the same burgers that you get in the US or Europe. They only have burgers based on chicken or Veggies.

The movie was nice for a relaxing night and the theater had western standards, I would say it was even better than most theaters in the Princeton area. They even had Nachos. Yummi!

The sunday I spend working and relaxing at the pool.

[20080105] Lalbagh Botanic Garden

Happy new year!

The new year here was not so impressive but it was still some fun to walk down MG road. Today I spent some time finding a multi-outlet power strip. I gave up after checking out the e-zone (electronis shop) and the forum mall. Will ask some colleagues whether there are better places.