Sunday was an interesting day for me here, as all days I'm not working seem to be. In the morning I took the camera out and took some pictures, as I'd planned. I started out early and was surprised at how empty the streets were. I'd hoped to get a good picture of the traffic, the shops and the crowds, but the shops were closed, there were few people out, and there was almost no traffic. It was maybe 8:30. I had also wanted to get some jaggery, a very sweet substance made from sugar cane. So I headed up Brigade Road to M.G. Road, a familiar route at this point, heading for Food World. I got there at 8:50 and the door was open and there were people there, but it turned out they were all employees and I was told the store wouldn't be open for another 10 minutes. I went across the street to get a picture of Food World, since it seems to be my most common hang out, other than i2 and the hotel.

Left: Residency Rd. where my hotel was, looking west toward Brigade Rd.

Corner of Residency Rd. and Brigade Rd.

Brigade Rd. looking north toward M.G. Road.

M.G. Road looking west toward Food World.

The north isde of M.G. Road.	On the north side of M.G. Road, opposite Food World, there is an embankment with lots of plants growing on it and a stairway going up to a wide sidewalk. I went up there and sat down on an old cement bench. I couldn't get a good shot of Food World with the camera from that height because of low power lines and poles in front of the store, but I took some pictures of other things and got up and walked down the sidewalk to pass the time.	Looking west on M.G.Road early Sunday morning.
Opposite Food World, looking east down M.G. Road.	Nice building on south side of M.G. Rd., a bit east of Food World.	Opposite Food World, looking west down M.G. Road. A bench right of the walk here is where the chef found me.

A man came up to me and introduced himself and asked where I was from. His clothes were not fancy or new, but he was nicely enough dressed. He said he had been a chef for 30 years but now he was out of work. I saw where the conversation was headed, but it didn't get there for a while. He was very pleasant and we had sat down on another cement bench by this time. It was his daughters birthday and he had no money to buy a chicken to fix for her birthday meal. We talked a while longer and he gave me some information on jaggery [This is a form of partially refined sugar, I believe, that I'd tasted at work. It comes in rectangular bricks and in rounded blobs.], which was somewhat useful because I hadn't known there were two types and they are a bit different. So in the end I gave him Rs. 50, about a dollar. Chickens cost Rs. 60 he said, but Rs. 50 was all he got from me. Guess I'm just a cheap American. He thanked me and went on his way just about the time Food World was opening. I went in, was directed to the jaggery, bought both kinds, some sun screen, and 4 more liters of bottled water, and took it all back to the hotel.

Along the way I could see that the city was starting to come to life. Some of the shops were open, there was more traffic, and there were more people on the sidewalks. I stopped at a cap shop, wanting to keep the sun off my forehead and not wanting to get sunscreen in my eyes if it ran down a bit during the day. I'd thought of getting a San Francisco 49ers cap if they had one and then realized how silly that was. I asked for one that says Bangalore. They didn't have any. I asked at a second shop too, but there were none to be had.

I dropped off the things from Food World and went out again with the camera. There were some statues of horses in front of a bank I'd gone into after leaving The State Emporium Saturday and it reminded me of the statues in Las Colinas,Texas and I wanted a picture to show Linda. So I tried to find them. I wandered around quite a while, south on Brigade Street, but they weren't there. I took an auto rikshaw finally up almost to The State Emporium on St. Mark's St. but the bank wasn't there. I asked an auto rikshaw driver on St. Mark's St. and he told me they were a 2 min. walk east on Residency Rd. from St. Mark's. He really wanted to take me all over and show me other things and some good stores, but I declined.

When I got to the bank I went in the gate at the sidewalk to get a good angle on the horses. I'd taken two pictures when the guard came up and told me there was no picture taking allowed inside the gate. If I wanted to photograph the horses it would have to be from outside the gate. This sounded awfully silly to me, but I followed his wishes and took another picture from the sidewalk and that was enough. I walked back toward the hotel. There is a WW II monument at Brigade and Residency in a very small park. There's a fence around the park and there was a guard, sitting in a chair, next to the memorial. He saw me and with hand gestures I asked if I could take a picture. He was too distant, and by this time there was too much noise from traffic, to call to him and have any chance of being heard. He understood and shook his head no. I was disappointed a bit, but not too much. I turned my attention at this point on getting a picture of a city policeman, with the one side of his hat turned up. That's how you recognize a policeman in Bangalore, but the half turned up hat. I figured they probably didn't want to be photographed either, so I aimed the camera up Brigade Street and made sure that the policemen, for there were two of them there, were in the side of the picture. As I clicked a bus went by in front of me and I wasn't sure just what, besides the bus, was in the picture, so I took another and this time I got them for sure.

Traffic at a light

Two tan and one white clother policemen with hats.

Looking north up Brigade Rd.

After this I returned to my room, ate some tuna from home, for an early 10:30 lunch, gathered up some things, and went outside again to go to work. I caught an auto rikshaw and told the driver, a rather young fellow, where I wanted to go. We had gotten down to Airport Rd. when the auto rikshaw's engine started to sputter and I could see that the driver was trying to make the rikshaw go just a bit farther with his body motion each time the engine fired a couple times. But soon the sputtering stopped. The engine had stopped and the driver pulled to the side of the road. He asked me to wait a minute, got out a wrench, flipped up his seat, and took out what looked like a liquid propane tank from under it. He went around to the back of the rikshaw and returned a few minutes later with the empty tank, which he put where the first one had been, flipped his seat down and got in. There is a lever, like a big hand brake, on the left side of the rikshaws and one pulls that up fast to start the motor. The driver pulled it several times, got out for a better position and pulled it again, but the engine wouldn't start. He went around to the back with his wrench and a moment later returned, the motor started, and we were off.

When I arrived at work I found I had a lot of very nice emails and proceeded to answer them. Rohith, who works in the same part of the Factory Planner as I do, and is technical lead for it, and is an extremely bright and very nice fellow, came in a little while later. He'd tried to get in touch with me but couldn't reach me at the hotel or here. I was out taking pictures, of course. He had said earlier that he'd take me to Lalbagh Gardens, one of the parks in Bangalore, the biggest and the nicest. I think Jayanta must have told him how I'd gotten too much sun Saturday, because he suggested we leave about 4:00 p.m. Actually we left at 4:20, I forgot my camera, and we left the second time probably about 4:35. But we're fairly far south, so the sun doesn't set early here even now, and we had plenty of time to see the park before dark.

We took an auto rikshaw across town to the park. They were having a flower show in a big graceful building that had no walls, had a translucent roof, and looked very British. There were thousands of people in the park, which was quite large. We walked up the central walkway to a fountain that had water spray heads in a sphere, with the water coming out the sides of each, tangent to the sphere. It was pretty. There were lots of flowers and trees everywhere. A short ways past the fountain we turned left (east) and went to the building I mentioned.

Between all the flowers in the building and the people, there was sometimes no room at all. I recognized most of the flowers. They had some big flowers that must have been some mutation of a chrysanthemum or similar flower. They were very nice. I think somewhat to his surprise, Rohith enjoyed looking at the flowers too. He's never been to Lalbagh before and he said a couple times during the afternoon that he should have come there before. He had never seen cocks comb before and was quite impressed with how strange it is. He had never seen bird of paradise flowers before either, though he'd heard of them. He got to see them both this afternoon, or "today afternoon" and the Indians would say.

While we were making our way along with the crowd, looking at the flowers, a group of boys, maybe 12 or 13 years old I'd guess, caught up with us. The people farther from the flowers were moving faster than the ones next to them. One of them turned around and looked at me, impressed that I was foreign and so tall. I smiled at him and he immediately smiled back. Then he shook my hand and introduced himself. The other boys didn't want to miss the fun and each and every one of the dozen or so of them shook my hand, though most without the exchange of greetings I had with the first one or two. Then as they moved off I overheard one bragging to another that I'd said I was pleased to meet him. Kids are great fun.

From the building we moved past some booths that were displaying various flowers, produce, and other things. Each was sponsored by a different organization. One had two human-like figures in front, a man and woman, each made entirely out of vegetables. It was obvious that a lot of work and thought had gone into their design. At the end there was a cyclone fence enclosed area with lots of different cacti and succulents, and I thought of my mom's collection in Castro Valley.

I saw some people with ice cream bars and asked Rohith if he wanted one. He was agreeable and though we saw several people with ice cream bars we never did find out where they came from. Finally Rohith suggested that we get some coffee. Coffee here comes in small cups. I asked Rohith the proportions. He said it's about 40% coffee with chicory, the rest is milk, and I know from the taste that there's a fair amount of sugar in it. It's quite good, and that comment is from a non-coffee drinker.

From there we walked around the grounds. They have trees and plants from all over the world, each with a sign that has the latin name and an English listing of what part of the world it comes from. Two of the trees I've seen around town, one with orange flowers and the other with lavender flowers turned out to be related and from Africa. Another big tree comes from Madagascar. It has feathery leaves like a pepper tree and leathery flat fruit, if that's what it is, that you might think was a leaf itself, it's so flat - maybe 2 by 3.5 inches and a quarter inch thick at most. That tree was so big that other little trees had started growing in the dirt that had accumulated where the vertical part of the trunk ended and the tremendous branches diverged. That tree, though, was nothing to the one we saw a little later. I took a picture of that one. Words will not do it justice, but I'll try anyway. It had huge branches that were taller in cross section than they were wide. There was a point maybe 8 or 9 feet above the ground, above which the branches spread out, and below which the roots spread out. There was no cylindrical trunk in the normal sense.

We were about to leave when I spotted a rose garden. It reminded me of the rose gardens in Tyler, Texas. Unfortunately, as we noticed as we got closer, there was a fence all around the rose garden and no way to get in. They were still pretty to see and I took a picture. Then we left.

The coffee we'd had reminded Rohith of his favorite place for coffee, a small restaurant near my hotel and he'd suggested that we go there so I could taste it. On the way we realized we were hungry and decided to eat there too. We had something non-spicy, for my benefit, and drank some coffee while we waited for the food. I don't remember the name of the food, but it was a potato based filling in a half meter diameter, rolled up, thin pancake with a very nice flavor called a dosa. The non-spicy filling was at the upper limit of my tolerance for eating spice without pain. As it was I enjoyed the meal and we had some rice pudding, made with jaggery and a few raisins, for dessert. That was good. Actually the whole meal was very good.

From there we started walking back to the hotel, so I'd know how to get back to the restaurant on my own. There's a very tall building pretty near where Residency Road, where the hotel is, meets M.G. Road. I asked if that was the tall building we'd seen from the top of the Diamond District tower where i2 has its offices. Rohith said it was. It's called the State Utility Building. He said that there was silk shop on the first floor and asked if I wanted to go walk over there and go in. I said sure. He said they might not be open on Sunday and, sure enough, nothing in the building was open. I know where it is now though and can go back easily.

One thing that is interesting about floors in buildings here is that the first floor is one floor up. The ground floor is, in the three tall buildings I've been in so far, labeled the 0th floor and the ones below that are -1 and -2. That's how the buttons are labeled in the elevators. It's very different, but very logical.

Then we returned to the hotel, I thanked Rohith for showing me around, he caught an auto rikshaw, and I came into the business center in the hotel and wrote most of this email. The keys stick on the hotel computers and spell checking is extremely difficult in Yahoo mail, so I sent this to myself so I could edit it at work in the morning. I don't know that this day felt much like an adventure, but it sure was a pleasant day.

Garr

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