Still alive here!

And I've been to places I don't want to return to, so I feel like I'm experiencing 'real' India!
I was visiting offices of some people my employer works with in Delhi. Usually, when I did this while working for my previous employer (I promise this is not going to get complicated but I don't want to name them since this blog represents my views entirely and not those of any past, present or future employers...), I would get a taxi from the hotel to an address given to me in an email. Most of the time this address would be in Mandarin or Arabic, so I wouldn't have a clue what it said until the taxi driver would point at some building and I would wonder about until I found what I was looking for.
OK, I'm sure it sounds clueless but it worked well so far.
In India of course (I'm saying 'of course' since the Brits colonised the place and so English is still widely used... or so I thought) all signs, street names etc are in English and for some strange reason I thought all would be easy.
But today for a reason my wise horrorscope predicted (yes the 'rr' is intentional), I decided to waste somebody elses money and booked a car (with a driver) for the entire day (as a tangent - now that would be a comedy - me in a car, automatic of course, sans driver, in India!)
And boy was I glad I did (have a driver with me, of course, I wasn't driving - no license)?!!
The place I ended up in was a multitude of high rise towers with masses and masses of people, these rabid looking dogs and more interest in 'the foreigner' than I felt comfortable with. To keep with the theme of using TV/film references, think the harshest Baltimore 'Towers' in the "Wire" but a bit more hallucogenic nightmare in the mix.
If I arrived in a taxi, if the horroscope didn't warn me of day where I'd "find it hard to achieve my goals" (I thought it would just be traffic jams), the driver would have left me there and I would have had to find my own way and fend for myself. Luckily I had my driver with me, God bless him, who found all these offices for me by asking people who stared at me and laughed and even in one case ran away after looking at me (though I must admit I'm a bit used to that).
I'm sure that at some point in my time in the 'Bad Mushroom Towers', we went into the bowels of every of these high rise towers. And don't take the reference to bowels lightly... the smell and left over human origin minefield made me doubt if these places had any plumbing or if leaving your erm... refuse behind was some type of turf graffiti markings.
I was so glad that I had someone with me (Mr Driver) who could navigate this new terrain. He commented later that it was an awful part of Delhi and he didn't like going there.
Well neither did I.

I am shocked at being so disloyal to my own prejudices ... but... I think China is cleaner and erm... maybe safer... and ahm... maybe tiny bit nicer? Oh dear... what am I saying? I still do think people seem more genuine here - friendlier, though with a bit of an abandoned mental hospital in a post-apocalyptic winter, kind of a way...

Below is a video I took of the nicer parts. Notice the men pushing a 4wd car and jumping into it? That's the local law - so glad they didn't have to rescue me and get away quickly... ;-)
Also apparently 75% of cars run on LP gas - that's why there's no pollution, explained the driver... (yeah - ???)
My nice driver also took his tour very seriously and decided to give me a cultural tour of India as well. He told me about the life in India and about his wife and what she does all day, in detail -for example she makes tea at 8am and it's usually Assam tea as it's their favourite and in the evening she watches some Indian soap where all the women cry a lot... I like Assam too - the Champagne of teas - as it is known among the people who know their teas (that's myself and Sally, a girl I used to work with...) And I know a friend of mine who watches that soap - "Bold and Beautiful", right?
Then he told me about his sons - how one of them is about marry into his arranged marriage (which he is happy about by the way, all you nay-sayers, I can hear you out there!) and we had a brief discussion about the pros and cons of arranged vs Western style relationships - not that either of us knew what the other was about... But since it is valentines day - Happy Arranged Valentines Day to you all! :-)


Apparently the video works! :-)