Posts Tagged ‘work’

This is Not My Beautiful World

dump
.
We wake to the shrill grinding sound of rebar being cut, in the construction site just outside the window. That sound is soon overtaken by the cacophonous grind of a cement mixer, which is again overtaken by the crashing gush of a truckload of rocks being emptied onto the construction site. A cloud of white rock dust presses up against the windows. This is not my beautiful world.
workers
.
The construction site next door is active from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day. Thirty sari-draped women balance trays of wet cement on their heads while a dozen half-naked children play in the mountain of sand. Another twenty or so barefoot men scoop rocks and bend rebar and are digging six giant pits in the red earth. They are building a three-story shopping center. From my dining room window this looks like an archeological dig. I have just found out that the construction will take one year. Huge buzz kill.

We chose this place because be could live like Columbian drug lords for what a one bedroom apartments costs at home, and because it was a quiet sanctuary away from the Bangalore choking traffic and relentless noise. Now, we may as well be living in the middle of the road. Every surface of our house is coated with grit. I’m beginning to suspect that this is why the owners have chosen not to live in their dream home.

Pack your earplugs and dust masks and come for a visit!!!

Where Phil Works

adobe1
.
This is the towering Adobe office on Bannerghatta Road in Bangalore where I work. It may look large, but it is utterly dwarfed by the buildings all over B’lore belonging to such behemoths as Accenture (3 bigger-than-airport facilities on Bannerghatta alone!), Accentis, Conexant, Enventure, Infineon, InfoSys, and so on. I guess only 10 years ago this place was all gardens and goats, and BAM, technology happened.

Anyway, I am proud to be working for a company whose name is an actual WORD.

Infineon? What the hell does that even mean?

Phil Works Too Much. Pam Goes Native.

The problem I can see ahead is that Adobe now has 24 hour access to Phil. He works at the office in Noida, a 45 minute choking taxi ride away from our hotel, while his California colleagues are sleeping. When he returns after being pulled at all day, the office in California is up and running and grabbing at him all night. He worked through the night twice this week.
….
I’ve never shopped with such purpose and urgency in my life. It wasn’t that I was so eager to leave rupees all over Delhi but it was getting harder and harder to scrub the judgmental stares off me at the end of the day.

I like attention as much as, okay…probably more, than most, but I haven’t felt this creepy brand of attention since I was a 16 year old hitchhiker with ass length hair and cut-offs. I get the feeling that everything Indian men know about Western women was learned from the Girls Gone Wild videos.

Yesterday when I stepped outside in my new modest, though totally bitchin’ Indian clothing, the ogling stopped. A couple of men at the market told me I looked nice in Indian clothes, but kept their eyes down when they said it – like they we’re talking to their mother or their sister.

~ Pam