From a neighbor we met last night we’ve learned that from now through early December it is considered off-peak time for visiting India. This means that the flights are at their cheapest. There are a few airlines offering SFO -> BLR for less than $2,000 (including taxes). This is far from cheap but since we’re out here you don’t need to pay $200/night to some hotel. It’s kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit India on the cheap. Something to consider 
August 6th, 2007
Bob
I’m Bob Van Zant and I’m a software engineer for a company in the silicon valley. I’m currently on international assignment with my wife, Heather in Bangalore, India building up a remote team of software engineers.
Prior to moving to Bangalore we lived in Ukraine working with a partner that does some software development for the company. This blog serves as the place where we’ll document all of the (very) wacky things that happen to us on a seemingly daily basis.
Thanks for visiting!,
Bob Van Zant
July 29th, 2007
Bob
The weather was really nice today so I finally got out this afternoon and took some pictures of our place. It’s a townhouse of sorts, we share the “far” wall with a neighbor that hasn’t moved in yet. It’s 2000 sq feet with marble floor everywhere. The interior, well I still have no pictures of the insides, but its rather nice. The quality of the finishing touches are very typical for houses of this sort: paint splatters on the trim, paint splatters on the windows, some windows close better than others, stains on the marble.
That big black pole in the middle of the photo ruining the picture is a light post. The light is also rather bright at night. It’s like having a full moon every night.
Here’s another picture just so that I can say I posted two. These airplanes fly right over our house when they come in for a landing at Bangalore airport. Check out the palm tree tops there. Looks like you’re on vacation every day.
July 29th, 2007
Bob
Typically Heather and I dread heading outside of our gated community. The walls and the security guards protect us from “India” and this makes our lives easier. Whenever we venture out we tend to have an awful time: the traffic sucks, restaurant employees give awful service, it’s dirty, it’s hot, it smells.
But yesterday we had a good day. I will go so far to say it was our first good day in India in the ~6 weeks we’ve been here. (more…)
July 27th, 2007
Bob
Ok, we’ve already lived here a month but I’m still considering this our welcome. A while back I killed a small roach in our kitchen. Charles told me about this roach chalk stuff that the roaches won’t cross. I found this at the store, it looks like sidewalk chalk but I get the feeling its not safe for children. Apparently it works. This one didn’t get far from one of my chalk lines before he rolled onto his back and started spewing whatever that fluid is. I took some pictures before taking him out of his misery and disposing of him.
July 22nd, 2007
Bob
Yesterday we stopped for lunch at a local pizza chain named Pizza Corner. We were excited to go here because Pizza Hut is getting old. We sat down for lunch and ordered a coke, a diet coke and a medium pepperoni pizza. 5 minutes later I got my coke. 5 minutes after that I asked a waiter where Heather’s diet coke was. “A diet coke?” “Yes.” “Ok, sir.” 5 minutes later I asked a different waiter “Can we have her diet coke, please?” “Sir, we don’t have diet coke.” Why did it take 3 waiters before one would tell us they didn’t have what we were ordering? After nearly 40 minutes I got fed up waiting for my pizza and went to manage the process myself. Our pizza came moments later. It was a small pepperoni pizza (recall that we ordered a medium). It can be terribly frustrating doing the most simple of things here.
July 22nd, 2007
Bob
When you come to India for ~2 weeks you’ll usually go through a short bit of culture shock. First you think it’s interesting. This is mostly because you’ve arrived very late at night and a lot of the city is sleeping. The next morning things are happy because you’re staying at one of the finest hotels in the world. Later that day you enter the city and it’s all down hill. You’ve gone from one of the finest hotels in the world to seeing some of the poorest people in the world. You just don’t know how to react. The traffic, the pollution, the fear of what you can and can’t eat. In my case my body just sort of shut down. We called it a day around 1:00PM and went back to the safe haven that is the hotel. This will be your low point of the trip, over the next few days you’ll become accustomed to these things and you’ll enjoy your trip. I’ve learned that this isn’t culture shock; when you actually -live- in India you get culture shock.
(more…)
July 22nd, 2007
Bob
I went through the thousands of pictures I took while in Ukraine and edited down to 42 photos. I put lengthy captions on each and turned it into a little web-based slideshow. The captions will be in the bottom left corner and they’re probably worth reading so that you know what you’re looking at.
Slideshow of pictures from Ukraine
July 5th, 2007
Bob
It’s been a long time since my last post. We travelled back to California, visited with some folks and then moved out to India. I went straight in to an interviewing frenzy and Heather worked on a bazillion logistical issues dealing with getting moved into our new place. But, she pulled it all off in record time. We’re living in our new place now and have met a bunch of our neighbors. The neighborhood is great, our house huge, pictures to come. Unfortunately we don’t have an internet connection yet and that’s the primary reason for no posts recently.
None of that is very wacky though.
The flight we take goes from SFO to FRAnkfurt to Bangalore (BLR). It lands at 11:55PM, India time. At this point you’ve been traveling for nearly 24 hours and are fairly well exhausted. BLR, an international airport, has two baggage carousels. These aren’t carousels like at SFO or any other airport I’ve ever flown to. They’re not big in the least. The length is maybe 20 yards and the width no more than 10. A 747, the big huge airplane we fly in on, is capable of delivering over 400 passengers. Imagine 1.5 checked bags per person (we had 5 total) that’s 600 bags that need to fit in an area that is only 60 yards long. Right. It’s a mess. Hundreds of people running around with luggage carts whacking you in the backs of your ankles all crowding around the luggage carousel hoping to catch a glimpse of a bag that looks like theirs so that they can ram you one more time before pushing you aside and reaching in just to realize, oh, that’s right, my bag is a different color.
A white-guy standing next to me (yes, white guys stand out) was kind of freaking out with the mess of people, luggage carts and his apparently missing bag. I asked him if he’d ever been to Bangalore before. He said no. I welcomed him to the city and told him to get used to it. It’s Bangalore in a nutshell: Millions of people all taking the shortest possible path to what they want with complete disregard for what the guy next to him is doing. Wait in line here and you’ll spend your whole life waiting.
June 25th, 2007
Bob
Next Posts
Previous Posts
