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I came here for a job, and have been in India for two months now. So far, I've had violent anal leakage, been diagnosed with the vivax strain of malaria (which isn't even that much of a problem here), been to Mumbai, dealt with FRRO (loving sisterfucking loving fuckers who should die screaming over a slow fire) unsuccessfully four times to register my visa, and lost twenty pounds that I didn't really need to lose. On the bright side, I live in over 2000 square feet with marble floors, three bedrooms, five balconies, and a swimming pool that costs me about $380 a month. I was paying well over $1000 for a room in a group house in loving Petworth, DC. I save over $3500 a month here without breaking a sweat. Bangkok and Singapore are four hours away on a cheap flight. Maldives and Sri Lanka are even closer. I can go to Kathmandu for a long weekend. Oh, the food is amazing too.
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# ? Sep 18, 2014 11:58 |
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# ? Apr 17, 2024 21:18 |
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It's in Hyderabad, one of the southern India centers of IT-sector outsourcing, mostly from the States. The big poles of this industry are Hyderabad, Pune, and especially Bangalore. Hyderabad is a shithole of 12 millions people. Most of the growth is on the west side of the city, in Hitec City and Cyberabad and Gachibowli. I live in Kondapur, in a gated compound surrounded by shanties. I pay one of the shanty dwellers $40 a month to clean every morning and cook meals (she only cooks veggie) for me. This is well above market rate. I commute the 4 km to and from work in a motorized tricycle for less than a dollar each way. There are Rivers of poo poo here, occurring when a sewage main breaks and spurts liquified putrefaction into the gutter for days on end. My compound has a massive generator to deal with power cuts, which amount to an average of four hours a day. Every few hours at home, the lights cut out for about ten seconds, before generator power kicks in. India is really intense. I'd been to over sixty countries before coming here, and spend five years of my adult life living as an expat, and still dumbstruck by the absurdity of things here. Expats tend to be heavily alcoholic, and most are heavy pot smokers too. I'm like the only one who doesn't chain-smoke cigarettes too (I have all the other vices). There are millions of security guards in this country. You need to check your satchel to enter a grocery store, and there's a separate guy whose sole job is to check your receipt when you leave the store. I have to scan my biometrics dozens of times a day - to enter a separate section of the office building, you need to scan them again. Everything smells like poo poo. There's no escaping the smell of poo poo. You become obsessed with poo poo, smelling it all the time, having the occasional explosive bowel syndrome, planning your non-emergency shits around availability of a toilet that isn't a fetid death trap. I always carry an extra pair of underwear and roll of toilet paper in my satchel. You just don't want to be stuck at work unprepared at 10 am after a messy shart. My underlings are crazy-hard workers, and they are going to eat the lunch of entry-level attorneys Stateside.
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# ? Sep 18, 2014 12:14 |
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Is there demand for expat IT works in India who also get paid North American IT rates?
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 11:21 |
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You seem like you're doing marginally better than the other dude on this thread who got "scammed" by an Indian guy who hired him as a personal trainer for a gym, also in Hyderabad or Pune or somewhere around there. That guy never posted back, so I guess he's rotting in an Indian jail now and his injured girlfriend probably died of sepsis in a hospital there. Every now and then I see a photo of India that I think "wow, that's stunning, I want to go there and see that" (like after watching The Fall), but then I look into it a little closer and it seems like everything is filled with misery and death, like time traveling back to Paris in the heights of the 1300s bubonic plague epidemic. The loving Ganges, man, I still get nightmares when I think about it. Edit: Now I can't stop reading about Ganges filth. From some random Indian blog / news site ( http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main53.asp?filename=Ne160612GANGA.asp ): quote:With the [Ganges] ferrying thousands of half-burnt corpses and animal carcasses, flesh-eating turtles were released to clean up the cesspool the river has become. But it didn't work. I'm not sure who thought that was a good idea -- flesh eating turtles? They might as well just dump a bunch of flesh eating bacteria into the river and cut straight to the chase. Double Edit: Christ apparently this was attempt #2. The first attempt was adding crocodiles to the river, but it turns out crocodiles don't eat carrion, so instead they were only attacking bathers and fishers. God dammit, every time I read about India, my perception of it gets worse and worse. Saladman fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Sep 20, 2014 |
# ? Sep 20, 2014 12:15 |
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Rick Deckard posted:Is there demand for expat IT works in India who also get paid North American IT rates? There are plenty of Indian IT techies. I'm an attorney for an outsourcer, and most of my work with involves contracts and speaking foreign languages with European clients. Most expats are involved in the IT sector, but not in techie roles. There are jobs for expats, but you need niche talent.
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 12:21 |
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Saladman posted:You seem like you're doing marginally better than the other dude on this thread who got "scammed" by an Indian guy who hired him as a personal trainer for a gym, also in Hyderabad or Pune or somewhere around there. That guy never posted back, so I guess he's rotting in an Indian jail now and his injured girlfriend probably died of sepsis in a hospital there. I corresponded with that guy. He hated it here, from his descriptions. He's back in the States, I hear. Expat scene is small and inbred, and everyone sees each other at Sunday brunch. It takes getting used to. I saw a guy with no legs hand-walking himself down the road on Friday. People live in shanties covered with blue tarps just outside my gate. Dust is everywhere, and turns my boogers black. It took me two months to get laid, and that was with another expat. Indian women can be smokingly hot, but you've really got work it with them. Expats who've had success talk about months, not weeks. The head-wagging thing is really endearing and infectious. Westernized Indians seem to be able embarrassed by it, but most foreigners pick it up. It means yes or do or excitement or just engagement. Locals LOVE to drink and get into fights. Hyderabad is 45% Muslim, but you'd never guess from all the wine shops. Head-wagging increases in direct proportion to alcohol consumtion. Nightlife is pretty sedate though. By 2am, your only choice for daru (Urdu for booze) if you run out is the Westin bar or a bootlegger. Feral dogs are omnipresent, some with rabies. Traffic is loving insane. Most cars and all auto rickshaws are dinged up from being bumped on the road. Every day I read in the paper about bus crashes (the driver always absconds).
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# ? Sep 20, 2014 12:37 |
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TheImmigrant posted:By 2am, your only choice for daru (Urdu for booze) if you run out is the Westin bar or a bootlegger. I think all the 5star hotel bars should be open, particularly Trident, Taj and ITC. Restaurants and bars which are not in hotels are required by law to close by a certain time. But you're right in general. Mumbai is the only city in India with a nightlife that compares to the west. And Goa I guess. Other places - everything is empty by midnight.
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# ? Sep 22, 2014 07:48 |
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Anarkii posted:I think all the 5star hotel bars should be open, particularly Trident, Taj and ITC. Restaurants and bars which are not in hotels are required by law to close by a certain time. But you're right in general. Mumbai is the only city in India with a nightlife that compares to the west. And Goa I guess. Other places - everything is empty by midnight. Westin is the only one here that's 24/7. Novotel's Pub stays open until 2:30 or 3, but that might be a result of lack of demand. People drink at home a lot. The wine shops are always a madhouse for the last 15 minutes before the 10:00 close.
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# ? Sep 22, 2014 10:19 |
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Yeah, I remember in Kolkata mostly seeing tons of creepy men-only alley pubs and the like. Most Westerners and young, affluent Indians drank at hotels, guesthouses or a handful of clubs. Have you been to the Northeast? It's totally great and unlike anywhere else.
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# ? Sep 22, 2014 23:49 |
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TheImmigrant posted:
Are you a sex tourist ? I'm kidding, but yeah it's pretty fun thread to read. So have you done any short haul hops around India for vacation? Oh and how's your internet speed? caberham fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Sep 24, 2014 |
# ? Sep 24, 2014 08:36 |
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caberham posted:Are you a sex tourist ? I'm here for work. Yeah, I spent a long weekend in Mumbai, and will be in Goa weekend after next for four days. I'm at home now, where I have excellent WiFi for a fraction of what Comcast charges back in the States. My office is within walking distance of offices for Google, Facebook, Dell, Oracle, and countless other tech companies, which love setting up back offices here. Those are the only places in the city that don't have frequent power cuts, since they run on their own generators 24/7. The compound where I live (it's literally a gated compound, with a shantytown immediately outside the wall) has good backup generators. Normally the city grid is down about four hours a day in any single area. Generators here pick up the slack, but there's always 10-12 seconds between an outage and generator pickup. If you're on a Skype call, you lose the connection. Edit: I guess I already said most of that.
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# ? Sep 24, 2014 19:38 |
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TheImmigrant posted:I'm here for work. Yeah, I spent a long weekend in Mumbai, and will be in Goa weekend after next for four days. I'm at home now, where I have excellent WiFi for a fraction of what Comcast charges back in the States. My office is within walking distance of offices for Google, Facebook, Dell, Oracle, and countless other tech companies, which love setting up back offices here. Those are the only places in the city that don't have frequent power cuts, since they run on their own generators 24/7. The compound where I live (it's literally a gated compound, with a shantytown immediately outside the wall) has good backup generators. Normally the city grid is down about four hours a day in any single area. Generators here pick up the slack, but there's always 10-12 seconds between an outage and generator pickup. If you're on a Skype call, you lose the connection. Do you ever do anything in town, or do you just go from work to home, where you get on your computer and play Minecraft (or whatever) for the rest of the evening? Would you actually recommend it? It sounds kind of like the "walled expat" experience that people get in Qatar or Saudi or [insert moderately-wealthy-but-still-third-world country here], but I guess you've only been there two months so it's all still new and interesting. How do you get groceries and etc, like if you needed to buy a drill bit could you just go and do it easily? It doesn't sound like you have a car or live near enough to walk to shopping areas, and I imagine public transit sounds pretty terrible for anything other than intercity travel (and even then...). Edit: Still no Google streetview anywhere in India? Get on that, Google. There are a lot of photos of Hyderabad, but like every single one in the city center is from the inside of some boutique shop. Saladman fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Sep 24, 2014 |
# ? Sep 24, 2014 19:44 |
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Saladman posted:How do you get groceries and etc, like if you needed to buy a drill bit could you just go and do it easily? It doesn't sound like you have a car or live near enough to walk to shopping areas, and I imagine public transit sounds pretty terrible for anything other than intercity travel (and even then...). Groceries are same as anywhere else - you can go to the big walmart-equivalent stores or your neighborhood grocer (probably not as an expat) or even better order whatever you want from http://www.bigbasket.com/ Public Transit is same as rest of SEA - Get a tuktuk for regular short distance stuff. If it's particularly long or late night/early morning, get a taxi. Buses run throughout the city, but wouldn't recommend to an expat. You can get up to 80Mbps at $50-60 a month which doesn't really drop more than once or twice a month. (I'm not the OP but I've lived in Hyderabad)
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# ? Sep 25, 2014 12:16 |
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Saladman posted:Do you ever do anything in town, or do you just go from work to home, where you get on your computer and play Minecraft (or whatever) for the rest of the evening? Would you actually recommend it? It sounds kind of like the "walled expat" experience that people get in Qatar or Saudi or [insert moderately-wealthy-but-still-third-world country here], but I guess you've only been there two months so it's all still new and interesting. I live in a gated compound, but everyone else here is middle-class or higher Indian, and I'm not isolated at all. There's a grocery store five minutes away on foot. Transportation is auto-rickshaw, which is the same as a tuk tuk. Socially, we (expat and local friends) go out drinking a lot, and smoke a lot of pot. We expats all have massive flats. I have a big-rear end swimming pool too. We tend to host local friends, who bring over booze and charras and food, since our places are usually better for hosting than our local peers'. Weekends, there are always after bar parties. We know local bootleggers who will deliver daru (booze) all night for a slight markup. It gets messy. I've been on the wagon for a couple of weeks, since things were getting messy. Not a bad lifestyle, once you get used to it. I've settled into a routine of gym-work-home. Replace home with bar, and that's the normal variant. Money is good, and saving is incredible.
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# ? Sep 25, 2014 17:48 |
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That sounds a lot better than I expected. A few good friends of mine went to Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and Cameroon after graduating college. Their local "friends" were "coworkers at the institute they saw a couple times at work social events" and everyone they actually hung out with were expat Anglophones. Everyone that went to teach English in a foreign country (China, South Korea, whatever) was like this too, maybe with one nominal local friend. I guess that Indians speak English natively is a huge benefit though, as far as meeting and befriending locals goes, since it's not like anyone is going to learn Amharic in two years.
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# ? Sep 25, 2014 19:01 |
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Have you been invited to any Indian weddings or local festivals? If you can post some pictures that will be ultra radSaladman posted:
That's interesting, I wonder if being in the Philippines is similar where everyone pretty much speaks English?
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# ? Sep 26, 2014 02:33 |
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Very few Indians speak English natively. Even Hindi is not native to this part of the country. I'm in the middle of the Telugu belt. Everyone with a university education knows English well. Everyone knows Hindi, although it's native for few people here. In Hyderabad, it's usually Telugu or Urdu > Hindi > English. You encounter a lot of people every day who speak little to no English. If you want to use auto-rickshaws (you do, because they are awesome), you'd best learn numbers and a few phrases of Hindi, or even better, Telugu. No weddings yet, although the festival for Ganesh lasted nine days and ended a couple of weeks ago. That was crazy - drum groups setting up everywhere, crazy kids dancing like they were batshit crazy at 3am, fireworks. It's never quiet here, ever.
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# ? Sep 26, 2014 03:43 |
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I still miss the food. That's about it though. I'm living next to the Bart rail in Oakland now and it's still a good deal less noisy than my Kolkata flat was any hour of the day. The whistle and walking staff foot patrols at night, hawkers in the morning, foot traffic and political noisemakers in the day, the noise never ceased. India is crazy.
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# ? Sep 26, 2014 10:57 |
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TheImmigrant posted:Very few Indians speak English natively. Even Hindi is not native to this part of the country. I'm in the middle of the Telugu belt. Sure, but it seems like the level of English is much higher than other South East Asian or Indian countries. Is English a lesser common language? Or do people just pick up the local language like Telugu? Post pictures too!
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# ? Sep 26, 2014 11:01 |
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caberham posted:Sure, but it seems like the level of English is much higher than other South East Asian or Indian countries. Is English a lesser common language? Or do people just pick up the local language like Telugu? English and Hindi are officially the national languages. I think there are about 16 official regional languages, like Telugu and Tamil and Bengali and Panjabi and Marathi. People have a mother tongue (which is sometimes Hindi), and study Hindi and English as well, if they go to school. Many auto-wallahs and vendors are poorly educated, and didn't have the chance to learn English. The professional class tends to code-switch between Hindi and English when talking amongst themselves. The auto-wallahs here speak Telugu to each other. The country is a linguist's paradise. English is everywhere though. Storefronts are probably 60% English, 40% Telugu here. Very little is signposted in Hindi, other than national banks and federal government buildings. Virtually no private businesses hhave Hindi signage. But yes, the level of English is much higher than in Thailand or Indonesia. Burma and Malaysia are comparable. It varies inside India too - Mumbaikars speak much better English than Hyderabadis.
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# ? Sep 26, 2014 11:17 |
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TheImmigrant posted:Very few Indians speak English natively. Yeah, I meant the type of Indians you'll actually meet and socialize with, not grocers who grew up on a farm. Not to be too classist, just that this is a big difference from say, West Africa where everyone will speak French natively and no one knows English (and yes, some other language as well) or wherever. IME all upper-middle and upper-class Indians speak English from a early childhood, since most if not all private schools (i.e. where wealthy people go) use English, or to a lesser extent French, as the primary language of instruction, or at least on-par with Hindi/Tamil/major local lingua franca. I have spent most of my adult life in a non-Anglophone country and have yet to meet an Indian who grew up there and does not speak very good/perfect English. I work at a tech school, so there are a lot of Indians. Saladman fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Sep 26, 2014 |
# ? Sep 26, 2014 11:29 |
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Saladman posted:Yeah, I meant the type of Indians you'll actually meet and socialize with, not grocers who grew up on a farm. Not to be too classist, just that this is a big difference from say, West Africa where everyone will speak French natively and no one knows English (and yes, some other language as well) or wherever. IME all upper-middle and upper-class Indians speak English from a early childhood, since most if not all private schools (i.e. where wealthy people go) use English, or to a lesser extent French, as the primary language of instruction, or at least on-par with Hindi/Tamil/major local lingua franca. My colleagues are all lawyers, so naturally they speak English well. They are not the majority though. The grocers and drivers I interact with every day rarely speak fluent English. I've been to Francophone Africa too, and French is more widespread there than English is here. Everyone in Senegal I encountered speaks French at a conversational level at least. Not the case with English in India. TheImmigrant fucked around with this message at 11:42 on Sep 26, 2014 |
# ? Sep 26, 2014 11:39 |
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I have say I'm extremely impressed by your picking up so much about terminology and nuances about various regional languages in just 2 months. For some reason, people like me who've been brought up with Indo-Aryan languages find it extremely difficult to learn a Dravidian language like Telugu or Tamil. I can fluently speak 4 different Indo-Aryan languages, and understand some more. But I find it easier to learn Italian/Spanish rather than one of the dravidian languages. Also more of you guys should visit India! While living in India is not for everyone and you might not want to deal with the chaos and corruption and general bullshit day to day, for a [male] tourist, it's an incredible country.
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# ? Sep 26, 2014 12:20 |
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Anarkii posted:I have say I'm extremely impressed by your picking up so much about terminology and nuances about various regional languages in just 2 months. I studied linguistics before law school. The first thing I did here was dive into the languages. The only place I've been as interesting from this perspective has been Indonesia. You're right about Dravidian languages. I don't find Hindi particularly difficult, but can't make sense of Telugu.
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# ? Sep 26, 2014 12:56 |
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Saladman posted:Yeah, I meant the type of Indians you'll actually meet and socialize with, not grocers who grew up on a farm. Not to be too classist, just that this is a big difference from say, West Africa where everyone will speak French natively and no one knows English (and yes, some other language as well) or wherever. IME all upper-middle and upper-class Indians speak English from a early childhood, since most if not all private schools (i.e. where wealthy people go) use English, or to a lesser extent French, as the primary language of instruction, or at least on-par with Hindi/Tamil/major local lingua franca. That's interesting; I have never met an Indian who was really "from" India and who spoke perfect English. I don't think I would ever confuse someone raised on the subcontinent with an American- or British-born and raised Indian in terms of their accent on their English, for example. edit: I should qualify since at least the OP is a linguist; I have met many Indians-from-India whose English was communicatively perfect but who had a thick accent and odd word choice at times.
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# ? Sep 26, 2014 18:20 |
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Mortley posted:edit: I should qualify since at least the OP is a linguist; I have met many Indians-from-India whose English was communicatively perfect but who had a thick accent and odd word choice at times. That's Hinglish. Usage here is unique in countless ways. E.g., 'timings' instead of 'schedule', 'loose motions' instead of 'diarrhea'. I'm satisfied that it's a true dialect in that they are consistent in Indian English. I've found myself picking up Hinglishisms already, like "arrey" and "yaar" and, when hassled by hijras in the street, "bahinchodh". Hinglish can be really difficult to understand at first. The cadence is the most foreign part of it. The accent comes easily enough with exposure, as does vocabulary. It's entirely possible to be fluent in English without ever leaving India, and this describes many Indians. Hinglish is a dialect in its own right though. There's a continuum between Hinglish and English here, and it's not entirely clear where you draw the line. My colleagues switch to more English when addressing me, and then in the next breath will speak Hinglish or straight Hindi with other Indian colleagues. Indians who have lived abroad often try to eliminate Hinglish from their accent, especially when speaking with British or Americans or people from other places in the Anglosphere. An RP British accent is still the favored one for those looking to shed the Indian accent.
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# ? Sep 26, 2014 18:55 |
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Oh cool a linguistics goon. If you ever want to go on a mini holiday, you send me a PM or drop a line in the China thread. We got a linguistics goon and a few law goons here in Hong Kong.Mortley posted:edit: I should qualify since at least the OP is a linguist; I have met many Indians-from-India whose English was communicatively perfect but who had a thick accent and odd word choice at times. Think that's just everyone not speaking their native language
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# ? Sep 27, 2014 13:02 |
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caberham posted:Oh cool a linguistics goon. If you ever want to go on a mini holiday, you send me a PM or drop a line in the China thread. We got a linguistics goon and a few law goons here in Hong Kong. Definitely. There's a long weekend in Hong Kong in my near future. Easy flight from the Hyd, and I haven't been in over a decade.
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# ? Sep 27, 2014 13:42 |
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Mortley posted:That's interesting; I have never met an Indian who was really "from" India and who spoke perfect English. I don't think I would ever confuse someone raised on the subcontinent with an American- or British-born and raised Indian in terms of their accent on their English, for example. No, I wouldn't confuse them either -- except maybe rarely for a Brit -- but most upper middle and upper class Indians speak "perfect" English as far as I'm concerned. Yeah they say a bunch of words differently and say "lakh" like nobody's business, but if I knock their language for that, I might as well knock British people for saying "aluminum" and "schedule" wrong, and their persistent misspelling of words like "gaol". Notwithstanding, I still consider most British (and even Australians) to have "perfect" English. There's a huge range of perfect, from some schmuck in Glasgow to Queen Elizabeth, so it could just be a difference in terminology, and my judging is probably wrong / lenient. Anyway interesting to know that random people don't speak English remotely as well as Francophone West/North Africans speak French, which in my moderately-limited tours of rural areas of countries there is that they speak French pretty drat well, except for women over about 60, since they were never permitted / never had the opportunity to go to school. Saladman fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Sep 27, 2014 |
# ? Sep 27, 2014 14:25 |
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Saladman posted:Anyway interesting to know that random people don't speak English remotely as well as Francophone West/North Africans speak French, which in my moderately-limited tours of rural areas of countries there is that they speak French pretty drat well, except for women over about 60, since they were never permitted / never had the opportunity to go to school. It's probably because the various native languages of West Africa are too scattered and obscure (and mostly unwritten) to form coherent economic blocs. There are 80+ million Telugu speakers in Andhra Pradesh and neighboring states, forming a sizable market in and of itself, and Telugu has been a literary language for at least a thousand years. Also, the British were not as linguistically chauvinistic as the French were during colonization.
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# ? Sep 27, 2014 16:14 |
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TheImmigrant posted:Also, the British were not as linguistically chauvinistic as the French were during colonization. This is definitely true. Even the English of a lot of the elite in Nigeria was especially poor and limited; this of course didn't hold up to anyone who had lived abroad. English skills deteriorated in a fairly steady way as you move north through the country, and middle-aged people from Kano had just about zero exposure to much English whatsoever.
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# ? Sep 27, 2014 18:04 |
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Today, I realized that it's a job to use shears and manually landscape the grass in office parks. I also saw it on the median in Madhapur Road.
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# ? Sep 27, 2014 18:25 |
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Probably much cheaper than buying a lawn mowing machine. Importing parts and maintenance can get tricky ? I don't know... And getting those lawn mower buggies? Yeah right, probably can hire 30 guys for a year
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# ? Sep 27, 2014 18:46 |
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caberham posted:Probably much cheaper than buying a lawn mowing machine. Importing parts and maintenance can get tricky ? I don't know... I'm sure Tata makes lawnmowers. The thing that keeps blowing my mind is how many make-work jobs there are here. The country has a massive supply of labor. My building has at least a half-dozen security guards on each floor. They hand-write entire log books for every employee - over a thousand - five days a week.
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# ? Sep 27, 2014 19:06 |
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I think the weirdest part of the day is when I leave the office to go home. The office is super-modern, with efficient air-conditioning. It runs on its own generator 24/7, in order to avoid gaps in power supply between when the city grid goes out and backup generator kicks in. Leaving the office, I go from a modern air-con building to the heat and exhaust fumes and chaos of urban India. Usually I walk next door to the grocery store for some fresh produce and breakfast* if I need it, and also to see if they have any meat treasures in the freezer. It's worth checking every day. Very occasionally, there'll be a treasure like bacon or boneless chicken breasts in the cooler, or cans of refried beans in the foreign goods aisle. Usually it's just garbage like breaded chicken nuggets. Then I step outside again, and find an auto-rickshaw to take me home. You always have to haggle with them. It's best to low-ball the auto-wallah - I start with 40 rupees ($0.65) for the 4km ride back to my flat. He'll counter, sometimes with something acceptable like 50-60 rupees; more often with something suck like 100 rupees. You have to be prepared to Just Walk Away. He'll almost always revise his offer to something more reasonable. Then I hop in, and off we go. The auto-rickshaws come in varying degrees of repair. Some can barely sputter up a hill; others are almost in racing condition. If I've been boozing, usually I'll stop at the wine shop (Hinglish for liquor store, which rarely sells much wine) for booze, where they greet me with "Arrey, Mister America!" Wine shops are pretty grubby, usually a shop with metal grill and lots of boozers milling around outside. The workers are always solicitous toward a gora waiting for booze, and tend to you quickly. Then I'll hop back in the auto, which I direct back to my flat. You have to navigate by landmarks here, as few of the streets have names, and auto-wallahs wouldn't recognize the names anyway. The most recognizable landmark is about 400m short of my flat. Often the auto-wallah will try to revise the price for the extra 400m. If he puts up a fight, I'll throw in an extra 10 rupees. Then I walk through the security gate into my compound, and the chaos is over. Until 9 or 10, there are usually a bunch of my neighbor women in saris watching their kids play in the small playground or kicking a soccer ball around or playing cricket. Sometimes I join in soccer. The kids love playing soccer with a big dumb gora, and speaking English with me. I'm kind of looking forward to getting a TV, so I can watch the local channels and passively absorb more Hindi. Also, I've found a good VPN for watching Netflix, and am tired of watching movies on my laptop. Electronics are quite expensive here. India doesn't make a lot of TVs or computers, and imports are hit with heavy duties. The HP three-in-one printer/scanner/fax that costs $100 at Target in the States is $150 here. A 40-inch flat screen TV is close to $1000 new, although there are lots of used sets you can buy from the local equivalent of Craigslist. *Breakfast is very different here. I'm used to granola and yogurt. The only granola you can find here is in the form of granola bars. Otherwise, muesli is the closest thing. Sometimes I stop at a street stand across from my office, where they have sambar (spicy vegetable chowder from southern India) and idli (puffed rice cakes), or dal and rice for $0.30. Dosa are great breakfast too - rice-flour crepes, often with coconut. I was eating sambar and idli for breakfast every morning the first month I was here. Then I took a trip to Mumbai, leaving on a 6am flight from Hyderabad. (The Indian airports I've seen are really modern.) I had sambar and idli from an airport restaurant. Halfway into the hourlong flight, I got Bad Stomach. On final approach to Mumbai, I gave myself a 1 in 3 chance of stepping off the plane without having poo poo my pants, it was that bad. Deplaning, it was the steps followed by bus to the terminal. I seriously contemplated stepping behind the landing gear and dropping rear end on the pavement, contemplating how likely arrest would be if I did that. Somehow, I made it onto the bus clenching my teeth, scuttled into the toilet in the terminal, and found salvation. Sometimes I think travel with a colostomy bag would be the safest way to get around in India. My gut pretty well accustomed to India now, but I'm always wary. Unfortunately, that is still something I associate strongly with sambar.
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# ? Sep 29, 2014 10:51 |
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Indian companies like Micromax are getting into electronics seriously lately. After their success with smartphones, they started producing no-frills 40" TV for around $400. But even with the big brands (LG, Samsung etc), don't purchase TVs at MRP. The "retailer's margin" is kinda open here. Sometimes they'll have a sale going, but even otherwise you should be able to get 20% off the listed price. And yeah, I love the new airports in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi. It makes international travel much less of a hassle. Not just the infrastructure, going through immigration queues used to be a nightmare with corrupt officials. Now it's pretty clean and relatively quick.
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# ? Sep 29, 2014 11:28 |
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Anarkii posted:Indian companies like Micromax are getting into electronics seriously lately. After their success with smartphones, they started producing no-frills 40" TV for around $400. Are you in India at the moment? Whereabouts? Plans for the long weekend coming up? I'm taking an overnight sleeper bus out to Goa. Flights are stupidly expensive - normally it's Rs. 6000 - this weekend it's 24,000.
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# ? Sep 29, 2014 11:38 |
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Yup I'm living in Bangalore now. Going to visit family for the long weekend. Had to book flights a month in advance to get them at a reasonable price.
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# ? Sep 29, 2014 11:48 |
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Anarkii posted:Yup I'm living in Bangalore now. Going to visit family for the long weekend. Had to book flights a month in advance to get them at a reasonable price. I've heard there are brewpubs in Bangalore serving Real Beer instead of this watery lager shite. I'd consider kicking a puppy for an IPA. Will be down there soon enough for a break from the Hyd. Sounds like it's doable on a regular weekend.
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# ? Sep 29, 2014 12:24 |
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# ? Apr 17, 2024 21:18 |
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Yeah the international pub+restaurant scene is far ahead in Bangalore. For microbreweries, Bangalore and Gurgaon (that place is a boring concrete shithole) are wheres it at. For global cuisine, Bangalore and Mumbai have it. The 3 best places for beer here imo are : Arbor Brewing Company, Windmill Craftworks and Toit. Sometimes there's events like pub crawls going on which take you to a few pubs with free cab rides with everything thrown in together for $20.
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# ? Oct 1, 2014 07:14 |