First Day in India

I made it!
After all my Visa trouble and a deserved vacation in France, I finally set foot on Indian soil early this morning. My first impression of India was the airport. Wow, can you say efficiency! My flight landed at 12:35 AM, we got to the gate at 12:40, I got off the plane at 12:45, went through immigration and health control at 12:50, got my suitecases and went through customs at 12:55 and at 1:00 I was in the car riding to my new abode in Bangalore. Let's talk about the drive for a minute. I had heard about the drive so I decided to be brave and sit the the passenger seat up front (which is the front LEFT seat in India!). It was interesting, but not as interesting as my ride back from work tonight. It is chaotic driving, pure and simple.Immagine trucks, tractors, cars, rickshaw (I'll explain this one in a later post), bikes, motocycles, and pedestrian trying to share a road without lines (or rules it seems!). There is a lot of honking going on and a lot of cose calls. Interestingly enough, our driver's car doesn't have one scratch. I think he probably was a stunt driver in Bollywood at some point because he passes everybody without touching anybody, just like a Fast and the Furious, James Bond, or Jason Bourne. I'll have to document this at some point.
So after couple hours of sleep I got woken up by the neighbor's phone @ 6 AM(thin walls!) and got ready for work. I was so excited to finally meet the people I've been workig with for the past couple months. They are all very nice people. I got to meet Shashi, Bavesh, and KK (the 3 names I remember) and the whole floor (that's about 100 people, with names that I'm not used to hear so It'll take time). I also met Bryony from London this morning in the car ride. She's doing UK taxes for the next 3 months and landed about 2 days before me so she knows way more than I do already (supermarket, bank, atm, etc...) and since everyone from KPMG US has left, she'll show me the ropes for the next day or so and I don't have too feel too left out.
I ate lunch at the cafeteria today with people from my team. I ate real indian food. It wasn't bad for cafetaria food, and seemed pretty healthy (no meat here!), but it was HOT. My nose started perling after just a couple bites. I bet I gave a laugh to quite a few locals who could spot the steam coming off my head! I should have stayed away from that red stuff!
Nonetheless, it was a good day. I need to got to the grocery store tonight to get some supplies and some food. I need to start taking pictures!