Survived the first week!

First week passed and I am still alive!

Now it feels like I got the hang of the life over here. Work is going good, getting back and forth from work is no problem, I have gotten into things socially, and you know what? I have found the supermarket! Below is my first complete self cooked meal!

I don't know how you think it looks, but I think it looks great! I have to admit it did not taste super well though, since it was way too spicy! Funny that first time I thought the food was too spicy in India was when I cooked it myself... For the connoisseurs out there that are wondering what this is I am happy to anounce that I will share the secret for free. It is instant noodles with fresh onions, tomatos, chilies, and..... a lot of spices. Stay in tune for next week's master piece.

The only thing that makes me feel a bit out of place at the moment is getting around the city. To get somewhere I need to use the auto rickshaws, and I don't know what to find where, or how the things are connecting. It might sound expensive to use taxi everytime you want to go somewhere, but it is not that bad. If you spend 2 minutes bargaining it is no problem to get the price down from 100 rupees to 50 rupees. (14 SEK to 7 SEK for you Swede's) It is funny that if you are 6 people going somewhere you can get quite far for 1 SEK each! I am considering getting an Indian drivers licence for motorbike and to buy one, since it would add so much freedom to be able to get around by myself without having to bargain with drivers thinking I am a tourist.

Since I, as most people here, am working Saturdays today was the first day off. For most of the day me and a guy I met from Norway, Preben, went for some sightseeing. We went to the fortresses Amber and Jaigahr. They were HUGE and were built in the 16th century or so. Besides getting to see some marvelous architecture we got to see things such as the worlds largest cannon on wheels, and water tanks built 400-500 years ago gathering 2.2 million litres of rain water through an advanced gathering system in the mountain.

Amber fort from a bottom view

The inner courtyard 1

The inner courtyard 2

Sitting in a window in another courtyard

 Picture of Amber fort taken from Jaigarh fort

Standing on the top of the top!

The largest cannon on wheels in the world. The barrel is 6 meters long, it weighs 50 tons and is charged with 100 kg gunpowder and 50 kg bullets. I wonder what you shoot at from the top of a mountain with that! Ever heard about the saying 'Shooting mosquitos with cannons'?

After the sightseeing we went to play some football; interns vs locals. We won with 5-0 and I was the goal keeper of the second half! :)

The winning team!

Two of my flatmates, Daike and Keite from Japan (Sorry for spelling guys!)

All in all it has been a great week. At work I have been to a big amount of sales meetings. Two of them was a bit outside the city, and on the way there I saw 34 elephants! It got me wondering why you have an elephant to ride on when you can fit as much people on a horse. I guess the elephants is India's answer to USA's SUV's!

Now I am starting to feel that I understand the products we are marketing and that I could start to sell by myself soon. One meeting was quite scary though. After having followed to 10 meetings or so (9 in Hindi) and having had no time to read about any detailed information about our solutions I was asked 15 seconds before entering the meeting if I would like to hold the meeting. It was a very important meeting since selling there would be a good reference and give us much credibility. Of course I said no thanks! Then my colleague introduced me as an R&D (Research and Development) expert from Sweden. That wasn't a literal lie depending on the interpretation since I do market research, and business development, but we were meeting the chief engineer and the intention was to give the impression that I was a technical person. Guess if I had to do everything I could to avoid technical discussions! I should get an Oscar for my act of being a confused technical foreigner with a hard time to communicate properly in English and a hard time to cope with the heat.

This was a great week, so I cannot wait to start the second one tomorrow!