i've just gotten back from my first chance to explore hyderabad (more about that later...much later) and am back in my room watching olympic swimming...as mentioned in the previous post...this post will focus primarily on driving in hyderabad...thankfully...we have a team of drivers at our beck and call so we don't need to drive ourselves...unfortunately...there's absolutely nothing of interest in the area surrounding the google offices and the city center is a 20 minute drive from where we are...
as a passenger in hyderabad...you notice early on that the indian government could've saved themselves potentially millions of dollars by not painting lines on the roads because nobody pays any attention to them anyway...lanes are entirely negotiable...between the cars...the auto-rickshaws (tuk tuks in thailand) with anywhere from 2 to 15 people (and sometimes furniture) in them and motorcycles with families of 5 making like chinese acrobats...traffic in hyderbad is a ballet...nay...modern interpretive dance of metal sheathed combustion to a symphony of randomly honking horns...one would think that there would be a plethora of accidents...but surprisingly we have seen very few...as one of our drivers said...all you need to drive in hyderabad is good brakes...a good horn...and good luck...
the skill of our drivers became readily apparent yesterday...its has been raining non-stop here since friday afternoon...and i'm not talking cats and dogs...i'm talking water buffalo and camels...needless to say the aqueducts in rome make for a much more sophisticated water system than india has...within the first day of the mini-monsoon-like downpour...the roads were completely flooded...ken (another googler from the other project) and i couldn't do the sightseeing we had hoped to do on saturday so after a half day at work we went into town to check out "the mall"...during the drive to "the mall" we had to traverse rip roaring rapids in our nissan sentra...oftentimes...the water was fender high and it didn't feel like the rubber was actually making contact with the asphalt...only on one occasion did our driver sayeed (who was impressed that i knew how to spell his name) falter...but with a "let's go for it" we plunged ahead...ken and i had gotten sayeed engrossed in conversation so he missed the turn...in hyderabad...missing a turn can tack on at least another half an hour especially with flooded roads...he took us through the back roads which turned to be similar to driving through rural areas of west virginia...plantation house...shack...plantation house...shack...plantation house...you get the picture...after about ten minutes of this...we rounded a corner only to find a felled tree...gandalf-like...silently saying "you shall not pass"...he decided to change route yet again...but this time we were on the wrong side of the road to be dropped off at the front door...ken and i told sayeed...hell...we can walk from here...we only have to cross the street...oh from the mouths of babes...aside from having to walk through ankle deep water (which was actually rushing down the street at high velocity) we also had to do our best impression of the hyderabady shuffle...these involves crossing the street in a herky-jerky fashion with an outstretched hand aimed at the oncoming traffic as the only shield between you and certain injury...we were able to dodge the squeaky braked buses and psychotic auto-rick drivers long enough to get to the mall...i won't bore you with the mall...but the reader's digest version is large...loud (especially with the heavily english accented woman telling shoppers that they only had 12 minutes to take advantage of whatever buy 2 get 2 free specials that were being offered) and claustrophobic...i couldn't wait to get out...
that evening...an hour after a snafu between myself and the transpo coordinator ismael about when we wanted to get picked up to go out for dinner...we found out from ismael that it was too dangerous to be on the roads and he was calling his drivers back...this left all of us essentially stranded and not looking forward to a dinner of pringles...oreos...and pb and j...the closest restaurant to our compound was a little over 2 miles away...certainly not walking distance in what was now knee high water in parts...luckily...another googler was being brought home from a day of sightseeing and could swing by the restaurant on his way back...jihad (a particularly unforunate name to have considering the current political climate in the u.s. and in india) phoned our order into a proprietor who was becoming increasingly doubtful (as evidenced by his repetitive call backs confirming that someone was going to pick up the food)...as promised frankie picked up the food and arrived with sustenance and a 12 pack of 24 oz. budweisers (which the restaurant had wrapped in foil to keep cold)...after dinner...jihad suggested that we watch his...shall we say "back up copy" of harold and kumar go to guantamo bay...instead of starting the film like a normal dvd would...it opened a screen of subfolders containing...shall we say photos of intimate interracial relations...needless to say we had a great laugh at jihad's expense and his none-too-believable explanation that it was his "friend's copy"...
that concludes part two of our programming...stay tuned for part three...pleasant dreams...
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