About me within India 2 of 2: my second real job begins along with funny stories - thank you Prasad!

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Published: 03 May 2022

I will start off with a warning again, which is in part one (paragraph one) as well. Young folk, if you are reading this, do not go into a job interview talking like this article.

My first day of the new job went well and I made a new friend called Prasad. What did the job entail? Website administration. A bit of security, patching, backups, adding new content, adding new modules to Joomla! CMS and statistics. The job taught me Joomla which I continue to use 16 years later. In the evening I went out to a nearby large Western shopping mall with Prasad.

After a few days I moved out of the cricket club to a hotel which was a five-minute walk from the office. Next week I registered my work visa at the ex-colonial police station in the centre of Mumbai. One evening I watched a Bollywood film called Krish which was great even though I could not understand ¾ of it. Bollywood films are all a confused mix of English-Hindi (Hinglish).

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Armenia

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Published: 04 April 2022

Personal recent travel review with pictures and well researched itinerary of the east.
Having been to 65 countries with repeat visits in four continents, Armenia is one of the few places I know little about. Last year, Armenia was in the news for negative reasons though these days it is peaceful. All I knew before is there was a skirmish last year, the Kartrashians (aka. Kardashians) kind of come from there (in the present day, 21st century, the village is in the bordering country of Turkey) and of course the moving genocide of over 100+ years back.

Ask anyone where is Armenia and they would struggle to find it on a map. They will also say, is that Europe, Asia or an area between Europe & Asia. According to most sources it is in West Asia and most of the Middle East is in West Asia also. It borders Iran, Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan. It has no sea unlike other countries nearby - the “glorified lakes” of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea.

Very first impressions - do not judge a book by its cover! We flew into Yerevan airport and after getting our luggage, going through immigration, getting cash out of an ATM, getting a SIM and going through a light Corona check (vaccine cert needed only, not a PCR) loads of men were harassing us for a taxi. This is like what happens in Egypt, the non-Gulf Middle East and parts of Asia. We wrongly assumed the people were money grabbing - how very wrong we were.

Armenia like most of the ex-USSR (The Baltics cares more) does not care too much about Corona. No PCR or rapid test is needed to enter at the border. Very seldomly will a restaurant ask to see your vaccine certificate and masks are seriously optional. No restrictions were visible during our visit and even cops in the airport did not wear a mask. In some ways it is nice to get away from the restrictions and constant media coverage.

We left the airport in a large taxi which cost well under £10 to get to the edge of the city centre where we stayed in a decent apartment costing about £100/week. Taxis are super cheap and cost £1-3 to get anywhere, even the airport in a standard sized taxi. The currency is very weak - £1 is 600 Drams. Everything in the country is very fairly priced: museums, hotels, shops and restaurants.

After dropping off our luggage we headed out for a walk. Nearby is the impressive and possibly only (Shia) mosque in Armenia. Not far from there we walked through Republic Sq., past the Opera House and to the Cascade. At the top of the hill to the right is the Motherland Statue which is similar to the one in Kiev - Soviet origin of course. Dinner was local food which is similar to the rest of the USSR, especially Georgia and it defiantly has an Eastern flare.

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About me within India 1 of 2: the culture shock begins in a very foreign land - thank you again Sunil!

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Published: 03 March 2022

I will start off with a warning again, which is in part one (paragraph one) as well. Young folk, if you are reading this, do not go into a job interview talking like this article.

One or two weeks’ notice remained and during that time I did handovers, leaving drinks, packing, research, flight booking and vaccines at my local GP clinic. The day came, my parents drove me to the airport, I checked in to the plane, said goodbye and boarded a flight to an incredible & long solo journey.

Before going to India, at nearly twenty years old I have been to Morocco for a day, a month in different part of South Africa and the rest around different parts of Europe. “Incredible India!” as it’s tag line goes is “Incredibly Different!” to all of the other places I have been to. From a poverty, population and cultural point of view.

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