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).
Less than two weeks in, ten of us went on a work trip to Konkan which is south of Mumbai and close to Goa. It is coastal with a simple rural life.
On the 11th of July (2006) I planned to use the Mumbai metro to go to another suburb to view a possible rental property. I just left the office and people from work spotted me (not hard) and advised me of multiple train bombings. Sadly, seven bombs went off and luckily, I did not use the trains in the end. I went straight back to my hotel as they said a curfew could be implemented.
The city and work continued the next day (a resilient city). Work was decent and I learnt a lot. However, there was a problem. The initial culture shock got to me a bit and secondly: I was spending about three times my daily salary! Imagine earning £100/day and spending £300/day. After some consideration I submitted my notice and worked less than my initial six-month contract.
At the weekends I used to explore the city, fly or bus it to: Pune & Bangalore to visit ex-colleagues from M&S. On one weekend my friend flew over from London to visit me & India. We went to Elephanta Island which is a few kilometres away by boat from the Gateway of India. The small island has a few caves on it which are Buddhist and very old.
After visiting the caves, we went to another corner of the island and went to explore WW2 bunkers which I love. I went down some stairs alone into the bunker and something tapped me 2-3 times. I ignored it and on a harder tap I turned round and saw an adult monkey charging at me! Quickly I ran up the stairs, up the hill away from it and by chance threw a 500ml Miranda bottle at it to scare it.
Little did I know it wanted the bottle to drink. After it fled to go to a tree to feed its baby the drink – yes, it opened the bottle and gave some to its baby. I looked at my arm and there were scratches on it. My theory is the scratches were from brushing past an object rather than the monkey. We left the island and that evening or the next morning I visited a local clinic. The doctor cleaned the wound, gave me a prescription and at the local pharmacy bought a tetanus & rabies shot.
Yes, without or without a prescription you can buy vaccines without any questions. I had the tetanus shot which messed my head up for the night and every few weeks another rabies shot. The silly monkey cost me £50-£100 in medical fees and many doctors’ visits after. This was not the only funny story. It was monsoon season which means the roads turn into rivers.
Normally it takes five minutes to walk to work and, on this day, it took 25 minutes. Why? The road was now a river of 2-3ft flowing water. When I finally got to work soaked the office was mostly empty with no power or net. I left, walked to my local shopping mall to spend the day.
After finishing up working in the suburbs of Mumbai I travelled around India, spent ten days in the amazing Andaman Islands (Indian territory), ten days in Nepal, a day in Bhutan, more time in India and returned to London in 2007.
The conclusion of part six? Even though I did not work very long in the job it taught me about Joomla! and gave me an excuse to travel.
End of part six!