Location time

I went on to film with my collegue based in New Delhi. I don't know if I did the right things, but I surely did my best with the resources I have!

In the evening...

it started to rain again!

We went to treat ourselves with...

beef again! this time... a surloin steak!

Well, I did some work today, but now I'm back to where I have to fight with inefficiency... Gotta get more effective results next week!!

PS
After I returned home, I saw the latter half of the Celtics-Pistons Game... Oh, yeah, as all of you expected, including me, Boston won the series. I surely did not expect the Lakers to get to the finals, but now this combination is looking more like the old days, when I loved watching basketball the most!

is it a nightmare again!?

Ineffective week!

I admit I was some useless guy in the middle of anxiety and frustration.
Stressful this may be with all of these failure to get appointments and doing research! Was I just an unlucky guy or did I not do my best? I have no way of evaluating, as I have no way to find out if there were any other routes I could have taken this week...

I took a brief walk through the main street and had lunch at KFC...

hmm... a different menu with Japan...

a Zinger Meal with large fries and a large Pepsi for 119 Rs +tax

After lunch, I was taken to an upper grade mall and had some coffee.

At night, I got a little hungry and not skip dinner... I just walked to a small supermarket nearby...

The things I bought... and I munched on the cup noodles!


I had two of them as they were small in size...
but they were too spicy! why wouldn't they just sell the ones they do in Japan!?
uh... well they of course can't with the same price!

PS
A pic of the day in the city...

can't see these so much in IT cities!

Never the way we planned...

I realize that many things do not go the way we were planning. My collegues that work in the New Delhi Bureau just say that's just Indian. You have to be ready to take whatever is offered, and not whatever was planned. It's really hard to count on things, but that maybe just the Indian way.
Well, I'll try to do the best with whatever I have, and I hope it will do good on our documentary!

In the afternoon, I took a walk through the main road...






it's filled with trees and constructions! it's one of the most gifted areas of Bangalore and one of the fastest growing areas!

Moving...

After taking a walk through the central area of the city, I said good-bye and moved a bit to the suburbs to cut my expenses.

saying hello to Mahatma Gandhi's statue...

I wonder what he sees in this city of continuing growth being poured with wealth...

The business hotels near the old airport seemed reasonable in price and quality so I decided to stay here for a while. I don't have a bath tub, but the big bed was fine enough for me to have a comfortable sleep!

For dinner, I returned to the basics!

some Indian food!

Settled in the city...

There was not much to do without appointments, so I just fired many e-mails and did some talking on the phone hoping something good would happen. Of course with the fatigue and stress from yesterday's long way here, I had to take some rest.
I went for a walk in the city and without any guidance landed at a shopping mall...

a new one!

I tried to walk a little more, but once again...

rain!
I had to wait for it to stop along with my bypassers under the roof of the mall entrance!

I decided not to take any more chances and I went back to my hotel and waited to go out on a pleasant dinner!

For dinner...

I had beef! It's been quite a long time since I had beef to eat!

Well, I hope things get better... I hope!

Thrice in the IT City

In the evening, I flew once again to the south. This will be the third time to fly to Bangalore. It was different in many ways this time, as the plane did not fly for about two hours and I was stuck inside the plane at Delhi Airport.


it's not flying...

finally flying after two hours delay!

The flight was longer than usual probably because I saw some lightning ripping through the clouds and the ride from the airport to the central area of the city was longer because...


the NEW airport was far away!

Many of the passengers including me were lost when we landed on the airport and went to the international arrival area by a mistake... well there was no one to guide us to the right way so who would've made it to the right path?

we were all confused!

I finally made it to the hotel at around 11:35PM. We left Central New Delhi at around 3PM, so that's more than an 8 hour trip!

A day off...

I finally get a day off as the crew will have to fly back to States tonight and they decided not to film today with all the stores shut down at Old Delhi. They had to get to the airport at night, but after they were kicked out of the hotel at 3PM, rather than to pay 50% overcharge to stay in their rooms, they decided to see the city a bit more. Well, that's a great decision as it's always better to explore the area more when you're a filming crew!

We stopped by the Gandhi Smriti Museum...

where the Mahatma was shot 6 decades ago...


Mr.Gandhi!

And...

a lizard!

then we stopped by a big mall in the suburbs... people! people! people! they were just swarming the area! We all became tired not because of walking, but seeing so many people!

Big Bazaar was filled with people! buying power is unstoppable here!

Filming in Delhi!

In the morning it was time to see the governmental aspect of India. And in the afternoon it was about the business aspect. I'm here for so many days already in New Delhi and now I finally see some filming here...
But the filming is all the time not enough and I still have to do tremendous work to get something going on in this area... especially in the first aspect!

time for some pasta! having dinner at a continental restarurant...

we had some tasty "nabe" for lunch!

at... Ginza!?

Hmm...

I didn't really get what I wanted to this morning, and I'm disappointed that I couldn't fill in our filming schedule for Monday and Tuesday...
Oh, well I will meet my crew again tonight and I'll discuss my agony with them...
It wasn't raining today and it was warmer than yesterday. Is it going to return to that over 40 degree weather? It's always better not to have any precipitation when filming, but it's also painstaking to be in the middle of the glazing sun... oh, but many of our filming is done inside the building, so maybe it's not a great factor! Well, at least for our schedule on Saturday!


to the rural but rapidly developing part of Delhi...

Rainy and cloudy...

Today's newspaper reported that Delhi's day temperature on Wednesday was 25.2 degrees Celcius, which is 16 degrees below normal and cooler than Novemeber. They also said that there was 36.9mm of rain in 24 hours which would be moderate in Japan, but the second highest in a decade here in Delhi! India Meterological Department's forecast is that the four-five days from today will stay cool. That's great! But since my room is always too cool for me even without the air conditioner I can control by myself, so I don't really mind it being just a little bit warmer...
Going out to an appointment in the morning, I did realize it would be much cooler than I was here last time, even cooler than Bangalore!

and my appetite was there with some curry and chicken with sweet lassy!

Last night, I fell asleep while I had the TV channel set on the CL final between the two English teams at Moscow. Maybe I wasn't that interested with only English teams battling, and I saw the recorded version in the afternoon in my room... It was quite an exciting ending though there were some red and yellow cards given out near the end, spoiling an exciting match!

the man in Blue missed the game winner PK!
and once again I saw the red team capture a title!

I skipped dinner as I had enough in lunch and worked on the computer in my room... I'm getting a little bit tired, but thinking about my colleagues fighting with disasters in the eastern parts of Asia, I find nothing of what I'm doing now painful or miserable!

And back to the capital...

After having a meeting in the morning, it was time to leave a city with the nicest weather in India. Well, that's what I thought for now...


taking the Jet Airways flight for the first time!

When I arrived in Delhi, I was amazed of how moderate the temperature was! I was told that it was wildly raining for a couple of days after I left the over 40 degrees blazing city, and the temperature went down drastically... I was probably under 30 degrees and I was surprised how refreshing it felt!

I surely don't want any precipitation, but I'd like it to be cool like this while I stay... which I think will not happen!

In a rural village...

It was festival time in a rural village in the Tamil Nadu Province. They say it's time to interact with their God and many of the villagers were back from Chennai to enjoy their time together with their families.


a traditional ceremony at the temple

It was so hot to be shooting in this area as it was supposedly over 40 degrees... drinking water was all we could to keep us going and in the evening when the filming was over, everybody was exhausted.

in the city... the holy animal sits with grace...

We rode back to Bangalore taking four hours to see the lights of the big city again...

Oh boy was it like heaven when I had a cold beer and some continental food as this modernized restaurant!

A rural city...

We were having some trouble with the hotel as we decided to leave a day short in the city, but they were quite grumpy... oh, why do they get so unkind when they realize they'd not earn more... well, maybe that's why it's only a three star hotel...

It was crazily hot, and with the electricity out briefly in the morning, it made it worse...

We went on the filming, and I also saw the panoramic view of the city for the first time!

a rural city, closer to Chennai than to Bangalore...

We had lunch and dinner in the city, but it wasn't that bad... but I surely think it would be impossible for me to eat this everyday!

Back again to the countryside!

Packing up till 2AM, it was quite hard for me to wake up, but sleeping till the last moment, I had enough time to take a breath at the airport...

Of course the lesser traffic and lesser fliers around were a great help.

saying bye-bye to New Delhi...

using Kingfisher once again!

After landing in Bangalore, we rode off to the rural area where I visited on the 7th, riding a long 4 hours with the filming crew.

in the countryside...

Arriving at the hotel... we tried to eat some dinner, but there was no one around and we had to wait in vain... we gave up and went out to get some food.

having beer and some Chinese kind of food!

It wasn't that relaxing at the hotel... of course it's not a five star lodge!
But at least it has air-conditioning... but without internets in the room!? Oh, this is a big lifeline trouble!

I was accompanied by a creature though!

We stepped by a small supermarket nearby...

just a regular supermarket... but impressive to find one in a rural city like this!

wow... Cup Noodles!

this looks familiar!

and these too!

and these are what I bought!

(P.S. I saw the results of the Victoria Mile(GI) on the computer which Japanese was not readable or writable on May 19th. I also saw the video replay on JRA's website on the 20th when I got to Bangalore. It's really sad to see Vodka could not wrap up her first victory in almost a year... she was the fastest runner in the last 3 furlongs, but that was not enough... and now everybody is saying she is not a superfilly, but a normal GI level filly... oh, they'll see that's not true someday!)