Friendly People

I personally feel that Indian people are very friendly. I can easily get help for direction every where as long as they know what I’m talking about and I know what they talking about. We meet some Indian friends at my training there as well. I can said all of them are very friendly and helpful, I really enjoy the time with them. India celebrate a festival call Holi where people throw colored powder or colored water on each others and have fun together without the barrier of different races among each others. This prove that India is a friendly place.

Veg Every Corner

Can you imagine KFC offer veg burger? Yes, this exist in India! Vegetarian food is everywhere. One of my friend who is vegetarian was so excited because vegetarian food is kind of rare at Malaysia. I become a 80% vegetarian at India because my company don’t always offer non-veg food and even they does on that day, it only have one single choice while all other are veg food. I think I eat very healthy at there.

Coffee Time

There are no StarBuck or Coffee Bean at India, but there have Coffee Day. The coffee at Coffee Day are consider good enough for me and it is cheap! One coffee at StarBuck in Malaysia, I can bought 2+ coffee at Coffee Day. A cold coffee at there is really a good fresh up after a hot day or stressful day. We do visit Barista coffee shop too, but that one is way too expansive for us (More expansive than StarBuck if you count the quantity). I don’t think I can visit coffee shop that often back into Malaysia any more.

Real Fast Food Drive Through

I guess most peoples have an experience of buying fast food through drive through like Mcd, but have you ever see a service that you order your food and they serve your meal all at your lovely car without need to move a step? I found this in Bangalore where they serve your food while you are still in your car. Not just food, they provide you the “table” as well, a long wooden wood that go through both side windows. Amazing huh? I don’t have a car there, so I can’t really experience that myself.

Traffic Universal Language – Honk

At Malaysia, honk is a way to scold others on the road. At India, honk is apply in every situations. Honk replace left right signal light. Driver honk whenever they reach a junction or they want to turn left or right, they are trying to remind other cars around to becareful. Even when I walk on the roadside, if I’m too near the road, the car will start reminding me not to cross the road with honk. No one will get boring on the road with all the honk. Surprisingly with all the crazy traffic and super driving technique of driver, I did not see accident there. Driver at India really train well.

Earth Hour Everyday

Blackout is something so common in my daily life at India. At least 2 times per day and it last for an hour. Lucky our guest house have a powerful power generator that can power up most of the electrical devices except those high power consumption devices, thus the one hour blackout is not much a problem for me. Handphone LED light always come into handy when blackout at night time while waiting for the power generator to boot up.

Foreigner Registration Office (FRO) Terrible Experience

Every foreigner who want to stay more than 14 days at India must register themselves at FRO, this go the same for me. Me and my friends went to FRO at afternoon for the first time, register ourselves at the security check point and found out the FRO only open at morning and close registration at afternoon. So, we went there for the second time the next day and queue up for more than 2 hours early in the morning. There are less than 50 peoples register there yet take so long time. When we almost reach the gate, one of the officer approach us and told us our form is outdated, please use the latest version. After we fill everything in the new form, the officer told us the registration is close, please come back next time. Great, what we can do except come back again next time?

We make full preparation and went to FRO for the third time. After queuing up for more than an hour, we successfully enter into the office for the first time (Yes, for the first two time, we are standing outside of the office only). When the officer at the counter half way go through all the documents we submitted, he voice out and ask us what is “IAMRL” written in our VISA. Well, they never told us what will written on our VISA when we apply right? So we have a guess and said it is Internship at Microsoft Research Lab. The officer don’t want to believe (maybe he choose not to listen) and call us came back with the letter that prove what is the 5 characters all about. That drive us crazy, after calling this and that, running here and that, queuing again and another 1 hour more, they finally believe it.

After that, the next counter question why we went there with VISA type X. Man, High Commission of India at Malaysia give us this, how I suppose to know then! After some great long explanation and confirmation, that counter only approve our application and went for process. While waiting for the validation process, I saw others whom went there with an agent and with the outdated form application process without any problems at all. I guess something going under table huh? After all those trouble, I really don’t wish to visit FRO any more…

There are just too many stories I want to share but this are the one I can think of now. I enjoy the weather, the people and the food (some time) but not really for the government service.

by Ooi Keng Siang