L'inde

L’Inde

In New Delhi I arrived a few days ago. Talk about culture shock…I was warned prior to arrival but you never know a place until you get there.  There are about 17 million people that live here. 17 MILLION!!!! In one city!!! It’s very overwhelming.  There are cars, tuk tuks, buses and motorcycles everywhere and at every hour. And the garbage? It’s pretty bad..o.k. very bad…I’ve never seen anything like this.  It’s incredibly hot, about 15 degrees hotter than Thailand and I thought that was hot. I am at risk of passing out in a moment’s notice.   Luckily, I’m mostly in an office working on a potential project for Conserve India www.conserveindia.org  I had to sign a confidentially agreement so I can’t divulge any details but it’s pretty cool stuff that will help alleviate environmental waste.  If you know my uncle John, he makes these as a hobby ;) It’s about picking those up and converting the material into other stuff.  My job is to create the business plan to start the first project of this kind in India.  Quite exhilarating and easily replicable.  I’m staying in the home of the founders, where there is a young male housekeeper who is training for the army and does all the cooking and cleaning.  Things could be worse… I share a room with a French intern, Noeline, who’s from the same town where I studied French! We get along great.  She studied design, so she’s here working on creating new products for the company.  The other day she took me to her friend’s apartment where we had dinner.  This required us to take the subway.  Again, people everywhere…it’s too much. Procreation should be curbed here, really. We had to go through security prior to entering the station and when the guard saw that Noeline and I had two big bottles of beer stashed in her bag he smiled and we laughed, so he let us go.  I’m not sure what the statistics are but it seems there are many more men than there are women.  Fortunately, there’s a separate car for women where men cannot enter.  Trust me, you don’t want them to.  I went to the factory today where I was able to see the products and meet other interns from Singapore.  We all are here with different interests but for the same reason, to learn.  So far so good, I’ll be here in total for about a month. We’ll see where Indian life takes me.