Roaming in India : Part IV - India in a Nutshell (No. 15 - 14)

There ya go. India in a nutshell. Imaginative leh!!

Hehe, just being a little crappy, can? :P

Besides, at least now you know how the India flag looks like haha..

To be honest, I can put pictures of a flag, a map, the prime minister, a Bollywood star, a piece of poop, or all the richest men in India, but one thing's for certain.

India is the next best thing when it comes to economic power.

It's got good natural resources, growing domestic demand, growing export & import and most attractive is the low cost of labour. Employees are so, unbelievably Cheap.

For an engineer like myself, where I could command a salary between RM3500-5000 in M'sia, I would only be worth RM800 in India. I'm completely serious.

RM 800 wah. Pay for my car instalment and I need to eat grass for the whole month! -__-

Hahaha, economics aside, what am I doing in this apparently no-man's land?

In a nutshell again, I'm basically a salesguy that sells shafts/equipments used in steel mills. My shafts are long, hard and very strong manufactured in China and the company I work for is responsible to market these products in India. So I get sent here to visit existing and potential customers. Sometimes I wonder why we can't be selling stuff to US / Europe / somewhere more exotic aih. But then, complaining is not my style! ;)

So. I'll give you a nice big pic to summarize what I've been up to in Bollyland!

 

Hehe I realize it's quite a big bunch of pics after compiling it so what I'm gona do to make it a much better read instead of going on a day-by-day basis is this..

The Top 15 Things You May NOT Know about India!

(Cool? Read on! )

 15.  The Chun New Airports!

There's been a lot of movement in the Indian airways. I tell you..these new airports are sprouting as quickly as Oldtown Kopitiam!

This is Nagpur Airport when I came in April 2007.

Quite honestly, I was REMORSEFUL that I even left my beloved KL to come to this crazy place. Like, what in the world were my bosses thinking?? No, not remorseful, Devastated is a better word lol. Exaggerating? Try going there in summer @ 45 degrees and see how much of your brain gets baked to think straight! Hehe. Here's my Dad and the local Indian dude who was travelling with me at that time, also taken outside the same airport.

 

At that time, the only impression the airports gave me were that they were like big Bus Terminals -__-

So this is what happened to the same Airport during my recent visit, same arrival area.

 

 

Something like Xiaxue Before and After Photoshop. Except that much less Photoshop was needed for the airports.

Nagpur A/P is not the only one that was given this massive makeover.

Pune Airport looks like this now..

 

 

 

 

 

Mumbai Airport..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bangalore Airport... (more in my earlier post)

 

I even heard Hyderabad Airport was nicer than Bangalore Airport. Wah as if this one not nice enough meh??

If you're wondering where all the produced steel goes, now you know!

 

14.  Airport security is tighter than a baby's arse

 

This was a picture taken earlier in April I didn't blog about. Don't ask me, I've no idea what's with this huge convoy of soldiers! Maybe they were expecting some guerilla attack or something. Not very smart to group the infantry like this though, one medium-sized bomb is all it takes to convert them all to Tandoori Chicken.

In what way is security tight at the airport?

From reaching the airport to take off:

(1)  Your ticket is checked right at the entrance of the airport.

(2)  Only passengers are allowed to enter the airport. Friends and relatives can only wave from outside the dirty glass. Trespassers will be shot on sight. (OK, this one kidding haha).

(2.1)  Friends / relatives / passengers have to pay Rs30 (RM 2.50) to enter a waiting lounge that's outside of the Delhi airport. No kidding.

(3)  Check-in luggage has to be scanned and bound with medium-duty plastic tape before check-in.

(4)  If the weight limit per bag is 34 kg, you're not allowed to check in a bag that's 34.2kg. This one damn frustrating lor. Have to open my bag and repack all my tai-fu in front of everyone. (How many tai-fu I need to take out to reach 200 gram lah u tell me?) Bags above 25kg will get a tag like this:

(5)  You're not allowed to carry more than one Hand Luggage. I made this one mistake last year and I had to compress my small backpack into my laptop bag to make it 'ONE hand-luggage'. Sei mei.

(6)  Next, you tie a little tag to all hand-luggage.

(6)  Another ticket + passport check before entering Security-Check. Here you're scanned for water bottles which you have to throw or finish the contents on the spot before proceeding.

(7)  Security-Check, my favorite part! Being a seasoned traveller here (chehhh), I'm all prepared. The metal scanners here are ULTRA-sensitive and will 'BEEP' at anything with more than 10 molecules of ferrous material. My god, even my chewing gum with the foil backing gets a resounding BEEP. So what do I do? Chuck ALL the items on my body (2phones,camera,pen,ipod,wallet,keys) into my bag and send it thru the scanner machine. My body check still gets a BEEP though, from my belt buckle and even the RIVETS on my jeans. But after I get di-raba by the officers and get through, I watch with evil glee as other less-experienced travellers get the BEEP over and over again. Buahaha.

(8) At this point, your boarding pass and little tag on your bag should be chopped, if not you have to go back through security check again.

(9) Once you're at the boarding gate (congrats!), you can listen to your favorite Hindi song at the 'music station'.

(10)  One more final check on your boarding pass and bag-tag just before boarding the bus to the plane.

(11)  It's usually just before take off when I get the urge to take a good long piss, especially if I didn't wana waste my water and finished it at the security checks earlier on. So yes, go to the washroom asap!

(12) Once you're done..finally you can relax! INDIGO airways (no-frill airline) planes are good! Comfortable seats and pleasant design =). If you're interested, here's the contact yo!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok, time to sleep now..No. 13 to No.1 will be up next =) I may insert other posts in between..but no worries, they'll all come eventually! =)

Cheers!
-EVo-