bird watching

This morning we had to get up quite early...to go bird watching. "Quite early" means in India any time between 6 and 8. If you're supposed to meet at 8 and you say "eight-ish" means, you are still in time at around 9 :-)
Even though I am not the person who is always in time - this is really hard sometimes. So we left the hotel this morning at "sevenish" (7:55h) and went to a bird watching place. After the noisy traffic here all over the city - a very peaceful place to watch animals. [I was quite scared when we saw a snake like 1,5m long lying on the street...but I did very well, didn't shout or anything and went bravly straight. I am sooo proud].

  Afterwards we made a short stop-over at the ocean.,,but didn't swim.

@ the ocean

Tonight we'll go to a bollywood movie "chennai express" in hindi - no subtitles. So I'm curious how much I'll understand!

The ladies with bollywood's Tom Cruise: Shahrukh Khan

 
 ...and afterwards to dinner at the spiciest restaurant in town :-)

First open-air dinner

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Traditional Market & Dinner with client

Saturday, 17.08.2013 (later post due to unstable internet connection)

This morning we went to the traditional market by rikshaw. Since Jamnagar is not very touristic place, people are not used to see western looking people that often here. So the market was a great attraction to us - we have been the attraction for the Jamnagar people :-)
Very impressing are the traditional, colourful clothes...we went in one shop and got almost crazy about shopping there...

fruit selling

bamboo handling

traditional indian clothes shopping

 After an relaxing afternoon, the client invited us to dinner to the "oil club" a hotel close to the Essar plant. Since almost everybody of the IBM team struggles with the spice here...the chef made a very delicious non-spicy dish :-)

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School visits & interviews

 Today we went to two governmental village schools, to do some interviews with the headmaster, the (english) teachers and the children. The children have been so nice, cute and curious - but by the time they could have asked us something, they were just too shy :-)
But still, data gathering has now started! It has been proven and tested that Candys and Sweets are a very useful icebreaker :-)

Even though our client works on saturdays we are luckily allowed to stay off on saturdays :-)
So tomorrow we gonna go to the market and meet in the evening for dinner with the client again. Saturday night party...yeah!

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Indian Independence Day

Essar Project Team @ Essar Township

Today is the indian independence day and our customers invited us to join their different kinds of celebrations. So this morning our team went to the Essar's township, the place where the Essar employees live, and joined their celebrations. It was really amazing...dancing & singing children, military parade, music playing orchestra, dog show. Here are some impressions:

Insect repellant headscarf

Orchstra

Judo

Traditional dance

dog show

 In the afternoon, the Chaitanya team invited us to join them to one of their happy children houses, a place where slum children get additional education to the general government schools, medical care and clothes if they are needed. They entertained us so nicely - a pleasure.

We got some traditional hats from the hotel

 I also took some pictures of the cows sitting on the streets again! This is so crazy...I mean, there is no gras, there's nothing they could eat, it's noisy and dirty and they still sit there were calmly - incredible!

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First school visit

Today we had another kick-off day! The head of Essar's CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), came from Bombay and explored his ideas for the project with us.

By the way: I was pretty confused in the beginning by the wording Mumbai versus Bombay...to make it clear, it's one and the same city, it just got renamed caused to some political reasons...but people who live in Bombay just call it Bombay. Since I am living in this country here for more than one month, I decided also just to say Bombay anymore.

So while we were discussing the timeline and the statement of Work, the client decided that today will be the first day we'll go to a school. So we went to the first government school this afternoon and it was sooo exciting!!!!
The children were so nice and shy...it was really so inspiring to meet them...when we asked for their interests in music, one boy sang a song in gujarati (the regional language which is spoken here) and two other girls showed us a welcome dance. Paula and me spontaneously took some lessons there:





http://gicainindia.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/day5-gujarati-welcome-dance/


Another interesting thing about India is the way they communicate non-verbal. Indian's use to shake with their head all the time when they are listening (kind of europeans do it, when they disagree). But in india this could just mean everything "yes", "no", "maybe", "so&so"...it's funny, cause we are just not used to that way of communication.


Tomorrow will be a public holiday (indian independence day) and we'll join them in their celebrations at the Essar's township. I'm really looking forward to that.


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