First impressions

Imagine, if you will that every car in Joburg was driven by an aggressive taxi driver that frequently used his hooter. Imagine all the roads were half as wide and there were double the amount of cars. Imagine that instead of robots there are circles at which there is no yielding either to the left or to the right. Add in a bit of healthy gesticulating.

Welcome to Delhi.

Well it's been 5 days and I am coming to the end of my first week. I am gradually feeling less overwhelmed and finding my feet in this crazy but phenomenal city. I have thus far successfully avoided Delhi Belly (thank goodness) and eaten some delicious food. My limited knowledge of Indian food has quite impressed my colleagues over here (thanks for the education Fae, Amantha, Zaheer, Pradeep and Ash (sort of)) and my efforts to fit in and drink my coffee out of a bowl are appreciated.

I am staying in a lovely guest house till the end of the week. The rooms are quite small but the pool is beautiful and considered quite a luxury here where water restrictions are common. As of next week, I move to a different guest house where the living arrangements are more spacious but there is no pool. Everywhere is very jacked and all the guest houses have wireless which is awesome. I have recently discovered Skype (where have you been all my life?) which means that I can talk to Brian for free albeit with an occasional delay. For those of you that are on Skype, please send me your user name. For those of you that aren't, get with the programme! Go to www.skype.com and download it ASAP.

Delhi, like Joburg is a very big city and getting around on foot is not really feasible. The easiest and cheapest option is rickshaw. My rickshaw driver on the first day was very friendly and after the obligatory cricket discussion (BTW. My being at the world record Australia-SA match impresses enormously over here. Thanks Standard Bank) we got to chatting. It turns out that his brother lives in Laudium. Yes, the place on the way to Pretoria! As you can imagine, we are now fast friends and he only tries to take advantage of me every now and again.

The offices are in a very beautiful building in town but the whole Delhi office is crammed into the space equivalent of one wing of one floor of our JHB offices. In addition, there is only one ladies loo which I find very bizarre. They are all pretty friendly although things seem to be done a little differently over here. When I asked the receptionists to organise me an access card they laughed as though I had made the most hilarious joke of the year. Apparently you have to ORDER them! OOOHHHH, now I get it ???

My colleague who I like to call Coreen-the-Machine is an embodiment of efficiency and awe-inspiring in her ability. She has really been great in showing me around and helping me to find my feet. I got launched into the deep end of the project and given my own client . I had to present a workplan on my third day of work. No pressure. The meeting went really well though and it looks as though things are about to get really exciting. [Quick recap: I am working on a project which is focussed on creating job opportunities primarily for rural women through mobile pay phones. That is the summary. Let me know if you want more detail.] For now, I will be based in Delhi.

There is so much to see and do here. Delhi is such a sensual city. All of the senses are constantly assaulted (with sometimes less than pleasant smells). Already on my first day, I had drunk chai in a market whilst stray cows wandered past (a mouse also scurried past but luckily I didn't see it) and had sun downers at the western and very expensive Lodi Garden Restaurant. This was thanks to Nic, my Delhi guide extroadinaire who has already been here for 2 months and still has 2 years to go. Also courtesy of Nic, I attended a drinks evening held by the South African embassy. We got there and it turned out to be a full on banquet in honour of our own Deputy President, Ms Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka!!!!!!!!! She started off the dinner by saying "I am not here to talk, we have done enough of that today. I am here to PARTY." As you can imagine, it was a very fun night. I met some incredibly cool people including the wife of the high commissioner, Mrs Maloyi.

For those of you that have asked me about lucrative marriage proposals, I have not had much time to investigate this but the good news is that education has recently become more important for the eligibility of a woman than looks so for those of you that are well educated and want to pursue opportunities overseas…

BTW. I am going to be in London next weekend for training. I will be staying at the party palace of Effra Road and all UK people can expect to be hearing more from me shortly.