Asia 2006: Random Bozo goes to Maharashtra

original blog entry

Back at the cyber café, using a fairly modern LuckyGoldstar* PC which has been endorsed by Sourav Ganguly, Sunil Gavaskar, Krish Sakant and Ravi Shastri. I wonder if I can get Kevin Pieterson and Andrew Flintoff to autograph my Pismo? For no real reason apart from having been able to wash with hot water and get my pile of manky clothes washed, I'm in a fairly silly mood and I hope this will carry on today.

*It's running windows 98 - they cybercafé owner tells me that it's easier to network 98 clients than XP or 2K clients. (He uses XP on his server.) I'm a bit surprised by this choice for clients and would appreciate comments from the BOFHs out there.

I'm going to stay at the Rajanthandri tonight and get a train south tomorrow, assuming I can book a ticket on-line today. Apparently India Rail offers a very up-to-date online booking facility. I'll let you know how I get on with it later but for now, on with the blog-catch-up...

another original blog entry

Did I say that my room has a balcony overlooking Chatrapatri Chowk (roundabout)? Er, no - well it does and this is a mixed blessing: great views of the town but traffic noise all night long. Once I've posted this, I'll check on my internet banking and then look into traveling on. Next blog will be from Goa or Ernakullam in Kerala, where I expect it to be even hotter...

aarrgghh! (written at 3pm)

1. It's 42 degrees centigrade here. That's 108 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. The nice man at the street stall yesterday showed me many newspaper stories in yesterday's Times of India. One was that medical students here are now regularly cheating in exams by texting the questions to colleagues who then text back answers. This is despite them being searched for cellphones before they go into the exams.

Final bit

Last time I blogged, I was in Satara, the nearest big town to Mahabaleshwar, so I could get a train south. I seem to have spent most of Sunday 2nd blogging and trying to get the Indian Railways website to obey me. It didn't, mainly because while the major town near here is known as Margao, officially it's called Madgaon. I gave up in disgust and near tears and crawled back to my hotel. (On the way, I met a couple of lads I'll blog about later.) At the hotel, I started chatting with a guy who asked where I'm from (the usual first question). At some part in the conversation, he did a very fast piece of mental arithmetic and so I asked if he was an engineer or scientist. He laughed and said that he owned the hotel. He mentioned that his cousin was getting married the next day in the hotel's reception/function room and pointed out the happy couple (Vaishakh and Latika). I asked him to pass on my congratulations and he said I should speak to them myself, so I did and they invited me to the ceremony. Thank goodness I'd just had some reasonably new clothes washed.