Monday - aka Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

I am not always the most punctual person. However, the Indian culture is more time-flexible than I can tolerate. We were told yesterday to be at breakfast by 7 so we could meet with the Infosys people at 7:30 with our visa paperwork for the visa registration that is required by Indian regulation. I got downstairs at 7, paperwork in hand- only 2 at breakfast, people slowly arrived, and we were told to meet in the lobby at 8 to walk over to the conference room. 8 came and went..... we finally got over across the way to the conference room by around 8:45 ish. Some people, betrayed by the general lolly-gagging, ran up to their rooms and missed the walk over, so I came back for them and we finally started talking about stuff related to the visas around 9:00 or so. We had our briefing, had information collected, which took about 45 minutes, and were told those of us who had to register for the visas (11 of the 24 total) would be dropped off at the police station for registration- the bus would leave at 10:30. In the meantime, we'd get a tour of the Infosys campus. The tour was great, and very interesting - this place really is state-of-the-art. At 10:30 our guide, Shweta, told us that we'd need to head over to the bus, but we'd make some quick stops because they were waiting for us. (We had been divided into 3 groups.) We get to the bus around 10:45 or so- and were still waiting for the third group. Once they arrived we made our way into the city of Bangalore.

Traffic is just atrocious. There are no lanes and about 20K vehicles on the road, so it takes forever to get anywhere. We finally arrived at the police station to have our visas registered at 12:30 pm. By 1:30 pm, when they closed for lunch, 5 of our passports had gone through one step of a 4 step process. Fortunately, Infosys had a representative to help "facilitate"- but the fact that it took an hour to accomplish less than a quarter of the work, even with a facilitator, was pretty astounding to me. The other half of the group, who did not have "must register within 14 days of arrival" stamped on their visas (which was only a function of the New York visa office, we found - the only thing the 11 of us who needed to register had in common was that we all got our visas in New York), basically just had to hang around and wait for us in one area while we hung around and waited at the police station. We eventually met the other half of the group for lunch at a good Chinese restaurant (yes, Chinese food in India. It was really good though). We then had to go back to the police station for when they returned from lunch, scheduled to be 2:30. Well, the officer who needed to sign our paperwork didn't return from lunch until 3:30. So we went back in and waited. Everyone finished step one pretty quickly- then we had to go get our paperwork signed (another line) - then go to the office on the other side and wait in another line to drop the paperwork off again, then wait to hear our name called. I will mention that the officer who signed our paperwork was reminiscent of the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld- you approached, handed over paperwork, said "Thank you" and stepped to the side.

We then had to wait in the office for our names to be called. The building itself was 150-200 years old, and I doubt it had been cleaned more than 5 times in that span. The walls were just covered in grime- there's no other word for it. We waited a long time. Finally my name was called, and we got a form that said we needed to return to the office to pick up our registration cards at 5:00 pm tomorrow. FOR REAL. It seems that the Infosys rep believes he will be able to pick up our cards for us tomorrow- but what a hassle this has been!!

As an aside, I will note that the process of getting a visa for this trip has been a disaster from day 1. I had to fill out the paperwork and FedEx it, with my passport, to an outsourcing company in New York City. They were unsure as to the right kind of visa for this trip - were were tourists, since we will only be here a week? Students, since we're here for a class? Business people, since we are sponsored by Infosys? Each visa office seemed to have a different answer for each person, which is why it was a disaster from the outset. So that took a while to get ironed out, and we (who had to use the Consulate General in New York) got Entry/Tourist visas. This was also a pricey prospect ($155- not small change, especially the week before Christmas). Then we found out about the registering and I spent the day before my flight to India getting copies made, additional passport photos, etc. Then we basically spent our first 2 days in India dealing with bureaucratic stuff related to the visa. Yes, it's educational, as I understand the hoops that one must jump through to do international business.... but as Infosys has this multimillion dollar campus from their IT solutions business, I can't help but think that they should come up with some IT solutions to assist the government. It was like going back in time- piles of paper, the computer in the registration office was a green screen DOS system from 1982.... Definitely not impressed.

When we finally finished (for today, at least) at the police/registration office, we had to wait a while for the bus with the other half of our class, who had gotten to go shopping. We all have done a fair share of waiting around, but this was particularly difficult because it was through no fault of our own that we had to do this step.

Once we met up with the bus (at around 5:15 pm), they dropped us for a bit at an Open Air market- essentially a farmer's market, India style. This was neat because it was our first real chance to talk to locals (non-shopkeepers or police personnel)- we all got some great photos and a real feel for what life is like for the people of Bangalore. We were told to meet at 6 pm back at the bus, but most of us took the same path, so we were all at the end of the farmer's market and the call was made to have the bus come meet us. Well, not all of us were there so there was some confusion that delayed us all a bit, and didn't have us in the bus and on our way until 6:30. It's great that our Indian tour guides try to be accommodating, but part of the frustration of the past 2 days is that the rules and times for things keep changing. There's just a general lack of discipline around time, which is very frustrating for me. But at least we did get to see some of the "real" Bangalore today.

When we got back to Infosys, I found out my luggage, which was to have been delivered at 7:30 am today, still has not arrived. That's right. I checked my bag in Boston at 1:00 pm on Friday, and here is is nearly Tuesday (India time) and still nothing. One of the problems has been that Lufthansa's Bangalore office is open from 10 am to 4 pm- that's it. You may note that we have been occupied with activities from 10 am to 4 pm each day (or at least, waiting for activities) so it's not like I have been able to spend time aggressively calling for information. It's $3 a minute to call from my cell phone, so it's also cost prohibitive... and we've been out in the town, not at our guest house, so I can't exactly call them and harass them about luggage not arriving when I don't know if it has arrived or not. So yes, the bureaucracy of this too has driven me up a wall. I am so sick of the clothes I have, and the Indian clothes, while working for city touring, are not exactly appropriate "business attire" for classes that start tomorrow. The 2 pairs of shoes I bought yesterday (for equivalent $4 American) were apparently worth less than that, as a strap broke on one on my way back from dinner last night, and the strap broke AND sole fell off the other while touring Infosys today. I really am a walking disaster with this stuff.

Fortunately, Jay's wife Gayle has loaned me a pair of slingback heels, and Katlin (a fellow student) has loaned me a skirt and top to wear tomorrow. I finally figured out that baggage claim number they gave me on Sunday was off by a digit, and was finally able to access the online tracking for my bag. It says it has been recovered at the airport, and "in process" of delivery. It's that "in process" step that is killing me right now. Another classmate is also missing his bag- at least they sell men's business attire in the on-campus store for him. I'm kind of out of luck in that department. It's a long & windy road from the airport to Infosys, so it seems that it's just not a priority for the folks from Lufthansa baggage to honor their timeline, and they'll get it here when they get it here. Not very efficient or respectful of my time- that's the way it works here in India.

So yeah, today was not a good day. It's also hard when I'm frustrated to keep a positive face as a representative of BU. I also think that I'll be writing my paper for this class on anticipating challenges. This has been quite an adventure, but not in a good way so far. Keeping my fingers crossed for better days in class tomorrow, and finally being able to wear my own clothes that I packed for this trip, not the sweats that were my travel clothes or the variety of other pieces I've had to buy or borrow.

All of the folks here in India have been very nice, but I have yet to see what can actually be accomplished. There's no sense of urgency about anything, which is particularly frustrating when we all had to jump through hoops, pay a lot of money on last minute plane tickets and had to have a lot of fortitude just to make it onto this trip- I wonder if we had applied the same set of time values we have experienced in the past few days, would any of us had made it here at all?