Things I have learned about India

No pictures in the post, just an overview of some things that I learned about India. Feel free to ask questions in the comment section and I will try to answer them if I can. So here we go.

Cricket
Cricket is huge here. Cricket is loved here like we love baseball, football and basketball. Today was a big game for India. They were playing the Australians in the Quarter Finals and needed to win to move on. Unfortunately, India did not win but I did watch most of the game in the lounge while to talking to one of the employees of the hotel. I already spent some time reading about the game but he helped me understand it a little bit better. Cricket is like baseball where each side has a chance to bat but only once per side. So basically there is only one inning in Cricket even though the game goes on about the same length as a baseball game. I won't try to explain the game here because I don't fully understand it yet, I understand about 75% but I am sure I will have it down before I leave.

The Local Paper
Anyone who knows me knows that I have stay up with current events. Since I got the morning paper in my room I decided to read it front to back. This is what I learned.

Large Numbers
In India, large numbers aren't written out like we write them out and they don't use millions or billions. When describing large numbers, Indians use the word Lakh. A Lakh is basically 100,000 so when they are talking about 3 million they would say 30 Lakhs. When written out, which I understand is not common, it would be written as 30,00,000 instead of 3,000,000. You can read more about this here.

Celebrities
Celebrity news is just as big here is it is at home. Not only is there plenty of news about the celebrities here, the newspapers thoroughly cover the Oscars. I even spotted a small article in the paper about Brittney Spears being able to visit her children. That is all I have to say on that.

Drinking and Driving
Drinking is not big here in India, at least people here don't partake in it like a lot of us do back in the US but India still has its problems with it. I have read a few articles about people being killed in drunk driving accidents and the Government is even trying to rollback the "Last Call" time from 11:30pm to 10pm. Of course the hotels are pushing for a "Last Call" time of 12:30am. I can't even imagine getting behind the wheel of a car drunk and trying to drive in the traffic here. That in itself deserves a big fat label of "STUPID". I will get some video footage and post it within the week.

Yoga
I spotted daily yoga tips in the paper and I am not ashamed to admit that I tried a couple of the exercises. I am not sure if I got much benefit but I am here for awhile so I will report back on that.

Corruption in the Government
Yup, across all levels just like home.

Strikes
India has those too. Right now the Lorry (Truck) drivers and cab drivers are on strike. From my understanding and from I can gather this has to do with putting speed governors on the cabs and trucks. One driver told me that they wanted to govern the speed of cabs to 36 mph and the speed of trucks to 50 mph. I am not sure how true that is but I am sure that all of our cab drivers and truck drivers would probably strike too.

Funnies (Comic Strips)
They got 'em in the paper too. The same ones we read at home plus some local flavor.

Cell Phones
I thought we Americans overused cell phones. Guess what? We can't touch the itizens of India on the use of cell phones. You can SMS (text message) for just about anything here. SMS is advertised everywhere and for everything; I even think that one could open a bank account with a cell phone, just kidding. It does seem that everyone has a cell phone here. I asked a person how much cell phones cost and monthly plan rates so here it is, get ready to be jealous. From what I got one could purchase a cell phone for about Rs 1000 ($25). From there, per minute use for outgoing calls is Rs 1, yes that is 1 rupee and too small to convert to dollars. Every month after that the cell phone is recharged for about Rs 300 ($7.50). We pay a lot more at home and use the phone far less.

That is it for now. Feel free to ask me questions and I will try and find the answer. Until then, I am attempting to learn how to speak the local language, Kannada, from the nice gentleman, Lawrence, that takes me to work everyday.