Thursday, 24 April 2008

Time Zone

The only way my family in Bogota and India communicate is through Skype or GTalk. We have taught our daughter (2 yrs old) how to say Good morning (Subrabhatham)and Good night (Shubhrathri) in Indian tradition whenever it is day time and night time in India respectively.

But due to time zone difference (10 and half hours difference) she started thinking that Shubrathri is for Good morning and Subrabhatam is for Good night!!

Tuesday, 22 April 2008

Español

I have started learning Spanish. A professor from an University comes to my apartment to teach me Spanish. Me, my wife and some of my colleagues have started learning it.

The language has lot of similarities with my mother tongue (Tamil). Seems to be interesting.

Sunday, 20 April 2008

**CHECK**

I work as a consultant at the Ministry of Public credit in Colombia. It is in front of the President's house and is heavily guarded at night. Some of my colleagues (non-spanish speaking people) left the office very late in the night (probably 1230 in the night) and were waiting outside the office for Taxi.

While they were waiting outside, the security guards asked them a few questions and because my colleagues did not know Spanish, they did not understand what the guards spoke. Probably, my colleagues gave some irrelevant answer and the guards asked these guys whether they can *check* them. Without understanding much these guys said yes. Can you imagine what could have happened?

These guys were made to stand against a wall facing it and the guard frisked them. These guys felt strange as they never expected this and it was a kind of embarrassment for them. Perhaps this could be the least expected for a guy who works in an Information Technology industry (a white collar job!!).

Funny and sad!!

Wednesday, 2 April 2008

End of 1st Month

At the end of the 1st month, here it is about Bogota, Colombia.

- I see gun men all over the city.
- If you book a taxi, it is safe. The taxi services have IVR and so you need not know Spanish.
- Almost everything is expensive (Food, Clothing etc). But taxis are cheap.Transmilenio
- There is an excellent mode of public transport called, Transmilenio.
- The weather is good.
- Some parts of the city is new and some old.
- In almost all the places(office, shopping mal etc), the security guard checks your bag.
- Outside office very less people speak English.