Arrived at Kolkata

Finally reached destination. Trip here was an adventure yet again, but I'll save you all the details. Good news is that Delhi is building a new airport and domestic and international flights will leave from the same area and it won't take 30 minutes to reach the domestic airport anymore. In addition, the new airport will probably have modern facilities etc.

My accommodation was/is a bit what I feared and a bit worse! In was called "Astana Inn", which made me wonder what "Inn" means. There were no signs on the outside. It turns out to be owned by the office manager from CRG, so she obviously arranged me an accommodation that supports her business.. My room is like a basic bedroom in a Indian house. Very modest that is.. I don't even know will I get breakfast or not as it isn't a hotel. The place is run by hotel management students apparently. And of course there's no internet. I'm currently at a cyber cafe, costs 50 rupees (75 cents) per hour to use. And like India otherwise, I had to fill in all sorts of information about myself to get access to the computer. Good that they didn't ask father's and husband's name like at the "Inn" ;) I'll see if I can add photos from the research institute, this cute old computer still has a place for a floppy disk, hih.

I talked to one Indian guy briefly on the plane. He had been working 6 months in Finland at Nokia. According to him, a lot of Nokia job demands in Finland require Finnish language. I thought it sounded a bit odd as there's loads of Indians at Nokia in Finland and I bet they don't speak Finnish. This poor guy had tried to learn Finnish for 3 months and as one can imagine, he didn't get very far in that time. He also mentioned that Kolkata is not an appealing place for him, as here as been a communist-rule too long, and is not a very business-friendly area. But he recommended the Bengali sweets of this area just like my dad :)

I only slept half an hour on the plane, so I'm pretty tired. Luckily I did the check-in yesterday on the Finnair webpage and changed my seat to a place where there's nobody next to me. Although cramped, I was able to sleep on the two seats for that half an hour. Better than nothing.

I visited a shopping mall this evening which is very near-by. Women were dressed there equally in tradional Indian wear and western wear. I bought two Indian style long shirts which I thought were both colourful and cute. There was also all sorts of things for home etc. and with fixed prices, so you know you're not getting ripped off.

I'm probably boring you all with this stuff but I'm just wasting time, as I have so much Internet time left :) Will probably go back to my Hilton soon and start reading some articles. Tomorrow first day at the "office". Let's see what's that like. And will I get breakfast!

Hope all is well with you.