Apparently they’ve opened a major section of the Metro in Delhi, When we visited they where digging the tunnel at Connaught Place; mainly by hand it has to be said.

Anyone who’s visited India, will remember the lists (like the massive one at Customs in the Airport), well now they have the metro, they have a new excuse to come up with lists. This is of the do’s and dont’s of the Metro.

Do’s

• Do stand in queue.
• Do limit your baggage to 15 Kgs, not exceeding 60 cm (Length) X 45 cm (Breadth) X 25 cm ( Height) in size.
• Do use the dustbins.
• Do stand on the left side of the escalators and while moving keep to the right.
• Do move away from escalators immediately after use.
• Do make way for the physically challenged.
• Do remember that the train stops for 30 seconds only.
• Do show your tickets to Metro personnel, when asked to.
• Do consider the comfort of your fellow passengers.
• Do abstain from drunken and unruly behaviour.
• Do take care of your valuables.
• Do contact Metro Police for assistance.
• Do contact female security personnel in case of any problem ( for lady passengers)

Dont’s

• Don’t bring eatables inside the station premises.
• Don’t bring pets inside.
• Don’t smoke.
• Don’t carry firearms.
• Don’t travel without your smart card or token.
• Don’t jump over the ticket barrier.
• Don’t share your card or token with another person on the same journey.
• Don’t cross the yellow line on the platform.
• Don’t step onto the Metro tracks.
• Don’t travel on the roof of the train.
• Don’t try to force the doors open.
• Don’t deface or put up posters inside the Metro station or train.
• Don’t step on the Tactiles meant for the visually impaired. ????
• Don’t use the lift, it is meant for the physically challenged.

Now your starter for 10, how many of these rules will actually be obeyed by the travelling public?

in the list of fines we have

• Travelling on the roof or any other part of the train, not intended for the use of the passengers, will result in a fine of Rs. 50/- (about 65p? or have i got my units wrong?) or imprisonment of 1 month or both.

Now, I know that offshoring jobs is going to happen, when you sit in your companies boardroom it probably makes financial sense, cheaper workers, and less union hassle, but I’ve been to India, and I am amazed at the number of companies who are investing a lot of their futures in a country that can’t keep electricity supply’s going to 5 star hotels in the capital city.

now, Norwich Union, is continuing the trend and moving some more jobs oversees, to India, and more interestingly Sri Lanka. I think that’s a bit of a major risk since it transpires that it can take just one ships anchor to knock the country off the map

My morning trawl of the my email, I.T. Websites, the news and some sport does take me to some strange places, for example today, we discover that the runner up in the men’s Olympic tennis (Mardy Fish) was pronounced “the best two-year-old tennis player in the world” by a Minneapolis TV station in 1984.

A more interesting story comes from the bowels of the BBC News Website, with once of those correspondent type articles about Queues in India. This reminds me quite a lot about our trip to India last year, which at the time scared us quite a lot, but with time I am beginning to remember fondly some of the more amusing cultural points.

We didn’t actually have to queue much during our visit, but we did visit the main ticket office for the trains in Delhi.

One part of our trip was going to be from Delhi to Mussoorie, via the wonderful national transportation network that is the train system in India. Now India is moving with the times, and from the year before where our friends had gone out to live until our visit, the online booking system had been introduced.

Now the online reservation system turned out not to be all it was cracked up to be, the first indication of this came when the web site said you could only book tickets between 8am and 10pm at night. It all became clear however when we arrived to pickup the tickets.

As far as I could tell, this is how the Indian Railway online reservation system works;

• You go online, find your train number (believe me this isn’t as easy as it sounds, you can’t just search for a train)
• You pick your ticket type and submit all the details.
• At the Indian end of the operation, something comes up on the screen, and a little man (they are almost always men, and quite small), writes down your booking in a ledger
• Now we are in the Indian system
• When you arrive in India, you have to report to the ticket office and collect your tickets.
• In the ticket office you hand over your printout from the webpage and your passport to the man on the counter (hitherto known as “the boss man”)
• The boss man, looks up your name in the ledger, writes down your details on a piece of paper and passes them to man no2
• Man No2 goes out the back and gives your information to the computer wiz.
• The computer wiz, enters your details onto a computer and prints out your ticket, and gives it to man no2
• Man No2 passes the ticket to the boss man,
• The boss man, takes your money and crosses out your name from the ledger, and gives you the tickets

Of course this didn’t work for us, because we where travelling in October around the time of Gandhi Jayanti (Gandhi’s birthday), we didn’t actually get a ticket but on a waiting list, the long and short of it is that we went through all this only to get on the waiting list for a train, which in the end we didn’t get on and instead we took a taxi, to Mussoorie, which was a very interesting journey.

Oh and you may have noticed it’s 5:30, and while yes I have just ranted about work, I don’t think that’s what woke me up (it is why I couldn’t sleep though), I had quite a strange dream about walking down a hill in India, a load of quite scary snakes, and a gym hall.

This weekend has been one of those where you get to the end of sunday, and then wonder how.

It started to go wrong on Friday night, for reasons i’m still not sure about we were still in work at 6, I was writing a ground braking bit of code that would tell other people in the office when I wanted a cup of coffee, Ruth was still upstairs fixing webby stuff, and stuart was watching someone else install a server, Then we go the idea to go the pub (I say we, I think it was stuart’s idea).

So one thing came from another and we ended up going to tarporley to have tea in an italian restaurant, and another driving first for me. I was the desegnated driver, so Ruth and stuart drank in the restaurant, but I think Ruth got a bit guilty, so we returned to stuarts, to have some wine and port (scarily, we have started to drink port, this I am taking as a sign of old age). Anyway that meant neither of us was in a fit state to get us home (a fact we knew would be true before we started the evening). So we stayed in Stuarts.

Saturday started a little later than normal, but it did start with bacon and egg, so you can’t complain. Stuart was off to Milton Keynes to visit friends, so we went to Delemare forest, and it was very pretty, now we are not really the rambily type but I think the hills of india, have inspired us to walk a bit more, and I definitely am appreciating my surrounding more (if only to go…. oooohhhh the silence). It was actually very busy for a forest, we stumbled into the middle of a orientating Event, and they where busy setting up Santa’s grotto, and the Christmas tree area.

then we came home, for a little while before we went to Ruth’s sisters to have tea and show them the photies from India. At this point I must confess that I am finding the photites from india, harder and harder to get excited about. It’s not the people, before anyone gets upset, it’s just the sheer number of times we have now shown the photographs, to Ruth’s credit, she still sounds enthused when she is doing the narrating bit, while I am sitting in the corner, trying so hard not to yawn. But tea was nice, and it was a very pleasant evening. Which Ruth drove back from.

This morning was Joshua McNaught’s (or Joshua David Everton McNaught for his full title) Dedication in Church, which just adds that extra little edge to the whole proceedings in terms of not messing up. It was a lovely service, with Chris Gilbert doing a family service about Wise and Foolish builders, and since he now has his apple Mac, it’s all gone high tech. Church was packed, before the service Lynn said to me, “we’re not sure if we’ll need this many chairs”, and in the end we put twice as many out, as there already was.

we did watch Mr Smith goes to Washington this afternoon, which is a fantastic film, that is actually quite scary in the sense of it ringing quite true in modern politics both here and in America.

We did a indian night last night to show all our photies of india off, and the little movie ruth and I put together. Of course we weren’t grownup enough to actual host the indian night so Carol did that bit, with all the food and stuff, and I just took my laptop and the data projector.

together we have so many photos. I think in total we showed 754 photos and 19Mins of Film. Now we didn’t make people sit through all those photo’s and most of the last 450 were just background while we talked to each other. I need to sort my photoies of india out. Pete gave us a CD with loads he’d taken, and we’ve collated together all of ours, and John and Carols and I now have a folder with 2,500 photo’s in (I think at least a 1000 repeats.)

i’m still doing the web pages

I’m Bored.

It’s not like I haven’t got loads of things to do.

• I’ve got a website to make for India. (the bit i’ve done does look cool)
• I could edit some of the video we shot in India
• I Passed my driving test, so the whole looking into starting a business thing could take off, if I just get down to writing some business plans, working out prices, and generally marketing the thing.

but basically i’m bored. I could play games but I don’t fancy it. The TV poo. and I can’t get motivated to do anything else, the closest thing to something I am going to do tonight may be making a bacon butty. :o(

[Listening to insomnia by Faithless, very apt. I could just get some sleep!]