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2003-12-18 - Khujaraho (Day 245)

Ah, one has to love India and the things that will happen! This morning was my first interview with the business schools I had applied to and with the time zone conversion; I had to be on the phone at 7:00am to make the call. Thinking ahead I booked one of the ISD (international phone-booth) operators the night before and assuming he would be working on "Indian Time" I told him the call was at 6:30am making him promise and swear that he would be there before that. Morning comes and at 6:30am, I am on the steps waiting, but the doors are locked. Time slips away, 6:40... 6:45...6:50... and I'm getting very worried as none of the other operators have opened their shops yet and my guy was no where to be found. 6:55 comes and I panic, grabbing one guy I had seen on the street over the last few days and demanding directions to an ISD shop. He was really a good guy, getting his scooter and running me to three different hotels before we finally got one to open by pounding and screaming on the metal doors. At 7:03am, I made my call and again I have to marvel at both the lack of dependability in almost everything, but as well as the other common saying that in India there is ALWAYS a way.

The rest of the day was just spent doing geek stuff trying to get my site updates uploaded which turned out to be a nightmare due to the horrible connectivity of BSNL which harkens back to the days of 9600kbs modems (about 1994) and the hours spent waiting for one or two pages to download. For a country that is marketing itself as a technology center, it is simply unbelievable how backward the internet infrastructure has been everywhere on this trip (except in Nepal) and how little I have seen people do with the net with the only activity seeming to be gushing sweet words on an instant messenger window.

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