The Longest Street in the World

The Original Cast of Galli Galli Sim Sim-See if you can tell whom is whom  from my description below

Today at breakfast, Melanie and I found ourselves watching a TV show called Galli Galli Sim Sim. The server at breakfast thought it would be funny to show us this TV program (I think he realized that even though we have been watching cricket every morning, we have no idea what is happening or how that game works...yet.) As we watched the show, we realized it was India's version of Sesame Street! Some of the characters look very similar and take on similar rolls to those in the original Sesame Street. For example, Googly looks like he could be Grover's baby. While Boombah and Aanchoo look as though they could be variations of what Big Bird and Snuffleupagus could produce as children (even though he is a lion...lol). Chamki reminds me of a Praire Dawn meets Zoey mixture. Since the show's start in 2006, characters from Sesame Street have been appearing on the show including Bert, Ernie, Count von Count, Cookie Monster, Grover, and Elmo (with the latter two currently becoming permanent members of the show). Famous Bollywood actors and actresses have also guest starred on various episodes throughout the seasons.

Galli Galli Sim Sim meets Sesame Street Characters

So why am I so obsessed with this show after seeing half an episode and about two hours worth online?

1. It's educating the youth!
         As a former Sesame Street enthusiast myself and as the former Sesame Street enthusiast that I'm sure you the reader are as well, this point seems fairly obvious. However, Galli Galli Sim Sim (GGSS) goes the extra mile. India's population is skyrocketing and families do not have the means to educate their children. In fact,  1 in every 5 children of age 6 and under lives in India. About 40% of the 165 million children attend preschool. GGSS has partnered with industrial companies to acquire funding for GGSS to come to the children. GGSS visits areas where low income families reside in order to provide educational programs and the equipment necessary to show GGSS to the youth. Often the characters visit the kids as well providing first hand lessons regarding  reading, writing, spelling, grammer, vocabulary, health,  and numbers/simple math. Giving kids the opportunity to learn these valuable skills during this critical time in their lives where they are at the peak of their ability to quickly learn, gives them a higher chance for success later in life.

Galli Galli Sim Sim Meets Sesame Street

2. It is all inclusive!
         Indians all have their own unique cultures and backgrounds. Hundreds of languages are spoken in India with ~23 of them recognized by the government as scheduled languages (this means the government recognizes the language and is in charge of preserving and growing it). Hundreds of religions are also practiced throughout India. Overall, India is very accepting of individual belief systems and backgrounds (Check out the Bahai Religion-it is quite popular! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_temple). All the characters on GGSS represent different cultures and regions of India, and multiple languages are spoken and taught throughout each episode ("An Indian can't get by without knowing at least 3 languages." --Anjan, UOP India Private Limited). The number of characters on the show continues to grow as does the number of cultures represented by the show.

Latest picture of  the Cast (Not including Elmo and Grover)

For the record Sesame Street is just awesome and outreaches to other regions of the world as well. I just wanted to highlight a couple things about GGSS, since I'm in India and it is a pretty cool spin off of the American version.

Love,

Sequoia

P.S. For the folks reading from the US, India has a version of basically every single TV show we have in the States (American Idol, every single cartoon, Dancing With the Stars, etc).

*I did not take the photos shown in this post. They were all retrieved from: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Galli_Galli_Sim_Sim
**References for the article
Census of India, 2011
Galli Galli Sim Sim Outreach Team. (2010). Project Records.
GyanVriksh Technologies (2009). The reach and impact of the Galli Galli Sim Sim television show in India.
        Midline report of a naturalistic longitudinal study. Hyderabad, India.
2009 Intermedia Study on Galli Galli Sim Sim.
2011 International Census Data K2-8 Audience Estimation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galli_Galli_Sim_Sim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMAZhLbS37o
http://www.sesameworkshop.org/what-we-do/our-initiatives/india.html?o=89&c=featured


               

So. Jet. Lagged.

Let me just start off by saying how Marisa, Melanie, and I have the best buddies ever. UOP did an awesome job of giving us a support system for our time here. Riki, Ranoo, and Avnish are the best and I'm so thankful for their help the last two days! So, thank you Riki, Ranoo, and Avnish!

On Tuesday Marisa, Melanie, and I had breakfast at the Leela Hotel. As with everything else at the Leela, the breakfast was incredible. It was a huge buffet style with everything you could possibly imagine. The fruit was fantastic, and there were so many varieties of fresh squeezed juices. There was a large variety of cheeses and breads as well. I stuck mainly to the fruit and various grilled vegetables (no wonder people loose so much weight here).

Good Morning India!

View from the Leela

Brenna said strange things happen in this field, but I didn't see any!

After breakfast, the three of us walked to Ambience Mall. It is a large mall that is exactly one kilometer, and I believe it had 8 floors. All major American brands were sold there as well as some upscale Indian brands. The night before we discovered the mall opened at 9am. We got there by 9:45am and to our surprise everything was black. Only a handful of stores in this giant mall even had a light on and most were padlocked pretty heavily. We walked around and windowed shopped. This mall is pretty crazy. It has an ice skating rink on the top floor, bowling alley, fitness gym, and a 5D movie theater (whatever that means?). It isn't the kind of place we were really intending to shop, so it wasn't a big deal the stores weren't open. One shop sign specifically said it would not open until 1pm. It was interesting how the mall itself opened at 9am but not a single store was even open by 11am when we left.

Ambience Mall

When we got back to the hotel I completely passed out. When I woke up I scrambled to collect my belongings in order to meet Avnish and Riki to move into our permanent place. I didn't feel so great after my nap. My sleeping pattern was (and is still) completely messed up. It felt like a bus had plowed me over. I wasn't really sure what to expect out of our permanent living situation. After talking with some CDPs (CDP = Career Development Program..at UOP most chemical engineers enter this program straight after college. It is a two year rotational program that feeds into the FOS (Field Operating Services) program which is a commitment of 3-5 years abroad) who had done a rotation in the Delhi office, Melanie, Marisa, and I were a little nervous about our arrangements. They had crazy stories regarding rats in their rooms that ate their things. I came into the situation with absolutely no expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Below is a pictorial tour of where I live!

Outside

Lobby

Hall/Stairs

Dining Area

Workout Room/Recreation

3rd Floor (Melanie, Marisa, and I are all on the same floor! YaY!)

Entrance to my room/Closet

Weird Fake Dresser/Mini Fridge

Main Portion (Bed, Desk, Chair, Table, TV)

Bathroom

I don't know what the bucket in the shower is for...

Hopefully that gives you more of a picture regarding where I live! After dropping off our things Riki and Avnish showed us a supermarket that is very close to where we live. We then walked to the McDonalds for dinner in order to give our stomachs a rest from all the Indian Cuisine. We have been avoiding eating too much Indian food in one day in order to give our stomachs and bodies time to adjust to all the spices in the cooking. My Tums have saved me more than once already on this trip. As we approached the McDonalds, about five children in raggedy clothing approach us. I avoided eye contact because I knew they were asking for money. It was hard to see children in that kind of situation and condition. A little girl grabbed onto Melanie's arm and sort of cuddled it for a second. The whole time the children were saying things in Hindi that I did not understand. Avnish came to Melanie's rescue and said something that made the little girl back off quickly. Riki and Avnish both helped a lot in this situation because it was hard for me to ignore the kids and continue walking without giving them something. All of our culture training before coming to India and since being in India has told us not to respond to the street beggars. The tactic is to ignore them completely and walk away without giving them any sort of response at all. Our culture coach told us that by giving to the beggars we are reinforcing begging as a behavior which will just encourage them to keep begging on the streets. By giving, we make ourselves an observed target that will be followed every time we leave our house. Since we are living here for so long, eventually we will develop an every day pattern and these people will learn our patterns and us it to their own advantage. I'm just glad Avnish and Riki were there to help us through this first experience of dealing with it.

McDonalds for the most part tastes the exact same (the fries are literally identical). Since most of India is Hindu, there is zero beef on the menu. McVeggies, McChickens, and McFish were the variety of sandwich options available. There were also chicken nuggets, as well as a whole menu dedicated to spicy-ness. I had a  McVeggie which was kind of strange since I had never had a veggie burger before, but leave it to McDonalds to make it still taste somewhat familiar. Their version of the Big Mac is made with chicken and is called the Chicken Maharaja Mac. When we went to dump our trays in the trash I noticed a little clear box that stated 'Condiment Packet Recycle.' If you didn't use your condiments, you were suppose to drop them in the box, so they could be used again.

Throughout this whole ordeal Riki kept asking us if we were okay. I was definitely not my usual weird self since at this point I still felt like a bus had plowed me over. When we got back to the Park Residency I passed out pretty quickly. I woke up in the middle of the night abruptly thinking it was almost time for work. According to the clock it was 12:30am..I had only slept for two hours. I kept forcing myself to go back to sleep but woke up multiple times every hour regardless. Eventually 4:30am rolled around and I couldn't get back to sleep so I just stayed awake and chatted with a few friends via Facebook. I'm hoping that tonight I can finally shake this jet lag and sleep through the entire night!

At 8:15am the India trio headed downstairs for our complimentary breakfast. I had a hard boiled egg, cornflakes with warm milk (they don't serve it cold), and some Puttu which is a ground white rice dish that contains coconut and water. It was the least spicy out of all the Indian food I've had thus far. Riki picked the three of us up at 9am to head to work. Traffic is pretty ridiculous (I still think Sao Paulo, Brasil has India beat though). There are no lines on the roads, so cars just sort of do whatever they want. It is extremely different from the systematic driving we have in the U.S.A. There is a lot more honking involved, and big cars surprisingly fitting in tiny spaces. It's extremely aggressive driving, yet defensive. Simmi, my mentor at work, said that if you look at the statistics more accidents happen in India when there isn't traffic because people aren't driving as aggressively and defensively.

Work the first day was a fairly standard orientation day. We received an HR presentation regarding Honeywell overall. We would go over a sector of Honeywell and then dive further into what India does for each sector which was very interesting since I didn't know most of those India specific details before. We met a TON of people. It will definitely take awhile to remember everyone's names! Simmi is awesome. She was very friendly and so knowledgeable about UOP. I know I'm going to really enjoy working with her this summer. Sangeeta, the HR representative who has arranged all our accommodations in India, took us to the cafeteria for lunch. This was by far the spiciest food I have eaten. It was so hot!! My stomach was definitely not ready for that amount of spice. At this point the combination of jet lag and crazy spicy food started to get the best of me. After meeting with a few other people, the work day was done and Riki took us to Spencers. Spencers is essentially a shopping mart similar to that of a Meijer or Walmart. I just bought some hangers, water, snacks, and mangoes. Everything (except the hangers for some reason) has been MUCH cheaper than in the U.S. Some of the prices have shocked me when I've compared it to prices in the U.S. I spent less than ten dollars on 3 bottles of water, hangers, 2 bags of chips, a bag of chickpeas, a snack thing that I don't know what it is, and mangoes. You definitely get your bang for your buck here in India. A combo meal at McDonalds costs about 2 dollars compared to the 5 or 6 dollars you would spend in the U.S.

In the interest of easing ourselves into the spices of India, we ate Dominos Cheese Pizza for dinner! It was pretty good. The crust was a little different, and there was about a drop of sauce on the pizza. On the cheese pizza they put tomatoes on top. Our guess was that they did this since they don't put a lot of sauce underneath the cheese. It was definitely good to give our stomachs a break. Everyone at work says that by the end of week three our stomachs will be able to fully handle all the Indian spices.

Tomorrow will be a get down to business kind of day at work. I'm going to find out a lot more about my project which I'm pretty excited about! The last few days have been pretty exhausting. I didn't have near as much trouble getting over the jet lag when I wen to China as I'm having now. Everyone has been so nice and welcoming here it is indescribable. The service we have gotten in India out does the service in the U.S. by a million miles. People are very proud of their jobs and very good at what they do, whatever that might be.  I probably won't write again until this weekend. We are planning on visiting the Kingdom of Dreams and possibly the Lotus Temple and a few other sites. If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them =)

I'll leave you with a picture of a lizard that was in Melanie's room. Poor girl has had two lizards in her room the last two days. Marisa is becoming quite the lizard hunter! Here's to hoping we can all sleep peacefully through the night and get over our jet lag!

Love,

Sequoia 

Hey Jude...Do Absolutely Everything She Told You Not To Do

Hello all! I'm in India! I'm currently lying in bed awake. It's around 4:30 am here. Obviously it's going to take a bit for my sleep pattern to adjust to the 9 and a half hour time difference from home. Below is everything that has happened to me thus far.

The Prep

My mom flew in from Brazil to see me before I left! I was happy to see her! Below is a picture of us right before we left the apartment to go to the airport. I miss her and my family so much. They'll be in the States

for a month this summer while I'm gone, so I'm so glad she came. We went downtown to the UP comedy club and saw Second City perform. They were really good. Then next day we went to Merrillville to visit more family and complete the final stages of packing/buying random things to prepare me for the trip. It was hard saying goodbye, and I'll be thinking about them a lot come July when they are here, but I know I'm about to experience a fabulous adventure.

The Plane

I flew business class/first class for both of my flights via United Airlines. It was my first time flying United. The service was incredible, and I've never been so comfortable on a flight. For the first leg of the journey from Chicago to Newark, I had the pleasure of sitting next to Brenna Huovie, the director of training services for UOP. She was on her way to Delhi as well in order to teach a class. She gave me great advice regarding anything that looks like green beans. Apparently there is a very hot pepper that looks like a green bean, so when faced with a potential green bean, I should cut it open to ensure it's a pod and yellow seeds  do not emerge instead. Apparently she had been tricked by this her last time visiting Delhi. From Newark to Delhi,

View of the Sunset leaving the Newark Airport en route to Delhi

my seat laid out completely into a bed, so I was able to get some good rest on the plane. I finished watching a movie called 'Playing for Keeps' and watched 'The Promised Land' as well. Dinner started with a tuna/salmon and a cheese vegetable skewer as a starter. Next I had a salad. For the main course I had lamb in a roasted vinaigrette with various vegetables. I had an awesome sundae for desert and then passed out for quite a bit of the flight. I woke up to the beautiful site below.

The Himalayas! The site was breath taking. I had a delicious breakfast while I looked out the window at this awesome sight. I sat next to a man named Bobby Moore during my flight. He is the CEO of an India based public company, and he kept giving me random advise about living in the Delhi area, as well as sight seeing (hopping over to Nepal for a weekend should be at the top of our list!). Early in the flight I developed a funny relationship with him and the flight attendant. At one point the three of us were crowded around the tiny window I was sitting next to looking for Jupiter and Saturn. When the flight attendant heard that I was going to stay in India for the summer, she went on full out 'Texas Momma Mode' (her phrasing not mine). She kept coming by and telling me to not do various things like visit old Delhi and ride the rickshaws. When it was time to de-board the plane, Bobby turned to me and said, "Look, Delhi is not that bad. It's just like New York or any other big city. Do absolutely everything she told you not to do."

The Airport

With that last bit of advice, Marisa, Melanie, and I left the plane to retrieve our baggage.

Marisa, Melanie, and I in the Delhi Airport after a long flight! Photo Credit: Brenna Huovie

At the airport, our work 'buddies' for the summer met us at the airport! It was so great to meet them! My buddy's name is Ranoo. She has been working for UOP for a year now in engineering and is currently working on an Oleflex related project. I was happy to learn this since it was the technology I specialized with last year. For those whom do not know, Oleflex makes olefins (for example propane to propylene and ethane to ethylene). The same unit can make various olefins based on the feed, hence the 'flex' at the end of the technology's name to imply it's a flexible unit that can make various olefins. 

The Hotel 

Our buddies accompanied us to the hotel we were staying at for the night, The Leela Kempinski Hotel in Gurgaon, India. I have never stayed in place so beautiful or experienced such wonderful service! The greeting was a little overwhelming as we exited the vehicle. A personal concierge came to collect my bags and ushered me to a security check similar to one at an airport. Since I was a woman, I was pulled to the side and entered an enclosed curtain room where a woman used a wand metal detector to search me. The men also had the wand metal detector used on them before entering the hotel but this was done by another man in the open. 

The hotel lobby

The hotel lobby

The staircase

After entering the hotel a woman asked me if I would like to receive the traditional Indian welcoming. She waved a golden tray in a circular pattern in front of me saying 'This is wishing you good health, luck, prosperity, and safety.' She then used her finger and placed a red dot on my forehead. 

Observe the red dot on my forehead from this mirror pic.

From there we were all taken to our rooms by our personal concierge where our passports were checked and baggage dropped off. It was requested that I provide a business card, but I don't have one, so that conversation felt a little strange. Apparently I will be asked for a business card a lot, so it might not be a bad idea to look into getting one. Here are pictures from my gorgeous room.

This bed is extremely comfy! I don't think this picture does justice to how much space you get.

There are blinds that can be raised and lowered to surround the bathing area. So yes, yes you can raise the blinds in order to watch TV while you enjoy a bubble bath. 

The toilet gets its own little room. 

The hallway leading into my room, there are closets and drawers you can't really see and my suitcase is sitting on a little bench 

The First Meal

Melanie, Marisa, and I went to dinner shorty after settling into the hotel. We ate at Diya, which is the Indian restaurant in the hotel (they had an American style and Italian style restaurants as well). 

We started by eating a thin crunchy bread served with sweet papaya, tomatoes, and pineapple. There were also these crunch crumb bread things that were in the shape of cashews. 

 Of course we ate naan with dinner! This bread is so delicious! I just know I'm going to eat so much of it this summer.

 This is a picture of Marisa laughing and the mango yogurt smoothie drink she knew about from a friend to get. It had little mango chunks in it and was a nice contrast to the spicy food.

The next two pictures are of my main dish. We were told the Leela was probably one of the last places we would be able to eat meat, so I ordered a chicken dish. The waiter asked me if I wanted a spicy or not so spicy dish. I said responded with not so spicy, since everyone who knows me knows I am extra sensitive to spicy food. Apparently the first three things I tried to order would have been VERY spicy so the waiter ended up just ordering me a dish, so unfortunately I can't even tell you what it was called. All I know is that is was pretty spicy (which makes me nervous for the dishes that are SUPER spicy), but VERY delicious. 

At the end of the meal we were given warm water with a lemon in it to clean off our fingers!

During dinner, there was live music playing. It was so beautiful! At one point during dinner, a waitress approached out table and said, "They are playing a special song for you." Sure enough, we hear the song 'Hey Jude' being played. They played it on repeat until we left the restaurant. I love that song and lip sang it with them through the first time they played it. When the bill came the three of us were all asked for a business card again! I don't think anyone believes three girls in their twenties are here to work especially since we don't have a business card when they ask lol. 

After dinner we saw all these women dressed in some of these most gorgeous outfits I have ever seen. A wedding was taking place upstairs. Let's just say they definitely know how to celebrate a happy occasion. I hope I get to attend an Indian wedding this summer! (Cough, Cough, Tapish I hope you are getting on that!).  

Myself, Marisa, and Melanie after dinner in the hotel lobby!

Today I will be moving into my permanent home for the summer. I'm anxious to get settled into a more permanent location where I can get unpacked and start familiarizing myself with the area. I'll probably post another blog after work on Wednesday so be on the lookout! Right now it is time for me to take that bubble bath and watch TV ;)

Love, 

Sequoia