Category: Travel

Tuesday was an average day.  I worked on both projects, we made plans for tomorrow’s visit to the test lab.  We’ll be at the office Wednesday morning, then over to the lab for the afternoon.  We are planning to put together two systems that represent the setup of our best results so far, then test them as a baseline.  Then we’ll get the changes underway for the next generation of boards.  We’ll just assume that we can’t get there with these ones, and use our best information, knowledge and experience, to get close.

Today again I walked over to the Royal Minaksha Mall on my own, for lunch.  I wandered a bit, ended up at TGI Friday’s, was quite…  American.  Just what I needed.  My body’s on a bit of a revolt.  Not that Indian food is a problem, just that I need some – um – more “traditional fare”, at least traditional for me, some of the time.

On the way to the mall, I noticed a lot of styrofoam around on the back road I was taking.  I’d been down here several times, this time looked… ugly with all that styrofoam.

On the way back from the mall, I saw a woman carrying  a basket of goods on her head.  She was so graceful, it seemed effortless.  I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do that!

On Saturday, we made big plans as to how we were going to get into the test lab and stomp this problem.  I had ideas and was confident that things would go well.  I had backup ideas in case those things didn’t work.  Srini and Somiyan had done their preparations, the units were ready, we were ready to deal with it and go back to the office.

Well, it didn’t go well.  It went from mediocre to bad to worse.  By the time the day was done, we were wondering what we could do to make it work better.  We tried some novel approaches and that didn’t work either.

We had planned to come back on Tuesday to do more testing, based on the assumption that we would make headway on Monday.   We decided instead to go to the office, ponder, and regroup on Tuesday, and do further testing on Wednesday.  Thankfully!

Lunch was again at the Hotel Nandhini, and was great as it was before.  Again I left with my lips burning  🙂   The sign of good Indian food, or a tenderfoot from North America eating it?

Yes, another working Saturday.   There is a lot to do on each of these projects.  I’m working closely with the hardware engineer, Srinivasan, to make the necessary circuit changes in a hurry.

We’ve also got project management challenges.  The two projects are competing for some of the same resources, so it’s going to be tough to get everything done on time.

At lunch, I slipped away on my own to the Royal Minakshi Mall – I wanted to browse on my own.  I went up to the food court for lunch, but my choice, “US Pizza”, is closed and gone!  Oh well.  My next choice, “TGI Friday’s”, was closed due to the election.  I’m told that there was too much drunken brawling going on, so they close all liquor establishments from 5 PM on Friday through to 5 PM on Sunday, the voting day.

Liquor Stores, Bars, Restaurants that Serve Alcohol are closed on the last 2 days up to an election

In the early afternoon, Ramu stopped by and suggested that I visit the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum tomorrow, that it would be worth the trip.  I figured maybe I might.

So it was getting rather late, so at 6:15 PM, I called for a car to pick me up at 7 PM.   In the meantime, I realized that I had not done some sketches critical to board layout for the PC board that we were working on, so I took the work with me.

Srini said he would collect the sketches from me tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon, when he would pick me up on his motorbike and take me to Hosur, where he and Mani live.  We’d hang out at their homes, and check out the market.  Now, I haven’t had a ride on a motorbike since I was 18 years old.  I was a bit petrified about it, but figured that it was in keeping with my theme for the entire rest of the trip, to say, “to H with it”, and just do it.  Something to look f-f-f-forward t-t-t-to.

At about that time, the skies opened up and we had a torrential downpour.  By the time the car picked me up, there was 1/2 foot to 1 foot of water laying in the streets.  The pedestrians were picking their way through it, many in sandals.  Yuck!

The rain had stopped, but traffic was completely snarled anyway.  The trip home was excruciating – first stop and go (more stop than go), then bumping down sidestreets, smaller sidestreets, narrow alleyways, nearly getting schmucked at every corner.  Most neighbourhoods were pitch dark – a “power cut” had happened – blackouts.

When we got to the hotel, the block around it was dark as well, but the hotel was well lit, as always – its diesel generator was running.  I was told that there are a lot of “power cuts” during heavy rains.  All evening after that, the power was on and off.  In my room, the lights would go out for say 30 seconds or so, while the generator kicked in, then they would come back on.  Fortunately, the Internet stayed up the whole time 🙂

At around midnight, I remembered the sketches that I said I would do.  I took an hour and drew them up, then, exhausted, crashed out.  During the night, a “power cut” happened and my CPAP machine stopped, and I awoke, very confused.  The power came back on, and I fell asleep again.  Love that machine, but too bad that it’s reliant on electricity to do its job, ha ha.

So, yes, I am entranced by sarees – the traditional garment that the Indian women wear.   On Thursday the 2nd, I asked a couple of the guys about them, and Darshan took me to the Royal Minakshi Mall for lunch, and we went to the Reliance store (big chain) to see some.

There are many different materials, colours, styles, and types.  Often they come with an extra yard or so of fabric, from which the wearer is to fashion their own blouse or whatever undergarment they wish under the sash.  Others have no extra material, so you are expected to just wear clothes you already have, or a ready-made blouse.

Some of the saree sashes are translucent, some are opaque.  Some are intended to wrap right around, cover he entire upper body, and some just literally as a sash.  It was quite interesting to see.

No, I didn’t buy a saree.  I didn’t see anything that would fit me 🙂

I went back to the little post office again, last postcard in hand, already with stamps, and ready to go.  The fellow scanned it closely and cancelled the stamps with his hand cancelling stamp.  Sigh.  Like being transported back in time!

On Friday the 3rd, we were working away as usual, and decided to go up to the lunchroom for lunch.  We were going to take the elevator.  We waited for about 5 minutes as the elevator went up & down, passing our floor constantly, even though the button was pressed repeatedly and was lit, saying that it knew we were waiting.  What fun!

There seemed to be a lot of power outages on Friday, not sure why.  It’s eerie seeing all the vehicles on the road with their headlights, but no streetlights, oodles of pedestrians, and the houses dark.

It turns out that the first of May is the Labour Day holiday here in India.  Everybody gets the day off, but the product development crew is here because I’m here all the way from Canada, and we want to maximize the amount we get done while I am here.  Sorry about that, folks.

The air conditioning in the office is switched off at night to save power.  Security controls the switch, and generally turn it on at 9 AM.  On this day, security staff were there, but they didn’t turn on the switch on at 9 AM as they were supposed to.  The office was stifling hot… until we realized what was going on, and harangued them into flipping the switch 🙂

I worked most of the day on my progress reports on both products, the F-PRO 2000 and F-PRO 3000.

There are three washroom facilities on our floor – men’s with stalls & urinals, ladies which I would assume has stalls, and a centre, larger one that is private and has a shower.  I decided to use the separate one, as it always seems to have toilet paper.  Well, on my way out, I went to the soap dispenser, a pump, put my hand under it, and pressed down on the pump, but instead of coming out the nozzle, it squirted sideways onto my shirt!  And ran down my shirt, ugh.  So, off with the shirt, rinsed it out in the sink.  Well, I was so sweaty that hardly anyone noticed… and I was nice and cool for a couple of hours.  It’s so hot here though that it dries out in record time, wow.  Soon my shirt was clean and dry (soap, wash, rinse, dry).

Mani ran out at lunchtime and brought back big bags of food for lunch – “veg” and “non-veg”.  There was a crew of about eight or ten of us, made our way up to the lunchroom, and we had a bit of a festive spread.  It was great!  The food was good too, although they keep giving me mystery foods and saying, “Try this.”  Then they say, “It’s hot.”  Well I still have to try it, and usually it’s wonderful, but my lips are always burning after I eat with these guys.  I’m starting to think that they get joy out of seeing me sweat!

Prabhu and Srinivasan are good friends.

Darshan arranged that a Joyson and Prabhu would take me to the Bangalore Palace early in the afternoon, but I insisted that I work later to get the job done.  By the time we went, it was crazy traffic, and the cab driver was a bit surly.  He dumped us outside the gates, we had to walk with all my crap (briefcase & bag of other goodies) in to the palace (sorry about that, guys).  It was quite interesting – this palace was used for the royal family right up into the 1950s.  This palace was more like a very large home for a very rich family, than the hugely opulent amazing palace in Mysore – although, there was the main room where the king held court – very impressive.  This palace also had the first lift (“elevator” in North American speak) in all of India, an ornate wooden structure that went from the ground floor of the main entrance to the next floor above.

Bangalore Palace

 We had a short visit the castle (because I made us late), then another taxi picked us up and zipped us by the Bangalore State Legistlative Building.  Pretty impressive, a very beautiful building.  They are in the middle of construction around it, so we couldn’t get in close for a look.

Prabhu and I in front of the State Legislature

The Central building of the State Legislature

Overnight on Sunday night, I had, um, gastro problems…  I was worried!  I started the Cipro that I brought from home.  Thankfully, the problems went away in about 24 hours or so, but finishing the sequence.

The boys from ERL picked me up shortly after 10 AM, and off to the lab we went.   We had had a great day on Friday, but just before the end of the day, we “went a bridge too far” and things got worse, but we couldn’t seem to backtrack and get success again.  So today, we were going to get back on track.

Alas, it was not to be.  We tried many, many things – lots of tests and experiments, but with little success.  We left at 6:20 PM after a long day.

The bright spot in the day was that we went to Gokul Krishna for lunch again.  Again, very good.

On Tuesday, we were doing strategy and planning for both the F-PRO 2000 EFT testing and F-PRO 3000 development.  I was called to a meeting with the top management of ERL where we discussed the work to be done, the progress (or lack thereof), and the schedule.  Now, for the most part, I declined comment the schedule, since I am not familiar with processes and outsource in India, and do not have deep knowledge of the resources available.  But certainly all eyes are on these two projects.

I had a couple of postcards to mail (nephews et al 🙂 ), and had tracked down a post office nearby the office – maybe 3/4 km away or so – 4 blocks east, 4 blocks north.  Late in the morning, then, I headed out to find this post office, using the GPS in my phone.

Well, I wandered a bit but I found it – literally a hole-in-the-wall with a metal frame wicket, behind which an elderly gentleman stood.  It appears to be a family operation, because when I put my postcards down, he didn’t know the postage to Canada, and bellowed to his wife to call head office and find out!

It turns out that it costs Rs15 (15 rupees) to send a postcard to Canada.  At Rs50 to the Canadian dollar, that’s about 30 cents.  What a deal!  I hope they get to their destination, and don’t end up in a dead letter office because of insufficient postage.

They put the stamps on my postcards – Rs10, Rs4, and Rs1, and cancelled them right there with a little hand cancellation stamp.  How cute!

At the last minute, I realized that I had one more to send, so I bought an extra set of stamps.

That’s either my thumb, or the helmet of a motorbike rider.  I’m thinking “thumb”.  Sorry.

There’s the Hulimavu Post Office.  Expand the image and zoom in and you will see the wicket.

When I mentioned my adventure to Ramu, he told me that this was actually a village – or what was a village, before the city engulfed it, some time ago.  So in there you will find a small market, shops of every kind, and services like a clinic, etc.  Now that he mentioned it, I did see all of the above.  How cool is that?  A village in the middle of the huge city. 

We ate in the lunchroom upstairs at the office, and to many folks’ amazement, it was fine for me.  Gerry was especially tickled at how I was able to manage most (not all!) of the Indian food set out for us, and that I actually knew what biryani was 🙂

The morning came early, but we met Lokesh and Karthik at 6:30 AM in the hotel lobby.  They are two young ERL engineers who had been pressed into being our tour guides.  Our van arrived and at 7 AM we were off to Mysore.

Even that early on a Sunday morning, the streets were fairly busy.  There were cricket pitches with people out playing on them, a market garden filled with people, and the traffic was, well, not crazy, but busy.

I put on sunscreen but then immediately started to sweat and washed some into my eye, very painful.  I tried to wash it out with tears for over an hour, but finally, two stops at restaurants along the road, and rinsing it out, it gave me some peace.

The drive was… interesting.  So many different things on the road.  Motorbikes with 1, 2, 3, and 4 people on them (more to say on that later), auto rickshaws, cars, trucks, overcrowded buses, trucks with boxes filled with people, trucks filled to overflowing (hay for instance) so they were twice their normal width, bicycles, pedestrians – you name it.  A new one for me were truck frames with engine, a hood, a seat and steering wheel, and a young man driving it – no windshield, no cab top – we saw 3 of those.  I learned later that they were going from the frame plant to the body plant… fair enough, but in Canada, they would be on a flatdeck.  Not so here 🙂

Despite it being  four lane highway all the way, our speed was uneven, and generally slow.  People were entering and exiting the highway all over the place, pedestrians crossing. vehicles weaving in and out.  It is crazy trying to drive here, I’m sure.

We got to Dariya Daulat Bagh, where the last Muslim king of Mysore had his palace, at about 10:30.  There was a nice long formal garden with a palace building.  We weren’t allowed to take photos inside the palace, but it was full of murals, paintings, and photographs of the life and times of the Muslim king, his conquests, his victory over the English (he is revered because he’s the only one that stung the English in this manner), then subsequent defeat.  Very interesting.

Looking back at the entranceway

 

Looking along the formal garden to the palace

Aside to the left to beautiful lawns framed by trees sculpted into columns

The palace itself

We had just been commenting on how we’d seen all kinds of animals but no horses, and, well, there were two in the parking lot, pulling carts.

Onward to the Mysore Palace.  On the way, the driver suddenly pulled over to the side of the road, handed a person a few rupees, and got a garland of jasmine which he put hung from the rearview mirror.  Very nice smelling, mmm.

We had some fun around our cameras – we had thought that they wouldn’t be allowed on the grounds, so we left them in the van – but then lots of people had cameras, so we retrieved them.  Then it turns out that you cannot enter the palace building even if you just have a camera, so we had to check them.

We had to take off our shoes to enter the palace, walked the whole place in bare feet.  It’s a magnificent place, wow.  Full of opulence and spacious rooms, ornate fixtures, and beautiful artifacts behind glass.  When we emerged, we went further down and toured a small temple.  The pathway was so hot on our feet, ouch!

We put our shoes back on, took some photos around the grounds, then headed out.

There were dozens of folks hawking their wares outside the palace.  I bought postcards, since we had no pictures from inside the palace.  Then a young child started harassing Norbert about sandalwood fans, followed us to the van, and proceeded to follow us and harangue him through the driver’s open window, lowering the price and upping the quantity constantly, for something like ten minutes!  I think he started at Rs150 for one, ended up offering five for Rs250.  Norbert kept saying “no” but just couldn’t shake him.  When we finally pulled out onto the street, that was the end of that.  I kind of kept expecting this kid to pop up out of nowhere to harass us somewhere else later in the day, like some kind of movie, but thankfully it didn’t happen 🙂

We went up Chamundi Hill, more of a mountain really, where we went to Sri Chamundeshwari Temple.  We didn’t go in because the lineup was hours long, but we checked out the large marketplace outside the temple.  We then went down to Mahabaleshwara Temple on the side of the mountain, with a large bull statue.

We stopped for a bit of shopping and lunch, then headed back to Bangalore.

The traffic on the way back was heavier.  Then the rains came, a torrential downpour.  It took almost four hours to get back to the hotel.  Norbert had time to shower and then he was off to the airport for his flight home.

On the ride back, I was again amazed at all the different vehicles on the road, including a family of four on a motorbike – dad driving, daughter sitting in front of him carrying something, son behind him, wife sitting side-saddle on the back.  All quite relaxed, zipping down a busy highway at 80 km/hr or so.  Wow.

After getting back to the city, Norbert and I went for a stroll and caught a sub at the Subway in the Bangalore Central store/mall.  On the way back, I stopped by a wine store to buy a bottle of red wine.  I was rather disappointed at the selection – only five different red wines – two imported, and three domestic!  None suited my fancy, but finally I chose a domestic Cabernet.  Well, it was Rs685 (about CA$13.70).  I used my Mastercard.  When the PIN request came up, the guy asked me for my PIN!  Yikes, I said something like, “the card is mine and the PIN is private.”  He said “sorry” and handed me the PIN pad.  Then he realized that he had entered the transaction as Rs485, not enough to pay for the wine.  He wanted to cancel and restart, to which I just told him I’d pay the difference in cash.  I had a weird feeling about that transaction.  I checked, nothing untoward has happened in my Mastercard account.  Not yet, anyway.

Norbert flew out of Bangalore late Sunday night (well really Monday morning), so as of Monday, I’m the only Canadian in Bangalore… or so it seems 🙂

The Product Development staff at Easun Reyrolle work Saturdays.  That means we work Saturdays too, while we are here.  It was a very busy day, with meetings about both projects and with the Managing Director, Premnath.  A lot of discussion about how to ensure that the products get completed and into the market on time.  That’s difficult, because there are certainly issues that I see that need to be addressed before the products go to market.  It’s a tough message for everyone to handle, because they thought they were very close… but things have been dragging on.  Not that all of the delays have been related to the issues that we see, but certainly these need to be addressed, in order to ensure that the product is successful.

We wandered to the Royal Minakshi Mall for lunch.  Right outside the office, we saw some mangy dogs.  One separate, obviously wary of the other several dogs watching it closely.  As it trotted away, it turned once in a while and growled.  None of the dogs looked happy.  They didn’t look very prosperous 🙁

Norbert spotted two monkeys in a tree, about 20 yards away.  Nobody else even noticed them, but it’s a bit of an unusual sight for us.

Cute, Yes, but I’ve been warned to stay away.  They will steal fruit if you are carrying it,they can get aggressive, and sometimes carry rabies

Then, we made our way through the small industrial area right behind the office.  There are several small industrial shops here, making bolts & screws, metal scaffolding, designer clothes, and industrial equipment.

After passing through the industrial area, there’s a residential area, then a wide open space with a huge school across an open area.  The path here is difficult to describe as a road – it’s pretty rough.  We saw cows grazing on the garbage.  Yes, that’s a common sight here – there’s enough garbage in the streets for cows to live on.

A couple of cows eating garbage by the side of the road.  Well, it’s more like a stony trail in the middle of the city.  Note the “ruins” in the background.  With construction all around, there are many such abandoned buildings.  Wonder why?

So, here’s the mall.  Big, clean, and modern.  Quite the contrast to the cows grazing beside an abandoned building, only 200 yards away.

The Royal Minakshi Mall

We enjoy Chinese Food, Indian style.  From left: me, Srinivasan, Manikandan.  Missing: Norbert, who is taking the picture.

Norbert juggles three oranges to win a tetrapak box of orange drink (tasted like Beep apparently)

As we got back to the office, our monkey friends were much closer, on the fence along the road, and we got better pictures this time.

Ramu arranged for a trip to Mysore for us tomorrow, Sunday.  Mysore happens to be his hometown, so he was anxious for us to see the sights there.  The Mysore Palace is second only to the Taj Mahal in all of India, he tells us.  The catch?  It’s 150 km each way, and we have to leave early because it’s a 3 to 5 hour drive each way.  7 AM early, on a Sunday!  Ouch, my head hurts already 🙂  And, since Norbert flies tomorrow night (well technically 3 AM on Monday morning), we have to be back in decent time, so he has plenty of time to get to the airport, in spite of whatever traffic challenges there may be.   We need to be back by 8:30 or so, at the latest, as he heads off at 9 PM.

We left work a bit early (4:30 PM), went to the Central store / mall again (1 km east from the hotel), where Norbert hoped to get some more of Danny’s planes.  Success!  Danny’s son was on duty, and we bought a bunch more packages.  Norbert was pleased – his wife’s schoolroom is going to be full of excited kids, flying planes around the class like crazy!

Darshan went down to the Gopalan Mall (roughly 2.5 km east) right after work, and picked us up two tickets to “Iron Man 3”, dropped them at our hotel.  So, we went to Gopalan Mall for dinner – ended up at KFC, was most appealing place – and hung out until the 10 PM late show.  Wow what a noisy mall.  I guess it was a Saturday and all.

The movie was in 3D, so we had to get those 3D glasses.  We had to put 100 rupees down for each pair of glasses (100 rupees is approx CA$2), fine.

Well, you know me, Mr. One Eye – but it wasn’t bad at all.  I had to put my prescription eyeglasses on underneath the 3D glasses, and that was a bit awkward, but overall OK.

“Iron Man 3” was OK, but I haven’t seen the first two, so some of the inside humour was lost on me.  The movie was pretty full – I would imagine about 400 people.  It was the second night of the movie showing here.  It didn’t debut at home until a week later, ha ha.

Anyway, the movie was clicking along, then suddenly the screen went blank, and a few seconds later the lights came on.  A malfunction, curses!  I said something, but nobody else seemed upset.  In fact, many got up and wandered out of the theatre.  Well, what do you know?  An intermission!!!  Brilliant, to get folks out to the concessions.  A few minutes later, the lights dimmed without warning, and the movie resumed.  Wow.

Afterward, we had to file out through the back exits.  Down the hall, there was a guy collecting the 3D glasses in a box, and giving out 100 rupee notes for each one.  He saw that Norbert and I were together, and pretended to give me 2 x 100 rupee notes, but somehow only one 100 rupee note ended up in my hand.  The crush of the crowd pushed me down the hall, and there is Norbert, holding out his hand, trying to get the second 100 rupee note.  Well, he was persistent enough, he finally got it.

By this time it was 12:30 at night, and we just didn’t feel like walking the 2.5 km back home – oh, and remember we have to be up early.  There were dozens of auto rickshaws in front of the mall.  We decided that we’d take one.  Yikes, I always thought those things looked dangerous.  Oh, well.  150 rupees for what should be a 10 or 20 rupee ride.  Oh, well, again – remember that it’s 50 rupees to the Canadian dollar, so we’re talking CA$3.  Later I was told that the price goes up substantially after midnight.

An auto rickshaw (photo borrowed from a tourist web site)

 What a ride!  Like a minibike with no muffler, a rough ride, bounce bounce bounce, and the side bars aren’t much to hold onto.  I was petrified.  Good thing the road was deserted!  We had a motorbike and a car pass us, and both kind of appeared out of nowhere, beep beeped, and swooshed on by.  Fun fun!  We survived, and got back to our hotel in time to crash around, oh, 1 AM.  Tomorrow will start early, like around 5:45 AM.  Ouch.

I was going to have a shower before bed, but there was no hot water.  Enough of that noise, no need for a cold shower these days 🙂

Norbert went to the office, the boys (a reduced crew) picked me up and we went to the lab.  Unlike Monday, things really clicked.  We got very methodical, with Manikandan entering results directly into a spreadsheet, me dictating which test was next, and focussing on only one test, leaving the rest for later.

Lunch was at the Hotel Nandhini, known for its food from the Andhrea region of northern India, apparently acknowledged as being the most spicy in all of India.  Yikes!  Non vegetarian.  Yes, it was hot & spicy, but it was also very tasty, excellent!  I couldn’t understand what Manikandan told the waiter, I think maybe they toned it down for me.  Nonetheless, I am really enjoying this Indian food.

In the afternoon, we had victory after victory, pushing the performance of the unit up and up.  In the last hour or so though, we fell flat on our face – even when we “undid” recent changes, we couldn’t get back to where we were in the afternoon.  It was appropriate to break at that point.

So, in India, they like their tea.  They break for tea in the morning, and in the afternoon.  Each day, when the others had their tea, I would fuss about, sometimes reading, sometimes pondering the challenge at hand.  Well, they needled me enough, that I decided to have some tea – black only, of course.  What do you know, it was great!  So from then on, I drink black tea with the guys, each time.  Hard to believe, huh?  Those of you who know me, know that I don’t drink coffee or tea, as a rule.  Well, it’s true!  Here’s photographic evidence:

The ERL management team took Norbert and I out to dinner at an interesting restaurant – The Barbeque Nation.  Here, there are large square holes in the centre of the table, where the waiters carefully set in open grilles full of hot coals.  You can feel the heat as they lower it into the hole with big hot pad mitts on.  Then they bring pre-cooked skewers of different foods and set them into slots on the open grilles.  You can eat as much as you want, they keep filling it up.  We ate, drank, and were merry, but when we were full, our fearless leader advised us that this was only the appetizer round, and that the buffet was next!  Oof, again.  I had a polite, small sampler of several of the dishes, and pushed back from the table.  Overall, a good time was had by all.  We also consumed no small quantity of red wine.  Generally, this is a noisy restaurant, and I think I know why.  No screams of pain from burns though, and that is impressive 🙂

Needless to say, when I got back to the hotel, I could do little more than crash.

We knew that we had to work on Saturday!  Yikes.

We were back at the ERL office on Thursday, working & planning the next day’s EFT testing at the lab.

For lunch, we made our way back to The Royal Minakshi Mall, but this time up to the food court.  Norbert and I had U.S. Pizza, which was fine.  No beef 🙂

After dinner, Norbert and I went for a walk in the direction where I had failed to find that shopping centre.  We went a block further than I went, and – voila!  There it was!  But… it wasn’t a shopping centre like we know it.  It was an old building with a few small shops in its storefront, then dozens and dozens of small stands inside (reminded me of the flea markets of Mississauga, although not quite as crowded), selling all kinds of stuff – jewelry, food, picture frames, toys, small appliances, flowers, trinkets, furniture – you name it.  Then, outside, there was a street market full of fresh vegetables and chickens.

Norbert purchased nice silk scarves, bracelets, and a bit of jewelry for his girls.  He was pleased with himself.

We wandered a bit more, saw some more back lanes filled with small, brightly lit shops, selling designer clothes, jewelry, electronics, and food.  This truly is a city of entrepreneurs.  At least in some areas.