Sunday, 31 May 2009
First Impressions
First thing we did after relaxing a bit was walk around the area Green Park in which we’re living. After asking several people for directions, we ended up in the local market place. There, we had dinner in Costa Coffee. I know, not very original when being in India, but we’ve got to be cautious with our health. Plus point was that we bumped into three American girls of which the one I talked to had just finished college and is travelling India for 6 months and learning Hindi at the moment. Most surely we should be seeing each other again soon.
Hello, I'm here!
Namaste!
The second flight from Dubai to Delhi weirdly enough was not as well organized and nice as the one from Frankfurt to Delhi although both were Emirates Economy flights. I found this very peculiar. Anyways, I’ve arrived well, was picked up from the airport by the Meena, the wife of my “boss” as I believe, and was brought in a wonderfully air-conditioned land rover to an apartment in Gurgaon. There, Rosalind, a friend from uni who is also interning at Quicksand, welcomed me to an apartment we are both meant to live in during this first week. We’re pretty glad to have each other here!
Saturday, 30 May 2009
Fascination
As I researched for the gate for my transfer flight, I was immediately distracted by the duty free paradise that stretches out in an aisle, centering between the gates on either side. Although it was around 6am local time, people were flooding the stores. The first thing that caught my eye was the parfumerie duty free store of course. There, I tried out multiple perfumes, and after having already filled me nose with thousand of different essences, young advising ladies would come up to me and offer new scents to try. Very friendly girls, and there were also surprisingly many men working at the parfuemrie, something one practically never sees in Europe. Maybe has something to due with the gender issues here. Men presence needed in perfumeries. But maybe Im just over interpreting. Anyways, what fascinated me most was the diversity in nationality between all the women working at the parfumerie. I was expecting solely Arabian women but instead probably only a tenth of the women there were from Arabian origin, while the rest seemed to be dominantly Asian and I also noticed an East European women. I heard more Chinese spoken then Arabic between the workers there. But, of course, English was the dominant language. It was also fun the watch all the people walking around in the store. One observation was particulary funny, when there was a man probably in his 40s with cargo pants till his knees and those trekking sandals, who asked in broken English (probably German) if he could leave something at the counter and come back alter to pick it up. The women at the counter naturally obliged. When I observe such situations I always have to laugh when I think about how the communication between eboth of these individuals reaches the other end. What thoughts crossed their minds about the other during this encounter. Till these day I am still fascinated by the fact that two people can have an encounter that only lasts 10 seconds and never see each other again in their life. I just find this crazy.
While roaming between the perfume aisles, a women of oriental background with perfect English asked me whether she could show me some Arabian perfumes. Curious as I am, I willingly smelled some of them. Very strong scents. But quite nice actually.
One scent did catch my “nose” while testing through multiple perfumes. Love in Black by Creed. Very interesting smell, quite unusual. But also quite expensive unfortunately. 119 euros.
