Too Beautiful, the blog

Too Beautiful

| wishlist

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Critical Mass in Bangalore

Hey, look: there's a Critical Mass ride in Bangalore! What with their choked traffic and lack of sidewalks, it makes sense.

technorati: bicycles, commuting, critical mass

Labels: Bangalore, Bangalore infrastructure, bicycling, Critical Mass

Sunday, September 14, 2008

A moment of peace

Here's why the Creative Commons license is a wonderful thing: a photograph of mine on Flickr showing a Bangalore street with a Hindu temple and Muslim mosque in close proximity was used to illustrate a post on Indian Muslims Blog calling for peaceful dialogue between Hindus and Muslims.

Of course, one's shareable pictures could also be used to illustrate hateful speech just as easily, but I'm glad mine was used for peace.

Labels: Bangalore, Bangalore trip

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Yet another American in Bangalore

I just got googlerted to the blog of a woman who has just moved with her husband from the Bay Area to Bangalore. Here's a post from Day Three -- she wasn't having a good time of it. Evidently her first experience of the Third World -- and in fact she wasn't even seeing the real Third World, she was seeing the fancy (for Bangalore) apartments catering to Westerners.

I do sympathize.

Labels: Bangalore

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Sex in Bangalore

My Google Alert for Bangalore today coincidentally turned up two different links having to do with sex. First, this Deccan Herald interview with the filmmakers of a documentary -- produced, oddly, by Japan's national TV network -- on Indian youth and changing sexual mores. And second, a press release about an Indian escort service purportedly run by someone named Jim.

While I was there I never saw anything remotely pornographic -- not like you see in Japan, speaking of Japan, where pornographic magazines and comix are available in vending machines -- but I didn't spend any time at the few newsstands I encountered. I was too busy looking at buildings.

But also happening at the same time is this new regulation that women will not be allowed to work at night. Though the enactment of the regulation is probably a technical legal error and will be quickly revoked -- because if it isn't, the whole call center industry will die instantly -- it has provoked serious discussion about the changing role of women in India in rapidly changing places like Bangalore.

technorati: Bangalore, Sex, Escorts

Labels: Bangalore, pornography, sex work

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Indian film stars demonstrate as farmers cook in road

In continuing demonstrations over a water rights lawsuit, local (not Bollywood) film industry folks in the Indian state of Karnataka -- where Bangalore is located -- took over the city's streets. Outside town, farmers also blocked roads, in one case cooking food in the middle of the road. What all this has to do with water rights, I have no idea.

technorati: Cauvery, Bangalore, demonstrations

Labels: Bangalore, demonstrations

Monday, February 12, 2007

New job, and I'm already planning for my vacation

I started a new job today, but as usual I will do very little blogging about work. I usually take care to blog very little about my day jobs. And in this new one, I'll probably do even less, as they have a strict internet policy. You can access the internet, but if you do it too much, you get some kind of warning. The little web surfing I did today already hit some kind of limit, so most of my posting will be in the early mornings, the evenings, or occasionally at noon from whatever nearby wireless hotspot I can find.

The other thing I did today, coincidentally, was buy a ticket to go to Bangalore in April. I've been holding off on this for nearly a year, but I'm finally ready to go. (I was going to go this month, between jobs, but Cris had some knee surgery and I stuck around to give her a hand.)

Also coincidentally, there was a general strike (or "bandh") in Bangalore today, and when one call center tried to keep going with a skeleton staff, it was attacked by zealous strike enforcers. The strike was, ostensibly, a protest over the verdict in a long-running dispute over which state in India is entitled to the waters of a River Cauvery. But like most political actions, it seems like it had more to do with the exercise of political power and control, as state and local authorities -- presumably the ones to whom the stoppage was addressed -- have nothing to do with allocating the water, which is a national decision.

One of those stories led me to another story on the same website: Hindu groups too preoccupied to protest Valentine's Day. It seems that right-wing Hindu parties commonly stage protests against the holiday "because it was a Western phenomenon which destroyed Indian culture." How strange.

technorati: Cauvery, Bangalore,, Valentine's Day, call centers

Labels: Bangalore, Cauvery, Valentines Day