Last night, I woke up at 4am and didn't get back to sleep until 6am. I planned to wake up at 9 and meet people at 10:30, but in the morning I got a phone call from Ron. "Good morning, Sunshine!" "Hrrrr?" ...it was 10:45, oops. So it turned out that a group of 5 TWers walked out of Diamond, saw a camel, ate at a standup, caught a rickshaw to MG(ish), and bought all sorts of cool stuff... got separated for a while (because you can only get 3 ppl into a rickshaw and we got out at different places) I was in the one with Ron and Becca. It was a lot of fun. We were stuck in traffic for a while and almost had a race!
We stopped in at a classy local clothing store and I ended up buying 3pr pants and 4pr shirts for about $61(including bank fees)... they are absolutely gorgeous. I didn't have enough rupees on me, so I paid by card.
We wandered around... stopped in at a Baskin and Robbins in a mall and got Lychee ice cream and fig and honey ice cream. Yum! Met up with some more people, tried out McDonalds India and KFC India on the main drag, shopped at a thousand tiny stores, waited wile one of our number got fitted at a tailors, and then took a rickshaw back to Diamond with Uchenna and Shane, arriving around 4 or so.
I know how to cross streets now. It's pretty excellent. I feel pretty acclimated.
Rickshaw 1 cost 35 and rickshaw 2 cost 45, neither of which is bad. Another group of people caught one for the same distance for 80, which is far beyond the appropriate price.
In general, you don't bargain for things that aren't rickshaws. many stores have "set price" or "fair price" signs which mean that the price is set pretty fairly and isn't eligible for change.
My fellow TWers seem to spend a lot of time talking about the places they've been (Barcelona, Amsterdam, London) and no time at all talking about code... which worries me a little. I don't talk very much when we're hanging out. I guess part of it is that we don't have many tech projects in common yet, so there's not much ground to discuss?
Later tonight, the plan is to go out and drink. Shots are apparently around $1 or $2 here, so