Manky Monkey Motors

On my travels. Fly tomorrow to Mumbai, than onwards to Chennai, finally on to Bangalore. Coming back next Sunday night. May get to paint the front of the garage before I leave tomorrow morning. It's a work trip, will be busy. Shall I put a few pics up ?

happy travels and yes please..

Git,  ;D

Well, that's a daft question! ::)
Don't envy you that trip. For pleasure, great, but for business, not much fun I should imagine.

I'm guessing you don't work in McDonalds then.
Are you an international jewel thief?

International man of mystery  at manchester airport now, down to Heathrow at 7 then onwards at 9. Will put up pics when i arrive. Its 33degrees in Mumbai so a cooling beer will be in order. Don't start work until Monday ON so going to make the most of tomorrow :)

Believe it or not, this was the sky on the way to the airport, See, its not so 'grim up north'  :)

Having a chill session in the lounge

That looks a bit posh.....

If your gonna do it, do it in style BG  :)

Goes with the international man of mystery image as we'll - te he he

Ive arrived in Mumbai. It's hot here - 32degrees. Room is ok though.

View across the bay from my room.

looks nice Andy,a job with perks

I'm looking out of the window at a rainy day in Basingstoke, but I ask myself would I really rather be in Mumbai?
-'course I would!  >:(

Yep, the job works me hard, but there are some nice fringe benefits. The lobby of the hotel below

These little horse drawn carriages are coming and going outside
, people are going up and down in them laughing and joking, it's very nice to see

Here I am, international monkey of mystery, completely cream crackered in the opium bar having some sleeping juice, off to bed soon as it's +5.5 hours from the uk here

You're a git, you know that don't you.
G'night mate.

Hi there - International man monkey git of mystery here. Finally got down to Bangalore yesterday, been a gruelling few day but got a lot of work done. So took pics on the way when I could, here we go. These are of Mumbai, although they could be any large city in India. The traffic is mental. mopeds, motorbikes, auto rickshaws, cars and BIG lorries all try to get into the same space while honking their horns all the time. it is complete bedlam

still you could always just stop wherever you are and get a pedicure

In the background is bollywood film stars houses, in the foreground people have set up homes in tin shacks or less, says something, not sure what

Even the tin huts / slums have satellite dishes though

Much of Mumbai retains the british architecture, these are the high count ( I think)

Next stop was Chennai on Tuesday morning. This shop was in the airport!

Each state in India is huge, and has its own local government. Chennai generally was cleaner, fresher and nicer than mumbai. This was a piece of art in the airport

TATA is a huge global company from India. Apart from making trucks and cars , they also own Jaguar, Land rover and Corus. Most of the trucks are taken great care of, and painted up like this one.

These auto rickshaws or tuk tuks are everywhere in India. Little 3 wheelers made mostly by bajaj, they ae cheap to hire and quick to get about in. healt and safety law has not made it to India yet!.  Again, most of the drivers are proud of their vehicles.

Chennai is in a state that has instigated the "one rupee Idly" for one rupee ( one penny) you can get an idly (puffed rice cake) with a chutney sauce. No one needs to go hungry in this state.

Of course, if you cant resist there is always ....

Thats it for now. Will put up some pics from Bangalore tomorrow maybe.

So what exactly do you do Andy?

What, besides robbin' banks????

ha ha ha. Ok, here goes. I am the operations manager in the UK for a medical transcription company. What we do is take dictations by doctors in hospitals and type them. this allows the doctor's secretary to use that time for other things, and gets the letters out back to the GP quickly. We have a large operation in Bangalore where most of our staff are employed (under UK terms and conditions). So before anyone thinks otherwise, we are not a sweat shop, quite the reverse.

Half of my role is to develop the IT systems that we use to get the audio to india, and the text back into the electronic medical records in the hospitals.

I come to India once a year to meet with our staff, help with the technology here and work on new ideas and development in the company. And drink beer with the staff as well!

This stops the company splitting into an "us and them" mentality. Working in 2 very different continents with different cultures has a lot of challenges, so this time together is very important.

www.scribetech.co.uk (http://www.scribetech.co.uk)

Just to give you an idea about the price differences, that first hotel I stayed in was 9000 rupees / night, that's £90
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OR

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You could just imagine my sneaking about in a black poloneck jumper putting boxes of chocolates in ladies bedrooms. Pick one of the 2 :)

Pics from Bangalore. Road signs can be a bit confusing

Went here for lunch yesterday. A very famous restaurant,  you have Idly and Chutney with a cup af coffee. Idly was 14 rupees ( 14 pence) coffee about the same

Inside its standing only, The coffee is made in the hand polished copper brewing thingy, tastes great

Me with Rustom and Bhashyam

There are plenty of these around, they are still made here

If you want a brand new 350 cc Royal Enfield, its yours for £1,200 + shipping and import duty

Every street corner seems to have a lovely ornate hindu temple, this is just one of them.

And the place is filled with humanity, life and colour

sneek me one back in your suit case, I think them have potential

This is our last night together as Rustom flys back to Mumbai tomorrow, we went out for a nice meal, Here is Bhashyam in the hotel lobby where we went

So cheers from Team ScribeTECH in India :)

I keep wondering if there is a business in that somewhere. I did ask about emissions controls, and was assured they meet EU phase 2 - whatever that means!

When I lived in Guildford, there was an Enfield dealership in the next village. It was actually a small shop jointly owned by a husband & wife. She sold flowers & ornaments, he sold motorcycles.
That's a great cover story for an International Monkey of Mystery Andy.

There is a song about that isn't there -one piece at a time .

thats exactly what i was thinkin / singing as i wrote my last reply  ;) ;D

One piece at a time sung by the (man in black) Johnny Cash

Back in the Uk. Still got to get from Heathrow  to Manchester but nearly there! Everything is so calm and clean

Welcome home. Bit chilly here compared to India?

A tad, yes. Been travelling for 20 hours now, time for bed. Will put the last few pics up tomorrow  :)

Welcome back and goodnight Andy.