Two Weeks in India

n celebration of my past two weeks in India, I have thought of 14 things I have seen or learned since being here that have not made it into any posts yet:

1. India does not smell as bad as people warned me. Spain and parts of SF smell worse. Sometimes in the morning, India smells like a forest fire because people burn their trash. At night, it sometimes it smells like a pumpkin burning, perhaps predicting India's Cinderella story? The other times it just smells like a polluted city.
   
2. State level politicians can be corrupt. Some have people bow at their feet.
   
3. People celebrate Christmas.
4. Women try to go on diets. We have the same lunch conversations as I did at Google in Mountain View- "I shouldn't be eating this but..."
5. They drive on the left hand side of the road. I think it is more comfortable there.
6. There is no such thing as public education. You have to pay for private school, which is expensive- one school costs $25K per year. When you consider what the average salary in India $under $1,000, it makes you see how unattainable education is.
   
7. Much like America, the north and the south have different cultures.
   
8. The power randomly goes out for a few seconds at least once a day.
   
9. People nod their heads 'no' when they are agreeing with you.
   
10. They play music in the Google bathroom (elevator music, everything from Fiddler on the Roof to the Bangles)
11. They eat anise seeds covered in sugar after eating to freshen their breath and help digestion
12. The new airport in Hyderabad puts about a 70% tax on your plane tickets to and from the airport to fund it.
13. They complain that their country needs education so they will no longer have uninformed voters and people that vote for celebrities. I told them that literacy has nothing to do with it. It is reading comprehension. We have the same issue in the US.
    
14. They label foods with green dots if they are vegetarian (no eggs). Non veg items get a red dot. Red pops up in random places like on Mars bars (Mily Way) because they have egg in them.