Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

After some false starts and mishaps, I finally got an organized tour of Bangalore last Sunday. I hope to go on a Mysore tour next weekend. Here are some pictures from the tour.

One of the “false starts” was that the full-day tour I was originally booked for got cancelled because of some local election last Sunday. So, I booked myself on the afternoon half-day tour instead (that actually turned out to be better, because when I looked at the stops for the full-day tour, the half-day tour actually looked better; the full-day tour was filled with museums and planetariums, i.e. places that have little to do with Bangalore). So I had to kill some time from 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and I stumbled upon this statue of Queen Victoria.
[flickr]4473819308[/flickr]

The first stop was this museum (and thankfully, the only museum in the list of stops):
[flickr]4473043277[/flickr]
Frankly, the outside of the museum looks better than anything else inside. Inside, you could find things like lathes and micrometers (huh, I didn’t know these common items at my lab in Berkeley were museum-worthy). There was one interesting exhibit though:
[flickr]4473043637[/flickr]
To figure out where the water is coming from, it’s important to note that here the water appears to drop straight down in a cylinder of constant diameter. But the physics of laminar flow of incompressible fluid under gravitational pull (in particular, the fluid velocity increases under gravitational pull, but the flow rate (area times fluid velocity) must stay constant) dictates the diameter must become narrower as water falls downward. I think they could’ve made this exhibit more tricky by fashioning the transparent pipe into the shape water would naturally have, and picking the right material with the index of refraction similar to water so that the underwater portion of the pipe won’t be so transparent. Then it is only through process of elimination that one can arrive at where the water must be coming from.

And we stopped by at Tippu’s summer palace,
[flickr]4473044907[/flickr]
which was fairly unimpressive, except perhaps this monument:
[flickr]4473045567[/flickr]

I really liked our next stop, Lalbagh Botanical Garden though.
[flickr]4473047375[/flickr]
It was a beautiful garden with beautiful paths
[flickr]4473826532[/flickr]
and lake.
[flickr]4473827302[/flickr]
As we had only one short hour there, not nearly enough time to look at everything I want to see in the garden,
[flickr]4473824560[/flickr]
not to mention map some unmapped sections of the footpaths, I plan on coming back later, perhaps next Saturday.

The tour ended at some Hindu temples, including the Bull Temple.
[flickr]4473052099[/flickr]
I felt a lot of ambivalence at these places, you know, first and second commandment and all that (especially at the Bull Temple, where I had a guide who encouraged me to touch the bull “for good luck” and where I also got a little red dot on my forehead, for whatever that meant). Well. I just remembered what Paul said about meat sacrificed to Greek idols: these Hindu idols also do not exist, and these gestures which could be interpreted as worship do not matter—if I do not mistake them for worship.

A friend of mine was complaining that the drug cartel violences just across the border weren’t getting enough media attention.

Well, here’s one less reason to be so worried:

From: Jonathan Poullard Dean of Student <adpa...@berkeley.edu>
Subject: Travel to Mexico Advisory
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:06:14 -0700

Dear UC Berkeley Students,

In response to the recent security concerns in Mexico, the U.S.
Department of State has issued a travel warning to U.S. travelers
traveling to and living in Mexico. Please read carefully the full
advisory notice at

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_mexico.html

Accordingly, UC Berkeley strongly advises against travel to Mexico
during Spring Break. We encourage students to discuss your travel plans
with family, friends, and other concerned parties as appropriate.

Should you have any further questions regarding your decision to travel,
please contact the Dean of Students Office at 642-6741.

Jonathan Poullard
Assistant Vice Chancellor/Dean of Students

Even if the liberal media is burying the story, afraid what the stories of violence in Mexico (and extending to U.S. citizens) would do to the sentiments towards immigrants and immigration, it looks like at least students at Berkeley will be well informed.

Of course, it’s another question whether the information would fall on deaf ears, but, well, let him who has ears to hear hear.

Update: In the interest of full disclosure, the update email:

From: "Harry Le Grande, Vice Chancellor - Student Affairs (campuswide)"
        <CALm...@berkeley.edu>
To: "Students, " <CALm...@berkeley.edu>
Subject: Travel Advisory to Mexico
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:44:57 -0700

Dear UC Berkeley Students,

On Tuesday, March 15, 2009 you received an email from me regarding travel to and
in Mexico during Spring Break. In recent days legitimate concerns have been
expressed that our initial message seemed to suggest that travel to any part of
the country would be ill-advised. This was not my intention. We are, in fact, in
complete agreement with a recent State Department Advisory that warns only
against travel to areas of Mexico that border the United States.

I would ask that you read the full advisory at:

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_mexico.html

I also encourage you to discuss your travel plans with family and friends. Your
safety and well-being is an important priority for us, and we just want to be
sure that you have a great Spring Break, no matter where you go.

Should you have any further questions regarding your vacation plans, feel free
to contact the Dean of Students Office at 642-6741.

Jonathan Poullard
Assistant Vice-Chancellor for Student Affairs
and Dean of Students
Campus Life and Leadership
326 Sproul Hall
UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-2426
ph: (510) 642-6770
fax: (510) 642-7167
poul...@berkeley.edu

I can’t see how anyone could have misunderstood the first email to mean that the entire country of Mexico is unsafe. I mean, that’s like thinking the entire Indian subcontinent is unsafe just because Kashmir is not a place a tourist would want to go to. But, well, some people don’t know coffee at McDonald’s is hot, so.

(If anyone asks why it took me 2 days to write this, I’m claiming that it’s taken me that long to recover from the trip.)

Last Saturday was my first weekend in Bangalore; no one else was coming to the lab (and I’m not … supposed to touch the equipments without a chaperon); so I decided to take a short tour around the city. There were some organized tours advertised on the Internet, but this being my first week (and my not being too familiar with the city’s public transportation system), I decided to venture out alone.

After a quick Google search, I had my primary objective: Vidhana Soudha. Well, long story short, I didn’t do much touring of the place (the gates looked so forbidding; I wasn’t sure if tourists were welcome in that place), and this picture was all I could take away:
[flickr]4412825749[/flickr]

But I did take a walk around the parks, both near the city center
[flickr]4412826141[/flickr]
and near the Raman Research Institute
[flickr]4413593834[/flickr]
which was nice. And I also sampled the local drinks, including one moosambi juice (bars weren’t open in the morning, unfortunately).

If I had to pick one striking difference in India so far (what some other people have been calling “culture shock”, although I wouldn’t call it that—let’s call it … a vague nostalgia, for me at least) is the different … character of road signs. I’ve been warned about lanes well before I came to India, but I wasn’t told about these:
[flickr]4417170386[/flickr]
[flickr]4416405589[/flickr]
Oh. And here’s one traffic rule I found out while walking around:
[flickr]4412826443[/flickr]

P.S. I got around this time on bus—both to the city center and back—despite the fact that I couldn’t find good information on the bus system online (or on the supposed route map at some bus stops). It turns out when you have a GPS (that instantly lets you know when the bus has taken a “wrong turn”), taking a random bus going in the approximately right direction works out fairly well. Also, it helped that I was willing to walk a fair distance (and the day pass was fairly cheap; only 32 rupees).

P.S. Oh, and haggling is very much … in fashion here. I was able to haggle a map of Bangalore down from 150 rupees to 100 rupees, and a hat from 100 rupees to 80 rupees by simply saying that original price was “too much”. Of course, the map was rather imprecise (and not as useful as my GPS) and the hat was cheaply made, but well, I bought them as souvenirs, not practical purpose (which was why any price was too much).

I finally made the visit to FRO/FRRO (I’m not sure what FRRO would stand for) to register. I’ve done something similar in Russia so at least I’m familiar with the concept—for certain types of visas, they want to make sure that I entered the country in the manner I said I would, for the purpose that I said it was for. Despite numerous warnings about how painful this experience would be, it turned out to be a relatively smooth process, if lengthy, and I am happy about that. One thing that stood out is a sign that was hanging in the Foreigners’ Registration Office (I didn’t take a picture out of respect (and fear that I might get kicked out; at least in U.S. government offices are so … paranoid about cameras in the office), but I have the sign’s wording in verbatim):

ATTENTION

ALL THE VISITORS WHO ARE VISITING
FOREIGNERS REGISTRATION OFFICE, BANGALORE
CITY, FOR THEIR OFFICIAL WORK ARE HERE BY
INFORMED THAT IN CASE OF ANY DEMAND FOR
MONEY FOR OFFICIAL WORK OR UNNECESSARY
DELAY BY THE OFFICIALS MAY PLEASE CONTACT
ASST.COMMISSIONER OF POLICE (FOREIGNERS
SECTION) OR DEPUTY COMMISSIONER OF POLICE
(F.R.O) BANGALORE CITY.

I guess they are trying to crack down on corruptions of the kind prevalent in developing countries, such as Mexico and South Korea (I have no direct experience with either, only anecdotes involving police officers and busy government offices).

I can’t say I’ve seen any … overt acts of corruption in my visit to FRO or elsewhere in India. There was some guy who was ushered in front of me at FRO with the, shall we say, bouncer recognizing him as “74″ (I had number 72 and there was another guy behind me who did really have 74), but aside from that, everything seemed relatively well-run, although busy and somewhat lacking in directions (it didn’t help that around the time my number came up, it was lunch time so many people were away at lunch).

So far, my short experience in India points to this place as being a region in transition: lanes are mostly ignored, but there are signs that admonish drivers to “Maintain lane discipline”. Roads are dusty in many places, but then, there are these trendy cafes that do serve expensive (compared to local food prices, for example) drinks. Perhaps in good time, India will come to be a place not too different from U.S. or Europe—I just wonder how the world economy would change with 1 billion more people in a well-developed market economy (for comparison, U.S. has only 300 million people).