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