R-Rated

A new bug bit me while I was in Europe. No, not the bed-bug but the Twitter bug. After having profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Orkut etc. could Twitter be any far behind. So, those who are interested, you can follow me on Twitter at @RajAnan. Am I not a propaganda machine? My wife would surely agree. More blogs and tweets to come up in the coming days from Namma Bengaluru . Stay tuned.

As written in the previous post, I was scheduled to fly out to a country with 5-digits and starting with an I. €100 to anyone who thought that country was Italy. Milan, in particular, was the 'next' destination for me. But just a short trip it would be. Left the comfortable confines of Amsterdam for Milan on Saturday morning, scheduled to report to the client on Monday. Sight seeing on Sunday then, right? Wrong. Terrible weather welcomed me to the birthplace of the Congress Party chief and unfortunately, I was confined to my hotel room on Sunday. Many difficult and screwed up things in Italia. First, English language is a 'foreign' language and hence a rarity for any Italian to string a perfect sentence together. Second, taxi fares in Milan start from the time the taxi 'starts' from its location (Linate airport, most times). So by the time you are actually seated in the taxi, you already have minimum €10 to pay. The farther the destination you need to be pick...

Another Wipro colleague took me to Amsterdam for a drink on Friday night since it is my last week here in the Netherlands. After a quick stop at his place to meet his wife and baby boy, off we went to the pub where he hangs out quite often. Translated into English, the pub’s name is The Stork and instead of loud music blaring out of the loudspeakers, this time for a change, it was just loud people. It is incidentally one of the oldest pubs in Amsterdam. Needless to say, lots of ‘senior’ folks who showed up were having the time of their lives. My colleague’s favorite bartender was not present and the reason was that his wife had passed away. That did not deter couple of folks to crack a joke on the deceased lady. Bundled around this corner of Amsterdam were all kinds of pubs. The ones that play loud music, a pub situated in one of the few remaining wooden buildings, a gay bar and for equality, a pub founded by a lesbian in the 1920s. After a round of ‘biers’ (just one glass of Brand Bie...

By now you (& I) are accustomed to the cold-rainy-windy environment here in Amsterdam. With the majority of last week spent at Hoofddorp office, it was time to move out of the city to either Rotterdam or Haarlem. The weather forecast for both places for the weekend was…… cold-rainy-windy, so I decided to take it easy and visit Haarlem. Haarlem is about 30 minutes away from Hoofddorp as compared to more than an hour and half for Rotterdam. As a result, slept late on Friday night and woke up just in time before the McDonald’s breakfast menu stops being on offer at 11 AM. Caught the Zuidtangent# 300 from De Hoek (pronounced as Dohook, spelling classes for my non-Dutch friends) and reached Haarlem station at 11:30. Reached the city center, precisely 5 minutes from the station. The way Haarlem is ‘structured’ is that there is a big church in the middle (hence the term, city center, duh) and there is an open market for cheese, flowers, vegetables, fruits etc (old fashioned stuff) and the...

On Saturday I planned on seeing Den Haag (The Hague) and the surrounding areas. With tips from the hotel crew, I zeroed in on Scheveningen and Madurodam. Took the Intercity train from Schiphol to Den Haag – Holland Spoor and caught a tram (for the first time) to Scheveningen. Unlike the US, the Netherlands is comfortably connected by trains, buses, taxis, canals and of course, by cars. So there is never really a sense of helplessness while traveling within the city or within the country. Scheveningen is that part of Den Haag which has the best beaches in the city. But then again, with winter just introducing itself to the country, there wasn’t much to do other than just take a stroll along the path parallel to the beach. There is a magnificent pier with upper and lower decks that ends in the water with an attached casino and a restaurant. Went to neither, but the walk along the open upper deck was very calm and relaxing. Just the right solace I wanted (Don’t take me seriously when I sa...