India, Can you hear me now?
Armed with http://www.wikimapia.com and a new http://skype.com phone account, I have tried to make contact with a few hotels I found in Bangalore. I didn’t have too much luck. It sounded like they could not hear me. I tested Skype by calling my cellphone and that worked well. My only guess is there is either a lengthy delay of audio when calling India, or the connection is getting somewhat garbled. I know when they talked at first it was somewhat garbled on my end. It was close to 23:30 Eastern Standard Time, or 10AM India time, when I tried to call.
I am very impressed with http://wikimapia.com. I would be lost without it. I have used it to locate the IBM facility on Bannerghatta Rd as well as learning all the roads and interests around the area. By filtering by the tag “hotel,” I was able to find 3 hotels within 1-2 miles of work. I looked up the hotels’ phone numbers using http://www.sulekha.com, the Indian Yellow Pages. I wish Google Maps would make India roads searchable. You can view the roads, but searching for them does not work.
I have met a friendly IBM India employee through my blog. Only a day after posting an entry, he commented that he might be able to help me find housing and get situated in India. He mentioned that there are lists of people looking for paying guests at IBM. I would simply live in a hotel for the first few days and contact some of these people to see if I could move in. Some of these arrangements even include food. I would be living with 1-4 other roommates, but this would make my stay very affordable.