March 1-5

Mar.1
One month, albeit the shortest month of the year, nevertheless I left Canada a month ago; I remember it being cold.
Waking up today was welcomed by the sun shining and happy screams of a playground filled with excited children, meaning I overslept. There would be not time this morning to join in any school functions if I intended to get to Vinod's at a reasonable time; in hopes of finishing with time to meet up with Shruti and do part of my long delayed souvenir shopping. Despite my best efforts by noon Hamid had been sucked back into his office.
First stop for the day is not Vinod's, it is a company for one of Hamid's other clients and is a shag carpet store. I hate this style and am well aware of Angus' dislike for all things modern, well most things modern. There is no way that these styles would fit into our store; possibly a separate affiliated modern only store, and that is quite the long shot. We head onto Vinod'[s 29 days after I first tried to go there.
We spend a few hours at Vinod's going throughv his carpets and like Ideal Carpets I recognize a lot of patterns from stock in the store over the year which is good and bad. Good in that it makes it easy to select and bad in that it limits the variety in choice. Plus in the back of my mind I think "Angus probably saw this exact same carpet before and skipped on it, he will think me the fool for selecting it this time." Then again, maybe he could use the second opinion to convince him to try them, who knows--Angus I suppose; it is always nice to have that sober second thought. That said, Canada should abolish the Senate--oh politics how confusing you are.
From Vinod's I head to PDR mall to meet up with Shruti for some gift hunting before her train back to Delhi. You are all getting tacky Indian things if I manage to find them--enjoy.

Mar.2
It is basically too dark right now to see what I am writing. The day is over although I am not entirely sure that it began. I am about 15 minutes away from leaving for the train station to catch another overnight and still yet to write about my day. I tried starting a few times and ran into a block or simply stopped because I found distractions to entertain myself with. Plus overall the day was unexciting; at least to write about. I slept in a bit (9am), read in the sunshine 6 1/2 stories up away from everything, watched a movie and T.V. shows, caught up on emails and sat through another Hindi dominated dinner. This all I suspect comes across a bit jaded, I enjoyed it all I just have already written about days like today extensively. When I was a top that roof nobody in the world knew where I was--no strangers, friends or family. When I jumped down I managed to give two carpenters quite the fright.
I wait at the train station for another overnight to Delhi, the same train I took nearly two weeks ago. I did the math on the ride over and I will have spent 50 hours on trains when all is said and done. Whether or not this is a long time I do not know. I know I like overnight traveling; when I am able to get a good night sleep in, it saves the days from being lost in transit. The train however is late, no surprise there, the only question that remains is how late will it be, and how eaten while I be in the meantime.

Mar.3
Starts off where March 2nd left me; waiting for a 90 minute delayed train being eaten by bugs wanting to get on the train while I am still groggy enough to quickly hit REM sleep; ideally before my fellow passengers begin snoring. A hopeful yet realistic goal; although one I would fail at which ends up making for one long day.

Breakfast on the train: a two egg omelet, ten peas, three french fries, two pieces of slightly toasted bread, a mango juice box and the three tea bag half cup of tea I drank. It does tide one over until the next time you smell food, so it has that going for it.

I made my morning tea nearly more tea bags then water in hopes that doing so may solve all of my sleep related ideas until my next glass later on; a daring move I realize. Four or five cups of tea later I end up on a patio with two Indians and a German man watching Canada give Pakistan a bit of a scare at the world cup before they eventually lose.

Mar.4
Angus arrives today after his day and a bit of traveling and I will get a chance to see his approach to everything here in India. More then that I am curious to see if the exporters treat him differently from me; I suspect that they will,. His flight gets in at 10:40am and just after 10 we head towards the airport to meet him there. From there I believe we will head directly to suppliers and start the whirlwind that will be the last six days.
Ever delayed, Angus this time, his flight is 45 minutes delayed which strikes me as a fitting start to his sojourn in India this year. we find Angus and stop by two of the suppliers that I had put carpets aside at while there is still daylight.
The majority of what I put aside was passed over by Angus however he did pick some and more from the companies within the same styles. It all comes as a bit of a relief as now I get to sit back and observe mainly--interjecting when things truly fascinate me. Now that I think about it I could have done more of that all along. Dinner was at Eggspectations which, as tends to be the case with western companies in Asia, is far nicer then back home. For myself it amounted to endless salad bar, endless desert and endless Tandoori Chicken Tikka.

Mar.5
The first full day with Angus here in India and another beautiful day. We returned to two of the companies I had been to weeks ago as well as a warehouse and a quick stop at ICE (International Carpet Expo) simply to meet a silk carpet supplier. Once there around each corner Hamid and Angus were running into exporters they knew; by this point I have met enough to run into a handful that recognized me as well,.
The group we went to see at ICE, as I mentioned, was a silk carpet exporter that Angus had discovered while at a trade show in Germany. The funny thing is of course Angus met a German wholesaler of the silk carpets who was foolish enough to leave the Indian exporter tag on. As much as possible he skips the middle man to keep the prices the lowest possible and this is simply one of those times.
While at the silk exporter I also got to pick out my very own silk carpet. A gift from Angus; my very own hand picked silk carpet which is quite the memento. There are truly some amazing pieces out there although they may not fit into the style of stock carried by CRT. One of the handy things about having me gone aroudn to the places first is I have the starting prices and maybe a slightly discounted one; then Angus can work his magic and lower it a bit more to an Angus price.
For dinner it was a five star hotel with one of the best chef's in the world, who happens to get paid $2500 a day. A few years back the restaurant was rated in the top 10 in the world, I am unsure if they still hold that rating although the food was amazing. On of the suppliers treated us as well in an attempt to coheres our return to their shop tomorrow morning. They have been quite kind to me however the product I was mistaken on and should not have listened to their story. It looked the same yet they claimed things were different now.