The first week is over...

Since more than one week I am in Bangalore, and I will give you a small summary of the things that I did since sunday.
Monday was the day of waiting, because I went to the Foreigner Registration Regional Office (FRRO) to tell them that I am in Bangalore, that I will stay here for some while, that I will be paid a salary by the NCBS, that I have a living place, and that the NCBS will pay my transfer back to Germany in case that I do something bad or that I die (for sure, it was more respectfully formulated). I am sure that it is the same in all countries, you have to wait a looooong time in such administrative offices, and you hardly understand what the personal is finally doing. But I was quit e happy that all the documents were in good shape, and that I obtained the desired document at the end of the same day. During the waiting time, I made the observation that many Iranian people were there, besides some students from Thailand, workers from African states or Expats from european countries.
In the following days, I finished the last pending tasks to really be installed, i.e. I got an indian SIM card for my mobile phone, and opened a bank account at the bank present in NCBS. Coming to the fun part, I got introduced into the lab work, how to use the microscopes, information about the cell culture, the managment of the lab, and so on. I had some nice and productive discussions together with my boss Jitu, and his PhD candidate Subhasri about the experiments to do. The way of discussion was very similar to those I was used to in Paris...maybe with less bla, bla.
The atmosphere in the research group is very pleasent, we had several times lunch together, which gives a good opportunity to talk about typical Indian things, such as food or cultural sites. On friday, we even went for a birthday lunch to a Chinese resteaurant. We had a great time, chattet a lot, and on the way back, I realized that I do not feel at all a big cultural difference in the way of conversation. This surprised me somehow. I did not imagine that it will be that easy. Maybe, it is due to the fact that I am only talking with people from a research institute which is frequently visited by foreigners. I will have to start to go out on my own, to find the contact to people outside the institute. A task for the next weeks...