Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Varanasi -> Calcutta Train

My train was 3 hours late departing. A poor american girl had been waiting for the 4pm train, which was now delayed until 3:30AM. I took her under my wings, spoke to the station-master on her behalf, and had her transferred to my train, which left at midnight.

It turned out she was amazingly interesting - lived in Sonoma, north of San Francisco, and grew marijuana (state sanctioned, for medical clinics) for a living. We had a great conversation about money laundering, taxes, and how to effectively hide your accounting books.

It's strange.. but all the criminals/law breakers I meet - most don't care at all about security. She uses a prepaid telephone, but doesn't seem to care enough to get a new phone every month or two - even though it'd be very very easy.

I gave her my card, and told her to drop me a line if she ever had any questions on improving her personal security (encrypted accounting databases, etc)...

Anyhow. My train arrived very very late to Calcutta. It's 6PM now, I have a 9PM flight, so I have just enough time to send a couple emails, grab a bit of plain rice (damn stomach), and then head to the airport. I sleep in Chennai airport tonight, which should be lovely.

It also looks like Air deccan, my carrier of choice, will be flying direct to the Andamans from Calcutta in 15 days, thus, if I had more time in my trip, i could have avoided the whole trip to Chennai.

Oh well.

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