Strike!

Working for an American company that basically follows American holidays (with the exception of a couple of the major Indian holidays), today is an off day. I elected not to travel for the long weekend in part so I could attend the Fourth of July celebration and in part because if I traveled next weekend I could have back-to-back three day weekends, which isn't the worst thing in the world. In hindsight and completely on accident, that was a wise decision.

There's a 12-hour general strike today in protest of a rise in fuel prices.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/south_asia/10505004.stm

If I had chosen to travel this weekend, it's a pretty good bet that I would have either been stuck where I was going an extra day or been stuck in Delhi upon arriving. I really didn't think it would impact me until I received a phone call around 9:00am from the car company. Either our drivers are on strike or they were unable to cross the border from Delhi into Haryana. I mentioned that this would have been a good thing to know more than an hour before expecting the car to arrive. He didn't apologize. Either way, I'm stuck finding my own transport if I care to venture out today.

On the bright side, there's nothing I absolutely need to go out and do today, but I had planned to take advantage of the day off and explore some sights in Delhi, including a search for Karim's in old Delhi which is supposedly once of the more authentic and delicious Indian culinary experiences in town. At the least, I could have gone out and taken some pictures that would have made this post more interesting.

On the bright side, I'm not stuck in some random place in India, or worse, stuck in Delhi with no way to cross the border. Plus, this gives me a little free time to start my "test the water" experiment.