Sunday afternoon Bill and I had arranged a cab to move us to our new home for another 2-3 months. It only took us about 3 hours and some change to get to Infosys campus in Electronics City.
We were aware that Electronics City is in the outskirts of Bangalore but being only about 20 kilometers away we didn't realize that it can take up to 2 hours to get into the city at certain times of the day. This puts a huge damper on our ability to have any fun during the week.
The only place you can sit down and have a beer at dinner is actually pretty close to us... i would say about a 5 minute walk, but Infosys will not let you in or out directly across so you are forced to walk about 20 minutes around the campus to get to Hosur Road and Chandaras (I think that's what it's called).
Chandaras is a pretty good place with LCD's on the wall that plays "Indian Porn". In other words, it plays sexually erotic music videos where the girls in the videos are white. In my opinion its the closest thing the Indians get to porn because of their strict sexual culture beliefs. The hypocritical thing is that about 40% of married men in India go to brothels as reported by a newspaper. Going back to the restaurant, the prices are good for food and drink so the crowd is 100% Indian men relaxing after work in Electronics City. I asked the waiter if any girls are around and he says its a very rare case and that only about 10% of Indian women drink.
What is a youthful male coming from America to do here at Electronics City? I guess the only thing to do is work. After a week here, Chandaras is already starting to bore me. It's very hard to believe that nothing around here caters to young techies for post work dinner and drinks. There are many companies that reside in Electronics City including Infosys, HP, Wipro, and Tata (biggest Indian company). Infosys alone in Electronics City provides work for about 13,000 people, though the campus only houses about 1,000. This leads to many employees coming and going all throughout the day but makes the weekends and nights an empty place.
Below is a pic of Infosys campus from Hosur Road.
The only place you can sit down and have a beer at dinner is actually pretty close to us... i would say about a 5 minute walk, but Infosys will not let you in or out directly across so you are forced to walk about 20 minutes around the campus to get to Hosur Road and Chandaras (I think that's what it's called).
Chandaras is a pretty good place with LCD's on the wall that plays "Indian Porn". In other words, it plays sexually erotic music videos where the girls in the videos are white. In my opinion its the closest thing the Indians get to porn because of their strict sexual culture beliefs. The hypocritical thing is that about 40% of married men in India go to brothels as reported by a newspaper. Going back to the restaurant, the prices are good for food and drink so the crowd is 100% Indian men relaxing after work in Electronics City. I asked the waiter if any girls are around and he says its a very rare case and that only about 10% of Indian women drink.
What is a youthful male coming from America to do here at Electronics City? I guess the only thing to do is work. After a week here, Chandaras is already starting to bore me. It's very hard to believe that nothing around here caters to young techies for post work dinner and drinks. There are many companies that reside in Electronics City including Infosys, HP, Wipro, and Tata (biggest Indian company). Infosys alone in Electronics City provides work for about 13,000 people, though the campus only houses about 1,000. This leads to many employees coming and going all throughout the day but makes the weekends and nights an empty place.
Below is a pic of Infosys campus from Hosur Road.
The campus is really nice as expected and the surrounding area where the other companies have offices are also nice. What's not new is just like Mysore, when you step foot outside an area that is owned by a money making company, you see shacks, dirt, pits, and rivers of human waste. Yum! I have been quite lazy in my picture taking but i promise to display such wonderful visuals for proof. My room is nice and very similar to Mysore, except now i don't have weird color walls and i now have a mini fridge. Bill's room is directly across from mine as you see in the pic below.
Work itself has been pretty easy so far. We met a few members of the Transportation and Services team on Monday and Tuesday and we were put on with the Lexis Nexis group which is an online publishing group that stores legal documents (court cases, laws... etc) and news documents dating from the 40's. Its a pretty complex application but the bulk of the app is search based features making it a dull app. They told us that when we go back to America we would be placed in either the Dow Jones, Lexis Nexis, or NY Times accounts. All of these companies are pretty big and established which will spice up my resume.
As I've come to expect from big companies now, it took about 2 days to get Internet in my housing and 5 days to get Internet at my workstation. Infosys has a rule that if your in a certain job band, you are not allowed to get Internet during working hours. This wouldn't fly in America at all... but when in Rome... you build Egyptian pyramids right? In other words, we used our persistence and skills to get Internet during working hours.
Wednesday and Thursday i watched videos off their network about the project. Seeing as i had no Internet or meetings, this got me through the days quickly. On Friday i was finally able to get Internet and i was able to set up my PC environment using IBM Websphere, Tomcat Server, and the latest Java. Most of the coding is done using a struts based architecture in JEE which is completely new to me so I have been reading some ebooks about it and trying to self teach myself. I know the best way to learn is by doing a project, so Bill and I will arrange a meeting with the team on Monday to get rolling on our part of the project.
Last week the typical day for me was waking up at 8am, showering, eating breakfast/coffee in my room, and then heading off with Bill to get more coffee at Cafe Coffee Day right outside the building we work in. This gives me a chance to read The Hindu newspaper that i get every morning. We get in to our desk at about a quarter past 9 and dig in for the day. Time-wise this company is very lenient as they realize that 12,000 of their employees are commuting from inside the city through a very congested Hosur Road. When we get into the office, we are actually one of the few ones in there that early. At around noon, we go get lunch. There are more places to eat inside campus than there were in Mysore, but its essentially the same food. The Mysore Floating Restaurant replacement is La Terrace here but its a lot better. With more quality comes a higher price though. For lunch the buffet costs 165 Rupees and a coke costs another 30 Rupees. The thing i like most about La Terrace is that it has fresh vegetables.
La Terrace resides in the ECC which is the building I am staying in. Lunch time it caters to everyone buffet style, but when dinner roles around, they cater primarily to the people who are staying at the ECC (temporary housing). For dinner they have a mini buffet of all Indian food for 100 Rupees and for the residents who aren't interested in eating the Indian buffet, they have a westernized menu consisting of salads, soups, pasta, and non veg meals. The pasta is kinda weak but eatable, but the Caesar salad is good and the chicken is good. Bill got the supposed burger, but it tasted like a very good meatloaf. Oh well.. they will get it eventually.
After lunch, we go back in to work at around 1:30 and stay till 5ish taking a coffee break in between. The day flies by pretty quick and after work we go to the gym. The campus actually has 2 gyms, but they are both pretty small housing about 15 treadmills, 15 bikes, and a few weight sets between the both of them. It gets extremely crowded right after work and doesn't let up till about 8pm when most of the workers go home. After lifting for an hour, we shower and go get dinner either at La Terrace or Chandaras and call it a night. Pretty uneventful nights :(
Saturday we made our escape at 1pm to the city and walked around a bunch, got some food, and mingled with some folk. We actually met an HP employee who was fun to hang out with and seemed pretty westernized. After dinner we went to Taika club which was a pretty good club, but these places are more fun if you come with girls or a bigger group of people you know.
Now its time for lunch and I've written too much as it is.
