Adventures In India And Infosys

Home Bound

2007-08-07T15:31:00.000+05:30

Its been quite a while since my last post. After the completion of our project Bill and I got split up with different parts of the Lexis Nexis project release. This began about a week after our project because they were trying to confirm the next quarter update for the web app. My part was to analyze documentation about a future release. I didn't really have a chance to do much as that wont be my client when i return home so they gave me an extremely light part to kill time pretty much.

In the meantime, i have received random emails from HR in the US which got me more lively about my soon to be return home. Now I was about to plan my return trip. Originally i wanted to take my last vacation days left here and use them to travel earlier. This pushed my leave date from the 18th to the 14th. Then i realized there is a national holiday that Wednesday and i would not be charged as a day off which gave me an extra day. Taking that into consideration i would leave Wednesday. Like a systematic churning of my brain, why leave on Monday when i can leave on Friday evening. I walk into the travel agency for the 3rd time now with another change of plans and for once i was extremely satisfied of the service here. He told me there was no flights on Saturday so i said check a day before and a day after and what he got me was a return 2 days earlier. So tomorrow morning at 5:00am i will be flying towards London Hethrow and at about 6pm est i will be in Newark airport!

On Monday I got a chance to meet with John Ensign one of the Senators of Nevada. He had come to Infosys to see what type of company this was and how it influences offshoring. Who knows the hidden agenda behind politicians, but it was nice to talk to him and a few other folks who accompanied him such as the American Ambassador to India and a few member of the foreign ministry counsel. We had a presentation about the economic history of Infosys and then a Q&A with him and the 8 of us Americans. This was followed by a lunch.

As i depart from my 6 month experience a smarter, older, more experienced man, i leave with some peacefulness and sense of accomplishment. I was reaching the point of anger and frustration having to deal with certain cultural differences and irritation when dealing with people who automatically try to screw you because your white, but knowing that i will be back in the best country in the world within a week was enough to sooth my soul. The biggest frustration with India is that the service industry is completely terrible because they don't focus on the basics of pleasing the customer.

The friends i have met here have been many and diverse, ranging from local Indians to people from Norway. The other foreigners that i have met who i wouldn't call my friends surprised me in their strange ways. There were a few people who were completely antisocial and there were people who came to India but were too scared to leave their room. The trip required you to take a huge risk of leaving the place you live for 6 months to come to a 3rd world country to learn. While others seemed very immature and childish at moments.

This will probably be my 2nd to last post, unless i return to India in the future, so the next will be in a couple of days once i land and settle back home and i can talk about all the things 95% of Americans take for granted. I believe that all Americans should come here for about 1 month when they are in their late teens to become more humble. I will post pictures next time.
CYA BACK HOME!

Official Information

2007-07-17T16:10:00.000+05:30

Its official! I have confirmation from my Mentor and my HR that i will be taking a plane back home anytime between the 18th-25th of August. This pretty much means that i can book my flight depending when i want to leave during that week... which in turn means i will be booking my flight for the 18th of August at 12:01 am.

With that said, i have not requested a booking yet because i want to see if i can leave earlier and use my leave days so i can go travel around Europe and maybe still India. I'm 99% sure that my flight back will be a connecting flight, so i will see if i can get my connecting flight pushed back a few days while i travel.

As far as my project goes, Bill and I have held to our promise and displayed a working version of our E-commerce site with all the functional deliverable that we have agreed on with our PM. He was very impressed with our work and gave us individual feedback as well after the group feedback. Only positives were spoken and the communication was briefly touched upon. He requested that we give him our work for him to post it on a server and in turn use our project as a model for future trainees. Its always great to hear something like that. Today we have been documenting our work so that when we give it to him later today, he will have everything he needs. I'm actually at work right now.. done with my part of the documentation and just doing a bit of e-gloating i guess you can say.

Today we met with our PM's boss and he also gave us some feedback on what he has heard from my PM.. you still with me? And pretty much told us what will be in store for us in the future. He said the account managers in Bridgewater are still figuring out what account to put us on, but for the meantime we will continue to do some small work for the Lexis Nexis account here in Bangalore. He also told me that he discussed with his boss (my Mentor here) and my PM... still with me?... when we should leave and that's when i first heard of my formalized leave date.

2 guys from Mysore are coming on Wednesday afternoon to work here for their remaining month which will make the rest of my stay here go by faster. All in all, today was a good day with many questions answered and i look forward to finalize my stay here and return to my friends and family back in the states.

If anyone still reads this besides my mom and dad and wants to see more pictures of my nephew, let me know.

Destined To Fail

2007-07-11T20:45:00.000+05:30

Don't worry about the title as of now.. you will see by the end of the post what i mean. But hey, its a sweet attention grabber :)

So since Bill and I have arrived to Bangalore, the first 2 weeks were kind of a waste because nothing was going on. About 2 weeks ago on a Friday we finally got some action. We were put on a mock project to create a full blown E-commerce site. This having functionality of what was written in my last post. So we have spent our days and even a couple of nights (not too late... they only pay us rupees... or poopies as i call them) to work on this bad boy.

By yesterday (Tuesday) we had gotten the login, search, product display, add features for a user such as addresses, credit cards, preferences, and a basket working. Tuesday we were supposed to meet with our PM and present what we had. We came into the meeting pretty confident because we got a lot done after just learning the technology as we went. What began as a friendly meeting turned into an argument between Bill and our PM.

Apparently when we promised to meet on Tuesday our PM had intended us to provide him with a finish product, while both Bill and I thought it was just a checkup on our progress. I wont discuss much of what was spoken of, but from what i interpreted from my PM was that we were supposed to fail. He had commented that he gives the Indian newcomers only 5 day to do this. Bill took that as a personal offence and started saying that he should take an Indian over him and that our PM was insulting his intelligence. I realized what he was trying to tell us. His main point wasn't about our technology but our communication. I never communicated to my PM saying we wouldn't get it all done in time. Many other things were mentioned about deadlines and such but half of the time in the meeting was Bill being stubborn and not understanding the point of that meeting. We were destined to fail.... our PM knew what he was doing and it taught me some valuable lessons.... Bill on the other hand, i don't know.

So after the meeting we gave a concise list of what we will have done and we were told we need to get it done by Monday. Apparently our PM's boss has other plans for us after that which is pretty exciting. Its Wednesday night and in about a week 2 more people from Mysore will be arriving including Flowers, which will throw in a 3rd person to hang out with.

There are many different faces here on campus from all over. Most of who i have talked to are MBA interns from countries including Israel, France, Spain, Denmark, Canada, Australia, and Ireland. They are all older than me so its interesting to hear from them.

At the end of the day, the count is updated as there is a minimum of 32 days to a maximum of 39 days till i return to the best country in the world. I'm getting real tired of going out on weekends and having all the bars/clubs close at 11:30.. how lame.

I'm an UNCLE!

2007-06-26T21:09:00.000+05:30

I'm excited and proud to say that i am an uncle! My sister gave birth to a cute baby boy that they named Joshua. I'm very happy for my whole family from my sister to my grandparents who are now enjoying playing with the new bundle of joy. Unfortunately this make me more home sick as i too want to play with the new guy in town. Here are a few pics of Josh.

As for me, I have confirmation that i will be heading back to American sometime in the 3rd week of August, making my stay here less than 2 months now. I haven't gotten a finalized date of departure or a finalized return location, but everyone is keeping their finger's crossed for everything to stay the way they were prior to my leaving for India.

I've still been my lazy self and have not taken pics of the Bangalore campus or the sewer pits surrounding it, but i will... eventually.

For work, me and Bill have been assigned a mock project to create a full blown e-commerce site including database authentication, user account with category favorite and language preferences, pagination, breadcrumbs, and more. Think amazon.com, but with way less products. We were given a week to 2 week time frame to complete it, which is pretty tough seeing as we are also learning while doing and it is only the 2 of us. Once completed i will be pretty knowledgeable in the struts architecture and will have experience to produce web applications on my own if i choose. After the 2 weeks, we will join in on the Lexis Nexis project for the remaining time in India.

Bangalore... or is it Electronics City?

2007-06-17T10:21:00.000+05:30

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 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.

Whats Next?

2007-06-09T14:46:00.000+05:30

I came back from my amazing vacation on Tuesday night at 2:00am. From what i was aware of (what Infosys has told me), was that i would be leaving for Bangalore on Wednesday. From the airport i get a call and i find out that our trip has been delayed due to transferring of documents. Now my move is scheduled for Sunday at 3:00pm. I'm not really too shocked that things would change so quickly and in this case it worked out because i wasn't in any mood Tuesday night to pack up to move.

I'm pretty excited to be moving to a bigger city and to finally start some real production work, but unfortunately only 1 other person is moving there with me. The rest of the batch who has completed the training is staying in Mysore and 1 or 2 are going elsewhere.

They initially wanted us to take a train to Bangalore, but we were able to convince them otherwise. Currently I'm half packed... I hate packing so much.

Last night was fun when a bunch of us all went out for mine and Bill's last hurrah in Mysore. We went to Planet X and stayed there till it closed.

Next post will include pics of Bangalore DC and what I'll be doing.
BTW I have uploaded some movie clips from the Bangkok vacation.

I <3 Bangkok

2007-06-06T18:33:00.000+05:30

Please be aware before i write about my vacation in Bangkok that i may use words not appropriate for anyone under the age of 16. Also I will probably forget a few things so this post will have version numbers and revisions blocked off. Current Version: 1.0

With that said, after the 6 days in Bangkok, i can honestly say that Bangkok is the best city in the world.

It started last Wednesday after work at 5pm. Flowers, Luis, Mike, and myself took a seat in our cab and took off for the Bangalore Airport. We arrived earlier than expected at 9:30pm and was at our gate by 10:30. Unfortunately, Bangalore airport is very small and only had a Cafe Coffee Day to relieve us of our hunger since we had no dinner. Our flight left as planned at 12:30am on Thursday. Sleep was difficult because we were extremely excited to finally get away from work, Mysore, and India all together.

We arrived on schedule and with the time difference it was about 5 in the morning. The airport was huge and looked very similar to Hethrow in London with its architecture. We were able to take a cab to our hotel for 450 Bahts. Not a bad price for a 30 minute cab split between 4 people with the exchange rate being 1USD = 34 BAHT.

We noticed a few great things once we got into the cab, the first being A/C. Yes just like in any 1st world country, all the vehicles came standard with A/C.. unlike India. Next... REAL HIGHWAYS. We topped 120Kmph in a sweet pink Toyota Corolla which is the standard taxi cab. These highways didn't have any random speed bumps or animals running across the road... nor were there any vehicles going in the opposite direction in your lane.

The trip was about to take a turn for the worse when we were taken to the Unico Grand Hotel in Silom which is the hotel we thought we had made arrangements, but realized that the Unico hotel we were really booked in was the Unico Leela Inn Hotel which is in the Sukhomvit area. We were put at peace though when we got to our booked hotel and saw our nice rooms with our amazingly comfortable beds. I stress these comfy beds as coming from the beds in India that don't use box spring mattresses, it was heavenly.

It was about 8am when we settled in and got ready to go out and explore. Mostly everything was closed still, but we passed a ridiculous number of 7-11 stores. There is about 1 every 2 blocks which is convenient for getting you necessary liquids. Among 7-11, there were also many other US chains including Starbucks, Dun kin Donuts, Outback Steakhouse, Dairy Queen, Burger King, Subway, McDonalds, Pomodoro, Tony Romos, and ToysRus. First place we went into was a coffee house to feed our coffee addictions. We went to a local chain coffee show called Nero Coffee or something to that extent.

We stopped in a 7-11 to see how it compared to the US's and it was pretty similar. Once outside we were encountered by a taxi driver who right away seemed very outgoing. He looks at our fat friend Mike and rubs his belly and says.. "He big.. he a good fuck!" We all broke out laughing and knew this was going to be a funny trip. We continued to walk around for a few more hours exploring the city. Eventually it was lunch time and we walked around to find a nice burger joint. We ended up in some mall and at the "Garage". Below is a mini replica of the mall and i was amazed on how huge that place was. Its called "Central World" and it is bigger than any mall i have been to in America.

We had our first pitcher of Singha local beer and each had bacon cheeseburgers.

After lunch we were getting tired and decided to go home and take a quick nap. On our way back home we would pass by shops and there were girls asking if we wanted a massage every block. The way they said it was the funniest part and i will try to imitate it... "massaaaaaaaaaaage" in a whiny voice. So the rest of the trip was a quote fest of us saying.. " you want massaaaaaaaage?" Every cab we ever stepped into always showed you a Thai bath house and offered you to go to it. The whole Thai culture is very laid back about their sexuality. So laid back that every place you go to eat or shop your would see white guys and their Thai escorts. It was almost felt weird because we didn't have any.

Walking around the streets was fantastic for a guy. The hot girl to total girls ratio was better than America. Thai has the most beautiful Asian women in my opinion and they were all skinny, short, and cute. We talked to one particular tourist who is from the Netherlands and he said he has come to Thailand for the past 20 years every month. He told us that if you really want to get a prostitute you can get anyone.. whether it is a bartender, ticket person, worker... which led us to believe that these girls work in the shops and then at night as a secondary job, try to pick up business on the streets. At night you walk down any street and they have these outside cafeteria places where you can buy beer and food and try to pick up girls sitting at other tables. The girls were pretty classy looking though, so i think most do it so they can buy their nice bags or some use it to pay through college. This made them look like ordinary girls and even sometimes very classy. Very unlike of what we think of prostitutes in America as crack ho's... excuse my slang.

Now if you wanted to get a girl at a bar you would also have to pay a bar fee and pay her for her services, so if i can say that there is anything bad about Bangkok it is that. We were all afraid to dance with girls because we didn't want to pay for anything so ridiculous. Another negative is that there were all these girls at every club or bar. Even when we went to an expensive place which had a 600 Baht cover with 2 drinks free, they were still in there. I think the girls get in for free and get money from the bar fees if they pick up. So 90% of the club was prostitutes, but they never initiated any transactions if you can call it that.

Back to Thursday night, we pregamed a bottle of Johnny Walker Red between 4 of us and went out and asked a cab to take us to a club.

We later realized that it was Buddha's BDay on Thursday and most clubs were closed. We went to 1 and had some drinks. We retired early that night to catch up on some sleep.

Friday morn we got up and got some coffee and enjoyed our free complimentary breakfast that we only were able to get up for twice. We got into a cab to try to see the Grand Palace. We got dropped off in front and that area was packed with a big market. We looked around and decided to get lunch before going in. We had some nice Thai noodles. We asked the waiter what time the palace was open till and he said we had 2 hours left so we quickly hurried out. Right as we left the door, he told us we needed pants to go in. So we ditched the palace idea and got talked into taking a gondola ride. We wanted to do that anyway so we went on it. He took us around and through the canals and we saw a couple of temples and fed some fish on the way. The whole trip was only about 1 and a half hours and we felt like we got ripped off in price, but no matter we did it. Below is a pic of me and flowers when we stopped in front of one of the temples.

Another funny story about our big friend Mike.. while getting on and off the gondola, he managed to rip his shorts in half down the seem in the middle. It was comical, but he refused to let us take a picture of it.

BTW I have more pictures of the everything on webshots and some video as well.

We started the gondola ride from the palace area and our exit stop was down in Silom. We walked out and explored some more.. stopping for more coffee as well. We walked around some more until we got tired at 5ish and decided to go back to the hotel and get ready for the night. We went and got some dinner. After dinner was clubbing time again. We went to Q-Bar which was expensive but OK. Met some white girls who were coming from Bangladesh and know of our sorrows living in a 3rd world country with nothing to do. We spent the whole night there and then went back home.

Saturday morning we were once again determined to go to the Grand Palace now wearing pants. We got in the cab and he told us that there was a police meeting and the palace was closed.. we believed it and later found out he was lieing. Oh well.. instead we decided to go to get food and then get a Thai massage. We found a place and got them down to 1500 Baht total for 4. The girls weren't that attractive but knew what they were doing. We had the massage for an hour and a half and felt really good afterwards.

We continued walking and exploring a different area again. We must have walked about 5-10 miles easy everyday just exploring. We shopped a bit and then got home to get ready for dinner. We wanted some American food and went to a Cajun place. The food was amazing and we played some darts before we went out.

After dinner Luis had a friend working in Bangkok and called her to see if she knew a good place to go out and she told us to go to Kao Sao road. Here we saw many tourists and clubs. None were really all that impressive or good, but we still had fun. We got bored after a few hours and decided to go see the all famous sex shows that the city is known for. I wont get into details of what i saw unless you ask me, but it was quite funny. They would perform their act for 5 minutes and then another girl would go on stage and do her act. We stayed for about an hour and a half until the acts started to repeat.

After the show we wanted to do some more scandalous things and went to see how a real whore house really operates. We got taken to 1 and it was so shocking. The girls were sitting in a room with numbers pinned to their clothes and they constantly wink and smile at you while you negotiate a price with the bar lady. We found out that it would cost 2500 Baht to take a girl from the house and this did not guarantee any sex so it seemed really expensive. I don't understand how they would make money because its a lot cheaper to just pick up a girl off the street. Anyway, after we bargained for the fun of it, we took off and went home.

Sunday was another shot to go to the Palace. Once again the taxi driver tried telling us it was some holiday so we could visit a bath house, but we just kept telling him to take us to the Palace. He finally did and what do you know... no holiday or anything. We got in, but they made me get borrowed sweatpants because i had a rip in my jeans. It was free so that's why i have those pants on in my pictures.

The Palace was very interesting and we spent at least 2+ hours there. The Grand Palace was much nicer than any Indian Palace. We tried finding the black market there afterwards, but realized that there is no big outdoor black market and that its all the streets that make the whole city one giant black market. Virtually every street you walk down would have a line of small shops selling lots of copied materials such as watches, sunglasses, jewelry... and more.

We knew if we came to Bangkok that we had to go see Muay Thai boxing at least once. We were able to find 1 stadium that had fights on Sunday so we paid an overpriced ticket of 1000 Baht each to get in to see 7 fights. The fights were cool, but a few of them featured really skinny people weighing in at less than 115lbs. The best fights had the bigger guys of around 140lbs. We only stayed through for 4 fights as we got bored and hungry.

At night we decided to eat at American chain Pomodoro and then set out for a club just like the past few days. You may say the partying was excessive, but we were just playing catch up as there is no such thing as partying in India. While walking another street there were a bunch of bars with girls trying to get your attention for a good time or a massaaaaaaage. We also passed by a bunch of "lady boy" bars. This kinda leads me off tangent for a moment.

These "lady boys" are also pretty prevalent around Bangkok. So i guess there is a big market for them. The funny thing is that they are more touchy than the girls. You would walk and they would touch your ass... and we would laugh when one of us got harassed. We got one to dance for us while we were cracking up.

We were then taken by a cab to a bar called "Hollywood". The bar was HUGE and was one big open space that had circular bar tables and bar stool around them. I would have taken a pic but they wouldn't let you bring a camera inside. The had a pretty good show with a live band playing, while different people came out to sing. They had background dancers and everything there too. I could tell why they wouldn't let you take pics. One act was in fact a "lady boy" signing and it was sooo funny. The crowd loved it and 1 guy gave the he-she a half bottle of whisky and he-she drank a few shots down on stage. Meanwhile Luis in the background is screaming "I love lady booooooooooys" because we have this running gag every time we enter a cab we would say we all want a lady lady, but one wants a lady boy. Most of those were directed towards Mike. So apparently the electric pianist heard Luis yelling and told the lady boy and he-she came towards us and asked for Luis's name. Luis goes up and yells in the mic, "USA loves lady booooys!" It was a riot. We stayed there a couple more hours and then went to another club were we smoke hookah, drank some more, and danced.

Monday was going to be our last full day out. So we walked around and were able to find a giant mall that was filled with black market stores. We were amazed to see a 6 story mall full of copied stuff.

We shopped around there for a bunch of hours... got some DD coffee then proceeded to find a Japanese restaurant because Luis and I wanted to get sushi. We ate the "Kobe Steakhouse" and the food was incredible. Afterwards, we came home and got ready for the night once again pregaming in my room. For our final night we decided to go to the Patpong area which is the most well know area for sex shows, night black market, and go go bars. Since we had already gone to a sex show and shopped at a black market, we wanted to see what the go go bars were like. They were very simple we about 10 girls on stage dancing very plain... just shaking their shoulders waiting for guys to call them by their numbers. After about 20 minutes, they would switch girls. It was kind of boring because they wouldn't get naked, so we went to try a couple of clubs. Most clubs in that area weren't too buys.. probably because it was a Monday. The rest of the night was spent bar hopping until 5am.

Finally Tuesday morning came.. our last half day in Bangkok. We woke up late obviously and went straight to The Outback Steakhouse for our last lunch in Bangkok. Got some food and just walked around a bit more buying some souvenirs before making our way back to get our luggage at about 3pm.

The rest is the return home... which was extremely depressing because we had the best vacations we ever had. So this is where I stop. Hopefully I got through the whole post without missing too much. Ask questions if you want to know more about the culture because that was the most interesting part about Bangkok. Below is a picture off a pedestrian overpass of a local street.... reminds me of America.

I would go back in a heartbeat!

Done! Break Time

2007-05-30T16:42:00.000+05:30

Its been a while since the last update but i wont write much here because I'm on the run. In 30 minutes I along with 3 others will be departing for Thailand! We land in Bangkok airport at 5:00am Thursday and stay for 5 nights. We will be in the heart of Bangkok in the Silom area where all the business and clubbing goes down.

As far as work related news, I passed the compre test with a B+ and just finished the POST project. Most of the project was document work and was very complex, but we got through it.

I officially found out that i will be heading to Bangalore for production work once we get back from Thailand.

... CYA in a week!

Easy Days Are Here

2007-05-19T17:48:00.000+05:30

After the semi-stressful testing days, i feel more than confident that i passed. For the hands on, to low ball myself, i expect a 40-45/50. The same goes for the multiple choice part. We will officially get our results by Tuesday. The next few days afterwards were really laid back and easy... even to the point of disorganization.

Wednesday we had a lecture about quality assurance for half the day. Thursday was our official first day of POST project where we just briefly touched upon each position of the group. There are 8 members in a group, the project manager, module leader, CC, SQA (quality assurance), DBA (database admin), and 3 software engineers. Since I'm the 4th member of the team, i am the SQA which is an easy position i feel. I make sure coding standards are being followed and so on. Since the project has to go in a certain order, the PM's are supposed to get the requirements from the "user" and relay it to us. When i speak of disorder its because the 1st day is for requirements, but the meetings for the PM's got pushed back from the middle of the day, to the end of the day, to the next day.

The past days i would come in the morning, check my mail, then proceed to look around to see if anyone is doing work and noticing the entire class either playing computer games, listening to music, or watching a movie. I would then go take a coffee break with my buddies from the other class for an hour, and come back to see nothing has changed and make my way home to relax.
Friday was different because we were lectured on AJAX, but nothing was hands on. Its an interesting feature in java that most might have noticed on certain websites. Its used for quick information requesting and response without changing the page. An example would be during html form filling, every button you type would have an auto complete type feature. AJAX is powerful, but its more of a convenience feature for sites. After that lecture we had another one for about 20 minutes on how to use Visual Source Safe (VSS) which is a Microsoft product to help in handling versions.

Friday night was really fun because HR had arranged a batch BBQ at Metropole restaurant. Everyone went and had a good time. The gang pregammed in my room and played some cards. To hop off topic real quick, whenever Indians see you playing cards, they automatically assume you are gambling, so we couldn't bring cards for the dinner. The dinner was held outside buffet style with tables in a circle. After eating, we introduced flip cup to our HR team and they were definitely having a blast. Of coarse the frat guys me and Flowers cleaned house during those games.

After our POST project, we have off that Thursday and Friday followed by a couple of ILI sessions the next Monday and Tuesday. So we're planning to go to Thailand for a 6 day vacation once everyone gets the test results on Tuesday. Apparently Bangkok's nightlife is the best in Asia and the exchange rate is also 1-40 so it will be fun and cheap.

And here i am Saturday afternoon.. not doing much. Counting down the days till B'lore. I will try to get pics of Friday from other people since i didn't bring my camera.

Today's Wacky News Article

2007-05-13T09:49:00.000+05:30

"Mom-in-law gets life term for murder"

After multiple disputes with her son and daughter in law, a mother finally flipped. Here is some quoted parts of the article.

"The son and his wife had a strained relationship with Maniben... So bitter
was the relationship that Maniben had even lodged a complaint against her son
accusing him of harassing her, and the police had even arrested him on one
occasion."

"The septuagenarian had set her pregnant daughter in law on fire over
payment of electricity bills"

"The pregnant daughter in law used the common washroom on the ground floor
and was walking up the stairs when Maniben caught her hair from behind and flung
her on the ground, poured kerosene and threw a lighted match stick on
her."

She was about to get the death sentence and instead the gave her life imprisonment.

*septuagenarian: someone whose age is in the seventies
-wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

As for me, I have my specific comprehension exam on Monday and Tuesday so just tried a couple new restaurant this weekend and they were both yummy :)

News Stories

2007-05-12T10:26:00.000+05:30

About a week ago i have opted to subscribe to the local paper here (The Times Of India) mostly because i felt like i was loosing touch with the international world. Well my 100 rupee ($2.50) for a month subscription was well worth it to get some great local news as well. From now on i will be relaying some of the funny articles i come across. Yesterday had a great one. A local Mysore traffic cop was beaten by an angry mob at a traffic light when he was supposedly harassing an old women. He was beaten pretty hard but finally made his escape in a cab while some other police men a few blocks away were too scared to go help him.

Other great headlines in the past days were: Woman marries soon to be husband's brother when he himself was late to his own wedding.

Stay tuned for more :)

Almost Done

2007-05-09T08:23:00.000+05:30

My title for this post is almost done. Don't get a false impression because i am still months from returning home, but training wise here in Mysore i am about 3 weeks away. But what I'm looking forward to is today being the last day of lecture. I have to admit I'm getting pretty burnt out from learning. I'm lacking strong interest lately... partly because the material is trivial and non-hands on. So my schedule is as follows for those who care: last lecture day today, test for last module (J2EE) tomorrow, study days for the rest of Thursday after the test and all of Friday, our big comprehensive exam for the stream on Monday and Tuesday, then 1 day of ILI (Customer satisfaction training or something...), then 10 days for our post project. After all this we get shipped out to another development center and stay there till mid August.

Yesterday was our J2EE part1 test and project review and for the first time we got a 30/30 on our project. I'm glad to say my team is working much better now.. but its mostly just 1 other guy.

Going back in time to interesting stuff, I'll take you back to Friday night when we went to Shilpashree the rooftop restaurant and about 15 of us escaped like bandits with a 4000 rupee bill including lots of drinks. The day before was a huge storm as its been raining here for about 2 hours every other day. This storm brings out all the bugs and walking to the gate i snapped some pics of a hoard of bugs around a light. It was later informed to me that those bugs were termites. I also snapped a pic the next day (Saturday) of the same location.. and now have a cool wallpaper.

This weekend we stayed here so Saturday we walked around town again.. always some street we haven't walked on, and i found a guitar store and bought a really cheap ($30) guitar that's made out of plywood. At least its something for me to practice on :) .

Saturday night we went to Metropole again and since it was raining, i didn't bring my camera to take pics.

Monday we had project work for J2EE part1 so it was an easy day. The non-cs batch finally took their generic compre test and wanted to celebrate so we all went out to a really nice hotel called Southern Star Regales. The best place yet! Now we're starting to live like the rich folk we are in India. They had a restaurant section and a separate bar section and a guy who played the electric piano in the lobby. Here i am at the bar... riding the stool as i wait for my drink.

So I'm made it back to today (Wednesday) and I'm writing this before i head in for my last lecture.

Post more comments! Ask questions!

Bday Weekend

2007-05-01T18:17:00.000+05:30

Well I'm writing today's blog because i have time on my hands due to May Day. Apparently this holiday is celebrated everywhere in the world... except America.. figures. The rest of last week flew by like every other as my time here at India lacks the jaw dropping occurrences that make time drag. Most of the week consisted of work and then repeated mention of our anxiousness to once again escape boring Mysore and go celebrate my 23rd at Bangalore.

Friday night we went to a new place called Metropole which is by far the nicest place in Mysore we have gone to eat at. Unfortunately i did not bring a camera, but i will next time. The prices also reflected the niceness costing my 1000 rupees for the night including drinks. The food was really good though. They have some sweet stuffed mushrooms. On our way home we hop in this rickshaw and we try to drive up a hill... to make a long story short, we tell (yell) him to stop and we angrily flee out of the rickshaw and start walking to find another one.

Saturday (my birthday in India time) we took the usual train into Bangalore, but this one did not treat us well and it took us 5 hours instead of the usual 3. We finally arrive and 1st thing we do is snag the same hotel we stayed last time (Citizen's Lodge for those reading from India). When we took a rickshaw to the hotel the driver had to do a U-turn to get us there and then when we got out and paid him what we agreed on since he didn't want to run the meter, he yelled at us because he wanted more money to do a U-turn. We just threw the money down and ignored him and went to the reception desk. The guy followed us and yelled some gibberish to the reception clerk who appeared to not care at all and we got our rooms. As we walked towards our rooms the rickshaw driver shook his finger at us and yelled... "your a bad man! your a bad bad man!" It was actually pretty funny because of the irony behind the con artists these drivers are.

A bit of background info. India is a very good country concerning crime. There are practically no murders and minimal other severe types of crime. Conversing with the locals, we learned that the majority of crimes are performed by rickshaw drivers and that they are at a class level of just above the "untouchables" (the lowest class level in their caste system). We agreed and told them that we constantly battle the drivers as they see white meat and think we are stupid ignorant people. An example is when we leave the gates of Infosys, they all line up in front and there is a billboard containing destinations and prices for rickshaws. We ask to go to a certain price and they ask for a ridiculous amount and then we look at the sign and notice it is half the price. Now after telling them this they STILL try to con us by saying the sign is old. The sign also reads "If a rickshaw driver is asking for more than the stated price, please call the police". So this appears to be a repeated problem. Every other day when we leave campus its the same battle like the don't remember us. A bit frustrating.

Back to Bangalore. Once we drop off our bags and change, we go have an early dinner at TGI Fridays. We get a few watered down drinks and food and then head out to a bar called NASA. Have a few pitchers there and then head to the most expensive place we have been to called FUGA. Pictures are of NASA.

Fuga requires a 1000 rupee cover charge, but unlike the states, the cover is given back to you as coupons for drinks. And its a good thing too as drinks cost 350-450 for liquor and 140 or so for a Kingfisher. This place was really nice though and you can tell that the people who go there are either travelers or kids who's parents are big guns of a company. "My Dad Is An ATM" is a common Tshirt sighting in Bangalore. We met some Brits and some people from Italy here for work. Good times were had by all.

Sunday was a day of recoup and travel again. We went to the train station to take the 2:15 back to Mysore and the place was crowded as hell! So we decided to see to a bus back home. We were able to find the station right next door and paid 180 each for a ticket but the bus had A/C and took 2.5 hours to get back. We are definitely taking the bus to and fro Bangalore from now on.

On my return Sunday we ate dinner, talked to mom and dad on Skype and went right to the lab to work on our Advance Java project which i pretty much elected to do the whole thing after what happened last time. Was there till 11:30.

So here is another thing i cant stand about Infosys.... The rule is you are not allowed to enter or leave through a side entrance of the GEC after 9:30. Now i can understand the rule so they filter out bag checks and all that other stuff towards the main entrance, but the don't gate off these side entrances but just put a guard there. This wouldn't be such a big deal if i didn't live directly across from the side entrance. So as i left the GEC at 11:30 through the side entrance i yelled at the guard who told me i cant leave. The rules they have here are illogical. Just like another where your not supposed to leave the GEC after lunch before 4:30.. so even if you get your work done and clock out you cant leave.... another rule i don't really follow and end up yelling at the lazy guards.

I'm getting tired of typing.. so Monday was project day and we got (aka me because i did 95% of the work) a 27/30 because of particulars that were not written in the project specification requirement document... whatever. We have our test tomorrow and then we start Advanced J2EE part 1 and that is our 2nd to last module for training! WOOOOOO! Time to rest my fingers... cya.

Rest Of The Week + Ooty

2007-04-24T15:48:00.000+05:30

So the rest of the week kind of flew by with not much to write about seeing as i didn't. We finished our Oracle training and our project which is another story i will have to write about. And then this weekend 10 Red, White, and Bluer's went to Ooty which is a hill station up in the mountains about 4 hours drive away from Mysore.

So 1st things first. The story that is my project and my group. So we had a day to do our Oracle project which did not require more time than was given. I as always elected to take most of the work which the rest of the group didn't disagree with. So i was done with my parts in about 4-5 hours and i sent one of my members the code. I asked him if he needed help to integrate and he said no so i took off for lunch. I return about 1.5 hours later and he tells me he had to change some of my code. I was in agreement knowing that there always needs to be some code change to fit all the pieces together and i asked him if i could see what he changed. He shows me this whole new code. I was taken back and said that wasn't my code and he insisted it was and showed me my old code. I repeated a bit more rash and he agreed and said he had to use the code he "had" to fit with "his" code and the rest of the "group's" code. Hopefully if you have read my other blog entries you can easily see what i am alluding to. I was a bit furious and i look at the other code in more detail and notice there are so many unnecessary pieces there. I question him on why there is a certain statement there and as expected he does not know. The logic behind the code that replaced mine was terrible by way of having a function run itself to see if it works but then undo any changes the function had made... seems pretty worthless. Since the project was due in 10 minutes i said OK for them to use that code. When it came down to the assessment, guess which part of the code did not run correctly? Mine! Well... that is what was supposed to be mine but had been replaced by Mr. X's.... And guess what went wrong? The part of the function that was to undo the changes didn't properly work so the data got duplicated. Yay! Haha its a bit funny because of the irony.

While complaining/telling the story to my American coworkers they let me in on another little secret. Every month or so the Indians are required to take English tests including an auditory examination and a textual one. Apparently they cheat on those tests as well! This bothers me more than the cheating on the projects because during real project work, you can always ask for coding help from a more experienced member, but they should WANT to speak better English. Ahh enough about them. I got a B+ for the Oracle module and now we are doing Advance J2EE Part 1.

Onto Ooty! We planned a trip to Ooty this weekend. Instead of renting a cramped bus like we did for Goa, we decided to just split us up and take 2 Jeeps. We thought this would be better for space as well as power. We needed that power to go up the steep hills and crazy hairpin turns to get there while conquering the craters that was once called a road. When we finally arrived, just as we stepped out.. it rained. We dropped our bags off at the hotel and come back out to go to lunch and guess what we see? A SLEEPY DRIVER!!

We get one of these every trip. He was quickly woken and we went to get lunch as most of us had not eaten breakfast before we left at 7:30. We went to the "Sidewalk Cafe" which had pictures of burgers and dishes called Mexican Steak sizzlers. We walked in, sat down, and looked at the menus. Where's the beef? We asked and apparently there was a veg restaurant. UGH DECEIVED! So we ate there anyway. Things not out of ordinary for us but for the folks back home, the power went out mid meal, food took a long time to arrive, and the bill took even longer to arrive but when it did the waiters stand right near you like a hawk as you try to split the bill.

While eating the rain became a storm. We ran from store to store because there was nothing else to do. Not much here to buy that you cannot find anywhere else. We finally decided to go to a Cafe Coffee Day and chill there until the storm subsided. It finally did about 3 hours later. By this time the group went to the local Gardens and then dinner. It pretty much rained for a bit again and then we decided to just head back to the hotel for the night and played an hour long game of UNO that had no winner.

The next day the weather was much nicer and we went sightseeing after breakfast. We drove past some more mountains and villages and went to a tea factory to see how tea was made. It was pretty cool but i expected it to be a big bigger.

After the tea factory we took a long drive up to "Dolphin's Nose" which is another high elevation scenic spot to take photo. I didn't think it was anything special. I think Europe was more beautiful when it comes to landscape. But driving past we see this little guy... and his father on the other side.

The drive to "Dolphin's Nose" was so long that we all got tired so we got lunch and took off home. If i have time I'll start a list of things India needs to improve upon. Otherwise... Thanks for reading!

P.S. Even though I am here in India, I still read the news and i want to wish the families of the vicitims in the VT massacre the best and hope they recover quickly.

LETS GO RANGERS!

Another weekend away @ Bangalore

2007-04-16T16:20:00.000+05:30

Friday we finished up our projects for Java and our group got a 28/30. Today was also our of our batch member's bday so we all decided to go out to Planet X again. Since a kid set up the party we had a huge party hall for us reserved. I didn't expect it but about 20 Indians came who are in the same class as him (not my class). I didn't really know any of them but 1 girl sat next to me and we talked for a while.. It started as a good fun night.. and i guess it ended that way.. but for other reasons. So Sam (bday boy) apparently didn't know many of the Indians and it was fine cause i guess they were bored and wanted to go out. So we're eating and drinking, and this girl that sits next to me.. 5'2 100lbs... probably took 4 shots of vodka in about an hour seems OK and we're talking. I see her take another shot and i decided i need to go to the gents room. I come back and i see this girl yelling and collapsing. Apparently she took another shot and went to dance by the speakers and flipped out. She walked to the table and tried to do another shot but the bottle was empty and she slams the bottle on the table... walk around to the table and proceeds to collapse again. While all of this was happening about 15 Indians were following her trying to hold her up. Since non of them are strong she kept falling. Finally the Americans (who know how to handle a drunk girl) told them to just let her lay there and they did. Then 1 girl decides to take a bottle of water and throw it on her face.. like water will sober them up hahah what were they thinking. So obviously that doesn't work and then this drunk girl starts kicking and screaming her head off like she was possessed.. its was creepy and funny at the same time. I have never seen such a thing and I've seen drunk freshman girls in college that did not do such things. So once again the Indians trying to help are holding her down cause of her kicking while shes on the ground and once again we have to tell them to not do that because she could pull a muscle. Finally they decided they wanted to take her back.. but non of the Indians wanted to so one of the Americans took that responsibility. They didn't wanna come back with her because the Indians are treated here like children and if they were to return noticeably drunk to campus they feared getting fired. So since that killed most of the party 15 of the Indians left ... left w/out paying the bill! WTF!! The other 5 left paid for their share and so the Americans had to cover their portion.
So in the end it was funny and crazy and that made it a good night.
Mostly everyone decided to go to Bangalore this weekend as well. So about 15 of us took the 11am train.

Once we arrived me the 3 of us that had been here before just took off and went to our familiar MG road to get food and walk around. The rest of the people decided to call HR in Bangalore and have 1 of them show them around. Apparently she was 45 min late and took them to 1 mall and MG Road.... Seems like most of these kids are afraid of exploring and fending for themselves. So afraid that even though they brought luggage (yes.. not just backpacks) to stay the night... they decided to leave to go back to Mysore after dinner. Either they are too scared or cannot make decisions for themselves when one of the batch members was sick and knew he was going back before he came. Whatever.. the usual 4 of us who like to have fun stayed overnight.
We ate lunch at KFC which was yummy and then walked around. We decided to get a hotel and drop our stuff off at 5. We find a hotel and decide to go eat around 7. We go to TGIF Fridays and it was delicious. I had Caesar salad and a fillet Mignon. It was all a tasty treat.

After dinner we went out to a couple of clubs. Everything closes here either 12 or at latest 1.
Next day we got lunch at Ruby Tuesdays which sucked.. I have never been there in America and now i know why. Afterwards we walked around again.. went to a mall... bought nothing... then we took the train home.

Today i had my Java test which i got a 25/35 grade... not as well as i wanted and counting in the project i just missed the 'A' grade for the Java module by 2 points. Now we are learning Oracle more in depth and this is a 6 day course.

Pictures added on webshots and 2 movies added!

New Stuff.... I Guess

2007-04-11T17:54:00.000+05:30

So another update.. these are getting more spread out as i get more involved in doing work here.

So the rest of the week went OK.. took my tests... passed my tests... did my project... (hopefully passed my project).
I say hopefully because it was me and 3 Indians. They did this for all the Americans and stuck them with a group of Indians. So we split up our project. After about half an hour one of my group members offers me my portion of code. I was taken back asking if they had did it already. Turns out they have all of the previous batches projects. Kinda cheap so i refused and did my own (better practice this way anyway). It was a easy project and so time came for our assessment by a worker. Keep in mind I had the last portion of the project. He goes through the first part real thoroughly and finds all these mistakes and asks the member what they did. Well they didn't know.. then he gets to my part and does one error check and it passes and that's it. He then checks our code for neatness and efficiency. He looks at mine first and in about 10 seconds goes to the next one. Of course the Indians have sloppy long code and he grills them and they have no clue what their own code does (probably because they copied it). So hopefully we get a decent grade.
We finish up with HTML,CSS, and JavaScript and start the next topic of Java. The first few days are pretty easy as it goes over the basics of Java which is similar to C++. This is a 5 day lecture course and another 2 days go towards the project. So right now we just got our projects and i wont be making the same mistake in letting them do the 1st parts and i will integrate everything on my comp so i can fix their code and grill them before the instructor does.

So the weekend was OK. I went to the zoo which was pretty cool. I have pics but its dumb to put them up because they are animals that you see in the zoo. Also this weekend was a "big" craft fair that we went too.. It blew.... nothing but junk and it wasn't as big as people were saying. On Sunday the President of India came to Infosys to give a speech. So they shut off our Internet Saturday night until Sunday night... which boggled my mind. He was supposed to go up and speak at 3:30 so we got there at 3:15. 3:45 we were thirsty only to realize everything had closed down because of the President's visit.. so we have to sit out in the heat without any beverages... real cool (sarcasm)! 4:15 still no president so we decide to bail cause we were angered because of the drink situation, the time situation, Internet situation, and all the Indians had umbrellas to cover them from the sun and they blocked our view.. how rude... so we went to the fair instead. The people who stayed said it was weird cause he was like a cult leader making everyone repeat after him... riiiight.
Otherwise that is pretty much it! This weekend we need to leave Mysore cause we have exhausted everything there is to do around here.

Long awaited update

2007-04-03T21:57:00.000+05:30

So its been a while since i have updated... over a week.

Bangalore
So that following weekend 4 of us (me, Flowers, Alex, and Mike) decided to get out of Mysore again for the weekend. As you can kind of realize there is not much to do in Mysore and we have been exploring to our fullest while still maintaining our outstanding academic standings.
We took a train from the middle of Mysore to the railway station in Bangalore. The ride is exactly 3 hours and costs 55 rupees. Nothing compared to that long ass 14 hour ride to Goa.
So for 1 way transport you are paying about 120 rupees including rickshaw to the Mysore station.
First thing we do when we get there is call for a rickshaw and tell them to take us to "The Forum" which is the biggest mall in India. It houses probably like 50 stores.. and is not impressive compared to America's finest. Non the less our target of visit was not a store for any clothes or other luxury goods, but instead for some essential MCDONALD'S!
The familiar foods that we get in the US was about to be offered to us. Nope... no beef... no big mac... only Maharajah Mac.... So that's what i got and it pretty good for chicken. Tasted similar to the Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich.
So on our walk around we noticed another American splendor. Subway! So we walk around get coffee and shop till we get hungry again and go eat. I bought a couple of t shirts...... everything else was expensive for India. After Subway we decided it was time to find a hotel for the night.
We enter the adidas store and a guy tells us where to go for a hotel and the night life.
We litterly crossed the street and find this gorgeous hotel that costs us $12 each for the night for a 4 person room with 4 beds and the works (except TP). So we just dump our stuff off and go out. While trying to pull a rickshaw for cheap a few local fellas decided to help us bargain and got us down to 60 rupees a rickshaw for 2 people for a 10km drive. Pretty sweet deal. All those rickshaws run on naturally compressed gas so its economic for them too.
We get dropped off and go exploring and go into 1 bar.. it was smokey as hell but the music was good and we were wearing shorts and we got in cause we were white while the rest of the people in there had suits and nice clothes on. We got a few pitchers (which was a first for us in India) and kick them back. So this place closed at 12 and we went to a hotel party afterwards which was OK cause it had more girls and dancing, but ripped you off in the alki department so i only had 1 drink there and that was the rest of the night at about 1 when that place closed.
The next day we went back to the same street to shop (mostly window shop) and we ate at a KFC. I'm convinced our main attractions for Bangalore has been the American fast foods. So KFC was pretty similar to America's except there is no mashed potatoes or mac+cheese. So Flowers and Mike.. one being a prior fat kid and the other is a present fat kid decide to down a whole 12 piece bucket of chicken.. it was fun watching... i ate a chicken sandwich and was stuffed. Afterwards we walked around... and then we had to go catch the train back home.
It was a good weekend.

General Comprehensive Test
If you remember me stating that we constantly go out and still maintain our grades.. well interestingly enough, our General Comprehensive Test was on Monday and Tuesday. The test would comprise of everything we have learned in the modules and Monday was a hands on test where we had to write a program to calculate a bill and then the other part was creating databases and retrieving information depending on the query. Since i figured studying for a hands-on exam would not help me i didn't study when i came back on Sunday. Well after taking the test i know i nailed the program, but i only got 3 out of 6 queries on the database confidently answered. So i was a bit nervous that i was probably going to get a 70 and not my usual A, but i knew i could pull up my grade on the multiple choice test on Tuesday. So i studied a bit (also not much because it was mostly review) and felt pretty good after leaving the test on Tuesday.
FYI i actually read our training books cover to cover prior to every module test so that's why i could breeze through the books the 2nd time for the compre test.

Specific Stream (J2EE)
Straight after the test on Tuesday we were integrated to our new groups for our Specific Stream
of J2EE.. so 4 went there and 4 went to the OS stream. So its pretty much now just me and Bill out of our good friends that are together. Our first module in this stream is Unix. So we learn the basics.. all pretty familiar to me. Easy day.
Since these are our first classes with Indians, it was quite an experience. 1st off they love to clap. They clap if someone drops a cup or anything else on the floor... they clap if someone answers a question (before the teacher approves or disproves the answer) and they clap after each day is over. Weirdos. Next when a question is asked the class.. they all, like children, uncontrollably yell out at once answers. Now it wouldn't bother me if the answered were right, but most of them don't even make sense.. they just remember a cool lingo word and blurt it out there. It appears that in India there were no bullies that would make fun of you when you get an answer wrong like in the US. God bless America for bullies. After work hours, they stay in the labs till 8 chatting online and playing these dumb addictive games like the helicopter one were you make a helicopter go up by clicking and holding the mouse down and make it go down by letting go and using this avoid the barriers. The teachers don't trust any of them and they require the Indians to shut off their monitors as to not get distracted. This required us to do the same but we aren't used to it because we could have ours on in our small class before. Attendance is way more strict as well.. Our old class never took attendance and now we take attendance 4 times a day. Its pretty lame.

Other...
So nothing eventful i would speak of happened for the rest of the week and same for weekend.
Monday we finally got our Generic Compre Test scores back and to my amazement i got a combination of 91! A! I tied for best in class with Mike (and he likes to code on his own spare time.. nerd).. hahaha anyway.
We started a new unit of HTML,CSS,Javascript. We learned all three in 2 days and it all came easy to me again. I will be taking my Unix test on Friday because i missed the 1st one on terms i rather not repeat here. Right now we're working on projects and all the Indians are cheaters and they have old batches projects all done... but i wont cheat and I'm doing my own part myself.
Otherwise the rest of the days are all similar.. ya know the usual laundry here and there.. meals are the same on campus which sucks except I've been eating oatmeal in the morning here in my room mixed with some berry jam... pretty good tasting and for you. I've been playing a lot more cards as well. Weather is still 95 and sunny everyday.
Man that was a long update.. hope you didn't fall asleep reading it. I would have...
Bye

Pre Weekend

2007-03-23T16:03:00.000+05:30

Friday 23/03/2007
Easiest day yet! We had 3... yes 3 tests today and yes i don't retract my earlier statement. Why?
We had 3 tests (one for each of the modules we covered this week) for our 4 day week. These modules included 'User Interface' (UI), 'Software Development Methodologies '(SDM)', and 'Client/Server Concepts' (CSC). Boy those acronyms are catchy. Each test was 10 questions and if i haven't stated before we need a 65 or above to pass.. 80 to get an 'A'.. great grading system were if you don't get a B (65-80) or above.. you fail.
1st test (CSC) I aced.. 100%
2nd test (SDM) which was covered for 2 day kinda worried me because there was a lot to memorize, but to attest to my own skill (I swear I'm not conceited) i got a 100% on that as well.
3rd test (UI) and what seemed to be the easiest... i got a 90% :( One wrong on a trick question broke my 100% streak for the day.

So anyway.. these test complete all that there is to learn for our generic stream. Funny that we've already had 5 tests and the Non-Tech classes has only had 1 this past Tuesday. Since the modules for this stream are done, we take the generic comprehensive exam on Monday and Tuesday.
Monday is the "hands-on" objective test on writing code and sql statements that lasts 3.5 hours but looking at the practice test, i can be done with it in 1 and a half.
Tuesday is the subjective test which is similar to the module test in multiple choice format but this time there is an extra choice "Not Answered" because now each wrong answer will deduct 1/4 of a point. There are 50 questions so i don't think a 1/4 of a point will be bad if i guessed. So this weekend i will review once more what we're learned and look forward to another A.

So back to why it was the easiest day. After the test we did a whole bunch of nothing. We were done at 9:30 and had the rest of the day to ourselves... unfortunately we are not allowed out of the gates until 4:30 M-F which reminds me that it is 4:18 and time for me to run!

P.S. Check out this info.
Infosys's definition of J2EE:
In this day and age of IT, J2EE is one of the most ardently sought after technology. The J2EE training focuses on the platform independent Java technology and other related tools. The trainees acquire hands on practice on HTML, XML and Java language. They are exposed to the minutiae of design of static and dynamic web pages. Debugging, one of the protracted processes is made easy through usage of tools such as Eclipse. All in all, the J2EE training strives to churn out skilled J2EE professionals who can fathom the best possible technological solution to a given business problem.

And here is what my stream learns in terms of modules:
J2EE Stream
UNIX Operating System
HTML, JavaScript and XML
Java Programming
Oracle
Advanced Java Programming
J2EE - Part 1
J2EE - Part 2

CYA

Updates

2007-03-21T14:25:00.000+05:30

Wednesday 21/03/2007
Nice short day today... out at 2. Going go get my haircut in a bit for a good 45 rupees ($1).

Just posted 3 videos of as well.. check it out.

2007-03-20T17:13:00.000+05:30

Tuesday 20/3/2007
Back a day and another test down. This morning was our RDBMS test and i got a B+. Already in a week we will be done with the generic stream and onto learning J2EE and then around the 1st week of June head out from Mysore to Bangalore. So now onto the good stuff....

This weekend was a blast. We left Friday after work at 6:30 on a tight 10 person bus to go to Goa! We had a 3 day weekend because of a state new years holiday or something. It took us a good 14 hours by bus to arrive at Goa and we were there by 9:30am and ready to eat. Our first breakfast consisted of a sweet fried eggs and bacon. This was the 1st time we have had bacon in India so it was soooooo good. It was more like ham because of its thickness but delicious like no other. The hotel offered some sweet "Continental Breakfast" comprising of free coffee and toast. I wish sarcasm could be expressed with written type... oh well.

Promptly after bfast we check into our rooms and immediately rush to the beach. The beach is pretty nice... not too dirty but the weather and the calmness makes it sweet. The water was hot tub warm as well but real salty.

So the gang decided to soak up some rays and soak up some beers. It was either kingfishers or fosters but interestingly enough the kingfishers were Goa state specific so it was lighter than the ones we would get in Karnataka state (where Mysore is). Every 10 feet was a shack that served food and drinks so we would get a beer here.. walk for 5 min.. get a beer there... walk for 5 min... get another beer... and repeat.

Another weird thing about the beach was that there were a few broken down cargo ships pretty close to the beach. Some of the guys actually swam to it and back. Takes a bit of the beauty away from the beach but if you walk down the beach far enough you don't see it anymore.

Since we didn't eat lunch we were hungry and ate dinner at a local joint close by. I had a nice steak... yes that's right... steak... with mushrooms. Not bad but as expected after ordering medium i got well done, oh well. After dinner we retreated to the hotel to play some drinking games before we went out to this hot spot called Club Cabana.

Once at the club we were angry at first because it was on a hill and you had to hike up a good kilometer to reach this place and the steps and lighting sucked. The next sucky part was the 900 rupee cover. DAMN.. haha nah its only $20 but its all you can drink open bar with Bacardi, vodka, and some other stuff i didn't get. Great deal! Once up there, this place is HUGE. It looks like a mansion that the Brits had and was bought by the club so there was about 4 levels outdoors including a pool area. Then there was a kinda small dance floor inside and some huge sofas outside. It doesn't rain here in India until the monsoon season so i can see how this is manageable. Apparently we missed the good season to visit when all the youngens go which is around December and January. The majority of the people there were either Russians or Brits. Fun times were had by all.

After descending from the mansion we lost our drivers! Turns out our sleepy drivers were passed out inside the van. One was in such a position that he probably got stepped on about 3 times and nobody noticed. I definitely accidentally whacked him on the head with the door that separates the drivers and passengers. The other driver was actually passed out on the back seat thought.

The next day we got up and again enjoyed our bacon breakfast and once more headed straight for the beach. This time less drinking but same amount of walking and tanning. Once sitting you were always hassled by a beach merchant selling useless shit but i decided to get a massage. First it started that i was going to just get a foot massage for 150 rupees for 20 min but it turned into a 400 rupee full body massage for 45 min. Pretty sweet.

At 5 we decided to go shower and browse some local stores for souvenirs. To our disbelief there are no touristy shops in sight except for wooden statues. I could not find any magnets, shot glasses, or good quality T-shirts (except for the memorable one that said "Lets get drunk and kill god"). So no souvenirs were bought from Goa except my sweet towel.

Time for dinner. We went to a place called the Mermaid and what a dinner that was! I ate the best calamari i have ever had and then a sweet surf and turf. All in all the food in Goa did not totally disappoint.

No one really wanted to go out tonight so we hung out around at a few places with a couple of drinks here and there and then crashed. The next day was all driving back at 9:30 ... we nicely made it back to campus in 12 hours this time. We also stopped at a high point on the mountain to take some pics.. and i did.

And that was my Goa vacation. The beach, the food, the fun, the white girls, were all worth the 26 hours of cramped bus action.

Friday

2007-03-16T14:56:00.000+05:30

Put up 2 new video links.
Inside the GEC
Back of the GEC

Today was a short day. We were done learning at 10:30 and had little homework. Plenty of time to pack up and relax before the 14 hour bus ride to Goa.

This weekend will be fun and look forward to some pics and movies.

Mid Week

2007-03-15T16:56:00.000+05:30

Its been a while since update but here i am again. I've been pretty busy all week.

To start off i got a 23/25 on my programming test! Easy!

The rest of the week has been me organizing the group's trip to Goa this weekend. We're going friday and staying for the 3 day weekend. Its supposed to be a big tourist place and hopefully we'll score some burgers.

Since no one took initiative to organize the trip and only a week was left, i decided to do it... and boy is it annoying. So now its all done and we're ready to go.

For mom i have taken a few pics of myself and my classroom.

Right now we've been learning RDBMS and we have a test on Tuesday but i'm excited for the beach. Well Adios!

Weekend 2

2007-03-11T18:24:00.000+05:30

This weekend had its ups and downs.
Check the pictures and videos. I upload new ones for both!

Saturday 10/3/2007

Today woke up and relaxed a bit. Then a couple of us decided to go into town to hang out. We hopped on a rickshaw (which by now is a regular thing) and told the man to take us to this rooftop restaurant for some lunch. A one way trip for 30 min cost us 100 rupees. He then 5 seconds later picks up another rickshaw driver and the other guy explained to us that our driver doesn't speak English and he's the translator. Hes on one of the videos i just upload. BTW this guy's rickshaw was pimped out.. rims, lights, sweet horn, leather, and he called it sky queen.

So onward ho! We are in town and go to eat at this place. Only white people eat up here apparently. Met some British cricks... no too attractive. I took a couple of pics of the view. Pretty nice.

After lunch and a few beers and feeding a stray cat we head out. All of a sudden a 7th grader who works at a cyber cafe (so he claims) meets us and starts talking to us.... we shoot the shit and he walks with us for like 3 hours and he didn't want money. He showed us some cool shops and so i got a few gifts for people. Worked on my tan walking around and we went back around 6. Now this is the bad part of the day. Pretty much starting here i was on the can every 30 min. So the night was me eating ramen noodles and watching Southpark on the Internet with another sick kid. Not how i picture my Saturday nights. But its not like there is much to do in Mysore. Everything closes at 11:30 so even staying out till 12 is a good night but nothing more.

Sunday 11/3/2007

Today is a study day for me. I read about 175 pages of stuff we learned in 3 days time and i have another 75 to go. Thankfully i feel better since i popped about every pill i had here including some Tums i picked up in Chicago and we went out to eat. We decided to get more of our study on by the pool.. we we spent about 2 hours there got a swim break in and everything. So after my dinner in 20 minutes i will continue studying. Tomorrow is my first module test on 'Programming Fundamentals'. See ya!

Friday

2007-03-09T17:07:00.000+05:30

Friday 9/3/2007
Today was a busy day but let me just quickly describe yesterday.
Our 2nd day learning was more intense. I knew most of the topics but our homework was lengthy. We were coding till from 2 till 7. Thank god that was over.
Today our day began with class lecture for 10 minutes then we were sent over to a big class of indians. We took our intermingled seats and waited. 30 minutes later (full of waiting) we had visitors come to our class and take pictures. Right after they left... they told the US batch to go back too.... I felt used... kinda funny though.
Afterwards we met with the chief of police for a quick chat and then we went to the auditorium. Apparently the princess of Thailand was going to make a speech. When she came out i totally pictured her differently. I tought she was going to be a sexy fit young girl... no a 40 year old out of shape woman. Oh well... after 1 hour of waiting for her in the room she gave a 10 minute speech and we were out of there. So we went back to class to get our learn on and then broke for lunch. After lunch we learned a bit more and did our homework. I was done at 4:30 and took off for the weekend.

BTW... if anyone wants to go on a diet... come work for infosys @ mysore. Its impossible to overeat and your always walking everywhere. The portions arent big and they dont need to be because all that spicy food makes you get full quick. All the fatties here will be skinny but the end of the 6 months.
To be continued....

Real Class

2007-03-07T19:10:00.000+05:30

Wednesday 7/3/2007
1st day of real classes went pretty well. Our first 3 days are fundamentals of programming. So today we learned the 5 steps of software development from gathering requirements to deployment. Next was learning the basics of C. This came easy for me so i when we broke for lunch at 12:30 i came back and finished the homework before our next session began. We were given 6 big books for the duration of our training and i found out my specialized stream will be J2EE. All in all we got out at 3:30 and had the rest of the day to do our thing.

Last Days B4 Real Class

2007-03-06T11:45:00.000+05:30

Tuesday 6/3/2007
Today once again was a half day sort of. Our last day for cultural and diversity training. We were let loose at around 11:30 but had to return at 2 till 4. Finally done with this part... guess we're celebrating tonight. We heard of a Chinese place here local that we will explore today.

One thing i haven't mentioned is how frustrating somethings are here. For example a huge tech company like this only has 1 public printer for the entire campus. WHAT? Then we don't have any refrigerators which would be sweet. Warm water just isn't the same.
A good thing though is we found out that from now on till we leave we don't have to wear ties on Monday and Tuesday for the rest of the summer. So no ties at all required. Sweet.
I've stopped going to the floating restaurant cause its a rip off. Now i eat at the cafeterias where i can get a full meal of chicken and rice for 35 rupees and a drink for 10 which is approximately $1 for a filling meal.

We're in the talks of going to Goa next time we have a 3 day weekend. There is no nightlife here in Mysore because everything closes at 11:30. Oh well.

Real training finally starts tomorrow so I'll let everyone know how it goes. Adios.

Monday 5/3/2007
So today was a sweet day. Went to work at 9 and we were out by 12:45. Half days are nice but there are so many strict rules here on campus such as you must wear your work attire M-Th 8am-5:30pm. So no shorts, no jeans, no t's... Another rule is that no entertainment is open until 5:30 such as the gym, pool, ping pong, and other shit. So a bunch of us just went by the pool and sat at the tables and play durok. We had to come back at 5:30 to meet our "buddies" who will help us with assimilating and anything else we need, but at this point we have already figured out most things. After dinner we decided to play a full game of snooker. 1.5 hours later we were finally done and called it a night.

Weekend

2007-03-04T18:11:00.000+05:30

Friday 2/3/2007
Ah finally the weekend. To start off, casual Friday dress code rocks. No ties, no dress shirts, no dress pants, and no dress shoes.
So more group fun for the culture classes and finally we're done with the day. I sign up to use the gym and hit that up. The class decided for all of us to go out and party at a bar in town after work to celebrate the completion of our first week. So at 7 we all load up the bus and go to Planet X. Now this was the first time most of these kids stepped off campus.. and they looked shocked. Some were spreading rumors concerning the place saying there will be a "cover" charge to get in... silly Americans to say things like that where they have not even been there.
So as the experianced crew was completely correct to defunk that rumor, we all start having a great time. The food and drinks were good. A couple of us tried to go go-karting after a few beers and they threatened to do a breathalizer.... rediculous... I though they wanted my money more than that. So we all left at around 11:30.
So comming from late nights a few of us decided to ride bikes around campus. We did. Enjoyed the sweet gazebos they have and late night juice bar. Called it a night after that.

Saturday 3/3/2007
So today we have a trip around mysore on a Infosys paid bus. 2pm we start the show. First stop was to one of the biggest palaces in India.

I forget the name of the damn thing.. but thats ok because inside was unimpressive. The old Palace burned down real early in the 1900s so this new palace was constructed and everything inside was donated by other countries.. so nothing is original or Indian in there... blah. But it does look pretty damn cool at night. Check it out.

Afterwards we went to another lame temple and to see the 2nd biggest bull in the world. There are pics of the bull on webshots which you should all be checking regularly.

After the bull, we went to town to shop around on the major street. So sight #1 was this little girl like 7 holding another baby like 3 and clinging on to us for about 10 blocks. It was the most annoying thing and she kept saying "la la la la la...". I suppose this means give in thier language but how annoying and she grabs you by the hand and she was all dirty... yuck.

The next sighting to which i regret taking a picture so you can all believe me was this man lying on the road right by the sidewalk on the busiest circle intersection and he was dare i say it... dead. He had dust all over him and he was just lying there. I couldnt get a shot cause there were so many people crossing the intercetion that if you stop you will get pushed forward by the mob.

The whole trip we were all harassed by sales people. Everywhere you go its worse than Mexico. And they were selling these annoying magnets that make a noise when the click together that i wanted to knock it out of their hands.

Sunday 4/3/2007
So a relaxing day today. Went to the gym, relaxed in the pool, got crappy Domino's pizza, and did my laundry for the first time on campus. It was cheap but so was the quality. I learned how to play snooker today as well. Other than that not much happened.

More of the same

2007-03-01T18:37:00.000+05:30

Wednesday 28/02/2007

Well first thing you should notice is that yes i wrote the date in the European format... The past few days have been full of form filling and they required the dates to be set in dd/mm/year format.
So today morning was my screening test, and boy what a doozy. I found out i got a 77/100 which was good compared to the rest of the group so i guess i can say cuse didn't rip me off too badly. Next was more paperwork. Then more paperwork. Honestly the more computer stuff and paperwork we do the more i realize how unorganized this place is. And for computer brilliant people, we are still not on the local system to access our "Sparsh" intranet. BTW Sparsh means "Touch".
I did find out some cool things about Infosys. I finally found out how much room and board is taken from me and that is a whopping 1500 rupees a month! To equate that in US terms, that's a few cents over $1 a day. DAMN! Once i get back to the US I'm going to think everything is so expensive. So onto the next thing... MORE PAPERWORK... you get the idea by now. All this paperwork drains me so once again time to leave campus to go enjoy a few beers.
This time we went to a place a bit close called "The Roost". It looked like a nice restaurant/motel and everything is even cheaper here. I large beer is only 75 rupees and all the food items are each under 100 rupees. So the four of us, Mike, Me, Flowers, Will kicked back a few.

I drank a local brew called "Knock Out". It is quite tasty. I don't think I've commented much on the food around here, but eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner locally on campus is OK. You pack your plate up from the buffet and eat what looks to be a lot but it doesn't fill you up and your hungry in an hour. The meats if any at a meal are 80% bone and 15% fat.... not much left to eat. This hurts my protein input as the rest is all carbs.

Thursday 01/03/2007

Today was a whole day of "Cross Cultural Leadership Training". We get teamed up with a group of Indians and do silly activities that reminded me of something i would do in middle school. We had to go out and get interviews of 5 people that have worked on site with another culture so we did that and then we discussion perceptions of cultures and did some other stuff i have already forgotten. Its not that fun but it beats paperwork for 8 hours a day. Unfortunately this training will go on for about another 3-4 days.... Wooopie.

As a random side note.. I've been practicing my head bobbing. Indians love the bob.

Intro

2007-02-27T21:20:00.000+05:30

Hi everyone!
This is my first blog post.. never thought i would be doing an online journal but i figure it would be easier for everyone to know what was going on and not repeating myself 30000000000 times.

For starters....
Current Location: Infosys Mysore Development Center (DC) India
Currency: Indian Rupees 1:42 approx conversion rate to the US Dollar
Time: GMT +5:30. I am 10.5 hours ahead of the East Coast so day for you is night for me and visa versa.
Weather: 75 Degree in the early morning... goes to 90+ by mid-day. Always sunny, never cloudy.

Since this is my second working day evening and my total 4th day at Mysore i will quickly recap my experience so forth.
Pre Days (Chicago)
So we all met in Chicago for a kick-off jam. This was the first time i met another Ilya. He is from Chicago and his mother's name is also Olga... weird. Anyway, met a few other good guys such as Jason Flowers, Alex, Mike.... and others. Flowers and I went to school together and had classes so it was good to have some cuse pride with me. They treated us to some famous "Chicago Style Pizza"... I was unimpressed, NYC pizza is 100000x better and then we went out to the bars. The HR team came with us and we all had a great time and fired it all on the company credit card (I cant wait till i get one of those!). After that was flying.. flew for so long i don't even want to talk about that. Next stop, INDIA!

Day 1 - Saturday
1st day landed in Bangalore airport at 5:30am local time and got my bags... We took this small bus to campus and our bags went into some ghetto truck.

The drive was about 3-4 hours long because of the local craziness of driving and our bus was huffin and puffin up hills. Sights on the way included little children taking shits on the side of the roads like it was nothing. The streets are all dirty and cows though not running around wild, but still abundant.

We arrived on campus at around 11am and checked in out luggage and laptops and immediately went to get our first real Indian food @ the floating restaurant which actually does not float just has a moat around it with live fish... nothing special. I mention real Indian food because the flight food was terrible and the chips that we had on the bus was not Indian... only the price (5 rupees for a snack bag and 20 rupees for a big bag of "American Sour Cream and Onion" and "Ketchup" flavored varieties.

After the meal came the highly anticipated exploration of my room and a badly desired shower. I have also uploaded the video of the room for all to see. My initial reaction to campus or DC as this place is called was that i was at a resort. Afterwards me and a few comrades explored campus. Interesting enough we requested a map but they told us for "security reasons" maps were not made. Fine... So we walked around a bit saw a few of the buildings and cafes and then hopped on a couple of "ladybirds" (sweet bikes with baskets in front) and rode around the 330 acre site. BTW Infosys has about 2500 bikes on campus free for anyone's use, just grab and go. Obviously being obnoxious Americans we chose the pink and purple ladybirds and enjoyed the ride. I will get pictures of the bikes later. By 6pm i was done for the day and went to sleep. Slept for a good 12 hours and was up the next day ready to do anything.

Day 2 - Sunday
Played a bit of ping pong, went swimming, explored some more, went to the gym, ate.... not much but a lot.

Day 3 - Monday
First day of work!
Well not much work was done as most of it was lectures and formalities. HR presentations, India presentations, Infosys presentations and so on. We also had a team building event with the 100 Malaysians that also came on Saturday. So in this big auditorium we all got family last names and the goal was to find your family... so wanting to take charge i yell out my family name and get my family together... we were the Yalamaldala family and i was the "grandfather". So everyone came to me and i elected myself the representative. We had 5 min to get a slogan ready and present on stage so to make the long story short we won for being the most enthusiastic (we chanted our name at the end of the last group to present) and won candy bars. Everyday we get 2 tea/coffee breaks which is good except the coffee and teas come prepared with milk and sugar in it already. I ate lunch and went to another cafe to get coffee cause they don't have coffee at meal time except breakfast. So a regular coffee in a small paper cup costs 3 rupees... CHEAP!! A cappachino costs 12 and an espresso costs 9 and the espresso is the full paper cup. We have 2 Dominoes on campus that also deliver but I'm in NO hurry, not a fan in the US and wont be one here. Unfortunately we do not have a fridge in our rooms but i might get one on the black market if its cheap enough.. i like my water cold.
That reminds me... I get 2 big 1 liter bottles of aquafina water replenished everyday in my room along with housekeeping everyday that cleans my room, does my bed...but no laundry. I bet if i paid them a few rupees they will iron my clothes.
So we finally get our temporary id passes and this mean we can venture out of campus. And a few of us do badly desiring a beer and some local flavor. Since work got out at 5:30 and we were hungry and went to the gym, we left to go into town at 8 and had to return to campus by our curfew of 11 M-Th (12 F,Sat,Sun). So we took a rickshaw to a place called Planet X which has a bar, club, go-karts and an arcade. We began by haggling the driver down from 400 rupees per person to 300 rupees total round trip including him waiting for us for an hour while we enjoyed ourselves. This included a 30 minute drive in each direction as well. And finally there we had our first drinks at India. I had a 750ml of Kingfisher beer. Very tasty i have to say. We only had time for 1 drink each but it was enough. They said they will give us a tour of Mysore on Saturday.

Day 4 - Tuesday (Today)
Today was another day of paperwork and presentations. Worked till 5:30 again. Not much going on today. Tomorrow i will be taking an assessment test at 8:30 to see how much the CS (computer science) group knows so far. There are 2 groups (CS and Non-CS) this only differs that the CS group doesn't take fundamentals in computers and goes to Bangalore 2 weeks earlier to work on real projects. 50 Questions, multiple choice... and doesn't count for a grade. We found out about grade criteria today as well and seems like its pretty hard to fail out. We need a 65 average to pass and this includes group work as well and open resource hands on tests. We also have modules that we need to pass prior to the cumulative tests and we can fail 3 of 9 and still be employed.... so sounds pretty easy as long as you assert yourself. Well time for bed... Still adjusting to the weather and jet lag but getting better at it. Until next time.