Sing-land Trip Part 1: Singapore

sorry for the delay (read the previous post for more on that) but here is the first half-ish of our awesome trip to Singapore and Thailand.

on thursday we left mysore immediately after our big comprehensive test that marked the end of our training, more or less (we managed to talk to the right people, who let us blow off a couple of days of our worthless 'soft skills' training crap). our flight out of india was scheduled for midnight, so after the 4-hour bus ride to the Bairport, 4-hour flight to Bangkok, and 2.5-hour flight to Singapore, we woke up to find ourselves in Singapore (funny how that works out). there were 10 of us on the trip: Jon, Ryan, Steve, Paul, Sean (who is from perdue, gross; he also just left the company), Rafal (who is Polish with a Green Card, which lead to a whole other set of fun little problems), Compton, Tom, Gagen, and myself.

we checked into the Oxford Hotel, a pretty crappy, expensive little hotel in the city (which i think is fun to say, because it implies that the country of Singapore is more than a true city-state). my first impression of the city: it's pretty freaking awesome. after coming from india, where people literally relieve themselves (in whatever way necessary) on the side of the road, not to mention their great affinity for littering whenever and wherever possible, Singapore struck us all as being quite possibly the cleanest city any of us has ever seen. this is possibly because of the severe laws of the land (which include the death penalty, no exception, for smuggling drugs, and canings for littering; chewing gum is also illegal and one of the guys had his eclipse confiscated by customs). after that, we wandered around downtown for a bit.

we did some shopping at a couple of malls and the massive open-air market near our hotel, then ate some delicious duck for lunch. we also saw a true Asian arcade, which was pretty impressive. it was also such a novel experience being in a country where people not only had the ability to make change, but did so without complaining or trying to refuse our business (again, india is stupid).

for dinner we went to a nice little sushi bar, which had a computer screen at every table. customers sit down, look at the menu, then order their food on the computers. after an incredibly short period of time, the food is brought out and the reciepts for the most recent batch of food are placed in a box at the table; at the end, you request a cashier come over to your table so you can pay. the whole experience was incredibly efficient. finally, we wandered over to a local tourist spot and had a few really expensive drinks ('expensive' as in 'close to american prices'). end day 1.

for day 2, we kind of slept in a lot; the sleep was nice, and quite necessary after the traveling nightmare of the day(s) before, but it's still a bummer to sleep that late on a sight-seeing trip like this one was. anywho, we spent most of the day on the little (man-made) tourist island resort thingy called Sentosa Island, just south of 'mainland' Singapore. we took a cable car ride to the island, went up in a fake little tower thing, saw that almost half of the island is under construction for a big new resort / casino / universal studios monstrosity, saw the aquarium, and got to see a dolphin show (with pink dolphins, which was pretty cool).

while we were in the aquarium, Rafal had to go visit the polish embassy and get a temporary passport, because his passport expired before his indian visa did, and apparently Singapore had a problem with that. none of us were surprised in the least to discover that India had no problem with this whatsoever, or that Indian officials did not even notice this.

after feeling like tourists for a while, we went back to the open-air street market and bought some more souvineers. then, for dinner, we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe (quite possibly my favorite franchise ever, now). i had a bacon cheeseburger, just like every other time i have gone to a Hard Rock in a foreign country. there was a really cool band there doing covers of all sorts of songs for charity (a big breast cancer thing, i think) . . . . like bon jovi, deep purple, nickelback, and a dozen others. end day 2.

day 3 started with us visiting the Fountain of Wealth, which is apparently the biggest fountain in the world (too bad it wasn't on when we went, but it was still pretty neat). this was on our way to the airport for our flight back to Bangkok, Thailand.

the second half of the trip will follow shortly.

Chennai and [Dreams of] America

good news, everyone!

after one of the best weekends ever and a couple of truly hellish weeks, i finally have the chance to blag at you again. first, the important stuff:
pictures here [http://picasaweb.google.co.in/shadedaemon/Singapore]
and here [http://picasaweb.google.co.in/shadedaemon/Bangkok]

so the big reason for why it took so long for me to post this is because, almost immediately after returning from my big trip, i was moved off to the lovely city of Chennai for some cubicle-sitting, document-reading, and dream-crushing. to make a long story short, the internet access which we were promised was all set up for us (and subsequently were promised every day for the past week that it would be set up by the end of the day, tomorrow morning at the absoulte latest) finally appeared. this was one big issue i found after moving, the other was the fact that my two main reasons for coming to this company (international exposure and opportunity for quick advancement / movement throughout the company) were not only false but direct lies told to me by the recruitors, interviewer, and generally almost everyone else with whom i interacted before / during my training period.

basically, that means i no longer have any reason to subject myself to the miseries of this worthless company any more. so unlike the other 60 or so americans in my batch, i am quitting 2 months ahead of schedule; i believe each and every other american in this batch is planning on quitting within a month of setting foot on american soil again.

i announced my resignation from the company on wednesday and it is currently sunday evening; i was told they 'needed a day to figure out the protocol for dealing with an american-based employee living in india who wants to quit'. i haven't heard from them since, so who knows how long this will take.

my plans for the future: i am hoping i will be able to get into a good graduate school program, preferably something revolving around computer graphics (3d simulation, virtual reality, The Matrix . . . . that sort of thing) or possibly networking as a second choice (then i can be That Guy in all those spy movies, sitting in the dark of the van shouting 'i just need another minute, i am almost into the system, just buy me one more minute!' into my earpiece as the other guys get shot at).

Trip: Wednesday-ish Through Sunday

so a handful of us have finally bullied HR into letting us take a couple of days off for a trip (after all, october is basically a holiday in india). some other US/UK folks here are still not allowed to leave (now that we have been split into a bunch of different 'stream batches', everything is all messed up and most of us are probably never going to see each other again from here on out . . . . sad), so they are meeting us for the second half of the trip.

we are going to singapore and bangkok for the weekend. basically, the most awesome trip ever (so far).

quick geography refresher, check it out:
down in malaysia you should be able to see singapore. more or less straight north from there, in thailand, is bangkok. west, across the bay of bengal, you can see india. mysore is more or less south of bangalore.


View Larger Map

details of my trip to follow shortly after i get back.

Things I Shall No Longer Take For Granted

• drinkable water


• beef


• toilet paper


• silverware


• napkins


• reliable electricity


• refrigerators


• microwaves


• bulk-size products


• the english language


• the ability to walk outside without being swarmed by mosquitoes


• changing seasons (i.e. winter)


• american tv


• pasteurized milk


• the concept of being on time


• the concept of being in a hurry


• edible fruit / vegetables


• driving on the right side of the road


• traffic rules


• freeways / highways


• mexican food


• having a room with more than 3 outlets


• being able to walk on grass


• a shower with reliable temperature and / or water pressure


• wireless internet

Long Overdue, I Know

sorry for the long interval between posts; we started our 'POST' project thingy about 2 weeks ago and that has been eating up almost all of my time and energy until recently. it is the Project on Organizational Standards in Training, or some other BS name like that ('what does POST stand for?' was a question in at least one of our daily tests last week, and i don't think a single person knew / knows what it actually is, still). basically, POST is a horribly organized (go figure) attempt at providing us with some 'hands-on' project time. the first 5 days were spent trying to fill out paperwork (more or less what we will be doing for the rest of our careers with this company . . . . Indians love their beaurocracy). now that we are finally done with the stupid paperwork phase, we can actually start coding the project. we spent one day getting ready, creating the skeletons and trying to integrate our project with some absolutely horrible, worthless software, as we were instructed to do. the 'integration' with this horrivle versioning software took almost 6 hours in itself, but now that we have it done, my group is expecting to finish our coding all on monday and have the majority of our remaining 3 days to relax and not go to work. hooray for being salaried!

anyway, i think i actually learned something this weekend. needing to do laundry, i have been wearing my ND Shirt (the green one from my junior year) all weekend . . . . for the second weekend since i got here.
the last time i wore it was the weekend Notre Dame played MSU.
both times i have worn this shirt since coming to india, we have lost; therefore, i think this Shirt is cursed.

from one of the past few weekends, i don't really remember which, i have posted pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/shadedaemon/ChamundiHill
we went to Chamundi Hill, which is basically a thousand or so steps up this hill to a temple / market area. more or less unremarkable, and the only reason to climb the stairs is just to say 'i climbed a thousand stairs, in the sun, with incredible humidity and 90 degree weather'.

i also remembered to post a quick little video i took with my camera when i went to the tibetan monastary:
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/shadedaemon/CoorgTrip (very last thing in the album).

"Weekend" Trip to Coorg: Life Goal Accomplished Before Breakfast!

good news, everyone!
this past weekend a bunch of us decided to wake up early and take a scenic trip to Coorg, which is apparently a town in india. we still don't know quite where it is, and we can't find it on Google Maps / Earth. anywho, we went, and it was almost fun.
oh yeah, by "weekend" i mean "sunday" because this stupid company made us work on saturday. something about mysore having too many holidays earlier in the year or some crap like that. it was mandatory.

so i celebrated my one day off by waking up at 5 am to catch the taxi to coorg. the first stop along the way was the Golden Temple, which is a Tibetan Buddhist Monastary. kind of a big deal, apparently. we made it there just after they opened up for visitors in the morning (7 am), and we got to see some of the morning prayers. it was pretty freaking sweet.

List Of Things To Do Before I Die:
#12 visit a Tibetan Buddhist Monastary - - - - - check!

after hanging around the monastary for a while, we crammed back into the taxi and went to a sketchy little diner thing for breakfast. i had a masala dosa, which is basically a giant deep-fried pancake thing with some really spicy onion-potato stuff inside of it. then we drove off to a little park thing, where we spent most of the rest of the day. not much to talk about there; they had rabbits, deer, and poisonous-looking spiders that were quite literally the size of my hand. think cosmo-sized . . . . there was also a gross, dirty-looking river and a whole lot of bamboo.

after the foresty-place we went to Abbi Falls, which is (surprise) a waterfall. yep, they have those over here in india, too. i got a couple of pictures of the waterfall before my camera battery died. good thing we did the monastary first, eh?

our final stop included a hotel in a small town for lunch and a "scenic hike" around the hill right next to the hotel. the view was nice, but nothing to write home about, so i won't.

here are those pictures: http://picasaweb.google.co.in/shadedaemon/CoorgTrip

well, it took me about 10 minutes to write this up. which means the shower should be getting warmed up soon, which in turn means its time for me to take my leave.

SCARY

as an american living inside this little westernized-bubble that is our campus, its sometimes easy to forget just where i really am. then something like this happens to remind me. while i feel as though i came well-prepared and with an open mind for the radically unknown, to say a lot of my experiences here are eye-opening is still probably an understatement.

don't worry, all the messy nastiness is happening up north, and i am way down south.

its still a little disconcerting, though.

check it out: you can see New Delhi (bombings) and Agra (Taj Mahal) up in central-north india.
way down south-central is Bengalore ('Bengaluru' - i am in Mysore, which is just southwest a couple of hours) and just east of that is Chennai (where i will be living come november).


View Larger Map

Quick Updates

1) i leave mysore at the very begining of november to move to chennai (where suresh tought in HEROES . . . . awesome). i will be there for my project cycle, which i have been told lasts both 2 and 4 months, so who knows what will really happen there.



2) i have a few awesome new t-shirts that i bought in mysore. lets just say that "indian fashion sense" is an oxymoron or contradiction of terms.



3) this place is incredibly dull and boring, and its a major hassle to get out and visit anywhere for the weekend. hopefully moving to chennai will solve part of this problem, because the city actually has its own airport and we will no longer have to drive for 3+ hours on top of our flight to get anywhere in the country.



4) most of the people i have grown really close to are leaving this sunday to finish their training in hydrabad. many of them will not be living in seattle, which means there is a good chance i will not see them again, or at least won't see them for a really, really long time. that sucks.


5) i have not yet been able to watch any football games, which seems to be working out well. apparently notre dame wins games when i don't watch. still, i don't like having a football season that i can't watch.


6) training is an absolute joke so far. i spent 4 years actually learning this stuff, and now i am getting a watered-down version of what i already know spoon-fed to me by people who don't know how to teach americans. i have gotten A's on all my tests so far without even exerting myself, and am possibly the only person who got 100% on the project we did.

Rituals: Workdays

sorry for the lack of posts over the past two weeks. not much of note has happened recently, what with training and getting more adjusted now that the shock has worn off. since the days are just kind of mushing together over here, i figured i'd walk you all through a rough outline of my daily schedule here.

wake up some time between 7 and 8, wait for the water to get hot so i can shower (if i am lucky / early enough to get any hot water). spend a few minutes getting ready for class, including drying my hair (yay for my 240-volt hair dryer), staring at my wardrobe trying to figure out whether or not i need to wear a tie for whichever day it currently is (and whether or not it matches whichever shirt i happen to grab first), and making sure my ipod is well-hidden. i walk over to the training building, which is conveniently just across the road from our hostel (and i usually get yelled at for walking across the grass to the pathway instead of walking the extra 50 feet down to and back from where it meets the road). swipe my security card to open the door, let the guard dig through my backpack looking for who knows what (my deck of cards have already been confiscated once), and head over to my classroom.

from about 9 till 12~12:30 we have someone lecture us on topics which most of us have been taking real clases on for 4+ years. add horrible powerpoint slides, worser engrish, and incomprehensible accents. if you understand the attention span of the typical college kid, you can maybe start to see how difficult it is to pay attention to / care about anything that the instructors are trying to say to us (seriously, we had a conversation with our most recent instructor about the differences between "can't" and "shouldn't", which are completely interchangable in indian-english).

to be fair, we usually get some small break around 10 ~ 10:30, which most of us use to get coffee / coke / the recently-discovered, incredibly, heavenly, delicious chocolate croissants that are offered at the 24-hour snack stand just outside of the GEC (opposite side of the building from our hostel). it's taken about a month, but i think the security guards have finally realized that we can bring our drinks into the building now (it's absolutely allowed, we have had many discussions with HR and finally had to start writing down the names and ID numbers of the security guards who still refused to let us in, which has solved the problem nicely so far).

anyway, lunch whenever our instructor decides to let us go, which can be any time from 11:30 (only once, and it was awesome) till about 1 (which leaves us less than an hour to get to the food court, stand in line forever, stand in another line for even longer, eat, and get back . . . . gross).

after lunch is either time to do assignments or more lecture, depending on the instructor, material, etc. assignment-time is supposed to be from 2 - 6, which more or less rounds out our work day, but i have yet to have an assignment that takes me until after 4 to finish, at the absolute latest (and there were only 2 that took me that long, all the others i have been finishing before 3). i no longer bother to start the assignments in the morning, because then i have nothing to do from 2 - 4:30, which we were told is the absolute earliest we are allowed to clock out and leave for the day. its difficult enough to fill that time as it is; i only brought 4 novels from home and am down to my last 2 already.

anyway, i usually head over to the long-cycle (slower track) classroom and help my friends in there who don't understand whatever computer-programming concepts they are currently learning. after that we try to play a game of ultimate frisbee if the weather is nice (which it occasionally is) and then dinner as soon as the food courts open, which is 7:30. after dinner is anything from playing uno until security yells at us (cards=gambling=illegal, no exceptions, arguments, or explanations entertained), playing starcraft / warcraft via internal LAN, smash bros, mafia, or some other form of winding down.

rinse and repeat throughout the week.

Weekend in Bangalore

so, despite the first 3+ hour (each direction) trip to bangalore, i decided to give it a second shot. one of the guys here, Vishal, has family living in bangalore. we stayed in the guest-cabins at his uncle's house, and it was pretty awesome. we left friday evening and bade the trek to bangalore in time for dinner (9:00, which is approaching the end of dinner time by indian standards). we spent saturday in the city, doing a little shopping (you have no idea how hard it is to find a) bow-ties, b) suit-vests, and c) american board games in india). being able to have alcohol (incredibly strict enforcement of the dry campus rule) was nice, but by far the best part of the trip was being able to eat an actual meal that left me feeling full afterwords.

in true american fashion, we ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe.

i had a bacon cheeseburger ('bacon', 'cheese', and 'burger' are not food in india) and a pomegranate margarita. both good. i also bought a t-shirt, since i most definitely did not bring enough informal clothes to india.

basically, it was a lot of relaxing and getting away from indian beaurocracy. there are a few pictures up (http://picasaweb.google.com/shadedaemon/IndiaAugust2008) and i am trying to get some pictures from my photo-maniac friends who came with us.


also, i found out that i am now a part of the Manufacturing Business unit, which means i will be working on post-training projects in either Chennai or Bangalore, and i will be "based in" Seattle when i return to the U.S.
fine print: being "based in" an area doesn't actually mean anything, so far as we can tell, because i have yet to find a trainee from last year who actually has spent more than a week or two living in the area out of which he is "based".

Vent1: Catastrophically Wasted Day

Good news, everyone! we just found out that everyone in the US / UK batch is by default placed in the 'project management stream', which means that we will be project managers in about 2 years.
bad news: i don't know if any of us will be able to make it that long.


NOTE: this is all a completely true story, as ridiculous as it may seem.


for those of you who don't know, i had serious visa troubles. our visas were supposed to be for the city of Mysore, since that is where the training campus is, but all our paperwork came from the company headquarters in Bangalore, which apparently caused mass confusion among the consulate. long story short: my visa says 'Bangalore' and they refused to change it to 'Mysore'. however, there are two other US trainees who have the same problem.

anyway, everyone else went to the Mysore foreign registration office, and the HR department told us explicitly several times that the lucky three of us were required to travel into Bangalore to register. fine so far. unfortunately, this involves a 3-hour bus ride both ways and a couple of hours minimum at the office cleaning up the red tape. worse, the office is only open from 10 - 5 on weekdays, with a two-hour-or-so lunch break in the middle somewhere. oh yeah, as trainees, we have a 9:30 curfew after which we will be refused entry to the campus and docked pay for missing the following day, since we won't be allowed back in until after work has already started.

still not too bad, right?

well, i got up this morning at 4 so i had time to meet the 'full formal' dress code requirement, since our fun little trip included a 'short stay' at the Bangalore campus while some paperwork was finalized and notarized. we caught the 5:30 taxi (which showed up at about 5:45, thank you IST [Indian-Stretch-Time] ) and proceded to the main gate, where were refused exiting-rights. apparently trainees aren't allowed to leave during workdays without express permission from HR. oops, looks like NONE OF THE FOUR HR PEOPLE WHO HAD SET UP OUR TRIP had bothered to tell the gate guards. luckily, one of them answered his cell phone after about five or six attempts to call him. so around 6:15, only half an hour late so far, we began our 2 1/2 hour drive to Bangalore. once we were within sight of the campus, we called our incredibly confused contact person. apparently no one had told him of or little adventure until about an hour before we arrived there.

side note: we spent about three hours in the HR office after work the day before filling out our forms and figuring out what we would be doing today (we literally found out when we were leaving eleven hours before our actual departure time). we also scanned our completed forms so that our contact would be able to prepare enough copies of everything and make sure all the paperwork was complete. . . . except no one bothered to email him the forms.

so we arrived and met our contact, who asked us to explain why we were in Bangalore to register in the first place. we explained our story to him, and he told us that the stupid rule requiring us to register in a city separate from where we would be living had been changed about six months back. and he had very clearly mentioned this to the Mysore HR person in charge of visa registration (the guy who had arranged our trip to Bangalore) several times. so basically, our whole trip to Bangalore was entirely unnecessary. great.

we gave our Bangalore contact the paperwork, which he had wanted to have copied and assembled before we arrived; this meant about two hours of waiting around the Bangalore campus with nothing to do. we finally got everything assembled and headed into town for our actual visit to the FRRO office . . . except that by the time we got there, they were closed for lunch. after a lunch of our own from a nearby hotel-restaurant, we found ourselves waiting in line for another hour or so in the shadiest, most run-down, unkempt, nasty little series of buildings ever. after listening to our contact argue with the angry little man behind the big official desk for a while, we learned that foreigners were now required to register in the city where they would be staying. which meant that not only was our trip unnecessary, it was also a complete and total waste, because we would have to lose another day of class to travel to Mysore to register.

another fun piece of information: our visas were now required to match the location at which we would be staying, which ours clearly do not. this means that the company HR people now have to contact the Indian consulate and get his express, written permission for us to live in an area separate from what our visas say; who knows how that will turn out.

so after an incredibly long and worthless day, we drove back through a very . . . interesting . . . location. more on that later, since i am too tired to keep going.

did i mention that today was our first day of actual training, which we missed?

and i should also mention that NONE of this would have happened if the HR people would have made a simple phone call to talk to our Bangalore contact, who happened to be the PERSON IN CHARGE OF THE FOREIGN VISAS OFFICE FOR THIS COMPANY! his job is entirely to know all about the visas and formalities necessary for us to register with whatever countries we may be visiting! WHY DID NO ONE TALK TO HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE!?

this, and several other little things the people of this company have done (or not done), has caused most of our batch to severely lose respect for the company. some of these incidents are beyond simple mistakes or oversights; a lot of these problems are being caused by pure negligence, lack of communication, and a sort of apathy.

First Trip To Mysore: Traffic, Palace, Pictures

after an entire week of living solely within the barbed-wire and guard towers of the campus here, we finally found our first opportunity to leave and see 'real India'. the city of Mysore, which is incredibly tame, clean, and rather unpopulated, was still quite the shock for the members of our group who didn't know what to expect. so this morning 21 of us Americans hopped in a few cabs and headed into the town.

perhaps the first thing everyone noticed was the traffic. it's difficult to describe to someone who has not experienced it before, but i will try anyway:

there are three-wheeled 'auto-rickshaws' all over the place, functioning as taxis. people walk all over the place, as do animals (think cows....). there are bikes ('cycles' as they are called outside of the US) and scooters everywhere as well, and a fair amount of small euro-cars (nowhere near as tiny as smart cars and others i saw in italy). there are also enough cow-/horse-driven carts around to make them worth mentioning. oh yeah, everyone is honking their horns, all the time.

the horns are used to make others aware of your presence, and are used whenever changing 'lanes', turning, entering an intersection, etc, to make sure others know you are there. lanes are more of a theoretical suggestion over here; with all the people, animals, bikes, and scooters weaving around, it would be impossible to get anywhere without hitting them or going around. also, there is almost no space between vehicles. anyone who has ever seen driving in a foreign country will agree that 'bumper-to-bumper' has an entirely different meaning outside of the US.

oh yeah, everyone drives on the wrong side of the road, too.

traffic aside, here is the rundown of our day: up at the crack of early, left campus at 10 for the Mysore Palace (kind of cool, but too modern to really interest me; we also had to take off and check our shoes in order to enter). after the palace we went to a hotel for some food (indian buffet). around this time it started raining (yay monsoon season) and we went out for some shopping; after dinner at an incredibly sketchy chinese food place, we found a pretty awesome western-style nightclub and got a round of drinks before headding home.

the stores / streets of Mysore will get their own blagging later, right now i am too tired.

a few new pictures are up (http://picasaweb.google.com/shadedaemon/IndiaAugust2008). i apologize for not having more pictures from the city, but the more touristy we looked the more street vendors / conmen / pickpockets we attracted, so we tried to stay mobile and avoid stopping or flaunting valuables (like cameras).

Frisbee Is Going To Be The Death Of Me

earlier this year i broke my pinky finger playing ultimate frisbee. today i broke a blood vessel in my ring finger (other hand) and my finger is starting to look like a purple sausage. at this rate, by the end of 2009 i won't be able to use any of my fingers at all.

anywho, a bunch of us are leaving first thing in the morning to spend a day in mysore (the Infosys campus is rather isolated and not quite in the city). some time next week the three of us who have faulty visas (they say "Bangalore" instead of "Mysore") will be sent in to spend a day waiting in line to register.

pictures and my impressions of Mysore soon to come.

Training Cycle

so, after two ~10 hour days of sitting in a big stuffy room listening to big stuffy presentations, i basically have learned squat. i have, however, filled out roughly 10 pounds of paperwork, give or take, which includes the 20-page signing session for all sorts of fun policies that we didn't have time to read.

oh yeah, i also found out that as a CS major i have been mandatory fast-tracked, which means only four months of training before i begin my project phase. the brits don't seem very happy about that.

the topics covered during training are mostly basic CS skills/knowledge: RDBMS, OS/systems theory, programming fundamentals, programming in C, object-oriented concepts, algorythm analysis, and software engineering theories. and J2EE (gross). we have a sort of level-of-competency test on thursday morning to see how much of this we know (/remember). and apparently we find out what business units we will be working in early next week (i.e. financial companies, insurance agencies, networks, databases, mainframes, etc). more on that as it comes up.

finally, this friday is the Indian Independence day (another country that escaped British rule? lets rub it in their faces a bit), which means a three-day weekend, which in turn means a trip to the actual city of Mysore.

Pictures, More Interesting Things

ok, so i decided that the easiest way for me to do pictures is just to keep them in Picasa and let Google do all the background work for me.

long story short -- just go here: http://picasaweb.google.com/shadedaemon/IndiaAugust2008

i will try to remember to put that link in whenever i upload more pictures, for convenience.

more interesting stuff: the UK group has arrived finally. i have turned my laptop into an alarm clock, since i don't have a voltage converter for my actual alarm clock (or wii). no signs of "Delhi Belly" yet, which is good. lots of new friends, which means lots of ultimate frisbee and mafia games. weather is nice temperature-wise, but incredibly humid and spontaneously drizzly/rainy/monsoon-y/normal. had a bottle of coke with lunch today, and it was made of real sugar and little/no acid, which was an interesting experience. also, i had a slice of pizza which was incredibly sour; definitely weirded me out a little. finally, to avoid confusion, i have [already] been dubbed "Evil Nick" by much of the group; go figure.

Arrivals

yay, i made it to india in one piece!

after an 8-hour flight to frankfurt, 3-hour layover, 8-hour flight to bangalore, and 4-hour bus ride to the mysore campus, i am finally "home". first impressions: the campus is tiny, especially compared to the friendly, pedestrian-oriented, walk-on-the-grass campus of Notre Dame. yes, i have already gotten in trouble by the security people for walking on the grass. i only moved to avoid running into a big group of people.

anyway, my room is bigger than my ND single, and i have my own bathroom. i exchanged a bunch of dollars for rupees and can now actually buy stuff, like lunch. more impressions: very little meat in our diets so far; just a little chicken and some mutton, which was surprisingly good (especially after a day or two of airline food).

another fun thing to note is the incredible lack of efficiency here. our group (~55 US people plus 13 UK people) was turned loose yesterday morning after we arrived (5 am or so) and we literally haven't seen anyone in charge or been told anything about rules, where / how to get meals, etc. the "information desk" just looked confused when we asked about curfews or any sort of common space, since males and females are not allowed near the other genders' hostels. also, we were told that we must show up to make 8 copies of our passports / visas today, and the copier is open from 10 am to 12 pm. for almost 70 people.

electronics are also an issue; so far, i have my computer, hair dryer, and shaver working. the entire room only has 4 outlets, including the bathroom sink outlet. more on that later.

finally, pictures will come as soon as i get my camera battery recharged.

Gone

well, it's tuesday night.
in 8 hours, i will be on a plane heading to atlanta; from there, i go to frankfurt, germany, then on to bangalore. after registering in bangalore, its a long, hot, 4-hour drive to get to mysore.
pictures and details of my trip upon arrival, hopefully.

Leaving Soon

kicking off my new blog, i'd like to remind you that i am soon leaving the country.

i will be living in Mysore, India, which is near the bottom of that darker red area.

It's Official

i am now a blogger. wahoo.