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).

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.

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".

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).

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.