Warren in India

Monkeys!
I'm still going through a lot of the photos that I've taken recently (boot camp graduation ceremony and Mysore trip, mostly) but I've decided to post this batch now.

Outside of the temple we visited in the hills outside of Mysore, there were monkeys, mostly looking for food from the tourists (given or stolen) and harassing the juice merchants who set up shop outside.

I took many of photos of said monkeys, and I've posted the best in the usual spot.

As an aside, now that boot camp is over, my energy levels are mostly back to normal. It's still quite tiring just being alive over here, but it's no longer disruptively so. Anyway, I'll be posting more soon, I think. The latch on my PowerBook has broken, though, and since I rely on this machine for all of my photo processing, there may be a gap in my postings while it's in the shop. I haven't yet decided when I'm taking it in, if at all.

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Rickshaw photos posted
I've posted some photos of auto-rickshaws (including one with me inside) at the photos area related to this journal. Enjoy!

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The Guinness That Might Have Been
Last night we went out for St. Patrick's Day. We went to the only Irish Pub in Bangalore, and most (if not all) of us who went were looking forward to a nice pint of Guinness. Alas, it was not to be. The Dublin does not carry Guinness, or, for that matter, any other beer not brewed locally. This was explained to us by the waiter, who said that "it's a lot of ocean between here and there." Strange, then, that they had Bud Light and a South African (!) brew. Rumor has it that they carried Guinness a while back, but that it was about $20 for a pint. This story may have been nothing more than an expatriate Irishman having a bit of fun with one of my colleagues, so please salt to taste.

In other news, I've been re-assigned to a different internal project. This one is an internal marketing tool, rather than the internal resource management tool that I had originally been assigned to. Right now, I'm waiting for an e-mail from the project manager to tell me what's up. Supposedly the project will last for 3-4 weeks, then I'll be on another internal project. I have no idea what any of the other details of these projects are, let alone how they might affect my departure date.

We finished Object Bootcamp on Wednesday, so we developer bootcampers have been working out of the office since Thursday. It's nice to be back in an office, but I've been in limbo since this morning. Bootcamp was an overwhelming experience. The consensus is that we all learned about the equivalent of a semester-and-a-half of university material in just over a month. We learned what was essentially a completely new way of looking at programming, which takes the JIT approach that I mentioned earlier. We develop so that projects can be planned in much smaller chunks than the much longer (12+ months) plans that more traditional approaches require.

I've now got another reason to want to come back before June 5 -- New Order are playing in Chicago on May 3. It's their only show in the midwest (at least for now), and their first stop anywhere near there since 1993. It figures that I'm scheduled to be on the other side of the world. I'm going to buy tickets anyway and just hope for the best.

We're having a "Bootcamp Graduation" ceremony and party tonight. I'll post more on that after it happens. Our bus leaves for Mysore at 6:30 tomorrow morning, so I'm sure it won't be a late night for me.

I've been struggling to try to get more money into my pay-as-you-go cell phone account here, so those of you with whom I haven't spoken in a while will probably hear from me next week.

Have a good weekend!

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Getting down to brass tacks
A lot has been going on here, so I'll just dive right into things, how's that sound?

First and foremost, my return date is a bit clearer: as with all but three of the other campers, I've been placed on a project here -- for me and many others, it's an internal (i.e. non-billable) project. This means that no-one is buying me a replacement ticket to come back before June just yet. There are two big caveats to this:

1. If billable work comes up for me in the U.S., I will leave ASAP. Apparently, this usually happens with 7-10 days' notice, mostly for booking a new flight.
2. There are people working on the internal project in Chicago, so I may be able to finagle my way back to Chicago to work on it. The powers-that-be in Resource Management are aware of my food issues, so that may be a a factor there. Don't hold your breath, though. You'll turn blue and pass out, and that's quite unbecoming.

Last Monday night, I saw Mark Knopfler (!), formerly of Dire Straits, in concert here. It was a very pleasant show; even though I don't know any of his "solo" work, I heard all of the Dire Straits songs I wanted to hear. The show was held at a part of the grounds of what is apparently still a functioning palace of sorts. I wish I could tell you more about that, but that's all I know. The downsides to the show were the late hour on a school night and all of the dust on the ground on the way back. My throat and lungs complained for the few days after the show.

It rained here Friday night. The skies opened up, and we got thunder and lightning -- the whole works. An hour later, it stopped. There were still patches of mud around when I was out today. I'm sure Monsoon Season is a blast. Apparently, rain in March is a rare thing. (As an aside, it was in the mid-90s -- again -- today...and it's not even Hot Season yet. That's coming soon, they say.)

The trip to Mysore was pushed back a week. It seems that I was not alone in thinking that four intense six-day weeks in a row weren't the best thing for everyone's health...so you'll have to wait for those photos.

However, I did prepare some other photos to share. That address is the place you'll want to watch for more photos.

This past week was the continuation of "Object Bootcamp," or "All Programming, All the Time." It has been as amazing as it was exhausting. Imagine a forty-hour week of a class of your favorite college subject where the level of instruction is so high that if it were any higher, it would be totally over your head. During the exercises, we are expected to not get things right so that we can be gradually steered in the right direction. It's actually a lot more effective than just sitting us down and showing us the "right way" to do things. I've learned almost as much as I did in any one programming class in college, and that's saying a lot.

The downside of this is that I've been dead tired almost every night. My typical after-class schedule this week was: take a nap, wake up, have dinner, go to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. I'm actually a tad concerned that there may be another, health-related factor there, so I'm going to keep a careful eye out and go get myself checked out if I can't get properly rested. It's probably just the intensity of the schedule, which should ease off a bit after we finish Object Bootcamp on Wednesday. This should also mean more time for me to make entries here. I hope.

Anyway, I'm going to take my evening shower now and get myself sorted for next week. Take care of yourselves, and I'll shout at you all later.

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That Huge Project I Mentioned Earlier As A Place I Might Land
Quickly, before I hop in the shower:

ThoughtWorks has announced its role as primary systems integrator partner for the first sequence of DestiNY USA.

Um, wow.

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Yesterday's Headlines, Blown By The Wind
It's funny: after I'd been here for only a few days, it seemed as if I'd been here for weeks already. Now, however, six hours or so after the three weeks of "proper" boot camp sessions have ended, it seems as if it's all gone by in a matter of days. We'll be spending the next two days at the Agile India 2005 Conference, followed by nine or ten days of the "Object Bootcamp" that I mentioned earlier, full-time. Then I'll either be placed on a project back in the States or on one here (most likely an internal resource- and revenue-tracking application).

As for more recent happenings, I'm getting over a bit of a cold. I actually missed most of Tuesday's camp because of it -- the only reason I went in was to take part in a group presentation that my group gave.

But enough of current events for now. I'd like to try to recap my first week here, dodgy as it may already be in my memory. My strongest memories are of the first ten hours or so after my arrival, so let's begin there.

As I walked out the door of the airport onto the street, I began to look for a friendly face -- in particular, the face in the photo I'd been sent of the boot camp coordinator, Kerri. She was nowhere to be seen. I probably looked the part of exhausted firangi (that's Hindi for foreigner, and, yes, it is apparently pronounced the same way as the name of that alien race from Star Trek), so the two ThoughtWorkers who had been dispatched in her place knew to yell the name of our company in my particular direction. After such a long journey, it was really an amazing relief to meet Kraig (curriculum coordinator) and Peter (UK camper, also one of my roommates) in the barely pre-dawn coolness. I was finally here. And ready for some sleep.

After one of the more surreal cab rides of my life (one suitcase in the trunk, the other shifting about in the luggage rack on top), the driver insisted on a new term to our agreement -- that we also pay for his parking fee at the airport. Kraig, who was paying on behalf of ThoughtWorks, decided that it wasn't worth arguing with the driver and reluctantly agreed to pay the extra amount. Since he and Peter had waited patiently outside Bangalore Airport for me from about 03:00 to 06:00, Kraig offered as a tip a clever if crude suggestion as to where the driver might decide to securely store the fee in question. The driver politely thanked Kraig (no, really!), but I don't think he tried out the suggestion for a makeshift wallet. If he had, he would without a doubt have gotten some funny looks making change for his next fare.

Kraig fed me some microwaved leftover pizza, and I returned to my flat and had a bit of a chat with Peter. It was quite tranquil sitting on our eighth-floor terrace, watching the sky grow lighter. So tranquil that Peter excused himself to head for bed. I moved my suitcases into my room, lowered the blinds (our flat faces west), and closed my eyes.

And nothing happened. I'd been more or less awake for a day and a half, and I couldn't sleep. So I unpacked and took a shower. And I wasn't tired any more.

I eventually called Kraig, and we went to Indi Joe's [sic] for some quasi-western fare. I had a garlic steak sizzler. It was quite tasty, since I'd brought plenty of that well-tested Hunger Sauce with me. (I've had a similar dish there again, and it was pretty good the second time around, too, even when I wasn't quite so famished.)

Now into 40+ hours of sleep deprivation, I returned to the flat, where I met my other two (temporary) roommates, Ian (UK) and Shane (Australia). I was beginning to think that it wasn't a coincidence that I'd gotten along so well with everyone I'd met. (I may be getting the order of things wrong here; it's possible that I met Shane and Ian before I went to lunch, but the point doesn't really matter here.)

I tried to tough it out until the scheduled 7 PM dinner, but I finally collapsed at around 16:30, setting a new Warren-record of approximately 44 hours without any significant amount of sleep. Peter called me at around 20:00, rousing me and allowing me to toddle down to the restaurant where a fairly large group of campers and other ThoughtWorkers was chatting and finishing up dinner. (Had Peter called at a less opportune time in my sleep cycle, there might have been a repeat of a conversation Stewart and I had one evening in college. "Zzzzz...hello? Groan." "Hi Warren, it's Stewart." "Oh, hi, Stew. Groan." "Were you asleep?" "No, not at all. Groan." "Why don't you call me back later?" "Okay. Groan." "Click." Why do people lie about having been called when asleep? As if the other person can't tell....)

After dinner (where I met quite a few more campers), I went back to the flat and make myself stay awake until midnight or so. As was the case for the next four or five mornings, I woke up at around 05:00 and was unable to go back to sleep. It's hard to judge for sure, but it probably took me about a week or so to get fully adjusted to the time change.

Now, I hope that it's apparent why I don't make entries very often. This entry represents about three hours of writing and editing, and I didn't even cover that much! I'm far too inefficient of a writer to be an effective blogger. (And I haven't even gotten to the caretakers yet!) I'm also far too self-conscious of a photographer to be a good photo-blogger...but I plan on making up for that this weekend and into next week. (How does that saying about the best-laid plans go? Where's the rest of the first week's happenings, anyway?)

I will be heading out on a group day-trip to Mysore on March 12, so expect lots of photos then. But for now, it's time to recharge my laptop's battery as well as my own. Until next time...keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.

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