Warren in India

Free time? What's that? Ah yes, I remember now....
Today has been pretty fun, as well as relaxing. After a casual evening last night (Pizza Hut at home, then chatting with eight or so other TWorkers on someone else's terrace), I met with a project group this morning for about an hour, then a larger group of us headed over to a restaurant at the fabulous Leela Palace hotel (where our bootcamp sessions are being held, as luck would have it) for a 1200-Rupee buffet brunch. The spread was incredible -- a wide array of vegetable dishes, kabobs cooked to order, sushi (!), other meat dishes, and desserts. I abstained from the all-you-can-drink champagne and decided to stick with bottled water ("100% Trust" goes the slogan) since it's warm and dry here. There's a pickup game of volleyball happening at 5 PM, which should be fun. After that, who knows? Probably some more e-mailing and a stab at another entry here to cover the high points of last week.

Those of you in the throes of winter will probably question my sanity for having written this, but the weather here has been quite boring: sunny, 90 degrees, and low humidity every day. While there is more smog than I care to think about, before today I had seen only two clouds. It's been mostly sunny today, but the clouds I've seen today and earlier in the week have all been of the half-hearted, wispy variety. Before you all cry for my hardships here, understand that the thought of the six inches of snow and/or ice forecast for Chicago (yes, I'm spying on you all) doesn't make me homesick at all. Yet it's quite a mental exercise to fully realize that it's still winter back in the States.

BTW, the project for the project group that I mentioned earlier is actually a quite a difficult exercise. We have to analyze a case study of a project that ThoughtWorks took on a while back for a major retailer in the UK. When we* came on board, the project was about a year behind schedule, with a firm legal deadline (having to do with responsibility for bank-card fraud) looming. Our project is to make a recommendation WRT the appropriate course of action for TW at eight different "decision points" through the duration of the project. These vary widely from the broad ("Should TW even take on the work?") to the more specific (questions about system architecture). In working through them, it has made me appreciate the difficulties that can crop up throughout the life cycle of an engagement. I'm just glad that these issues are discussed here at a fairly broad breadth and that I wouldn't ever be responsible for dealing with them on my own. :) (Despite the difficulties, we* did deliver to the client successfully.)

Anyway, I'm off to volleyball.

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