Are We Having Fun Yet?

Another ACDC square dance weekend has come & gone. It was tremendous fun, I had a great time and it was wonderful to see everyone again but my feet were killing me nearly the entire weekend from dashing around from hall to hall, helping at the registration desk, answering various questions and even (gasp!) dancing.

My little household did the weekend on the cheap: we commuted from home to save on hotel expenses and even scored a parking place at a friend's nearby condo so we could save on parking. It added to our general sense of exhaustion but the financial impact is significant.

I hosted the guest caller Advanced hour and called a tip during that block. On the whole, I think my ten minutes of mic time went pretty well. kent4str hosted the C1 hour at the same time so I didn't get to see how things were chugging along in his hall but it's hard to imagine things going terribly wrong.

Monday was a day of great relief thanks to the Presidents' Day holiday. cuyahogarvr and I went to the National Geographic Museum in downtown DC to see the Anglo-Saxon hoard display, a collection of gold, silver & garnet pieces unearthed a short while ago which date to about 1300 years ago. The display pieces were much smaller than I had anticipated; the largest was only a couple of inches in length and most were tiny fragments the size of my thumbnail. And as I should have anticipated, the crowds were dense so it was difficult to see any of the artifacts or even read the text on the associated signs.

In the early afternoon, cuyahogarvr and I went to Fairfax, VA, to visit John Marshall at his rehab facility. Mentally, he's as sharp as ever although he's still moving delicately & slowly. Good news, however: as I type this Tuesday afternoon, John should be in the process of being discharged to home. He still has some physiotherapy but it will done with home visits. Each day, he's a little stronger and more mobile.

kent4str had an interview with another headhunter firm while we were visiting John. It's comforting to know he's still in circulation and there are nibbles periodically so we're still quite optimistic about his long term prospects.

We spent much of the afternoon catching up on various mid-term planning and projects. We've booked our hotel room for the upcoming CALLERLAB convention, although not at the host hotel. Because the primary hotel only has small double beds left --of which only cuyahogarvr might fit into, we've had to look elsewhere. Fortunately, the Marriott is only a half-mile away and we were planning to drive anyway so we'll have our minivan available.

We've also purchased air fare & booked a rental car for the Vancouver IAGSDC convention, as well as booked a rental car for our April trip to Ontario to visit family.

My evening was largely spent catching up on some reading, finishing off two magazines and an ebook. I'm increasingly becoming disappointed with many self-help productivity books and articles as I'm doing nearly all of the things which they recommend: task lists, aggressive prioritization, using a PDA, etc.. In all, it would seem the best way for me to become yet more efficient is to stop reading books on increasing personal efficiency. Which kinda sucks 'cause it means I've hit something of an unsatisfactory plateau.

Well, back to the salt mines. I don't have much to do except watch three Fujitsu guys install & configure my new storage array expansion but I'll think of something to make the time worthwhile.

Executive summary: I'm home.

When we last heard from our heroic world traveler, he was attempting to recharge his tablet & mobile phone at his gate at Charles de Gaulle Airport, just outside of Paris. Alas, it was not to be.

I think I had everything plugged in & charging for about five minutes when my name flashed up on a screen asking me to go to the nearest Air France courtesy desk. In this instance, nearest==only and while I was only fourth in line, I was fourth in line for more than a half-hour as the Brit at the front of the line had the Air France rep looking through every possible combination of flights for the following day to his destination, then doing it all over again by window or aisle seating.

When it was finally my turn, it was just to ask to see my permanent residence card. By the time I was back at my gate, however, the plane was in the process of boarding so I never did get my devices fully charged.

The 7.5 hour flight from Paris to Dulles was uneventful. Indeed, it was half-full so there was plenty of sprawl space for folks who wanted more room or to lay across several seats to sleep. I caught up on a lot of reading on my tablet, watched the latest Harry Potter movie (which probably would have made more sense if I had seen the movies or read the books leading up to it) and the last Transformers movie (which I suspect wouldn't have much more sense if I had seen the prior ones).

We landed just before 1pm EST. Passengers were unloaded at an outer terminal, shuttled in the "mobile lounges" to the customs area in the main building and were processed in a general fashion not unlike most slaughter houses. Kent & Michael were waiting for me and we headed home.

In all, I think I was in transit 21 hours total, 26 if you include the stopover in Paris and 29 if you include the transit time to & from the airports. No wonder my body is rebelling against me currently.

I've unpacked my suitcase and backpack, although I've yet to swap out the contents of my wallet and the extra pockets of my backpack. I'm working on going to bed after nightfall so I can acclimatize back into my usual daytime routine but the act of simply staying awake is taking a great deal of energy. I keep looking at the clock, wondering if it's 9pm yet. Nope, not yet. Still not yet. Nope. Damn, this day will never end.

I went to get my hair cut just a little while ago, the first time I've driven a car in two weeks. I'm feeling very proud of myself: despite recent adventures in driving, I stayed in my own lane, used turn signals and didn't honk at every vehicle, pedestrian or tree I passed. So there.

There's a huge tonne of emails to catch up on from the past day or so and I'd better get at it. So much to do, so little desire to do any of it...

I tried to sleep in a little this morning, really I did. Still, I was awake at 7am despite being utterly exhausted still from the previous day's tours.

As previously planned, I cranked up my mobile phone, connected it to the hotel wifi (which is now functioning as it should, thank you very much) and skyped Kent & Michael back home to chat for a half hour before they went to bed Saturday night.

Since the wifi was working so well and I had little incentive to get out of bed, I caught up on the latest news from Canada and the US, handled some email, updated twitter and so on. If I hadn't been a little thirsty, I would have stayed in the bed the rest of the morning.

I was thirsty however and there were things still to do this last full day in Bangalore. I made myself somewhat presentable and headed out into the world, hoping to get my errands completed before the full heat of the day set in.

Because most of these errands were gift shopping, I won't say much about them here. Suffice it to say, I now have all the souvenirs I was planning to purchase.

Alas, I wasn't able to visit one particular shop as it was closed today; I'll try again tomorrow after work. And I wasn't able to get a second small suitcase: the only store where I've found luggage or indeed anything larger than a purse wanted what could only be called US prices, and I wasn't willing to shell out $125+ for a suitcase when a simple small gym bag would suffice. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do about that.

The early afternoon was mostly spent catching up on my travelogue updates, sorting through photos and generally relaxing in the air conditioning of my room. I suppose I could do more with the day but really I just want to relax and look forward to being home again.

Something I noticed yesterday when out touring with the guys but neglected to report: wow, the locals Do Not Tip. I mean, jeez, I thought I was a lousy tipper but these guys are truly harsh. (Obligatory tourism joke: What's the difference between a Canuck and a canoe? A canoe tips.) I've been giving out 100 rupee notes ($2) to the hotel staff for room service and laundry delivery. To me, it's not extravagant. When we last ate together on our way back to Bangalore yesterday, I paid the bill and was prepared to leave the 15 rupee change behind but the guys actively discouraged me from doing so. I told them how most states in the US have a special minim wage level just for wait staff which is typically a small fraction of the regular minimum wage level and they seemed quite shocked --as would any normal human being, IMHO.

I haven't written much about the local newspapers so let me fill you in on a few things. My primary newspaper here is the Times of India, largely because that's the newspaper the hotel delivers to my door every morning. It's a good mix of local, national & international news: for example, the headlines today (Sunday) were about a controversy in local state high court appointments, speculation that the head of the commander of the Eastern Army may resign (and who will replace him) and Mitt Romney winning delegates in Nevada. At a glance one might guess the journalists here are nowhere near as deferential as American journalists tend to be. Take for example, today's harsh front page headline:


That said, I haven't been here long enough to know if the papers have political affiliations like many North American news outlets. For example, the Toronto Star is well known as a Liberal paper, the National Post as a Conservative one. Is the Times of India a Congress(I) supporter against a state gov't run by the BJP, or do they skewer everyone equally? I'd need more time here to say.

Valentine's Day advertising features prominently. At first, I thought this was a sign of western influence, but the more I think of it, the more I suspect it's marketing depts going the easy path to bigger sales & markets.

The astrology column occupies a full half-page and gives very detailed advice --if you're into that sort of thing. Each zodiac sign includes a celebrity name & photo noting their birthday, but not a single one of these celebrities is Indian: names include Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, Daniel Radcliffe, Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe and Charlie Sheen, among others. This despite the column being produced by a local astrologer. Go figure.

Sunday comics? Nothing local, not even an editorial cartoon. Just Garfield, Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible and the Wizard of Id. Sorry, India.

Not a word on Whitney Houston but I suspect the paper went to the presses before the news broke.

I'm thinking more & more about my return trip, my logistics of packing, checking out, getting to the airport & such. In particular, I'm thinking a lot more about the list of things to get done nearly as soon as I return, including calling a C2 session on Wednesday. I have plenty of material still in inventory to use, but I should stop procrastinating and get back to writing some new choreo immediately.

Today (Saturday) has been one long-ass day.

The alarm went off at 5:30am to give me enough time to make myself presentable, pack my camera & batteries and head down to the lobby to meet my hired driver. Today, I and three of my Bangalore office colleagues went to Mysore to see the temples, palaces and countryside.

The drive out of Bangalore itself was quite the adventure. I've made comments here previously about the barely-controlled chaos of urban vehicular traffic. Now I've seen it from the inside as a passenger. Spontaneous lane shifts, casual passing of slower vehicles by crossing into oncoming traffic lanes, speed bumps that made me glad to be wearing a seat belt, sudden stops & accelerations: it was the whole OMG package. In the course of the 150km drive from Bangalore to Mysore, I had 14 heart attacks, five strokes and lord knows how many panic attacks. And that's just the stuff my subconscious hasn't yet blocked.

Traffic calming seems to come in three varieties: the casual speed hump most North Americans would recognize, rumble strip kind of speed bumps (5-6 small speed humps 6-8 inches apart) and portable offset gates erected by the local police which restrict traffic down to a single lane with some tricky navigation. Believe me when I tell you the rumble strip version is guaranteed to get your attention, especially if the stripes have that magical interaction with the wheelbase of your vehicle causing the driver & passengers alike to be tossed around like numbered balls in a bingo machine.

The drive of 150km really did take three full hours each way. Simply put, the highway is dominated by modes of transport which typically can't travel more than 45km/h: critter-drawn wagons, tractors, auto-rickshaws, scooters typically laden with three passengers plus cargo and buses making frequent stops. Even if you could get up to speed, it would only be a matter of five minutes before you hit another traffic calming mechanism.

Still, getting out of town was time well spent in itself. You've seen the photos in National Geographic magazine and I can assure you they're all true: oxen pulling overloaded wagons of sugar cane, cows roaming at will, fields with goats, a troop of monkeys vying for handouts from humans. The only thing missing from the picture was an elephant or two.

Our first stop was a palace commonly known as the "Summer Palace." It's an all-wood structure and while intricately carved & painted, it's rather small for something to be labeled a palace. And at 200 years old, the wooden structure is showing its age. Hopefully, a full restoration will be undertaken some time soon. No photos are forthcoming as photography was forbidden inside the structure and the exterior was sheathed in protective tarps. Sorry.

On our way through town, we made a spontaneous visit to the Roman Catholic cathedral, St Philomena's church. Yup, there is an RC cathedral in downtown Mysore, India. Who knew? Frankly, it was a cathedral like any other. I had hoped there might be some customization in recognition of its special location & culture but no: it was a perfect cut-and-paste gothic structure which would have been perfectly at home anywhere in Europe or North America. Indeed, wikipedia says it was inspired by the Cologne Cathedral in Germany.


The guys suggested we stop for a quick drink as we left the church whereupon I had yet another new experience: street vendor coconut water. There are vendors on every street in every town in the area sitting beside an enormous pile of coconuts. One selects a coconut from the pile, the vendor uses a wide-blade scythe to hack off the stem & husk, then the pointed end to gouge a hole through the meat to the litre of water inside. You can then drink directly from the coconut or, if you're a delicate but fat & overpaid westerner like me, you'll be offered a straw.

While I know this is supposedly a very nutritious drink and is the latest fad in parts of the western world who fetishize all things organic, raw & all-natural, frankly, I wasn't impressed. It wasn't a strong flavor of any particular kind and didn't especially quench my thirst. Imagine dissolving a half-teaspoon of sugar in a quart of water; if that sounds good to you, coconut water is your thing. You're welcome.

The next palace we visited was grand on any measure: the Maharaja's Palace (aka Ambavilasa Palace or Mysore Palace), the royal home of Maharaja Chamaraja Wodeyar IV. This place is the stuff of Disney fairy tales: immense, sprawling, stone, marble & glass, elaborate carvings and luxurious furnishings. Again, photography of the interior was forbidden. Further, one had to go barefoot through the palace. While I expect that of temples & holy places, I was a little surprised about needing to check my shoes to visit a royal palace. Oh, well... at least the shoes were checked at no extra charge.


The other big surprise was the price differential for admission: local citizens can visit for five rupees while foreigners were charged 100 rupees. Perhaps citizens of India get a break because their tax money is preserving the place. I like that theory more than the cough-up-you-fat-overpaid-walking-bank-machine-westerner alternative explanation. Still at effectively $2, it's an incredible bargain.

Next up was lunch at the Sapphire Restaurant at the Lalitha Mahal Palace, now a luxury hotel. Outside of a horrid package of almonds from my hotel mini-bar, I've never had a bad meal in India and this restaurant was no exception. The buffet had so many flavours to try and the dessert table was too enticing for me to resist. I ate too much mais je ne regrette rien.

We began the slow trek back to Bangalore after lunch, winding our way through the winding streets of Mysore, making a few additional stops along the way. The next one was the Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary.

It was a pleasant park on the Cauvery River with several protected islands which are used as nesting areas by various migratory birds. Among other species, there were hundreds of spoonbills, cormorants, pelicans and such, along with very large bats hanging from the upper branches of trees across the river and at least two crocodiles sunning themselves along the shore. There were a half-dozen sanctuary-operated tour boats offering a leisurely half-hour ride around a couple of the small islands so we could get closer to the birds. All boats were propelled by humans with oars: engines would disturb the wildlife. Many photos were taken --including that of the life preservers piled neatly on shore at the landing pier.




And now for a little digression into language...

Yes, english is spoken by a huge portion of the population to some degree. Typically, the more educated one is, the better one's english. As a native english speaker, I make allowances for lapses in vocabulary, syntax & grammar for others, just as many others do when I stumble my way through French or ASL. The point, we all typically agree, is to communicate even if imperfectly and with some effort.

That said, there is a special level of hell in my world for folks of any language who create signs but don't/can't bother to spell-check them with a native speaker or against an Internet filled with suitable examples. Conversational communication is real-time, but making signs for traffic, business or directions isn't, and if one is going to put something out in public for all to see, it should be correct both in content and form. I would take pains to do this if I had to post a sign in spanish, chinese or whatever, and I don't think it's too much to ask adults to do likewise.

I don't mind the admission rate charts referring to people like me as "foreigners." I prefer "foreign national" but there are space restrains so I'll accept the shorter form. (I despise the American term "alien": I'm from Canada, not Mars.) Still, if you're going to use the word "foreigners" three times on your sign, would it hurt to spell it the same way rather than three different ways, none of which were correct? I forgive the misuse of the apostrophe in the follow example: native English speakers have a tough time getting it right so some slack will be cut for those using it as a second (or third or more) language. That said, a quick google search will find standard english signs to copy.


From the bird sanctuary, we drove though still more kilometers of back country roads, through villages and scenery. Our driver was honking the horn even when we were the only vehicle on the road: I can't decide if it was a reflex action from driving in Bangalore where one honks every 10-15 seconds or if the quiet of the countryside unnerved him in some fashion.

Sugar cane is everywhere in these parts. We past many fields just harvested, the process of being harvested or yet to be harvested. Huge stacks of cut cane were piled by the roadside, waiting for the cart with oxen or donkey to collect it.

And finally we arrived at the Kesava Temple, constructed around 1268 AD. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and is undergoing extensive renovation. The stone work and carvings are exquisite: no detail is spared.


By now, it was the late afternoon and the sun was fading so we finally made the final trek back into Bangalore. We had taken a number of major streets and highways out of the city when we went directly to Mysore but I presume we were now approaching from a different direction thanks to our tangential visits to other sites as we were scooting through back alleys and the wrong way up one-way streets, dodging motorcycles, scooters, cows, dogs, pedestrians and other cars in a fashion that would have made Indiana Jones proud for nearly an hour.

Bangalore at night from the neighboring hills isn't as well lit as most western cities, largely because there are fewer street lights. The lights one does see are apartments, homes, businesses and entrances with minimal additional street lighting. Bangalore also has considerably more of a tree canopy that many other cities I've visited which conveniently cuts back on some of the light pollution.

For the first time, I also noted satellite dishes: they were pointed nearly straight up. Since the satellites are positioned over the equator and Bangalore is about 13 degrees north of the equator, this makes perfect sense. It just struck me as unusual because where I grew up, the satellite dishes point at the horizon. See how worldly I'm becoming? :-)

We arrived back at the hotel at nearly 9pm sharp. I was tired, exhausted --and needed a bathroom like never before. Not that I was having any sort of GI issues, it was just time you understand.

Once settled back in my room, I had a drink from the room minibar and attempted to update LJ but the hotel wifi system was having none of it: something wasn't working correctly. I curled up with a book for a short while (on literary references to Charlemagne), then headed to bed.

I must be fully adjusted to living in Bangalore: this morning (Friday), I slept in.

Over the past 10+ days, I've been waking up at 7:30am by reflex (my watch alarm set for 8am as a precaution), check my email, get scrubbed up enough to be seen in public and walk over to the office by 9am. This morning, however, I woke up, rolled over to look at my watch and was astonished to see it displaying 9:10am.

Fortunately, it's Friday here and all of the big work projects have already been tackled. In fact, I completed all of the writing tasks I had hoped to accomplish shortly after lunch Thursday. At the moment, I'm monitoring some processing jobs and updating some scripts, but otherwise expending most of my energy dreading a huge pile of stuff waiting for me at my data center back in Washington.

One of the curious side effects of being 10.5 hours out of sync with home is that I'm spending less time online. We talk a great line about how the Internet has made us a 24x7 world, but it really hasn't: the bulk of the transactions, updates & postings generated are done in the daylight hours of the writers. Since most of the people I follow on email, Facebook, Google+, LiveJournal and a host of news web sites are all in North America, there are precious few updates posted during my daytime hours in India. In effect, I get to do all of my reading & browsing within the first hour or so of my day before going to work and never have a distraction until my bedtime, just as folks in North America are starting their day.

debbieann commented on yesterday's post about the card key electrical control for my hotel room. The suggestion was that any card the correct shape would probably work just as well as my room's door key. Sure enough, the Cold Stone Creamery gift card I forgot to take out of my wallet works just fine at keeping the lights & outlets on. Yay!

I just finished reading "Rainbow's End" by Maury Klein, a history of the stock market crash of 1929. Wow, that ended badly.

I've finally figured out how to operate the television in my room. The problem ultimately was that the remote for the descrambler had dead batteries. Easily fixed.

In keeping with the hotel's international clientele, the channels represent a broad range. There are a stack of channels in Indian language(s), but also two from France, one from Russia, one from Germany, a few from south-east Asia and Al Jazeera from the middle east.

There are a handful of cricket channels and a stack of sports channels, and by sports I mean still more cricket channels.

I found some familiar North American channels, or rather, their Indian equivalents: CNN India, MSNBC India, etc.. I think only the BBC new channel looked the same on both both US and Indian televisions.

They have VH1. Sorry about that, India.

The Indian news channels were intriguing: many times the speakers were talking a local language with appropriate upper-screen titles while the ticker across the bottom was english. In fact, many of the channels have a mix of languages, switching between english and other languages in the same program or commercial, sometimes in mid-sentence. One National Geographic channel has two overlapping audio tracks in different simultaneous languages, the net effect being that one can't make out the narrative at all.

The commercials seem to come in two major varieties: the basic story theme in a style & structure western eyes would quickly recognize, and the Bollywood musical style with lots of singing & stylized dancing, praising the product or service in question, or just creating an atmosphere of energy & excitement.

I've been watching one of the movie channels, an Indian channel showing primarily American movies. Every now and then, text scrolls across the dead center of the screen, inviting anyone who is offending by any aspect of the movie to complain to a gov't review board.

The single most striking commonality between Indian and American television is obvious, however: 500 channels and nothing on. I'm going to go read a book.

Some translations:
1. A rupee is about $0.02.
2. "Timings" means "office hours" or "business hours"
3. The ground floor is "0" in most elevators. What the locals call the first floor would be the level above ground level.
4. Car horns are used as turn signals. And Bangalore drivers do love their "turn signals."
5. Traffic moves on the left side of the road. It also means that pedestrians tend to also pass each other on the left, which conflicts severely with my deeply in-grained habit of automatically passing on the right.


A friend had arned that Bangalore has periodic & frequent power outages. For the first few days, I think we were outage-free. Friday and Saturday however were not good days for the local utility: the power blanked out for about 30 seconds several times on each day. I'm not sure however if the restored power was from each building's own backup generator or from the utility; when/if the utility power did come back on while the generators were in use, it was entirely transparent to me.

The office where I work is entirely populated by laptops so everyone's battery carries them through the brief outage. Uninterruptible power supplies provide bridge time for the network devices and storage. I'm glad however to have never been trapped in an elevator during one of these brief outage. I was trapped behind an escalator in one shopping mall Saturday: the attendants were refusing shoppers access while the techies manually restarted the escalators.

I wonder what happens to the traffic lights --like anyone looks at those things anyway.


Hey, let's have a few pictures! Here's a little something I recorded this evening on my walk from the office to the hotel: I have to walk through this mess twice per day.


Here's a shot of the office where I'm working, "Prestige Obelisk," 8th floor:


A familiar scene in nearly any country these days --great wealth next to great poverty.


Next to crows, dogs are the most common critters. I've only seen two dogs who were clearly household pets: the rest are simply very sociable strays who nap anywhere they like, including in the street.


The gov't is attempting in small ways to reduce the noise pollution but frankly, I think this little digital wonder surrendered & died on its first day.

The "morning person" transformation brought about by the change in time zones is swiftly losing its charm. What's the point of waking up at 7am on a Sunday when there's nothing to do?

I slept well and was feeling much better this morning. Last night, my feet didn't just hurt: they were pure agony. A hot shower and foot soak before bed did wonders. My face, forehead and scalp are definitely pink from sun exposure but I think I've avoided a burn. Again, a cool damp cloth on the skin helped sooth the worst.

I took a few minutes this morning to inventory my laundry, bag & tag it, and call for pick-up by the laundry service. Dry cleaning & pressing isn't available on Sundays but all I needed is a wash-and-fold anyway:
trousers: 85 rupees each
shirt: 70 each
t-shirt: 70 each
underwear: 35 each
socks: 35 (each? per pair? Dunno.)
Presuming socks are by the pair, my total should come to about 1265 rupees, about $25 USD. Because I put in my order before 11am, I should have it all back by 8pm without a convenience surcharge. Same day service after a noon pick-up would have a 50% surcharge, after 3pm a 100% surcharge. See how conscientious I am about my employer's costs and shareholder value? I deserve a raise. :-)

Once the laundry was on its way, I went on out a walking tour again. Until now, I'd been concentrating my touring to the east of the hotel in the commercial areas. This morning, I went for an extended walk to the west, around & through a 250 acre park. I had the place mostly to myself since most sane people aren't out on the town at 9am on a Sunday. I took some nice pictures of the park, statues of Queen Victoria and one of her past viceroys, the state legislature, the state central bank and so on. I got some photos of the exteriors of some local temples & monuments, a few shots of the indoor sports stadium too.

I also got a little smokey. A lot of leaf and paper garbage is simply collected into a pile and burnt on the spot. If you're lucky, the winds blow the smoke away. Today was not one of my lucky days.

By 11am or so, I was wandering back towards the hotel. Taking more care to avoid excessive sun (yes, I was wearing a hat today), and tanking up on bottled water, I put my feet up and rested a while with a book.

About an hour later, I headed east again to do a little shopping. I readily admit I'm a terrible shopper. I have no ability to go into a store, look at their merchandise, immediately evaluate what I like or not and how much I'd be willing to pay. Rather, I prefer to have done the research in advance, determined my price-point and then go directly to the targeted shop to purchase the previously researched item and absolutely nothing else.

That doesn't work so well here.

For starters, I didn't really intend to do any clothing shopping while here so I did no prior planning. Most local shopkeepers like to chat and aggressively upsell the customer to other products: I'm ok with haggling when purchasing something large like a car or a house, but not so much on small (to me) trivial items. And it certainly doesn't help that I have to translate the list price in rupees into US dollars so I can plan my spending & budgeting.

I could tell that business was comparatively slow on a Sunday. About 25% of the shops weren't open today. Maybe it was the camera case over my shoulder marking me as a tourist but the auto-rickshaw drivers who wouldn't give me the time of day the rest of the week are now actively pulling over to offer me driving tours of the local highlights for 30 rupees. Shop keepers were out on the street, urging me to enter their stores or directing me to alleys & courts of shores off the main road. Yes, today my wallet and I were much in demand. Feel the love.

I only bought one item, something I saw being sold a couple of days ago which stuck in the back of my head as a household present to Kent, Michael & myself: a really cool table runner and six place mats. The color scheme should be sufficiently neutral to work with our dining room but not so neutral as to be completely bland.

The local currency is a bit of an adventure in itself. For casual use, it's about 50 rupees to $1 USD. I have 1,000 rupee bills, 500 rupee bills, 100 rupee bills, 50 rupee bills, 20 rupee bills and 10 rupee bills. For my small day-to-day purchases, I probably use the 100 rupee notes the most. But the coins! I have 1, 2, 5 and 50 rupee coins. The snag is that coins of the same denomination can be various sizes: In my hand right now, I have three different sizes, weights & colors of the 2 rupee coin and two different styles of the 1 rupee coin. Worse, one style of 2 rupee coins is exactly the same size, shape & appearance as one type of the 1 rupee coin: you have to look carefully to ensure you're offering the right one. And since the 1 rupee coin is worth about half a US penny, one needs an awful lot of them for them to be useful. Most prices in the unofficial economy are rounded to the nearest hundred so coins just accumulate in my pocket. Even if I had a use for them, it would take me so long to figure out which is which that the line of locals behind me would run me out of town. When I'm on my way back to the airport on Feb 14, I might just leave them here at the hotel as a tip to the housekeeping staff or make some beggar's day.

On my to the hotel, I stopped for lunch... at McDonald's. Oh, don't start on me: I wanted to see how the local menu is different from the North American version I've known my whole life. There are some items which are the same: you can get a filet-o-fish or an egg mcmuffin, for example. But you can also get a veggie mcmuffin, the mcaloo tikka burger and (my order) the chicken maharaja big mac. The CM big mac is built the same as the usual US big mac but had chicken patties and a spicy tangy sauce instead of the usual ketchup/mayo secret sauce. The mac with a large fries and large coke came to 174 rupees, about $3.25 USD.

I was back in my hotel room again around 2pm, resting my feet and generally avoiding the heat & sun of the midday. I have my eye on a gift for my grandmother but I'll go take another look later in the week.

---

And now it's nearly 6pm local time. I went out for another walk into the commercial area, looking at light short-sleeved shirts to wear instead of my long-sleeve office wear for the remainder of my trip.

Apparently, even without my camera, I'm easily pegged as a tourist/ATM. No, dude, I'm not buying your collection of ancient coins. Not for $150, not for $100, not for $75, and I'm not buying your story about your brother in the hospital with outstanding bills. Sorry, mister, I'm not interested in your laminated map of India. Or your friend's carved wooden cobra toy. Or your array of scarves & shawls. Wow, these folks are persistent, but I'm very good at saying no and sticking to it.

I did, however, discover I'm getting the not-so-unexpected raw end of one particular deal. The hotel charges 50 rupees for a 300mL can of Coke; I just bought two from a street kiosk for 42 rupees. So much for my keen skills in providing good shareholder value (but I finally had a chance to use a 2 rupee coin!).

I'm spending the rest of the evening in my room. I chatted with Michael via skype (it was around 9:30am eastern time) and now I'm going to read a little and, if I feel energetic, I have some work-related writing and/or server work I can do. If I need a distraction, I can always write more C2 choreography.

I solved a minor mystery this morning.

Unlike most US & Canadian hotels, one activates most of the electrical services in one's guest room by inserting the door key card into a slot inside the door. It's kinda neat dropping the card in place and having the lights all come on.

Last night, I returned from a couple of hours of walking around Bangalore. I grabbed a can of Coke from the fridge and found it wasn't very cold. In fact, it was nearly room temperature. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but I noted that the remaining soft drinks in the fridge were pleasantly chilled this morning. Of course! Pulling the key card not only turns off the lights but it turns off the fridge. Duh!

I slept very well last night. Because I had left my power cord at the office and neglected to power off my laptop before I departed on my walk, my laptop was dead. My phone & tablet still worked so I could catch up on email, Facebook, Livejournal & Twitter. My room has a very nice flat panel television but if it can get anything other than one channel broadcasting in Hindi, I can't find it. A vacation from television is probably a Good Thing anyway, although I'm curious what else is typically broadcast here.

This morning before I left for work, I used Skype to talk with Michael & Kent back in Maryland. The wifi in my hotel doesn't have enormous bandwidth but we had a passable video connection and excellent audio --at least up to the point where we lost the connection. We re-established it as audio only and all was well.

I've done a huge amount of technical writing while here in India. In large part, I'm creating a set of things my team needs to know for general day-to-day operations. I've tackled the easy ones and am now moving on to the harder topics, the ones about which I know little myself at the moment. I spent the larger portion of today walking Vinoda, Manjunath and Leslie through the docs and showing them live what they'll need to know for future. We still don't have individual login credentials for them so we can't have them do stuff hands-on, but we'll get that done before I leave.

We had lunch at the company buffet again today. I'd love to tell you want it was but I haven't a clue... just trust me that it was all delicious and I'm probably going to need two seats on the plane to return to DC on Feb 14.

For those who have asked, no, I have had no health issues at all since arriving here. No mosquitoes and therefore no malaria to worry about, only a couple of fruit flies. I have been avoiding the tap water for drinking & such but haven't been too worried about getting it near my face while showering. Yes, I've avoided uncooked vegetables & fruits as a precautionary measure but either I've been better at that than I thought or eating my own cooking for so many years has left me immune to nearly everything. Go me.

After this afternoon's training session, two of my local colleagues took me on an extended walking tour of the nearby commercial & shopping district. Wow, what a place! We did a lot of window shopping this evening and I plan to go back on the weekend to look more closely in a few shops along the way for gifts & souvenirs to take home.

It's such a blast walking around Bangalore. With the minimal traffic control, it's a state of insane but workable chaos. I'm sure I risked death a dozen different times crossing the street and the exhaust fumes have probably shaved two years off my life, but it's completely worth it. This place just gets more interesting every day.

Tonight, I'm putting my feet up and sitting at the laptop for a little while to catch up on writing, editing and personal stuff. Tomorrow is a new adventure.

I didn't sleep a great deal last night, but that's OK: I was much too excited to sleep.

I think it was after 4am local time before I had caught up on all of the office email, messages to home to assure the family that all is good, updates to FaceBook, LiveJournal, Google+, Twitter and FourSquare, etc..

When I did crash, I slept soundly and comfortably so it was a bit of a shock when my watch alarm sounded at 10am. I had warned the locals that I'd probably be too exhausted to accomplish much but I wanted to be at the office before noon so I could force myself into the daily rhythms of the new time zone.

I dressed up well this morning, complete with dress shoes, a sport coat and a tie. I wasn't sure how formal/informal the office environment might be so I decided to go for the max, just in case. As it turns out, it was completely unnecessary: no one is wearing ties around here. Or jackets. Or dress shoes. For that matter, many are wearing jeans and t-shirts. In short, they dress the same as my California colleagues. Personally, I still prefer business casual when I’m in an office to help set my mood and focus my mind, but I’m happy to skip the tie & coat tomorrow. I may even go with my more comfortable walking shoes.

The Ketera office is a five minute walk and/or death run from the Chancery Hotel. There is a major street (2½ lanes in each direction with a median barrier) I need to cross to get to the office at a funky five-way intersection. I've only been through it once yet, but while it was more chaotic than any I’ve seen back home, I could feel a certain flow & logic to it. In any case, I'm just going to blend in with the locals and jump off the curb when they do, trusting their instincts are better tuned than mine.

It's a huge logistic relief to not have to worry about scheduling a driver daily: my inner puritan barks at me for having any service which too closely resembles employing a personal servant. Yes, I know that's not at all the case but it's more than just the passing transaction one might have with say, a taxi ride in Manhattan. It takes a change of mindset and I'm still working my way through the fact I'm not in Kansas anymore.

BTW, did I mention in the past 30 seconds that I'm not in Kansas anymore? It still thrills me: I stepped into a magic metal can and was whisked with 100 close friends across the planet to a wholly new continent, new time zone, even a new latitude since I’ve never been this close to the equator before. It's a different culture, a different language, a different etiquette, a different cuisine. Even the trees, the grass and the birds flying past my office window are new and strange to me. Can it get any more fantastic than this?

The skies have been clear blue all of today. It's a comfortable 84 degrees F out there right now with moderate humidity. In short, it's gorgeous out there.

No lunch for me today. My body still isn't quite communicating with me fully thanks to the lag but I’ll force myself to have dinner tonight whether I’m hungry or not. No clue where yet, but I'll likely try the hotel restaurant.

The local office tends to work 9:30am to about 6pm, more or less. Some folks are earlier, some later. They've placed me in a corner meeting room with windows to the north-east and south-east; since we're on the eighth floor, I have a superb view to the street level and the park adjacent to the building. From a balcony off the lunch room on the other side of the building, we have a view of the state senate and supreme court; I'll get photos later.

Internet access has been great, although I’m using a hard-wire connection instead of wifi. Not a big deal but it means I can't update my mobile phone or tablet via wifi until I return to the hotel. I don't have a working mobile phone here (at least not yet) but I think I'm OK with that: I'll largely be using Skype to talk to home anyway. It would be nice for emergencies but that's all. I'm used to my phone beeping me when new email arrives so the lack of alerts is taking some getting used to.

For the most part, the Ketera folks have no greater idea of what I’m supposed to do here with them than I do. I have only the vaguest agenda from the home office, but that's fine: too detailed a plan would likely have been pointless anyway until I knew more about the situation on the ground here. My primary point of contact is Vinoda who has been great about showing me around, answering my questions and generally helping me adjust.

I’m spending much of today and tomorrow writing documentation. While we have a lot online and such, I find it lacking in the kind of precision and detail we would need for, say, a new hire. If I'm supposed to be showing these folks how to handle our night shift duties, I want them to have all of the information required to do it correctly so I can sleep better at night and so they can proceed confidently into new situations without worry or angst.

The interesting thing is that I'm rediscovering that I really do like writing, including technical writing. Having a bare workspace with lots of elbow room, no mundane distractions, no mobile phone pinging me repeatedly and no other agenda than writing has truly helped my focus. I'm not in a perfect writing mental zone yet as I’m still wired from this travel experience, but I'm generating better docs than I have in years today. I hope we can turn this into some useful courseware for my Dear Employer when I return.

As it happens, my arrival today had a happy and unplanned benefit. The Ketera team celebrates the staff birthdays for the prior month on the first day of the new month. Thus, today being Feb 1, they had a huge cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to the folks who had a birthday in January. Once they learned my birthday was earlier this week, they added me to the honors list, joining the other four!

The samoas served were delicious! And they thought they might be too spicy for me! Ha! The pineapple cake was a wonderful too. I think I made a bit of a splash when I whipped out the pair of scissors from my pocket to help cut open the box in which the cake was shipped. The ladies asked why I carried a pair of scissors. I said guys sometimes need an emergency moustache or beard maintenance. The guys (nearly all of whom have a moustache or beard) thought that was hilarious but the women just looked confused.

It's a little after 6pm now. I’m thinking of going for a short walk around the block or so while there’s still some daylight, just to get familiar with the neighborhood. Hotel procedures require me to drop off my key at the front desk every time I leave, then collect it again when I return to the hotel. I'm sure this is a security procedure to ensure no one steals my key and ransacks my room, but it is a minor annoyance. Yes, I know the front desk folks are there explicitly to do this kind of task, but I feel like I'm making them do unnecessary work whenever I come & go. Yeah, I know, it’s a new mindset I'll have to internalize.

I’m back from my brisk walk. My energy level is alternating between "just fine" and "nearing death," and the cycles are getting shorter. I ordered room service for dinner rather than risking going face down in the buffet. A huge platter of curry chicken with a tip for the room service is about 300 rupees, about $6. And now that my stomach is full, my body is really crashing hard. Time for bed very soon.