Yummy food and some more pictures

Hey all,

Not too much happened today. Mostly I spent the day at work and made some decent progress on my project. The fun part, of course, was the breaks from work. Around 2:30 I was frustrated and had a headache, so Nels, Rob, Prasad, and myself went to the coffee shop around the corner for a break. I got a lichi frappe, which was basically a milkshake with lichi juice in it. I really like lichi, so this was fantastic. Also, sitting around and chatting was of course fun.

The other cool thing that happened today was dinner with Venkie and Prasad. Venkie got hungry around 6:30, got Prasad to come with him, and asked me if I would like to tag along too. Venkie has tons of energy and gets distracted easily, so we didn't actually leave for a while and instead hung out and chatted in his office while he and Prasad had some Scotch (first time the drinking age has mattered here). We then went to a fairly good Dosa place near the office, and Prasad and Venkie ordered a bunch of food while I basically sat and ate. It was fantastic! Venkie lives in the US and is very much into pop culture, so it was fun hearing him chat about that (and in general it is fun to talk to Venkie because he is really a character and has *tons* on energy). Beyond the fact that the multiple varieties of dosa, the pori, and everything were delicious I also was able to handle hot food more than Venkie or Prasad who are both Indian! We got some dish that they both thought was far to spicy and kinda nasty, while I just ate it and thought it was pretty good ^_^. This proves to me yet again that this "Americans can't handle Indian spicy food is just a bunch of bull" We will see if I get taught a painful lesson before I leave, but so far so good ^_^.

I also got the chance to post some pictures today. The photos from Mysore are here:
http://claremont.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044553&l=f08f6&id=13300735

And the photos from this past week and from touring Bangalore on Saturday are here:
http://claremont.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044559&l=22e64&id=13300735

The pictures from Commerce Road are not going to go up for a while, as they might tip off some people to surprises I am preparing ^_^.

Thats all for now. I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Cheers,
Jason

Shopping at Commercial Street

Hey all,

I've had another fun day today, basically spent shopping with Revi and Tracy. I started out planning not to do much of anything, as I was still tired from yesterday. I went into work at noon and worked for half an hour before a whole bunch of people wandered down to a salad place nearby. My salad basically consisted of a little of everything they had there (peppers, beans, tomatoes, lettuce, etc.) *drowned* in dill salad dressing (I didn't tell the lady to stop soon enough). It was mostly pretty good, but once I got to the bottom it was basically soup :-(. After the salad I got some ice cream ^_^. One scoop of this chocolate/brownie stuff which was *fantastic* and one scoop was leeche flavored (which is a really yummy fruit that I get here alot) and also *delicious*.

So, after lunch I decided to go to commercial street with Revi and Tracy. We grabbed an auto down there and basically spent 3 hours wandering around and shopping. It was actually *really* fun, seeing all the different colorful clothing (including lots of vibrant purples that will make Elaine flip ^_^), all the different *types* of clothing, and just witnessing the scene and seeing all the little knick knacks and jewelry. It was also fun bantering with Tracy and Revi and seeing how all the shopkeepers presented their wares. They would always pull out dozens upon dozens of things for us to look through, just to sell one or two. In addition to all the shopping that Tracy and Revi did, I found a really cool shirt for myself and I made another *really* cool clothing purchase which will remain a surprise until people can see it in person ^_^.

After shopping we were going to have paratha (I haven't had it before, but apparently its basically a combination of delicious bread and lots of butter ^_^ [India is a *massive* counterexample to the American idea that being a vegetarian automatically makes you a healthier eater]), but the place was closed. Instead we went down to MG road, stopped by the cat/magazine shop (Revi is a big cat person and hadn't seen it before), and had a snack at a place I had been on my first day here. It basically serves little bread wraps around things like chicken tikka ^_^. Afterwards we all came back to the apartment and chatted about things like perceptions of the caste system, family, relationships ^_^, and arrogance that some big companies can have when they want to get things done. It was a fun conversation, and a good end to a really fun day :-). I will try to post pictures in a reasonably timely manner.

G'night for now!

Cheers,
Jason

A Saturday at Cubbon Park

Hey all,

I had a pretty cool day on Saturday. Tracy and I toured around Bangalore a bit, starting in a park in the middle of the town called Cubbon Park. I think it was established while the British ruled, as parts of it are very English style and there are statues of Queen Victoria and some King. It is definitely still a park in India though, the dirt is an iron rich red and there is a bamboo forest!!!! It is really cool timber bamboo, maybe 20 meters high. When the wind blows it all starts swaying around and the stalks knock into each other and make a terrific noise (that I hopefully got video of).

We got to Cubbon park at about noon, and missed dieing on the way by about 3 mintues. Yes, thats right, we almost died. We got to the park, grabbed a delicious snack of fresh corn cooked on coals, and started wandering. This is when we noticed a big crowd of people at the edge of the park looking at the road we had just driven up along. We walked over and found that a MASSIVE tree had fallen onto the road that we had JUST driven up. This tree branch damaged a car and killed a driver of an auto-rickshaw (incidentally, the type of vehicle we had been in on the ride to the park!). I'm just glad we didn't leave for the park any later in the day ^_^. We watched the scene for a while and took some pictures. Also, on the way back home later in the day we walked up that road, and people had taken vengeance on the trees. Trees all along the road had branches chopped off and the tree that had dropped the branch that killed the rickshaw driver was being cut down! Crazy times.

So, after that excitement we wandered about the park some more, walked along a little amusement park there, and went into an aquarium on the park grounds. The entrance fee was 5 Rupees a person (about 12.5 cents) which was pretty sweet. The aquarium was kinda neat, but it wasn't much more than you can see in any pet store. Afterwards we wandered over to MG road so that I could by batteries from my camera and we stopped at a delicious restaurant for lunch. I'm really learning how to eat and appreciate Indian food. I had Alu Gobi with Butter Naan, and it was *delicious*. Oh, and on the way to MG road I almost got on TV! I was taking a picture of a statue/artwork thingy and a guy came up to me, told me he was from a TV station and asked me what I though of it. I basically told him that I though it was interesting, and he asked me to get on camera for an interview! I declined, but I had the opportunity ^_^.

Once we sated ourselves on MG Road we started walking to City Market, which is fairly long walk away, most of which is through Cubbon Park (which, as mentioned, is very nice). It started raining (its getting to monsoon season here) part of the way through the park and we ducked in to a big red building that turned out to be the Government of Karnataka (the state Bangalore is in) museum. Again it was only 5Rs. to get in, and it was definitely worth it. There was lots of really ancient pottery, a cool weapons display, fantastic paintings (with *lots* of gold on them!), displays of musical instruments (something I've never really seen before), and lots of fantastic sculptures. I actually managed to take a couple of pictures, tough I got hissed at by a lady (who worked there) and clapped at by a guard in the process of it. The most shocking thing that I saw while I was there was people just walking up to the statues and *touching* them!!!!! This is of course something that you never see back in the states, and apparently it is just fine here for people to go up and push, prod, and rub the statues with their hands not at all gently! Once I saw people doing that I actually noticed places on the statues that were worn smooth from so much touching! Crazy stuff.

Once we were done with the museum we kept walking for a *long* time, and started getting into a little bit more uncomfortable part of town. You could defintiely tell that it was more traditional and there was less money there. Every single person we saw on the street did a double take and then stared when they saw us. We saw a *massive* while Mosque, and realized that we were in the middle of city market. What with all the stares (some of which looked less than friendly, which we put down to not being dressed 100% appropriately for such a traditional area) we got pretty uncomfortable and came home by rickshaw before really touring around the area much. I felt kinda lame bailing like that, but I figured feeling lame is better than feeling scared and worried (best to trust those feelings). That was definitely the most out of place, foreign, and "oh man I'm in a different country" that I have felt since I've been to India and I did not particularly enjoy the feeling. I will, however, make another attempt to go to to city market during the summer!

Thats all for now folks.

Cheers,
Jason

Photos and a Wedding!

Well, maybe I'm over promising with the title. First of all, I've uploaded photos to facebook up to the last week or so. I have three albums overall up for India stuff so far, which can be found at:

http://claremont.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044306&l=274a7&id=13300735
http://claremont.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2043088&l=35476&id=13300735
http://claremont.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2043086&l=55067&id=13300735

I will try to get the photos from the past weekend at Mysore up sometime in the next few days.

Guess what cool thing happened today! I guess the title gives it away, but I have been invited to a wedding! The guy who sits next to me at work is getting married on July 12th and he invited me ^_^. The invitation is especially spectacular. It is in a huge envelope that is scented by sandalwood! I'll put some pictures up soon. I'm really exited and hope that the wedding will be loads of fun!

Also, I'm posting this stuff kinda late (its about 1AM here) because we had something like a 2 hour power outage at our apartment tonight :-{. We wandered up to the roof, hung out there for a while, then came back down to the apartment and passed around Nels's Nintendo DS and played "Elite Beat Agents". Fun times, but the power is on again and I am happy ^_^.

Tomorrow Tracy and I are going to tour around Bangalore a little bit. We're currently planning on at least visiting a couple of the parks in the city, and I'm really looking forward to that. I'm also looking forward to finally catching up on my sleep a little bit (I've been staying up late and waking up at 7:30AM every night for the past week!).

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Cheers,
Jason

Conversations on Economic Dichotomy

Thats a big title! It stems from a few conversations I had on Wednesday that I found interesting. It started with a really interesting conversation with Ashwani over lunch on Wednesday. He is a program coordinator, which means he is the liaison between MSRI and 14 different universities here in India. He basically markets MSRI to them (i.e. gets good people to come do research) while also supporting research at the universities. He had some interesting commentary on why not a whole lot of world class research comes out of India. Apparently promotion at the IITs (Indian Institues of Technology, very good and very competitive schools) happens every 7 years, regardless of whether you publish or not, so there is no real motivation pushing people to publish. Another factor is that professors at government run universities (like the IITs) are paid horribly by the government. After a student graduates from an IIT they can go directly to industry and make something like 5 times what a professor is earning from the government!!! These salaries are determined government wide, and the body that changes the salaries only meets once every 10 years!

I had another, related, conversation with Christian later on the same day. The takeaway point was that India only switched away from a planned, government controlled economy in 1991. This creates a dichotomy in the current economy: the plodding and slow to change government run organizations versus the lightning fast and constantly evolving private sector (the tech industry). In just a few years India has become an international tech powerhouse. However, to give an example of the plodding government organizations, there is a road in northern India that connects to China. The Indian and Chinese governments started this road at the same time and had approximately equal amounts of construction to do. The Chinese finished the road in 6 months. India finished the road in 16 years! It interesting (and sometimes frustrating) to deal with these inefficiencies day to day.

Cheers,
Jason

Fun times

Wow, its been a while since I've posted! The main reason for this is that Tuesday night I became addicted to the old SNES game "Bust-a-Move". Basically it is vaugly like Tetris: you shoot colored bubbles at already established bubbles and try to eliminate all the bubbles before the ceiling crushes you. Fun and addictive, I played through *60* levels on Tuesday night, then the remaining 40 Wednesday night. I am now, however, done and can get back to things like reading and posting to this blog! I'm going to be careful before I start any more video games this summer. ^_^

So, what has happened in the last few days? Work first. I am making progress on my project to build a pseudorandom number generator. I *finally* understand the error correcting code that I am using (it is _really_ simple, but I didn't realize this until Abishek explained how it worked to me. Much nicer than reading and rereading a confusing paper over and over ^_^). Wednesday and this morning I got a basic, and essentially non-random, version working. I know understand what I'm doing though, so I spent a couple of hours sketching out a design, and this afternoon I rewrote all of the code. It is now all pretty and nice, and tomorrow will consist of stitching a few last bits together and beginning actual experimentation to see what sorts of things we need to do to actually get the generator to work. Also, I am getting used to Venkie and really like him. He is crazy and he is awesome. The very definition of crazy awesome. He is a character. He gave a mini-lecture on expander graphs today, just because he felt like it. It was very cool ^_^.

Plenty of things have been going on other than work. Tracy, Christian, and I left work a little early yesterday and took a rickshaw down to MG road. We basically just wandered through bookstores for a few hours (^_^), spending most of our time in "Blossom", the bookstore I have mentioned a few times previously and *really* like. I ended up buying, based on recommendations from Elaine (who has yet to let me down ^_^), "Song of Solomon" and "Pride and Prejudice". I'm trying to blow through a number of classics this summer (currently reading "Catch-22"). While we were on MG road we also found a money exchange that takes travelers checks (finally) and browsed around a pretty cool music/movies shop. I need to find some India movies that have subtitles so that I can see what they're like!

The other recent major thing happened tonight. I came home a little late, had an early dinner, then met Nels, Ashwani, Prasad, Ranjita, and Christian at Opus for quiz night again. We could only have 4 people on a team so we broke up into team west: Nels, Christian, and myself and team east: Ashwani, Prasad, and Ranjita. They did a bit better than we did, but neither of us performed terribly well tonight. We did have a great time though! I had a couple of beers and just enjoyed chatting with everyone there when we weren't beating our heads against a wall trying to answer the questions ^_^.

After we left Opus we dropped off Ranjita and were heading back to the office to disperse when Ashwani (who was driving) decided to take us to a place he knows of for food. This place turned out to be about 15 kilometers out of Bangalore and consisted of a number of *horribly sketchy* shacks on the side of the road. One of the big draws of the place is the fact that it is outside of Bangalore, so it can serve alcohol after 11:30PM (though we didn't get any while we were there). We sat and chatted (and ate _delicious_ food) about random things. Apparently there is a very big rave scene all around India. I also found out that after Israelis do their mandatory stint in the military they tend to take a vacation and spend like 8 months in India (Europe & the US are too expensive). This is such a common thing that there are small communities that have been built up. They are also not well liked because these communities let them stay a bit above the local culture, which can grate against people they come into contact with.

We just got back a little bit ago. As Ashwani said tonight had "Good fun, good food, good drinks, good music, and good company". It was a good night ^_^. Its kinda cool having a nightlife and learning what big cities are like for the first time in a foreign country ^_^.

Thats all for now folks. I need to sleep!

Cheers,
Jason

Rooming....

Hey all,

Not too much has happened today. I finally met Venkie (my mentor). He is very friendly and high energy :-). Hopefully I will get what exactly I'm going to be doing sorted out in the next two weeks before he leaves again! The funny thing is that he, like Ran, gave me a couple of reasons why it is good to go to grad school ^_^.

The main reason I'm making this post is to update all y'all on my housing situation. This past Saturday at about 11:30 there was a knock on our door and a guy from work was there to move us! There had been no word of this before so we were all shocked. We got all packed up and then were moved at 3:00PM. We are now in a *very* nice guesthouse about 5 minutes from work (though the internet bill hasn't been paid there, so it doesn't work :-P). We thought that this was going to be a temporary place for a day or two before moving again. However, I have been told that we will be there permanently (though Sanjam was moved out and Tracy moved in within 6 hours of us leaving! He was moved again this past weekend and will be moved again tomorrow, which will put him in his SEVENTH apartment this month :'-(. The housing situation here is a bit weird). I have also been told in the last hour or so that I will be given a roommate :-P, but we will see about that. I'm not really sure what to believe any more. At the very least we are in a very nice place, close to work, and have a non-zero probability of actually having internet when I get home.

Thats all for now folks!

Cheers,
Jason

What a day!

The plan for the day consists of a trip to Mysore, the next largest city after Bangalore in this state, with Nels, Pavol, and Rob. This began when I woke up at 5:00AM after far too little sleep. We managed to make our 6:30AM train with no major issues (though we did jam 4 people into the back of an auto-rickshaw that should only ever carry 3). Indian train stations are pretty crazy places. There are a *lot* of people, a lot of trash, and a *lot* of pushing when people start to load/unload the trains. Fortunately we took reserved seats in a 2^nd class sleeper car (there are something like 5 different possible categories of car to ride) and didn’t have to deal with any of that (we probably wouldn’t have been able to).

The trip to Mysore is about 140km and takes the express train 3 hours. There were no real difficulties with the train, and we took an auto-rickshaw (again with 4 people) from the train station to the Maharaja’s palace. Apparently Mysore used to be the capital of Karnataka, Bangalore is now the capital, so the palace of the ruling Maharaja was is located there. Unfortunately, the original palace burned down in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s and was rebuilt in the early 1900’s. It was a bit of a letdown that the palace was not authentically old, but it was still fantastic to tour through.

As I mentioned, we took an auto-rickshaw to the palace. Once there we actually had to walk around the grounds to a road near the north side in order to find ourselves some breakfast (there was no food served on the train. In fact, I slept most of the way). One of the first things I noticed about Mysore is that there are many more people trying to sell you things on the street and they are much more insistent. We became quite good at saying no by the end of the day.

There were basically no salesmen inside the palace grounds, which was really nice. We wondered around outside for a while, taking pictures, until we discovered some elephants in a distant corner of the grounds! These were black (Indian?) elephants, that I had never seen before. As we were taking some pictures, a man walked up and offered us pictures with the elephants! Nels and Rob were too chicken, but Pavol and I got a few pictures touching the elephants trunk! One thing led to another and we got to get up on its back and take a short ride! (Ha to Elaine! Now I’ve done that too! ^_^). It was really cool and Rob and Nels took a ton of pictures which I will try to get a hold of soon.

After we saw the elephants we went into the palace. We were not allowed to take in cameras or wear shoes, which is pretty standard fare for India. The whole place was spectacular, tons of marble (which seems to be pretty common here), intricate columns, woodwork, and paintings. There were several rooms that were particularly fantastic. There was a massive room that was topped by an octagonal pyramid of stained glass that was absolutely gorgeous, depicting peacocks and some other two-headed bird that looks like a phoenix and I would like to learn more about. There was also another room with a massive stained glass ceiling, in a shape that reminded me of a greenhouse, and doors which were beautiful wood inlaid with unbelievable intricate patterns done in ivory. Finally, there was a massive open “room” that was basically a front porch the size of a football field, but covered and intricately designed everywhere. The palace overall was gorgeous and I think that one of the most interesting things was noticing where European influences were coming out in the artwork (especially in some of the intricate woodwork done on the ceilings).

After the palace we grabbed some lunch and headed up to Chimundi hill. This was a 13km drive out of town, most of which was spent climbing up a massive hill. Once we got to the top we took a while to locate each other (since we had taken two rickshaws that turned out to have dramatically different speeds). We wondered around the top of the hill, took in some *breathtaking* views, looked at the temple there (but didn’t go in. The line was horrific and we weren’t really interested), and popped our head in a free museum that seemed mostly there to tell you what was bad about not being a good Hindu.

Now, the really cool part about the hill is that there is a 1000 step staircase that leads from the base of the hill up to the top. We decided to take the staircase down to the bottom, which was quite a hike! It was worth it though because we got some pretty sweet views on the way down and the trail was nice (if steep). Also, about 1/3 of the way down is a *gigantic* statue of a bull (I think it is supposed to be an incarnation of Shiva) which was neat.

Once we got to the bottom of the hill we decided to walk the rest of the way back to town! It was only 3 or 4 kilometers farther and the walk turned out to be really interesting as we got to see a whole bunch of different levels of Indian life (it really is true that abject poverty exists right next to incredible riches here). Once back in town we grabbed a quick dinner (we were a bit early for dinner still) and caught our train back to Bangalore at 6:00PM. We arrived back here at about 9:00PM, had a heartier dinner of Pizza Hut (which tasted SOOOOO good after a long day of walking, too much sun, and not enough to eat), and as soon as I finish writing this I am going to sleep *extremely* soundly for the rest of the night.

I just have one observation to make about people saying hi & taking pictures. Several time today Indian gentlemen came up to our group and asked for pictures with us. One time, when Pavol and I were waiting for the other two on top of the hill, I guy came up and just asked to take a picture of us! I guess Mysore is enough off the tourist track that white people aren’t so common! It was kind of neat being the object of that attention, especially since people were really friendly about it. Also, when we were coming down the 1000 step path, there were a lot of people that said hello to us. That was very often followed by the question “you from where?” always uttered identically. We never really stopped to chat with people (too much in defensive mode from the aggressive salesmen in the city), but I really wonder if that was people testing out the English they knew on real English speakers (as I have heard happens in China), or if it was something else. Is was interesting that when we mentioned we are from the US (or Pavol mentioned he is from Slovakia) they would immediately name the capital of the country! These were very odd conversations.

Happy Fathers Day Dad!

Cheers,

Jason

Quiz Night

Hey all,

If you recall, we left off my adventures at work yesterday as I was readying myself to leave for "Quiz Night" at a nearby bar called Opus. The party going to quiz night just ended up being Nels, Rob, and myself. Getting there was almost an adventure in and of itself as Nels "kind of" knew where we were going and had been told the bar is "impossible to miss." It turns out that it is only impossible to miss if you are looking at it from the correct direction, which we almost didn't do. It also looks quite sketchy and rundown from the outside, which was getting me pretty worried.

However, once we walked into the bar it was not longer sketchy or rundown at all. It was a very nice, stylish place with colored mood lights and excellent (if a little loud) music. Since Opus is also a restaurant we ordered ourselves dinner and some beer (Kingfisher, which is one of the two or three beers available here. A light and somewhat flavorless lager, it is still pretty good). Quiz night started at 9:30, and it was basically a Master of Ceremonies announcing questions that we quickly wrote on small pieces of paper an turned in. The guy was a bit of a character, especially when he was announcing answers. He would often go through the cards, announcing the things that people submitted that were *not* answers. It certainly jerked our chains a bit, but it when we didn't fall for his trick it was fun to watch the rest of the (very energetic) crowd fall for it.

There was a range of difficulty on the questions. There was a whole lot of American trivia so we did well on that, but we lost pretty badly on the "listen" section, which was a series of 5 questions where they would play a sound clip and ask something like "what TV show is this from" or "what is the name of the lead singer of the band that did this song". The hardest one of those was a song by Bono, where we were asked to give his original given name! We were allowed to "call a friend" with our cell phones, but we didn't end up having time to :-(. Some of the questions required some British type knowledge (like the traditional british meal that goes with a given traditional british drink). All in all, we did OK but not great and would really have needed a little more diversity in world perspective to do fantastic. However, this happens every Thursday and there are plans to go back (if not next week).

There was one other even that happened while we were at Opus. Rob was happily eating away at his meal, then suddenly he pulled back, his math started opening and closing like a goldfish, and he started clutching his chest! He also got all pale! I thought that he was going to die! He certainly looked like it! It turned out that he had eaten a *really* hot pepper in his food, and after suffering through the pain for a while (even the rice we had was temperature hot and he wasn't able to eat it :-( ) he recovered just fine to the point we were able to tease him about it ^_^.

Not all that much happened today. Basically just working, though I got to talk to Satya for a while about some fun stuff, met a vegan who has set up illegal radio stations (i.e. he has set up radio stations) in multiple major US cities, and did the boxing class again. I also made some progress on a problem that I've been avoiding because it didn't sound fun, but now that I have an idea I want to see if it works!

Thats all for now folks! I think we are going to go out to dinner, and hopefully I'll do something cool this weekend. I hope you all do too :-).

Cheers,
Jason

Boxing!!!

Hey all,

So, just a few things have happened in the last couple of days. I actually have a project to work on, at least for a little while, which is building a pseudorandom number generator. Cool and confusing, we shall see how it goes.

Other than the really cool thing that happened yesterday was a boxing class! Thats right, one of the bosses here named Kentaro teaches a boxing class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I finally remembered to bring workout clothes to the office yesterday and I had a whole lot of fun! We just learned the stance, a few blocks/dodges, then learned and practiced punches (the classic 1-2, left jab and right...jab?) the rest of the time. I was happy because I seemed to be doing pretty well and it was *very* good exercise. I was breathing hard and pouring sweat by the time we were done, and that just feels fantastic after sitting in front of a computer in the office all day for a few weeks. Also, all the muscles in my left leg were *completely* exhausted, because you basically do a lunge forward with your left leg every time you punch! One last cool thing about the class: it is on the roof of the building I work in, so not only do we get to be outside and exercising but we have a fantastic view over Bangalore at the same time! ^_^

It took *forever* to get home last night. For some reason the roads and cabs were busy and we didn't get a cab out of the office until something like 9:30PM! :-(. Once we got home the power was out, so we just hung out on the roof where moonlight and light pollution from the city let us see. Once the power came back on we discovered we have "internet" in our apartment. Essentially there is a cell phone (which is limited to just one tower, so we can't move it around) that is plugged into a base that has a power/recharge plug and a USB cable. I think that we can possibly plug into the USB cable and get internet through that. However, none of our computers would recognize the device, so no internet >:-(. I'm even more pissed because we could have installed this thing ourselves in about 10 seconds (plug it into the wall) if they had just given it to us a week ago. And we *still* don't have internet because we can't get the damn thing working. This is just really really frustrating. :-(

The good news from last night was the I finished "Watership Down" which is a really good book, and Elaine was able to call me on my cell phone! Anyone can call me (with a calling card) by calling +(91)9916677560 (I think the 91 is the Indian country code. Double check that if the number doesn't work).

Today just has been further work on the pseudorandom number generator and not much else. However, a few people from work are going to go to a bar later tonight and participate in something called "Quiz Night." I think it is basically a trivia competition, so we will see how it!

Thats all for now! Cheers,
Jason

Another day at the resort and a return to work

The second day at the resort I played even more sports than on the first! After having a fantastic breakfast I played ping pong with 3 other interns for a couple of hours. I can already tell I’m getting better ^_^. After ping pong I played cricket!!! It really doesn’t take too much to begin to understand all the weird lingo like “wickets” and “overs,” and I actually had a pretty good time playing. I may try to watch a little bit of cricket on TV while I’m here, just to get a little more of an idea for the game. There is also a cricket sports game for the XBox that is advertised all over! Something you would never see in the US. Anyway, despite having fun playing cricket my impression of the game is that it is even more boring than baseball :-P. There is a LOT of waiting that you have to do. That said, I must reiterate that I had fun and want to see a little more of the game.

After cricket was more waterpolo, this time with a smaller group. However, I paid the price for playing all of these sports outside. I got fairly badly sunburned and could already feel the effects of it in the middle of the day! I ended up spending a good part of the afternoon sitting in my room and reading, which was still *really* nice. When I came out of my room people seemed to be just hanging around, and I ended up sitting and chatting with a whole bunch of different people (including Anandan, who runs the lab) for several hours. This is the sort of thing that I have always really loved ^_^.

We again had the “Dancing, Drinking, and Dinner” though I refrained from doing much dancing or drinking as I wasn’t really feeling it. However, opening up the evening was a “fashion show” put on by all the managers and higher-ups where they strutted their stuff to the tune of “I’m too sexy for my shirt.” It was awesome. Its great to be working for people with so much energy and enthusiasm.

As I mentioned, I didn’t really dance or drink. This meant that I hung out outside and chatted more. Eventually this led to a whole bunch of people, many of them my higher up bosses, wandering off, sitting down on some grass, and just singing. It was really impressive to see how many different songs people know and how they aren’t really that embarrassed about singing. They just kept going and going, apparently till 2 in the morning! It was very interesting and beautiful to listen to, and it makes me realize that Indian culture is much more in tune and comfortable musically than American culture. Even on the bus coming to the resort, a whole bunch of interns started singing, which led to a singing game between the two halves of the bus! One half would sing part of a song, then the next half had to sing a song that started with the letter the previous song ended with! It was incredible how fast they could come up with songs and roar them out!

That is about the end of the story for the weekend. We packed up our stuff and came back to work this morning, and nothing really eventful happened at work. On the way back on the bus I chatted with Revi, who has a *ton* of interesting stories. She has done a lot of crazy things in her life. The most interesting thing that I learned was a little tidbit about Indian culture: apparently the shoulders and upper arms are the really sexy body part in Indian culture (I don’t know if this also applies to men, but it applies for women). Indians would find a tank top scandalous because it exposes the shoulders and upper arms, and not really be bothered that it was showing cleavage. Lots of interesting things!

Cheers,

Jason

First day at the resort

Hey all,

It has been a fantastic couple of days! This Sunday and Monday were the annual Microsoft Research India retreat. This meant that the whole lab went to a spa/hotel about an hour outside of Bangalore and stayed there for two nights. This place is the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in. The room was huge, elegant, and just amazingly nice. And I had it to myself! The guy assigned to be my roommate never showed up, so I had this *humongous* room for two all to myself ^_^. It was fantastically luxurious and I enjoyed it a lot. The rest of the resort was just as nice. There were so many things I did that it is hard to figure out where to start!

On the first day the buses left relatively early in the morning (and Tracy, the other intern from Harvey Mudd, arrived at 4 that morning and got to come on the retreat. The first thing we did after putting down our bags was start a game of Ultimate Frisbee. One of the Brazilian interns, Teofil, had managed to rustle up a slightly crappy but useable frisbee. We had an 8v8v8 game: two teams of 8 were playing while one other team of 8 waited and rotated in at the point. Most of the people had never played before. Despite all of this, the game worked fairly well and was a ton of fun ^_^.

After frisbee I played ping pong (though they call it “table tennis” here) for a while. There is a different standard of goodness for ping pong here. An Indian who claims to be “terrible” at ping pong generally means that he can’t quite get all the different types of spin to work on the ball all of the time. I, on the other hand, actually am rather terrible, though I had fun nonetheless.

In the early afternoon we started a “puzzle hunt.” This is essentially a massive scavenger hunt where you start with a bunch of clues, each of which is a puzzle that you must solve. Solving this puzzle leads you to a location, which gives you a further puzzle to solve. For example, one of the clues was titled “Connecting People” and had a picture of a green rectangle with some numbers and an astrix on it. “Connecting People” was a hint for Nokia. Based on this we had to guess that we were supposed to enter the numbers into our phones with the T9 autocompletion dictionary on. This gave us the name of a street, which we had to find. On the back of the sign was the key we were looking for. Another puzzle was a bunch of pieces cut out of paper with numbers on them. The hint was “Line the pieces up and reflect on the background.” We had to line up the pieces in order, then arrange them so that the space between the papers formed letters (the background). This formed a word, which was on a sign somewhere in the resort. This sign has a piece of paper with “1234” on the back. We then had to take the letters formed by the first 4 pieces of paper and that was the key. Now, there were 12 of these puzzles. Every time you solved a puzzle you got another clue to the “meta-puzzle,” and once you solved the meta-puzzle you won. There were 12 groups of 5 people playing this game, and we were playing for hours. It was pretty intense and fairly fun. I took quite a few breaks because it was so frustrating, and my group didn’t do too well, but I enjoyed myself.

After the puzzle hunt I played water polo in the pool, which was fortunately shallow enough to wade in. This time we played with about 30 people. It was fantastic. Afterwards the event was “Dancing, Drinking, and Dinner,” which another intern aptly changed to “Booze, Booze, Booze, and Dancing.” I ended up having a couple of drinks, having a *delicious* dinner, and dancing for several hours. Indian hip-hop is great to dance to and its nice to hear new songs. All in all, it was a fantastic day.

Cheers,
Jason

The day that work stood still

Today has been interesting. I think I am starting to get over my jet lag. Instead of waking up at 4AM like usual, I slept in till 8:15AM! Keep in mind that I usually leave for work at 8:30, so I set a speed record getting ready. I was just fortunate that there was enough hot water left in the heater from yesterday that water was slightly above freezing. Nels and I got out of the door just after 8:30, ready to make it to work early, and then it took us about half an hour to catch an auto-rickshaw :-P. What finally worked was having one of us take each side of the street so that we could flag down rickshaws going both directions. I swear that we had to ask 30 drivers before we could find one that would take us where we wanted to go.

In the whole day of work I really didn’t manage to get much done. I did get to talk to Elaine (YAY! ^_^) for a little while though. I then spent about 4 hours in presentations (that had been scheduled for 2 hours). We finally got the cell phone guy to the come to the office today, so I have a SIM card that should enable my phone for use in India (BONUS: I get free incoming calls, so anyone with a calling card can call my Indian number. I will post that when I get back to the office and can find it). Unfortunately, my cell phone is from Cingular, so it is locked and can only use the SIM card it came with :-P. I need to go find a sketchy cell phone dealer in a market and pay a few hundred rupees to get my phone unlocked before I can use the SIM card and get the phone working :’-(.

Tonight all of the people in my group (Cryptography, Security, and Algorithms – also known as CSA or, more frequently, Crypto) all went out to dinner at a restaurant called “Ebony.” The restaurant is on the top story of a 13 story building in the middle of the MG road-Brigade road of Bangalore (which is one of the major “places to be” here). Since there were 12 people in our group we weren’t able to sit outside, but I did get a few pictures (that will hopefully turn out, given that it was so dark). I had a great time. I got to chat with people in my group about all sorts of things, sit back and listen to them chatting, had _DELICIOUS_ Indian food (the best I’ve had yet), and Microsoft picked up the bill ^_^. One of the post doc researchers in my group did is PhD work in a university in France (they kept on making fun of him for being so European), and there was another guy I was talking to who just had a fantastic list of favorite movies (basically the list of movies that I really should see someday) like Casablanca, Schindler’s List, The Pianist, and others. I hadn’t heard of “Joy Ride” or “The Bicycle” before, but I want to see them now. Basically, it was a great time.

I’m currently very content. We just got back to the apartment at 11:30, so I am full and happy after the dinner. As I’m writing this up I’m listening to “Baby Bash,” “The Bad Touch,” and “Hallelujah.” Life could get better, but in very few ways.

G’night all,

Jason

Day 4

Well, I’ve already said that I woke up far too early this morning and that I spent a while taking pictures (some of which have now been posted on facebook [LINKS?]). Breakfast came a little after 8, and consisted mostly of fruit: a bunch of miniature bananas that were quite tasty (that’s right, I actually ate bananas!) and a huge, football shaped fruit with a sweet and squishy pink inside. Nels and I managed to get out the door by about 8:30, actually caught an auto-rickshaw, and made it to work by 9 (which is the first time that has happened, despite trying to do so for the last several days).

The day mostly consisted of me reading a bunch of papers and trying to figure out what I will be working on for the next 10 weeks. My mentor is still in the states and a little hard to get a hold of (especially with the 12 hour time difference), so I’m really hoping that I’m not off on a complete tangent with all this reading I’m doing.

There were a few fun things that happened. I signed up for my Citibank account so that I will actually get paid (the guy was supposed to get to the office at 10:30, which is when Revi and I went down to meet him, and didn’t show till 11:15. I’m really just starting to expect such tardiness in general…).

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here, but I left a set of clothes at my original apartment and have been trying to get them back for the last couple of days. To this end the guy who manages all of this stuff grabbed me in the middle of the day and sent me off in a taxi, with the nominal goal of recovering my clothing. First, the taxi driver drove me to a different apartment complex than the one I originally stayed in (after I asked the manager if he had been told the correct one) and the people there brought out clothes for me to look at, then when I told them that I hadn’t been to that place before and none of the clothes were mine they threw out a few not-so-polite-sounding things in either Hindi or Karna (the state Bangalore is in is Karnataka, and I believe the local language is called Karna). Next, the taxi driver took me to Land Mark, which was the correct apartment where I originally stayed, but it turned out that there was nobody there! Finally, we returned to the office, unsuccessful, and I ran into the manager and one of his helpers when I came inside. They had apparently been updated on what had happened, and told me that somehow my clothes had gotten wet again (how they new this, or how they knew where my clothes were I don’t know) and they needed to be dried. I’m supposed to get the clothes tomorrow morning sometime. We shall see… On the plus side, I got to take a break for work to be chauffeured around the city and enjoy the view from the car.

Finally, I had a really nice lunch where I met several new people, including a pair of people from Brazil (one of whom plays Ultimate! Unfortunately I didn’t bring any disks… :-( ), and had a fun chat. Apparently India has its own version of “The Office,” more than one version of “Dancing with the Stars,” and all sorts of other reality TV shows (i.e. “Indian Idol”). I was also invited by Lucia (one of the Brazilians) to join them and a bunch of other people the weekend after next to go to Hampi, which is a holy city that is about an 8 hour train ride from Bangalore. The plan is to take the train overnight starting on Friday, stay the weekend, and come back Monday morning. I think that 11 people are coming on the trip and it sounds like its going to be a whole lot of fun.

Miracles upon miracles, we actually got a taxi away from work at a reasonable time today! We saw a coworker who lives near us leaving (meaning that she had a taxi) and we all dropped what we were doing and ran after her. This is why I did not manage to send out more emails or thins like that today. I was just getting to that as we left. However, this did leave us more time tonight at home, so Nels and I took a little tour around the neighborhood. We chatted and saw all the little tiny shops along the main street near our apartment, and actually got some exercise for the first time in a while. All in all a fun day. Oh, and we don’t have internet yet tonight because, “Someone fell and broke his leg.” That is really the excuse that we were given. It may be true, but if we get an excuse like that tomorrow I’ll start to doubt it… I hope I do have internet tomorrow and get a chance to get in touch with you all!

Cheers,

Jason

P.S. I’ve also learned that my surge protector doesn’t really appreciate 240V, 50 Hz electricity. I also learned where the breakers in my apartment are…

Things to do when you wake up early

Well, its about 5:00 in the morning here. I just wrote yesterday’s blog post and figured I would start a little on today’s. I think that I am still not adjusted to the jet lag. I fell asleep for a few hours around 9PM last night, then woke up at 11PM, then woke up at 2:30AM and have been waking up every hour since then. I finally got tired of it (and felt rested enough to actually move my body out of bed) and just got up. I’m running out of shirts to wear for work, so I’m hoping that the laundry I put out in the hamper today will get done. I also need to recover some clothing that was taking for washing at the last place I stayed and I haven’t seen since! Today is also that day I sign up for my Citibank account (so I can be paid! Oh, and I found out that I’m going to be making less than the minimum tax bracket in India, so I don’t even have to file a tax return in India!!! Happy Day!). Hopefully I will also be able to get a SIM card for my cell phone so that I can actually start using it for calls! That’s all for now, and we shall see what the rest of the day brings!

Addendum: I spent some time after this taking a bunch of pictures and putting them on my computer. Hopefully I'll get those on the internet in the next 12 or so hours!

Cheers,

Jason

Observations on Head Movements

I’ve noticed and interesting feature of body language the just drove me up the wall until I figured it out. Indians nod their heads to mean yes and shake them to mean no, but there is also another movement. It looks like a head shake to a casual observer, but there is more up and down motion, like they are tracing out a flat infinity symbol in the air with their nose. I looked around on Google and managed to find a forum thread that seems to indicate that this motion means “respectful listening,” which matches with what I have seen.

The one issue with this gesture is that it looks so much like shaking your head no. I first noticed it while talking to two other guys about a research problem. One of them was throwing out ideas, then the other would shake his head to those ideas and sometimes agree with them! It looked like he was shaking his head, “No, no, that won’t work.” and then saying “Oh, yes, we should try that.” Soooo confusing!

Since then I’ve noticed lots of people doing it, and the “respectful listening” interpretation seems to be spot on. I just have to consciously make the mental jump every time I see it to keep myself from thinking that it is a head shake of disagreement! I wonder what the next think that I’ll notice is! I will certainly try to keep you all posted :-).

Cheers,

Jason

My second day of work

Yet again I woke up early today, at something like 6 or 7 o’clock AM here. I really wish that I had internet because this would be a great time for talking with all of you in the US with it (my Skype ID is “jdfennell” for whenever I am able to get back on for anyone that wants to call me). I’m getting a whole ton of reading done by waking up at this ridiculously early hour, and it hasn’t yet been too hard to make it through the days staying awake ^_^.

This morning Nels and I planned to leave at about 8:30 in order to get to work by 9:00. Unfortunately 8:30 came and went and breakfast did not arrive (it is supposed to be here between 8 and 8:30)! We waited until 8:50 and decided to stick it out and wait a few more minutes till 9:00. Literally *as we were standing up* to leave, the doorbell rang and it was the guy bringing breakfast. We ate quickly and left, but by 9:15 the traffic was already horrendous. We had to walk most of the 4km from our apartment to the office along the busy, polluted, and dangerous (b/c of the traffic) streets. I tried to take some pictures of this, but we shall see how they turn out.

We ended up not getting to work until around 10:00, again :-(. Once there I continued reading through the paper on the first topic I was given by Satya (which I didn’t find that interesting) and eventually met with Satya when he got into the office. He talked to me about a cryptographic procedure QUAD, which I took a quick look at, and also told me that my actual mentor for the summer is a guy named Venkie (who was the one to interview me). The only problem is that Venkie is in the US attending conferences and meetings for a little while longer! However, I did call him and talk to him on the phone, which gave me some idea of some things to look at for possible research topics. The most interesting of these is trying to construct a hash function for finger prints so that they could be used for authentication without giving away the original print. I’m also reading up on error correction codes.

I stayed late at work and got to talk to Mom and Elaine on the phone, which was also really nice. I realize that all of these blog posts are going to be posted at once (since I’ve been writing them on my laptop, which doesn’t have access to the internet). I’ll try to get them posted soon so you guys aren’t all in the dark!

One final nice thing that happened today was that once we got back home Sanjam, Nels, and I walked a little ways to a shop where we were able to buy some anti-mosquito things to plug into the wall (I’ve been getting bitten, and need to go buy repellant). I haven’t been able to use the mosquito netting Dad gave me yet since I don’t have a place to mount it on the ceiling and I’m still not sure if we will be moving from this place or not.

Cheers,

Jason

Bangalore, Day 3

Again I slept in 3 hour chunks and woke up early. We were only given breakfast for two (I guess the guy didn’t realize there are 3 people here now), compacted rice cakes with a soup-looking thing to pour over it, that were fairly good. Nels and I tried to catch an auto-rickshaw at 10:00, but that was rush hour and we only were able to stop two, neither of with would take us to Microsoft just on the meter (usually you have to try something like 6-10 auto-rickshaws before you can find one that will take you where you want to go on the meter). We ended up walking backing and taking a cab, that was sent by Microsoft, to go to the office.

At the office I met another intern, a lady whose name I’m still blanking on, Ravi or something like that, who is a friend of President Klawe’s and had been directed to look out for Tracy and I. She is quite a character. She worked for Microsoft for something like 10 years before Klawe convinced her to go back to school to get her PhD, which is what she is doing now. She has most recently been spending some time in Africa working on a research project and accumulating stories (such as having her shoes stolen off of her feet while sleeping on a train).

I really didn’t get much done today. I spent a while talking with Satya (who may be my research mentor) about India and about possible research topics. I need to talk to him more tomorrow because the first topic that I’m looking into seems far too much like last summer’s work and not nearly math-y enough for me :-). I also got to introduce myself to everyone at Microsoft Research India at a meeting (just a brief introduction, so not too bad, “Hi I’m Jason, here’s where I’m from, here’s what I do, anyone who likes frisbee should come chat with me…”). I also went to a talk by a professor from one of the IIT’s that is currently visiting and has had many of the researchers as students. The talk was on randomized incremental algorithms and was quite interesting.

Getting home from work proved to be a bit of a challenge. The new apartment is not really within walking distance of MSRI, so we need to wait for taxis. This took about an hour after Nels called that, in which time I worked a little, chatted with people, and got online just a bit. I really hope that we have internet in our rooms tomorrow!

Once we got back we just had dinner, called the housing person and bitched about things like not having internet (which is supposed to be in by tomorrow now… was going to be today. That is one thing I am learning, is that *everything* takes longer than they say here and is highly inefficient. We were told that the cab we asked for would come in 10 minutes and it took an hour, just as an example), and chatted with each other. Now its time for be, as I’m exhausted and am getting up early for work.

Cheers,

Jason

Thoughts on Smells

One of the things that I have really noticed about Bangalore is the prevalence of strong smells. I am one that usually does not notice smells, but they are just so overpowering here that I can’t help it! I’ve never been in a place with such strong smells all the time! It is always a challenge to figure out what the mixture is, but here are a few I’ve been able to identify. The scent of cows clustered by the side of the row, which is the normal (strong) smell of cows mixed with the smell of their excreta, is just overpowering. The choking fumes of an auto-rickshaw’s exhaust pipe. This makes the air barely breathable when traffic gets bad and you become surrounded by the auto-rickshaws. Finally, the smell of the fresh juice stands, which take oranges and mash them up for juice. For some reason the acrid taste of the orange *peels* suffuses the air instead of the smell of the delicious inside.

Bangalore, Day 2

I woke up around 7 Bangalore time. Spent a long time sitting and just reading or futzing on the internet. At several points I wandered out into the 2^nd room and saw Motih watching a movie. Breakfast eventually came and we had a fairly filling meal of seasoned rice with small veggies in it. Motih also offered to have me tag along with him when he went out this afternoon. Through theh rest of the morning I read, showered, and got ahold of Elaine on Skype (^_^ <3), style=""> When we eventually left, Motih, Raj, and I all walked down to the office and they tried to get me in and show me around. Unfortunately the security guard was a little obstinate and they weren’t able to get me in. Oh well, that’s what tomorrow’s for!

Motih and I then to an auto-rickshaw down to a mall near MG road, where we commenced our wandering. We wandered up and down this 7 story mall, buying a water on the way. Their supermarket is different then ours. More crowded and with different foods (like rice) extremely obvious. I also tried to watch the people around me to see how they behave. It seems like there is always the expectation that people should know what they are doing and there is a considerable amount of non-verbal communication used to accomplish most things.

From the mall we walked up to Brigade(?) Rode, and observed the spectacle of the MG road area, chatting all the time. Manish was right, that Pizza Hut looks like a really upscale joint! My major regret for the day was that I didn’t bring my camera to take pictures :-(. We eventually wandered down a side street (blossom?) and went into an arcade to kill some time. We sat down and watched cosmic bowling for a bit, then played the games in the arcade for tickets. We didn’t manage to accumulate too many, but I found that I am fairly good at a “demolition” game that was essentially wack-a-mole and was quite fun. Motih got a mask for a Indian superhero (I forget the name) that he plans to put up in the office, and I got an Indian children’s story. These were purchased using the tickets we had won.

Interesting tidbit: we stopped by a magazine store that’s major claim to fame is that it has something like 15 cats wandering around freely. Very cute and made me think of Elaine.

The most fun part of the day was the next stop: a bookstore, the stop story of which was used books, and crammed together as used book stores should be. We browsed for like two hours, and for the modest price of 300 rupees (~7 dollars) I got Around the world in 80 days, Watership Down, Catch-22, and Canterbury Tales. We also chatted most of the time about books, good and bad, which was incredibly awesome ^_^.

Afterwards we grabbed some food. We went by a fast-food place for a snack, basically Chicken Tikka and some greens wrapped in Naan (Yum!). Afterwards we went to a fairly famous restaurant that had both Indian and Western options on the menu. I got a Prawn Tikka Marsala and some Naan, which were delicious. We then took another auto-rickshaw back home, with Motih avoiding the drivers that tried to scam us :-). We spent most of this afternoon chatting, and while I cannot remember everything we talked about it was a really fun time ^_^.

Once we got back we made some calls, I started going to bed, then a guy showed up to move me to another apartment (I wasn’t supposed to be living in the one I was I guess). This one is _much_ nicer, cleaner, non-smokey, and more spacious. The guys living here, Sanjam and Nels (who is from America too and is currently going to CMU) are very cool and I stayed up for a while chatting with them. Sanjam also pointed out that Nels is much easier to understand because he projects (and probably is better and articulating correctly). This means that I have a project for the summer: speak louder and more clearly (I’ve needed to do this for many years, but hopefully this will be enough motivation ^_^). The downside of this new apartment is that it does not yet have internet :-O!!!! so I won’t be able to communicate as actively for a while :-(. Now, I have stayed up later than I should have typing this, so I am going to sleep now!

Cheers,

Jason

I'm in India!

Hey All,

This is my first post from India, and I'm a little bit stunned. It is about 8:00AM local time here, and my plane got in about midnight last night. Getting my bags wasn't too bad of an experience, but getting to my apartment was terrible. I was expecting to be met at the airport by someone from Micrsoft, and there was noone there. I also apparently missed seeing the government sanctioned taxi service inside the airport, which would have cost me about 400 rupees maximum. As it stands, it cost me 5000R and about an hour of stress and driving around to get to my apartment :'-(. I feel taken, and quite like an idiot.

I was luck that there was someone here when I got to the apartment. He may be my roommate (if I have the right room, which is open to question). I chatted with him for a little while last night and went to bed about 2:30AM. Around 4:30AM another roommate came in. He is pretty sure that I'm in the wrong room, but has no problem with me sleeping here for the time being (which is good). I went back to sleep, cuddling Moshi and holding my necklace, again. My bed is the smallest on which I have ever slept and even during the night it is so hot and humid that I don't need a blanket.

This morning another roomate has appeared. He was kind enough to let me borrow one of his plug adapters, which is why I'm online right now! Apparently none of the adapters that I bought from AAA before coming work :-( They just don't fit in the slot. Hopefully I can remedy that sometime today. I am told that we actually do have someone who brings us food (though they don't give you a choice of the food they bring, so if you don't like it you can go out), but I'm not sure what time breakfast is today. I also haven't been able to find bottled water and am worried about being somewhat dehydrated.

My roommates all seems really nice and friendly, and I think that they are all also interns at Microsoft research. Even so, I'm hoping that some sort of mistake has been made about the room and I will be able to get a single. I would really like some personal space to come back to and hide :-P. My roommates, however, will probably be invaluable as I try to figure out what is going on here. I've basically come to India knowing I have a place to sleep and a job to show up for. Everything else I don't know! This is making me a little bit worried, but hopefully everything will get sorted out and settled over the next week.

Cheers,
Jason