Farewell party at Amoeba

Hey all,

I left off on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, staying up late after Elaine left. I got to work at 9AM on Wednesday after about 5 hours of sleep and got cracking trying to catch up on all the stuff I've put off because Elaine was here. A basic summary of my projects from the last few days is that they just aren't going anywhere, and I'm really quite frustrated with them, and I'm not going to say any more on that. I was completely zapped by 6PM, so I came home from work and basically spent 5 or 6 hours uploading pictures, emailing people, and blogging (all catch-up). I skipped out of a dinner at a place called "Grasshopper" that most of my friends went to that sounded pretty cool, but I was really glad to get all of that stuff done!

Thursday was another frustrating day at work, but at 7PM a whole bunch of people from the office went downtown to say farewell to all of the interns leaving this week (one of whom is my apartment-mate Nels :-( ). We went to "Amoeba", which is a bowling alley/video game arcade. I didn't bowl at all, but a few of us went into the arcade and played dance dance revolution, which I ended up doing really well at (I'm still not sure if I'm proud or ashamed of that ^_^). After that we just chilled, chatted, and watched bowling (incidentally, this is the only bowling alley in Bangalore, and probably anywhere near here), and in general had fun. After bowling we went to dinner (with ~40 people total!) at the nearby "Mainland China" and had immense quantities of fairly good "Chinese" (Indian take on Chinese) food and again chatted. All in all a good time, and a nice way to hang out with lots of friends that I have no idea when I will ever get a chance to see again :-).

Work today was again fairly frustrating, but at 6PM Nels, Tracy, Rob, and I headed down to Commercial street (I had to pick up sari blouses for Elaine, and Tracy had one as well), then we walked over to MG road and had dinner at Emgees, a nice place that I had lunch at while Dad was here (and this was Nels last meal for this India trip! His flight is leaving at 6AM tomorrow morning and he is packing as I type!). Tracy left us after dinner to take a rickshaw to the train station. She is going to be in Maduri visiting her host family this weekend, so the apartment is going to be really really empty (going from 3 residents and a visitor for the last few weeks to just me :'-( ). Nels, Rob, and I really really had to fight to get a rickshaw back home, and even after agreeing to 100Rs. for the fee (which is still a ripoff, but about the best you can get from MG road at night) the guy tried to charge us 100Rs. *per person*, which *really* pissed off Rob :-(.

That is about all for now. I have *finally* caught up to present time with the blog, and will try not to let it get into such bad shape again in the remaining week I have here (SO LITTLE TIME!!). I may stay up fairly late tonight with Nels, who is going to try to stay up until his flight leaves (possibly a marathon ping pong session at work). We shall see!

Cheers,
Jason