Jason in Bangalore

Back in the US! Last post

2007-08-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Right now I'm sitting in the Portland airport, playing around on their wireless because my flight isn't leaving until 3.5 hours later than I wanted :-P. This is going to be my last post, now that I'm back in the US.

So, what has been happening the last few days? I left off late Wednesday evening. There isn't too much to say about Thursday. I got to work fairly early in the morning and after spending a last little bit of time doing creative work, I started collating and summarizing everything that I've done this summer. Silly me, I didn't really do this *at all* as I went along, so it was quite a chore. I also played a whole bunch of ping pong with Rob (I'm getting pretty good ^_^. I hope to keep up playing some with the table in the LAC at Mudd), and Tracy and I took a trip to the UPS store to ship books. It turns out that this was a really good idea, because I had 16 kilos worth of books to ship back (OK, so I went a little nuts at the cheap bookstores....) and my luggage is packed pretty tight as is. The people at the UPS store were *really* nice, and did basically everything for us. All we had to do was sit around and chat, which was really really nice ^_^.

Thursday night I went to my last dinner at New Shanti Sagar with Rob and Tracy, which was a really nice last dinner to have with my friends (Friday night was a dinner with just the Crypto group). After dinner I ended up staying up till about 3:30AM working on finishing up documenting some parts of what I did.

Despite staying up late on Thursday night, I woke up early enough on Friday morning (last day of work!) to make it in by 9AM, when I was supposed to meet with Satya. This meeting, as usual, got pushed back a bit, but I had a good meeting with him and put together some final (or at least summarizing/progress report ) thoughts on my work. The afternoon was spent in a 5 hour marathon LaTeXing session (interrupted by only 1 ping-pong game), writing up the theoretical work that I had done this summer. This ended up being a 13 page long document, which made me feel a little better about the amount of work I had done. I finished this up just in time to say goodbye to all of my friends at work who weren't in my group, and head out to dinner at "Tai Tai" (a Thai place) with the crypto group.

It took us about 45 minutes to reach Tai Tai (partially because of a long delay caused by Abishek... ^_^). The starters were delicious (and I reminded myself that margaritas are *wonderful*!), but the meal was a little bit of a disappointment. The really fun part was when Vijay asked me what I had ordered and I (like always) couldn't remember. He noticed my (empty) margarita and started making fun of me, and asking for drunk stories from college ^_^. I didn't give him any drunk stories, but I did tell the "Doom" story, which is the source of the "Evil Jason" nickname freshman year :-) (something I have to tell in person. Certainly not something I would commit to text and be able to do justice to). I also told the story of me getting assaulted on the street by the random dude that wanted to know "Country!".

After dinner I said goodbye to the crypto group and headed back home to make sure, one last time, that I had everything packed. I spent my last few hours in India just hanging out at Tejus Nest with Tracy, chatting. An excellent way to end the trip ^_^. The cab showed up at 10:20PM, and I headed for the airport! There were basically *no* lines for the baggage check, which was weird (and two guys tried to pay them like 100Rs. each for helping me with my bags. I gave them 10, told them I'd been around for a while and that they should go away. Definitely a difference from my first experience at the airport). I got through security and passport control fine, then spent a while making international calls to wipe out the last of my Hutch cell phone minutes.

Not too much else to report about the flights. I spent basically all of my time in Frankfurt in lines and almost immediately got on the plane (20 hours of nearly unbroken time on planes gets a little bit old...). I sat next to a really nice interesting lady from Oakland, CA on the Frankfurt -> Portland flight. Apparently she had been doing traditional Greek dance classes and northern Greece for the past two weeks!

I've fed myself with a turkey sandwich and fries (first American meal in 3 months!) here in Portland, and am just waiting for my flight. I think that really is all folks! Thanks for reading my blog and I hope that you've enjoyed it! I know that I've enjoyed my experiences in India, and have been glad to share them!

Cheers,
Jason

Not working as hard as I should...

2007-08-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Today is Indian Independence Day! This day marks the 60th anniversary of India's independence from England, but it also marks the beginning of the Partition (which was the separation of India and Pakistan into separate countries, was very violent, and is a large part of the reason that India and Pakistan don't get along so well today). This combination of things means that today is a fairly quiet day. It is mostly a day of quiet and contemplation, though there are some parades and celebrations, and *lots* of people have Indian flags out!

Anyway, we were told to take the day off of work because it is Independence Day, but I had enough to do that I came in anyway. I didn't get much work done though. Christian came into the office just a little bit after me (wearning an I <3 India t-shirt and brandishing an Indian flag. I told him he looked like an American...). Soon after he arrived, he received a call from Prasad, about a mandala (the things I've taken pictures of that are in front of most houses) competition in Cubbon Park. Christian and I caught a rickshaw down to check it out, and *boy* am I glad we did! The mandala were *spectacular* and there were *thousands* of them! Basically all of the roads in Cubbon park (which is a fairly large amount of road) had been blocked off, and both sides of the road were divided into a bunch of square meter squares, which is was the space each person had to draw their mandala in (these are created out of chalk dust and colored chalk, by the way, and *incredibly* ornate). I took about 150 pictures before I even knew it! I'll try to post them soon.

After admiring the mandalas we caught a rickshaw over to the Bull Temple to meed Prasad, Rob, and Apu (who is a temporary researcher who just started last week). The auto driver seemed rather lost on the way, and we drove through a concert! Literally! There was a stage with musicians on the right, there were people in seats on the left, and we just drove through the space in between them! I don't think they were to happy with us...

We eventually arrived at the Bull Temple, which is basically a small temple with a large stone bull (supposedly a wild bull that terrified villagers in the 8th century, then was subdued sort of and turned to stone, but kept growing until somebody hit it in the head with a trident, which stopped again... so yeah). I was not really impressed with temple, or the people there who were trying to pump money out of me and Christian :-P. And this is one of Bangalore's major tourist attractions...

After the Bull Temple the 5 of us walked to a restaurant that Prasad knew about, and had lunch on the top floor. The draw of this resturant is that the top floor serves authentic Northern Karnataka food (eaten on a banana leaf with only your hands ^_^). We had to wait like 45 minutes to get seated (during which I was *really* grouchy and ready to come home), but it wasn't too bad because they had live music from an Indian band (which I got some video of!), playing traditional instruments. Once we got the food I was much happier because it was delicious and all-you-can-eat (for only 100Rs.!).

Christian and I parted ways with the others after lunch and headed over to MG road to do some shopping. I made my final shopping trip and finally have the last of the souvenirs that I want (including a model auto-rickshaw and a carpet! ^_^). We came back to the office after that, and then I came home because I couldn't concentrate. Since then I've just been hanging out here and trying to pack (I *might* be able to fit everything without shipping stuff, but it will be tight...).

Thats all for now! Only two days here left! I am getting *really* excited to be back home. All the little annoyances here are so much harder to bear when I know that I only have to deal with them for a couple more days. See you all soon!

Cheers,
Jason

Fewer and fewer days left...

2007-08-14T11:12:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I only have three days left in Bangalore! Can you believe it? I certainly can't... I have *far* to many things left to do before Friday ends to really believe it.

So, what have I been up to since the last post? I believe the last post was between 2 and 3AM Sunday morning, in the midst of a Harry Potter book (possibly right after or right before a several hour power outage!). Well, I finished Harry Potter at about 7:15AM, not having slept in the meantime (oops... I barely slept at all this week!). After playing on the computer a bit I got about 5 hours of sleep and woke up around noon. I don't really remember what I else I did on Sunday. I know that I went in to work for a little while, and other than that I remember next to nothing! Maybe Rob or someone has some idea... I guess sleep deprivation really does effect your memory. On the plus side, though, I did get sleep Sunday night!

Monday was actually, finally, a good day at work. I spent basically the entire morning speaking to Satya about the pseudorandom number generator (we even forgot about the Lab Sabha and just made it down in time to have the cake [for celebrating August birthdays]). The afternoon was spent in fruitful pursuit of the things we had spoken of in the morning, and then at about 7:15PM Rob, Revi, Udai, and I went with another Microsoft employee named Mike (Redmond based, but visits India a lot and knows Revi) to the paratha place. The parathas were delicious, and we got to listen to Mike and Revi talk about what it was like to work for the actual Microsoft in Redmond through the 90's and early 2000's. It sounded like a completely different place from Microsoft Research in present day. I do a fairly good job of maintaining work/life balance at MSRI, whereas it didn't even sound like that was possible at Microsoft. There were all sort of other, slightly horrifying, stories they had that I don't think I will share here. Despite the stories probably being very biased toward horrifying, it really made me feel like I wouldn't have wanted to work there at all.

After parathas I made a quick (and maybe final!) trip into commercial street to pick up a small gift, then headed home (and again got a decent amount of sleep).

Today has pretty much been all work. I spent from 8:30AM to 10:00PM in the office, but I feel like I got a lot of stuff done and my PRNG implementation is in fairly good shape (and even has an interface now!), and I got to talk to Deba about Imagliazzo and Naor (they have a rather *cool* paper). There were some breaks from work. I played a whole bunch of games of ping-pong today, mostly with Rob, but some with Christian and Ranjita. I'm definitely getting better, and the game is oodles of fun ^_^. A bunch of people also went to New Shanti Sagar for a late lunch / goodbye lunch for interns in the Emerging Markets group (even though some, like Revi, aren't leaving till next week).

I guess thats all for now. Sorry that this has been a somewhat boring blog post, but I'm buckling down and just trying to get work done before my internship is over. Tomorrow is the day of Indian independence from the UK, which is apparently a fairly quiet day of contemplation (it also marks the anniversary of the very bloody and violent partition between India and Pakistan). We aren't supposed to go into work, but I'm going to have to in order to get things done.

Cheers,
Jason

My last Saturday

2007-08-11T14:54:00.001-07:00

Hey all,

Its hard to believe, but I only have a week left in Bangalore! My flight leaves at 2AM next Saturday, so this was my last one! It wasn't terribly eventful, but it was fun. I woke up at about 10AM, after staying up till 5AM (Nels, Rob, and I played ping-pong from 11:30PM to 2:00AM, then Nels and I hung out in the suite till he left [:-(], and then I stayed up futzing a bit).

I went into work soon after waking up, but didn't stay for very long as Satya wasn't there and I really need to meet with him. I came back home and read "Song of Solomon" for a few hours and finished it (a *very* good book ^_^), had some lunch, then tromped down to the IISc bookstore and bought some of the books on the (very long) list that Vijay had given me of good textbooks to have. I bought about 10 different texts, for a total cost of $100, including all three of Knuth's "Art of Computer Programming" books (they were less than $30 ^_^). I walked both to and from the IISc, which is a few kilometers away, and on the way back I *finally* tried a savory coconut for the first time. There are guys all over that sell these large green coconuts. When you buy one they chop off the top with a machete type thing and you can use a straw to drink the coconut milk out. Its a very refreshing drink, even if I'm not the biggest fan of coconut milk. This whole thing is 12Rs (about a quarter), and sometimes (I didn't do this) you can have the guy chop up the coconut more after you are done with the milk, so you can eat the inside, which can be really yummy!

After I got back home I went into work again to check for Satya, planned a trip to commercial street with Rob, then finally got a haircut! It turns out that there is a haircut place only a block away from my apartment, which is very nicely convenient ^_^. I brought them some photos and I think they did a decent, if not superb, job of the haircut. I may even post pictures before I get back. We shall see :-).

It rained hard off and on through the afternoon, delaying our trip to commercial street (Rob was walking, and I was going to meet him there), and giving me time to start on Harry Potter 7! (part of the reason I'm still conscious at this hour). The trip to commercial street was fun and very succesful. I found a present for Brandon, and I also bought myself some lychee honey! (sounds intriguing). We also visited a shop where I had been last week with Elaine to buy some souvenirs, and I bought a whole bunch of things there as gifts for the South freshman and some others. The really cool part about this shop is that they guy there recognized me from when I came in with Elaine. He was really excited to see me, shook my hand when I came in, and ran out to buy Rob and I coffee while we were looking! It was pretty cool chatting with him and the other guys in the shop and feeling like I could actually be open and friendly (oh, and he gave us discounts with out me asking because "You're my friend" ^_^). I got a chance to ask about a few traditional pieces of Indian artwork that I've been wondering about. There is a very distinctive style of carving animals that are mostly hollow with lots of stylized holes on the outside (it looks *far* prettier than my description) which I learned is from northern India (particularly Kashmir, as that is where this store gets its goods). Also, I have frequently seen a carving/statue of 4 lions back-to-back in a circle facing outwards (this is a symbol that is on government buildings, and is also on every form of Indian currency!). It is a called "Ashoka" or a "Column of Ashoka", and is named for a great Indian emperor/king named Ashoka who lived a few centuries back and was very fond of lions. I also learned that a certain flower-like pattern I've seen before is a "chakra", and that the flowers I've been seeing on Ganesh statues and statues of other gods are "typical[traditional maybe?] Indian flowers" and not lotuses as I have been assuming (apparently lotuses have only 7 petals and are more stylized).

As you can tell, we had a good time at the shop (Rob also got some ortaments, and there ere some small wall hanging/pocket things that we both purchased), and afterwards we walked to the paratha place that Revi exclaims over so much and I've been trying to get to all summer. The parathas were not as spectacular as I was hoping, but they were solidly "good".

After the parathas we caught a rickshaw back home, who got lost on the way and caused the drive to be rather more expensive than it should have been :-P. I've basically just been reading Harry Potter since I got home, though I took a break for a while when Elaine called (yay!) to chat with her and her father for a while, both of whom seem to be doing quite well.

Thats all for now folks. I'm planning a pretty boring Sunday tomorrow, after having spent so much money on gifts and books today. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get back to Harry Potter ^_^.

Cheers,
Jason

Farewell party at Amoeba

2007-08-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

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

Pictures update

2007-08-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

This is just a quick post to give you all the links to pictures that I've taken recently and forgot to put the links to in the right posts (there may be some links here that I've already posted):

Elaine's last day and random pictures
Delhi and the TAJ!!!
A week in Bangalore and Pondicherry with Elaine
Random weekend pictures
Nels Birthday and Karaoke
A week with Dad

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Jason

Elaine's last day in India

2007-08-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

This Tuesday was the the last day Elaine had in India. Since I had been gone for a 4 day weekend I worked for a few hours in the morning, then Elaine, Tracy, and I all tromped down to commercial street with two objectives: Get Elaine a nose piercing (!!!) and get Elaine a sari. We succeeded in both fronts. The really nice jewelry store where we initially wasn't available for appointments, but after wandering about for a bit (and me buying myself a small emerald earring that looks pretty cool ^_^) we found a street full of jewelers, one of whom pierced Elaine's nose. It was a rather *brutal* process to watch, and I'm glad Elaine couldn't see it or she probably would have freaked out (they had to push some widening stuff through the hole after it was made by the gun) and *both* of us were lightheaded afterwards. She and Tracy also bought several really cool nose piercings.

After the piercing we went shopping for sarees at the Mysore silk emporium, and Elaine and Tracy both found some *beautiful* sarees. Definitely check out the pictures (from this whole day) here. Tracy headed back to the office to get some work done while Elaine and I had her last meal here at The Paradise Club on MG road (Palak Paneer ^_^), then met up with Nels and went to the same shop that I had gone to previously with Dad. I'm getting the guy there a *ton* of business, and he gave me some really large (like 30%) discounts without me even asking ^_^.

We all went back to my apartment at this point, finished packing up and everything, then Elaine and I watched "Muriels Wedding" and finished just before the cab came to take us to the airport. It was a zoo at the airport, but I have learned to deal with lines in India (shove your way in wherever you can, keep doing that, and feel no guilt) and we got through the line pretty quickly. I went around to the visitors area, and saw her off nicely. I was *really* sad to see her go, but her visit has been a lot of fun ^_^.

I took a prepaid rickshaw back to the apartment, and then stayed up till 3AM doing random futzing on the computer and finally went to sleep.

Thats all for now. I'm getting closer to actually being caught up on this blog!

Cheers,
Jason

Delhi Trip

2007-08-09T12:11:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

As promised this is a description of the trip that Tracy, Elaine, and I took to Delhi this past weekend. Summary: AMAZING!!!

Our flight from Bangalore left around noon, so we got up fairly early in the morning. We were all disappointed by the flight out because it was cloudy the *entire* way. I had been hoping to actually get to see Bangalore and India from the sky :-P. We got through the airport without any complications, and had a *much* better taxi experience than coming into Bangalore (though it took the guy forever to find Anu's family's house, and then he tried to charge up extra [Anu's brother Sachit took care of that though ^_^]). Anu's family is *amazingly* nice and took incredibly good care of us the entire time we were there (I'm taking mental notes every time I experience India hospitality. It is the best I've ever seen and I hope to mimic it myself). Though we had never met them before and Anu wasn't even there for most of the time we stayed with them, they were incredibly friendly and hospitable. We were always *bursting* from the most delicious Indian food I have had here (which *really* is saying something), and never felt weird or awkward.

When we first got there we all sat in the living room and chatted with the whole family for a while, while they served us 'lunch' (lots and lots of snacks that filled us to bursting at ~5PM). The family is Anu's mom and dad, plus her older sister Poojan and younger brother Sachit. They also had Anu's 5 year old cousin staying with them while we were there. His name is Divanchu (I probably spelled that wrong), and he is *incredibly* cute and *incredibly*...spirited... He had the tendency to go around pointing at things and claiming them as his. At one point Poojan was trying to leave to drive somewhere and ended up taking her parents car instead of hers because Divanchu had taken the keys and wouldn't give them back (he wanted to drive the pink car!). At one point he claimed an entire blender assembly as his (he loves to cook) and pretended to make us juice from rags that he would very carefully put in the blender (he had the process all worked out). The most amusing thing he did was after we got back from Agra and were sitting around the living room. I was sitting down and leaning forward so my head was only a little above his level. He walked up to me and started feeling my goatee with his hand and just sort of staring at me. He must have spent 30seconds to a minute feeling my goatee, rubbing my cheek, and feeling my goatee again. Then he said something in Hindi and everyone (who spoke Hindi) started laughing. Apparently he had told me to shave it off because it hurts! He apparently also tells Sachit to shave ^_^. CUTE!

Ok, so after 'lunch' Poojan took the Elaine, Tracy, Sachit, and I out in her car. We drove around Delhi a bit (the traffic and infrastructure is much better here. Everything is much farther apart, but it still takes about as long to get to things as in the much smaller Bangalore). This trip took us to two places: Jun Path (said "Pat" with emphasis on the t) and India Gate. Jun Path is a fairly large and dense, really cool market. We wandered about and bought some cool stuff, saving a lot of money in the process because Poojan is an *incredible* bargainer. Elaine & Tracy both got some Indian hangy things and skirts, and Elaine bought a novelty pipe from a hawker (I've seen hundreds of this identical pipe. Its a very popular item). I found some really neat kurtas for myself ^_^. Once we finished in Jun Path, we took the scenic route to India gate, going through Cannard Circle which is a really really nice shopping area (the most expensive in Delhi) with a nice park called Central Park in the middle. India Gate reminds me of the Arc de Triumph if it was set down in the middle of the park in front of the Eiffel Tower. Its very nice, and it also has a forever-burning flame to commemorate fallen soldiers. While we were there Tracy, Elaine, and I all got henna (me on my upper arms, them on hands + an arm) which looked *really* cool. Unfortunately the stuff wasn't very good quality so it didn't leave very much of an impression. Once we got back we had an *amazing* dinner and then greatfully went to sleep...

...but not for too long because we woke up at 4:30AM to catch our train to Agra! Anu's parents got up at that time to drive us to the station (*so* nice!) where we met Tracy's friend Rebecca (who is going to be at Mudd next year) and hopped aboard the 2 hour express train to Agra. We arrived and got to our hotel by way of a prepaid auto (4 people in it ^_^) without much hassle except the driver trying to get hired as a guide. I cannot do justice to our day, so I won't really try (see my pictures for more justice). The Taj Mahal is *amazing* and I cannot believe I was there. It was like something from a fairytale. We first saw it from the roof of our hotel and I was just blown away... We also went to Agra Fort which was similarly amazing and had a very cool view of the Taj. After a long (and hot & humid. Both Delhi and Agra are *very* hot and humid) day of touring, we just collapsed in our hotel room for the late afternoon and had dinner on the roof of our hotel, with a view of the Taj and all the kites that kids on rooftops were flying as the sun set. It was awesome.

We woke up at 4:30AM again to catch another 6AM train back to Delhi (unfortunately not express, so it took 4 hours to get back) and we took a cab back to Anu's house. We were all fairly exhausted, but sat down and chatted for a while and then were served *delicious* pourri for breakfast!!! (at noon). After breakfast we ''took our rest' which basically meant we just sat about the house and enjoyed delicious relaxation for a few hours. At one point Anu's mom even made Tracy lie down because she didn't seem like she was comfortable/relaxed enough ^_^. We also found out that Sunday was "Friendship Day", which is like Mothers Day or Valentines Day, but instead you celebrate your friends! It is a really cool idea, and we ended up going out to a bar at about 4:30 with Poojan and a bunch of her friends. It was really cool hanging out with them, and I got to chat with one of them about the differences between the US and India (chatting about arranged marriages, how households change after marriage, parties, jobs, etc.). It was also fun drinking and dancing in the middle of the afternoon ^_^.

After hanging out at the bar we came back to the house, relaxed for a while longer and had some food to eat, then Tracy, Elaine, and I went to Akshardham Temple. I don't quite understand the story behind the temple. I think that the 5th incarnation of some very wise Hindu man caused it to be built, and it is a modern temple built with ancient techniques and in ancient styles. The entire main temple was built without using steel at all. Imagine a truly beautiful ancient church or temple that you have seen, then think about what that place would be like if you could have seen it in its prime, just after it had been constructed. That is what Akshardham is like. It actually felt like a far classier and religiously themed Disney Land. It was filled to the brim with visitors, and you had to go through a bunch of security and leave all electronic devices like cameras and cell phones before you could get in. I don't even know how to start describing the intricacy. The main temple has something like 1000 elephants carved into its base, all of which appear almost alive because they are so well crafted. You can walk around the main part, looking at these elephants, and reading about the stories and wise sayings that they depict. Even their eyes seem to have expression!

The main temple itself was breathtaking. The stonework was at a level of detail that I have never seen, and it all was incredibly beautiful. It was like the intracacy of the Tibetan Buddhist temples that I have seen, except all done in marble! It was also very peaceful and reverent inside, encouraged by the fact that you weren't supposed to talk.

After the main temple we went to see the musical fountain they had there. I've heard of these before, always hearing that they weren't too impressive, but this one was promoted as the best in India and *boy* was it spectacular. There must have been three or four thousand people in the crowd around the fountains, and even before the music, lights, and water started it was really cool. The fountains are in this slight depression, that is down a few very large steps from the level of the rest of the temple. Everything is done in beautiful redstone, and there is a massive gold statue illuminated by a spotlight and backed by an enormous redstone building at one end of this area. All three of us agreed that it felt very mystical and surreal. I felt like I was in one of the crazy settings from an Indiana Jones movie ^_^. Dorky as that may sound, it is probably the best way to describe how I felt. Then the show started. The light and water show runs along with music, and the music was a beautiful Indian piece. It sounded like a subtle blend of western classical music and traditional Indian ^_^. Then the light and water show was fantastic. I can't even really describe it, but the fountain and lights perfectly captured and enhanced the feeling of the music, and all of this went along perfectly with the surreal feeling of this place. My favorite thing the fountain did was a sort of peacock-tail type of effect, where water was blown out in a mist in a fan shape, and illuminated by lights in such a way that it seemed to ripple and undulate in the air. It looked like something that I would have thought would be impossible to create outside of a computer animation. All in all: incredible.

After the musical fountain we got out of Akshardham as fast as we could. Basically all of those thousands of other watchers of the fountain were also leaving, and we wanted to get our stuff out of the coat check before things got too bad. I did get stuck in a long line at the coat check, but for some reason one of the guys that worked there and had a shorter line came over and pulled me into his line and I got my stuff quickly. I was really confused and initially distrustful of this because I didn't want to lose my spot in line for no reason, but he was just being really cool, and didn't even want money for it, which is a nice change ^_^. As we were walking back to our taxi it started raining, and a *massive* downpour started just as we got into the taxi (just in time!). It was *incredible* to watch the rain come down like that. It soaked anyone who was out in it in seconds, and there was water *covering* the roads. It is really hard to describe well, but basically it rained *hard*.

On the cab drive back we drove by the "Lotus Temple" which is a really cool meditation area (that was unfortunately closed that late) that looks like a massive lotus flower. We were at least able to see it. We also stopped on the way back to buy some friendship bracelets that were being sold because it was friendship day ^_^.

And Anu arrived just a little while after we got back!!! It was really cool to see another Mudder there, and it was neat seeing Anu with her whole family. We all sat and chatted for a while and had nice appetizers and a delicious dinner and then got some well deserved sleep!

We woke up decently early in the morning so that we could go with Anu, Sachit, Poojan, and Divianchu to a Sikh Temple that was in Delhi. It is one of the most important temples to Sikhs, and it was really cool. We had some sort of holy food, some holy water, and saw an artificial lake full of holy water off to the side of the temple. One cool thing about this temple is it is the only place in Delhi that has a sweetwater spring, and I think that is what the holy water was.

While we were coming back to Anu's house from the temple I got a series of text messages informing me that our flight was being delayed. We got back to the house and had our last (and of course, delicious) meal with Anu's family. I was really sad to say goodbye. The weekend we had there was really amazing, and it was all because of their kindness and generosity ^_^.

We took a cab from their house, and because of the delays we tried to go to a cool place called Delhi Haat (a big market with food and shops from all of Indias different states!!! It sounds so cool and I really am sad not to have seen it), but didn't think we would be able to make it and had our cab change course to the airport in mid drive. We got there far faster than we expected (which was somewhat upsetting because it would have been nice to go to Delhi Haat) and got through security and everything just fine (even carrying all our toiletries on the flight with us this time instead of checking a bag for them). The only problem was that I had a pair of small scissors in my toiletries bag that they found and made me throw away (sad because they had served me well, but I have now replaced them with an even nicer pair, and they were only 12Rs. originally anyway). It was nice that the airport had a small ice cream/sandwhich stall and and a water purifier, but it was not so nice that our flight was (in total) delayed by 3 hours and we were all dead tired (myself less so than Elaine and Tracy, so basically fell asleep every time they sat down ^_^).

We made it back to Bangalore without too many problems, though we again missed the view in the plane, this time because of closed windows and it getting dark because of the huge delay. When we got back to Bangalore we celebrated our weekend by going out to dinner at Ebony, then came back home and *dropped* off into sleep.

Wow, that was a long post, but it was a long and fantastic weekend ^_^.

Cheers,
Jason

Assaulted...

2007-08-08T10:46:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

As I mentioned in the last post, when Elaine and I were walking between City Markety and Cubbon Park this past Thurday, I had a slightly more violent than usual encounter on the streets of Bangalore. Here is the story:

From City Market we walked to Cubbon Park, and on the was I was essentially ASSAULTED. At this point in the summer I'm pretty much completely used to beggars and salespeople on the street and know how to deal with them. This is that I initially thought this guy who came up to me, saying some unintelligible word over and over was, and I brushed him off. This is when he *grabbed* me. Let me be clear: beggars on the street will touch you and paw at your arms to get your attention, but they don't grab you this. This guy actually was using force, and kept saying the same thing over and over, which I couldn't parse. I managed to push him off of me, and tried to walk away quickly, and he followed me just as quickly. At this point Elaine hadn't noticed what was going on and was getting ahead of me in the crowd. I couldn't get away from this guy by going forward, and he was blocking my path backwards, so I literally jumped over the rail on the side of the sidewalk into the street and ran down the street to catch up with Elaine, and when I caught her I had her walk fast (hoping that the guy would stop pursuing me). He *ran* after me on the sidewalk and caught up to me just after I caught up to Elaine. He grabbed me again and turned me around, still saying the same thing. It was at this point that I realized he was saying "Country! Country! Country!" over and over. I said "U.S." and tried to turn and break away from his grip. I managed to turn, but he grabbed my arm with one hand and actually *grabbed the skin on my back* with the other (you know those lumps that you have on either side of your spine? Yes, he grabbed that) and turned me around. At this point I just looked him in the eyes (he had now somehow gotten hold of both my arms and we were standing face to face, grappling) and got him to pause. He calmed down a bit (he started saying "Country" more slowly and quietly), and I started saying "America", "US", "United States", until he finally said "America? US?", and I said "Yes, America". At this point he let go of my arms with one hand (still holding on with the other), shook my free hand with his free hand, let go with the other hand, patted me on the shoulder (while kind of keeling forward like he was out of breath), and said "Sorry, Sorry." And that was the end of it. He just walked away. I heard another Indian guy on the street mutter "Oh my God...". It is one of the most bizarre experiences that I've had here, and I sat down to calm down for a while afterwards. He was a fairly small and old guy, so I think that I could have taken care of myself if he had gotten more aggressive, but I don't really want to think about what would happen to me if I decked an Indian guy in the middle of a crowded street....

Elaine in Bangalore!

2007-08-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I've been doing a miserable job of updating this blog since Elaine got here, but I'm going to try to catch up all in one big push. As a result I'm going to try to keep the entries a little more terse than usual (we shall see if I have any luck on that front).

OK, so we left off last Sunday the 29th of July with a wonderful day wandering around Bangalore. Well, on Monday Elaine and I headed down to City Market to see the flower market down there that we had heard so much about from Tracy and Rebecca. After some initial wandering around in the wrong direction and in some sketchy areas (and having a kid throw a stick at Elaine! >:-( ) we managed to find our way to the right area. It was fantastic. There is a huge building that is completely surrounded by vegetable sellers and all sorts of other colorful goods. Inside this building is the flower market. The entire building is filled with small stalls, each of which is *overflowing* with all sorts of beautiful flowers. It was amazing. There were two particularly remarkable things to me. First was the smell. This is definitely not as well off of an area of town, and the smell would fluctuate from *wonderful* when you were in the midst of flowers to sewage-ish when you walked in certain areas farther from the flowers. I've never before experience a mixture of flower fragrances and raw sewage smells.

The other really cool things was how *nice* people were. I'm used to very aggressive merchants that I cannot trust. In the flower market we had every other person asking us where we were from and trying to engage us in friendly banter. There was a random guy there, I think he was another shopper, that took the time to tell us how to get around, then took a video of us saying our names using his cell phone (lots of people wanted pictures). The main indication of this incredible niceness was that no fewer than *6* different people reached out as we walked back to hand a free red rose to Elaine. She had a whole gaggle of them by the time we left! (We walked all the way to Cubbon Park and a little beyond on the way back and found "The Sports Authority of India" which has a *huge* climbing wall!).

After City Market we ate dinner at the flat and then watched the movie "Princess Mononke", which is by the same people as "My Neighbor Totoro" and was really quite good ^_^.

All, right Tuesday. It was basically a long expedition though Commercial Street (and lots of stimulation of the local economy). We got earrings, earrings, silk pillows, and a few other goodies. We ended up far too tired to go downtown for dinner like we had planned so just indulged ourself in Pizza Hut (so tempting and easy. It was fantastic) for dinner and then watched "School of Rock" ^_^.

Wow, that was a quick one. Wednesday is going to be a little more detailed. There were actually two parts to the day. We woke up early in the morning to walk to Malleshwaram with Tracy & Nels to meet Prasad and Pavol. We then went to one of the best idly stands in the city (I've hated the idly [little rice cakes] that I've had at the flat to the point that I refuse to eat any more of them, but these were hot, had butter, and were *amazing*. My mouth is watering just thinking of them.), then walked a little farther and went to a *fantastic* dosa place. A good morning ^_^. I went to work for a few hours and Elaine took a nap.

In the afternoon we went to Tipu Sultan's summer palace, which is a really pretty, and fairly small, palace in the middle of Bangalore. We took some fun pictures there and admired what we could see of a beautiful temple next door (unfortunately we were unable to get into the temple because it was closed). From there walked over to a nearby castle-looking fort, which was unfortunately closed :-(. We tried to walk around it a little ways to see if there was another entrance and we ended up in City Market!

From there we walked to Cubbon Park, which I was attacked by a random person on the street! I'll tell the whole story in a separate blog post, but it was a bizarre and somewhat scary experience. Cubbon Park was really nice, and while we were there we noticed some really big and pretty buildings in the distance. We headed toward them and ended up walking down a road with tons of massive, beautiful capital buildings (the courthouse, and what looked like a several *very* central government buildings). From there we ended up walking back to the house, as we found ourselves part of the way along the route back from MG road.

Now Thursday, which was the last day in Bangalore before Tracy, Elaine, and I left for Delhi. Elaine and I didn't do too much, just went down to the "Musical Foutain" park we had seen on the way to MG road, and played in its 'solar energy' playground. There was a slide with an endless conveyor belt to generate energy for light up a sign in front of the slide and make it play music. There was a similar hamster-wheel like thing, but it was jammed so we couldn't get it to generate anything. We looked at the fountain, but shows are at night so we didn't see anything special. The park was about worth the 5Rs. entrance ^_^.

We then went across street to Nehru planetarium and payed 25Rs. to see a show in the planetarium about the Hubble space telescope and saw lots of pictures from Hubble (it was nice but, unfortunately not full resolution on the pictures :-(). After the show we played in the science playground outside. All the signs list the wavelenghts of the colors of the equipment, which we thought was really cute (for instance, the whisper dishes we painted blue and the sign that explained how they worked also mentioned that blue light is 430-470nm). The playground had whisper dishes (parabolic dishes that allowed you to whisper and still be heard 50 meters away, provided you were int he right spot), a cool mirrors/kaleidescope thing, lots of spinning things like you would see in any playground (Elaine likes these, but even watching someone on one can make me nauseated), and resonant swings which would cause each other to swing more energetically. We were actually fairly tired after these places, so we came back to the flat, were lazy and had Pizza Hut again, and then packed for the Delhi trip and went to bed!!!

Ok, that was last week up until Delhi. I think I'm going to post the details of the story of my assault by the random guy on the street, and the Delhi trip in new posts.

Cheers,
Jason

A weekend in Pondicherry... sort of

2007-07-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

Well, the original plan for this weekend was that it was going to be spent in Pondicherry. Elaine and I left on Friday afternoon and, after an obscenely long drive, arrived there at about 9PM and paid way more than we wanted in order to stay the night in a hotel rather nicer than we were planning on. Dinner and the buffet were very nice, though food has not been sitting on Elaine's stomach very well :-(. Sleep was wonderful after that long drive!

The next morning we got a slow start and didn't really get out of the hotel until a little before noon, at which point we headed over near the water (Pondicherry is on the sea) and tried to find a room for the next night. We failed completely. After an hour of trying the only room we could find was for 5000Rs. a night :-P. We decided to cut our losses, wandered about near the water for a while (saw the Ghandi statue, went to a great little bookstore "Book Cafe", and a wonderful restaurant called "Rendezvous" [This was a French colony for many years]) then headed home for Bangalore :-(. After a *long* drive we made ourselves a makeshift dinner of toast and nutella, then went to sleep. All in all, a few nice bits in Pondicherry, but it has proved to be a lesson in the necessity of planning well ahead for things.

Today proved to be *much* better ^_^. We woke up fairly early and decided to tour around Bangalore. We had the yellow flavored rice that they serve us at the flat for breakfast, then after some further futzing headed downtown to Geruda Mall, which is right by MG road. I really wanted to show Elaine the spectacle of a Bangalore mall. We wandered up its 6 stories, stopping at a store to buy Elaine some *fantastic* Indian tops, which gave the mall time to get bustling and busy and a true show of how happening of a place it is.

After the mall we walked to Brigade road and had lunch at the Paradise club, where Dad and I had gone twice for beers while he was here. Elaine had some *truly amazing* Palak Paneer, "the best food she has ever had in her life", which is a high compliment from someone with such a developed and diverse palate! We even got the recipe from the waiter, then stopped by a supermarket to pick up the spices that we will need to cook it!!! Hopefully we will be able to recreate this taste sensation!

We continued our *fantastic* day by stopping by the cat/magazine store after lunch, and spending a while there watching the cute cats and reading through a few of the magazines. It was so much fun getting to bring Elaine to all of these places that I've wanted to show her for two months (holy moly, I've been in India for two months!).

After the cat store we stopped by Blossom for several hours, Elaine flipped upon seeing the collection ^_^, and we bought a whole bunch of fantastic books. I'm going to have reading material for a *long* time. After Blossom we decided we wanted a bit of exercise, so we walked the 6km from MG road to my flat! We only stopped to admire a nice park in my neighborhood (incidentally, the weather today was fantastic!).

The last major thing for the day was dinner. Tracy and her visiting friend Rebecca decided to make pasta and sauce for dinner, and Elaine and I went to the Food Mart to buy food for a fruit salad (our [Elaine's] contribution), and matches to start our stove. Dinner was *delicious* (bow-tie pasta, tomato sauce full of zuchini, squash, and other good veggies, and a delicious fruit salad of pineapple, apple, mango, and bananna [:-)], with mango juice to drink) and we had Gelatto from Daily Bread and a Chocolate with Almonds Cadburry Bar (reminds me of New Zealand!) for dessert.

All in all a fantastic day! I don't really want to go back and do work tomorrow :-P.

Cheers,
Jason

Elaine is here!

2007-07-26T21:24:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

Guess what! Elaine arrived Wednesday night (or really, Thursday morning)! I met her at the airport dressed in my full Indian suit, which I have been keeping pictures of offline for the last month to keep from spoiling the surprise! It is fantastic that she is here and, as much fun as I'm having in India, I'm going to be really really glad when this whole long distance thing is over for a while!

We didn't do too much on Thursday. Elaine has been sleeping a lot, catching up from a horrifically long 36 hour trip to India. We did go out to wander about the neighborhood around my house, down as far as "Orange", where I had dinner with Dad and Tracy last week, and wandering back through some residential areas on the way back. Last night we went to Opus and, while we didn't participate in quiz night we at least watched the spectacle and had some delicious food (blueberry 'cheesecake' that seemed to be made from whipped cream ^_^) in the process. On the way back we, completely by chance, ran into Revi and Udai on their way to dinner and while we were talking to them saw Rob walking by! Crazy meetings! The rest of the night passed largely by looking at pictures and reading.

Today we woke up late, and it looks like I'm going to be able to bring Elaine in to work with me today! Then, around 2PM, we're going to take a private car and head out to Pondicherry for the weekend! Pondicherry is part of the formerly French part of India, and we're really eager to see what happens when French and Indian cultures meet!

Lets see, quick notes on the rest of the week before Elaine got here... Lots of thinking about Elaine coming and preparing for the event (bought a massive flower wreath). At work the PRNG actually is working (probably turned out to be a dumb mistake with file output), Monday night we watched a Bollywood movie in our flat with lots of people, and Wednesday before I went to the airport we went to Zero-G for Bollywood night, and got dinner at an 'open late' place after that.

I should probably be off to work now!
Cheers,
Jason

Dinner with Nate

2007-07-22T10:32:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Its been a fairly nice and relaxing Sunday today. I slept in a bit this morning after staying up late last night, and I finally gave up on the sketchy and thing facial hair and shaved away everything but my goatee.

At about 10:00 Tracy and I met Rob and Revi at the dosa place, and the group of us ventured over to commercial street. I found some very cool things there (not for myself ^_^), and I think that we all had a fun time. Revi had to leave a bit early to go do an interview for one of her projects, and Rob, Tracy, and I had lunch in that area before heading back to the office in Sadashivanagar. Mainly just checked email and such at the office, though I had several excellent games of ping-pong with Rob (and I actually won the second one!).

I went home, putzed about, and wrote email to a bunch of people through the afternoon, then started to upload my pictures from the last week and a half to facebook. Around this time Nate Pinkney emailed me, reminding me that he (and Prof. Harris) were also in Bangalore! We met at 7PM and the three of us (Tracy joined Nate and I) headed down to the Cohiba club on MG road for dinner. It was really cool chatting about what he is up to (helping Prof. Harris with stuff for the next edition of his book) and how he likes India. The number of random Mudders in India is becoming ridiculous, and will be even more so after Elaine and Greg get here (which is soon!!! ^_^_^).

Since dinner I've just been working to get all of my pictures uploaded, commented, and tagged on Facebook. That process is now complete, and here are the links to all the new albums! Enjoy!

Bylakuppe
A week with Dad
Nels Birthday
Random Weekend Pictures

Cheers,
Jason

The week with Dad

2007-07-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I'm starting to fall behind on this blog, so I'm going to skim at a higher level than usual over the last week (especially since Dad has been keeping a very detailed journal too). I'll start off with this past Sunday. Dad and I headed over to Lal Bagh Gardens, which is a botanical garden on the far side of Bangalore. The garden has a few nice features: a great view of the skyline of the city, a couple of really nice lakes (with lotus flowers!), a silk tree, and some kooky topiary. Overall, however, it was not particularly taken care of. There was trash everywhere, their 'glass house' display area was completely empty, and the 'Japanese Garden" looked like an angry mob had taken axes and flame to it. I guess the lesson is that European-style tourist spots in India don't live up to their European counterparts (duh!). Dad and I were going to go to a tiffin place near the gardens for lunch, but there was a line spilling out on to the street so we caught a rickshaw and went to a place near MG road called "Pub World". It was supposed to have 4 different sections designed like pubs from different parts of the world, but they were so similar I could barely tell where one section started and the next began (for instance, the only distinguishing feature of the "wild west" style pub was the swinging, saloon style, doors).

I worked a bit that afternoon, and for Sunday evening we went with Nels, Tracy, Rob, and Pavol to the dosa place near home. It turns out they have a *huge* selection of delicious meals, and I think we ate there 3 or 4 more times this week!

On Monday Dad and I went down to the MG road area to get Dad tickets for a bus tour into Mysore for Wednesday. We were hungry, so we ended up walking along a part of the MG road area that I haven't been to before (actually along MG road) and grabbing a wonderful lunch at a slightly swanky place called 'Emgees' (say it out loud if you don't get it). Cubbon Park was between us and the bus ticket office, so we decided to wander through. We got slightly lost and ended up in a part that was *much* prettier and better maintained than the parts that I had been through before, and made the place look better than Lal Bagh. We eventually made it to the ticket office and got Dad a ticket for Wednesday!

There was a big sign at the end of Lal Bagh that had a listing of traffic violations and fines that I thought was amusing and took a picture of. I was just looking at the picture and reading through the fines such as "Racing/Trial of Speed - 300Rs.", "Jumping Traffic Signal - 100Rs.", "Using musical/Shrill Horn - 100Rs.", and "Cutting Yellow Line - 100Rs." (all of which I have observed frequently, especially the horn one) when I noticed "Ladies seat occupying by male person - 100Rs.". I don't know which seat is the "Ladies", but I thought that its an interesting thing to have a traffic fine for.

For dinner this Monday Tracy, Dad, and I tried to find "Daily Bread", which we had been told was a really good sandwich shop. We ended up going about 2km farther than the store (we found it on the way back) and having dinner at the *very* sketchy (but delicious!) "Orange".

On Tuesday, Dad and I stayed closer to home and explored the area. We wandered about a small park near the office that is the best maintained of the parks I have seen (no trash piles!), then headed down the road to a "Tuberculosis Hospital" (Dad is a lung doctor, with a sort-of sub-specialty in tuberculosis). We wandered inside and (after Dad gave his credentials) were able to chat with one of the doctors there for about 20 minutes. It turns out the place doesn't treat patients, but is the central place in India for training of doctors to care for tuberculosis and for research into processes to eliminate the disease from India. After we left Dad explained all the medical details I hadn't understood, and described the details of the disease to me. All very interesting.

We then tried to get into Palace Grounds, which is a really huge open area where concerts are held, to try to see the Bangalore Palace which occupies a small corner of the grounds and is supposed to be a copy of Windsor Palace! On the way I bought some "Jackfruit" from a street vendor. It is a *huge* [larger than watermelon] spikey fruit that has a bunch of smaller yellow pieces inside that you eat individually. I had one and it was delicious, but my mouth started itching so we decided to throw the rest of the pieces I had bought away :-(. I haven't been able to find any in a supermarket, but hopefully I will have more luck in the future.

Anyway, after walking several km we found an entrance to Palace Grounds and wandered in. It was, unfortunately, partitioned so that we couldn't get to the side that has the palace, but we did spot what looked like a large amusement park, and we found an abandoned go-kart course where we sat and enjoyed the breeze for a while. That was the lowest population density that I have experienced in a month and a half!

After we tired of Palace Grounds we took a rickshaw to Daily Bread (we knew where it was now!), had fairly good sandwiches and delicious gelatto for lunch, then I went to work. We had dinner again at the dosa place, and it was again delicious!

On Wednesday I woke up at 5:30AM and grabbed a quick shower before helping Dad get an auto-rickshaw down to the bus place for his tour, for which the bus left at 7AM and returned at 11PM! He had a great time, though the day was rather long!. As for me, I went in to work at 6AM and worked till 8PM, trying to catch on all the time I had been spending out of work. However, Wednesday was Nelses 25th birthday (and Thursday was Christian's 31st), so a *huge* contingent of people from the office went over to Opus for karaoke night. Some highlights of the evening: talking with a new intern, Camillo, from Columbia and getting the inside scoop from him on traveling to Columbia (sounds like it would be fantastic! And it is quite feasible to do without being kidnapped/killed!), along with Christan and Udai sang "Under the Bridge" (we had a stage act and everything. We sang badly, but had fun ^_^), and had tequila shots with Nels and Christian because it was their birthday (then found out that each shot cost 450Rs.!!!!! That is more than $10 for each shot!).

Thursday was Dad's last Day in Bangalore :-(. I worked in the morning (as had become routine), then we had lunch at the dosa place and headed over to commercial street to do some shopping. The shopping was really a lot of fun and Dad found a whole bunch of cool things, such as a *beautiful* figure of Krishna. We also bought a pair of kurtas (traditional Indian shirts) together, and I (finally) found a couple of cool earrings for myself.

After lots of shopping we headed over to MG road to sit down and relax for a while over a couple beers, after which we did a little more shopping on MG road for some positively *beautiful* scarves. I tried to get an auto-rickshaw in a slightly different spot than usual to get back home, and it ended up causing us to have to walk and extra km to find one (though we got meter!).

Back home it had gotten dark and the power was out, so Dad had to finish up his packing in the dark. We went to dinner (again) at the delicious dosa place, then I called a cab to pick us up for the airport. Just getting the cab to the house proved to be an adventure as it was hard for me to get ahold of the guy on my cellphone, and it took him *an hour* of roving around Sadashivanagar to actually find the place! Even once we were in the cab the adventure was not over, as the cab had a broken horn, the driver was constantly on his cellphone, and when he wasn't on the cellphone drove more recklessly than any other person I have yet seen here!

The airport was a zoo, but I think that it always is. I flashed my passport at the guards and managed to get into what turned out to be the passengers only area and helped Dad get all checked in and said goodbye. Then I tried to leave, and almost got arrested! I tried to just cooly walk out the door, but there were security guards on both sides and one of them stopped me. I tried some BS story about having to say goodbye to someone, but he just told me to go back inside (apparently once inside, you are only supposed to leave on a plane!). At this point I told him that I had just gone inside to help my Dad, and that I wasn't a passenger. He was *not* happy with this and asked, somewhat angrily, how I got in. I said that I just showed my passport, which he then took from me and stared *balefully* at. All through this exchange Dad was inside the airport and watching, getting ready to bail me out (though I don't know what he could have done). After a couple of minutes of staring at the passport, the guard handed it to me and just looked away, like I had disappeared. This was all the sign I needed, so I (quickly) waved goodbye to dad and *booked* it away from the guard and headed back home via the waiting taxi driver!

I would like to end the post on that high note, but I have just a couple of other things to mention. Once home I ended up staying up for several hours with Nels and Tracy, listening to music and generally putzing around. We also went outside and danced around on our roof in the *deluge* of rain that hit right after I got home (which marks the first, and probably only, time that I have had my shirt off while being outside in India :-0).

Not too much happened on Friday. Mostly just me working all day (after a year I understand why the CRF probability distribution is convex! I'm sorry to all my readers, but it was a triumphant moment and I had to put it in here). I was expecting to do something that evening, but neither Nels or Tracy came home, so I ended up just futzing on the computer (downloaded all the PhD comics ^_^) and reading my book [it turns out Tracy went to an office party that I forgot about, and Nels is off traveling]. I ended sitting in bed reading for a while, and all the sleep deprivation I've gone through in the last week (working and hanging out with Dad doesn't leave much free time, and I haven't really managed more than 5 or 6 hours in a while) caught up to me. I managed to turn out the light in my room, but I didn't even push the book I was reading out of bed (let alone change or close the door!) before sleep took me (apparently Tracy couldn't figure out what was up, because all the lights were on and my door was open when she got home at 2AM, but I didn't come out of my room or anything).

I woke up fairly early today, but have not done all that much. I finished "Pride and Pregidous" (reading in a nice little park near the flat), which was actually quite good, far better than I expected, and have talked with Elaine, Mike, and Dad (who got home safely, though his bags were soaked in the above mentioned deluge [and apparently my copy of Dummit & Foote that I shipped back with him looks like someone took a sledgehammer to it :'-( ). I'm really enjoying having a nice, relaxing day at home for the first time in weeks ^_^.

Thats all for now! I will post pictures from Dads visit sometime today.

Cheers,
Jason

Bylakuppe!

2007-07-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So, this past Saturday Dad and I woke up at 7AM and wandered about Kushalnagar until we found a place to eat (our hotel doesn't do breakfast) and had delicious porri for breakfast. We checked out of the hotel at 9AM, right when Chosang and Rinzin showed up to take us around Bylakuppe (Chosang also went into the hotel and recovered some money because they had overcharged us by about 300Rs. for the room [so the room cost 450Rs ~ $10 for two people for a night ^_^]).

We then entered Bylakuppe and began touring around temple, starting with a stop down the hill from the "Golden Temple" which is the one mentioned in guidebooks that talk about Bylakuppe. It was a spectacular view over a field of corn and a road lined with trees that all had huge prayer flags on them. From here we proceeded on into the actual temple complex.

Just walking up to the Golden Temple was amazing. The place is ornately decorated and brimming with color. While Dad and I took pictures and chatted with Rinzin, Chosang wandered off to find a monk to open the temple for us. It consisted of 4 stories, of which I believe only the bottom is normally open to the public. A monk let us in and we started on the 2nd story of the temple, which contained a massive golden statue (which I don't understand the religious significance of) and the walls were totally covered with paintings that had intricate details down to the size of my thumbnail (this is a constant through all the temples. Massive, colorful rooms with mindblowingly detailed decorations covering every inch of the walls. Beautiful.). At every temple, when you enter there is a small ritual: putting your hands together, touching your forehead, lips, and chest, then getting on your knees and touching your forehead to the floor. This is repeated three times, then you only do the touching of the hands to forehead, lips, and head and you are finished. It is the most active sign of religious devotion I have ever engaged in, though I can't say that I ever felt particularly moved.

The 3rd and 4th story were designed similarly to the 2nd (and, it turns out later, the 1st) in that they contained a massive golden statue in the center (the statue on the 4th floor is of Buddha).
We always moved through the rooms clockwise (down for you physicists), which is something common to both Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist temples. (Later, when we were being really formal, we also stepped out of the temple walking backwards and being careful not to actually step on the threshold of the temple). To understate things completely, this temple and all of the ones we saw were *astoundingly* beautiful (like a certain person I know who's name starts with an E ^_^).

We saw a huge amount in Bylakuppe, so I will compress it down quite a bit. It was a really wonderful experience ^_^. After floors 2-4 of the golden temple we came down and saw some exhibits, around the 2nd floor, of the Tibetan Buddhist depictions of an equivalent to hell ("were sinners go")! I didn't know such a thing existed, and it was pretty incredible to see. We then continued on to the temple next door that was again huge and beautiful and contained 3 massive (at least 5 meters tall) golden statues of Buddhist sages and Buddha. We then continued on to the very pretty neighboring garden, and went to see Thubrig's son. Thubrig is the brother-in-law of Chosang and the friend of another Tibetan that is a good friend of my Dad's. Thubrig's son is about 10 years old and came to India a couple of years ago to become a monk at the Golden Temple. He was fairly shy, but Dad got some good pictures of him to take to Thubrig.

After visiting Thubrig's son we saw a *massive* (~2-3 meter tall) prayer wheel (massive barrel filled with the various mantra's and prayer's from the Darma, the Buddhist holy book. When the wheel is spun the prayers go up to heaven, or at least that is the general idea), then proceeded to the outside wall of the temple complex. The *entire* wall around this massive complex consists of smaller (~.5 meter tall) prayer wheels, occasionally interspersed with rooms that contain half a dozen more massive prayer wheels. We walked around a good portion of the outside wall spinning the wheels, which was a really cool experience. We then walked up and down a line of 16 monoliths just inside the wall that represent 16 great Buddhist teachers, followed by walking 3 times around another monolith that was somehow (I didn't understand how) special and had lots of other people walking around it (clockwise, of course).

Incidentally, when I seem to sound knowledgeable about things, then switch to saying that I don't understand, it is usually because I wasn't able to understand an explanation of things offered by Chosang or Rinzin or they couldn't understand my question. However, despite the language barrier we managed to have very nice conversations with them, either chatting about Rinzin's schooling or the family life, or being informed about the significance of the things we were seeing. Speaking of Chosang and Rinzin, I would like to underscore how incredibly generous and kind they were to us. They took a day that they had off of various work commitments to take two people that they had never met around their community. This next story illustrates this aptly. As we were leaving golden temple complex (after having seen the 1st floor of the main temple), Dad asked about the "Medicine Buddha", which he is interested in. This didn't translate all that well, but just after he asked Rinzin disappeared for a while. She came back as we were exiting the complex with a small plastic bag filled with what looked kind of like coffee beans. Apparently they are the Rempoche's (overseer of the temple) special medicine to help to recover from illness, and are not very easy to come by! This was something that we were offered just because Dad mentioned something about medicine!

The final cool thing that I will mention about the Golden Temple complex was that there was a moss-covered rock outside the Golden Temple that was carved into a miniature version of another temple complex: the one in Tibet that the Golden Temple was based on. The tragedy here is that the temple in Tibet no longer exists: it was destroyed by the Chinese, probably during the Cultural Revolution.

After the Golden Temple we had lunch (Tibetan putta [a soup] and cowmein [I wanted to try momo, but they didn't have any]), bought some prayer flags (if you write your name, or really the name of any person or group on them then that person/group will be helped at every step in their future), then visited Ngagyur Nyingma (yay for taking pictures of signs) Nunnery, which was much smaller, but still *spectacular*. Also, being a nunnery, there were nuns instead of monks here, which was something I did not know was endorsed by Buddhists (I think there are probably differences between different groups). After this we proceeded to the Sera Jey Monastic University which was again massive and spectacular. I am running out of words to describe these places, so I will simply say where we went, note some interesting facts, and post the pictures as soon as possible (though a lot of my pictures failed to come out :-(, I'll get some from Dad). The cool fact about Sera Jey was that about *four _thousand_* monks were there. And this is only one of 8 temples, and not the largest! This gives you some idea of the size of this community of exiled Tibetans (this is one of two areas given to them by India when the Dali Lama first fled Tibet).

The next temple on our route was Sermey Dratsang Cultural Society, which had *unbelievable* wall hangings and weavings hung everywhere. The common theme in the artwork here is *incredible* detail, lots of color and gold. This temple also had 16 paintings (8 on either side wall) depicting 16 great Buddhist sages, the same 16 that were represented by the monoliths at the Golden Temple. Finally, one of the main statues in this temple was of the Medicine Buddha, and there was also a mandala for the Medicine Buddha (a small scale house, completely made out of gold that depicts (as do all mandala when the word is used in this sense) the world according to the Darma of the Medicine Buddha.

The next monastery, Nalanda, was the newest that we saw. There were several beehives on the front of the temple, which apparently show that the temple will grow and prosper. The other cool thing in this temple was that Chosang had helped to install some of the stones in the goldwork around the central idol in the temple.

At the next monastery we actually saw a bunch of monks in the middle of prayer and meditation! They were chanting in the main temple and we still went in and looked around! (This was the place where we were a little more formal about what we did). I took a short video of them chanting and will see if I can post it. This monastery also had a really big school out back (all of the monasteries had an attached school), and there was also a guy who would pray for things you asked him to (with the length of the prayer proportional to the amount you paid him).

The next monastery only had a single monk that was praying (and would later lead others in prayer) in a back room and beating a drum. From the sound of it Dad and I though that there was a whole group of monks back there, and were really surprised when there was only one! He had quite the resonating voice!

The next temple was the final one. It had incredibly ornate weavings draped everywhere and was, as expected, spectacular. At this point it was 3:30PM and we had been touring around for 6 and a half hours! If we had stayed till 8 we could have had dinner with Chosang and Rinzin and the rest of the family, but given that it was a 5 hour drive back to Bangalore we decided that wouldn't be the best option. Chosang gave Dad and I white silk scarves that he got at this last temple and are apparently blessings ^_^. We had our driver take some group pictures of us in front of the temple, then there were some kids outside the temple that asked Dad to take pictures of them and got *really* excited by when they saw themselves on the LCD screen ^_^. He also got a couple of good pictures of 10 year old monks that were watching the proceedings and seemed to feel to formal to join in until Dad asked to take their picture.

We said goodbye to Chosang and Rinzin at the entrance of Bylakuppe, where we had originally met them. It was really sad saying goodbye to such incredible and kind people, and we made sure to get their mailing address so that Dad could send them pictures and some other thank yous for all they had done for us. I feel like I made two friends that day, especially with Rinzin who was very fun to chat with about plans for schooling and things like that. ^_^

There is one last observation I would like to make. At every temple that we vistited, there was a picture of the Rempoche (the head of the temple), and Chosang and Rinzin would say something about them being the 14th or 17th Rempoche (or some other title). There was generally also a picture of their predecessor. It was not until late in the day or maybe the drive back that I realized that they were not 14th in line in presiding over the temple, but the 14th *incarnation* of a Buddhist that had become enlightened and decided to return to our world to help others find the way to nirvana. It made much more sense when I realized this. Along the same lines, there were pictures of the Dali Lama in most every temple, and many pictures of a small boy who was named to be the next incarnation of the sage that China put in to rule Tibet when the Dali Lama fled. However, the kid in the pictures is the incarnation named by the Dali Lama when the previous died, whereas China named a different incarnation and put this child and his family in "protective custody." Conclude from this what you will, but the exiled Tibetans certainly aren't buying it. I saw several "Boycott Chinese goods" sings in Bylakuppe.

The drive back was, as before, beautiful. The main even on the way back (other than contending with *horrific* [worst I've seen] traffic in Bangalore [did I mention that our driver was awesome?]) was seeing a bunch of Indian men walking down the road, butt naked!!! Considering how not OK anything publicly sexual is here, I couldn't believe what I saw! There were about 6 guys, just walking along the side of the highway with no clothes on, perfectly unconcerned. There were also other men, clothed, walking with them (pushing a pair of them on a cart) and also not alarmed. The only theory I have so far is from Tracy, guessing that these men are Jains (a fairly small but influential religious group here) of a sect that does not wear clothes! Considering the uproar I would expect at seeing a naked woman out on the street, I was shocked to see all these naked men. I think two sayings are particularly appropriate for this:

India is a nation of contradictions.
-lots of people

Anything you can think of might be [is?] true in India.
-Prasad

When we got back, around 8:30PM, we went out with Nels, Rob, Tracy, and Pavol to the dosa place near my house, which turns out to be a *fantastic* restaurant for dinner ^_^. After getting back I decided (as I have for many nights in a row ^_^) that I didn't have the energy to write this blog post and collapsed gratefully into bed.

I think that is *more* than enough for now. Next is Sunday's turn... We shall see if that happens tonight.

Cheers,
Jason

Journey to Bylakuppe and random observations

2007-07-17T05:45:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I haven't posted for a while because 1) I've gotten busy and 2) there is *so* much to talk about. However, I'm just going to buckle down and write this all down! Dad and I went to a Tibetan refugee camp called Bylakuppe this past weekend (though it has been there since the Dali Lama fled Tebet, so its not what I would typically think of as a refugee camp). The trip was *fantastic*, and I'll try to capture some of the highlights here.

Dad and I left Bangalore on Friday at about noon, taking a private taxi (it was fantastic having a private driver for the weekend!) that I hired through work. It was about a 4 hour drive down past Mysore to a town called Hunsore where I was to call Chosang (our contact at Bylakuppe, who is the brother-in-law of a friend of a friend of Dad's! Seems like a tenuous relationship, but we were treated almost like family while we were there, as you will see) for directions to Bylakuppe. The drive itself was amazing. We both brought books but didn't read at all, just marveled at the spectacle when we went through towns and at the beautiful landscape when we left them again. What was especially interesting about the drive was watching the land become more lush and verdant and the houses change in architecture and begin to look to be in better repair as we approached Bylakuppe. Another favorite for me was all the gigantic advertisements for cellphone companies and "The Fun Fort" on small and somewhat broken down houses.

After a stop at Hunsore to call Chosang and handing the phone off to our driver we quickly make it to the entrance to Bylakuppe where Chosang and his daughter Rinzin (who is in 9th grade) were waiting for us. After greeting us Chosang led our driver through the camp on his motorcycle to a Indian town called Kushalnagar on the other side of the camp. The camp itself is very large and it took us 20 or 30 minutes to drive through. It is also beautiful and has an incredible sense of peace, very different from the hectic frenzy of the Indian areas bordering the camp. Everyone was wearing western clothes (even the women, who were also out on the street and wandering around). When our driver make normal (for Bangalore) use of the horn our car received looks of disgust and incredulity. And there were monks, wearing robes colored a deep red, all over the place (it was neat seeing that monks are not necessarily solemn and stuffy. I saw groups of monks running about, playfully roughhousing and the like. Also, I saw monks on motorcycles!! This was extremely exiting to me, but unfortunately I didn't ever manage to get a picture :-( ). I don't know if the feeling of peace is some sort of personal bias, or some sort of more western feeling, but my Dad was also conscious of a greater sense of peace as we drove through the camp.

In Kushalnagar Chosang and Rinzin had arranged a hotel for us (we couldn't stay in the camp without risking arrest by the Indian police and 5 years in jail, as it is officially a refugee camp). After chatting with them for a while (they both speak OK English, but Rinzin's is much better. It is also the easiest to understand of any English that I have heard while in India, as Rinzin has a very very clean American accent) Dad and I wandered about Kushalnagar. Though it was not as peaceful as Bylakuppe it is certainly more peaceful than Bangalore and I felt like I received fewer and more friendly stares than I ever have in Bangalore. We also weren't hassled at all by shopkeepers, then came back to the hotel and had a nice dinner there. In conclusion, I really enjoyed it there.

After dinner Dad and I sat out on our 2nd floor balcony, read, watched people, and played around doing nighttime photography with our cameras which was really a lot of fun (all the while listening to beautiful music lilting from the distance). While sitting on the balcony I had a number of observations. I noticed a teenage/early-20s Tibetan woman walking around with a "Fuck on the first date" T-shirt that I thought would be fairly risky in the US, let along a traditional Indian town! I've also noticed that balding seems to be a very common thing for older Indian men, and wonder if that is an accurate statement. I also marvel at how deeply western clothing has penetrated into India, at least for men (apparently there is a definite perception that women who wear western clothes are, shall we say, "looser"). You still see lots of men wearing the traditional pants/skirt thing, but western button up shirts are pretty much the only thing you see guys wearing (younger people will wear T-shirts). I don't know why the clothing seems to be so viral, but I would be interested in seeing a country like China to see if such things have happened there as well. One final note along this line is that all school uniforms are very western, even for girls (though their uniform has a skirt, not pants).

India also seems to have a very strong culture of being outside. I could look out from my balcony and see at least half a dozen small groups of men hanging out in front of shops and chatting or buying things from a shopkeeper. This is in direct contrast to the US where you have to go inside to do almost anything (or bring 'inside' with you, like going to the drive-through of a fast food place in your car). Its not like the weather encourages people to be outside, especially in this rainy monsoon season, so I wonder why this tradition seems to be so strong.

Just a few more things I've noticed. Mustaches are *very* popular in Bangalore (I've heard 'you aren't a real man' if you don't have a mustache in the next state over, and that has some influence here too). Also, peeing on the side of the road seems to be completely accepted here (usually just by guys, but I did see a father holding up his 1-year-old daughter's skirt so that she so relieve herself by the side of the road while we were sitting on our balcony). Finally, I've noticed that while there is a huge variation in the skin tone of Indians (from very dark to essentially Caucasian), there is almost zero variation in hair color (though there are a few people who look like they have gotten red highlights in their hair, but other than that the only variation I see is when old people get gray in their hair!).

One last amusing anecdote about the hotel room we were staying: The bathroom did not have any towels, soap, or toilet paper (normal here, which is why I carry TP on trips with me now) so we requested towels and soap from the hotel. A guy brought up a single towel and a bar of soap to me, so I asked for another towel, to which he replied "No sir, only one towel per room." Dad and I got a good chuckle out of that one!

Ok, thats enough about Friday! The next post will be on Saturday and touring around Bylakuppe!

Cheers,
Jason

A trip to MG road with Dad

2007-07-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

After that last, massive, post I'm going to try to make this one a bit shorter. Not too much happened this morning. I slept in a bit till 8:00. Revi came by in the morning because someone at work had decided it was sari (formal wear for the Indian female) day today and Revi and Tracy dressed up in their saries. I got to chat with the two of them, in the full formal wear, while wearing a towel, which was amusing.

I had a very productive morning at work, writing up some thoughts in a new area I'm working on a bit (adversarial learning on CRFs). I was going to meet Dad at noon, but at about 11:30 Venkie IMed me asking how things were going. This eventually resulted in me staying an extra hour trying to code in a change that he had suggested to the pseudo-random number generator. Probably the most irksome part of all of this was after I sent him the first copy of the writeup on the algorithms, to which he replied "I can't read this. Have you ever heard of pseudo-code? Its this thing called 'pseudo-code' " which was a bit of slap in the face and very hard to swallow. However, I had no choice but to rewrite the file to his satisfaction and then try to make the changes he suggested. Anyways, around 1:00 I finally got out and Dad and I went to pizza hut and tried again to set up his cell phone (in vain). After the *delicious* meal at pizza hut we came back to the office, arranged transportation down to the Tibetan camp Bylakuppe for tomorrow, grabbed Tracy, and headed down to MG road!

It was definitely a fun afternoon. This was Dad's first trip in an auto-rickshaw, which is certainly a new experience, and one really impossible to describe (especially in heavy Bangalore traffic). Once we got to MG road we toured around a few places, the cat (really magazine) store, my favorite bookshop, the Planet M music store, and a couple of stores selling neat Indian goods (I bought a few gifts ^_^). After all that shopping we took a break at a resturant on the 3rd story of a building overlooking the milling masses of Brigade Road, sat, and chatted. After that nice break we attempted to find Gerudo mall, which I had been to about 5 weeks ago, but were unable to find our way there and were fairly tired so we hopped in an rickshaw back to Sadashivanagar(where I live).

Funny story from the drive back: our rickshaw was stopped in traffic and there was a bus diagonally in front of it with some space behind (right next to our rickshaw). A guy on a motorcycle drove into that space, and while he was still slowly drifting forward started staring at us. This guy had his neck cranked around 90 degrees! However, while he was staring at us, he kept drifting forward on the motorcycle and smacked the front of the bike right into the back of the bus! He wasn't hurt at all, just startled, and all of us and the rickshaw driver had a good chuckle at him. He was too distracted by all the white people to notice where he was going!

Dad went home for a while and I worked for a bit (after we tried to get his phone worked out again and the people asked for an additional *two days* to get his phone unlocked :-P), then we walked down to Opus with Nels and Rob. Rob split off to go home once we got there, but Dad, Nels, and I had a really nice time at Opus (good music, good drinks, good food, good people ^_^). We did not participate in Booze & Brains (quiz night) this week, but the main waiter actually recognized us as Thursday night regulars! :-). I guess we've established quite the tradition.

After Opus we headed home, and Dad and I will meet tomorrow at about 11:30AM to get picked up by a cab and drive ~250km to Bylakuppe! Should be a cool trip! Since I've been home I've just been futzing on the blog (and talking to Elaine! Yay! She gets here in14 days, and I *cannot wait*!). Now I should *really* get to sleep, so thats all for now!

Cheers,
Jason

Dad is here!

2007-07-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

The past two days have been pretty busy! Tuesday night I headed over to the airport at about 11:15PM and waited there for about an hour and a half to pick up dad. Fortunately the taxi ride back from the airport was significantly less eventful (and much cheaper) than the last one. We got to my place around 2AM and went to sleep soon afterwards.

The next morning I woke up before Dad (he slept in a bit). Once he woke up and while he was getting ready I made a slight breakthrough in part of my research (saw a new way of looking at a problem I was working on the previous day) ^_^. Once we were all ready we wondered around the neighborhood a bit, I showed him Basham circle (again, "circles" in Bangalore are more often just intersections), and we went to the dosa place that is near my flat. I'm not sure why, but the people at the dosa place treated me more like a tourist than usual: even after I told them what we wanted they tried to give me food advice, which was rather irksome (I totally related to Elaine getting upset when people thought she was a tourist in Martinique).

After breakfast we checked out a guest house just a block from my flat and checked Dad in there after looking at a few rooms (and I canceled the reservation I had already made for him in another place in Malleshwarm). Once we brought his bags over and got him settled in I went to work and put in a few hours of work and grabbed a light lunch before leaving work again at 1PM to take Dad around. We wandered a little south of Basham circle, had lunch and a nice chat a Chinese place I've been to before with Nels. After lunch we wandered back, attempted to get a cellphone set up for Dad (it is proving to be very difficult to unlock his phone to use other SIM cards, and I think we have given up now. We have the Hutch SIM card, but they already took his phone for a day and wanted two more! I think we're cutting our losses and giving up [note: this is from the perspective of 'now', which is Thursday, breaking from the rest of this post which is on 'Wednesday'], and stopped by the nice bookstore that I found in our neighborhood.

After that full afternoon Dad went back to his hotel and I worked for about an hour, then we were picked up by Ravi (a researcher in my group) to head over to the wedding reception (which comes before the wedding here, as an announcement of the impending [the next day] marrage to the world)of a Nikhil (another guy in my group, who sits next to me). The reception was all the way across town, and on the way there we picked up another guy in my group, Deba, who was buying some gifts fro Nikhil and his bride. It took about an hour to get across town and it was very nice chatting with Ravi and Deba on the way.

The reception itself was rather incredible. The entire building was covered in lights and there was a massive and colorful sign announcing it outside. There were literally several *hundred* people there with all sorts of colorful saris and nice clothing. We initially looked around the huge (and again, colorfully decorated) room, than sat down and relaxed in one of the many chairs facing a stage in the front of the room that had a pair of (I kid you not) *thrones*. I mostly listened to Ravi and Deba discuss the similarities and differences of Indian wedding traditions (though I did learn something about red dots on the forehead. A bindi is the dot that women wear on their forheads and it is really just a style and fashion thing, when a woman is married they start putting a certain coloring on the place they part their hair and do so till their husband dies, and finally a tika is the red powder I've had on my forehead in Hampi and it means "god's grace"). Nihil and his bride eventually came in, had a small ceremony for either the bride's or the bride's mother's birthday (complete with the really weird, slightly mutated Indian version of "Happy Birthday"), then they started greeting guests. Every single one of the people came up in small groups, greeted the bride and groom, and had their picture taken (another major feature of the wedding reception is that the bride and groom stage a bunch of pictures for the photographers... who seem to really be the ones that control weddings nowadays...), which makes me feel bad for the bride and groom who have to keep smiling for pictures! Fortunately we got through the line early and went to have some of the *delicious* food, of which their were copious amounts of!

After we had eaten we headed out (receiving an exit gift of a coconut ^_^) and took Ravi's car back across town. The chatting was even more interesting on the way back. Deba is from eastern India and his family is originally from Bangladesh but migrated during "The Partition" when India and Pakistan became separate countries. We got to hear some about the partition, about east & west Pakistan (which were one country until east Pakistan succeeded and became Bangladesh), and some interesting and relatively unknown bits of history (the eastern side of the partition is less well known and less well studied). The ethnic group of Deba's grandparents apparently has a language and a script all of their own, but it is now really dieing out (pretty much all of the people left Bangladesh, either for England or for India [there are many Indian stores in England run by people of this group whose name I can't remember]). Anyway, lots of other intersting things were discussed, research, the state of some institutions in India, transportiation (Deba had the priceless quote about autorickshaws, "They're the fastest way around because that guy [the driver] doesn't care about his safety or yours!"). In conclusion, the ride back was a lot of fun ^_^.

Once we got back Dad came over to my place for a little bit and met Tracy (Nels still wasn't back!). After he left I got to talk to Mom and Brandon for a while (Brandon just got back from a month-long, spectacular-sounding trip to Spain and France!), which was really nice. After I got off the phone with them I called Elaine, which was also *really* nice! ^_^

Wow, and that was only Wednesday! I think I'm going to do another post for Thurday!

Cheers,
Jason

2007-07-09T09:06:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

For some reason Blogger isn't letting me edit my title, so I guess I will do without! This past weekend has really been a lot of fun. After having been to Hampi the weekend before, I stayed in town for this one. On Friday a whole bunch (me, Nels, Rob, Tracy, Christian, Prasad) of my friends from MSRI headed across town to party with the astrophysicists. We hung out in Sonnett & Natalie's appartment (which is *really* nice), chatted, drank, played some fun games and heard some interesting stories over "Nevery Have I Ever". Overall it was a really fun night that we will hopefully repeat again in a few weeks!

Saturday I went into work to get a few things done in anticipation of having less time once Dad gets here (which is in like 36 hours now!). While I was roaming around the office in search of a printer that wasn't malfunctioning in some sort of creative new way I ran into a couple of interns who had just started this past week. Their names are James and Dan and they are MBA students at Cambridge. We chatted a little bit and the dinner on MG road was proposed for the night!

After working the rest of the afternoon I headed down to MG road with Tracy & Shalin, and we met up with Dan & James at the McDonalds (yup, quite a landmark. We were just standing in front of good 'ol Ronald). It took a while to get the whole group together, and I got to chat with Dan a bit, which was really fun. He is Mormon and spent the two years of his mission in Thailand in '95 and '96. According to him Indian & Thailand are kind of like Switzerland & Germany, fairly similar but still really quite different. Apparently the food is spicier in Thailand, and putting your hands together (like one was praying) in front of your chest is the common greeting there (with the height of the hands denoting the level of respect).

Once we all got together we headed over to the Cariabe Club, which is the Trinidadian/Spanish/Cuban/I-don't-know resturant that I went to a few weeks ago with Christian and Nels. It has *fantastic* food and it was really fun talking to everyone there and hearing a little about the MBA program at Cambridge. That about wraps up Saturday.

After going out on both Friday & Saturday I didn't feel like doing much on Sunday. I slept in, went into work for a few hours, had lunch at a soup & salad (though my salad ended up being something that *I* would call a soup) with Nels & Rob, then came home, fuzted about, and read for the afternoon. Very relaxing ^_^.

However, Nels got back from work around 8:30 and suggested that we all go out to a club called "Zero-G" (its on the 10th story of a skyscraper downtown). Tracy, Christian, & Rob all came and we met up with Sonnett & Natalie there. The view from the club is *really* spectacular, and the place itself is very cool looking: cool colored lights, modern art type furniture, a (sketch) pool in the back... a very nice place. Getting to Zero-G, however, proved to be a bit of an ordeal. Christian & I shared an auto, which started off going *incredibly* slowly, basically just coasting (Christian asked if they needed us to get out and push). After a bit they pulled over, got out to look at the engine, and it turned out the accelerator handle (same thing as a motorcycle) was broken! To work around this they just pulled out the cable that ran to the engine, the driver wrapped it around his hand and pulled a various levels of tension to accelerate!! It took him a while to get the hang of changing gears with the new means of speed control.... That is probably the sketchiest and most dangerous experience I have yet had on the roads.

There were a couple of other amusing stories from the night too. Nels had a glass of wine when we got there and when he finished it he asked for "another glass", so they brought him an empty wine glass... ^_^ Apparently at many bars in the US there will be some 21 year old girl who brings around shots to various tables, at Zero-G the 21 year old girl was a 30 year old, slightly overweight, guy wearing a sombrero (though this is probably due to the fact that there were no females working at Zero-G. I know I've seen cashiers at the supermarket that are female, but other than that I don't know how many I've seen that have jobs in shops or that sort of thing [unless they are family run], something I need to start paying attention to). The final crazy thing about Zero-G was the Indian dancing. I also noticed this at the MSRI resort a few weeks ago, but the Indian style of dance at parties is markedly different than the American style. I can't really describe it, but I recommend that you watch a couple of Bollywood movies if you want to see.

That ended a quite full and fun weekend. Not too much has happened today, except that a chipmunk *fell into our office*! There is a small hole in one of the walls and somehow a chipmunk managed to go through it and fall down!!! It was freaking out, running around, and made it down the stairs and to the ground floor before anyone caught it. It was a little bit surreal, and highly amusing. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures :-(.

Well, thats all for now! G'night all!

Cheers,
Jason

Fourth of July

2007-07-05T12:04:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Ironic that this post is going out not on the fourth of July, but oh well. After the fun of this past weekend in Hampi, not too much happened this week until the 4th. There are, of course, no official celebrations around here (though I found out today that last year some interns got together and set off fireworks... Oh well, things to keep in mind in case I spend future 4ths outside the US), so we celebrated by taking a trip to karaoke night at Opus. We met up with the astrophysicists we met at Hampi, and about 8 people from the office came, so we had a pretty massive group. Dinner was really good (I've discovered that I can actually get beef at Opus! I didn't think I was going to get any at all while I was here!). I think there is some sort of tradition starting when we have events with Prasad because Ashwani smuggled a bottle of brandy into Opus (in case they didn't have any and because it is *way* cheaper than house drinks). In addition to dinner I had a couple of beers, and after mentioning that enough alcohol might convince me to do karaoke, Nels had some (delicious) brandy shots show up in front of me.

We finished up chatting and dinner right about when the karaoke actually started. Unfortunately, the people who got up to sing were, by and large, *really* good, which meant that I wouldn't go up to sing by myself. Nels is the only person who went up by himself and sung "We're so happy together," which was the closest thing to a 4th of July celebrating America song that he could really find. However, the high point of the night was when Nels, Rob, Christian (who is incidentally not American), one of the astrophysicists whos name I forget (the one that wasn't in Hampi), and I went up and celebrated the 4th by singing the most american song we could find, which turned out to be the Beach Boy's "Surfin' USA". I think someone has posted a youtube video of that, but I'm not going to give any further hints as it was rather horrible and embarrassing. Fun though ^_^.

After Opus closed at 11:30 Nels and I came back home and hung out in Tracy's room, watched VH1 and chatted for a while. All in all a good night ^_^.

All right, time for me to go to bed. Its almost 1:00AM and I've spent the last several hours posting to the blog / uploading pictures on facebook. I think I am *finally* all caught up, and I hope that you all enjoy the pictures and the posts.

Cheers & g'night,
Jason

Hampi day 2 and the rest of the week

2007-07-05T09:49:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Its taking far longer than I expected to get up all of this stuff about Hampi, so I'm going to try to keep this post short and actually get up to date! We woke up fairly late, having *really* enjoyed sleeping after our long day. After another cold, soapless shower (that nonetheless felt great) we went to breakfast. This place was actually pretty fast with our food, which means that we were only able to go to the main streed, buy some shirts, and come back before the food was ready!

Breakfast was delicious, and then set out for a temple/castle complex about 5km away from modern day Hampi. Everyone else rode bikes, but since my knee had been hurting and Sonnett was also having knee problems we instead hired a rickshaw for the day. It was the nicest rickshaw that I have yet been in, with plush seats, an analog clock mounted inside, and even a good stereo system! The driver first took us to the royal baths, which used to be a swimming pool for the king and queen and was really cool. He then took us over to this *massive* area that used to be a castle. It had several swimming pools, one of which looked about olympic sized, and one that looked like an Escher painting! Keep in mind that all of this stuff is ~1000 years old! There are also a few remaining tall buildings, which provided a breathtaking view of the surrounding area. The rest of the group caught up with us at this temple complex, we wandered through some "secret" (cloak & dagger) tunnels that Prasad knew about, then moved on to see elephant stables!

The stables were very neat (I posted some pictures) and there was also an ancient statues museum that was neat to tour around. We finished the touring for the day by visiting one final temple, that had the most well preserved and intricate carvings and sculpture that I have yet seen. The temple contains 1000 images of the prince Rama (hero of the Ramayana), and is decorated with a montage of scenes form the Ramayana! Very cool!

After the touring we headed back to Hampi, shopped a little, then had a *very* late and very long lunch/early dinner at the Mango Tree (excellent food to finish up the visit to Hamp ^_^). After dinner we grabbed all of our stuff from our hotel and headed out to the train station (where Nels and Prasad disappeared for a while to go buy booze to sneak onto the train!). We got onto the train without any major issues, but we found out that all of our beds were side births :-(. What this means is that instead of having a semi-compartment of four beds that are separated from the rest of the train by a curtain, we instead had beds that were smaller and built into the wall (and no place to gather and party :-( ). Despite this we found some space for the first hour or so and consumed most of our booze. Nels, Prasad (though he denied it at the time), and myself all got a bit soused. We managed to find some snacks, Prasad & I chatted with the astrophysicists (Natalie, Sonnett, and Nick) for a while, then came back to our own car and Prasad, Nels, and I just sort of sat around and chatted for a little while before we went to bed (I must say, I really enjoy chatting ^_^).

Sleeping was less of a challenge than I was expecting, though I will avoid side births when possible in the future. We woke up at 5:00am on Monday, as the train was supposed to get into Bangalore at 6. We didn't get there until 8! :-( It was, nonetheless, a fantastic weekend. And after not having more than a cold, no soap shower for several days, my shower back at the apartment was *awesome*!

Well thats about all for Hampi. Here are the links for the pictures that I posted to facebook:
Day 1: http://claremont.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045131&l=15c16&id=13300735
Day 2: http://claremont.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045349&l=3d68f&id=13300735

Cheers,
Jason

A weekend in Hampi

2007-07-03T08:35:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

This post is coming out a little bit late as I have lots to talk about from this weekend, which in case you couldn't tell by the title, I spent in Hampi. Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire many years ago and is filled with all sorts of fantastic ruins. It is also not a very well known place, which means that it is not as touristy and busy as Mysore was. A quick summary of the weekend is that it was a *fantastic* time. Now for the slightly longer summary.

Our train left at 10:30pm, so we met at the office at 9:00pm. This may seem like a lot of time to catch a train, but it turned out we needed it because I forgot to leave the one key the Tracy, Nels, and I share for Tracy! We had to have our auto-rickshaw (which was stuffed full with myself, Nels, Prasad, and Rob) turn around, drive by the place Tracy was eating, and hand her the key out of the side. Despite this rather long detour we managed to make it to the train station with plenty of time to spare and got situated in our train. Just like the trip to Mysore we were in 2nd class sleeper with air conditioning, which basically means we had four bunks in a compartment that we could close off with a curtain (oh, and it got *really* cold because of the A/C). The surprising part of the night was that as we were settling in we saw some other Americans in the space next to us, who asked us if we new Christian (who was originally going to come with us, as was Pavol, except they both became sick)! It turned out he had met them previously at an 'expatriates club' event and had told them about the trip. Their names were Sonnett, Natalie, and Nick and we all hung out together for the whole weekend. This began when the seven of us all packed into our part of the car, played a little uno, chatted, and had some beers that Prasad and Rob sneaked onto the train (which is not strictly legal, at least the drinking of the beers...). The phrase of the night, and really the theme of the weekend, was "Cloak and Dagger."

The train ride was 10 hours, and the beds are fairly small and uncomfortable. However it passed uneventfully, with Prasad vigilantly (but unnecessarily) guarding our valuables from thieves. Our train actually went to a town called Hospit, from which we took a 45 minute auto-rickshaw ride (it was pretty cool going through all the different small villages, having children run up to the rickshaw to wave and say "hello" to the white people, and going back at the end of the weekend we even saw a parade with a band and lots of cows horns pained and covered in jasmine [smelled awesome ^_^]). The most amusing part of the ride was when the driver suddenly stopped, seemingly at random, wandered off to take a leak, then hopped back into the car to keep going. It is definitely the case that people have no problem using the sides of the road as public toilets here.

Once we got to Hampi we were hit with a crowd of people offering us rooms (incidentally, it was incredibly nice to have Prasad mediating for us all weekend, as he can actually speak the Kannada [the language here] and he does not seem like an easy target for scamming). I forgot my backpack in the auto-rickshaw!!!, but nothing happened to it and I was able to get it back without any problems (^_^). Once we got settled into our accommodations (and took ice-cold showers without any soap) we had breakfast. While the food ended up being good, the actual breakfast process to something like 1.5 hours (once we ordered the lady there sent her son to go get food!). Once we got the food we began touring around Hampi. We started with the only remaining active temple (the only one that had not had its idol desecrated by invading armies hundreds of years ago). All the different temples seem to have the same style of architecture, but that architecture is different from anything I have ever seen elsewhere in the world. Anyway, the main temple was really neat, and I got blessed by an elephant! There was an elephant with its forehead painted, you give it a few rupees, it gives them to its handler, and then puts its trunk on your head for just a moment. It was definitely a cool feeling ^_^.

After the temple we started wandering around ruins of the old temples and bazaars outside of the working temple. It was all *beautiful*, even in its ruined state. It was even more incredible because some of the stuff was from like 1000AD! I will try to post pictures soon, but facebook has been being problematic lately.

At this point of the day we were getting hungry, so we went to a *fantastic* resturant called "The Mango Tree". You sit on grass mats outside and have a fantastic view over the river that goes by Hampi. Also, the food was amazing ^_^. While we were there we met a couple of Englishmen that had been in Hampi for a few days. They were spending a few weeks in India and just traveling around Asia in general, taking a break from graduate studies (the guy I talked to was in med school).

After lunch we began a long odessy to see Hanuman's (the monkey god) temple, which is a ways away from Hampi and across a river. We walked to the river, going through several other temples (and I aquired a bindi [the red mark on the forehead. No, it is not for unmarried women, it is a bleessing that you can get a most temples. I had the powder rubbed on my forehead and then was hit up for money. This is a rather frequent story]). We then took a boat a little ways down the river that goes by Hampi. This boat was certainly... unique. It was a bamboo framework with tarred animal skin on the outside. It basically looked like part of a coconut, which we stuffed 10 people into! We floated down the river and were dropped off for a little while to see another temple. The unique feature of this one was its musical columns. It has a whole bunch of small columns that, when knocked on with a fist, emit different musical notes! I have no idea how they were constructed, but apparently there used to be traditional dances at this temple with all the music provided by people tapping these columns!

Once we were done with the musical columns temple, we began the final part of our journey to Hanuman's temple. We first had to cross the river, which almost didn't happen because the people who ran the boats wanted all their money up front and we really didn't want to be abandoned on the other side of the river. We eventually made it across, though with feelings of distrust toward the people rowing us. At this point everything in the trip took on a general aura of sketchiness. Once across we had to hike over a few kilometers of random path through fields before we ended up at the bottom of the massive hill that the temple is on top of (right as it was getting dark). We made it to the top (in several groups as my knee had started bothering me and another person in the group also has bad knees) just before dark. The view from the temple is spectacular, and the sunset is supposed to be amazing (unfortunately it was too cloudy to see that day :-( ). The highlight of Hanuman's temple (other than visiting the birthplace of a god!) is that there are a whole bunch of monkeys up there that you can feed (that is one of the pictures that is going up ^_^). By the time we finished feeding the monkeys darkness had really fallen.

Thus began our trip to get back to Hampi. We hiked down the hill/mountain, then had to be guided back along those tiny paths in the dark to the river. If I had been doing this by myself it would have been *exactly* what you are not supposed to do when traveling abroad, and the whole thing felt pretty sketchy. However, once we made it back to the river the coconut boats were wating for us and (after sitting in a pool of water in the bottom of one) they took us back up the river (the poor guys had to work *alot* harder against the current). Once up the river we had "just a little ways" to the place outside Hampi we were going for dinner. This turned out to be about a half hour walk, for a whole group of tired people. It didn't really help when dinner (at this place recommended by the lonely planet) didn't have any light, took 2 hours to cook, and tasted terrible. After we got back to the hotel and slept like the dead!

I think I'm going to stop this post here for now. I'm getting tired and this is starting to get a bit rambling. I'll talk about Sunday in Hompi sometime later ^_^.

Cheers,
Jason

Yummy food and some more pictures

2007-06-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-24T07:41:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-24T07:08:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-06-22T12:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

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....

2007-06-18T06:40:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-06-18T06:39:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-15T07:48:00.001-07:00

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!!!

2007-06-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-12T22:05:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-07T20:55:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-06T21:41:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-05T20:42:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-05T20:41:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-05T20:40:00.004-07:00

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

2007-06-05T20:40:00.003-07:00

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

2007-06-05T20:40:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-06-02T19:39:00.000-07:00

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

Purpose of this blog

2007-05-18T20:44:00.000-07:00

Hopefully I will be using this blog to post about my adventures in Bangalore this summer. For anyone who I've sent this to who doesn't yet know, I will be spending the summer working for Micrsoft Research in Bangalore, India. I leave for India on June 1st and get back to Medford on August 18th. I'm working in the Algorithms, Cryptography, and Security research group there, and that is about all I know!

Oh, and one last thing:
HI FROM ELAINE!!!

^_^