Change is Inevitable

Just got back from the AR Rahman concert in Bangalore. Amazing.

We left at around 4.30 pm, planning to get some dinner before the concert. Because most restaurants don't open for dinner till around 7 pm, we had to go to a mall to eat at the food court. It was called Garuda mall, and it was definitely a good change to see a lot more youngsters around.

The concert's location was really good. It was a huge field and since it was at night, it was not hot at all. The breeze around the area helped. As expected, there was a huge rush to get in, and to make matters worst, there was only one "metal detector". I doubt that thing even worked...but nevertheless, this created a huge bottleneck. Ahh, more of getting pushed and people coming WAYYY too close.

Inside the ground, they had about four 3D screens and they had issued everyone with 3D glasses.  I didn't really see much of the "3D" aspect of it because the cameras couldn't do justice to the beauty of the stage. The lighting on the stage was just AMAZING! Seriously incredible. Each song basically had a different back drop, and each of them was very creative and went along with the tone of the song. And these backdrops were dynamic too. One of my favorite ones was when they played one of the songs that Lata Mangeshkar had sung, and since she wasn't there, they had a video of her singing instead (obviously done artistically). The backdrop during "Khwaja Mere Khwaja" was another amazing one. I tried taking pictures of it but it was useless...=(

We had bought the cheapest tickets, 500 rupees, which were standing ones. Hence there was some dancing going on as well, so I joined in the fun. Most of the people with 500 Rs tickets were young and very energetic, hence the atmosphere was generally great.

AR Rahman wasn't the only singer there though. There were several singers, but I believe every song that was played, AR Rahman had a role in it (since he is also a composer as well as other stuff). All the singers were of a really high calibre though, and most of them knew how to entertain a crowd.

They closed with some song which I do not know the name of, but the message was good. The message which AR Rahman closed with was "Change is Inevitable", and to fight corruption. There was also a brief slideshow on the backdrop showing the French Revolution, then the fight for independence and then a message to the youth.

Overall, a great night and I"m happy =)

Week 2

Yesterday was the end of my second week. On Wednesday, I'll have to present what I have so far to update the entire team on my progress, so I'll have three days to get my act together and make some significant progress. 

Today, I woke up early, and then right before showering, I realized it's Saturday! So I went straight back to bed. The song below will illustrate effectively how I'm feeling:

Anyway, that's it for now. About to decided where I'll watch the IPL final. Hopefully it's a good match =)

Surprise!

Today, I should have come back to my apartment to a major surprise, however I was tipped off earlier so didn't get a shock or anything.

What was the surprise? Check out the pictures below:

In case you haven't figured it out yet, compare it with this picture:

YES! new tv!!! It's a Sony Bravia, about 30something inches? Lol I'm excited!!!

Also, today I booked my ticket to Hyderabad for next weekend, most likely another trip to Goa the week after. The interns from the Pune campus would most likely join us, and there will be about 40 more interns joining us next week. That's actually kind of scary...how will I remember all their names?! And by the time I leave at the end of my internship, there would have been approximately 70+ interns in Bangalore. lol this will definitely be interesting, feels like I'm on exchange again =)

Laundry Ordeal and Wonderful Punjabi Food!

Yesterday was tiring. I finished work at about 7.45 pm, and head straight to the grocery shop to get some detergent. I must add that I took my own sweet time! Over there I run into my friend, who tells me that the laundry place closes at 9 pm. I started panicking. If you have ever taken a seminar or listened to a talk about cross-cultural communication or cross-cultural understanding, etc., here is something they may not have taught you. Young men, no matter what culture or background, we are all the same. We all measure the "critical laundry threshold point" the same way. And trust me, once it reaches that point, it is definitely "critical".

Anyway, so I rushed to my room, got the clothes and rushed to the laundry place. And when I reach there, guess what? They don't accept cash! This is probably the only place I've ever seen which prefers debit card over cash. Now my bank account would take about two weeks to get activated, so I'm unable to put any money in it, and hence, my card is virtually worthless. After a long negotiation in my broken Hindi and the dude's broken English, he finally accepted cash. It costs 30 rupees for the washer, and the dryer is free, and there is no limit on the number of times you can use it. But time was running out and to cut the long story short, my clothes didn't dry fully! Check out the picture below to see how I ended up drying the ones that didn't dry completely...yes, i piled them all on to the bed, and switched the fan on full blast. It actually dried pretty quickly!

But then, that wasn't yet the biggest headache. I had to iron the clothes! There comes a point in every ironing n00b's lives when they realize that ironing clothes is actually an art. I would say the irons they gave here was pretty good and I did a "decent" job, relative to what happened the last time I touched an iron about a year back (burnt my pants)

Anyway, that was yesterday. Today, I began realizing that my project is going to be much harder than originally anticipated. There is just so much I need to learn, and so much to improvise on the spot. And the project is so complicated that in order to come up with something accurate and useful, it would require A LOT of testing and tweaking of the model. AAAAH! 

Lunch was good though. We ate at a Punjabi place on campus. Aloo Pyaaz Paratha! Yummy....just the thought of it makes my mouth water. It was actually not too expensive (25 rupees) and then I topped it up with a glass of lassi. Amazing. It was probably the highlight of my day. Closely followed though was the sugar cane juice I drank after work. So far I've tried the lemon (the best) and masala (hmm...not so amazing) one. Today I tried mint (probably last time) and salt/pepper (comparable to lemon). One thing I missed out today (didn't want to walk much after the rain) was Kulfi (indian ice cream) =( They have some really good kulfi out here.

Anyway, today I just got my AR Rahman ticket booked! Super excited. The concert is this coming Sunday, and lol the tickets start from 500 and goes till 10000! obviously i got the cheapest one. 

Anyway, I guess that's my update for today. But just as an added bonus and a special shout out to my sister (please don't kill me!), please enjoy the pictures below (from the aquarium):

Sight-seeing and relaxing

Yesterday (Saturday) was tiring. I went sight-seeing with another intern from Canada. We started off at 11 am and decided to start off at this place called Tipu's Palace. We were expecting a lot to see and thought it should take up about an hour. Anyway when we reached, the entrance fee was 5 rupees for Indians and people from countries surrounding India (Thailand and Myanmar included).

It seemed like those people working at the gate did not realize this rule as I had to show them the bloody sign stating it. Anyway, when they asked where my friend was from (he's Burmese), we made a stupid mistake of saying he's from Burma. This @$$ then said Burma is not on the list (Myanmar was) and he won't budge on the fact that Burma is Myanmar. I wasn't willing to let my friend pay 100 rupees but he got tired of it and paid anyway. That really got my blood boiling and I told the guy at the gate in Hindi to go learn some geography before working for the tourism department. The place was tiny and run-down, and honestly, a big waste of money.

After that we went to see an aquarium (my friend had done all the research, and expected just the aquarium and palace should take up like 5 hours). Anyway, the online reviews CLAIMED this was the second largest aquarium in india, and was three storeys high. Once we reached there, it was only 2 storeys high, and it was again not what we expected.  If anyone's been to one of the major aquariums such as in Atlanta, Singapore or Bangkok, you would expect HUGE tanks of big fishes going all around the place. This was just a series of aquariums, the size of what you'll expect to see in someone's house. Major disappointment. We also had a quick walk through Caddon park or something like that

At this point, we had knocked out two places in less than an hour. So we finally decided to ask the cab driver (who was very helpful throughout, considering both of our phones had not been activated yet) to take us somewhere nice. He took us to some other park, I forgot the name. It was a huge park, quite nice. And there was a stone hill kind of thing. That was worth it. It seems like a place for families to go chill on a weekend, kind of like Rama 9 park in Bangkok, or a bigger version of Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta.

From there, we headed for lunch at a place called Koshis. It was air-conditioned, so that was a good change because we were feeling kind of hot before. Food was really good, I must have eaten like 6 naans (I don't know why, I seem to eat even more over here).

After lunch, we headed to the main thing we wanted to do all day, visit ISKCON temple. We had heard good reviews about the place and honestly it was quite nice. The architecture of the building is beautiful and to quote one of the tourists over there, they had an "excellent crowd management mechanism" There was a long line to go to the place where people pay respect, and there was a two sentence chant that was repeated a on the PA system. There were also these marble slabs on the floor about one step apart each. So basically people walk step by step, but they only take one step at a time, at the beginning of the chant, while you chant out loud. It was a brilliant idea. There was this hyperactive kid though who just kept running up front and then going back, again and again, and that kept me entertained =D We weren't allowed to take cameras in, but a lot of people were taking pictures with camera-phones so I did the same!

After the end, to exit the temple, you had to walk A LONG WAY through many souvenir shops. That got frustrating. Another really frustrating thing is the lack of concept of queues and lines. People will just bloody try to squeeze their way through. And when the crowd is walking really slow, people will start pushing from behind.  I got so annoyed that I elbowed one guy who was pushing from behind. He kept pushing on, and then I just turned around and gave him an evil stare. He apologized and after that I could walk comfortably lol. Sometimes I'll just create a wall with my body and refuse to let people through (when the line was stopped) just because it makes no sense for them to try to squeeze through when there is NO WHERE TO GO!!!!

After that I came back to the campus and headed to the gym, but it was closed :( So I had dinner (ran into a few other interns) and then headed back to chill out and watch shows.

Today was a lazy day, didn't do anything exciting.

That pretty much sums up the majority of the day, and if you've read till here, thanks for reading!!!

"See, I'm going fast..."

Hello!

Well, today I started working on a document which outlines my internship requirements and deliverables, etc. It was a good change to do something other than reading loooong research papers on stuff. I also managed to get Communicator working (communicator is basically like MSN Messenger, except it is used internally for communication amongst the employees). So I used that to communicate with the other interns to organize a ride to get to Hard Rock Cafe (all interns are allowed two cab trips per week and we can do carpools). I also booked a cab for this weekend to go see some temple, a castle and some other things. I don't really know the names of the touristy areas yet, but I'll read up on it before I go.

Turns out we left pretty early because one of the guys needed to get a suit made. On the way there, we reached a toll booth and the cab driver asked for money. One of the interns told him to pay (since apparently every other cab driver had paid so far) The moment he heard it, the guy just switched off the car engine right there! In the middle of the toll booth! We finally gave in.

While waiting for the guy to get his suit made, I saw someone selling grilled corn on the road side so I had some. Aah amazing! I'm not sure was it because I was starving or it has been so long since I had it, but it was good nonetheless. Dinner at Hard Rock was interesting, to say the least. There was a live "band" so there was a cover charge. Food there was (expectedly) expensive. Like very expensive compared to what I had been eating on campus. Lucky I haven't been spending too much on food this entire week so I can still cover it with my food allowance. Anyway, the guy who did the reservation miscalculated the number of people coming, and so there was a table short. The restaurant was unable to find more tables, and that really pissed off an MBA intern. He began talking and negotiating with the waiter, getting visibly worked up. Haha at the end of the meal, instead of letting the restaurant pack up his leftovers, he insisted on packing it himself, since he knew that they wouldn't be too happy with him. But his negotiation skills paid off...we got pretty good seats and it was quite a good atmosphere.

The cab ride back to the campus was hilarious. Since the Indica that was supposed to originally come broke down, we got a Qualis instead. There were two other interns who wanted to leave early so they decided to join us (since the car is bigger we could fit 6 people including the driver easily) But the driver won't, and so there was a short period of negotiation in broken hindi. Luckily  one of the interns there could speak Hindi so he saved the day. Anyway, the driver finally called up his boss to consult, and soon after he talked on the phone, he switched on the engine and started driving. I just smiled widely =D

Then on an empty bridge, he was driving at bloody 60 kph. I asked him why he was going so slow, and he said there were cameras so he was being careful. So we told him the speed limit was 80, and then there was more talk and finally he started driving at 110 kph and began saying, "see I'm going fast, now we'll all go fast......from this world" I couldn't hold back my laughter anymore. The guy then started ranting about how he's losing money because the indica broke down and they're using the qualis but only being paid the Indica rate. Apparently he also said he's losing money because there were 2 extra people, but I didn't understand that part and honestly the logic was super flawed.

Anyway, that was probably one of the best cab rides I've ever had (there are others that are up there as well), and a good way to end the night

Day ++

Today was pretty fun. Well, I continued reading up on the topic to understand it more and to find ways to tackle the issue.  I finally got internet connection and that's helped me with my research a lot more.

At about 3 pm I was summoned to go get the paperwork for opening a bank account and fill out a form for getting the sim card activated (so much security! in Bangkok/Singapore all you need is a copy of your ID card or  passport and they'll activate it on the spot. Can't blame them though after 2008 attacks)

After work I went to play basketball, but because it had rained earlier, there were too many puddles that it was hard to play. So I decided to join a volleyball game that was going on nearby. It has been about 4 years since I played volleyball and yeah, I miss it =) Some of these guys are pretty good, considering they were wearing office clothes and are 30+.

Today I also ate things other than dosa and biryani...beginning to experiment with other things! Lol as most of you know, I have short term memory for unnecessary information so I already forgot what I had for lunch, but for dinner it was paratha something....ok I forgot that too. Basically it was mashed up paratha (kind of like roti) mixed with other things like potatoes. Really good! and topped that with some lassi.....argh I'm hungry again haha

One thing that I still need to get used to though is the floor numbering system. The ground floor is 0, so what I'm used to as "second floor" is actually the "first floor". Kinda like the difference between C and MATLAB in terms of the indexing style (hey, I'm working in the software engineering research lab, I have to try fitting in!)

Anyway, that pretty much sums up my day. Tomorrow is going to be a farewell dinner for two of the Thai interns, and we'll be going to Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. I'm pretty excited to get out of campus and see the city now. Still have no clue what I'll be doing this weekend though.

Oh and before I forget, a special shoutout to my homeboy, Garrett, for his 21st birthday! Take care of yourself man and hope you're having fun in Chicago/Boston/San Jose, wherever you are

Day 1 and 2

So I just finished my second day of the internship. The first day wasn't very eventful as all the new interns went through an orientation program, met our project mentors and signed forms (it took the whole day). It was nice meeting all the other interns who were joining and I definitely had some good laughs.

Today I was supposed to report in by 9 am, so I reached there by 8.45 am. However my mentor was stuck in a meeting till 9.40 so I just chilled and read up on the division I was to work for. I was then briefed on the project that I'll be working on and then given A LOT of background documentation to read up on, so as to catch up with the project and gain a better understanding of it all.

What was quite frustrating though was jumping through all security loops in their computer system. Heck, I still haven't got internet connection (and I was supposed to do some research later lol)

The highlight of the day though was lunch and meeting up with the other interns. Today we met more interns who are just wrapping up their internship, and in that included 6 guys from Chula! They gave me some pretty good tips haha =D

Anyway that's pretty much it. I can't really go into details regarding my project unfortunately, but it is quite interesting!

A New Chapter

I arrived in Bangalore last night, and was driven straight to the campus. Although it was late at night, my first impressions were that the roads are incredibly cleaner than I expected and the city seemed quite nice.

As I reached Electronic City, I understood why they call this the Silicon Valley of India. There were a lot of multinational companies all located in one area, all of which had really beautiful architecture. 

The best part of the night though, was when I entered my room. It was ridiculous! I had expected a tiny studio where I could barely move around, but here I get a hotel room almost as big as the entire North Ave Apartment. Ok, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is definitely the size of at least a 3 star hotel in Bangkok. It definitely exceeded my expectations. 

Today, after eating an awesome lunch, I decided to cycle around the campus to explore. I could not believe that I was in India. I could not hear any car horns!!! 

Anyway, so far it's been a good first day. Here are a few pictures of my room (I am not sure if we are allowed to take pictures of the campus, as they are quite strict regarding electronics and security):

Everything came in sets of two, so I have two tables and two cupboards. No clue what I'll do with the extra ones as I don't really need it!

So much space!!! Makes my North Ave apartment seem so tiny

Shoe polish, laundry bags, hair dryer...they had everything!