Week 12:

A little late but as promised, I've uploaded most of the pictures from the Delhi trip onto Picasa. You can see them in the "Images From India" slideshow, or you can click the slideshow to look through them. I've chosen a picture showing exactly how huge the Taj Mahal really is, that little black on the bottom is me.

Our supervisor, Badri wasn't here this morning, nor were any of the people on the security team that I knew so I asked Bala of switching to introduce me to some of the security people, with whom we will be spending this last. So far in security we've gone over some of the basics of network security, such as using a TrendMicro server, layer-7 content filtering, defining traffic types using class-maps and match statements, and using zones to lock down a router and its connected networks. In the upcoming days I'm hoping to learn more about CISCO crypto-maps and different VPN types.

This will be my last week here in Bangalore before leaving. It will be nice to be back home, and I'm really looking forward to the 2 week trip in Europe that I've been planning, but I'm going to a miss a bunch of friends I've made here.

Bangalore is a city of almost 6 million people and it takes an hour and a half to go from one side of it to the other. In spite of this, you run into people you know almost everywhere. In the 5-6 hours I was in town on Saturday with friends I ran into three other people I knew, and Chase ran into a few people he met from an activity a couple weeks ago. I later found out that I was in the same area as bunch of people from the church, but didn't see them. Other people have communicated this to me as well, that as soon as you've met a couple people, it feels like you know half the city.

This week I had a cookoff with Swetha and a bunch of her friends, which we had been planning for a week or two. Swetha made an Indian dish; a dal, chapathi, and fried potatoes in the shape of (angry) smiley-faces. I made a cheese fondue, which had to be very modified to fit ingredients available here, but still turned out alright. Those present judged, chose wisely, and I'm now the proud owner of a new pair of sunglasses, the stakes of the cookoff. I guess promising chocolate fondue this week if I came away the winner may have been cheating a little bit, but if political campaigners can do it, so can I. I'll even follow through on my promise if I can find chocolate chips: can I find them....Yes, I can!

Also went with several friends to see Salt with Angelina Jolie. It had the chick, shooting, a predictable plot, and people punching each other, all the makings of a good action flick. Not even comparable to Inception the other week, but still decent.

I wish I could find some way to express more about my experience here in India, things I've learned about the mixture of old culture and new, the divided political climate, the acknowledgement and almost acceptance of widespread corruption, the way English vocabulary is used slightly differently, the way they think of themselves and their perceptions of outsiders, the tradition of joint-family houses and the ties one feels to his/her home state even after removed from it for generations. I suppose the most valuable parts of an experience are also the most intricately difficult to communicate.

This week is going to be pretty full of activity, in addition to trying to enjoy my last week, I have a paper to finish writing, security to study, last-minute preparations for my trip to Europe, and more never-ending LSAT stuff to go through. Plus I need to make sure that I successfully get everything in my apartment in once place; it seems that every time I go anywhere I manage to forget something. I should start picking up things from around my apartment right now just to make sure I don't accidentally leave housekeeping some unwanted gift.

-Scott

Week 11:

Last week I went to see Inception; if you haven't seen it I suggest that you do. One concept of the story is the idea of layered dreams, where you think you wake up, but later realize that you just woke up from one dream and entered another. Coming back from Delhi made me realize my living situation right now is kind of a dream-in-a-dream state. You could consider my family's home in American Fork as the original layer, where my long-term stuff is kept and my mail is sent. The next layer down is my apartment in Provo where I have lived for a year and will be returning in about a month. Next is my current residence in Bangalore; and during the past 3 days I was staying with a member family in New Delhi. With one exception, it takes an airplane ride to act as a "kick" from one residence to another. As I was returning to Bangalore from New Delhi my mind thought it was undergoing a different kick, and for a split second I thought I had forgotten all my luggage, not making the connection that I was returning to BGL and not to the US.

Of the things I noticed while in Delhi, there are a few that stood out very strongly at first. Delhi is hot, in more way than one. I was greeted by a blast of searing humidity air as I stepped off the plane onto the pavement; Delhi temperatures frequently pass 40c, 104f. Since it is the monsoon season there were occasional rains, but they weren't accompanied by wind or cooler weather, so they did little other than disguise the sweat streaks on the back of my shirt. The other hotness in Delhi is the girls. Indian women in general are pretty good looking, but northern Indians are dis-proportionally good looking! I don't know if it was a change in facial shape, eyes, complexion, or what, but I'm positive that there was a statistically significant increase in beautiful women in Delhi. Chase and I have started using the phrase "north-Indian" as code for great looking girls.

Boodu, a member in New Delhi and our guide for the weekend, picked us up from the airport and took us to drop our bags off at Bro. Nobels' house. We then headed out directly to see the sites of Old Delhi. We saw a very recently built Hindu Temple, covered in elephants acting out parts of different stories. The Gandhi Memorial was in a large park inside the city, where he was buried near his daughter and grandson, all victims of the Gandhi family tradition of assassination. Mahatma Gandhi was buried in a walled garden, with an eternal flame burning. His grandson, Rajiv, had a large flat monument overseeing a lake, with a Vietnam memorial-like wall alongside it. Indira, considered a tyrannical ruler by many, had a big rock with a rope around it, not quite on-par with the others put to rest in the park. We then headed over to the red fort, where Indian Independence from Britain was announced. Jumped on the metro (where I got some smiles from a very north-Indian girl) to get to a massive underground market to find a leather bag I've been hunting for, which I have yet to locate. Think Indian Jones, that's the kinda bag I have in mind. We went to Karims, a restaurant that gained popularity over a hundred years ago, and has continued cooking the same recipes for a century. Their roti, a flat-bread, was flattened out from a ball, and placed in an underground pot to be cooked. We ate it with a dal, along side mutton kebab rolls, and a chetni sauce, all of which was incredible.

The next morning we were up at 6:00 to start on the road to Agra, a 4-hour journey. We had a little bit of car problems. The car was having as difficult a time in the heat as we were, but fortunately we arrived in Agra without any serious delay. If you have seen Slumdog Millionaire you probably noticed the crowd of guides offering to take people through the Taj Mahal, it's not an exaggeration. We had barely stepped from the car before getting accosted by a troupe of guides, offering to help us get through the queues and "go over The Taj with a fine-toothed comb." On Boodu's suggestion, we enlisted the help of one of the guides, Emron, to get us through the line. Tickets to enter The Taj were 20/- for Indian nationals, and 750/- for foreigners. After buying our tickets, Emron asked 300/- of us to bribe the officer at the gate. If we hadn't already paid 40x the price for a ticket of everyone in eh 2 1/2 hour line, my conscience may have grated me a little. To get in through the "VIP Entrance" we took a detour around the side of the Taj, walking around back alleyways and up shadowy stairs, I was half convinced we were going to be the victims of some kind of organ-harvesting scheme. Once we arrived at the gate, kidneys securely in place, we had no problem in getting through the gate. Emron told us some interesting facts about the Taj Mahal; it took 22 years to build it, and along with the gardens on either side, the monument is perfectly symmetrical with the burial site of the third wife of Shah Jahan directly in the middle. Gems are embedded in the marble of the building, flush with the surface. The marble is translucent and supposedly glows slightly in the moonlight. The four minarets around the central building are angled 2 degrees out from the middle, so in case of an earthquake the towers will fall safely away from the monument, rather than crush the resting place of Jahan and his wife. After Jahan built it, he intended to build a second, smaller twin monument on the opposite side of Yumana river. His son disapproved of the expenditure, and locked Shah Jahan in the Agra Fort, where he lived the rest of his life.

The Agra Red Fort isn't a bad place to be locked away. Overlooking the city and across the Yumana from the Taj, the Fort has a central field which would be fantastic for some Ultimate Frisbee, dozens of good-sized rooms, and a massive stone bathtub. Mosques are found around the Fort, where shoe removal is required. This was very typical of many places we went during this weekend. We didn't have our shoes on, or had shoe-covers on, for most of the Gandhi Memorial, the Taj Mahal, the mosques in the Fort, and another mosque we crossed through to Karims.

Sunday morning we attended the creation of the New Delhi 4th Branch, which was split off from the first and third branches. The church has rented the basement, 3rd floor, and roof of a building in Delhi, and refurnished it for church use; well, mostly refurnished. The roof still has a stage and a bar, and could work for some really great branch activities. After church we crossed off a few final things in Delhi, such as the Bahai Lotus Temple and the Presidents House. Although it is called "The Presidents House" a different name, like "The Presidents Compound" may be more fitting. The parliament building is visible from the complex, where the two primary parties, Congress and BJP resolve their differences, sometimes in words and occasionally in blows. With August approaching, preparations are being made for the traditional military march from the Presidents Home to the Red Fort commemorating the declaration of Independence on August 15th, 1947.

There was some turbulence on the way back, but our plane got us back in BGL on time in spite of circumnavigating a large storm, and I crashed into bed at 2:00 this morning, glad to have kicked back one layer of residence, and a short 2 weeks away from the next kick. These upcoming weeks are going to have a lot of activity, with something going on almost every day. I have a lot of pictures from Delhi & Agra, which I'll be uploading soon, so watch that little slideshow on the right.

Midweek Post:

Cisco took the TAC team for a "team-building activity" yesterday, after bin hours, we left for Indijoe's, a multicuisine buffet place where we ate way too much, took pictures, and generally just had fun. There was a variety of Indian food, in addition to some different breads, pastas, deserts, and a few types of meat. They even had some pretty good buffalo wings! After everyone ate all we could, we went to Ezone for Go Carting. The carts were like gas-powered bumper cars, and the course was built with tires piled 3x deep, it was a TON of fun. Each race had 6 carts, and was done over 5 laps. I think the funnest part of it was taking the turns really fast: since the carts had such a low center of gravity they would fishtail around the curves. This also puts you in poor contact with the ground, and makes you more susceptible to getting pushed around by the other carters. One bump pushed me into a pile of tires where I had to wait to get pushed back into the course, putting me a full lap behind the rest of the carters. I'll get Venkata back for that somehow.

Week 10:

This weekend was relaxing in that we didn't travel outside of Bangalore, but busy in that it held a fair number of activities. A friend at work, Shankar, introduced me to another guy here at Cisco that plays ultimate frisbee! This may not sound strange to most people, but it's hard to find people that have even thrown a frisbee before, let alone played a game of ultimate. Throwing it around outside for an hour or two generated some interest, and pulled in another 3 people, almost enough to get a game playing. I later joined a bunch of guys from pretty much every team on TAC this weekend for some soccer, food, and cruising around the outskirts of Bangalore. It's amazing how good rural areas smell after being in the stinky city for a while.

We *finally* got paid for the previous pay period, and went to the bank to cash our checks. If you thought US Bank hours were bad, they are even nastier here: 10:00AM to 3:30PM. The area was similar to a bank in that there were tellers, and desks where people were applying for loans, but in every other way different. The tellers sat behind a thick pane of glass, where they did business with patrons through slot at the bottom. Security officers walked around in the room with old double-barreled shotguns, while workers carried tens of lakhs of rupees around the room in plain site for one reason or another. I would think that they would try not to inspire people to do anything stupid, but walking around with more money in one's hand than most people make in a year is just daring some kid to see if he could outrun a shotgun blast.

Saturday evening I went out with some friends to Hard Rock Cafe downtown, met a bunch of new people, had good food, and enjoyed the western music. HRC here is a lot like those you'd see in the United States, with a menu changes. There are localized foods that taste distinctly Indian, and a lot more vegetarian options.

Completely unrelated India/Networking note: the StarCraft II Beta is back online! The internet at my apartment is unreliable and pretty slow, so I decided to stay late at the office and play for a few hours. SC2 partner/former roomate/general dumpface Chris refused to get up earlier than 9:30, so we didn't get started until after 9:00PM my time. I figured that rather than take the risk of walking home past midnight I'd just spend the night here! There's a gents-nap-room I slept in, and a shower in the bathroom so I was able to rinse myself off with a bit. Even so, spending almost 36 hours on campus straight probably isn't something I'd like to do again soon.

LAN/WAN was a great experience. I learned more about some of the intricacies of switching, and how to figure out if problems are software or hardware related, which can be very difficult to diagnose at times. The mysteries of higher-level switches are now open before me, I know what makes a good switch, a bad switch, and why different switches are better at different types of traffic. A guy on the floor had his birthday this past week: for the party there was a cake, singing happy birthday, a candle, etc, then the party took a turn for the worse. Two guys picked up the birthday man by his hands and feet, and everyone took turns giving "bumps," aka kicking him in the butt. Some people were really ruthless! It probably still hurts him to sit down. Evidently this tradition is even more painful in home parties, where they break out cricket bats.

The TAC floor is a lot more social than working in the lab, since there are so many more people. After "bin hours" where the engineers are actively taking calls, people will get together and play some games, mess around with rubiks cube, or just chat. I found out that I can beat everyone on the TAC team in an arm wrestle except for one, I'll get you some day Dumesh, I really will.

This Friday morning we leave for Delhi. Most of the plans are in order, only thing left is to make sure we have a way to get to the airport in the morning. Our contact in Delhi, Boddu, has done most of the arrangements for us, including a day-trip to Agra for the Taj Mahal. More on this and pictures of the trip to come.

Week 9:

We got the assignment change this week! I'm now hopping from team to team in TAC, getting training, shadowing support calls, getting engineers to teach me about their respective technologies, and trying not to be a nuisance everywhere I go. Tues/Wed we received some formalish training from Shyam and Rajeshwari of the Architecture team. As the training went on I discovered that BYU does a pretty good job of preparing us with knowledge that can be universally applied. Classes in IT and CS made it a lot easier to pick everything up, especially concepts of process scheduling and memory management in Operating Systems by Professor Teng and the concepts taught in Networking by Prof. Ekstrom. The modern IT workplace really is a hydra of technologies, most of which we get some exposure to at BYU. Occasionally I wonder, as I'm sure every student does, if my college education has been worth the time and money spent. Attempting to approach this internship sans formal education would have been incredibly difficult. As it is I feel that I've been exceptionally prepared, and I still have another year of classwork!

This week we'll be joining the LAN/WAN guys across the floor. I've been able to spend a little time with them before and some of the projects they work on are huge in scale: WAN links spanning over a dozen devices and multiple ISPs. It'll be fun to see what problems companies of this size run into, and how the issues are resolved.

Bandh (Strike) Update

This morning we came to the office at 7:00, a little earlier than usual to avoid any strike activity and help work on lab audit preparations. There was practically no traffic, and much less activity on Cisco campus. Krishna Rao, the head of TAC in India with whom we had the opportunity to have lunch last week, called a meeting to address the issue of the strike. He said that if things appeared to be calming down everyone would be allowed to leave the office at 2:00. Unfortunately, since then most large cities in India have been "heating up," as per a recent update, but Bangalore has been one of the calmer cities, due to proactive police measures in establishing 35 platoons of "bandobusters" around the city. Here's a few things that have been going on around the country this morning:

• Pune, Patna, Lucknow & Varanasi top BJP leaders have been court arrested by police. These arrests are rooted to lathi charge.
• As of now all metro cities in india bandh turns to violence.
• All flights to Cochin, Mangalore & Mumbai canceled from Chennai.
• 15 Buses attacked in Pune by protesters.
• BJP Protesters rush to Bangalore and Mysore Railway stations to stop rail services.
• Flights canceled to Bangalore from Chennai.
• 04 BMTC buses have been attacked by protesters in Lokesh nagar.
• Banks, Schools, IT Offices and shops bandh in Bangalore.
• Two Buses stoned on Tumkur Road near Madanayakana Halli.
• A stray incident of quarrel between a shop owner and CPI(M) workers at Srinivaspura in Kolar Dist over forcible closing of shops. CPI(M) Worker injured.
• 35 Platoons of police deployed across Bangalore.
• Stone pelting on BMTC buses in Rajaji Nagar.
• Woman welfare associations come forward to support the bandh in Bangalore.
• BMTC and KSRTC services has been called off by Transport Minister Mr . Ashok till 06:00 PM.

Week 8:

My last post spilled over a bit into this week, but I'll try to elaborate a tad on the CCNA experience. Over the past month our manager Badri Krishnamurthy has been helping me prepare for the test by introducing us to people in the specific fields of technology that are found on the CCNA, such as wireless, routing, switching, etc. Most of my preparation has been by using TestOut Labsim or reading Todd Lamle's book, but this kind of training was much more enjoyable. Not only did we go over the material, but we got much more in-depth knowledge than we could have otherwise. Some concepts we covered on a CCIE level, far outside of the scope required for the exam at hand. Coming to these people for CCNA training was akin to asking Warren Buffet for advice on how to manage your piggy bank. Thanks to these experience support techs and my other studies I passed the exam this past Monday, renewing my certification which had lapsed 3 years prior.

With the Cisco internal audit approaching many people are becoming anxious about the state of the lab. Compared with other TAC labs the Cisco lab is in great shape. It isn't a model of cable management, nor is it absolutely perfect in inventory management, but we do a great job of ensuring that we know what is in the lab and who is using it. As should be expected, Cisco is very strict on their internal audits, and the team wants to be absolutely prepared for it. The result of this is a part-time extension of our current assignment. A few hours of every day will be spent in helping the TAC lab admins either with the recreate requests or helping ensure the lab is in the required condition. If you've followed my blog, you've read how manpower is readily available in the country. I've learned that Cisco has a team of "boys" that can be called upon and set on any task required, such as reorganizing the store room, which Sagar has been overseeing.

Last weekend was a great experience, but it left me wishing for a day off. This weekend provided that. Saturday I went out with my friend Swetha, who showed me some more parts of Bangalore and helped me find some things for my family I was looking for. Family, pretend you didn't read that, it's supposed to be a surprise. We grabbed some lunch at a subway where I ran into a friend from 2nd branch, who is preparing to go into the MTC in September. For a city of six million people, running into people you know happens with a strange frequency.

Sunday also has been a very relaxing 4th of July. Fast & testimony meeting was great, we got to hear from the new mission president and his wife, President & Sister Funk. The teacher had prepared a lesson on the psalms; a collection of quotations from the book which we took turns reading, explaining how we felt about them, and saying which hymn the quote reminded us of. It was a different kind of lesson, and a fun activity. It prompted a lot of discussion, most of which was relevant.

Tickets have been booked for our 3-day trip to New Delhi, in which we'll be seeing the Taj Mahal in Agra, the cremation site of Mahatma Gandhi, the Presidential Home, the Lotus Temple, along with many other sites. We'll be leaving the morning of the 23rd, and returning the 25th of this month.

In closing, there has been a 3-rupee increase (6c) in gas-taxes, which has prompted BJP, the ultra nationalist political party, to call a general strike across the entire country. From what I understand, the BJP stands little to gain from this other than some popularity of siding with the people against the decision of the Congress Party controlled government. We're not talking a Gandhian hunger-strike here. Strikes in modern India consist of all shops being closed down, rioting, transportation coming to a complete halt, and people setting alight tires and anything else that looks flammable. Several companies have given their employees the day off, especially if they have to travel a long distance to get to work. Since we are so far away from the center of the city, and Cisco practically next door to us, we'll still be going in to work. If I'm lucky maybe I'll be able to see some of the stuff going on! On the other hand, I don't like gas prices going up either, perhaps I'll go join them, feel some riotous camaraderie, roll a flaming tire down the road for a belated 4 of July display. Sounds like a blast!

-Scott

Week 7: Part 2

So, I'll pick up where I left off. Seeing the herd of lumbering elephants lumbering around in the forest was pretty cool. We stopped for a few minutes to just watch them walking, and continued on our way up to the jungle "hut," where we would spend the night. The rooms we were put up in weren't half bad. They didn't have sealed windows or doors, so we had a fair amount of spiders, mosquitoes, little beetles, and other insect roommates, but there was bed for each person, drawers to put our packs in, a water heater, and a lockable gate at the front door to keep tigers, monkeys, and government officials out. After getting set up the four of us; Kumar, Sagar, Chase, and I, went to the balcony above the rooms too see the stars, drink the last of the Badam Milk, eat some nuts & masala chips, and chat. We told Kumar and Sagar about american camping traditions, like telling scary stories around a campfire, tin-foil dinners, and s'mores. Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain a s'more to people that have never heard of or seen a marshmallow? You try it.

The next morning we got up at 4:30, which was Kumar's horrible idea, to see if we could catch some wildlife before the sun came up. We drove a kilometer or two up the road, and saw an elephant a ways into the forest. It looked like we could get closer, so we parked the car on the side of the road and walked down to it. As we approached we saw that it wasn't just a lone elephant, but five in an elephant camp. Bamboo huts were scattered around the area showing signs of waking up. A few fires were kindled, with men huddled around them cooking. Evidently elephants like an early breakfast, because at 5:00 a man was outside one of the bamboo huts heating some kind of malt mixture while the elephant stood patiently nearby munching on a stick of bamboo the size of my leg. You don't typically think of elephants as graceful, but when this close it looked like every movement was very controlled. One of the elephants was bobbing his head around, making a small bell around his neck jingle. I don't know if head-bobbing is a regular activity for elephants, but this one seemed to enjoy making some music while eating his bamboo.

We tried going by the park office to register for an elephant ride, which had been booked for days ahead of time. Instead we were able to get seats on a safari bus going into the jungle. We spotted several types of monkeys, none of which I could name, peacocks, deer, and wild boar. I thought I caught the unique smell of sandalwood trees in the forest, but it may have just been that the woman in front of me was wearing sandalwood talc. Sadly, we didn't see any of the jungle's more carnivorous; the tiger or the python. For being a tiger reserve, the area appeared sadly devoid of tigers.

We grabbed lunch at a restaurant on the top of a hill overlooking a river where elephants were being bathed. After lunch we sat on the balcony for a while, enjoying the smell and sounds, catching a pair of wild boar cross the river below us. Feeling that we had seen most of what the jungle had to offer us for the day, I suggested we start the 5-hour journey back to Bangalore, and see if we could find a place to swim en-route.

After a few hours of driving, listening to music, talking about India, and helping the malt farmers crush their stalks, we got out to swim at a river we had stopped at on the way out. About a dozen people had already pulled on swimsuits and jumped in, so we joined them. The group was really welcoming, we had a few contests to see who of all of us could hold their breath the longest. Kumar got right into the water, although Sagar took a lot more convincing. He has next to no swimming experience, and was at first terrified, refusing to let go of my arm, and then clinging to Kumar for a few minutes until he realized that he was not going to drown in the 3' of water. The group of guys invited us up on the bridge to have some fish they had caught and cooked. There was a pile of freshly roasted, spiced fish sitting on aluminum foil we were circled around, using our fingers to pull out a piece, pick out the bones, and pop it in our mouths. I have to admit, these boys made some really good fish.

After a bit more swimming, I got out and let myself sun-dry a bit. While standing on the dock, a short fat guy came up to Chase and I, rap music playing on his cell phone. Obviously drunk, he was dancing to his rap, and trying to get everyone else to. We rap-danced with him for a bit which he thought was great fun, while his friends recorded us on their cells. There's probably now a movie on Orkut somewhere of the group of us dancing to rap on a bridge with this drunk guy, in our swimsuits.

Toweled off and changed into dry clothes, we got back in the car and started the last leg of the journey home, stopping for a few minutes after dark in an empty field to look at the stars, which in Bangalore are rendered invisible by the city lights and pollution. Kumar was kind enough to drop us off directly at our doorstop, and I crashed into my bed. Falling asleep immediately. Great weekend, exhausting, but as everything else has been here, a fantastic experience.

-Scott

Week 7:

The weeks are getting busier and busier. Before I launch in to the activities of the weekend, I'll insert this small update: I took the CCNA exam this morning at a Pearson Vue testing center in Koramangala and passed it! Not quite with flying colors, but solidly at any rate. One of this summers goals is now clearly checked off the list. Now on to LSAT prep, bah.

As has been planned for a few weeks, we finally made it to Bandipur. We launched into the road trip at 6:30 in the morning, meeting up with Kumar and Sagar and heading out of the city. Once we had a few kilometers behind us we stopped at a hotel, which in Indian English is a place you get food, and grabbed a bite to eat; Puri, Samba, Idli: standard breakfast fare. Then it was back to the road. A road trip in southern India isn't much different than a trip in the US. It's accompanied by snacks like nuts, chips, drinks; although of their own variant. The chips were covered in masala, a combination of spices you find in everything, the drinks were "badam milk," a canned dairy product with small bits of almond. We had music blasting a good portion of the way, a mixture of western music and traditional Indian. I helped Kumar discover a passion for the older, Science-era Incubus music. It was shortly after breakfast that Chases digestive system started having a trip of its own, but you can look at his blog for that. (Link to come)

On the way out we stopped at some waterfalls which unfortunately mostly dried out since we are at the beginning of the rainy season. Chase shared a story from Thailand in which a group of elephants were walking across such a set of falls when a flash flood hit. In the middle of the current they were immobilized for three days and eventually died. In our situation there was no rain in sight and no elephants. While looking down into the rocky area that would be covered in water in another few months, we saw a crowd of monkeys cruising around looking for handouts and avoiding the plastic bottles that were periodically hurled their way. They weren't to keen to try the masala blueberries I tossed to them but they had no problem with aggressively stealing a mango from the woman standing next to me, prompting another wave of airborne bottles in retaliation.

Side note: several of the villages in the area make a living by growing sugarcane and refining it into sugar or one of the several sugarcane based sweets. While on the road we stopped by such a town and saw most of the process. The sugarcane is harvested from the fields, placed on the roads for cars to crush and speed up the process of collecting the seeds. They sweep the grains off the road, combine it with water and boil it in a bathtub-sized tub over a large fire for a full day. The sweet soupy liquid is poured into cast-iron shapes and cooked until it feels like a bar of handsoap; hard yet bendable and breakable, in sizes from 2" cubes to large approx 8lb blocks wrapped in newspaper and tied with twine to be sold to markets. After leaving the falls we got a little lost, driving back and forth over these piles of sugarcane before ending up completely by accident on the far side of the falls. I took advantage of the opportunity to cruise around on the rocks, jumping from one rock tier of waterless falls to the next, as it started to rain. I wasted little time in getting back off the falls, the story of stranded Thai elephants still fresh in my head.

Upon finally entering Bandipur Forest proper we stopped at a group of houses at the entrance to see if there was any lodgings available. Finding none, we through around my frisbee for a while, ensuring the black-faced monkeys didn't make off with it, and attempted to sneak into a group of 50-70 spotted deer. Some of these deer had racks about 5' off the top of their heads. Hunting is strictly forbidden in India, which is probably the only reason a group of deer as large as they were dared come within miles of people. Still, as quietly as I could and thinking "be a bush, I am a bush" with all my mind, I couldn't get within 50m of the herd.

As we continued into the jungle the trees started to get a little denser and the sun a little lower. We passed a jungle outpost where we were able to find accommodations for the night. In spite of their previous booking by government officials, two unused rooms magically appeared for our use. Kumar attributed this to our status as foreigners. Another side note: bribery and corruption in India is very widespread. To this point in our journey we had been asked no less than 3 times for "tips," baseless requests for a few rupees made by those with the guise of authority, which were all rebutted by Kumar. While not required to do so, the man working security for the nationally owned jungle huts inquired into the house status after reservations were due, cleared a previous unfilled reservation, booked us into the slots, and reserved breakfast for us, all while refusing to accept a grateful tip for his work. Corruption infuses Indian bureaucracy, but there are clearly people that carry out their responsibilities with a strong character. Tip of the hat to the jungle hut guard.

On the way toward the guest room in the jungle we drove pretty slowly, trying to pierce the darkness and spot some wildlife. Sure enough, in the fading light we saw a group of around 8 elephants about 10 meters from the road. If the trip had ended then I would have accomplished my purpose for it, but there were a lot more things to see and do. Which will have to come later! More on the trip and pictures to come tomorrow.

-Scott

Week 6:

I realized yesterday that I only have about 40 days left in India before heading back home. I really need to get on the ball about setting the rest of my plans in stone!
My birthday was this week, and while I didn't try to organize a party of any kind, birthdayish things kept popping up. A few girls that work at Cisco offered me some cake that was left over from an activity earlier in the day, completely unknowing that it was my birthday, and instead of playing modern Indian music in the Cisco gym as is the norm, there was some Audioslave and White Stripes!

In other news, I discovered that after attending a ritzy rooftop sushi & world cup party in uptown Bangalore last weekend a picture that was taken of a few friends and I ended up in the Bangalore times and the Deccan Chronicle. I guess it doesn't take much to make headlines here.

This week held a bit more Indian culture. During the week we discovered that we were invited to attend a wedding of a coworker at Cisco, which was being held here in Bangalore. We arranged to attend the wedding with Kumar and Sagar from the TAC lab. We arrived just in time, as the groom was waiting with his back to the brides entry, and a sheet being held in front of his face to prevent him from seeing the bride until the right moment. The ceremony was being performed by a Brahmin Priest, dressed in the traditional costume a priest would wear; I don't have a picture so you'll just have to think along the lines of a slightly heavier 50-year old Gandhi. Accompanied the entire time by the ringing of bells and a very loud "orchesta," (link to picture later) the two got married! The hall was very elaborately decorated; the center of the stage had a golden wedding pavilion, decorated with flowers, coconuts, and burning incense. In spite of the strong lighting that had been set up, the photographers felt it necessary to mount industrial strength bulbs on their cameras, causing momentary dizziness anything you glanced into one. At first it was just the priest up there speaking to them and ringing the bell, then somebody started bringing around a big bowl that people were pulling something out of. My first reaction was "fantastic, audience participation and I have no idea what is going on..." Fortunately it was just a bowl of rice which we were to take a small handful of and throw at the couple at the appropriate time. The bride and groom tied small ropes loosely around each other's hands, symbolizing their new bond, and the groom tied a necklace around the bride's neck, with 3 knots in the back, making the marriage official. They then sat on chairs facing each other and holding a coconut in between them while the audience came by, pouring coconut milk and maybe a few rupees over the coconut, sprinkling them with rice, and expressing their congratulations and blessing.

While the crowd of ~200 guests filed through, meals were served in the floor below the main hall. Large rinsed banana leaves served as the plates, which the caterers covered in biriyani, white rice, curry, onion vada, puri, papad, and a few other things I don't know the names for yet. As a gift from the newly-married, everyone was presented with a small coconut as a token of their appreciation in attending the wedding. I later found out that the coconut can be used as a symbol for goodness and health, which is why it's so prominent in Indian ceremonies.
On the way home I snapped a few pictures of some (hopefully) temporary housing, showing how some people even in developed areas of India still live.

Initially the plan was to go to Bandipur Forest this weekend, but it has been pushed off for another week due to the wedding. There are a few more things I'd like to write about, I'll try for another update during this week.


-Scott

The American and the Indian Engineer

For my summer class I was asked to write a paper on the Indian Engineer and their relationship to those in the west. If you're interested in looking over it, here it is.

-Scott

Week 5:

As previously mentioned, there was some work to be done in the office on Saturday so travel wasn't really an option. In place of a travel log, I'll try to elaborate on some things that have stuck out as unique to me so far in the month I've been here.
First off the general Indian personality is incredibly friendly and accommodating; if you say "hi" to people on the road or in the office you're almost always treated to a enthusiastic smile in response. If you're doing something wrong, you probably won't know it because they won't likely correct or rebuke you. In district conference yesterday the soon-to-be former Mission President Nichols shared an experience of his in the Goa Airport. While waiting for the gate to open, a crowd of 20-25 Australians set their baggage down in the terminal, inadvertently creating a wall preventing access to the gate. In order to pass most people (Indians) would patiently walk around the Aussiewall to walk single file through a gap at the end. The first non-Indian to come across this situation started accusing and yelling at the tourists from down under, causing a huge scene. The single-file line continued, feigning obliviousness to the entire ordeal.

In spite of the general patience, people selling their wares and services are NOT to be trusted with their suggested prices. Just the other night I got in an auto-rickshaw and asked him to take me to a nearby location, probably 3-4 kilometers away. This was in the evening, around 10:30, so the a typical auto fare would be around Rs12 per kilometer (approx $.25) When I communicated the destination the driver responded without hesitation (450 rupees). He tried countering my surprise and rejection of the price with excuses such as the time of day and traffic. After refusing continuously and walking a few meters away a couple times the price came down to 100Rs. While I still got taken advantage of, I managed to avoid the quadruple price initially suggested. This scenario is by no means atypical, I've been told by locals that any initial price suggested by street merchants for their wares is generally 8x to 10x the amount they will accept.

Sanitation here has a strange twist. Rather than washing hands before a meal, it's customary to go right into eating (typically with ones hands) then stop by the designated "hand wash" to clean up. A coconut will be rinsed off on the outside, yet when it is opened, a grimy rust-covered blade is used to cut off the top, allowing access to the milk. In a juice shop, the glasses provided are rinsed out after each use, but the blenders used to make the juices are left unwashed for hours at a time. Panipuri, while delicious, is typically hand-made by a guy on the side of the road, punching holes in the top of the hollow bread-balls with his thumb immediately after wiping sweat off his forehead with (hopefully) the other hand. You get to the point that you try not to think too much about what may or may not be in your food; to this point I've been very lucky to have avoided any health problems whatsoever.

As with China India has a huge excess of cheap manual labor; this results in a very different kind of work process than you see in the US. IE: Construction...Rather than collecting a number of well organized, specialized people and collecting precise equipment for the task at hand, a large team will be allocated to the project and equipped with the most rudimentary of tools sufficient for the job, usually a shovel bent at 90 degrees, a hammer, and a hardhat. The same concept applies to other fields, even at my workplace I've seen larger groups than necessary assigned to menial tasks. The determining factor of this situation is the leadership; if a queen-bee or alpha-male is in the area directing the crowd of workers, things come together very well. Otherwise objects move meaninglessly back and forth and holes which are dug exist only to be filled with dirt from the next hole.

A last thing I'll mention today is the mixture of languages. India is home to a few hundred of them but fortunately only a handful are spoken in each area. Most people in Bangalore speak Kannada, Hindi, or Telegu in addition to some amount of English. When two people meet each other for the first time they may be able to recognize their origin by appearance, in which case they'll try the language of their native area if they know it. Dialects of Hindi are spoken across the country, and is used as a fallback language if nothing more familiar is found in common. From what I can tell the vocabulary of these languages are overlapping and melding with one another. On several occasions I've asked what language a word is in and gotten conflicting responses. At least for those in Bangalore, the vernacular seems to be a hybrid of languages, a grouping of whichever words come to mind quickest or most specifically communicates what one is trying to convey.


Tomorrow night we're attending an Indian Culture dinner. I'll post some about that experience in the near future.

-Scott

Week 4:

   Our team lead, Kumar, reminded us the other day that in two weeks we will be getting transferred to a new, and to us as yet unknown, assignment. All we know is that we won't be getting as much hands-on time with the equipment, so if we should get as much time playing in the lab as we can. This weekend we went on the aforementioned trip to Mysore, starting with a 7:00AM train ride from Majestic Station here in Bangalore. It was about a 2 1/2 hour ride to Mysore, during which I got to know the people we were riding with a bit, and managed to shake the gaze of Antony, an 11-year old boy from Mysore for a total of perhaps 10 minutes. The kids eyes were glued to me the entire time, my very existence must be fascinating!

  Upon arriving in Mysore, our first stop was the Palace. Built in the early 1900s after the original Mysore Palace was accidentally torched by a ceremonial fire in a wedding, the palace was the huge residence and audience hall for the Monarch of the state of Mysore, now called Karnataka. Shoes and photography wasn't allowed in the palace, since it was in the same building as several temples. The place was incredibly designed, with granite columns, painted walls, and intricately designed woodwork with ivory inlays. The ceremonial hall was made almost entirely of granite, and featured a solid silver door, presumably to stop future wedding fires from getting out of control. In the front of the palace there is a balcony with stadium seating on either side of the center, as well as 3 floors of viewing windows for "guests and royal ladies" to observe the Maharaja on the balcony govern and take petitions from the ground, 25' below.

  While we had our shoes off, we entered one of the temples proper, there are actually at least 5 temples on the Palace grounds. The things that characterize Hindu religion were there in full force, brightly colored patterns, traditional music, statues and pictures of some of the core gods in the Hindu Panthenon such as Rama, Vishnu, and Ganesh. There was also a man administrating over the temple standing behind a candled collection plate with a small, flat bowl with a red paste on a table to his left. A woman approached the candles, heated her fingers above the flame, touched her head and put her hands together under her chin in respect. She then touched her finger into the small bowl and put a mark in the middle of her forehead. She then stepped over to her husband, who was looking at a picture nearby, and placed a mark on his forehead. It was an intriguing process to watch, I'd like to return to a Hindu temple in the near future and learn some more about their traditions and ceremonies.

  From the palace we took a short, yet wild, bus-ride up the hills to see Chamundi temple. One of the other passengers was so scared of the speed we were taking turns he started sweating heavily and had to put his head down to avoid looking at the drop we would inevitably take if the driver lost control. The hill was a lot quieter than the city. Cows roamed the area in greater numbers than the city itself, and you had to watch your food and belongings for fear of monkeys making off with them. From this high area there were some great views of the city and temple, I felt a little less out of place since even Indians were snapping photos of the area. On the hill I stopped by a museum where I was enthusiastically taught some Hindu theology, including the 5,000 year social cycle and the approaching commencement of the new Golden Age. On the way back into the city we saw the intimidatingly fortresslike Church of St. Philomena. Although a Christian building, people payed respect in the same way they do at other religious edifices, by leaving their shoes at the door. This can be a risky practice, as it's no mystery how the local street-vendors maintain their shoe stock. While leaving the city, we crossed the Muslim part of town and saw the mosque. In one afternoon we stopped by a Hindu temple, a Christian church, and a Muslim mosque, all three of the worlds largest religious families.

  An interesting side-note; Mosque aside, you can always tell when you're near a Muslim part of the city because you can pick up on the smell of beef. Cows are held as sacred animals in Hinduism, so they don't eat it and it's hard to come by. On account of it's rarity, Muslims (and American students) take advantage of every chance they get to grab some beef. My favorite restaurant is literally called "The Only Place," likely named as a result of it's position as very nearly the only place in Bangalore to get a good burger or philly cheese steak.

As it was about to get dark, we closed the day by attending a musical water-fountain concert in a very-well decorated and maintained garden by a dam, and jumped on a bus for the 3 hour trip back to Bangalore. I realized 20 seconds after I stepped off the bus, still groggy from sleeping on the ride, that I had left my cell phone on the seat...too late. The bus was out of sight. I got a slight rebuke from Savio, who then frantically, and fruitlessly, made calls to try and figure out where the bus was going. Fortunately, it wasn't an expensive (or even my) phone, so replacing it shouldn't be too difficult. There was a girls phone number in it I'm a little sad to have lost, but I'll likely be able to track that down.
  No traveling this weekend, as we're going to be staying in town on Saturday preparing for an internal lab audit at Cisco, so my next post is likely to be more of an article than a narrative. Until then,
-Scott

Off to Mysore:

Tomorrow morning, incredibly early, we're leaving on a train to Mysore for a trip. The ride supposedly takes about 1.5 hours, but it takes about an hour to get to Majestic, the transportation hub of the city, where we'll board the train. We're going to see a few palaces/temples, and whatever else Savio thinks is noteworthy in his city of residence. Sunday afternoon we're going to meet up with some work friends to throw around a frisbee and learn how to use a cricket bat. More on Mysore and cricket, and pictures to come.

Week 3:

I wasn't quite able to accomplish my goal of taking the CCNA test this past weekend, but I've gotten pretty far in study nonetheless, and will be ready to take it in the very near future. We also were unable to go to Rameesh's wedding, due to transportation issues and work schedule. His wedding is tomorrow (June 1st), so give him your congratulations on his wedding website, linked in the previous post.

We went for a short day-trip to a monolithic mountain called Savandurga just in the rural area just outside of Bangalore, guided by Savio, a friend and former travel-agency guide for India. Looking at the mountain from the bottom, climbing it looked like a daunting task, but thinking myself to be in decent shape, I tried going straight up the face of the solid block of granite. I made it about 70% of the way up, but I hit a part that was too steep/slick for my shoes to get traction, and ended up crab-crawling my way back down and going back around the side to meet with the others. Since I was shuffling down on my hands and butt I've managed to get blisters on both palms and starting on my feet. En-route to the bottom, I passed two little Indian kids, hauling it to the top...barefoot. I have pictures of them as they are going up the face. I'll see if I can figure out the photo-bucket slide show or some other way to get more pictures up here.

While waiting for the bus on the way back, a little girl asked Chase for the empty sprite bottle he had. When she got it, she broke out in a huge smile and ran to show her friends. We became instant celebrities in the villages sub-10 group, and had a group of kids waving us goodbye as we left on the bus. Ever seen The Gods Must Be Crazy? We've probably started a process that can only end by that little girls father throwing that bottle off the end of the world.

Work continues to be great experience, and as any good job, at times very challenging. However, I can tell I'm approaching the part of the learning curve where it's starting to show a little bit of horizontally asymptotic behavior. I'm finally getting my pansy tennis-shoed American feet under me.

-Scott

Ramesh's Wedding Invitation

Quick note, here is Ramesh's wedding site, including a picture of Ramesh and Lakshmi, his bride-to-be. They'll be getting married on June 1st.

Week 2:

I've now been in Bangalore for a little over 2 weeks, and it simultaneously feels as if I just arrived and that I've been here for months. Work at the Cisco TAC lab is fantastic! Every single day I am learning new configurations. Among other things, I've configured a stack of 5 Cisco Catalyst 3750 Switches, several ASAs (network security devices), a bunch of 6500 Series switch chassis, done work with redundant fiber lines, and done image restoration on about every type of device Cisco sells. Somehow the service cases that come in have managed to ween me into this stuff, typically introducing me to one or two new handleable things at a time, rather than throwing me straight into the tricky stuff. Looking back even just two weeks it's clear that the lab setups I'm working on now would have taken 4-5x the amount of time when I started here.

In addition to all the lab experience I've been gaining, I've been studying from a CCNA Certification book by Todd Lammle, so far I'm 500 pages through the 800 page text. My goal is to take the test this upcoming Saturday for the cert. After that I'm going to have to start splitting my study time between CCNP certification and LSAT study.

After CCNA Study and some StarCraft II matches with friends back home on Saturday morning, Chase and I grabbed some lunch further into Bangalore, and joined a poolside party put together by the Ives Club, a group mostly consisting of expatriots here in Bangalore. It was really cool to speak with people from around the world that have been here for everywhere between 1 week and 3 years and hear about their experiences. I got to meet a ton of people, including a few girls that I could probably take out without creating some kind of familial caste war.

Went to Church at the 2nd Branch Building this Sunday, which is my favorite branch. Whatever Chase may tell you differently, it is my favorite branch because of the exceeding righteousness of the people, and has absolutely nothing to do with the fantastic air conditioning in the building. Although the branch is really small by Utah standards, the lessons are incredible! It's very clear that the lessons are well though out, and a lot of preparation goes into them. The teachers do a great job of connecting the lesson with their situation and culture as well. While teaching about Ruth, a connection was made regarding the relationship between Ruth and her mother-in-law, and the relationships of mothers-in-law and daughters here in India. I had no idea, but evidently most mother-daughter-in-law relationships are pretty tense, so much that the teacher used a pair of wooden daggers to symbolize it. Are mothers-in-law that difficult in the US?

We've been invited to attend the wedding of a coworker, Rameesh. The wedding is going to be held about 12 hours away from Bangalore, so it would take the entire weekend and the a bit, but an Indian wedding isn't something I'm going to pass up easily. Hopefully I'll have more updates about that next week.

-Scott

First Post!

This blog has been set up as a running journal of experiences while working in Bangalore. The name of this blog, Silicon Nagar contains the two essences of this experience. Nagar is an Indian word meaning "colony," and is frequently found as part of localities within Bangalore, such as Ramamurthy Nagar or Indira Nagar, which were originally autonomous villages. Over time these villages grew together, forming Bangalore. Bangalore is frequently referred to as the Silicon Valley due to the reception of IT call centers from the United States and Europe, from which is pulled the "Silicon" of this blog name.

Bangalore has recently become the home to branches of several tech companies, including Hewlett Packard, America Online, Brocade, and most notably for me, Cisco Systems. Many of these IT companies have set up shop on the outskirts of the city, such as the Marthahalli area on the eastern side of Outer Ring Road, adding yet another "nagar" to the city.

I'll update this blog as possible while I'm here working at Cisco and learning about India's country and culture. Please email me if you have comments or questions.

-Scott Pack