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