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.
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