Nov 3rd

Mon Nov 3, 2008

Woke up early, plenty of time to get ready for work. The shower is very European. I've taken pictures (soon to be uploaded). Aditya told me that I should turn on the heater for the shower about 20 minutes before taking the shower. Don't leave it heat for too long or it will be really hot!

The kitchen is stocked with basics, so I was able to have a treasured cup of tea (Taj Mahal tea with milk) before I left. Oddly, I also chose to have a banana for breakfast, something I rarely do. This was a good thing as the pipeline folks here eat lunch at about 1pm. I choked down my pro-biotic and malaria pills with my tea (waste of good tea!!), and I was ready to go.

Angela came by the apartment to take me to work. When I asked her what time she would come by, I originally suggested 8am. However, the office doesn't start until 8:30am, so she came by at 9am instead. ("Whew!" thought this night crawler.) The clocks in the apartment were off by 1 hour, so I didn't know which were right - the clocks or my watch. (Watch was right, clocks are now reset. :-) She hailed the autorickshaw as easily as any native New Yorker hails a cab. We got in, and she told the driver where to go in Hindi. (The drivers do not speak much English.) After a short journey of about 20 minutes, we were dropped off in front of our building, a tall, dark glass building behind HyperCity and the InOrbit mall. The fare was 17 rupees (Subtract 101 from the number on the meter). The driver i not tipped.

Our office is on the 3rd floor. It is very modern, and wonderfully decorated. We are all on one floor, and the pipeline folks (Sam, Aditya, Chingkhei, and Sijo) are distributed among the pods (aka "cubes"). The pods seat about 10 people. Having the staff distributed keeps them close to production and in the loop for problems. Most of the pipeline folk sit near the windows, since they do not need to work in the dark (like lighters and compositors). In general, the whole office has soft lighting and is not nearly as dark as my office in LA. BTW, offices here are called "cabins."

Aditya gave me a tour of the office.

Lunch was very tasty Indian food. Mmmm.....

I brought chocolate to the Tech Team meeting and it seemed to be much appreciated.

I had dinner next door at Little Italy, above the Croma electronics store. The spaghetti was tasty, though oddly spicy (with bell peppers). The people sitting next to me were speaking Spanish, so I felt right at home. Yes, Jeff, you can get cheese pizza there!