Electronic City, First Day, Bangalore

First day at work, Senthil arranged a cab for the ride in - quite deluxe: an Ambassador cab with the driver in a full white uniform and official forms to sign and everything. Spent the AM getting things mostly set up around my work area and on the network. Most of the folks who sit in the area all went down to lunch, and I finally met Guru, who was assigned parts of my previous feature: turns out he was sitting right over the wall from me. I tried the south Indian line, about 25 rupees, I think: Dal Palak again! How funny - anyway, you’re given a stamped steel tray after paying, then you walk down the line and take your choices: rice, a main veggie, a second veggie, sambar (a soup), a couple of chapatis, raitha (yogurt and spice with cucumber) and some kind of sweet. It’s a full plate for a very reasonable price!

In the afternoon we had the first face-to-face code inspection I’ve done in probably 3 years (um, usually we just send around an e-mail asking for comments... sorry, process guys... gotta tell it like it is!) and made especially neat to do one with remote folks who I’ve worked with for several years. Around 4pm Vinya suggested that the traffic was going to get really bad if I didn’t leave, so I decided I’d wait until 7 or so when the traffic had died down - and besides, I had to call the cab company and arrange the trip home! Around 5:30, Vinya stopped by again and looked quite upset that I was still there - I explained that I was waiting until after the rush ended at 7... and she laughed a bit and *then* explained that she had meant I needed to leave before 5 because once traffic starts getting bad it does not ever “just get better” until very late in the evening. 7 to 8 pm would be one of the worst times to try to go home! Who knew?!

Anyway, Aafaque, another guy sitting in the general area, heard that I was looking to call a cab for the ride home, and since he had his own car and was going my way, he gave me a ride in to the city to MG (Mahatma Gandhi) Road at the Burton Center, a big landmark. Just getting out of the Infosys facility was an adventure: the security guards inspected our badges, permits, then opened the rear doors and the trunk and gave the car a thorough looking over! Aafaque said that the official reason is “terrorism prevention” to make sure nobody smuggles a bomb or anything in - but then why inspect on the way out, eh? Security may have been tighter because the Russian President had visited the campus the day before. Aafaque also said that this way, every car is treated equally and they won’t inspect some and not others which could be seen as prejudicial - I’m sure it must keep office theft down for sure, since everyone *knows* they’re going to get searched on the way out!

The hospitality aspect holds true with everyone I’ve met so far: so many invitations to homes for tea or dinner or to meet their parents. Aafaque was no exception and really did go out of his way to make my commute home a bit better.

Mehnoush and I had agreed to meet at Ebony on 13th floor (top) balcony of the Burton Center building. This restaurant has an outside seating area overlooking all of Bangalore and had a pretty good selection of dishes on the menu too; I enjoyed my time on the roof waiting for Mehnoush to arrive with Babu in her little car, having the opportunity to study the traffic patterns from high above! I had a good corn & chicken soup, and we shared a nice thai-flavored veggie appetizer (think a heavy, spicy-sweet tempura), then for the main course we shared a Parsee chicken dish with Dal (lentil). That one wasn’t so great, actually, but I wanted to see if I could detect any Iranian influence on the cooking style (The Parsees are Zoroastrian refugees who came to India from Iran when the Muslims invaded and took over that country) - evidently most traces of the Iranian Khoresht are gone, because this tasted pretty much just like most indian gravy dishes !

Since we were on the 14th level (the numbers are off by one here following the UK style, I guess: the first floor is the one upstairs from the ground floor, in case you didn’t know) - it started to get really cold up there. The restaurant is very prepared with warm red shawls for everyone sitting outside - just shiver, and the waiter is there to drape it over you. Even I used one since it felt like it was about 55 or 60 degrees out there. Back home we went, arriving around 10:30 or 11 - a total of about 3 hours in traffic for me today! Whew.