Whitefield Road, Bangalore

Mehnoush was up and away today to interview in Hyderabad - 4:30 AM!! Ouch! I slept in, and then also worked all day on a problem found in my software last week. Oh well, a nice day - but I really needed the rest and so I don’t feel too bad about not going out somewhere. She’ll be back tonight, and hopefully I’ll have a fix coded and tested by then so we can do something tomorrow. Of course, I am now taking a break and going through this journal instead of working so who knows!

Had a great hour-long conversation with my friend Steve using the softphone client on the PC today - works great for local calls to Raleigh. I still do have the hum on the line from my poor headset, and every 10 or 15 minutes, we’d get quite a bit of lag and delay (but I see that on Internet connections too, so I believe it’s the quality of the DSL line I’m using to tell the truth). Anyway, with the phone client on the PC, it’s just like I’m sitting at my desk a half-a-world away! Voice mails get checked at the click of a button. The IM chat seems a bit useless to me: already using Yahoo, MSN, GAIM... why would anyone want another one of them! I’ve hesitated calling long distance though, since I’m sure that would be billed back to Nortel and I don’t really want to do that. I set both Mehnoush and my parents up with “Reliance India Call” before leaving: they just dial an 800 number and then Mehnoush’s number here and we get the bill at the end of the month. Unfortunately neither one of them has called us yet! I don’t know why - it will be *really* expensive for us to call them from here, but if I don’t hear from them tomorrow, I guess we’ll have to do it anyway!

I’ve found a local yahoo group for the birdwatching scene here - every second Sunday of the month the birding types bring the binocs and head to Lalbagh Park at 7:30 in the AM! Yow! But since Sunday is Mehnoush’s only day off in over a month, I think we’ll just hang out here and do whatever she wants to do - I guarantee that getting up at 6 to go birding is NOT on the list . Actually, I’m tired enough that truly it isn’t on my list either right now!

Okay, now I *really* have to get to work to fix my problem so I can have fun tomorrow.