Josh on The Cliffs in LJ

Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

As the days get shorter and colder here in Chicago, a feeling has been bugging me deep down in my soul. I’m missing California, and the feeling of being at home. I know if I were there now, I’d probably be unhappy about some things. The traffic always sucks. My rent would triple. I’d spend a hellofalot more time behind the wheel of my car.

Still, that warm sun does something to my disposition, and seems to make everybody a bit more upbeat. The winter time is tough, but I’ll get through it. Maybe I should plan a weekend trip to California one of these days…

MacBook vs. PowerbookOriginally uploaded by Martin Erpicum.

I love my Powerbook. It’s tiny. Teenie Tiny. It’s the old G4 12 incher. The really little one. I am convinced that it’s the perfect size.

Lately I’ve been thinking about getting a new Macbook, but only because I’d be able to use it for work because it would run windows. But there’s something holding me back: the new Macbooks are way too big. The smallest ones are huge in comparison to my 12 inch Powerbook. I’d say that I travel enough now to be justified in my size issue whines. That extra pound and extra few inches DO matter.

Apple, if you could just shrink it down a little bit, I might bite. Until then, I’ll pass.

I was milling about today on my employer’s internal discussion board and stumbled upon this fun little link. TerraPass sells credits to help negate the CO2 released by one’s car, home, and air flights. I’ve been looking for a way to help heal the world for my car and plane usage…what a cool idea.

I just wanted to make a note that the experiences of those who live in the Diamond District’s (infamous?) G-Block live a very different life from those of us who live in other parts of the District. Not that I’m whining, you should just realize that there are some major differences in your experiences. Here’s a list of things I’ve noted:

• Your beds are amazing. Our beds are wooden.
• Your flats are decorated. Ours are plain jane.
• Your kitchens are outfitted with machines that heat food. In ours this is not guaranteed.
• Your flats come furnished with living plants. Ours most definitely do not.
• Your furniture is poofy and comfortable. Ours is not poofy (but is generally comfortable).
• You generally have few people and many rooms. We generally have one room per person (but sometimes more people than rooms).
• Your block is secured by a 3-5 person security team. Ours are protected by one guy…who’s generally asleep.

Am I missing anything?

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Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

Just another day at ThoughtWorks, or at least ThoughtWorks University. While we were designing the interface (and experience) for a new internal tool, we involved some real future users. In this photo, the Analyst team is carrying out a study with a low fidelity prototype, which led to a pretty sweet interface design, if I do say so myself.

Pictured, from the left: Deepti, Bonna, (anonymous user), Stuart, and me (Josh). Not pictured: Zaynab, who’s taking notes behind the camera.

The infamous poseOriginally uploaded by josh.ev9.

Sure, I could have posted one of my more skilled shots of the Taj Mahal, but I did not. Instead, the infamous pose.

This weekend a group of us went up to Agra, via Delhi, for a trip to the Taj Mahal. That’s the start of the story. Let me skip quickly to the end, for your delightment.

The Amazing Race

On Sunday afternoon, a number of people in our group received text messages announcing that Air Deccan, with whom we had booked our flight tickets, had cancelled our flight back to Bangalore. “Wonderful,” we all thought. After doing some work to reconcile the situation, we figured out that we had two options:

1. Fly back on the first flight in the morning and get back to Bangalore at 9:30. Our classes start at 9.
2. Receive a refund for our tickets.

Let me set a little more context. This weekend, we were travelling in supreme style. Let’s just say that somebody knew somebody, which means that the 9 of us had a caravan of vehicles and a police escort. That means when the light on the street says “red,” we continue on…no stop. Still, the traffic in Indian cities cannot be understated. It is dead slow.

Ok, so back to the flight situation. We decide that the best thing we can do at this point is to get to the airport as soon as possible. Tell that to a group of drivers in state-owned vehicles, here’s what they do: look around at each other, grin, and drive like hell. It was amazing.

You know those movie chase scenes where there’s a car running all over the place at top speed, on the wrong side of the road, with more cars chasing behind? That was us.

Needless to say, we got to the airport relatively quickly, and eventually tricked the system into selling us tickets for only $100 more than we had paid originally (compared with $400 if not tricked). Good stuff.

The Taj Herself

The greater part of the weekend was spent looking at tombs, forts, homes, and other old, old stone buildings. The Taj Mahal was amazing, and perfectly symmetrical. The things the designer of this building thought about was amazing. For example, the turrets on the corners are all angled out 5 degrees, so that from far away they look straight.The most impressive thing about the Taj Mahal (and the other historic buildings in Agra) is the fine detailed stone carvings. There is no paint on this building. Every time you see color on the building, you must realize that that color has been engrained in the skin of the building, not painted on. That means somebody has chiseled away the area that needs color, and implanted stone that is the needed color. Multiply that by a factor of huge. I call that impressive.

The Taj Mahal, and all the other sights of Agra are highly recommended. The expectation is true: if you come to India, you must go to the Taj Mahal.

Awesome Accomodations

I won’t go on too long about the accomodations, let’s just say those were taken care of as well. We stayed at the Mughal Sheraton, a 5 Star, no holds barred facility. It was quite nice…especially the beds (a haven of softness after nights and nights of hard hard beds).

Alright, I’ll end the oozing there. Here’s the point: if you come to India, to to Taj Mahal. (And have somebody upgrade your stay…by the way…we owe a big thanks to the person who upgraded ours, but I’ll protect her anonymity here, either way, Thank You.)

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Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

This is Airport Road, the main road outside the office. We have to cross this road one or more times per day, and the concept of crosswalk doesn’t seem to exist in India…

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Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

Up the street from the office in Bangalore lies a coconut graveyard, complete with barbed wire…

Today is Independence Day here in India. That means nobody goes to work, at least in the normal offices. (Restaurants and things tend to be open, I think.) So what does a group of weary foreign travellers do on a day off in India? Well, we go in to the office, of course. We have legitimate reason, of course. Most of us don’t have internet access in our apartments, so we have to feed our respective addictions to the ‘net. Either way, let me explain some things that are going on…

Yesterday we had our first day of training. This included an Introduction to the TWU program, a lecture about the history of ThoughtWorks and another about the TW India office, and finally we had a discussion about the cultural differences among the people in the program. At this point we’ve got people from the entire world. The TW offices represented are the US (SF and Chicago), UK, China, India, and Australia, but the people here are from a various assortment of other countries. It’s great to get to interact with all these people from so many different places, and our discussion helped to understand each others’ thoughts and ways of life.

But anyway…I’m sure the work part is less important to many of you. I think a lot of people would rather I discuss India and what’s going on here. So I’ll do that.

The first thing that I must say is that I have been shocked because I am yet to see a single Mosquito. Strange, no? I thought so. However, the monsoon season will soon be upon us, changing the current bugless state.

The other day I went shopping on M.G. Road and Brigade Road in Bangalore. There’s tons of shopping to be done there. I bought some beautiful (I think) curtains for the place in Chicago. I’m kind of excited about those. I also picked up some CDs to listen to since I don’t have any music on my work computer.

Here’s an interesting tidbit…the most exciting part of one’s day in Bangalore is when we cross the road to get a meal. I think I might have already said something about how crazy the driving is here. The honking is ridiculous, and constant. We can hear it from the office at all times. Anyway, the interesting part is when we try to cross the street. Basically, all you have to do is wait for a small gap in the traffic, then run with all your might to the middle of the road…then do it again to get all the way to the other side. Quite exciting…and a great replacement for a morning caffeine kick.

I’m trying to think of other things…but I can’t at the moment. The food here is fantastic, if you enjoy Indian…and cheap as well. A dish at a rather nice restaurant across the street costs 130-200 rupees…$1 = 46 rupees. Yum.

I’ll check in again when I think of more. Keep on keepin’ on.

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Originally uploaded by josh.ev9.

I made it here to Bangalore. It was quite a long journey: 2 nine hour flights, back to back. Craaazy. We went from Chicago to Frankfurt, then Frankfurt to Bangalore.

It’s nice here, and the office is really cool. Today we’re meeting people from different offices and just sort of settling in. Unfortunately I’m still quite jetlagged and feeling a bit out of it. Should get more sleep tonight…we’ll see.

We had dosa for breakfast…yum!

Alright, back to socializing. Talk to you again soon.