Urban Exploration - University in Berkeley

It occurred to me that I rarely do here what I do in a new place when I'm traveling or exploring. Basically, I just wander along for hours looking at everything I pass.
On Saturdy, a friend and I explored University Ave from Shattuck down to 4th Ave by foot.
It was utterly fantastic! Here's what I discovered:

• Everything Spanish Tile - I found the coolest little store that was filled to the brim with hand painted spanish tile. They had a variety of sink bowls, and everything else you could image painted in that spanish tile style.
• My friend brought me to this great little store filled with a large variety of cool screen print clothes. (I bought 3 T-shirst here, it's that good.)
• I discovered that this art store has a large variety of pre-stretched screens, and lots of ink too for screen printing. Don't forget Blick Art - they have good screen printing supplies too. I hope to one day get it together and throw a screen printing exploration gathering.
• I found this cool store with an Indian textile and jewelry import angle. They have a wide variety of things - specifically a good selection of bling stuff (jewelry and such with sparkly elements), lots of colorful scarves, metal vases, and homewares (like place mats and napkins in every color). This is a good place to browse.
• I also found my new favorite Indian grocery store. Nuff said.
• I found this huge everything Indian import store. Complete with the ornate chairs used in the big traditional Indian weddings and spices I haven't seen anywhere else. The upstairs book section was the best. They had every variety of Indian cookbooks that you could imagine. It's a lot like being in a store in India.
  

In finding these new places on Yelp, I'm surprised at how few reviews there are. These were well traveled stores, yet they aren't given much attention on yelp. I take that as a good sign. They're secret gems hidden in the University coridor of Berkelely. When I was asked Karma how long the store had existed, they said two years. The owner even mentioned that a neighbor came in recently and said she hadn't noticed the shop. And this shop has almost an entire warehouse worth of space, though you can't tell that from the store front.

Anti Ergonomics

It's friday now and I've been working here in India for a week. My goal is to teach the two developers here enough that they could manage a particular code base on their own. They've been "working" for the past several months on this project, but have been unable to successfully make any changes. Admittedly, the code is very complicated and I think it was unreasonable to expect them to figure it out on their own, without much real-time assistance.

I spent the early part of this week going through examples of our template system, and giving them all the information they need to do work.

It's been very interesting to be doing this because of the bizarre dynamics I've experienced. One of the employees is very engaged and seems to be very excited about learning how to work on this code base. I think he's going to work out great. The other one, who happens to be senior to the first one, hasn't done anything except pretty much ask unrelated questions and request that meetings get pushed back (which I finally stopped doing). Supposedly he's a good developer, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. My judgment is that he likes to waste time and not work, if he can help it. If it were up to me, I think I'd get rid of him.

Everyday, after work, my co-worker and I have done some sightseeing or shopping.

Tuesday we went to Dilli Haat Market - which is this very cool market where each state in India is represented in terms of what's for sale. The variety was really impressive to see.

Wednesday we went to Karol Bagh Market (image on right) - another crazy market with less variety, but lots of interesting things to look at. I ate Puri Chaat from a street vendor here (picture below). I'm fine, I've had no problems.

Thursday we went to Akshardham, a swarinarayam temple that was built recently. (That's the picture above). It opened a year ago! It's amazing.

Tonight we have plans to go to this other market near our hotel and hang out with one of my co-worker's friends formerly from Cupertino, CA.

Tomorrow we're leaving at 5am (!) to make the trek to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.

Overloaded with Pollution

I don't know what happend. Maybe it's something to do with the weather. The pollution is so bad right now that you can't even see half a mile. It's thick and I might even be able to feel the particulates in the air. It's like grimy soup. It's very bad. Yuck!

Today was day one of work at the India office. My driver showed up at 7:30AM to take me to work and so I rushed out of here and skipped breakfast. I had been informed that he would show up at 9am. I'm slowly learning that it's okay to keep a driver waiting. I still think it's rude. But those are my American standards, not those here.

I ended up showing up so early at the office that they didn't know what to do with me, and they hadn't turned the lights on. They put me in a small, dark conference room for about an hour and a half. It was fine, I just worked on my slides and agenda for the work I'm doing here.

The rest of the day was uneventful, except for lunch. The president of the company took us out, and it was another delightful meal. I ordered tandoori potatoes. Yum!

Yesterday was a long day of exploring the tourist areas. I hired a driver and had an intense and long day of sight seeing. There were some really amazing places like:

• The Bahai House of Worship (a.k.a The Lotus Temple) I got to see part of a service there. It was very peaceful.
• The ISKON Temple (Hare Krishne Temple) The architecture is pretty amazing. Really.
• India Gate - A 42m-high stone memorial arch paying tribute to 90,000 Indian soldiers in WWI and other conflicts of that era.
  
• Gandhi Smriti - A huge park and monument to where Gandhi was assassinated. It's a nice reprieve from the urban jungle.
• Jama Masjid - This was easily the most impressive place, in terms of architecture, I saw all day. The courtyard of this Mosque can hold 25,000 people. It's supposed to be the largest in India. Unfortunately I couldn't go up the minaret because I was an unaccompanied female.
• Chowri Bazaar - This dense market was as active as an agitated bee hive.
• Humayan's Tomb - Built in the mid 16th century, it was the Taj Mahal before the Taj came about. Except that this was built by the wife for the husband.
  

That's my adventures so far. I hope you're enjoying them.

A Whole New World

After finally settling into my originally planned hotel, I took a walk about in this neighborhood. The poverty was appalling. I've traveled a fair amount and I've never seen anything like it. It's overwhelming and chilling.

Crossing a street here is quite a bit like being the frog in frogger with a blind fold on. The space you consume is open space, as far as drivers are concerned. I am getting a slight thrill in frogging across these huge highways, but only when I'm in the mood. There were a couple times where I wished there was a traffic obeyed crosswalk. It takes a lot of energy to cross these major streets.

I just got back from Connaught Place. It's the center of New Delhi and also the main shopping area. It's a big circle with radial streets, quite a bit like Burning Man's street layout. Under part of the center park is the Palika Bazaar. I had thought the vendors were aggressive on the street (they were, the worst I've ever experienced), but the vendors in the Bazaar were 10 fold more aggressive. I only lasted about 20 minutes down there.

I'm glad I'm back at the hotel. I have this awful headache right now. I think between the pollution, the noise, and the amount of energy it takes to politely handle the obscenely aggressive vendors and everybody else who apparently wants to be my friend desperately, my head is unhappy. You wouldn't believe how loud it is everywhere. Everybody has gone out and purchased a custom loud horn for their rickshaw, car, or bike, and they are not hesitant to use it. It's so loud as a pedestrian, especially when you're trying to cross the street.

On a plus note I ate lunch at the shopping area and had saag paneer, and it was freakin amazing. Yum! I'd say currently my favorite part of India is the food and architecture. It's amazing so far.

New Delhi, India - Day 1

For those of you who don't know already, I was sent to India to work with a couple web developers that work for my company. They need some training on a particular code base that they will be taking over.

I arrived in New Delhi at about 1AM on Saturday. I went through customs and had a surprising experience. I brought trail mix with me (on advice from a co-worker who said to make sure I had some food handy.) On the customs form I declared that I had nuts and seeds. But nobody ever looked at anything I had. I just walked on out after getting my bag. The other fun part about this was the hotmail address used as a place to direct questions on the bottom of all the official looking custom signs everywhere.

The hotel driver was sent to the airport from the hotel where we will be staying. My one coworker is from Mumbai and she's spending this weekend with her family and meeting at work on Monday and my boss is coming a week later, so I'm on my own this weekend. Which suites me just fine.

There was a hotel snafu where they knew they had to pick me up from the airport, but somehow they messed up the hotel reservation so I didn't actually have a room when I arrived here at 2AM. They were full. It was suggested that I sit in the lobby and wait the 8 hours or so until somebody left and a room was ready for me. Keep in mind that this is a several hundred (US) per night place (chosen by my work) and that I had just finished flying for 24 hours. I ended up going down the street in the middle of the night and getting a room somewhere else.

My first impression of India is how spiritual it is. It seems like everybody has this calmness that we just don't have in the US. And despite the calmness in each person, this place is chaos. Take traffic for example. Everybody honks and flashes their lights. It's their way of making sure they're "seen". Trucks even have signs on their backs that say "please honk". It's the equivalent of "if you can't see my mirrors, I can't see you." They drive less than inches away from other cars. I'm told the rickshaw rides will be an adrenaline rush.

The other thing I noticed is how absolutely polluted it is here. Think of that great big fog cloud rolling into the SF area. Now add a bit of grey, add some eye, nose, lung burn and a bunch of trash all over the ground everywhere; and you've got New Delhi. The parts I've seen so far, at least. I don't think it's going to be cleaner anywhere else in this city though because I'm in the expensive, fancy part.

I also noticed the sheer amount of waiting there is everywhere. Everybody waits while a single person does their job. Like last night. The driver that picked me up, the bell person, and the security guard all stood right by me while we waited for the desk clerk to figure out that they were full and they didn't have a room for me. It was a bit strange to me.

Well, I'm off to explore now. I'm seeking some yummie Indian food.

Snow, Travel and More Crafts

We were up at Squaw Valley this weekend playing in the snow. My company had its yearly planning session up there during the week and then we got to stay up there through the weekend. What an excellent fringe benefit! My honeypot came up on Thursday night and we skied on Saturday. It was the most perfect conditions because it basically snowed the entire time I was up there, but amazingly enough, it stopped snowing for the entire day of Saturday and was relatively warm. Perfect!

Something I realized on our way home from there is that I leave for India on Thursday. Whoa, I haven't even begun to plan for this trip at all. Besides not having prepared my materials for what I'm teaching while I'm there, I haven't even begun to research where I'll be going and what I'll be doing with my 5 days off at the end. I'll be back on Feb 19th.

My honeypot lost the last hat I made him, so I've been working on this new hat design. I've never crocheted a hat from the center out radially before. I'm following the pattern in this new book my mother-in-law gave me for xmas. It's been a pretty great gift. I'll let you know how it comes out.

And What a Week it's Been

Wow, what a crazy week it's been. I felt like I was constantly running just to keep up with everything that came my way.
There were so many extra errands and so many more social events than normal for me. It was extremely fun, and also draining.
Last week I went to get the visa for my India trip and that took hours of standing in line.
There was this fantastic Girlz Night that I attended on Tuesday night. That was such a blast. It was a new group of friends and we hit it off really well. I hope I get to hang out with them again. An intriguing sounding movie called "The business of being born" came out of our discussions there.
Then on Wed morning we had an apt with our friend, who happens to be the real estate agent that sold us our Oakland house. There's a recently fixed up 4 unit place a couple doors down from us that we were interested in looking at. Slightly for investment purposes, and more for a couple friends that are looking to buy. This place was perfect. It's a reasonably priced spacious 2bd, has a huge yard and the entire building was recently overhauled. New foundation, new roof, new everything. It had been a rental previously. (If you're reading this Yar - what are you waiting for? We would be the perfect neighbors.)
I had two friends from out of town visiting this weekend. My Chicago friend arrived while I was at work on Friday and I didn't get to see him until Sat morning! I had dinner plans after work and a pretty large group of us went to Happy Shabu Shabu. The experience was interesting - the service not so great. Basically each person had a hot pot of boiling water in front of them and then you get served veggies and you make your own food! Sorta like Korean BBQ, except with boiling water instead of a grill. We had a 20 person group which might explain the bad service. The rest of the gang went on to the Cornelius show, and I went home. Before that my co-workers and I went out for drinks at 5pm to celebrate our success. we have about 1/3 of the staff, but we recently beat Zillow in unique visitors per week. It's a huge milestone and really demonstrates our growth, and our potential. Woo Hoo!
Saturday my Chicago friend, my honeypot, and I walked up to Rockridge for a lovely breakfast. Then we all went our own way and I bought supplies for the party we threw that night. It was a lot of fun with hours of gaming. The games went on until 5am! (I thought I was too old to stay up that late. he he he)
Sunday I finally got to see my other friend in town from DC. She was at the shabu dinner on Friday, but she was so far away I didn't really get to talk to her much. We had plans to hike but were both so worn out from our previous nights (she wasn't able to attend the party due to another show she went to) that we chose to walk around 4th ave and browse. It was a lot of fun. I don't really browse anymore. I probably didn't much before either, but I never do it now. Except yesterday. There's quite a bit of unique/weird stuff down there so it was good times. After our shopping experience, we went to Jupiter and had pizza to fulfill my friend's craving and some other friends met up with us. Then we went home, hung out and played some more games. It was fun.
Today I got up and went out to breakfast with my friend from Chicago and finally got some more time to hang out with him. Then I went to work and he prepared for his travels back.
Tonight I had dinner plans, but everybody was just too tired, so it pretty much fell apart. But that's ok. I'm tired. I'm really happy to be home and just relax a bit because I'm leaving for another adventure on Wed afternoon.

Our company has an off site planning week at the start of every year to figure out which projects are most importnat and make a tentative schedule for the year. This year we're all (60 people plus significant others and families) are going up to Tahoe on Wed through Sunday. My honeypot is coming up Thurs night and it sounds like it might get a little crazy. I expect good times!

The trip to India is official - I leave on the 31st and arrive back on the 17th and I'll get 5 days at the end when I'm not working. Also, I have a plane ticket into New Delhi and out of Mumbai.

WFH

That's WFH (working from home) for those who don't know the vernacular.

We are permitted to wfh at my job. And I haven't really taken advantage of that very much before. But I'm starting to now. I've begun to see how glorious it is to skip the commute into work and the random interruptions of my concentration. And then there's the magic of having my cat nearby, either on my lap, on her special pillow next to my computer, or occasionally, on my keyboard. On the downside, I miss working in a group. And we've got a pretty great group at my work. Also, there's some coworkers who don't really work when they are wfh, so they give it a bad reputation. I'll be going in tomorrow, I need to have some discussions with folks that just won't cut it via IM.

I recently found out that I (probably) am going to India in February. I'm really excited to go there. It's been the place I've wanted to travel to for quite a while. The unfortunate thing is that after going to New Zealand, I don' t have much vacation to use. But I'm going to try my darndest to get at least a week off, after working there for two weeks.

Some updates for those who are wondering:
I'm no longer doing calorie restriction. We went to Houston and it was impossible to maintain while I was there. Then I never picked it back up again.

I still love my Roomba, though she hasn't gotten as much attention as she did when she was new to me.