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.

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.