Airmail to India

Apparently Indian mail works pretty well b/c I got Ann Marie's wedding invite only ~10 days after she sent it through regular international postal service...In case any of you want to send me letters :-)

Milk

So I'm writing this post really just to mention that you can get milk delivered to your door in a small pint-sized plastic bag every day. The milk is basically good fresh for around a day, but should be boiled if you keep it longer than that. My first attempt at boiling was not particularly successful. My lesson? If boiling milk, do not leave the room and allow the milk to spill all over the small two-burner gas unit that is a stand-in for a real stove. My second lesson? Water is pretty good at removing milk that you've scalded onto the pot you were using.

This also seems a good post to mention that the Mango soy milk I bought a few days ago tastes a lot like Mango Lassi (though less sweet) and is totally awesome to drink - though less good on cereal.

Pondering working hours

After leaving work a few minutes after 9pm tonight and finishing an overly spicy Raju dinner (sidenote: that's the first thing I should learn in Hindi) around 10:30, I'm starting to wonder if I would ever know what to do with myself if I actually had a normal 9-5 job. It doesn't help that I have bursts of extreme productivity around 7 or 8 on a typical day, but it's just amazing how fast the days fly by here.

(Mental note that I've been here for more than a month as of 5 days ago)

We're also talking about shifting our team's hours so we'll overlap with the US more We might make 8pm (or later) the typical end-time until Daylight Savings screws us up by making us 10.5 hours ahead of EST (so 9am becomes 7:30pm) on November 2nd. So that'll just be more incentive to work later. I guess I could start shifting my hours in the office to start later, but it seems strange to come in after 10 or 11 and I usually make good use of that time catching up on all the state-side e-mails from the later part of the day. The problem is that transit + work is beginning to consistently consume ~11/12 hours per day when I work until 9ish and that's started to make me irritable. A fact which I seem to be taking out on the people in the office and/or the universe in the form of, as Mike Foss describes them, "Will Sighs".

Anyhow, I suppose this isn't all that exciting to read, but it's something that's currently on my mind...now back to the work that I couldn't do without internet earlier in the day :-/.

Internet? You need that?

Internet in the office was down for around 4 hours today. Fun stuff for a development team that needs the internet and connection to our US network to basically do anything...Though I was able to use the time to present a bit about what our ops teams do and that seemed reasonably well-received, so I guess it wasn't entirely unuseful.

So about those posts...

Apparently they aren't going to happen this weekend unfortunately, but I just wanted to throw out there that only in India would I not have any running water in my apartment because the motor that pulls in the water has been broken for the whole day :-). I'm really hoping it's fixed by the time I get back tomorrow night, or I'm not going to be a very happy camper...

I might try to write the entries on the plane back, so we'll see how that goes. I will catch up before leaving on Thursday for next weekend though.

I'm looking for good analytical/math problems...

We're searching for some test questions to give college seniors who might be interested in working at our office here. Any suggestions?

Things like "Create the number 24 using only these numbers once each: 3, 3, 7, 7. You may use only the following functions: +, -, *, /. This is not a trick question, for example the answer does not involve a number system other than base 10 and does not allow for decimal points."

Would be great.

Basically we're looking for word and/or graphic problems that should be reasonably challenging.

Just e-mail me any suggestions you have in the next 24 hours :-).

Thanks!

How's your innate sense of numbers?

Take the test here

I got 88% after 25 tests.

Yes, I know I'm behind in India blogging...I've got 3 entries to write about trips now...I'll try to get at least one or two done this week.

Apartment Day 5

I moved into my apartment last Wednesday morning. It's a 3 bedroom, 3 bath, with three semi-balconys (one with a washer and two with clothes lines), I also have a kitchen (no stove), dining area and living room...So like I've mentioned before, I have a lot of space for guests...

Michael (the other American here for a long stint who overlaps for 10 months) headed back to the States for a few weeks at weddings, family gatherings, etc. Drew (the American who has been here for a year) is leaving on Friday morning.

I'm still adjusting to life outside the hotel, but I wanted to still a reference to the degree to which I was frustrated by the several hours it took me to figure out how to get the internet working in my apartment with my router. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Turns out it really helps when you actually flip the switch that powers the socket your router is connected to...who knew?

I'm slowly completing the random shopping necessary to make my apartment feel like home. At some point I need to start thinking about the walls...

I'm waging a war with ants that have spread from one bedroom throughout a large chunk of the house. I believe I've won the most recent confrontation with some help from Raju, my cook/cleaning person, who went out on his own initiative for insecticide today while I was at work. Also my thanks again to my cousin Scott for the brilliant suggestion of going after the little buggers with tape. Why tape? These ants are incredibly frustratingly small and tough, so it was actually incredibly hard to squish them. And for your reference, small enough that they could crawl into my work computer's keyboard looking for food. Lots of fun, I tell you what.

Oh so I meant to say more about Raju. So Raju is apparently making good money (10,000 Rupees/month) working for Michael and I (~$250). In exchange for this, Raju cleans both of our apartments each day and makes dinner for one of us. He also needs money for food periodically, but I'm easily getting meals for $1-2 a pop. For comparison sake, this is apparently a really good wage - we're paying a premium for his honesty (no need to worry about him stealing from us when we're not home. He speaks Hindi and very minimal english, so communication is going to be a fun exercise.

It's kinda late here, so I think that's going to be all for now, but I will post photos from my apartment and the trip I took my first weekend here (yes, I know I'm a slacker).

Power shortages...

What am I going to miss the most about leaving my charming hotel sometime this week? Well, I could say the onsite gym or pool...or the great waffles...or the company-covered dinners...or the massaging chair in my hotel room. But honestly I think I'll probably miss the guaranteed electricity more. Inside the city, Chennai has started doing ~2 hours/day rolling blackouts to conserve power. Suburbs lose it for closer to 4-5 hours/day. The apartment I'm moving into will have a generator that's good for a couple of hours, but I'll need to flip a switch to actually start using the power - a bit inconvenient.

Also, I really really really like fixed price stores. It's hard to barter when you don't know how much something should actually cost - Europe is much easier in this regard b/c I have a sense of how much is too much to pay for something. Ah well...I guess I've got lots of time to learn...