flashback: cambridge pub crawl

monica & me
Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

yeah so partying is fun in india but in retrospect boston was better. especially with friends like monieeca ^_^ (shoutout to mon!)

bangalore house party

bangalore-kerala_13-small
Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

random small house parties in bangalore are fun. although i left my a|x jacket at this one and have yet to recover it ...

floor at the leela

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Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

floor arrangement at the leela palace hotel (where i got my haircut, and the preferred brunch location). arrangement consists only of petals, without adhesive or even string.

more infy

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Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

elsewhere on infosys campus ... outside building 9, the oldest here ...

i do have to say the ambience of the campus is remarkable ... it lies somewhere between country club and urban park ... really ideal, especially given the optimal bangalore weather.

working at infy

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Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

i've now been working in knowledge management at infosys for a month. the view above is of building 11, from the balcony outside my office in building 12.

i have my own office, which i thought was really cool until i realized how isolating it is. it's also a bit frustrating as i haven't started on my project yet ... i've spent the past month learning about the km group and gave a presentation on it last week ... of course i spent most of my time emailing ... arranging meetings ... rescheduling meetings ... spending half an hour trying to connect on the phone ... hopefully soon i can begin on my project ... and hopefully it will be a bit more engaging than what i've been doing up till now. ... i've become a bit jealous of the marketing department. the whole department seems fun, they have a great office set-up (no individual rooms), and the projects interns work on are quite interesting.

yet i can't complain too much, of course. the hours are great. though i'm supposed to get in early, the fact that i have no real work allows me to take the last bus from my residence at adarsh gardens at 8.30 ... i get to work at 9.30 ... eat breakfast (khara bhat ... so good!) ... get to my office at 10 ... and then i take the first bus back at 5.25 ...

yesterday i slept in (recovering from the kerala trip), took a noon taxi to work, ate lunch, got to the office at 2 ... and hopped back in the taxi at 5 to the leela palace for a haircut. (haircut: great! head and shoulder massage included.) oh, and infy paid for the taxi of course :-)

creamy ...

brenden eats
Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

brenden ate a *whole plate* of ice cream. :-P

taj

taj pool 6
Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

pool at the hotel was the best part of cochin ... okay that and the food at the hotel ...

chillin'

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Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

dude chillin' near the chinese nets in cochin ...

it seems a lot of the men here have nothing much to do but sit around all day since they make the women do all the work.

jill the jew

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Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

the sign for crafters in "jewtown", with jewish model jill, was also an attraction

red building

red building in kerala
Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

i thought this building looked cooler than the synagogue ...

man-skirt-less

i need a man-skirt
Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

adam, like most of us, was bored. he chilled on the steps to one shop, lamening that the one item he wished to purchase: the indian man-skirt!

poor adam, baking in the sun, tired, bored, man-skirt-less ...

synagogue area

would you like to come have some joy in my shop?
Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

we visited the synagogue area. (the 'gogue is the white building with blue trim in the distance.) of course the 'gogue was closed, so we wandered the (swelteringly hot) area, enjoying the souvenir-shop keepers ("excuse me sir, sir, please, come, have some joy in my shop!") ...

chinese nets

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Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

fishermen in cochin use chinese nets to catch fish in the shallows. i helped this guy with his net, pulling it out of the water with long ropes and catching lots of small catfish.

cochin

from boat 4
Originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

all instep went to cochin, in kerala this past weekend ...

we took a chartered bus from bangalore at 9 pm on friday ... of course jill and i drank on the bus (smirnoff raspberry twist, and smirnoff redbull) and danced in the aisles halfway there ...

the driver was rather lunatic, with manic acceleration, deceleration, and swerving ... leading to much fun on board. he did get lost a few times and we finally arrived in cochin at 11 am, 3 hours late.

here is a view of the hotel where we stayed, from a cruise boat in the harbor

boston update from melissa

melissa says:

this week is the DNC and justina got a bunch of VIP invites so i think
tomorrow night we're going to mantra. the red sox took 2 out of 3 from
the yankees this weekend SO GOOD and there was a HUGE fight between
Varitek and A-Rod too... insane.....oh so this weekend albi2hungry
came to mantra with me but by the time we got there they were all
finishing dinner so we all went over to felt and he had something to
eat there. and then the party left for tonic but we stayed at felt and
then visited mary (justina's friend) who was working at Blu (the
restaurant in the same building as LBC theatre).... really nice
restaurant and then saw the Bourne Supremacy... it was ok.... nothing
special but then on Sat. night i went to see I,Robot with Andrew and
justina and albi2lush went to the convention center for a DNC media
party (Jesse Jackson and a bunch of famous Democrats were there) and
justina got SO DRUNK. she started throwing up in the car so we took
her home and she threw up ALL day yesterday, it was SO gross, to make
matters worse, i had to basically keep andrew entertained... and make
food for him and drive him to the amtrak... so i escorted them around
this weekend... being sober=not that fun when surrounded by obscenely
drunk people. albi2drunk was buzzed as well but sobered up once she
started puking.... so crazy

wasted invite

freshsamanthas just told me albi2lame isn't checking his gmail. well, albi2LAZY needs to use his fucking gmail acct b/c i'm out of invites and ppl who actually want to use gmail want invites, so he needs to use it.  my reasoning is like the "there are starving kids in india, so finish your dinner" argument. which is especially funny when you're wasting food in india :-)

view from my flat

IMGP2083, originally uploaded by caffelatteo.

my first picture from india: the view from the balcony off my bedroom here in bangalore. definitely gorgeous ...

indian telecom

first post from india. i'll have more, frequent posts with pics once i can connect to the internet from my flat again.

for now, i'm at work. internet access at my guesthouse flat stopped working a couple of days after i arrived, so this is the only place i can get online.

to restore net access at the flat, i have to deal with a chauvinist tool named sridhar who handles networking at the guesthouse. he disregards every request my (female) program director makes -- so i have to deal with the incompetent boob myself, and berate him until he gets his act together.

of course, i can't do this because i am unable to connect to his phone. due to the very limited number of connections from the land-line network to mobiles, they are all busy, almost all the time. indian telecommunications: i redial sridhar dozens of times, and each time am refused a connection to the cell phone network. :-)