India Journal

Paging Dr. Pangloss

Shawn — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:05:48 GMT

In a style befitting our whole India experience, my company has decided that they would rather have me back in Phoenix. This has been brewing for a few months, since at least my trip to the US in April, but we had expected to lose a year, not be told to pack immediately and return. The official word came a few days ago, and a few days before our summer trip home. This has put us into a mode barely less frantic than evacuees.

We leave for the US on the 12th and will cram in short vacation in north India the week before that. Joshua, Ian and I will come back in July to wrap up the remainders of our time here.

The lack of posts on this blog are the best testament to the reason for sending us back. Changes to my responsibilities require extensive interaction with business partners in the US, requiring me to be in meetings throughout the night. This has resulted in endless alternation of sleeping and working, with little time for anything else. Despite the long hours and constant exhaustion I still asked to stay in India, to no avail.

But British Airways returned by missing suitcase, 5 weeks after they took custody of it. Nothing missing and just in time for the final trip. Maybe this is the best of all possible worlds after all.

Heathrow/British Airways Fiasco

Shawn — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:58:49 GMT

I mentioned at the end of my last post that British Airways seemed past the turmoil of problems surrounding the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow.   30 minutes later I was watching ground crews unload all the bags from the hold and manually check them against a list.   That process took over an hour.   The delay in London added up to a 2 hour delay reaching LAX.   When we got to LAX we had to taxi for a very long time to the most remote part of the airport, instead of going right to the International Terminal.   Then, to make matters worse, the jetway operator couldn't get the walkway to line up to the airplane. That meant about 10 minutes of pointless delay.   We finally got on buses to the terminal, customs was packed taking another 30 minutes. Another 15 minutes looking everywhere for my suitcase lasted until 11:00 PM, 30 minutes after my connecting flight to Phoenix had departed.

The last part of the fiasco: Nobody staffing the Lost Baggage desk from British Airways. That left more than a few very angry people.

Throughout the whole trip, I was calm. I have learned that it rarely does any good to get angry. And the people on the plane were very apologetic. At one point the captain came out to explain the situation and said he could have shared the information from the cockpit, but wanted to face the disappointed passengers.   He and the other crew were obviously frustrated and embarrassed by things that were outside of their control.

I am frustrated and embarrassed by my profession. From what I read, this is largely a failure of a complex software system and a larger project to operate Terminal 5.   BAA seems to have ignored, through ignorance or ego, a similar disaster from the new Denver Airport a few years ago.   They probably trusted the hype of IBM and the other vendors that their software would "just work" without comprehensive testing that simulated real world situations.

But I don't hold British Airways totally blameless.   I don't know the details of what they could have done better at a higher level, but at a personal level they messed things up at LAX by not having staff on hand when one of their main flights from Heathrow arrived. There were only two BA staff to handle dozens of angry and frustrated customers.   These same two had to work the baggage area and then rush up to man the lost baggage desk.   Second, they offered no compensation for my missed connection and subsequent overnight sleeping in the terminal.   They said it was because I didn't book the flight through them.   Very poor customer service.

As for my missing luggage? The xeroxed form letter they gave me said to expect it within 36 hours. It is going on 72 and they don't have any update.

Bangalore, the real story

Shawn — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 13:42:08 GMT

I am in London at Heathrow terminal 5 which seems to be over its many troubles from earlier in the week. I am on expensive wifi and only have a few minutes which I will use to give you the real story, really quickly about our Bangalore trip.

No, Sarah is not going to Srinigar. That was an April Fools joke, although I did enjoy several conversations with very concerned people.

We had debated where to go on vacation for Spring Break for weeks. We considered Kerala, Hong Kong, Dubai, stay home, Kanyakumari etc. In the end we suffered from too many choices until there were only two choices left: stay home or go somewhere within driving distance.

We reserved hotel rooms in Bangalore and Mysore. We drove to Bangalore on Sunday afternoon and spent Monday sightseeing. The highlight of the morning for the kids was finishing the historical sites (Tippu's Palace, Bull Temple, etc) and go to McDonalds for lunch. I warned them not to expect the same food as they where used to in the US. They ended up being very disappointed. There was no beef, even though this was cosmopolitan Bangalore, famous for its beef. The fries were the only thing close.

What we did enjoy, too much is the donut shop across the street. Joshua kept coming up with excuses to go back. The donuts in this shop were better than any donut I have ever had, including Krispy Kreme. The best we have eaten in India, hands down.

The following morning we were supposed to drive to Mysore and wonderful town where we were booked into a palace that was turned into a luxury hotel. But when we met our driver he was very nervous about going, saying that he wanted to get out of the state of Karnatika and back to our state of Tamil Nadu as soon as possible. The reason was a news report of a water dispute between the two states. Farmers in villages along the road between Bangalore and Mysore were stopping cars with Tamil Nadu plates (indicated by the "TN" as the first part of the number) and beating the occupants and stoning the cars.

We considered the odds and risks, and with my work adding its ever present stress we decided to go home early. The hostilities aside, it was a nice relaxing trip. It was what I needed before a more stressful trip to Phoenix and LA. I get to Phoenix late Saturday night and stay until the following Sunday. After that I have a few days in LA then back to India.

A New School for Sarah

Shawn — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:22:23 GMT

We took a quick trip to Bangalore and enjoyed some good food and cooler climate. I will write about the trip in more detail later in the week. We rushed home a few days early because Sarah is off to Srinigar to start an apprenticeship making Kashmiri rugs.

We were walking around the one of Bangalore's shopping districts and Sarah and Amy found a little Kashmiri store tucked away down a side street. The man who runs the store with his Italian/Kashmiri daughter just adored Sarah and Sarah in turn just loved all of the Kashmiri products, especially the hand stitched rugs.

Amy has been doing some sort of cross-stitch while we watch Alias on DVD, and Sarah has had a mild interest in that, but nothing compared to how much she fell in love with these Kashmiri rugs.

While Joshua, Max, Abby and myself were exploring a used book store across the street, Sarah and Amy arranged for Sarah to be enrolled in the "Kashmiri Cottage Crafts Apprenticeship Program" in Srinigar, the capital of Kashmir. The program is an 8 week course that teaches all aspects of wool and silk weaving including materials preparation, dying and coloring, traditional and modern weaving techniques and finishing. This nice man at the store kept calling Sarah "my daughter" and gave her a great deal on a rug. He made a few calls and got Sarah into the program. It is a really exclusive school and only had openings for the term that starts on April 1. She will be a few days late, but should be able to catch up. It will cost us some money, but not as much as her tuition at the American School, where we need to work out how to have this wonderful experience count for credit.

Amy was concerned that this was just a sweat-shop masquerading as a school, but I was more concerned with its proximity to the lawless Taliban and Al-Queda controlled areas just across the border in Pakistan. Mr. Akbar assured us that all is fine and that we have nothing to worry about. In fact, he will be escorting Sarah there himself. I am leaving for the states in a couple of days and couldn't go myself, and Amy has to stay and take care of the little ones. We will go up and see her during her mid-program break over the May-Day weekend.

As a result, Sarah will be offline for a while, but expect to get some really cool Kashmiri rugs for Christmas. I am really excited for her. Quite the adventure for an 11-year old.

Tillamook Express

Shawn — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:30:05 GMT

I think that every expat could probably name that one thing from their home country that they just can't live without, the one thing that makes life in a foreign country bearable.   Actually, it is probally not one thing, but a list of things. For our family the item at the top of that list is Tillamook Cheese.
The locally available alternatives are no comparison. We have a block of greenish "Pizza Cheese" that passes as the worst mozzarella on earth. And the local dairy/grocery company Nilgiri's has a cheddar cheese that is best described as "interesting", but not "good tasting".    But for me, nothing compares to Tillamook.

How much do I love it? I planned my first honeymoon trip around a visit to the factory.   I ask everyone who is coming to Chennai from the states to bring me as much as they can pack.   I have to go to Phoenix next month and am planning to bring back a suitcase of it.

I am running an international cheddar cheese trafficking ring. Anything for my family.   For Max and Abby they will eat just about anything as long as it is covered in this stuff, and I am more than ready to give the Indian food a break and feast on real grilled cheese sandwiches.

What the Wind Blew In

Shawn — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:50:04 GMT

Earlier in the week we had rainy weather, courtesy of a cyclone blowing up from Sri Lanka. That storm brought strong winds blowing from the south.

The door on our top balcony faces south and suffers from the same endemic lack of quality as everything here. The result was an indoor waterfall. The rain came in around the door, ran across the third floor landing and then cascaded down to the ground floor, pooling at the foot of the stairs. As all our floors a marble, it became extremely difficult to walk. Max was screaming because he slipped and fell on his head.

The door was installed incorrectly. When the wind drives the rain against the door, the water runs into the house. I need to find a carpenter who can replace the door (it is warped) and redo the door jams as that the rain will run off to the outside. Otherwise we have this to look forward to each time it rains.

A decade in the saddle

Shawn — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:09:58 GMT

Today is the tenth anniversary of joining my current employer. If I had been told then that I would still be working for the company and that they would send me to India I am not sure I would have believed it. My plan back then was to work here for 6 months and then go work for a dot com startup. The CFO back then was very wise and predicted the collapse of the boom and convinced me to stay.

Over the past few weeks this job has been exhausting and all consuming. That is the reason for the lack of posts. Back then it was hard to imagine being at the same job for 10 years. Now it is not so hard to imagine being here in another 10 years, but only time will tell.

New Server

Shawn — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:32:39 GMT

If you are reading this then you are seeing my site running on a new server. My old host (WebHost4Life) seemed to just get slower each week to the point where I was hearing about it from readers. Researching web hosting services is difficult because there seems to be a lack of credibility across all the services that offer comparisons.

My new host is DiscountASP.net which I chose because it has many good reviews from developers I read as well as top hosting service recognitions from developer magazines.

It seems like the right balance of features, performance and cost. I had hoped that WebHost4Life would in fact be for life, but it is just too slow.

Please let me know how the site performs or if there are any problems.

SkullCandy

Shawn — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:13:40 GMT

A member of my team flew into Chennai over the weekend. For the last three weeks Jayashree had been getting packages from Amazon containing replacements to electronics that had been destroyed by the horrible electrical system here. That list included replacement power supplies for our Xbox and Wii consoles. I added one small treat to the list, a pair of Skull Candy Full Metal Jacket headphones. I am impressed to the point that I have to spend a few minutes raving about how good these headphones feel and sound.

They are an in-ear design and come with three different size gel ear sleeves. The ear bud is all metal (hence the name Full Metal Jacket). The sound quality is amazing for head phones. There are two size of speakers, I chose the larger 11mm over the 9mm. I have been using the standard issue iPod headphones and they aren’t low quality, but these are far superior. I started off listening to the Grateful Dead’s “Sugar Magnolia” and Jerry’s guitar really comes through. I switched back to the iPod phones and everything sounds a bit more muddled. This is impressive considering my ears have been surgically repaired and even now don’t work too well.

For the next test I chose Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. The piece has a strong cello foundation that cause my old phones to crackle at high volume. The FMJ phones remained crystal clear even max volume.

The SkullCandy website targets the punk rock set and I finished off the test with “Rocky Road to Dublin” by the Dropkick Murphys. I usually listen to DKM at full volume and the Skull Candy buds lived up to expectation. Very clear, absolutely no distortion.

Due to permanent tinnitus (ringing ears), I prefer to keep headphones on as much as possible, and these are a great way to go. Very comfortable and high quality.

You take the train, I'll take the plane

Shawn — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:22:06 GMT

I am envious of Joshua. Monday night he took the overnight train to the heart of south India. He is on a field trip with his school to a place called Mis'tea Hills, a campground up in the Western Ghat's near the hill station called Ooty. He is due back on Friday morning. I had imagined he and I taking a journey on the train, a weekend away from the girls (leaving Max in charge). The school beat me to it, but I am excited to read his stories. He is traveling "AC 3-tier" which is an air conditioned coach that has a padded bench to sit on below an overhead bunk. At bed time the back of the bench folds up to make a third bunk. The school reserved an entire car for the students. As much as I wish I was with Joshua on that train, I do not envy the chaperones. It is hard enough to get any sleep on a train, without 45 kids on their first Indian Railways adventure.

As for me, I flew to Kolkata this morning. On the cover of the newspaper was a minor mention of a "work slowdown" at all the airports tomorrow. Hopefully my flight out will not get cancelled.

And the home front with the men all gone? No problems, they say they don't even miss us.

She owns the sidewalk

Shawn — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:08:42 GMT

She was dressed in black silk interwoven with gold thread. She shimmered in the morning sun as she walked. We were driving up the sidewalk, shortcutting past a slow stoplight. We sounded the horn to scatter the others out of our way, then we came up behind her. Bweeep beep went our horn, but she flicked her head around in a motion that sent her black hair and black silk fluttering in an arc. She gave my driver a look that ended his honking. For good measure she gave me the same look. We formed a quiet procession behind her stately walk.

The cars on the street raced by. The light had turned green.