Hello and Welcome to Sugar Mountain!

So I’m back in Bangalore!

The trip started out fine, at 03:50 I left the house heading for the airport.
My son, asked me the previous night why I always need to be away in India all the time, so it was not the happiest camper who boarded the flight to Frankfurt.

Frankfurt was the same, durring my three hour wait I spent some time looking at the Javascript unit tests again. It’s really strange, but these small tests is such a joy to work with. In Frankfurt I also started with the review of the upcomming book by Ellnestam, it surely is promising!

On the flight to Bangalore I got the seat dead last in the plane, and there was no space at all to bring out the laptop, so I keept on reading the coming book in the iPhone. I promise the my laser eyes sharp are not created for this.
The woman next to me was an elderly indian woman who was somewhat lost. Durring the flight I helped with for instance opening her food, holding here cup of water, opening/closing the seatbelt etc etc. She was really sweet, I think, since she was constantly speaking to me in a language I did not understand.

Arriving in Bangalore was a relief, since me and the elderly woman hade run out of topics to talk about.
In Bangalore they have upgraded their fight agains the svin flue since my last visit, they now have heat-seeking-cameras instead of doctors. Bangalore is really high tech! The only issue with this new high tech solution was that no one was watching the tv’s that showed the heat signatures. Maybe the tv’s where there to show the visitors that India hade the heat under control?
Well at least customs went well this time. When I finally got my bag, after an hour of waiting, it had a big white X on top of it. I know since last visit that this is the sign of a smuggler, and that it’s time to pay. So I tried to put my laptop on top of the big white X and went towards customs looking as confident as I could. My only misstake was that I hade missed the second X on the side of the bag, so of course I got taken by customs.

Thanks to my charm and intelligence I managed to convince the customs guy, after explaining that the great state of India probably did not mind me bringing in socks, shirts or laptop chargers, to let me through. And this even without having to pay the bribe. I felt really good when I was walking out of customs knowing that that I hade managed to sneak through the second laptop that I had in my hand luggage. Success! I hade finally beaten the Indian customs, and who are they to treat me as a smuggler?

Prasad, as always, was waiting for me ready to take me to hotel. On the way into town, on the for once empty streets of Bangalore, we talked about the TED conference(TED India is held in Bangalore this weekend), about new car models, that Prasad could talk in his native tongue to Samuel and such.
Prasad told me a story he hade heard about Toyota. Toyota hade launched a new model in India some time back in 2003 , the same time as when the offshoring of  support centras hade really taken of here in Bangalore. So a lot of the new support centras bought the new 8 seater Toyota model to be used as transportation of the employees between their homes and the offices, since they were working shifts all through the night. Unfortunately the drivers at the support centras drove like they hade stolen the cars and where involved in a lot of fatal car accidents. The Toyota car started to be referred to as a “killer car”. So Toyota decided to remove the brand new model from the Indian market, the car hade sold like “butter in sunshine”(thanks for the translation Google Translate), but Toyota did not want to smear the Toyota brand with a “killer car”. A story that surely makes one think.

After 4.5 hour of sleep I woke up at the hotel, and it’s really a nice one. Breakfast consisted of boring bacon and egg, I do not what to give the belly-bug a chance to get a grip on me. After breakfast Ram came by and picked me up to go the office.
And now something about Ram, Ram has after 1.5 years in India gone back to being 100% Indian, at least he drives and walks 100% like an Indian! He breaks for nobody, like the space balls. An example, we are closing in on the most crowded traffic junction in India(at least it felt so), and Ram refuses to break, he just turns.. By magic we made it to the office.
An other example is me and Ram crossing the street from the office to local coffee shop, Ram just walks straight out in traffic, taking me by the shoulder saying “fuck it, no problem”. The funny part is that we made it cross the street, so maybe the Indians know something the rest of the world don’t know(maybe that is was Martin Fowler really is talking about). I will test this new driving and walking technic first chance I get when I’m back in Sweden.

The interview that was planned to be held today was unfortunately canceled, due to that the poor guy we where to meet was involved in a car accident on his way from Chennai to Bangalore for the interview. Luckily he apparently was not badly injured, and hopefully we will get a chance to meet him before I leave.
So instead me and Ram spent the day talking, we hade some really good discussions and we also managed to fix a WEBDAV bug.

Kashif and Appa Rao came by the office as well, great to see them again. Appa even stayed to re-test his Google Analytics work he have been doing the past week. Unfortunately the data was not correctly submitted, but together we managed to fix the bug and also re-factor a smal part of the source code. Kaizen MF!

At 7:30PM I was ready for dinner, but Ram was not even close since he hade some bug in GWT that needed attention. But through the power of me outranking him, I persuaded him to close the computer and take me to dinner. Appa stayed behind since he was about to test “one-more-thing”!

Projectplace Bangalore is something special, it’s 10 highly skilled people with a never give up attitude, I feel really blessed knowing them!

Me and Ram hade dinner at my hotel, and a nice one it was(I think that I might have let the belly-bug in under my shield). We continued our talks and enjoyed the elevator/Las Vegas style music in the restaurant.

After dinner me and Ram called it a day, Ram drove his car home and I wrote this.

[Update] ESPN is showing the Arsenal game, success!