Hello and Welcome to Sugar Mountain!

Todays report will be a short one.

After a good nights sleep the day started with a trip throughout town together with Ram and Prasad.
We where on the lookout for some christmas gifts, mostly for the kids. Durring our trip I got to see a Panasonic TV that showed everything in 3d, really cool shit.

Due to the constant raining it felt somewhat of an adventure. I got to see parts of Bangalore that I have not seen before, the really poor parts. The mix of really poor and really rich people here in Bangalore is scary.

After a couple of hours shopping, or mostly riding the car really, me and Ram hade a nice lunch and watched the last part of the cricket game between India and Australia. Well Ram refused to watch since India really sucked, but I kind of enjoyed it when Ram hade explained the rules.

After lunch Ram was longing for his new found friend GWT, so we walked back to the office.
I also finished up some stuff that needed to be done, mostly mailing people that is. And all of a sudden the time was 7:45PM and it was really time to leave the office, and that was really the end of the day.

I’m really looking forward to meet the rest of the team tomorrow, we will make sure it’s a good day!

[Update 22:47]
Now most of you will probably think that I’m lying, but this is a true story.
When I was writing this report, it felt strange to do it so early(8PM local time), the normal is a bit later, and normally more things happen durring a day in India. But I was convinced that this was it, until I realized that I needed to go down to the hotel restaurant and eat something.
Earlier today I told Ram that the electricity died like five times yesterday, and that it was a drag when I was watching the soccer game. You know, I hade to find back to the right channel and all.

But today after finishing the report, and after a not so very eventful day, I got stuck in the hotell elevator not once but twice!
I hade forgotten all about yesterday and the mode swings the electricity has here, so I plainly walked into the elevator, and placed my room key-card on the reader to go down to the restaurant. At the same time the power died, first I thought that I hade done something wrong, but soon remembered the mood swings. I knew from yesterday that the power usually comes back within a minute or so, and so it also did this time. The elevator started to move to the -1 level, probably some safety stuff, and the door opened.

But now I did something really strange, I stepped out of the elevator, just to walk straight back in again. Why did I not take the stairs, when I know that the power seems to die repeatedly and quite close in time? Well,  I put my key-card on the reader to go up this time. But to my surprise the power dies again just when I’m in between ground floor and the basement. This time I needed to wait a little longer, but not more the 3-4 minutes.

Ps, It worked the third time! ds.

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!

Wednesday
The plan today was to have a bit of a slow day, focusing on unit-tests, some Javascript sessions and such.. But (as usual it seems) things did not turn out as planned.

We started the day with the morning stand-up meeting. We quickly handled the issues at hand between all of use(well except me since I’m the boss) and got started fixing the stuff found by UxD late yesterday afternoon swedish time.
We had our goal set to finish all the reported issues before the Stockholm stand-up meeting, but some of the issues took time, so we did not reach our goal.
During the meeting with Stockholm the scrum master was screaming more then ever, maybe she wanted to make point. I don’t think so, she has a good sense of humor, so no worries.

Well after that I started to go through a lot of bugs that are prioritized for the next spring by Mr Irish. Me, Mr UxD and the loud Scrum Master will have a chat regarding my conclusions tomorrow. Hopefully Bangalore Earth Hour will not happen during our meeting.
As I tweeted previously today, Jayesh is spot on with his skepticism regarding Earth Hour that toke place on the 28th of March. In Bangalore Earth Hour happens several times a day automatically… Luckily Blue Star has filled the basement with batteries that kick in, so Internet never goes down. I wonder what happens with the elevator, since the light go down? Shit, I need to remember to take the stairs tomorrow!

Durring the day our beloved boss sent approximately 15 mail regarding a failing in-development feature and kick-started Rams sweeting. We will handle the issue next week when Ram can have a partner in Mr New York(samcyp).

Me and Ram went for a late lunch around 2 PM, since he just needed five minutes more for about two hours, at the same restaurant as yesterdays dinner and lunch. But what the heck, it dame good food.

During lunch me and Ram also went to Total, a big shopping mall near by the office. I found some nice clothes for the kids. On the way to Total Ram asked me what I thought was the best and worst thing in India. The worst thing is easy I said, the contrast between those who have(and they seem to have a lot) and those who has none is really striking. The best thing would probably be meeting Ram and the rest of the crew, and of cause the food.

After lunch I got a mail from Mr UxD asking if I had started investigating the feature I had promised to do until monday. He thought that it was a good thing for me to start with tonight, since it would prevent me from falling asleep until CL final tonight. I know it was a joke so no harm taken:) But this brings a thought to mind, if possibly anyone who reads this blog is living at Nandhan Grand in Bangalore and could tell me what channel the game is on. All I can find are programs with 15.000 people dancing and singing.. It’s really strange, but true! It’s like all channels are directly liked to Bollywood!

After work me and Ram walked over to the Forum, and got some more stuff for the kids back home. On the way to the Forum I say the most stressful job in the world, a traffic cop in Bangalore. He was sitting in some cage and was occasionally screaming at some Auto-richa who was on the verge of going the wrong way one a one way street at rush hour. He once tried to hand out a fine but the Auto-richa driver got away.

At 9PM I had dinner at the Hotel, shiploads(as the spellcheck want’s it to be) of rice, chicken and naan. During dinner I watched the Zoom channel in hindi. Since I say a picture of Paris Hilton every five seconds, I knew I wasn’t missing much.

Tomorrow is the last day for me here in Bangalore, it’s true that time flies when you are having fun. Since this is my fourth trip to Bangalore one might imagine that I would get used to the traffic, the noise and the massive amount of people, but I think I never will.
But the week before I went down here, I finally figured out what is so special about Bangalore at night, it’s the darkness. Bangalore is a city of 5 million people (according to wikipedia) but is still really really dark. It’s just the main streets that have light, the rest is dark.

And now it’s 11:55PM 00:10 AM, and the game is soon to start. But Star Sports, which will be airing the game tonight, I think, is still showing tennis!

Tuesday

Today nothing really exciting happened, I woke up and went to the office. Unfortunately I had forgotten the AC on all night, so I was freezing cold when I woke up. Luckily freezing can easily be fixed here in India, step outside for two minutes and your fine.

At the office we started the day with the daily stand-up meeting, after that we started fixing the issues found by UxD(two still to be nailed tomorrow). Me, Ganesh and Kashif fixed some easy bugs after the stand-up meeting.

At 12:30 it was time for the Stockholm “morning” stand-up meetings. It’s kind of fun to take part in meetings with Stockholm from down here. I will not name any names, but the Scrum Master in Stockholm really screams during the meetings whenever she talks to us. Luckily everyone knows she is not upset but is compensating for the distance.

I participated in the sprint follow up of the April sprint with Stockholm, unfortunately Internet was behaving badly. Rumors has it that some router was killed apparently(possibly nevdull77 testing something?!)
While I was in the meeting, Ram was kind enough to pick up some food for me. All I can say is that it’s lucky that I do not live here in India, it was a massive amount of food(and hot as usual). I would look like a big red balloon after a couple of months!(Music tip: Black balloon by Monster Magnet )

In the afternoon we did some ruff estimations of coming projects in the June sprint, as well as we had a little meeting regarding testing of our own code and quality contra quantity, it was good. Quality still rules!

During the whole day I have been trying to get some time to prepare the Javascript Event Chain/Namespaces session we have planned for tomorrow, but have not really succeeded. But what the heck, how hard can it be. I’ll shoot from the hip on this one.

For the evening we had planned to leave the office at 7pm, to celebrate the Bangalore Star-of-the-Sprint. But due to reasons out of our hands, bug fixing, mailing an such, we left at around 8pm. We went to a nice restaurant close by the office where JoJo handed out the “voting cards” with a company logo and all. The focus for the Star-of-the-Sprint is to find the person who have been living the core values best for the past three-four weeks. The victory went to Adarsh, with Appa as a close runner up and Durgesh taking the bronze medal! Congratulations all of you! The prize Adarsh won was a lovely little silver star, it looks great!
Unfortunately JoJo forgot to say that is was not allowed to vote for yourself, but luckily Ram only got one vote.

The food was great and somehow the conversation always seemed to end up around the things Jon ate when he was down here in Bangalore. Jon, I tell you, the Bangers are really impressed. I’ve heard stories about how chilies being eaten and more, and they say “that you boldly went where no mans gone before in the wilderness of food”! They also say that Jalle is more like me, a bit more sensitive. I think what they mean is, a bit more sweaty.

Today I learnt that there is a real Ramesh around, and not only our own. Ramesh apparently works for Blue Star in Bangalore. Unfortunately he’s in the hospital right now because a big tree outside the office fell on him during some heavy rains some time back. How much bad luck can a guy have, we hope that his broken legs heal soon.

After the dinner Ram and Durgesh took me home in Rams new car. A great thing that has happened since my last visit is that Ram now has removed the plastic covers from the seats! I like Ram car, its great. Or it’s probably like this, I like to ride in Rams new car much more then behind him on his scooter. I don’t have a death wish you know :-)

It was really close that I did not continue with the Bangalore reporting thing, but why stop a loved tradition :-), so here we go

Sunday

The trip started out really bad, I stood in the wrong check in line for 30minutes at Arlanda, and I hate that. Me, I’m a guy how likes to have control, if I stand in the wrong line that’s an evidence of me not having control.. Puts me in a bad mood one could say. And for christ sake, it’s 04:30 in the morning.

Question: Is Sweden on leave or something? At 4:30 Arlanda looked like Bangalore, people all over, I promise. It was insane.

I eventually ended up in Frankfurt, and Frankfurt is Frankfurt.. ..Dark and grey, no fun at all.
But I did the good thing of the day in Frankfurt; I helped a small young guy, possibly 13years old, find his way to the Bangalore flight. He was a Swedish consultant working for Cap Gemini going down to Bangalore to attend some 2 week course. Apparently Cap Gemini has 20k developers working in India. But back to the good thing, he tagged along with me through Frankfurt Airport, this of cause due to that I’m such an experienced traveler and a real business man. I even waited for him when he went to the toilet. Even on the flight to Frankfurt I had noticed that this guy kept running back and forth to the toilet, and he later explained to me that he was afraid of flying, and of cause that was the cause of all the visit to the toilet. I told him, “you will have no problems on the flight to Bangalore, it’s a big 747 and the flight will be smooth”. Boy, where I wrong, we had a really bumpy road down to Bangalore, I hope the kid survived!

The flight to Bangalore went well beside the bumps, I had this really interesting Mr and Mrs Something who had been living in the US for 6 months and where now moving back to Bangalore, they were really nice talking to. The Mr in the family was working for a big Indian consultancy firm, and was a bit feed up with not being able to change anything. “We are not very agile” he said, I tipped him to contact Blue Star and see what they could offer..

Entering customs in Bangalore was a new experience, thank you Swine Flu!
Previously it has taken a long time to go through customs, but now thanks to the flu it takes ages, first one need to fill in a form regarding your physical health. I lied a lot as you might understand, since I really need to start running or something. After that you need to state where you have been the last 6 months, easy for me, I could even state the street addresses, Klarabergsgatan 60 and Allfarvägen 21 Täby. The people in customs did not understand my joke so I had to change it to Sweden.
The only problem here was really the massive amount of people that needed to pas the 3 doctors asking the same questions as one previously has answered in the form..

After that I was planning to fast as a shark pick up my bag and get out to Prasad from Blue Star who was waiting for me outside. One could guess that the bags would be waiting since passing the doctors took about an hour. But no, I waited 53 minutes for my bag, and when I finally got it I got grabbed in Customs by Mr Sunshine himself. He wanted me to open my bag, since someone had marked the bag with a big X on the side. So I open the bag, and showed the lap top I had brought from Sweden to JoJo . Well about here the discussion starts, Mr sunshine informs me that is only allowed to bring one computer into India and he thinks the laptop is worth 40.000 rupees, which is probably 35.000 rupees to much, I said “no way, I’ll leave the computer here with you and you can do whatever you want with it”. So then he said, “but I can give you a discount” , I said, “are you real(that is a translation of “är du riktig” in Swedish) can the customs give me a discount, that sounds insane! “. Mr sunshine did not react positive to my comment, and I should have kept my mouth shut! But to end this part of the story, we “agreed” on 33.000 rupees as the computers value, and I paid 9013 rupees as some kind of tax.. it’s hard to believe but I can show you the receipt.

The day ended on a really good note though, when Prasad had taken me to the hotel, the hotel had decided to upgrade me into a suite instead of my ordinary room. Suite == Sweet.

Monday

I had talked to Ram during the nightly adventures in customs, and we had agreed a pone meeting at the office around 09. And so we did, it was really great meeting the nice people in D&M Bangalore! For me the day mostly consisted of meeting, and meetings held in Stockholm, so I did not really have the time to take part in any cool stuff that the Bangalore team is working on. Me and Ram had a nice, but short, lunch with some Blue Star people.

In the afternoon we all got the chance to celebrate Ganesh’s birthday. They do have some strange traditions here in the far east, the guy’s getting older get’s cake all over his face, and he seems to like it.. Must be some Hindu tradition, “go to the local baker, get a ‘cream cake’ and put it in the face of your friend”. Strange, but fun!

I spent the evening at the hotel restaurant, sweating and speed eating due to the fact that two people were constantly filling my plate with Chicken tikka masala. Or possibly it could be due to the Kingfisher beers.

Ps, forgot one thing, my shoe touched some cow shit today, does this make me holy or just my shoe? Ds.