First weekend and first days of work

So I'm finally set up at my desk and able to regularly update my blog, which is good because a lot has happened since the last time we spoke. I'll start where I left off:

On Friday I took a rickshaw to Electronic City to where the Infosys campus is. This was my first rickshaw ride, and it can hardly be explained in words. Imagine this: You're in a car with me driving, but every other car is also driven by me (if you've been in a car with me, then this is truly a frightening experience), there are no lanes and many more motorcycles than cars, there are no doors or seatbelts and there are cattle wandering on semi-paved streets. All in all, pretty insane. I went through the most impoverished parts of Bangalore, and it's pretty depressing. Children in standing barefoot in streets heavily littered with trash, stray dogs everywhere, hovels on the side of the road…not pretty.

All of a sudden there is a huge glass pyramid on the right side of the road, the first landmark of the Infosys campus. My driver took me to Gate 5, where I checked in with security, where they escorted me through a metal detector, checked me and my bag for disks and laptops. All of the guards carried huge elephant rifles. I waited for Matt, a University of Michigan graduate who has been working here for about 4 months. It was nice to finally see a friendly, American face. Matt is a really great guy and I can tell we’re going to get along great while I’m here. We just seem to have a lot in common.

He gave me a cursory tour of campus, and HOLY COW!!! It can’t accurately be described, so wait till I get my digital camera, but it blew my mind. These buildings would stand out in any American metropolis and the landscaping is incredible. Reminds me of Disney World, if Disney World was a pristine 85 acres of bio-dome in the middle of complete chaos. There’s a huge shaped swimming pool in the middle, buildings that I never thought I’d see till at least the year 2020, gyms, one-hole golf courses scattered around campus, a 5-star hotel…it goes on and on. Matt and I met up with Josh, my flat-mate, and we went to meet Jean Michelle at one of his restaurants on campus. Jean Michelle has been a 5-star chef in France, Japan, Australia, Thailand and a few other places. Infosys hired him to run the dining halls and restaurants on campus, which I can say are really very good, and I haven’t eaten at the nice ones yet.

That night Matt and I met up with some other Infosys employees and interns at a bar called 1912. It was a really nice joint, a place I felt much more at home. The others had called ahead and reserved us a private table, which is pretty much standard operating procedure around here. This ensures that you have at least 2 waiters at your table at all times. Getting a refill on your drink takes a couple minutes at most. The really great part was that in a group of about 8 of us, there was one girl from Iran, a guy from France, a girl from Ghana and a girl from Romania. The rest of the crew were Americans from around the country. (Today at lunch I ate with a group of people that included a guy from Belgium, a guy from Guatemala, a guy from Spain and another from France). I can’t imagine I could have had this kind of experience anywhere else. Really great night out.

Not much since that. I’ve just been getting organized at work, but from what I can tell the work as a Marketing Executive is a lot of fun and very diverse, which is exactly what I wanted. That’s all for now. Talk to you guys later. Peace.