In and Around the City

I had a chance to explore a little more of Bangalore city with a few other interns on my first weekend in town. It feels like a small town that was suddenly stuffed with about three times as many people as it was comfortable with. Which is unsurprising, becuase that's pretty much what happened in the last decade. There is a nice park called Lalbagh Gardens which reminded me of Golden Gate Park (no buffalo, though). There are a few main shopping and restaurant streets concentrated in the center of the city and three new western-style malls have sprung up. The prices vary greatly depending on the type of store. It's a little disconcerting to see an Adidas or Kenneth Cole store next to one selling Bollywood DVDs and soundtracks.

The weather held for us during the days, though it's been raining briefly in the evenings. In fact, as I write this, there's some tremendous thunder outside.

Went to my first Indian discotech last week. I didn't care much for the music (loud house) or light effects (epileptics beware), and the bartender ripped us off on the price of drinks because we were obviously foreigners (apparently it's a common practice). For as conservative as the culture can seem, from the outfits and behavior at this place it was clear that the younger set has another side. Don't I sound old and crotchety ("We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways...").

But I am working, too. And now that my jetlag has worn off, it's a bit tougher to get up and into the office at 8:00. I'd post pictures, but it's mostly a cubicle farm. The projects going on around me are interesting: text and data mining, data quality, business intelligence, web services frameworks... My work is so research-based that it feels sorta like being back in school. But with longer lunch breaks. And less skepticism for buzzwords.