July 2009

Did not do all I wanted here; but on the other hand; I relaxed at the hotel and went to a few pubs. It was relaxing and beery out. Today I head back to Chennai after a one hour flight. I’ll be there for about four days and then head to Singapore for a weekend and a day of meetings there. The flight time out for me to Singapore is nicer. I leave at 1015 in the morning so I get in a reasonable time. The other flight is on a Singapore Airlines flight which leaves at 1150pm and gets in at 550am. Buh bye evening and hello morning .

I’m staying at the Changi Village Hotel over by our offices there and the incredible Changi Airport. I’ll be relaxing Friday in the hotel lounge testing how the Tiger Ale tastes and planning on doing absolutely nothing. I’ll also meet up with Todd there and we’ll return to India together Monday evening. Coolness!

Back to the New Woodlands Hotel today. Perhaps dinner at the hotel restaurant. They have good vegetarian food. I am thinking Thali . I am going to definitely have Chilli Crab in Singapore.

Well, its about 830am. Time to beauty up and do breakfast. Well… Not beauty up. I don’t beauty up too well. But I can get presentable sort of…

Catch everyone on the 1 hour flipside in Chennai.

Off I go in a few hours to Bangalore. Home of the IT Industry in India. Getting a hotel and doing some touristy things. Flying on Kingfisher Airlines. Must be a plane full of beer . My new HTC Magic Android phone is nice overall; but I’m missing the google experience applications. There are ways around things though and the exchange activesync connector works quite nicely for email, calendaring, contacts. I like how the contacts and calendars are managed as well through a central view of the calendar. There are alternatives to Android Market like Slideme. I think if I would have done a bit of research previously, I may have done something else; but having a phone in India is nice. Its a whole different mindset and I appreciate the flexibility of an unlocked phone. No more monthly accounts with a locked in service provider. The Magic mounts as a USB device so copying files to install to it is easy. I tend to synchronize exchange calendars most of all for work and I keep a personal calendar on it for me. I can reach my google calendar easily and even have it offline using the built-in gears offline capability for it and email.

So, I am about 90% happy with it. I will have to look at a phone though which has the google experience applications especially android market. I miss that one.

As far as the outmoded locked in accounts, no changing, etc; I don’t miss that at all. I will be buying simcards from here on out for all the places I end up. Prepaid simcards are cheap ways to get connected. Monthly accounts, 2 year service plans, locked in providers… Blech.

The Gnome Gone Network Manager

The Gnome Network Manager has checked out of the building. It sucks at many levels that I replaced it with a few things including scripts. I think it tries to do too much with too much. I replaced the wired and wifi management with wicd. Then I started looking at what I need to do to vpn in to our pptp vpn server. That’s just a script folks. Run the script and I connect and get the IP address I need. Finally, for my Tata Indicom USB Modem; I installed Gnome PPP figuring its just a PPP connection after all. It took a bit of work but it dials twice as fast as the Gnome Gone Network Manager. I can also use wvdial for this after writing a suitable /etc/wvdial.conf file. If you run wvdial with a sudo in front of it without a wvdial.conf file in /etc it will search out a suitable modem or whatever and write one. Gnome PPP uses a wvdial.conf file as well. So now, I’ve basically made the Gnome Network Manager truly become the Gone Network Manager in Gnome. Yay!

For my home vpn, I just use openvpn and I launch it pretty easily these days and it just works.

Chennai Affairs

Its the weekend but today I have work to get done I’ve procrastinated on. Procrastination is the thief of time. I’m enjoying time here and will soon mark my third week in country. This coming weekend, I’m off to Bangalore for a few days and then after that back to Singapore to pick up Todd and return. We had a wonderful dinner at Copper Chimney. Also picked up a new unlocked cell phone which is an Android HTC Magic. I have bought sim chips and I’m moving past these damned locked accounts at ATT or Sprint in the US. I want freedom!

Tomorrow night I am going to Sparky’s Diner for dinner. This is an american owned restaurant here in Chennai so that should be fun. Motto of Sparky’s is “never trust a skinny chef”.

Today is more of a rest day and work day so I’m reading, taking it easy and enjoying that second cup of filtered coffee from the restaurant.

Just a few odds and ends notes about Chennai I found interesting. I found a auto driver which speaks excellent english so we have political discussions to and from the Chennai MRTS in Mylapore. He still charges me the same old rate which he assures me is non-negotiable. Buying stuff like cell phones here is different. Usually I would go to the ATT store but here they will come to you for most things. Eating here is challenging if you want to have a beer with dinner. You can go to a bar which happens to serve food. There are not many restaurants besides Zara’s that I have been to yet which serve good food and beer. But that is going to change hopefully this weekend. I’m off for another eating adventure this weekend. Next weekend I’m off to Bangalore for some days and then the weekend after that I go to Singapore for a few days vacation actually.

The Chennai MRTS or mass transit system is interesting. It runs very punctually and the schedule is easy to memorize. I went and bought a month pass for it and then realized after riding it once that they don’t really check for that. You simply walk up to the train station tracks and off you go. I still wonder why the train stations are so huge. BART stations are tiny little things. These stations are 3 story giants. But the main thing is Chennai MRTS takes me to a 5 minute walk from work each day and then back to a station where my friendly auto driver that speaks english is waiting to ask me more questions about Obama, whether the US is so expensive as he hears, and why people in the US dress the way they do. He also asked me why Michael Jackson changed the color of his skin. I told him because he was unhappy with the way he was. He said, “that’s sad”. I agree.

I’m having some pretty good times here my week and week-end days. The hotel is always interesting and rather wild. Seems that people party here into the night for weddings. That’s pretty cool. The other day there was a sea of police officer cadets. More female cadets than males. I tried talking to one and she patiently listened and smiled and said “that’s nice”.

End of my chennai stuff reporting for one day. More mental meanders to come.

Last night, Dinesh from our India office and I went out for a beer and Thai food at Benjarong. Its this quite quaint and wondrous place with beautiful decorations from Thailand. The food was simply wonderful. We had a rice dish, pad thai, and chicken panang curry. I had a Thai Iced Tea to drink. The food amounts were just right for us, tasted very authentic and the service was great. The owners I have read are a family from Thailand which came to Chennai some time ago. The restaurant has a number of beautiful art pieces from Thailand the most interesting is the vegetable and fruit carving that goes on out front. As we left, a person was sitting in front of carrots and watermelon artfully carving them into different shapes. Very interesting!

My friend and colleague Todd will be coming over in late July to spend some time here in Chennai but first I go back to Singapore for meetings and a weekend there around 30 July or so. Then in August sometime, my boss will be arriving for a staff visit here. August will be a busy month for me with folks coming from all over to visit in Chennai.

This is a weekend here in Chennai so some exploration is warranted. I will probably go to a few shopping areas today and record things with my little digital camera. One place is called Spencers Plaza which is a multi-story mall, food court, and money spending location. I am looking for some books, gifts, and other stuff to take back when I go. I also will stop at the Landmark store at the Chennai City Centre to look at books, movies, DVDs. That’s a really neat store which reminds me of Borders or something.

Since food is never really far away from my thoughts, I’ll probably do a dinner here at the hotel tonite. They have really good vegetarian fare. Tomorrow, I am going to go back to Copper Chimney for dinner. Next week it will be Sparky’s Diner which is an American owned restaurant here. I also need to get over to Amethyst sometime. Too many places!!

I don’t have a firm date when I’ll leave from here yet. Airline tickets can be changed so will just have to wait and see. As far as communication back home, best I have found if you are visiting here is Skype. Get your loved one or family a free skype account and yourself one too. It just works. And its free.

Some days you are meant to achieve greatness and other days its better to not even attempt it. Today is one of the latter days I fear. I’m lazy and slothful and those are the best of my weekend qualities. Being away from home on a holiday is different. I don’t remember the last time I was away in a hotel room alone on the weekend of the 4th of July. I’ve gone out here in Chennai far more this trip than I had time for ever before. I’ll be putting stuff up on my flickr photostream soon so people can live vicariously with my adventures riding autos, going places, working and playing. The place I am staying in here is called the New Woodlands Motel.  Its a very  interesting corner of the world to be in.

I am told by Deepak that Mylapore is one of the oldest parts of the city and is regarded as a cultural center. It also has a long history which appears to go back to the Roman days. Its close to the Marina Beach area which is one of the longest continuous beaches in the world I am told. It also has its fair share of restaurants, a mall, interesting olds and news, and I’m digging it.

Someone told me that the best way to see Chennai is out the window (or lack of one) of the Chennai auto’s. The auto’s look like this…

There ya go! Not me riding in one but I’ve been bustling around in them myself. Taking photos out of the window/door thing is a blast. I’ve promised a few people at work to chronicle a day going to work. I’ll be riding the Mylapore MRTS which is a hop, skip, and a auto ride from the hotel I’m at.

I’ll try to post more often since someone in the office showed me some kindness and gave me a little Tata Indicom USB broadband CDMA modem so I can do email and light webstuff when I want to.