Despite my comments about the Air India flight, everything actually worked out pretty well. (Sorting out the expense report is going to be fun, though.) We landed on time; I picked up my rental car, scooted up to my mother’s house in Oxford, said hi, and went to sleep. About four hours later my brother…
Read More Day 14: getting back on trackI’m somewhere over Eastern Europe at around 2pm Indian, 9:30am London, sitting in seat 47K in Air India 747-400 VT-AIE. Or maybe we’re over Turkey or Western Europe – who knows? The clouds are solid. The fairly primitive IFE (in-flight entertainment) system is no help: no moving map, no altitude, no speed, or time to…
Read More Day 13: somewhere over Eastern Europe…This trip had gone perfectly. Too perfectly. It was unnatural. And on Friday evening, my luck ran out. The plan was to fly on Jet Airways from Bangalore to Mumbai, then from Mumbai to London on British Airways. The flight to Mumbai was due to arrive at 11pm, while the second departed at 2:15am. Plenty…
Read More Day 12, part 2: oops.Friday began with a quick trip to the Sun building in Bangalore to meet with Vijay, the VP in charge of the site. After that I phoned my driver, Srinivas, and he drove me out to the Tech Park where the-Indian-operation-of-the-company-formerly-known-as-StorageTek (!) was based. I met with the site manager and the architect who works…
Read More Day 12, part 1: StorageTek@BangaloreThe rains returned to Bangalore on Thursday, but not enough to disrupt things seriously. (Chennai looks like it’s in a worse position.) I had five things on the agenda: A series of meetings about global engineering issues and mentoring. These went well, although one meeting was postponed to Friday, giving me a welcome break to…
Read More Day 11 – Bangalore Tech Talk and "Diwali Bash"Raj Premkumar has solved my puzzle of the mystery painting at the Salar Jung Museum. It turns out that it was mis-labelled: the actual artist was S. G. Thakur Singh, whose “After Bath” won a prize when it was exhibited in London in 1924. There’s a JPEG on that web page, although it doesn’t really…
Read More Mystery painting identifiedWhen last we left our intrepid hero, he was cowering in bed, transfixed by television images of Bangalore under flood waters of Biblical proportions. The following morning brought little relief: the regional papers were running headlines like “Bangalore is now an ocean”. Undaunted, Dale and I took a car to Hyderabad Airport. We saw people…
Read More Day 10You absolutely must check out Mr Angry and Mrs Calm. Simply amazing. I can’t begin to imagine how it works… (Via BoingBoing.)
Read More An extraordinary perceptual illusionWhile I’m in India, where Bangalore has been experiencing its wettest month since records began, they also seem to have been having some weather back in Massachusetts. From the Boston Globe: “In Boston earlier yesterday, occasional gusts as high as 55 miles per hour forced pedestrians to lean into them, while downed trees snarled public…
Read More Missed meTuesday comprised a full day of meetings with the ex-SeeBeyond organization in Hyderabad. Dale and I talked with each of the functional groups: about the group membership; what they were doing; the major issues that they faced (strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities); and how the integration into Sun was going to affect them. After that, we…
Read More Day 9