I can't believe I'm getting paid for this...

Thanks to all of you who read thefirst blog entry and saw fit to come back for more… you are real troopers!

Pics are all up in 'Bangalore two,' and have descriptions so you know what you are seeing...

As I start to write this, I have just gotten back from ThoughtWorks-India Family Day 2008, and I am in a terrific mood! It was a fantastic day filled with fun, music, dancing, laughter, friends, and food… what more could one want in life? The most impressive part of all is that all of those things could be found at an event sponsored by my employer. Who’s ever heard of such a thing? I am not sure how I managed to accidentally apply and accidentally be accepted into this company, but I’m sure I must have done something off-the-charts good in my last life to deserve it. The people I am surrounded by are really tops, both my classmates and trainers, and the TW-India folks. Day after day I continue to be impressed and amazed at the people, the company, the values, and did I mention the people? I’d say there must be something in the water, but you can’t drink it over here!

So I’ve now been here a week, at a company of almost a thousand people, and I have personally talked with the CEO, COO, Chief Scientist, and Founder, all of whom made it a point to come to India in part to talk to the new incoming class of 18 people. They all say they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the people. They are also completely open and honest about the company, even the less than perfect parts. Transparency is rampant here.

Ok, enough of all that for now…though I reserve the right to gush again later. I’ll also get back to TWI Family Day a bit later.

Last Sunday I laid low during the morning, then had lunch within the compound, and then went exploring the neighborhood in the afternoon with a few of the people from the Chicago office. We had to cross Airport road(see previous post) but made it and eventually found a great little market street. There were tons of small shops and carts selling everything from fruit and veggies to pharmacological goods to clothing to chickens (don’t worry, I didn’t get close!). It was a good introduction to the country for us, a little more realistic than the bubble we are living in here. There was all sorts of shopping going on all around us, and while it was a minor street as far as traffic was concerned, we still had to be conscious of cars behind us.

Dinner was a ‘welcome’ dinner at apretty nice place nearby called BBQ Nation. The concept is that they put a barbecue in the middle of your table,sunken in. Then they bring out skewers of cooked appetizers which you let warm and then enjoy with various sauces. There was a buffet to follow,but only about 5% of us had any room left after all the yummy appetizers. Interestingly, they asked who was veggie and gave them different colored plates so that they wouldn’t serve you meat. Yum yum! There was paneer (fresh cheese), mushrooms, veggie balls, and all sorts of other goodies. Desert was good too! It was a nice relaxed way to meet everyone and start to get to know people. The poor Australians, however (just 2 people) didn’t arrive until late that night, so missed out on the BBQ and also had to start their training the day after arriving!

Hey Benjie, what do you mean you are living in a bubble? I’m glad youasked! The Diamond District is a gated complex, home to 2 office buildings and a ring of condominiums surrounding a beautiful courtyard. There are something in the ballpark of a thousand condos. Some are hotel style, some are (I assume) owner occupied, and some are rented out corporate-apartment-extended-stay style. That’s what we are in. They are comfortably furnished, 3 people per flat, with rooms and bathrooms for each person. There are TVs, laundry and internet connections in each, as well as kitchens that came stocked with a few essentials when we first got here. Water is filtered as it enters the DD, and then there is another filter in the kitchen for drinking water. One thing that surprised me is that the beds go “thud” when you lay down. Picture a thin futon cushion (maybe an inch and a half or two) on a cement floor, and that is the level of hardness I am talking about. Fortunately, I am usually too exhausted to notice.

Within the complex you can find a grocery store, dry cleaner, two restaurants, a gym, swimming pool and three ATMs. You really don’t have to leave, but I try to get out as much as possible. The other day I had one of my hardest moments yet. We were walking to 100 Foot Road to shop a bit and get a bite to eat (it was actually on Valentine’s Day). We crossed the street (see previous post),and were walking along, when I realized we were passing a tent city / shantytown setup under an overpass. It is literally across the street from the Diamond District, maybe even in its shadow. I took a couple pictures, but they aren’t the best because I held the camera at my side so as not to look like I was taking pictures. I almost started crying at the disparity of it all. How is it that we can live in this posh bubble with dozens of families living in tents across the street?

There are so many stark contrasts in India just like that. Religious and non-religious, traditional and modern, vegetarian and non-veg, old and new, foreign and domestic, expensive and cheap… Today I heard a techno remix of“American Pie,” I said I thought Don McLean must be rolling over in his grave, but I just looked it up, and he is very much alive… Sorry Don. So maybe he appreciates the royalties… I kind of doubt it.

Anyway, Monday started ThoughtWorks University. Classes are held in a conference room in the hotel next door. It’s nice enough, but I know by the end of the 6 weeks I will get a little nauseous every time I see that room. We start with breakfast at 8:30… let me tell you it is taking me a while to get used to curry and other assorted Indian foods for breakfast. Yes, there are other (limited) options, but I’m really trying to embrace the culture, stomach and all.

I must say here that my Indian classmates are amazing. They are infinitely patient when I ask them for the nth time “what’s that?” or “Is there any meat in there?” And they hardly chuckle when I take a bite of something too spicy and think my head is going to burst into flame. Seriously though, they are so welcoming, educating, friendly, and fun! They don’t even wait for us to ask before they start explaining something we won’t understand.

On a side note, a couple years ago Is tarted a Google Group called “Pay It Forward” for something I had been working on at Hillel. I never really did anything with it, but then last year when we were in Ecuador I got an email from a guy who wanted to make it an active group. So I gave him co-ownership rights and said “have fun.” Nothing nothing nothing…then the day before I left for India I got an email from him and another guy. The other guy is a motivational speaker who uses the pay it forward model to reach people. He wants to use the group to expand the pay it forward ideas. I didn’t see the email at first, but the first guy emailed me to kind of get my blessing to give co-owner rights to the new guy. Well in his email, his last email to me popped up, and I saw that he had said he was working in the tech sector in India! SoI emailed him thinking that there was a chance he was in Bangalore. He’s not, he’s in New Delhi, but he said if I ever make it up there that I have a place to stay! How nice is that?!?

So back to what’s been going on…Monday and Tuesday were really long and fairly boring. There was a lot of history, business model, diversity training… introductory type stuff. What I was impressed with was that on our very first day we had a session onThoughtWorks values.

Did I mention they were long days? Part of that was because we had unscheduled meetings with some of the bigwigs mentioned above, but I was really unimpressed. We were all totally jetlagging, and needed to get on a good schedule, not push ourselves. Fortunately, that has been my only real gripe with this whole experience!

So starting Wednesday, things picked up. From then on there were no more long days, and almost every single activity is extremely fun, engaging, active,involved, and educational. We have had ‘lessons’ using balloons, legos, and paper hats. Every morning we start with a ‘stand-up’ meeting, where we stand in a circle and toss a stuffed animal around and say what we did the day before,what we are looking forward to today, and any issues we are having. Why is it a stand-up meeting? Because if your feet get tired, it’s too long. This is a regular practice for ThoughtWorks.

We even had a class on how to have successful meetings! They talked about it for a few minutes, and then we were directed to have a meeting to decidewhere to travel on our remaining weekends. We were given 45 minutes, and I was designated the facilitator, because I had been bugging everyone about planning the travel already. It went really well! We picked two places, Coorg and Goa (check them out, they seem great!), and put off the planning our last free weekend until after the first one so we have a better Idea of what we want. For me it was an amazing chance to facilitate a meeting in a way I never have before, with a bunch of really bright, motivated people. I did my best to keep us on task and focused, and made sure people had a chance to talk. It was really valuable. Especially since right afterwards our trainers gave us (and me) feedback which was really terrific and constructive.

Another thing we do is use stickynotes. Lots of them. A common practice is to ask a question, and have everyone write their thoughts on post-its and put them on a white board. Then someone goes over all of them to stick the common ones together, and we discuss the patterns we see. It is really effective because it is visual and a basic vote of ideas at the same time. Colors are also fun and make things more interesting to look at. We like to use things that are easily changeable…Its kind of what we’re all about.

At the end of the week we finished off with a ‘retrospective’ meeting. I was worried it would turn into a gripe session, but it was totally different. We started by writing how safe we feel sharing our views with the group (on a scale of 1-5) on a post-it, crumpling it up, and then they were stuck to a white board. Most people were 4 and 5 with a few 3’s. Apparently if it is too low you try to work on that before moving on to anything else. If you can’t get people feeling safe, then you don’t have the retrospective. But we were in pretty good shape, so we started by drawing what we were feeling on a 3*5 card and then putting it up on a white board and talking about our feelings with the group. It is a good thing we talked about them, because one girl’s picture made me think she felt the group was really fractured, and I was worried… but it turns out she is feeling a lot of different things inside. Someone also drew a teenagemutant ninja turtle, but I don’t think that had too much to do with TWU. I drew fireworks.

Then there was another whiteboard with areas labeled ‘things to keep doing,’ ‘things to do more,’ ‘things to do less,’ ‘things to start doing,’ and ‘things to stop doing.’ Then of course it was post-it time! So we populated the board with our greats and gripes, and then someone consolidated similar comments. Then we took markers and voted for the ones that were the most important to us. Then as a group we talked about all the things that got votes. One of the things we talked about was the long days, and we came up with some really constructive ways to keep things shorter or at least make us more comfortable with that.

One evening during the week we went out to a mall for a little shopping and some dinner. It just happened to be the mall’s 15th birthday, and so they had a lot of hoopla going on. One thing they had was a huge cake in the shape of their logo. I have never seen so many men scrambling and climbing over each other for a piece of cake. It was a crazy frenzy. And this was an upscale mall. See video.

Then it was Friday. Its funny, we are really playing more than working, but Friday is still Friday, and when the weekend comes around it feels good. I guess it is because we are so busy, both with the learning and with evening activities, but then again theweekend was just as busy!

Saturday, as I mentioned, was the TWIndia Family Day 2008. All I can say is wow. I feel so fortunate to work at a place where so many people would put so much of their own time and effort into what at another company could amount to an ‘extra’ work day. There was breakfast in the office at 8:30,and then we all boarded busses at 9:00 and drove to a posh resort on the outskirts of Bangalore. There were lush lawns and gardens, a lovely pool, nice sitting areas… it was very relaxing. It was also nice to get out of the smog of the city and breathe some fresh air.

In the morning we played games on the lawn. I was a member of the non-winning team for the 11 legged race. This is where 12 of us stood in a line and all of our legs were tied tothe two people standing next to us. Thenthe three teams raced to the end of the course, maybe 30 meters away. All I can say is hats off to the winning team, who seemed to be floating down the track faster than I can walk without any impediments. It was a lot of fun though. There was also a camel for rides, and you can check the video area for Candace’s noisy camel ride.

Then it was lunch time. Yum yum. Then some relaxing in the shade. Then it was time for the ‘cultural’ part. This didn’t sound that amazing, but it turned out to be the best part! ThoughtWorkers from the India office had spent (in some cases) weeks putting together dances,skits, songs, quizzes, and performances. The theme for the day was ‘Bollywood,’ the Bombay based movie industry here in India. So some people dressed up, and there were decorations. Some of the girls in the office did an amazing job putting together a bunch of dances chronicling the history of Bollywood. It was amazingly impressive, both in scope and execution. Then some of the guys performed some skits of a more humorous nature. They were really funny! One guy played a nice rendition of ‘Classical Gas’ on his guitar which made me wish I had brought mine… not that I can play that.

There was a movie trivia quiz, and a music quiz, both of which with chocolate prizes (the best kind). The TWUers made a pretty good showing too! Then we voted on a king and queen of Bollywood based on dress, and our very own instructor Liz was the queen! Then in true Bollywood style, the king of Bollywood and the founder of the company (also in garb) danced to woo her! It was pretty funny. See the video. In all fairness, he claimed ‘white guy’ status when it came to his dancing.

There was also a guy who sang some pop songs. He was incredibly impressive as an entertainer… singing, dancing, and just all around having a good stage presence. There was also this little kid who got up on stage and started dancing like a maniac, but he was only four years old! It was so cute. See the video.

Then it was dinner, good as always,and the TWI band played. They too were impressive, jamming away while we stuffed our faces. Finally there was this ridiculous professional dance group that was wearing a lot of shiny plastic looking clothing dancing the night away. Kind of crazy. The whole thing was so much fun, and really cemented the sense of community and culture I have been acquiring over here.

Sunday was a shopping day! A group of us headed off to the fairly touristy/ trendy district for some good ‘ole consumerism. We started with lunch, and then shopped till after dark! If there is one universal truth about humanity that I have learned in the various continents I have visited,it’s that everyone love a sale! We went to Bangalore Central because it had just that, and wow. It was a 'Happiness Sale,' though I'm not at all sure what that means. It was crazy busy. They had brought in extra changing rooms to accommodate people. Just booths. When you finally wanted to check out, it waskind of a mob scene. But I am happy tosay I got what I was looking for at good prices. I got a short kurti, which is really more of just a shirt, but has a neat collar and a nice design on it. Then I got a longer kurta which is a really soothing shade of dark red. I think i tlooks great, though you may think it resembles a dress. I think I am going to wear it tomorrow, so I’ll let you know, but I’m pretty sure it will be the most comfortable thing I’ve ever worn.

Don’t worry, there are pants.