India - May 2008

Working week 1

2008-05-08T04:20:00.000-07:00

We've all had a really busy week here in the QBurst office. We finally got to the office after navigating our way through a massive road block after being diverted off the main road up to Technopark from our hotel. Apparently, the fishermen were promised by the local government that a wall would be built as flood defences from the sea - but it's not been done. They organised a protest which blocked the main road causing us to divert down a much smaller road - predictably enough there was an accident, causing a second block which we got stuck in (for two hours).

Anyway, we got here. We had a short tour round the building (got lost. went up two levels instead of down) before finding the correct office. Technopark is huge - the building the QBurst office is in is apparently amongst the largest in Kerala state, and this is just one of many.

Then cracked on with what we were here to do. First was the project kick off for the Product component tool (I am aiming to drop the word product to reduce the number of project we have that beging with 'pro' :-)). Matt and Karen spent the morning going over the business needs for what we want, and I had the afternoon to discuss technically how we were going to do it. We made really good progress and managed to almost have it sorted out before going home.

It's good to see these guys in their own environment - especially Jose, who was really contributing back to the technical design phase, which I wanted these guys to own as much as possible.

Right now, I have a party to go to with the QBurst guys - so we are off to a restraunt in Thiruvananthapurum (I hope I spelt that right!).

I'll have another blog later that will get me right up to what I actually did today :-)

Weekend

2008-05-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

It's good to see some of the sights when you get to come to a place like this. Saturday was spent largely just getting over the jet lag (i.e., sleeping), and just lazing around a bit. We had a walk around the beach at Kovalam near the hotel we are staying in, and had a trip up to the lighthouse looking out over the Arabian sea. The view was quite special;

View out over the beach from lighthouse
I KNEW I could hear a goat when I was walking up!

We stopped off in a cafe for a beer - you can't sell beer unless you're in a hotel - so they get round it by just asking you to hide the bottle under the table like this, and then drinking out of mugs...

Then it was a curry for dinner, and an early night so we could get up for our trip out to the southern tip of India on Sunday.

That was really good, and also the hottest day so far. It came courtesy of our taxi driver, Praveen (?). The first stop was a palace - looked like quite a popular destination - everyone was cramming into it and there was a really tiny set of stairs leading up onto the first level. Tiny Stairs + Lots of people = Bad.

Anyway, that obstacle over, the rest of the place was really interesting. It was used by Kings and by the military (apparently the armoury was raided by an English general at some point - the weapons are now in a museum so the room looked quite bare...)

It was pretty hot, so we took advantage of the coconut stall that was right outside the palace. They chop the top off the fruit (and the nut) so you can get to the coconut milk inside with a straw - really nice, and fresh off the tree.

We then got back in the taxi and headed further south to the most southern tip of India, and without a doubt the furthest to the south (and east) I have ever been. At that point, The Arabian Sea, The Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal all meet (east to west, in that order). In this picture, you can see the Thiruvalluvar statue - made of solid granite and 133ft tall. We went to look around the Gandhi memorial (which is right next to it), and got a slightly crazed tour guide to show us round - he told us that when the Tsunami hit in December 2004, the wave was right up to the shoulders of that statue - 10,000 people died on the coast there... It was quite surreal.

The Gandhi memorial itself was good - the guide made it though - he was really passionate about it all and called himself the 'Tsunami Watchman' and walked around blowing a whistle at everyone that was in the way. Really made it a good visit and got us all to sign his guest book (not to mention stealing my camera to take loads of pictures).

The last thing we went to visit was this temple. We weren't allowed to take photo's inside. They wouldn't let me or Matt in without taking our shirts off, and Karen had to cover up completely - but once we were in it was probably my highlight of the day. That place had been there and used as a temple for 1000 years - and some of the things in it were over 2000 years old - really good experience - Just a shame I have no photos of it!

To top it all off for the day - this guy was waiting for me on the wall in my room.

Journey here!

2008-05-05T06:41:00.000-07:00

Well we got here (finally). After roughly seven hours on a plane we goto Doha (Google Maps) and had about a four hour stop over before our connecting flight onto Trivandrum. As we were there for a bit of time, we went out to have a whirlwind tour of Doha - well, the beach at any rate... It's a really new developing place - lot's of really good looking buildings going up all around (a bit like Dubai I guess - but having never been there I actually have no idea...). We managed to get onto a boat trip which took us out into the Persian Gulf for a look around - theres some photo's of it up on flickr;

The boat, Doha city in the background
Matt and Karen on the boat on the persian gulf
Sun starting to set over Doha

That was our first (intermediate) introduction to the heat too. I thought it was quite humid there. It was definatley hot - but I discovered later that it was nothing like india itself.

We'd travelled about 3,200 miles to get to Doha, then it was back onto the plane for another 5 hours flight to Trivandrum. When we got off the plane it was about 30 degrees, and extremely humid. Oh, and it was 4am.

The taxi ride from the airport was a massive eye opener - Sadly I didn't get any photos because a) it was 4am and i'd been travelling for the best part of 24 hours, and b) I was a bit too gobsmacked...! We drove (very fast) through the slum area in (or near) Trivandrum. There's loads of stray dogs walking around (we saw a load of them on the beach the next day).. I can't really describe it though - there were people sitting outside there houses (small huts made of whatever was handy). It was really busy considering the time of night - but we hurtled through everthing beeping at all of it on the way. Still not entirely sure if they drive on the left or on the right side of the road, or when it's appropriate to beep the horn and flash your lights (as far as I can tell, 'a lot' pretty much covers it). We got to the hotel and went straight to bed until about 1pm on Saturday.