Beef, It’s What’s for Dinner.

That’s right; we found a restaurant in Bangalore that served Steak!!!  Steve arranged for the four of us to meet his friend, and Penn State Alum, Eric Mendez and his friends from work for dinner at the Juke Box. Eric is working in Bangalore this summer for Intel; he graduated Penn State last year.  It’s nice to have friends around and it’s true – Penn State alums are everywhere, even on the other side of the globe!!

I really need to stop talking about food (all the time), or maybe I can just change this blog to “Joel's Eating Adventures” or “Eating in India”.  No, I don't want that. I guess I can talk about work.  That’s right, I can talk about why I am here in India, I started work on my project!

  I was actually first given my assignment on Monday, and have been quite busy with the initial research ever since.  Right now, I have been tasked with outlining Rich Internet Applications and what I think we should use to develop the project in. I am previewing the three main competitors: Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, and Google Web Toolkit.  It is going quite well, a lot of reading and comparing right now. The most helpful places are message boards and forums; I get to read real people’s problems and solutions.  But, most of the conversations are just flame wars between the Adobe Faithfuls and Microsoft Fanboys. So, I need to take everything in with a pinch of salt.

Aside from work, yesterday we finally registered at the Foreign Registration Office.  It took almost the entire day to do it too.  You think that paper work is bad in the US? Oh no, you have no idea what it is like here in India.  I am extremely happy that we did not have to deal directly with the FRO.  Mr. Prince, our liaison from Fragomen, has been instrumental in coordinating all the necessary paperwork and meetings and appointments and traveling to and from the FRO.  He spent most of the day with us driving around the city to where we needed to go, including getting 5 passport style pictures.

While we were waiting for the pictures to develop, we all went for a walk around the city.  We were over near Brigade Road and M.G. Road.  I thought the area of the city where I was staying had a lot of nice stores, well boy was I wrong.  This was the shopping district of the city.  There were so many shops and boutiques, I want to go back.   It really was a nice area.  Just like New York, there were plenty of street vendors and merchants.  I am currently looking to buy a watch; a real one too.  Not a street knock-off.  But, while we were walking around, I stopped to check out some (fake) watches.  The guy initially told me some crazy price, something like 2000 rupees. “No way!” I said, and quickly started to walk away.  He immediately lowered the price.  So, I glanced back at him and had his full attention.  After a good bit of bargaining, and walking away a few times with him hot on my heels, I had him at 200 rupees for one of the watches. But, I didn't really like the style.  I did however have one picked out that I sorta liked, but he wouldn't budge at 400 rupees on that one.   So, I left with a bare wrist.  I am almost sad that I passed on the one watch, it was less that 5 USD, but I will just have to go bargain again somewhere else and this time find one that I like.

  Time to go back and pick up our pictures.  We get back to the photo place, and the pictures aren't done yet.  It turns out that they do more than just print pictures there, they were photoshop-ing our passport photos.  From what I saw, the guy working there was touching up the pictures and trying to make us look good.  Mr. Prince said it was a common practice, due to the practice of arranged marriages and sending a picture with a marriage request.  I thought it was unnecessary, I don't care what I look like in the picture; I don't even know where these pictures are going...

  After we got the pictures, we called our driver and he took us to the FRO where we stood outside and Prince went in and dealt with them for us.  We were called in only when we needed to sign the papers and get approval from the Assistant Commissioner of Police in Bangalore.  After the whole process, we were told that they would require our passports for a day!  What?! Why?! I didn't like the idea of this, but they told us we would get them back on Friday. What are we going to do? Refuse? We all agreed and handed over our passports.  Prince said he would see to it that we got them back on Friday.  So, as I write this, I am passport-less in a foreign country.

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