Hooray! TWU-Developed [Internal] Application Launches!

It feels like just last week I was headed to India for TWU XVIII. I remember being nervous for the flight and eager to start our internal project. The previous batch began development on our web application, which was built for chronicling the experiences of ThoughtWorkers all over the planet.

My batch took over in August and headed up another four weeks of development. The initial goal was to launch just before our departure. Ultimately the launch was pushed back and development work was handed off to the members of TWU XIX.

Today saw that application go live.

I'm extremely impressed with the work by the last batch. I'm extremely proud of these three new classes of ThoughtWorkers, and feel honored to have been a part of this project. To see something you've worked on go live is incredibly satisfying, to say the least.

Learnings

I learned more than I can count on this internal project. To be effective, we had to dive in deep to the following technologies.

• Spring MVC - Java Web Application Framework
• Hibernate - Object/Relational Mapper
• MySQL - Relational Database
• Hudson - Continuous Integration
• Subversion - Centralized Version Control
• Selenium - User Acceptance Testing Framework

My favorite technical accomplishment on this project was implementing flash scope (as in Rails) in the Spring MVC framework. Prior to this implementation, we were passing around query strings for absolutely everything; that simply didn't feel appropriate.

It took a lot of learning on my part along the way to flash scope -- including how to implement a listener, filter, and Java annotation. The end result was a far better solution for the application and one that was reused several times in places where query strings just didn't make sense. I'm so very happy to have had the opportunity to push my knowledge and contribute to a delivered product.

Thanks!

So many people are to thank for this moment of accomplishment. Sumeet Moghe has put together a truly world-class training program. The real-world experience has helped me in immeasurable ways on my current project and is a far more effective way of learning than solving small problems from textbooks. Our trainers were wonderful as well, bringing their global experience into the classroom and project setting. I had the opportunity to work with young developers like myself from Australia, China, India, and the US.

Fun Fact query strings are attached to the address of a webpage. If an error were to appear on this blog with a query string, it would be shown in the address bar. e.g. -

http://sghill.blogspot.com?error=CommentTooLong

Clarification The app is not public facing, which is why a link doesn't appear in the post.

Ceremony

We've covered bits and pieces of the closing days of TWU XVIII with Ending on a High Note and Graduates. The only piece we didn't really cover was the ceremony.

After a brief slideshow put together by the trainers Felix and Elian, we announced diplomas. The first several graduates gave a speech upon receipt. Hilariously, the speech-giving ended by request. Now that's an agile, adaptable team!

Elian was my coach and presented me with my diploma.

Out of nowhere, there were chants for dancing. I knew it'd be much less fun without the other half of the award-winning team.

Six and a half weeks later, SG Hill is a graduate of the University and has 160 hours of project experience.

The next project begins Monday in sunny Los Angeles, California.

Note In an effort for cleaner posts, picture attributions popup when holding your mouse over the pictures. The first three were taken by Sumeet.

Ending on a High Note

On Thursday the members of TWU batch 18 put their party shoes on and celebrated the experience in style. Our after-work destination was a place on 100 ft. road by the name of High Note. The elevator signs here always get me.

Our night started with an award ceremony. We recognized students for their stand-out performances in work-related tasks such as most talkative, food vacuum, and delhi belly. My orphanage dance-off proved memorable to the crew as I walked away with the night's first award.

From there, the night took an unexpected turn; a project was launched. One of our trainers, Felix, was the first to request a picture with my glasses. One thing led to another, and an eventually we got photos of almost the entire class.

We couldn't quite get everyone during the High Note celebration. For this reason, my side-project continued into another day and began to incorporate just about everyone. The waitress at our last lunch in Bangalore also was keen to get involved.

Note There are far more phenomenal pictures than this post could possibly show. They're part of my Flickr set here.

Back to the City Detour: Mysore Palace

On the way to Kabini for our safari we stopped off at Mysore for breakfast. As referenced in part 3 of the Into the Jungle series, this was the first time I'd seen monkeys in the wild.

The journey back home saw us stopping at Mysore again, twice. Our first visit was to the Royal Orchid hotel for lunch. There is also a Royal Orchid next to Diamond District, where we spent our first week of TWU for sessions. These are both incredibly posh places with delicious food. The Diamond District version also includes Geoffrey's, who proudly claim to be Bangalore's most happenin' English pub.

IMG_1711 by sumeet.moghe on Flickr

The group split after lunch. Sumeet, Derek, and I went to the tourist-friendly Mysore Palace for a barefoot exploration (with audio tour). Kyle and Richard had already been, so they and Sumeet's wife headed toward the shopping district.

DSCF3577 by sumeet.moghe on Flickr

The palace had burned down nearly a century ago. Since then it has been rebuilt in somewhat of a unique fashion -- this structure blends the Hindu, Muslim, Rajput, and Gothic architectures. The result is something impressive and befuddling. It's one of the few palaces that feels like a patchwork of varying influences without much coherence.

DSCF3581 by sumeet.moghe on Flickr

Photography was not allowed inside the palace, which is unfortunate because I can't locate an example of the stunning 3d-like paintings. We picked up all kinds of fun facts along the way, like the virtual fire-proofing of the new palace after the old one went up in flames. The most memorable result of these instructions to me were the giant pillars that looked like carved wood in an octagonal room; they were actually cast iron.

IMG_1715 by sumeet.moghe on Flickr

Fun Fact #1 Entrance to the palace is Rs. 20 for residents of India and Rs. 200 for foreigners

Fun Fact #2 After shopping proved to be more expensive than anyone had hoped, we all met up outside the palace for a group photo

Graduates

Today was the last day of ThoughtWorks University XVIII. The schedule was fairly light.

Futurespective

After each iteration in a project, we reflect with a retrospective. The task for this futurespective was to imagine we were six months in the future, managed to be let back into High Note, and had completed a successful project. We wanted to write down what did go well and what didn't go well.

It's a pretty cool technique for getting the fears and risks of a project directly out of the customer's mouth. It's also a useful technique for realizing the fears of new and confidences of new TWU graduates.

Our successes ranged from completing the University to learning new technologies and successfully deploying products. Our imagined failures had a much wider range. We thought of things as wild as QAs (Quality Analysts) being eaten by tigers. More mundane shortcomings were brought up as well, like spending too much time on trivial tasks.

Richard's Birthday

Friend of the blog, Richard, turned 22 today. If you'll recall the previous birthday posts, we have a few traditions here: kicking and caking. Richard was fortunate enough to avoid one of them. We'll head to the video to see which one.

Note This certainly isn't the last post of India. We at the blog have quite a few more things to say in the coming days.

The Fifth and Final Pecha Kucha Night

Wednesday night of the last week meant it was time to gear up for ThoughtWorks University XVIII's final Pecha Kuchas. These presentations have been the highlight of the trip for me and I can't believe we went through them so fast. As is to be expected at this point (sorry, TWU XIX), we had another phenomenal round of speakers.

A record 33% of tonight's speakers mentioned me. The topics we covered tonight weren't always given away by their titles (or first slides).

1. Humour by Rohit
2. The Family by Nitin
3. What Have We Learned From Our Mistakes? by Sanjiv
4. Be A Career Super-Hero by Sumeet
5. Canadian Winter Demystified by Felix
6. Mr. Bean by Kiran
7. Homebrewing by Julie
8. The Truth About Tigers by Chirdeep
9. Breathing by Derek [Video]

I was able to capture all of Sumeet's Super-Heros presentation on video. With his permission, it is reproduced here.

Note Sanjiv is from the last TWU batch. He was one of the organizers for the TWU Amazing Race

Challenge bonus points available for those who can guess the three which mentioned me (email submissions OK)

Into the Jungle: Part 2

After getting acquainted with our new setting and breathing the kind of fresh air that makes one glad national parks exist, we headed to lunch.

Before coming here I thought the popularity of the buffet was dwindling. If this experience has taught me anything about buffet-style eating, it's that it's alive and well in Southern India. The vast majority of meals are served buffet-style, and I still forget the fork four out of five times.

Net Riders

From the lunch area you could spot two potential things to have fun with:

1. Nets
2. Tree Houses

Lucky for us, we spotted one area with both.

Some of us stayed grounded for photos at first, but couldn't resist the temptation to climb for long. Derek and Rahul sprinted to the top, looking like rope-climbing pros.

Rahul was the only one bold enough to go above the net and swing down.

IMG_1564 by sumeet.moghe on Flickr

Soon our curiosity about the other areas of the place began to grow. We left the net behind just in time, as monkeys waited to take over.

Into the Jungle: Part 1

We simply had to make the last weekend we'd spend in India a memorable one. Our last weekend trip was organized by fellow Chicagoan Derek. The other members of our crew included Sumeet, Sumeet's wife Amrita, Pankhuri, Richard, Kyle, and me.

It's about a five hour drive to the Kabini Jungle Lodges & Resort from Bangalore. The lodge is rated 5-stars and is one of the best in the world for Safaris. I haven't had the chance to share an Indian key yet, so I'll take that opportunity now. This is how you get into your lodge.

The cabins were gorgeous and amazingly comfortable. The bed provided the best night of sleep I've had since leaving my memory foam at home. We were just feet from the lake. Mother nature cooperated beautifully with our last weekend's adventure.

After dropping off our luggage at the lodge, we spent plenty of time taking photos of the surrounding area. Several adventures were set to begin.

Paddles of Fury

Note This post is inspired by Richard's latest post.

Since TWU began, we've been playing some serious ping-pong here at the office. In youth, I played pretty often. In the past few years I've hardly picked up a paddle. The good news is that classic, sought-after suburb-of-Detroit form is back; most of the time my arms can't even be seen clearly.

I have been quite lucky in my ventures so far, utilizing the net as almost a third player. Often times opponents will seek to adjust the magical wonder out of said net.

We're pretty lucky here -- both offices in Bangalore feature foosball, ping-pong, and a few instruments. Our Diamond District office also has a snooker table, which I recently learned is different than pool.

Did You Notice? One can easily guess the date of the picture by the state of the beard

Request-A-Post: Dessert

Each and every weekday at TWU, we undergrads have the privilege of catered lunch. It's generally colorful, delicious, and at times predictable.

Wednesday is the only meat-day. There is usually one dish in the buffet-style line toward the end with chicken. Most days have a specific order to the buffet:

1. Pick up plate
2. Walk by forks
3. Get flat bread
4. Get flavorful rice
5. Get white rice
6. Choose dal or curry
7. View the extras, including sweets
8. Sit down
9. Realize you forgot fork

Lunchtime Sessions

Occasionally we have lunchtime sessions by the trainers. It's on such days that we tend to eat around circular tables.

It was requested this picture be taken in honor of the number of sweets present at this table: 24.

"You're only supposed to take one!"

Note It's not really a requirement to only take 1 sweet.

Note Sweets here are way sweeter than anything I've ever tasted.

Thought, Ghosts, and Round 4

Another week down and another phenomenal round of Pecha Kucha completed. We had topics ranging from thought-provoking to outright hilarious. No videos this time, but we've got proof of a certain bearded fellow enjoying himself.

IMG_1526 from sumeet.moghe on Flickr

Keeping up with tradition, Sumeet has uploaded the slides below.

1. Dabbawalas of Mumbai by Sudeep
2. Biometric Technology by Vikram
3. Small Reflections of a Great House by Hardik
4. Philosophy of AI by Prateek
5. The Defect of Thought by Yang Kai
6. Our Space Time by Che Kai
7. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star by Elian
8. How Ol Charlie attacked Intelligent Design with Occam's Razor by Ananth
9. What Are You? by Mahadev, dance-off expert

It's almost impossible to pick just one quote to share, but I think I have to go with one from Mahadev.

"What are you? Some guys get offended if you ask this question. Others don't...and those guys are ghosts."

Fun Fact When two souls go for the same body, they have a merge conflict.

Card-Carrying Membership

Minutes from the Diamond District apartments and almost a rite of passage for Westerners, the Manipal Univesity Hospital is definitely deserving of its own post.

View Larger Map

I headed there on week two for exactly the reasons you'd suspect (no worries, I'm fine now). The doctor was very good and knew almost exactly what to prescribe by simply looking at me. I was taken by the differences from the medical facilities in the States to here.

One of the first surprising things is one pays before visiting the doctor. My visit was Rs. 300, or about $6. I also became a member for Rs. 100 ($2). Another Rs. 400 for the prescriptions, and I had spent under $20 for a trip to the hospital. It's service like this that makes it an unquestionably wise decision to go at the first sign of trouble. Seen below is the back of my membership card. Impressively, the front contains my name and vitals; it was printed as I wanted waited for mere seconds.

Prescriptions are different here as well. It appears a doctor's note isn't necessary for medications. A coworker, upon seeing my malaria prescription, asked why my name was on it. As I waited for my electrolytes and general stomach-bettering prescriptions, I snapped this photo of the pharmacy.

In all, my visit was 2 hours at the most. I went on a Friday and began feeling better by Sunday.

Birthdays in Bangalore

We touched on birthdays briefly with Prateek's celebration last month. Having a large group means you get the opportunity to celebrate several birthdays. While the kicking tradition was covered, there was something missing from that occasion that has since also become a tradition.

Caking

My flatmate turned 11 a few weeks ago, or so he claims. He was the first person I've seen caked, and the first at TWU XVIII.

Next it was Yang Kai's turn. The caking was restricted this time, but he made a special request.

Kaushik is legendary for his Control+S motioning in Dumb Charades. When he turned 21 last week, he was quite possibly caked more than anyone.

With at least a few more celebrations to go, I've never enjoyed having an April birthday more.

Bangalore's #1 Socialite

Wednesday at lunch last week, our TWU colleague Vatsal was on the phone. One thing led to another and soon I was on the phone. It was a short, but good chat with one of his best friends.

A few days passed and the weekend arrived. Four other TWU-ers, plus me and three friends arrived. One of those friends was none other than the girl I had a phone conversation with -- Paulami. She also happened to be Bangalore's #1 socialite, knowing the manager of every bar in town.

Our place of choice was a club in UB City. The place featured top 40 music, which effectively meant my requests were met with blank stares. This was my first time in a club, though I think I blended in pretty well.

Why the laptop? I was heavily inspired by Atreyee's Pecha Kucha last week, which focused on test-driving new experiences.

One of the perks of showing up to a social venue with a well-connected person is the immediate access to the DJ. I tried for quite a while to get something I knew to rock the place, but time after time my requests fell on deaf ears. Frustrated, I shifted gears.

Me "Okay then...how about a dedication?"
DJ "To?"
Me "sghill.blogspot.com"
DJ "Blogspot? No. No URLs."

Eventually, we reached a compromise.

Fun Fact 1 Command issued at time of picture: rake test:units

Fun Fact 2 A waiter brought us some fries midway through the night. We thought someone in our group must've ordered them and began to indulge. Shortly thereafter, the waiter hurried back, took them off our table, and proceeded to place them on the table next to us...where the party began to eat the fries.

The Highly Anticipated Indian Paintball Exposé

I've never played paintball before, and I certainly didn't think it'd be one of the experiences I would have in Bangalore. When the announcement was made in the middle of the day Thursday, I decided to try it out.

We left the office around 1:30 and drove for an hour to the paintball fields. We were instructed to wear long sleeves and pants. We showed up in varying outfits. Not wanting to ruin one of my precious few shirts, I went in a far too revealing t-shirt. We had someone play in sandals. Rahul, the organizer, came in slightly more formal attire. See if you can spot him.

The guy running the paintball business struck was more than a bit hilarious. He casually demonstrated how to shoot by picking out an extremely small target near an employee and fired away.

Me Did you just fire at that guy?
Him *smirking* I'm a very, very good shot.

Some time later, a question was asked by one of our teammates.

Aarti Do the paint balls hurt?
Him *smirking* It hurts...slightly more than a mosquito bite...and slightly less than a sledgehammer.

The Games

The total cost including transportation was Rs. 600 ($12.93). For that we had two games.

The first was bluntly named "DeathMatch". Two teams started at opposite ends of the field and ran behind barriers of varying heights whilst firing paint at one another. There is a scoring system for this, and our team won by one point.

The next game was more of a strategy game. Each team had a captain and there was a flag in the center of the field. The objective was to get the flag and put it on the other team's base without getting hit. As a twist, only the captain could touch the flag.

I was on defense for the second time, which definitely had its pros and cons. I was out of harms way for the most part, but I was also just standing. Go figure, I was hit in both rounds from far away...in exactly the same spot.

Note Yuyutsa is the name of the place.

Fun Fact I asked if paintball was big here. When I found out it wasn't, naturally I inquired if this was the largest and only paintball company. It's not, but most close up shop after 3-6 months. Yuyutsa has been around for five years now.

100 ft Road Shopping

One of the first things a Westerner hears about coming to India is to pack light -- no need to bring a lot of clothes. The rationale being the clothes here are super cheap. After shredding my only pair of pants here in Mascal, it was clear I needed some clothes. The problem with this solution is how little I enjoy shopping for clothes. It took weeks, but finally I headed to some nearby shops on the famous 100 ft road.


View Larger Map

The first I ventured into was Adidas. Moisture-wicking shirts in the US go for about $40 when not on sale. It's actually the same cost here; roughly Rs. 2000 for a shirt. Onwards.

I see tons of people wearing Pepe Jeans. It's a brand from London that was surely reasonable. Unfortunately it was the same story -- 30 USD for a pair of jeans. Having not brought all that much cash with me, I moved onwards.

Finally I arrived at a place having a 60% off sale: Bossini. Upon further investigation, this company seems to do everything. Still, I was glad because I walked out paying less than Rs. 2000 ($43) for 2 pairs of jeans, a polo shirt, and an Indian robot shirt.

Note The robot shirt is a shade of green

Burritos: "Why Would You Do That?"

There continues to be surprising interest in the food here from the West. I'm happy to report here on a few more things I've discovered.

New for me during this trip is eating breakfast. While it's often too early for me to have something spicy, I make sure to always get juice. The best mixed fruit juice I've ever had is here. The mango juice is quite good as well, and this is the first time I've tasted the extra-sweet litchi.

Lunch is something different every day, with a common element of laughter. In the US we have Chipotle, Qdoba, and the like everywhere. What makes this important? A burrito like this is a common meal.

"Chipotle Beef Burrito" by Khaz on Flickr

We don't have tortillas here, but we often have chapati. Chapati is like a tortilla made of wheat. Rice is also served, so I tend to make mini burritos. This always encourages stares and inspires laughter with a quote.

"What you're doing there...with the rice and chapati, is just too weird. Why on earth would you have rice and bread? Nobody does that."

Which is a fair point. They are both of the same food group. Unsurprisingly, I'm not the only American to be pulling this maneuver.

For dinner during last night's Pecha Kucha, we ordered some excellent wraps from Kaarti Zone. The wraps came in a box in several types. I went for paneer last night, which is supposedly similar to cottage cheese (though it doesn't taste it). It was so good that some of us ordered it again tonight. I went with the also-delicious chicken.

Fun Fact paneer is completely lacto-vegetarian (no eggs).

A "Comfortable" Round Three of Pecha Kucha

Wednesday flew by as I spent the day pairing with a trainer for the first time. For those interested in slightly more detail, we worked on implementing flash scope in our web application. It's basically a nice way to handle things like error messages from forms. I also created my first ever Java Annotation.

Pair programming example from a2gemma on Flickr.

As we came to night, it was time for another round of Pecha Kucha. These presentations just keep getting more and more fun. We had a full docket tonight of 10 speakers. A few even mentioned this blog!

1. The Laws of Attraction by Rashmi
2. Soul Theory by Shweta
3. History of Hacking by Navneet
4. Life Lessons from World of Warcraft by Sherry
5. ThoughtWorks' Leadership Team
6. TDD Applied to First Timers by Atreyee
7. A Brief History of Nursery Rhymes by Namrita
8. The Yellow Book by JK
9. The World of Advertising [Video] by Sneha
10. More than Words by Richard

For information on the title of this post, you'll have to check out "More than Words", which Richard asked me to record. Always ready for an opportunity to use my iPhone^®, we now have video. I think it's fair to say this blog and trip would be far less interesting to hear about with this little wonder device.

Dance Night at the Orphanage

ThoughtWorks is pretty active with an orphanage in Bangalore. We arranged to visit said orphanage on this Tuesday after work. It took about an hour to get there in traffic with seats so small I wished I was shorter.

The children were each presented with two things that brought amazing smiles to their faces. The first item was a toothbrush; the second was candy. I thought it a beautiful gesture of yin and yang. Clothes were also delivered -- but instead of a fashion show, we were delighted with singing and dancing (including a particularly genuine rendition of If You're Happy and You Know It).

One of the highlights for me was this young lady asking me if I would dance with her. As you might expect, we cut quite a rug together.

Roughly 1.5 hours into our visit, an impromptu dance-off broke out between Mahadev and...me. We're talking complete with surrounding circle and clapping. It was exciting, to say the least. Luckily we can relive the magic here. Cheers to Chirdeep for the camerawork.

Quality not good enough? No worries -- see it in High-Definition at the following links!

• High-Definition YouTube Version
• High-Definition Vimeo Version
• 11 more photos of the orphanage trip in my Flickr account

The Metal Scene

One of the best things about being here is the emphasis on work/life balance. Once 5:00 hits, the day is done and it's time to stop working. On Friday, I was content to continue finishing my story for as long as it took. Colleagues had other ideas in mind.

The Place

We headed to Legends of Rock, a pub in Bangalore. A metal pub in Bangalore. I can't be sure what I was more surprised to discover, the giant metal scene here or the cigarettes prominently displayed on page one of the menu.

It's worth mentioning that the bar was separated into smoking and non-smoking sections. The non-smoking section is directly above the smoking section. Seriously.

Kingfisher is easily the most popular beer here...though it must not have had to win any taste contests for that title.

waiter Something to drink, sir?
me I'll have a Coke in a bottle.
waiter Diet Coke?
me No...

Ten minutes later, my flat soda in a glass arrived.

The Photoshoot

Soon it was time to meet the locals. It's amazing how friendly the average person is here (or at least the average American-pub-attending person is). These three gentlemen were behind me for quite a while, so I opted for a photo to celebrate the randomness of the occasion. As you can see, varying degrees of excitement to be taking a picture with me were demonstrated.
Possibility: The Beatles are also considered metal.

Factoids

• Everything closes at 11:30pm here, even pubs
• This place has karaoke on Wednesday nights
• Alanis Morissette qualifies as metal here