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