I made a trip, about 3 miles on foot round trip, to the local post office to get some stamps. I took a few pictures during the day. Basically, wonderful weather, wonderful people, wonderful food, wonderful prices... Miss the folks back home.

I want to send some post cards, but it is hard to get to the post office.
I want to upload a few pictures during the day, but the IT team figured out that flickr is a resource hog.
...

Hmmm OK, that is the extent of my complaints. Life's pretty good right now.

I was too busy to take many pictures today. Here are some shots of my meals.

BTW, you probably don't read LJ anymore, but happy birthday hakamadare .

I kinda wish I could think of some recurring situation needing a new avatar:

I've been here about a week (if you include the travel time to get here). I'm adjusting. I'm making friends. I've had a few strange dreams about changing jobs to things that I would enjoy a lot less than this. These dreams usually end up with me choosing not to (e.g.) be a project lead at a particle collider, or be a staff writer for a sitcom.

I have been here long enough that:
- I've tried most of the food options and am starting to repeat
- I have a background task of trying to catch it and stop whenever I think the women in the class are very desirable
- I've explored the town and campus more or less to the extent that I can
- I'm being tempted by the desserts, treats, and such available cheaply here
- I've completed most of my shopping
- The kids are bored with the video conferences
- I'm filling out OK Cupid to maybe look for someone local to chat with (probably not going to contact anyone... but the process is amusing enough).

The holidays that happen at home that I miss for this trip are:
- Groundhog Day (Candlemas)
- Snowpocolypse
- Black Rose ball
- Super Sunday
- Lincoln's Birthday
- Valentine's Day

Side note:
- The Dinner with the Dons at GW is being changed from Wed to Tue so as not to conflict with Chili night.

Here are a few shots from my walk this morning.

I feel a lot more alert today than yesterday. I must have just needed the sleep. I got out for a walk after breakfast, and had a short bikeride too. The bikes are too small, and have only one gear, so it was not a thrilling bike ride, but it did the trick. I think after lunch I'll go for another walk and see Electronics City (the local village).

I had good intentions for today being an exercise day, but I was only feeling like being awake for a couple hours at a pop. I didn't otherwise feel ill, but I was just tired. I'm hoping that this is just me catching up on sleep over the last week... though possibly it is a result of going cold turkey on meat (it is very easy to eat a vegetarian diet when in Southern India). Tonight, BTW, I had a fantastic dish whose name I didn't get, but it was Cauliflower baked in a lime and tomato sauce.

Here are a few pictures from earlier in the day... mostly flowers on the campus grounds. I've been avoiding taking pictures of people, and that's about all that's left to shoot.

Also worth noting:
- They have loaner bikes freely available to anyone on the campus for riding around on campus. I went to ride one this afternoon, but all the seats are too short for me.
- I brought binoculars and my map, to try and look for Vesta in Leo, but there hasn't been a single clear night yet... odd, sunny days with blue sky, cloudy nights, constantly. Maybe tonight will be different.

Here are some pictures. Note the blood red silk sari danabren .

I'm going to sleep now after a long fun day.

I got a call this morning at 4AM (local time) from +1 414-755-6401. This was someone in the Milwaukee WI area code. ... do I know anyone there? Am I doing business with anyone there (maybe)? Anyway, it woke me up, and I'm already on fragile sleep because of the time shift. I tried calling the number back, and got a message that didn't say who they were, but offered to let me be added to their do not call list. Not knowing who, I didn't take that option. Oh well. Tried to sleep again after a while, with little success.

Sometime later, I had a lengthy video chat with Piper and Joisah (see pictures). And then went for breakfast. All in all, a good day so far (I got over the Milwaukee thing).

Time to get ready for work.

Here are a few pictures, including some interesting looking plants.

Things are going pretty nicely so far. This morning I had a 90 minute video conference with Piper and Josiah as we tried out strange video filters on the webcams. I had a chat session with Martin a 15-year-old prodigy-type that Justin connected me with. I had a nice chat with Merilee. The only thing I didn't get was exercise.

For lunch today I had something called Ragi Dosa. This is a wheat/millet fried bread with stuff to dip it in. I don't know the names of the stuff. I also had a spicy pickled (something strange). It was great, but the Ragi Dosa was pretty oily, so I'm not sure it fits in with my weight-loss strategy. Lunch cost 17 Rupees, which is about 40 cents. I was told by a student that If I ate this for lunch in a couple hours I'd be hungry again. She was close. after three and a half hours, I felt a powerful hunger.

I went to a clothing store during lunch to buy some more pants. There I spent something more like American prices. I got three pair of pants, including the length adjustment for about $52. I could probably do better off campus, but it wasn't worth leaving the campus for the difference. Concerning the fitting, no one more than an inch taller than me can buy pants here easily.

They are busy trying to get me set up so that I'll have internet connection in the classroom in a few days, but until then they brought me a compendium of white papers to read from their research labs. The first one was on the state of bio-computing. Interesting stuff.

I have an ear-worm today. It is the heavy synth music associated with the pile of money with Marvin-eyes from the Geico ads. No idea what the song is called. Yesterday evening they were playing Christmas music in the restaurant. I commented on it, and they've switched to some kind of techno-music that is similar to my earworm.

Coincidence, one of my students (Ramya) worked at Yantra/Sterling overlapping me by a few weeks.

The weather here has been quite warm (85F). They tell me to dress more warmly for my trip to Agra.

Here are some pictures.

I'm pretty weary. I didn't sleep enough last night, and it told on me toward the end of the day.
The buildings on this campus are very dramatically designed. Only one picture of them here, but more to come.

I'm 10.5 timezones ahead of where I was last week. This kind of shift normally takes a few days to make work. I got a fair amount of sleep on the planes, and here in the hotel. Last night I took an anti-histamine to help make me drowsy at the right time, and it kind of worked. I slept about 6 hours in 90 minute increments, interrupted by my kidneys removing liquid that had collected in my ankles, knees, and calfs during the flights. I woke up irrevocably at about 5AM local time (breakfast starts at 7). The class starts at 9:30AM.

I needed to change rooms because the first room I was in had no internet connection working. This room has a good one! Outside my room there are thousands of birds chirping. When it was too late for the birds to chirp, there were dozens of dogs barking, whining, and fighting. As always the locals are incredibly friendly and desirous of being help and assistance, and unlike in Cairo, aren't treating every chance to help as a way to get a small tip.

I have to do a little bit of clothes shopping while I'm here. The pants I wore on the plane died of old age (unraveling threads), so I'm down to one pair. I should buy more than a couple pair of trousers per decade. I won't be filling as many sari requests as last time, but I plan to get one for Yeliz who got short-changed last time, and one for Danabren who is really appreciative.

One of the problems with being underslept is that I had a big bag of ideas to work on, and loads of inspiration, and now I have time, but the fog in my head has hidden the inspiration. Hopefully in the next day or two I can resume the efforts.

Here are some pictures.

Andy and Jess got me to Logan with plenty of time to spare. I ate a meal there which permitted me to sleep on the way to London. I was out for about 4.5 hours of that 5.5 hour flight (perfect). Then I spent about 5 hours hanging out at Heathrow Terminal 5. This included another meal, also some shopping. I bought a new longer duration battery for my video camera, and some reading (I picked up a copy of The Road by Cormac McCarthy in Boston).  That's got to be a grim movie.

On the plane from Boston to London was a kid wearing one of those sideways billed Yankees caps, and some Jeans that were too big for him and forced him to walk stiff legged with a wide stride so they wouldn't fall down. Don't know why he didn't just get a belt or some suspenders.

I got on the flight to Bangalore with no problem, and slept for about 5.5 hours of the 9+ hour flight. Toward the end of this, I got a good look at the Southern sky and saw the Southern Cross and the Centaur (and probably Vela). This was followed by finding my ride right away, and a 75 minute cab-ride to the hotel (Employee Care Center). Note: after all this travel my waist was a bit smaller, but my ankles, calves, and knees were very puffy. Here at the ECC, the hot water is scalding, but great water pressure. The cold water has very variable water pressure. The shower area is large enough that I can step out of the stream when it becomes unbearable. Unrelated: I realize that I forgot to restock my travel bag with Q-tips.

When I got here the internet was down, so I'll be posting this sometime after this writing. The hotel has electrical outlets with built in universal plug adapters. You do need to make sure your appliances can take 50Hz and 220V. But this is a cool improvement over things in Sao Paolo, Cairo, Utrecht, and Trivandrum. BTW, the roads and traffic here remind more of things in Cairo than they do of Trivandrum.

Along the way one of the flight attendents mentioned something about our "personal belongings". It made me wonder about impersaonal belongings and personal longings (A or B).

I'll probably be on line for a couple hours after I get there (assuming I find a plug). Flight has been delayed, and is estimated to depart at 8:50 EST.
Six hours later I'll start six hours in London, so I can chat with early risers on Monday.

Every once in a while I make a post about SCA stuff, and I really didn't have a nice picture to use for that. This afternoon it occurred to me that several years ago Katrina von Halstrern did a nice version of my arms that were signed by Hanno and Kunnegunda. Fortunately the red ink hasn't faded much since she did it.

Since LJ has shown no new posts in over 8 hours, I'm guessing there is something wrong with the server I connect to by default.

I looked at the 10-day forecast for Bangalore. Every day is sunny. Every day the high is either 85F or 86F, and every night the low is either 59F or 60F. Looks like I won't need a wide variety of thermal choices. While I'm in London it will be about 38F, but I don't expect to venture outside the terminal. So, all in all, I'll bring an eight day supply of summer weight clothes, and some electronics. I'm going to bring a few things to read during my long layover in Heathrow.

In other news:
- Yesterday I handed out a couple of DVDs containing 720p MP4s. One was the i Sebastiani show from Jan 24. I gave that to Mike McAfee. The other was the concert here in Camelot on Jan 17. I gave this one to Charlene.
- So far, I am very satisfied with the secret projects, as they have all gone to people I will enjoy getting to know better, and whom I think will enjoy being drawn deeper into the SCA.
- Jon & Charlene (and Tim Riordan) have inspired me to try and write some songs. Hopefully this will turn out more productively than my NaNoWriMo projects (paraphrasing: I don't have any songs in me and this one is the first)
- Andy (and probably Jess) is coming over to take me to the airport this afternoon.
- I had an idea for a video trick, and it didn't really work out. I have a different idea in mind for how to do it. I'll have to try it when I get back. It involves my green LEDs
- The Opportunity rover is near a fresh crater. In the background of this large near-true-color panorama includes (to the left) some mountains, which are the rim of a very large crater that Oppy is going to take the next year or so getting to. In the foreground you can see that the impact making this crater kicked out some debris in on particular direction, so it was probably an oblique hit. On Earth, our atmosphere protects us from having craters this small. This was pieced together from B&W images through various color filters and posted to the unmanned spaceflight forum by a regular with the handle stu.
- The full Moon being in Leo has made the last few days very difficult for spotting 7th magnitude Vesta in Leo. I think I'm bringing some binoculars to Bangalore in hopes of finding a dark viewing spot near my hotel. I'll still be in India when it threads the needle (Feb 16-17).

I had a good time, and saw some old friends, and made some new ones.
I got people on board for the secret projects.

Time to pack.

Before I can go to Birka, I need to pack, and then return the rental car used for the NY trip. I'll probably get to the site between 10:30 and 11AM. I'm arriving with three secret projects that need collaborators. I was at Birka when I rounded up most of the team for Rhonwen's Laurel scroll.

I allowed 2 hours extra for traffic, and got to the Visa place with 11 minutes to spare. After, I had dinner at a place that had Jagermeister on tap. The trip back was surprisingly quick and uneventful.

Here are a few pictures.