Kivela

The last days of the week I’ve spend a lot of hours at work together with my Chennai colleagues.
I must say that I was impressed to see that they followed the Scrum methodology like we do in Belgium with all the necessary meetings and even the test driven development but also the (real) agile things like keeping the standup short and discussing topics outside the standup when recognized in a meeting. One example was that during the knowledge transfer meeting (offshore specific meeting - comparable with a kickoff) one of the Indian Service Center coaches asked a question about my sample concerning the occasionally connected smart client. I postponed it till after the meeting and asked if he felt confident with trying it out in pair programming and he did. The lack of an internet connection really turned the tables on me.

Although I had specific ideas in mind I still could grab snippets from other projects where as my fellow team member had the idea / implementation idea in mind, and in normal circumstances should know all things by hart, albeit with some gaps (And I can’t blame him). I really think this team would have a huge benefit from an internet connection for every team member. When we code review the Indian code in Belgium we sometimes respond why they didn’t look at this msdn article, this google query result and so on, but thinking about the fact that these people only have real project experience and no internet what so ever (not even at home, given the prices here) makes my respect for them even greater. Ashik I’m talking about you mate !!!

At noon my Indian colleague Rajesh took me to an Indian Medical Vegatarian Restaurant called Sanjeevanam. (He did this after I told him I had diarrhea for 3 days straight

This restaurant is known for their medical skills (have more than a restaurant, do yoga and so on 2) and the food is really good !

Pic of the food on one leaf (from their site)

When you enter you receive a banana leaf on which they put 5 drinks, they’ll explain for what they serve (all medical but natural) and in which order you need to drink them.

After that you receive 5 cold vegetables in a sauce

After that 5 half cooked vegetables with veggy sauce

After that some cooked vegetables with white and brown rice and some curries (really good ones 2)

After you had your really good (big) meal they will give you a dessert which is really sweet with a lot of onion and sugar.

The big surprise was the rosegarden honey they poured in your (right) hand and which you had to lick up…

This great meal was served for 110 rps / person, which sounds like a bargain to me.
Ofcourse since you’re eating of a leaf so you can’t use fork and knife. You should eat with your right hand only. Which was troublesome at the beginning but I got the hang of it at the end Hope nobody took a pic of me at the end :p

This weekend we had a calm weekend because the 3 of us had some jet lag results (and diarrhea problems) that we had hidden this week. Dries had to leave India after 4 weeks so we decided to have some Chinese at the hotel and go to sleep early. Hope you’re doing OK Dries, really hope your ‘newly-found-rear-end-popcorn-fetisch’ gets resolved

On Saturday Rajesh and his friends took Gery and me to a ‘club’ named Escape, which is located in the basement of an hotel like most clubs in Chennai. The general idea is that hotel guests are free to enter, couples have a cheap entry, and foreigners and singles have to pay a lot, so sorry Raj for the extra entree fee :s

In India people drink one beer / cocktail and start dancing, no fights, no discussing, no harassing girls, no drunk people just one alcoholic drink / 2 max and after that coca cola and water and a lot of dancing / laughing and fun. It opens at 7, we entered at 10 and it stops without discussion at 1.30. We really had a good time dancing, laughing and meeting people. India is really incredible on this matter !

Another strange thing is that Indian people eat after clubbing. So at 2 o’clock on saturday night every restaurant (called hotel here) is full ! And I mean full, full. And they’re hungry after dancing too

After getting up really late (9 o’clock we met Davy for the first time (Belgian colleague arrived at Chennai last night) and decided to go to the most crowded place at Chennai : T. Nagar around noon.

Crowdy is an understatement, if I look at the pictures I really feel like I didn’t quite capture the overall chaos there. We went to a local shop there called Pothys in which I bought a Chennai specific gift for my wife, hope you like it baby We met a really friendly Indian women there, who helped me to find the perfect **** for my wife. (It’s still a surprise babe) She took me from one floor to the next (the shop has 6 over crowded floors), helped me bargain the price, helped me choose the perfect **** (sorry Liefie, don’t want to spoil the surprise) and even helped me find how the payment and stuff went.

In this shop you have to choose your goods at a local table (they have a lot of tables), get a ticket, go to a counter where you pay, go to yet another counter where you receive the goods, go back to the original table for some customisation, wait 30 minutes, go back to the orginal table to receive a ticket, go to the paying counter where you receive a coupon, get back to the original table and get your goods…. No way you’ll figure it out in 2 sec, period. Thanks a lot lady, what ever your name may be. (She was working for the Indian government but I couldn’t quite get her name :s )

Some quick tips for new visitors (Chennai for beginners lesson 3):

- Quick tip for the new comers after me. The food at Copper Chimney (next to Zara’s tapaz bar) is really good, but whatever you do, don’t ask for tea… It makes you really sick for like an hour or two… (and I mean really sick, both Gery and I didn’t feel ok) It consists of normal tea but with chocolade goat milk or something, really got sick after drinking the cup…

_ Tip 2 : When you go to Citi Center (big shopping center with a lot of big brand clothes, quite expensive) and you ask a Riskhaw driver to take you somewhere nice to do some shopping; he’ll stop at a handicraft shop where he has commission. We where dropped of at the Artillery, we did bargain the price for two wooden Ganeshas and had a great cup of Saffran tea, but be prepared when entering: 5 guys will say hello, shake you’re hand and give you a cup of tea, and you’ll surely find something you’ll like When we left the store the rikshaw driver was waiting for us, although we didn’t ask that… Turned out (after we said what he had bought) that he received 10 rps for every piece sold by customers he brought. So keep in mind that when you go to a handicraft shop with the rikshaw that your driver already receives his commission.

When we asked to go to T.Nagar today the riskshaw driver dropped us off at yet another handicraft shop, but we declined to step out (we already mentioned twice we wouldn’t) which pissed him off, but don’t get offended: they have their commission there and just wanted the quick 20rps, which is understandable !

At T.Nagar there are alot of people begging for money, some handicapped some really small children who will call you daddy/mommy… Although this will break your hart, everybody will tell you not to give them money because this is a practice that should be stopped (police will act if they see it also) for the childs sake. I didn’t take a lot of pictures at T.Nagar because it is heavily crowded and you are so overwhelmed with the overall colours, smells (a lot of fruit is sold there) and general atmosphere that you’ll simply forget to grab your camera…

You can find the (few) pictures here.

Quick answers to some questions I received more than once

Q: How is the diarrhea there ?
A: It’s constant :s. You don’t have a lot of stumache ache but it will come out juicy & spicy Or as Dries puts it : Spicy in is Spicy out

Q: Are all Indian girls ugly ?
A: Nope. They have pretty ones just like in any country.

Q: How is the bargaining with the rikshaw drivers ?
A: It is starting to become the sport it should be. Rikshaw drivers actually expect you to bargain and it is just their way of doing business. As long as you stay friendly and laugh from time to time you’ll get a good price. And just remember, 10 rps more than the day before doesn’t mean the rikshaw driver is getting rich on your behalf.

Q: Does Chennai smell that bad ?
A: What smell ? (more than a week here

Q: Is it really hot there ?
A: Yep, at day times it ranges from 32 till 40 (without a lot of sun) and at night it remains 30 degrees, but every hotel / restaurant has A/C at 20°.

Q: Is India cheap ?
A: It depends, real estate is expensive, high tech is expensive (although +/- everyone has a +200 euro phone here), petrol is expensive, food, clothes and handicraft work is relatively cheap.

Q: Are people friendly there ?
A: You should keep in mind that staring is a normal way of showing interest in people here, so yes people are really friendly here (minus a few exceptions ofcourse). Quick example: a Riskhaw driver that asks 200rps and settles for 50 after a few minutes of bargaining will still shake your hand and call you his friend and say ‘have a good evening’ when you pay. When something happens in the street, unlinke in Belgium for example, everyone who is around will come and help you out. Theft / Accident / Misunderstanding / … people will run up and see if you are ok.

Filed under: Chennai on August 19th, 2007