Mysore
Trip Start
Jul 18, 2007
1
5
13
Trip End
Ongoing
Mysore, India
Monday, July 23, 2007
So I am not actually living in the actual mainstream part of the city. Instead we are about a few kilometers outside the actual mainstream part of Mysore. I am in a campus which is something like three hundred acres large. About the only way I can describe it is as a first class resort. Most of us here agree that this is a good description for the place I am living. Needless to say everyone reading this may be skeptical of that description as I am in India, a third world country. However, Ill try and do my best to describe the area in the following sections.
My room
When we got to the Infosys campus, local time was roughly 5 am. Since it was dark, at the time I really didn't get a good look at the campus as a whole. I was also rather exhausted after nearly twenty four hours of travel, and didn't care too much. Anyway, we received our keys and headed off to our room. Ill let the pictures I upload show you what I most likely could not
explain about the outside of the building. Anyway, my building was
essentially hotel with a couple floors. I got placed on the bottom
floor. So tired as I was I walked to my room, opened the door, and
dropped off my stuff inside.When I got to my room I was extremely surprised and happy. My room is essentially a room made for two people. However since I am American and not Indian, Infosys seems to think I would not get along with a roommate. I am not going to tell them otherwise as I am quite content to have a double room to myself. Anyway, my room has two beds, two sets of sheets, two desks, cabinets, and a separate bathroom.
It also has a television. Now as I was coming here I heard rumors that we received ESPN and HBO on our tvs. It turns out the rumors were mostly correct. We do get those channels. However, apparently there is an Indian version of ESPN and HBO. So we don't get the normal stuff which they show in the US. ESPN is much more heavily weighted towards cricket (a sport which I rather dislike now that I know what it is and how to play), and soccer. Occasionally in the morning I have been able to catch a MLB game, but my hopes for football seem bleak. HBO is pretty good however. They show some decent movies, and its a worthwhile channel to watch.
Before I mentioned that the place was like a hotel. The benefit of a hotel is that you get maid service everyday to clean up after you. Apparently I get the same service here. Every day whilst I am at work or out doing stuff, a cleaner person comes by to switch the towels and sheets, as well as give me bottled water, coffee, tea, sugar, and creamer (of which I use only bottled water...). This is kind of a double edged sword. While it is nice to get new towels every day, and come back to a freshly made bed, they also tend to clean up stuff I leave around. This is a nuisance as I put stuff (such as shoes) in a place for a reason. It is kind of annoying to adhere to their cleanly policy, but such is life.
Sports Facility
So there is a giant facility here called the employee care center, which we all just call the ECC. This place is essentially two things, a sports building complex and a store area. The stores are fairly simple. There is a grocery store, which also sells little knick knack items people may need (kind of like CVS). The store has this little hot food bar where they sell really cheap Indian food during lunch. Next to it is a book store which does have some current US books. There is also a bank, a Laundromat, a salon (male and female versions), and a cell phone store. Then there is the sports part of this complex. We have three basketball courts, a volleyball court, four tennis courts, four badmitten courts, a dozen pool tables, a couple dozen ping pong tables, a gym (equivalent to a smaller American gym with good new equipment), an aerobics room, a soccer field, a cricket field, a climbing wall, and a swimming pool. Needless to say that there is a lot to do. The only unfortunate part is that the sun sets here around 7:30pm currently. So we don't have too much time after work to go out and do outdoor sports stuff.
Food
The food situation here is rather interesting. We actually have a lot of choices in where and what we want to eat. There are three 'food courts' located on campus (as of yet I have found but two). Each food court has a few places to eat. The cheapest way to eat is to just get the cafeteria style food in one of the food courts. There are about eight or nine different menu items, the most expensive of which costs about Rs 40 or a buck. The other night, that Rs 40 bought me two pieces of fried chicken, gravy, and about a pound of egg fried rice. Besides the cafeteria food, there are a couple of chain restaurants here. One food court has a dominoes (no pepperoni though...). Pizzas are pretty pricey compared to everything else. A 10'' cheese pizza cost about Rs 90 or 2.25ish. There is also a chain called Cafe Coffee Day all over the place. Its kind of like Starbucks, and I won't go near it. There is also an ice cream/hot sandwich store which sells fries :). The only other place to eat on campus is a restaurant called the floating restaurant. It is a little open aired building that is surrounded by a moat with fish in it. It is easily the best food on the campus, but dinner costs Rs 125 or $3. So it is a lot more expensive comparatively to everything else.
So far I have no qualms with Indian food. It is alright. They tend to use a lot more spices than I would prefer, which makes the meals very heavy in flavor. They also like to make everything spicy. Even the egg fried rice I had was spicy. It had jalapenos mixed in with everything else. Even some of their breads are spicy. It is kind of bizarre. But so far so good...
Office buildings
Not much to say about these. They are like a lot of the nicer office buildings I have seen back in the US. About the only different is they seem to be fond of moving water architecture here. There seem to be waterfalls both inside and outside of buildings everywhere. They went a little overboard with that I think...
Weather
Contrary to what everyone told me I was in for with monsoon season, they weather has been fairly pleasant here. It has rained a bit but nothing out of the ordinary. I would equate the weather here to Michigan April/May weather but 15 degrees warmer.
Next up: something...
