life's more fun together
About a year and half ago, I tried convincing Ash to run with me. She groaned and told me how much she disliked running.  Despite it all, she stuck with it and even after I stopped she continued. On March 30th, Ash ran the Atlanta half marathon, 13.1 miles through midtown, downtown and the Georgia Tech campus. She ran it in 2 hour and 12 minutes. Awesome job huney!!!
I have absolutely nothing to complain about being a student again. I never thought I’d have another Spring Break again after undergrad. But thank goodness… my dream came true… Spring Break 2008!! 🙂 Going back to Hawaii to see my grandma, parents and friends was such a treat. It was a lot of fun and I loaded up on papaya and pok’e. That was pretty much my staple throughout the stay. Everytime I go home, I try to take my grandma somewhere she hasn’t been to before to try new food. This time, it was Kakaako Kitchen, near Ward Center and Ala Moana. I think she liked it since it was her type of food, fried, fried, and more fried. 🙂 It’s amazing that she’s in good health after all the fried food she’s digested over the years. I’m thankful for that. Aside from her foot problem, she’s in great shape, especially for a lady who is going to turn 90 this year! 🙂 I also spent some time with my parents which was cool and of course, hung out with Cathy. She is my going-out-partying buddy everytime I go home. I also saw some friends who I’ve lost touch with over the years and hung out with them too. It was really nice. It’s always good to be home. I really do miss Hawaii and hope to go back there and live there someday.
On my way back to Atlanta, I stopped by L.A. for a day and a half and stayed with my sister’s family. We took my niece Meagan and nephew, Dylan to Disneyland!!!! My niece, of course, loveeeddd it. She was smiles ear to ear all day there and was filled with energy.
It’s tough keeping up with her! I had a great time there and was so happy to see them. We rode most of the rides at Disneyland and the lines weren’t so bad. Too bad the ride “Small World” was closed due to renovation until later this year. That’s my favorite ride since childhood. Meagan loved all the rides and Dylan was busy looking at girls. Haha, just kidding. He does like to charm the ladies, though. 🙂 He’s a great baby. He’s not fussy or hard to deal with at all. He’s usually a pretty happy baby overall. I can’t wait to see them again!
I had a great time work with the Spark City team. Everyone is very enthusiastic about the project and working with the technology. We have a good mix of both young and veteran team members and it’s really nice to see everyone pitching in to do their share. It has been a great learning experience for me as well. I was able to accomplish so many things during just two weeks, that the same would have taken me twice to three times as long if I were in the US.
We spent a lot of time going through the logic of each development function. We printed out the screen design, wireframes to plan out work activities and wrote test cases. We also spent some significant amount of time on overall project context, giving the team an idea of the business reason, the coca-cola culture and our clients. We also had a discussions about quality and how we all can improve the user experience.
Here’s a picture of the full team.
Every morning, we have a LLP (low level plan) meeting where each person goes through what they did yesterday and their plan for the day. It’s also the opportunity to identify or escalate any issues or risks. In typical Sapient style, the LLP is on a huge whiteboard. Every team has one and at the end of each LLP meeting there is a team cheer. So in the morning with five or six other teams in the same floor, you hear everyone’s team cheer. Our’s is Spark City Halla Bol. (I forget what it means, and I think I also spelled it wrong -will correct later)
Here’s Arif, our Site Dev Lead facilitating a LLP meeting.
The team giving their status update (front the left: Vaibhav, Archit, Pankaj, Jomy).
Here’s Avesh and Rajni discussing their story (functional development scope).
Printing out and posting the site comps with the wireframes on the wall helps the team discuss and communicate.
Hardik showing us his Connect & Collaborate page in development.
It’s just under 2 hours before I leave to catch my flight back to the US. I sit now in my hotel room stretching out my legs before the long trip home. On March 1st, I arrived in Delhi, India for my second trip. Exactly one year ago I arrived in Delhi, India for the first time for the Sapient People Portal project . This time my purpose was to kick off the Coca-Cola Spark City Project with the team in Gurgaon. My arrival to India the second time around was very different. I anticipated the crowds, the dust, the craziness that is so wonderful yet so frustrating about India. I knew where to go and didn’t feel like I was completely lost in a foreign world
Getting off the plane, the familiar smell of a country of people and growth. It’s hard to explain what that smell is but you can’t forget it though I loose the smell after being here for a day. This time, I had my camera in hand and I was able to snap a photo of the welcoming party of rental car companies. There were over a hundred plus signs. They all stare at you with foreign names on their boards wondering if you are their guest. I found my ride. 🙂
At the Sterling Guest House, and I was greeted warmly by the caretakers., Ankur, Laxman and Co. These guys were so glad to see me and I them. They treat me quite well and with great respect. I try my best to do the same for them. We exchanged hugs and hand shakes. It was a very nice reunion.
Gurgaon is quickly transforming. The dust is worse this time with the endless construction. From large corporate buildings, to sky metro rails, to little shacks. The most notable is the huge metro project which is connecting all of Delhi and surrounding cities. For just 10 Ruppees (25 cents) people will be able travel in a air condition train from Delhi to surrounding area. The cab drivers and the rickshaws drivers are nervous for sure. The project is slated to finish in another year.
I had lot’s of shopping requests this time as usual and I had frequent trips to the nearby Sahara Mall. It’s a small mall and not near as fancy as some of the new malls. These days malls are old if they have been around for a year or two.
The fruit market near the guest house looks so colorful, I had to take this pic.
I met of up with Jomy and Avesh the first day after my arrival and we went around Delhi streets. I told them I liked crowded markets, that wasn’t hard to find. Here’s Avesh and I getting a local street treat. It’s steamed sweet corn kernels with butter and spices. Very good.
Jomy checking out how the cornwalla.
Another interesting looking street food that I did not try was this chaat dish. It is made with fried patotoes, spices, onions and this creen curry.
We ended the day at this spinning restaurant called Parikrama in Connaught Place. The food was very good and the views were also nice though i was not able to capture it sufficiently with the camera. The paneer or India cheese (curd) is the predominant food in India. This particular dish, I think it was Paneer Pakora (fried paneer) covered with spices was particularly delicious.
