Goa for broke

I’ve eaten so many sharks in the past two days. I woke up in the middle of the night last night and found myself covered in surfboard.

To be completely honest, Ive had a difficult time this week finding inspiration for what to write in this blog post. I had such a positive response from everyone who read Happy Hampi, that I started to doubt whether I could one-up myself. What’s funny is that looking back over the past two weeks, some incredibly profound events have occurred in my life. More than enough to draw ample inspiration from and throw my writer’s block into the woodchipper. I’m currently sitting in the Goa National Airport, writing this entry on my phone. My flight’s been delayed an hour. My face and arms are officially power ranger red. I still hear the waves from the Arabian sea and I look like a sexier version of Mic Dundee in this brown leather hat. I’ve given up trying not to look like a tourist. By embracing my inner picture taker, I’ve found that not only can I document my extraordinary adventures more efficiently and effectively, but also that I never have to use a store of any kind ever again. Over the past two days, I’ve been approached 75 thousand times to buy something. Milk, cheese, peanut butter, laser pointers, beach balls, rocks, shells, necklaces, rings, bracelets, rocks, shark teeth, live shark, dead shark, filleted shark, shark in garlic, shark with salad, shark with LSD, shark with crack, rocks, etc. Someone even tried to sell me rocks. Twelve times. What’s more is that even with a backpack full of 75,000 rocks and some not so useful knickknacks, I’m leaving Goa with thousands of new friends. Very close friends. Very close friends who very much would like to sell me stuff. How do I know all these people are my friends? Well because they said so themselves. Never in my life have I had so many new people cordially approach me with a warm, inviting, there’s-no-way-this-6’5”-white-dude-with-the-stupid-Mic Dundee-hat-is-getting-out-of-here-without-buying-something-from-me “Hello, my friend!” “My friend! What is your name?” “My friend, where are you from?” “My friend, you want to buy? I give you great price. -Okay...how about 400 rupees for that glow in the dark spinny thing that I know will break as soon as I touch it? - Oh no, not enough my friend. Business very slow. -Yeah business slow. The recession rears it’s ugly head. -Your head not ugly my friend. That hat good for your size. My friend you buy, no?” -Oh, okay fine. I’ll spend an obscene amount of money on the glow in the dark spinny thing. I know it’ll provide hours of fun. Shoots spinny thing into the air, mimicking new friend who sold spinny thing. Spinny thing immediately flies directly into ocean never to be seen again. So, with a heavy backpack on my back, a camera full of pictures, and down a spinny thing, Ill begin by speaking a little bit about work.

Last weekend work took us camping at a beautiful place along a river somewhere in India. As usual, I had no idea where I was. There were team building activities, swimming, a camp fire, tents, guitars. My Russian friends will appreciate this, we even played mafia. During one of the activities, I covered myself in leaves and silently stalked one of my Chinese colleagues Cui for about seven minutes. I watched his movements, trying to define patterns. I watched how he positioned himself. How the heat and sweat fogged up his goggles. How his weapon shimmer in the bright, hot sun. As Cui sit scanning the landscape behind me, I jumped down from the rock I was perched on and with a guttural Tarzan Rambo growl, I shot the crap out of him with my twin carbine semi-automatic paintball gun. Poor boy didn’t even have a chance. Too young. And then Damen shot me in the neck.

We spent two great days camping, hiking, kayaking, and swimming. We were even able to get beer delivered by boat, which made for a few fantastic games of mafia. Varun, my QA partner in crime and world renowned foosballist, is a total backstabber. I would have bet my soul that Varun was just another towns person. He knew exactly all the right things to say. Like a black widow, he spun his web of lies, drawing me in invitingly and satisfying my desire for security and companionship, only before, at the time it mattered most, tearing away that warm security blanket and devouring me bone and all. Varun is not what he seems.He should not be trusted.

On Monday began yet another intense week of learning, training, teaching, communicating, presenting, scheduling, monitoring, estimating, encouraging, thinking, analyzing, and problem solving. We areofficially through iteration one of release three, Thoughtworks Chronicles. There is much refactoring to be done on the code base, the UI needs to somehow become production ready, our QA build box dies every time we deploy, and we need to find time to develop an additional 50+ story points of new functionality. A seemingly daunting task over the course of a four week release, but I’m confident in my team. As an analyst, I get to watch. A lot. Like in a creepy way. It’s funny to get to know people outside of the work environment and then to see how thy perform when the heat is on. It’s been a great thing to experience for me. My personal knowledge of the client’s vision for Chronicles grows everyday. I’ve also come to know the app at the code level. I’ve been able to get some guidance in exploring and writing automated functional tests for the new things our devs have been churning out. I’ve been having many meetings with our client, writing story cards, even managing our story wall. All of these things have given me a much clearer view of what an agile software development team does and how all the moving parts integrate to form the whole.

Wednesday evening I gave my first of what will hopefully be two Pecha Kucha’s. I’m not quite sure at the moment what these seemingly sexually over toned words mean, but basically it’s a presentation technique. Twenty slides, twenty seconds apiece, on any topic you want. I picked hockey. Why? Well I knew there were a lot of folks on my team who didn’t really know a whole lot about the greatest sport in the world. That, and I knew I could find some badass YouTube clips to throw in. Which I did. Quite a few. After sitting in the office until 3am, slaving away, trying not to curse the horrible user experience that is PowerPoint, I finished Pecha Kucha 1. And it turned out pretty well. Despite a quick technical difficulty, I think I was able to engage the crowd and keep their attention. I’ve received a lot of good feedback too, which has really been helpful. Let’s go blues.

Thursday morning, we headed to the Parikrma Learning Institute. A group of us went to hang out with the kids for the morning. They were awesome. Parikrma is a school here in central Bangalore for kids who come from the slums and other economically downtrodden areas. The folks at Parikrma have a pretty simple philosophy. Provide the best education they can every single day. When we arrived, classes still hadn’t started yet, so all of the kids were still running around out front. They were pretty funny. Some were playing tag. Others were posing for pictures. They seemed very curious about us. When the bell rang, all the kids ran inside and we were eventually invited in. Upon entering the school, each of us had to light a small candle and float it on a pool of flower petals. This was to signify that we had become part of the Parikrma family. Our first activity was breakfast. Our team took turns serving every kid in the school breakfast. They entered the main hall by class from five year olds to high schoolers. Each class took it’s seat on the floor and didn’t eat until the whole school was served. When we were finished, everyone ate together.

The school administration gave us a tour of Parykrma while the students were in class. We visited the computer lab, the virtual classroom where the students would interact with other kids from across the globe and a few of the classrooms. My favorite were the five year olds. Our team told the kids our names when we first arrived and by the time we met the little kids, they had made each of us cards. The teacher would call on one of the students and he or she would walk up, present the card and say thank you for coming. I was really happy to receive a card, so I decided I’d perform the magic trick where I remove my thumb. One of the kids gave me the “white devil, white devil” look, but quickly realized that I had not severed my own thumb and promptly gave me a high five. Nothin better than scaring smallchildren.

After some information sessions on how we as a ThoughtWorks team could work to help the school, we concluded the morning with an assembly. All of the students poured into the main hall and had quite an extravaganza planned. First there were poem recitals, then there were songs and dancing, and finally my favorite, there were inventions. A couple 5-grade age boys came up to show the school what they had been working on. I was floored. The first was a harpoon that wouldn’t be used for stabbing. After we all realized what the sharp metal shank connected to the sling actually was, the teacher prodded a bit about its use. I think in the end we may have decided it could be for fishing. Moving on. The next was a battery powered spinning butterfly thing. It was awesome. This kid walks up with a battery and two wires. He touches the wires to the positive and negative ends of the battery and this thing starts spinning and glowing in his hand. I just remember thinking to myself, “I have absolutely no idea how to McGiver something like that together, and I doubt this kid pulled it from Google.” It was clear that we were dealing with some very intelligent children. Overall, the Parykrma experience was very humbling. Although the kids didn’t have a whole lot, especially at home, they were still at school on time, looking very nice and ready to start learning. At no point did I see any of them complain about anything and it’s not like they’re having recess in state-of-the-art facilities or eating catered cafeteria food. They all struck me as smart, hard working kids who were determined to do their best. It was refreshing.

You wanna know what was even more refreshing? Lying on one of the world’s most beautiful beaches for two days, drinking beer, eating seafood, spying on Russians, and listening to the Eagles. As you might have gathered earlier, Nolan and myself boarded a plane for a beach town on India’s western coast at around 5am Saturday morning. The place is called Goa, a former hippy community turned tourist hotspot on the shores of the Arabian sea. In short, it was stunningly beautiful. Goa is divided by its northern and southern beaches. We spent our time in north Goa. After we arrived, we took an hour long cab ride from the airport to Baga beach. Baga had been recommended to us by some colleagues and appeared high on a number of “must sees” in Goa. We didn’t yet have a place to stay, so the cab driver brought us to a couple beach front cottages to find something we liked. It didn’t take long before we had a room about 20 meters from the shoreline. The beaches were beautiful and from the get-go there were people everywhere. You’d look out on the water and see people parasailing, jet skiing, body surfing, running along the shoreline, etc. All along the beach were these huts - a mix of bars and restaurants - with chairs and umbrellas right on the beach. All you do is pick a place, ask for a menu, and then a waiter brings you whatever you need. Nolan and I spent the first day visiting said places and took a couple trips into town to do some more exploring. We visited some local shops, a book store, and a few bars. At one point we were in some hole in the wall watching Deep Blue - a creepy movie about really smart man eating sharks. Having been thoroughly freaked out by the crazy sharks - I’m sure the beers aided in this - I decided to take out my vengeance by eating one myself. Not really. I had never eaten shark before, but the waiter at one place highly recommended it and then promptly pulled out a platter of whole dead fish. “See? Very fresh.” I didn’t really want crab, so I went for it. Smothered in garlic and butter, it was actually really good. Little did I know that I would continue eating shark throughout my stay, which I think left me more creeped out than to begin with. As I mentioned before, another peculiar little aspect of our trip was the number of Russian tourists. For me, it was the last thing I expected. One of the first things I saw on the beach was a sign in Russian welcoming Russian tourists to Goa. All of the waiters, bartenders, panhandlers, etc. knew at least enough Russian to try to sell things to tourists and to understand the drinks and food the tourists were ordering. I was really enjoying myself. I made a point to keep my head down. We sat in bars and restaurants pretending not to have any idea what folks around us were saying. It was a little bit like being a ghost.

The first day, the monsoons were still raging, so we spent quite a bit of time under the thatch roofs of the huts along the beach. The second day, however, it was absolutely gorgeous outside. We woke up around eleven after a long night of dinner, drinking, exploring and sitting on the beach under the stars playing with those glow-in-the-dark spinning things and laser pointers. One thing I quite vividly remember - the 40 yr old Indian men next to us shining the laser pointers at airplanes and each others crotches. They just thought it was the funniest thing ever. There were two things we wanted to accomplish the second day: rent motorcycles - check. see dolphins - check. The bikes in Goa are super cheap to rent and everyone rides them everywhere. I was a little concerned by the fact that I had never ridden one before, but I managed to get out of the parking lot without falling, which I think kept the renter guy a bit more at ease. Nolan, however, was not so adept. I took off down the road and I think he ran into a few things before getting the hang of it. The bike guy actually caught up with me and made us switch bikes because Nolan’s had a brand new paint job. It wasn’t long, though, before were both cruising through the jungle. We rode to the north side, took a wrong turn and ended up at a jail - where we took some quick photos and quickly left. We rode south into more mountainous terrain, picked up some lunch at a nice restaurant high up on a bluff (more shark and some hookah), and then made our way down to the shoreline where a local boater took us out into the sea to see some dolphin pods. It was awesome. I’d never seen a dolphin in the wild before. Just being out in the middle of the sea was amazing. We actually even jumped in and swam for a bit, but admittedly, I couldn’t stop thinking about those sharks from Deep Blue. After about 5 minutes, I was less about the exhilarating freedom of the open sea and more about getting the hell back on that boat.

That evening, Nolan and I spent our remaining few hours drinking fosters, eating more shark, watching the sunset, and listening to the entire Eagles greatest hits album as it played in the shack behind us. Desperado playing, he fell asleep in the chair next to me and I spoke a bit with a German guy at the table across from us. The sunset was unbelievable. Like nothing I had ever seen. I thought about riding those bikes through the country side. I felt like a real explorer. As with most of our weekend travels, I think we did Goa the right way. No plans, no agenda, no lodging, not really even any cash - just get there and see what happens. Maybe this is a recipe for extraordinary adventures. Whatever it was, I’m glad I did it. Next stop: Delhi.