We're not gonna step out in front of that truck are we?

I went to bed last night, well, earlier than I think I ever have before. Jetlag is a funny thing. All of a sudden, you are incredibly tired at weird and often inopportune times. It makes sense. My entire sleep pattern has basically been flipped on its head. In my case, the inability to keep my eyes open at 6:45 in the evening really didn't present any problems. I left the office at around 6, played a little guitar, read about two pages from Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English (actually very interesting, but will put you to sleep, especially given the circumstances) and then promptly passed the hell out, to put it bastardly. The flip side to this coin, however, must have struck me in the forehead right around 3:45 am. There was no going back. What to do? What to do? Check Facebook. Check. Check Linked In. Check. Read the news. Check. Do pushups. Check. Get through half a decade of Rosary before going back to recheck Facebook. Recheck check. Check. I laid there in the dark listening to Moscow radio broadcasts for the remainder of the night. Definitely not the most enjoyable experience, and unless I plug in my coffee i v soon, tonight might be more of the same.

We had to be at the office at 8:00 am for a traditional standup Bangalorean breakfast. I was mistaken, however. I thought the breakfast was going to be at the office. It was not. We needed to walk a half-mile or so down 100-mile road to a small outdoor cafe. This presented the first of what I hope will be many grand opportunities in India. Today. For the first time. I crossed the road. I know it's crazy, but true nonetheless. I will never look at crossing the road the same. Everywhere you look, both directions, is a mass of semis, scooters, cars, rickshaws, and motorcycles, all coming at you at speeds fast enough...well fast enough to kill a small herd of elephants. Kind of like fighting off a bear in a campsite, our tactic for accomplishing this unfathomable task is to herd together ourselves in as large a group as possible, waving our arms and yelling "Stop!" in a feeble attempt to stop traffic. I'll admit, this transformation into the black, white, chinese, brazilian, indian, 20-something glob monster is quite a sight and actually works. For about 3 seconds. The cars do hesitate for a moment, but then instead of stopping, they zoom behind you, in front of you and around you, all the while never taking the foot off the gas. Being a pedestrian here is simply a game of Frogger. Only in this Frogger (unlike the Atari version) you actually DIE!

We ended up having a very nice meal. Our trainers, to whom we were introduced yesterday and got to know today, met us for the mini-adventure. They, being the veterans they are at this sort of thing, led us down some of the back streets of Bangalore to the cafe. It was my first glimpse at real life for people here. Again, very vibrant, bustling, moving, raw. People were selling things, picking things up, dropping things off, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, looking at the 6"5' white dude, etc. Despite drawing a bit of attention, people were very kind and seemed very comfortable affording us certain permissions that maybe they wouldn't one another, like walking in the middle of the street taking pictures, nearly getting hit by motorcyclists who still hadn't taken slowed down from the road we crossed half a mile back. I had some great coffee and the spiciest breakfast I've ever had. I don't know why I expected eggs. Rice and some of that good ole' melt-your-face-off curry at 8:00am is the way to go. If you want your stomach to feel like the 7th gate to hell for the remainder of the day. I may be "eggs"aggerating a bit, but this stuff was definitely no sausage McMuffin.

We came back to the office for our first administrative sessions. Things were very informative. We played some icebreaker games, got to know one another a bit and were given an intro understanding of what we should expect, what our goals are, who are coaches are, who we need to contact for various things, etc. Informative. I had some lunch, spoke one-on-one with my trainer about my personal goals for the program, unlocked my Iphone (something everyone should do - http://jailbreakmatrix.com) so that I'm no longer held captive by ATT and can use any sim card I wish, and then sat down to read a bit of this new book we've all been given,
"Strengths Finder". For anyone interested, my personal goals for the program are to gain an intermediate understanding of the skills necessary to be an effective BA and then to gain experience using these skills in a real-time setting. I also to hope to learn more about creating test automation frameworks from scratch, writing functional tests to populate regression suites, and overall betterment of my QA capabilities. I've spoken about these goals with my trainers and so far they have all been very supportive. I know this experience will be what I make it. That said, I don't plan on leaving any stone unturned. It would be a waste not to utilize such amazing resources.

Tonight, I may play some cricket for the first time. And tomorrow, off to a winery. Pictures to come soon...