I write these words from the Maharaja Lounge of the Delhi airport. I am sitting with my business class peers (three of whom are stomping around and singing, as two year olds are wont to do). There is championship level cricket on the TV. Half the eyes in the room are glued to it.

Today was the best day so far. Again, things came together at the last minute. We stood up the demo server and it worked like a charm. I ad libbed through some basic cluster, software, and parallel programming stuff, and my class of 15 or so tech guys dug it. Towards the end I was having trouble getting them back from the lab sessions because they were so into making stuff work. Everyone wanted pictures at the end, again, which is incredibly flattering.

I’ll note that I don’t usually work this hard. This was an ass busting week: Up at 6 or so every morning to rewrite my slides for the day. Perhaps an hour to work out and have breakfast – and then teaching for at least four hours and coding for many more. Then dinner late and perhaps an hour with a martini before collapsing around 11 or midnight.

I am left with the feeling of having done something difficult and worthwhile. Now, homeward.

Woke up thinking “I get to go home today.” Of course, I need to get through from now (7am) to when my plane leaves (11:10pm). Fifteen hours after that, it’ll be 4:45am in New York, and my plane will land. Tanned, rested, and lively – I will bounce off the plane, catch a puddle jumper to Boston, and meet Jen at approximately 8:10am on Saturday. Perhaps then I will go to Judo, catch up on housework, and then go to her boss’s holiday party in the evening.

I feel good enough right now that this actually seems like a reasonable sort of schedule for a “day.”

Yesterday was pretty much as expected. My Kingfisher flight got me to Delhi around 11:45 on Wed, and I got to the hotel around 1 in the morning. The Delhi Hyatt Regency is, perhaps, more palatial than the one in Kolkata. As mentioned on Facebook, my room is smaller and contains (among other things):

* A switch next to the bed to make the curtains open
* A square bathtub. I was filled with the urge to bathe, just to see how it worked. Turns out that it’s deep enough to sit up comfortably. Simple as that.

Not to gush about the hotel some more, but this place is massive. Breakfast is quite the production. Indian, Western, Asian foods … a juice bar that amounts to huge piles of fruit and a blender. When I have a few more minutes I’ll post pictures.

Yesterday’s session was good, but frustrating at the end. About 30 people showed up from all over India – various Apple resellers and partners – to listen to me hold forth on compute clusters and so forth. I talked fairly free-form for about four hours. During the last hour they rolled in a pair of Mac Pros. I’m still talking, keep in mind. They put operating systems on the machines and rig some cables. I’m still talking. Then one of the guys is like “Chris, can I switch over the video?” I’m like “why?”

“So you can do your demo.”

Demo? Oh yeah, right. There’s a demo. On which computers? Those? My software doesn’t run on Mac Pros. It runs on Xserves. And, um, could we take a coffee break so I could look at this frankencomputer you’ve built? Right. You folks go get coffee, I’ll just be a sec.

I wound up saying “no.” It was too much. I flailed in front of the audience, on live video, for about half an hour and then just called it. “We’ll get this set up tonight, come back for tomorrow’s session.”

Then the big boss and I went for dinner. Southern Indian food this time. They keep pushing KFC on me and I’m like (a) vegetarian, and (b) I am in INDIA. I want to eat INDIAN food. I want it to be VEGETARIAN and SPICY. I even tried real butter-milk.

So: One more day. Class until 4pm. Meeting with potential customer at 5:30pm. Then to the airport.

Oh yeah, and trinkets have been obtained. Woot.

Since I have whined, it’s only right to report on the good times.

Everything came together today. I rolled in and delivered my final seminar – which I was able to take at a relaxed and deliberate pace – knowing that there was no need to prove it in the lab. This was mere exposition without need for anything more than “I have done this, and you could too – using these tools.” I talked about a little, off the cuff, about big brain stuff. Where scientific computing is going – that sort of thing.

The big boss from Apple, the sales head for all of India, arrived and obtained sign-off from the customer that they were well and truly satisfied that I had delivered the training. This completes a delivery that started in April, and now said Apple, the re-seller, and us will finally get paid. They were quite excited about that, and we are too. We went with his team for a leisurely lunch at a sit down place, with tablecloths. We ate Indian style, sharing an assortment of appetizers and entrees surrounded by raita and garlic naan. We talked about our families, and then I tried to explain the American health care debate.

After lunch, I finished up all but one of the customizations that had been stapled on at the last minute. I taught an APC battery unit to send mail when the power went down – installed a linux virtualization layer on top of OS X, and fixed various other things.

And at the end, suddently, we were all friends. When I started making signs of wrapping up, the whole lab got together, and everyone (every single one) demanded a picture with me. Then a group photo. Then a group photo with the cluster. Then just the young guys from Apple, and so on. I’ve got the group photo, along with my slides, here. The grad students shared their aspirations of post-docs in the US, and the big boss of the institute invited me back any time.

The young techies asked me to share my photos, so I plugged in my phone, pulled up ‘terminal’ and started typing. “You share photos from the terminal?” they asked, shaking their heads in astonishment. “That’s how we do it in the old school,” I replied. “Hardcore,” they said.

I write these words from the back seat of a tiny car, hurtling through Kolkata traffic on the way to the airports. My driver is doing what can only be described as “jabbering” into his cell phone in Hindi, or perhaps Bengali. I honestly can’t tell. At the airport, I will board a flight to Delhi, to be met at the airport by that same big boss from Apple. I will go to my hotel, and I will fall sound asleep.

I will wake up in time to be picked up at 9am and taken to the Apple offices – where I have every intention of absolutely winging two days of ad-hoc training. I have re-written a day’s worth of slides in the evenings and mornings for three days running here. These last two days were stapled onto the end of this gig at my insistence. They fulfill my requirement that I don’t do international travel for periods of less than one week. I have the strong impression that now that the customer is happy, we’re going to have a chill sort of session.

Peace, out.

Addendum: my Verizon cellular wi-fi card works here – but my iphone does not. Weird.

I would be remiss to fail to note:

* The immanent threat of terrorist attack on major, western hotels in both cities where I’m staying.
* My amazing bartender, who has me convinced that he actually likes me.
* The unbelievable food, even at the mall food court.
* The world of contrast and divide
* The driving. Oh God – the driving.

Long couple of days here. On the positive side, they did not fly me out here to have me waste time.

When I left off these chronicles, I was enamored of my huge shower. A piece that had not sunk in at that time is that this is not a shower for those with any body image issues at all. The sink / counter is a single piece of glass, moulded to sink shape. Said counter floats between two columns attached to the wall, and behind the counter is a floor to ceiling mirror.

When you bathe, you stand facing this full length mirror. You are illuminated from above. It is not the sort of scene that lends itself to romanticizing ones shape. Me? I’m in pretty good shape. However, after a couple of exploratory flexes I realized that I really didn’t have the sort of body that I like staring at in the buff. Oh well. It was still opulent. I rested my coffee on one of the many marble ledges, and took sips as I showered. I’m totally not allowed to do that at home.

The gig is demanding. I’m working for a science institute of 400 people or so – about 125 scientists. This engagement is the capstone of a rather long and involved deployment. Apparently the word came from the very top of the organization that no mere vendor training would do. The local guys wouldn’t cut it. The training had to be delivered by my company – by me in particular. I have no idea whether this was due to inflated imaginings of my capabilities or by some familiarity bred contempt for the local folks. Whichever, I find myself standing in my own shadow here.

For all that, I made incorrect assumptions about the class. I walked in with five presentations ready to go. My class is generally very light on “talk” and very heavy on “what do you want to do?” I’m good on my feet and I procrastinate. If I can really connect with even one student – help them solve their problems – then I can create an avatar in the organization. My whole and entire goal on these gigs, not to put too fine a point on it, is to create people who replace me.

So first off, we did the lecture portion in a formal lecture room with no network. All the parts where I usually ad-lib and *show* people how to use a system were filled with – well – description. This was my one request – that we do the lectures in a network connected environment, preferably with workstations or laptops for the students.

I was quite enthusiastic to get to the lab part. Little did I know.

The classes I had prepared start with things like “write a hello world script, however you prefer to do it.” I generally then work with whatever language(s) people pick – so as not to get bogged down in “oh gosh, I don’t know PERL.” In this case, however, there was substantial confusion about concepts like establishing an ssh connection to a server. Edit a file? What now? “ls?”

So I had 20 people staring at me as I said what must have sounded like “mwah gar lubble stuh.” The lab was filled with the sound of people staring at me as I tried to explain that you truly don’t need to modify the defaults on ssh-keygen. Nobody had user accounts. Nobody knew how to run ssh. The class diverged … I struggled. The day wore on. We had tea. And biscuits. Seriously. In the middle of this fiasco, we broke for tea and biscuits. It was actually civilized.

Fortunately they recorded the whole thing on video. Two man camera crew. As my class caught fire, I glanced at the camera guy and thought “diediediediedie,” but it didn’t work.

So, we called it an early day yesterday. Devolved to a small group of administrators and did a more normal class on systems administration. We probably wrapped up about 10 hours after we started. After that, last night I re-wrote my entire day two schpiel to include an introduction to the Unix command line, and to provide step by step instructions on every file I wanted them to write.

I rolled in this morning with shiny new, highly detailed slides, like “let’s go to the lab and fix this thing,” and the honcho is like “we will do a formal lecture in the conference room.” I tried to convey that simply reading through my highly detailed and cut-and-pasteable slides to a room of 20 people would be … um … painful. She would hear none of it. First the formal lecture, then the lab time.

So we did it. I thought that the class really went pretty well, for all that. People appeared to learn. They were writing little scripts and running them by the time we reached the end. The cluster was seeing use. It was too good to last.

We wrapped up with the students around 6. Then the team turned on to me and started laying out customizations. The system has to power itself down if the temperature gets too high. They need linux virtualization, tied into the cluster. They need, they need. They asked if I would take a break before getting started.

Break? We’ve been here 11 hours already.

Yes, so you must need a break before getting started.

This was where I started getting a little snippy.

I think that what I actually said was something like “are these pieces that *we* will be working on, or that *I* will be working on. Because if this is a team thing, then I will join the team on the break. However, if this is one of those nights were six guys stand around and watch me code – I would prefer to get started now so that it can end sooner.”

Tomorrow is the final day here. More simple rules will apply. I will work hard, at their direction. What they get to pick is the order of tasks I attack. I will check to be sure that am still working on the most important thing. I will stop at whatever I consider the last major milestone that I can deliver prior to 5pm. I will end on success, dammit.

I will also deliver at least an hour more of formal lecture, in that godforsaken, network free lecture room. On slides which my James Bond style martini will help me write.

And then I will leave this place. This beautiful place, that I have barely seen, to which terrorists apparently have snuck, seeking to blow up a big shiny western hotel with marble showers.

On a lighter note, when I ordered my martini, with olives, my wonderful bartender smiled a huge Indian smile and said “oh, James Bond style then?”

Yes, you’re damnn right. James Bond style. Bring it on – Wed, You got nothing on today.

Let’s get one thing straight, right off the bat. I like my new bathroom. The one in Boston. I like it a lot – but there are bathrooms out there in the world that put it to shame – and I just bathed in one. I’ll spare the details of the act itself – but say:

* marble everywhere
* Niche for holding soaps and shampoos … and the back of the niche is mirrored.
* 11 foot ceiling with one of the big ass rain shower heads up top
* Deep tub next to that
* Frosted glass divider between the room of bathing and the similarly huge and opulent bedroom

I’ve stayed “nice,” and this place is outdoing itself. There’s a Huuuuuge Indian wedding happening downstairs – which doesn’t even ripple up to my windows.

Got screened for H1N1 by thermal imager again. This happens prior to immigration, presumably so they can quarantine you in no mans land. Nope, no cough, no fever, nothing. Thanks.

The cab ride here from the Kolkata airport was something of a piece of work. The pre-paid taxi desk was closed, so I was reduced to haggling with the dudes out by the curb. I’m not much of a haggler – my rules are simple. If I get even a whiff of bullshit – I walk. So, I walked past three dudes until the guy with the cell phone came over and said “they all work for me. You need a cab?” Got a rate from him, I picked the first driver who had approached me, and off we went.

Cars in this city communicate much like geese. The constant honking is to prevent collisions. There’s no malice there, just honking. And pollution. Ungh. Plus, rampant poverty – desperation – etc. Still the memory of the poverty just outside the walls is fading as I sit in my air conditioned splendor.

And before that? The flying? The four hour puddle jumper Emirates air flight was not so luxurious as the 12 hour one. It was more like flying domestic coach. Still, I got my vegetarian meal – which is more than I would expect on any US domestic flight.

Since I’m trapped with nothing but a massive airport and the internet to amuse me, I think I’ll post to LJ with something like a Facebook or even a Twitter frequency. This may cause you to feel like you’ve been transported back to 2006. Do not be alarmed.

I had a moment of clarity where I realized why nothing in the duty free stores ever appeals to me: The duty free stores are populated with consumables. Alcohol. Tobacco. Perfume. Candy. CONSUME. It is perhaps the very definition of the duty free good that it not have any lasting value.

Let us not mince words: I enjoy a sweet smelling drunk smoker as much as the next guy – but a whole store dedicated to things that will become grease spots, ash, and urine in short order – it makes me sad.

I have now walked the length of the international terminal here, and I can report that it is long. I walk at a brisk clip, and it took me nearly an hour to go end to end and back. Added to the hour of chillin’ with my cheese sandwich and bottled water, and I only have an hour to go before the flight opens. Yay.

I’m now into the part where I could very easily just take an eensy little nap and (a) miss my flight or (b) assuming that I nap on the flight, wake up semi-rested and unable to sleep just as I’m supposed to go to sleep. Therefore, on I push.

I have a couple of small bills as a souvenir. The only kitsch that even mildly appeals to me are the highly ornamented arabic art – and I don’t think I want to pick up something that fragile at the beginning of the trip.

The awesome jet is a Boeing 777-300 from Emirates Air, who are perhaps the awesomest airline ever (so far as I can tell). The awesomeness started when I saw a perfectly ordinary three prong power plug in the back of the seat in front of me. I’ve been plugged in and productive for the entire flight, which is soothing my mind to no end. I’m an inveterate Powerpoint tinkerer, and the ability to poke and prod my slides in flight is like lotion on chapped skin. I’ve finished up two more sets of slides, bringing my set of ready-to-go talks to three. Coupled with Dag’s two day set of SGE slides, I think I’m pretty much set for the first three days.

The ICE (Information, Communication, Entertainment) system rocks – and keep in mind that I write this from coach class. There were four or five movies available that I actually wanted to see – out of a selection of dozens. I can pause, rewind, fast forward and so on. I can send text and email messages through a somewhat crufty system that costs $1 per communication – though I don’t have in-flight wireless. Maybe I just haven’t flown international in a while – but this is pretty darn sweet.

They also, being an airline from a Muslim flag country, occasionally indicate the direction to Mecca on the ‘flight status’ display. I get a kick out of this.

It’s been incredible flying weather the entire day. The trip to New York was uneventful, and as I write, I can see the Western coast of Europe – Lisbon to be exact – glowing below us. I’ve seen Block Island, Portugal, the Northern coast of Africa, the island of Crete, The southern reaches of Iraq, a massive set of thunderheads over Kuwait. In addition, I kept seeing what must be either military or oil cities – incredibly bright squares and rectangles of perfect organization lighting up the otherwise black ground.

Transcribed a bunch more pages from my notes on the Dalai Lama teaching of the Lamrim texts

District 9 is a decent movie. Not tremendous, but a nice break from writing slides. Nothing else really lit me up. Watched the beginning of “Food Inc,” and the high points of the most recent Harry Potter.

The food is terrific. I somehow got marked as “strict vegetarian,” which is fine with me. It means I get my meals before the rest of the plane – and the incidence of mystery meat is kept to a minimum. It’s also worth noting that the alcohol consumption on this flight is low low low. It’s available, but they’re not pushing the hooch to any degree – and people aren’t sucking it down. It’s somehow civilized.

And yes, I’ll go ahead and mention that the stewardesses are cute. There, it’s said.

Aaaaaaand, sunrise over the indian ocean. God that’s pretty.

Of course, now that I’m sitting in the Dubai airport, at 8:30 on a Sunday morning, I find myself thinking “Um, the bars are open pretty early here.” Dubai smells like Vegas, but with salt water in the air.

Hit the first tiny snag, in that I was encouraged to check my luggage rather than carrying on all the way through. No biggie – but luggage in the bin over my head is much more in my control than luggage placed – where now? Going to what city? After pushing back ever so gently (“I carried it on for the tiny flight here – isn’t this a bigger plane”) I gave up, shifted out a toothbrush and change of skivvies, and handed it over. Now I’m substantially lighter.

At the same time, I’m substantially heavier. Stopped off at the currency exchange place and obtained my walking-around Rupees. Very convenient – and accomodating. I was able to get lots of small bills. However, said small bills didn’t fit smoothly into my wallet – and I was reduced to finding a semi-private corner to shuffle currency into a couple of envelopes.

Walking into the international terminal, past security, the two combined to activate what might be called my ‘shields up’ response. I detect no threat – but I detect unusual patterns. They may be totally normal for this place – but not for my day to day existence. Rupees in my pocket, passport in my hand. This next leg is the ass-buster. 11 hours and 50 minutes. I’ve got a window seat well back from the wing.

Speaking of views – I took some pictures of block island from the air. What a beautiful day for flying.

Catch you on the flip side.

At the airport, at the gate, settled in and online – all before 7am. The plan for the day is to get on a flight to JFK at 7:15. That, notionally gets me to NYC at 8:30. I’m all carry-on all the time, so I’m okay with leaving on an international flight only two hours after that at 10:40. In theory, I don’t even need to go back through security – though I’m sure there’s some extra complexity to be had.

At 10:40, I settle in on the Boeing 777-300ER. We suspect, after substantial online research, that there will be the “airline” style power adapters between the seats in coach. I purchased an adapter for my laptop that will work with a couple of the possible plugs. What I seem to be missing, electrical-wise is a coherent picture of what plugs I will need for India. There are three standards, and none of the standard adapter kits are willing to list “india” as one of the places they support.

Anyway, at 8:10 am tomorrow (AKA 7:10pm today, our time) I arrive in Dubai. I chill in one of the world’s truly opulent airports for five hours, and then catch a puddle jumper to Kolkata. A mere four hours later, we land at my destination. That will make it 7:15pm their time, AKA 7:15am on Sunday, relative to my body.

My plan is to stay up as much as I can, in particular to not sleep once I hit the ground in Dubai. The keys to overcoming jet lag are well known: Eschew alcohol and caffeine as much as possible – adopt the local time schedule as much as possible – expose your skin to the sunlight – and finally: suck it up. Switching your body clock around sucks.

Totally looking forward to spending a week living in a culture that has been offering a serious vegetarian option for the past couple of thousand years.

Woot!