Why? Because I had no internet for the last two weeks, at least not real Internet. Infosys provided us with restricted Internet which blocked all ports except for 80, which meant no AIM and no Skype. They also blocked personal email, facebook, and some blogs including my own. So until last Wednesday, I've been pretty but off from the world outside of Infosys. The only solace was that Infosys didn't block SSL sites which meant I could still access my brokerage account which was good considering how volatile the markets were in the last couple weeks, but even that was stripped down. Also, the day (Sunday Sept 14) we arrived, we had no Internet at all for the next two and we all know what happened Monday: Lehman Brother bankruptcy and the Merrill Lynch buyout. I'd like to think both were pretty important market events... but nope I missed the action. Here's why.
The day we arrived, the reception told us the Internet would be activated on Monday (Sept 15) at 10 am. We finally got the restricted Internet on Tuesday, but not the real one that was promised. Then our batch owner Raghu told us that it would come in the next couple of days. One and a half weeks later, Airtel, our Internet provider, finally comes out to our hostel to install our Internet. We each got a DSL line, but it cuts in and out sometimes like now. I'm typing this entry on Notepad because my Interenet doesn't work at the moment. It's important to note that Infosys wasn't to blame here. We all agree that Airtel took forever to get out here and that they took Indian Standard Time to an extreme by arriving a week later than scheduled. It was a frustrating week and basically I was trying to wait it out before calling my parents, which ended up not working because they started getting worried. I guess I lean on the Internet for a lot of the stuff I do in my daily life.
In the absence of the Internet we still had to go to work for the last two weeks. I'll start off by saying that last week was a 6-day work week because we were required to report on Saturday September 21, which made this a long two weeks. Also, my first impressions of Infosys Hyderabad is that it's better than being in Mysore and the city looks pretty good too, but prices seem to be more expensive on average here. It doesn't really affect us much given the new resolution in our salary that was presented to us last Tuesday. I'll explain later how it made us all happy and how the exchange rate and Indian tax laws no longer apply to us. But first....
Hyderabad: First Impressions
The trip from Mysore to Hyderabad was long. On September 14, after a long goodbye with the long cycle group (made long because the bus arrived at 10:45 despite being scheduled for 10:00) the 10 of us endured a 4 hour bus ride to Bangalore on a bus that barely fit all of us and our huge luggage. After arriving in Bangalore, we took a 1 hour plane flight from Bangalore to Hyderabad on Kingfisher Airlines, apparently a premium airline company in India. They actually served us a meal on our 1+ airline flight and I was impressed with their service. It's definately better than the airline service on a United or Southwest Airlines flight. Then we landed in Hyderabad at the Rajiv Ganhdi Airport.
The first thing I noticed about Hyderabad: There was a McDonalds in the airport. Finally it looked like there would be access to a larger variety of foods because Mysore (the city) didn't offer much in terms of food. The bus that took us to the Infosys campus was also a nicer looking bus, a precursor of things to come.
We arrived at the campus at around 7 pm and went to our hostels. As I walked to reception on the first floor, I was surprised to see hallways and several common areas! The common areas seemed liek a huge upgrade because in Mysore we always complained about how there was no good meeting place to hang out and play cards or simply to talk. The Long Cycle ES batch will be pleased. After reception assigned my room, I walked there with my luggage and I opened my room door. I saw a bigger room with nearly the same setup as my room in Mysore... except that there's more deskspace, bigger mugs, better looking curtains, an Ironing board, laundary bags, and an air conditioner that looked more centralized.
We explored downstairs and to our delight we found that the computer labs were all on the first floor of our hostel. What a concept! Now we don't have to walk outside to the GEC to get to our training room. Our hostel building is basically a combination of rooms and work area. I believe the first floor is mad made up of HR and a bunch of training class rooms while floors 1 - 5 (they start at 0 here) are all rooms for trainees.
The setup of the campus is much smaller than Mysore, but the layout makes much more sense. The two food courts are located realtively close to each other and towards the middle. In Mysore, 3 food courts were dispersed along the outside of campus. The buildings here are awesome especially the new food court that is surrounded by two office buildings. We call it the spaceship building because of the rounded architecture. The food courts are both indoors and the new one has an escalator in it. The new food court has a fruit juice station, a place called "Bowl of China", Subway, Dominoes, and several other Indian vendors. Upstairs, there's a bakery and a Coffee Day. The bakery and Coffee Day are pretty disappointing because both lack good pastries. That could be a good thing I guess because now I'm not gonna have a doughnut or a muffin for break everyday. The ground floor of the food court contains a gym, pool tables, ping pong tables, a book store and some ATMs. The old food court has the ICICI bank, another gym, the grocery store (much better than Loyal World in Mysore IMO) and an Infosys store.
To sum it up, the Hyderabad DC was everything I was expecting to get in Mysore. The dorms that looked like hotel rooms, the indoor food courts, the common area, convenient laundary and laundary service, as well as the nice weather. Mysore's campus in my opinion was too spread out and there were way too many rules there. Hyderabad is an actual development center while Mysore is a training center, which means everything at Hyderabad is more professional and the rules are not as tight here. There's no curfew, the rooms are coed, and I'm sure they don't care if we play cards out in the open, somethign that was impossible to do in Mysore. I'd be happy to stay here for the remainder of my time in India.
Hyderabad: The City
I haven't explored the city in great depth, but I did go out last week and this week. The city itself seems richer and it is filled with shopping malls and good restuarants. The shopping mall we went to was indoors and filled with American brand name stores, which also means expensive prices. The first restaurant we went to was a Five star hotel called Ista. It was a really nice hotel and the restaurant was expensive. I spent about 800 Rs. ($20) on my meal. We're only coming back to that place on a special occasion.
On the way back, we passed by the IT district of Hyderabad, so we saw a bunch of campuses for each company including: Microsoft, Nvidia, WiPro, and TCS. All of them looked impressive. This is definately a city with a large IT presence.
On the way back, there was a bunch of traffic so it took us about an hour to travel 20 kms. The city is crowded, but based on what I was told, I expected it to be more crowded. The number of people doesn't seem to be a big problem here. Some roads are in pretty good condition and the city center looks modern. I have yet to visit the rundown area of the city, which I believe could be crowded and could look like a third world region.
The city is pretty impressive and I like it better than Mysore. Hopefully I'll be able to explore it more this weekend.
