The commute

My house is about two miles from work. Most days I walk both ways. The evening is nice when it's cool, but I often leave later than I want to in the mornings when it's starting to get hot, so I often show up to work a little sweaty. Here's what a normal commute looks like for me:

My street; the blue house is the one right in front of where I live

Then I turn left and walk up this street

This is the same street, I just wanted to capture how it gets even narrower when cars are parked here

Then I take a right and walk down this street

And I get to admire this building under construction. There's lots of construction in the city

And then I walk past the cows. The smell definitely wakes me up in the morning.

A lot of women create sidewalk art in the mornings. This house has some of my favorites. (Usually it's just plain white, but there's a holiday coming up, so she got really fancy.)

Sorry, this is a lousy picture (I have to keep my eyes on the road when walking), but this is a scrapping facility where they go through waste and salvage plastic and metal.

Then I get to the main road (Banaswadi). But right where I meet it, it is passing over the railroad tracks, so I have to walk under the road.

And on this morning they train was going past as I approached.

Also, cows always have the right of way on the roads here

It's a bit dank as I walk across the railroad tracks. There's not really a path, but lots of us walk this way everyday.

It's a pretty nice view this way.

But the view can't distract from the smell. This one stays with you for the whole day.

Then, after leaving the railroad tracks, I'm back on the main road (you can see it coming down the ramp). This takes me almost all the way to my office.

This mall (with movie theater) is under construction, but it's going up pretty quickly. I might be able to see Star Wars Episode VII here in December.

Up ahead there's a cart where a man sells coconuts for people who want some coconut water on their way to work.

And a vegetable stand. Can't beat that fresh produce.

Lots of scooters and auto-rickshaws on the road. Not as many cars or trucks.

Across the street, you can see posters for the latest Kannada language movies. (Kannada is the language of Karnataka state where Bangalore is located, though within the city, many people speak English.)

At that blue cart, a man is making sugar cane juice. Behind him, there are a bunch of fruit stands.

Bangalore has a lot of trees. I really like all the green in the city.

Then Banaswadi Road hits another set of railroad tracks, so it has another ramp over them.

This one has a pedestrian footpath, though. It's actually really nice. Still, some people hop the fence to walk over the railroad tracks and shave one minute off of their trip

I really like this sign: "Loco pilot no backing without permission". I know that it is a direction to the pilot of the locomotive. But I prefer to think of it as addressing a crazy pilot.

As I come down the footpath, this is the view. More cars and fewer scooters. That means it's a more affluent part of town.

And here's the last road that I cross before I reach the office.

And right outside the office, there are food carts and fruit stands, which is very convenient.

Home sweet home

I live in the northeast part of Bangalore near Banaswadi Road, which is a pretty busy street (and the reason that they call the area Banaswadi). It's a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house, so the three of us live pretty comfortably. One of my roommates is from Texas, while the other is from Kerala (another southern state in India).

This is the front of my house. It's a little hard to tell, but you have to walk under the neighbors' house (through their garage) to get to our house. So, no front yard.

Our living room is still sparsely furnished. It has a nice little chandelier and a display with random effects from the previous owners. You can see the door to one of the bedrooms to the left of the stairs, and in the back corner to the right of the stairs is a bathroom. We keep my camping pad in the corner in case guests come over and want a place to sit. But you should probably assume that this post is out of date and we have furnished it since then. 

The dining room is pretty spacious and came with a nice table (and a not so nice tablecloth). My roommate invested in a refrigerator which was a good investment. And we have three chairs, in case all three of us decide to eat at the same time. You can see some pots and ingredients starting to fill up the pantry (most of those are mine). For some inexplicable reason, the cabinets are ridiculously high (I think the base is at 6.5 feet off the floor). We don't have much in those cabinets.

The kitchen is cramped. We have a microwave and an electric cooker, which work great when there aren't power cuts. There's also a water filter that came with the house, but it's supposed to be cleaned regularly and we're not sure if the landlord has kept that up, so we don't drink from that. We find about one dead cockroach in here per week, which is not fun. You can see a door on the left hand side, but that just leads to a narrow porch outside that we haven't figured out a good use for. (Not pictured: more cabinets at 6.5 feet off the ground)

We also have a second floor with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a prayer room that no one in our house uses. In the hallway in the middle, we have a washing machine and dryer. There's also two balconies, one which is narrow and useless, and one that has a bit more space (and a nice view of our neighbors' house) and a porch swing. I sometimes go out there to read. And then we have a roof, which is sometimes overrun by neighborhood cats, but I am hoping to keep some plants up there (it's also where I dry my clothes--my roommates prefer to use an electric dryer).

My other job

I have been involved with the International Development Design Summit (IDDS) since 2008. IDDS hosts technology design events globally that bring together people from all over the world and all walks of life to design prototypes and ventures that improve the lives of people in low-income communities. I have been an organizer for six summits in that time: Boston - 2008; Ft. Collins, Colorado - 2010; Kumasi, Ghana - 2011; Lusaka, Zambia - 2013; Arusha, Tanzania - 2014 (I was the lead organizer for this one); Cali, Colombia - 2015 (plus I spent 1.5 weeks at the summit in Chennai, India in July of this year). I really enjoy working with all of the amazing people who organize the summits and then meeting all of the amazing participants who attend.

Since February, I have been working with my friend Mustafa and his team to plan IDDS Lahore which will take place in Pakistan in January 2016. The summit will last for two weeks (all of the ones listed above lasted about four weeks, except for the one in Colombia--the length of the summit determines the scope of the projects that teams will work on there) and will focus on ICT (information and communications technology) solutions. I'm mildly competent at using my computer and smartphone, so my role will focus on bringing together the design and business curricula that participants will see at the summit. I'm really excited about this role.

But I'm also looking forward to the end of the summit. For the last few years, as soon as I finish one summit, we start planning the next. I love the intensity of the experience and the passion of the team, but it has also worn me down a bit. I'm relieved that the planning for this summit has rarely required me to join meetings that are scheduled in the middle of the night (ah, the pitfalls of meetings with people across timezones). Still, I look forward to finishing the workday and being done for the day. Of course, if the past is any guide, I'll get bored of that quickly and find some new project to fill my nights and weekends.

My job

I work at a social enterprise called Essmart. Our main office is in Bangalore, India (in a part of the city called Cox Town). The company was started by a couple of friends of mine back in 2012 and focuses on rural product distribution in southern India. That is, lots of folks have designed products like cookstoves, solar lanterns and water filters that are intended to help people in low-income communities, so we make sure that they actually reach the intended users, rather than just sitting in workshops and labs halfway around the world. We don't design any technology in-house, but rather act as distributors (we also don't sell products directly to customers--all of our sales are to retailers).

One of the related areas where we work is to help organizations with new products to conduct market testing. This can range from gathering data on pricing to collecting feedback from users to testing different marketing messages. My job primarily involves these market testing trials, from recruiting potential clients (so, if you know anyone, let me know!) to negotiating the contracts and then designing and carrying out the trials, followed by analyzing data and producing the final deliverables as well as using the data to determine if the product is a good fit for Essmart's distribution catalog.

The company has about 40 employees currently (only three of us are expatriates) and operates throughout Tamil Nadu (an Indian state with a population of about 68 million). This means that it will help me to do my job if I can learn some Tamil (we have interpreters throughout the trials, but there's a lot to be said for being able to communicate directly), so let me know if you know of any good Tamil resources.

First trip in India

I landed in Bangalore in the early hours of the morning yesterday. Customs and immigration on arrival was pretty much a non-event. Actually, the only hassle was when I was leaving the US and the staff at United tried to keep me from boarding the plane without a return ticket. I explained that since I have a five-year business visa (which stipulates that I cannot stay in India for more than 180 consecutive days--sounds like a good excuse to visit other countries in the region every six months or so), I don't need a return ticket. And finally, after 20 minutes on the phone, he informed me that I was correct and let me go.

Getting from the airport in Bangalore to the apartment where I am staying while I get settled was a bit more difficult. The taxi driver did not have navigation on his smartphone (apparently more and more drivers are using Google Maps and other apps to navigate) and my US SIM card did not allow me to connect to the internet to navigate. We were only a few blocks away from where we needed to be, but neither of us knew the neighborhood, and no one was on the street to give us directions since it was 4am. Finally, I called a friend on the driver's phone and she helped direct us to the apartment.

Then, after dropping off my bags, getting some sleep and settling in a little bit, I booked a ticket for an overnight bus from Bangalore to Chennai (about 350km or 220 miles). I took an auto-rickshaw (a 3-wheel taxi, also called a tuk-tuk in some parts of the world) to the bus station and boarded my bus. Instead of seats, this bus had beds. There were five rows of beds, with three beds per row, and two levels. I was happy to have a bottom bunk, and one that was on the side of the aisle with only one bed. (Picture an aisle between beds B and C in the arrangement AB  C.) The bunk had an outlet for charging a phone (actually, the outlet in my bunk was broken, so I was glad I charged my phone before leaving) and a sheet over the bed (I brought my sleeping bag, rather than using bus-provided linens).

I got a good night's sleep and arrived in Chennai a little before 5 in the morning. The bus driver pointed me to the city train and I bought a ticket for 5 rupees (about 8 cents) and rode the train for 45 minutes until I reached my stop. Since it was still 6am when I arrived, there weren't a lot of transport options, and I wasn't sure which way to go, I took a ride from the first auto-rickshaw that I found. He refused to take me for less than 150 rupees, which I grudgingly accepted (I'm not a morning person and did not feel like aggressively bargaining). It ended up being a 7 minute ride, so I felt duly ripped off (the proper fare, even with a premium for the fact that it was early morning would be about 40 rupees), but I was just happy to be done traveling.

New blog

Well, after nearly four years' break, I am back to blogging. I gave up the last time around because it felt more like a chore (and at times, an exercise in self-pity) than a healthy or productive use of time. This may well quickly turn into that. But at least at the beginning of my trip, it seems like a good way to share with people what's going on in my life. There will probably be long breaks between posts sometimes. That might mean that I'm doing lots of really exciting things and don't have time to post things here. Or, more likely, it might mean that I'm doing lots of really routine things and there's just not much to say.

In the meantime, rather than allowing myself to ramble, I figured I would keep it short and fill in the rest of this post by sharing my favorite music video. Enjoy!