Disney Land

2/4/08

Ben in HYD #2

07/02/07

It's been a fun week in Hyderabad, but I'm now very happy to be home in Mountain View. I leave for Michigan in a few hours, but you're lucky enough to get Trip Report.2 before that. Notice how early I'm up - that's the magic of a 12.5 hour time difference.

As usual, this report comes in bullet-point form.

Poverty:
- There are a lot of poor people in India. Far more than I would have expected given the recent economic growth here from the IT industry
- There is a much larger dichotomy between rich and poor than you would think. Rich people make $10k+ / year, while poor people make at most a few dollars per day. And the poor far outnumber the rich.
- Poor people have little to no chance at success here. They can't afford schooling, won't be able to learn English, will never go to college, etc. Rachel is working on some of these issues in the US, but even the poorest people in American don't compare to the poor here. Starving children knocking on your car window begging for money are extremely common place. It was heart-wrenching.
- Because of the vast numbers of very poor people, there are an excess number of service jobs. These jobs are mostly filled by men, very few cleaning ladies or waitresses in India
-- There are so many people for these jobs, and they are paid so little that you are getting constant attention. Do you like it when people watch you eat? I find it disturbing.

Food:
- My teammates took me out to local cuisine where I ate some weird stuff. Pastries filled with a spicy liquid, some weird curds on flatbread, beans, vegetarian dishes, and random breads and spices
- I ate all my pop tarts, because they're delicious
- I have no idea how Lee survived here for 3 weeks. It must have been some sort of Indian miracle
- I enjoy Indian food, and I ate well here. However, because Indian food is so different than my normal cuisine, it all tends to blend together. So needless to say, I'm ready for some American food. Top eats when I get back:
-- Good breakfasts, including eggs, potatoes, bacon, etc.
-- Good orange juice. All the juices were so sweet here, I couldn't stand it by the end
-- Fried chicken
-- Pizza
-- Google coffee. The machines in Hyderabad just weren't the same. I miss my self-made espressos with the perfect kiss of foam

Getting sick:
- As far as I know, I didn't contract malaria or hepatitus. I'll keep you posted if this changes (aka, 'oooh, my duodenum is acting up')

What to do at night in Hyd:
- Not much, it's such a pain to get anywhere
- Mostly worked
- Eat dinner with the team

Entertainment during travel:
- Gameboy
- Laptop
- Books (reading Ender's Game series for this trip)
- Movies and TV, but only on the return trip. Partial viewings of the following:
-- Blades of Glory, Talledaga Nights, 300, Shooter, The Office, Simpsons, Futurama, Scrubs

Ben in HYD

6/24/07

This is my first tale of my adventure in India. And quite an adventure it's been. I spent over 36 hours traveling, including 14 hours on the flight to Hong Kong and a 10 hour layover in Singapore. The layover was actually pretty nice - the Singapore airport is the nicest I've ever been in. I rented a hotel room for the day so I could relax and shower. I got a 30 minute back massage from an old Sinaporan lady with really strong hands. And I got to go on a free tour of the city, complete with boat ride. Nothing was too exciting about the travels, except that I ran into three Googlers at the Singapore airport. We went on the tour of the city and had dinner together - and they helped me get a cab once we got to Hyderabad. One of the best things about working at Google is that when you run into someone you work with, there is a 90% chance that they'll turn out to be awesome. The people I met, who work in the Hyderabad office on Adwords, were no exception - they were nice, friendly, and very welcoming probably the whitest guy on that airplane.

Lest I not ramble too much, here is the Ben Lewis expected bullet-point version of my trip so far. More to come later in the week:

* Got into Hyd at 11:00 pm on Friday having gotten only a little sleep in the past 36 hours. Took 90 minutes to get my single piece of luggage, after which a 1 hour cab ride took me to the hotel. Yes, I was tired.
* Slept until 11am on Saturday, explored the hotel, and found out that breakfast was no longer being served. Room service was pretty good though.
* I had an early dinner of nice, spicy, Indian food. The menu only market my dish as 'one chili' and I was barely able to eat it, so I now know better than to order anything with the dreaded 'two chili' icon at this hotel.
* I took a cab into the city to explore a little and get a cell phone in case of emergency. By far, the scariest part of my trip so far was that cab ride to and from the city. Driving here is completely insane. The only rule of the road that I can perceive at all is "try your best to stay on your side of the road, but feel free to drive into oncoming traffic if you honk your horn". Cars are honking constantly, driving across lane lines, sharing lanes with other cars, etc. But despite this apparently stupid behavior on the road, I saw very few cars with serious damage. If there are frequent accidents (and I have to assume there are), the relatively small sizes of the vehicles here much make the accidents less extreme than the ones we're used to.
* I had a delicious brunch this afternoon with pancakes, bacon, indian food, naan, and dessert. I was also given the opportunity to make my own drinks which I thoroughly enjoyed.
* I'm about to head off to a museum and some sight-seeing. It's monsoon season but the rain looks like it's stopped for today

Trip Report.2 will come after I've had a chance to see our Hyd office.

Ben in Moscow: Tetris Homeland

6/17/2006

Wow,

It’s been quite a trip. By the time this email leaves my outbox I’ll be home and asleep on wonderful American soil. God bless this country. After two weeks of constant traveling I’m more than ready to get home and relax. Moscow was ok, but certainly my least favorite of all the cities on the trip. We did some cultural stuff around the city, but our two days were poorly planned and we were late to everything. It turns out that in Moscow you don’t take official cabs. Rather, you just find someone going in your general direction and give them money to bring you along. Half of our “cab drivers” got lost because we don’t speak Russian and we couldn’t effective tell them where to go. The other half got lost because they were dumb.

Some things I did:

- I bought 25 bottles of Vodka

- We went to the Kremlin, but it was closed by the time we got there because they felt like closing early

- I went to an opera at the Bolshoy. That ‘s the place that’s famous for ballets, which we were supposed to see. Unfortunately it’s not ballet season so we saw an opera. It was an Italian opera and the subtitles were in Russian. I was ridiculously bored but fortunately we missed most of it because our cab driver got lost. I looked really good in my opera outfit.

I’m glad to be done with Moscow, and don’t intend to go back anytime soon. Oh, I forgot in my last trip report to mention my visit to the great wall of china. It was a big wall, in fact it was the biggest wall I’ve ever seen. Nice scenery and all that, but it wasn’t overly spectacular. There were bears though, and that’s pretty cool.

Here are my trip pics:

Ben Feels Tall

06/14/2006

It’s been a crazy trip so far. I know – I’m a bad son who hasn’t emailed his mother in 10 days. Fortunately, I’m not dead. After an amazing stay in Tokyo I went to Korea, Shanghai, and then Beijing. I’m now on my way to Moscow for the last leg of the trip.

In natural Ben-style I have a bullet point list of some of the things I’ve done on this round-the-world trip:

Japan:

* Went to the Japanese fish market at 5:00 am to watch people barter for fish. At 6:00 am I ate sushi and it was the best sushi I’ve ever had.
* Saw Shinto temples which were really boring. Other people took pictures.
* Went to Ahakihabra, the electronics district of Tokyo. It’s amazing what some people will buy. We had a contest where you had $100 to buy the craziest thing you could find. We ended up with a USB banana and a Hello Kitty ice machine. We came in second to this weird massager that sent electric shocks through your muscles.
* Presentations/company visits where we learned about the Japense internet culture and why we are #2 to Yahoo
* Karaoke with the Japanese Googlers. This was awesome.

Korea:

* Ate some bad Korean food and some ok Korean food. By the end of Korea I was really happy to have my airport McDonalds
* After work we went to the strangest club ever. It’s called a booking club if you can dig it. You reserve these rooms for $500 (there were 20 of us) and they bring an assortment of alcohol and food. There’s also karaoke and the waiters bring you women. See, the waiters “book” girls who are dancing in the club and bring them to your room. Then the girls talk to you for a few minutes and stay if they like you. It’s a great opportunity for the ladies out there. Unfortunately, to the dismay of my single friends we don’t speak Korean so the girls didn’t stay too long. What a concept though!

Shanghai:

* Shanghai was awesome. We were there on the weekend so we didn’t have to do any work. We just ate and drank and had a blast.
* I got a custom-made silk shirt. I had to bargain in Chinese (which I don’t even pretend to know). We just passed a calculator back and forth. Very weird. The shirt is awesome though – I’m quite studly.
* I went to a museum which was only kind of boring.
* I got a Chinese massage. Not as boring as expected.
* I went to the best bar ever. It was at the top of the tallest building in Shanghai, which is taller than any building in America. I think it was 500 meters. Anyway, the view was incredible and the atmosphere was perfect. Drinks were well done, but the alcohol + altitude made me slightly tipsy.
* We saw lots of cool buildings and cultural stuff. The architecture in Shanghai is great. I highly recommend a visit if you get a chance.

Beijing:

* Lots of work (yuck!)
* We got a tour of the Lenovo design center. They have some great products in China and a commanding market lead there. They will soon bring some of those products to the US where I expect them to do very well. I like their consumer laptops better than any other Windows laptop.
* We saw the forbidden city and tiannamen square. That was ok.
* All we ate in China was this lazy-susan meal. The waiters would bring dish after dish, but all I wanted was some plain rice. I’m looking forward to Russia.

Now I’m headed to Moscow for hopefully more fun and excitement. Our schedule is pretty packed but I’ll be home pretty soon.

Ben APM Trip and Japanese Toilets

06/04/06

I’m officially in Japan. Day 1 was pretty exciting (and exhausting). We had a very strange Japanese style dinner that was pretty yummy. The waiter didn’t speak English so we had to point to things on the menu. Of course, there were problems with that method of communicating so he brought us whatever he felt like. We ate some weird food, and I tried it all. Even gross things like tiny little fish where you eat the head and everything.

We went to Japanese bars and clubs last night too. I was exhausted, but how often do I get to go out in Tokyo on a Saturday night? I did some Japanese style dancing and watched my friends strike out with the Japanese girls.

BTW, the toilets here are weird. I’ll upload photos when I have time. FYI, my intl cell phone doesn’t appear to work in Japan. Apparently they use a weird version of CDMA here. So for now I’m only available by email and if you call my hotel phone. 03-3476-3000, room 2911. It’s the Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel.