The Chicken-Fried-Turkey Has Landed
Well, I've arrived. Slightly harried by CDG's (That would be Charles de Gaulle International Airport) TSA equivalents. What a thankless job, really. Making people throw away makeup, toothpaste, eye-liner, bottled water, half-full soda bottles, or my empty Nalgene bottle and full and fully sealed bottles of liquor purchased in JFK's duty-free store including receipts for your would be new informants. I now feel much safer. Thank you CDG.
That however was not nearly as entertaining as having one of my abused pieces of luggage being tagged for inspection at Bangalore's custom counter.
"What's this?"
"My keyboard."
"What's this?"
"My mouse."
"What's this?"
"The adapter for the power for my laptop."
"What's this?"
"The adapter for the power for my iPod. I think I have a screwdriver over there. Oh, and a Leatherman." (Trying to helpfully locate whatever it is must have looked dangerous)
"What's this?"
"More cables, that ones for my camera, that's my iPod mic, that cable is for..."
"Get out of here."
But, all of that said, I'm here, I'm settled, and I'm happily sitting at some free horizontal space at Dhruva here in Bangalore. Everyone here has been very cool. I was led around the three different office locations earlier today and introduced to just about everyone. Now I face being completely unable to remember ANYONE's name. But at least most everyone knows who I am, and that I'm not too scary. I wore a nice shirt this morning, just in case. You never know really. Thankfully I wore my "The Scream" shirt by Edvard Munch underneath. This put most of the artists far more at ease. Nothing like a tucked in collared shirt to make a game developer nervous.
I ate lunch with the two art leads on the PC and console side today, as well as the engineering lead on the mobile side. It was fun. It started off with a discussion of my work, but quickly segued into a discussion on games that were CPU tied rather than on time. You know, those old games that when run on new hardware do extremely bizarre things because CPU cycles are no longer at a premium. You remember, that "turbo" button on your 486? Thus far the tummy is 98% at ease. Bottle water plus not going overboard on the hot stuff. I attribute the 2% to jet-lag.
Skype is now officially my favorite company. Without them I'm sure that communication with home would be much more difficult. It works and works well. I can't call the US for free (I guess the deal is just calling the US from within the US, though that wasn't clear on the website), but I can receive as many calls as I like on my Skyp-In number without costing me any more than the activation. And really, at $0.025 per minute, I don't mind making calls out.
I'm going to get a cell phone this evening. That will be fun. Apparently there is some ammusing bureaucracy associated with getting a SIM card for it. It, much like the TSA and it's international brother/sister operations, probably has to do with terror(ism).
(2.5)
That however was not nearly as entertaining as having one of my abused pieces of luggage being tagged for inspection at Bangalore's custom counter.
"What's this?"
"My keyboard."
"What's this?"
"My mouse."
"What's this?"
"The adapter for the power for my laptop."
"What's this?"
"The adapter for the power for my iPod. I think I have a screwdriver over there. Oh, and a Leatherman." (Trying to helpfully locate whatever it is must have looked dangerous)
"What's this?"
"More cables, that ones for my camera, that's my iPod mic, that cable is for..."
"Get out of here."
But, all of that said, I'm here, I'm settled, and I'm happily sitting at some free horizontal space at Dhruva here in Bangalore. Everyone here has been very cool. I was led around the three different office locations earlier today and introduced to just about everyone. Now I face being completely unable to remember ANYONE's name. But at least most everyone knows who I am, and that I'm not too scary. I wore a nice shirt this morning, just in case. You never know really. Thankfully I wore my "The Scream" shirt by Edvard Munch underneath. This put most of the artists far more at ease. Nothing like a tucked in collared shirt to make a game developer nervous.
I ate lunch with the two art leads on the PC and console side today, as well as the engineering lead on the mobile side. It was fun. It started off with a discussion of my work, but quickly segued into a discussion on games that were CPU tied rather than on time. You know, those old games that when run on new hardware do extremely bizarre things because CPU cycles are no longer at a premium. You remember, that "turbo" button on your 486? Thus far the tummy is 98% at ease. Bottle water plus not going overboard on the hot stuff. I attribute the 2% to jet-lag.
Skype is now officially my favorite company. Without them I'm sure that communication with home would be much more difficult. It works and works well. I can't call the US for free (I guess the deal is just calling the US from within the US, though that wasn't clear on the website), but I can receive as many calls as I like on my Skyp-In number without costing me any more than the activation. And really, at $0.025 per minute, I don't mind making calls out.
I'm going to get a cell phone this evening. That will be fun. Apparently there is some ammusing bureaucracy associated with getting a SIM card for it. It, much like the TSA and it's international brother/sister operations, probably has to do with terror(ism).
(2.5)
posted by Casey at
11/15/2006 04:37:00 AM
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