goodbye cookout April 27, 2008
Posted by rfarinel in : university , add a commentIn my time here, I’ve taken 4 classes plus a lab and I’ve meet a lot of really great people, both Indian and foreign. We actually all got together last night for a cookout on our balcony for the last time. A few of my foreign friends are staying a bit longer in India to travel, some are going back, and some are doing project work for another few weeks or months. As much as I’ve liked India and Mumbai/IITB specificially, I am, of course, happy to go home.
As to the cookout: it was a smashing success 
. We bought ~7kg (14 lbs) of various meat which we cooked on our awesome grill. My friend Victor and I also spent part of yesterday afternoon making 4 lbs of pasta for our now-famous pasta salad. I think I heard there was only one plate left over after all was said and done. It was funny because most of the Indian guys had never heard of pasta salad (or root beer for that matter). We helped them out though – lots of pasta salad and some A&W for-the-win.
So I’m leaving tonight from Mumbai International, flying through Amsterdam’s Schiphol and arriving in Boston Monday morning at 10:30am. What’s really funny is the timezones – I leave at 1am, fly/travel for more than 21 hours, and arrive only some 9 and-a-half hours later. I’m gunna be jet lagged for days.
Well, it’s pretty early here and it’s already hot so I should go take a nice cold shower to cool off… maybe after I’ll start packing.
off to the races April 20, 2008
Posted by rfarinel in : university , add a commentYesterday, my friend Victor and I went down to southern Mumbai to the horse track. It was something we just had to see for ourselves. Because of my prior 
horse & dog track experience with Jill, I was able to somewhat make sense of the little book we bought and we ended up getting by just fine. Overall, I ended up down around Rs 300 (~$7.50), but that’s not bad for an afternoon of entertainment. The track and grandstand were similar to the horse track I’ve been to in DE except we paid a bit more to get in to the extra special area and ended up getting better seats and a quieter counter to place bets.
Well, fun time is over and I need to start hitting the books. I have three more “end-sems” coming up this week – Philosophy on monday, Distributed Systems tuesday, and finally Network Security/Crypto on friday. It’ll all be over soon.. but for now, it’s study time.
end of an era April 12, 2008
Posted by rfarinel in : university , 1 comment so farWell, classes are over. Last day was yesterday (Friday) and now it’s go-time. For exams, that is. At home, we usually have around a week and a half for exams. It ends up being pretty quick and painless because usually the exams aren’t worth that much and they’re scheduled for two hours but you can normally complete them in a little more than one. IITB however, has two full weeks devoted to giving students three hour exams that are usually worth 50% of the total grade. So yeah, I’m gunna have a lot of studying to do in the next two weeks. It shouldn’t be all that bad though; I’m doing pretty decently in most of my classes.
In other news, it’s hot. Like really hot. In the past few weeks (maybe the last “couple”) it’s 
been getting increasingly warm. I don’t really mind the 95+ degree temperatures during the day because there’s usually shade and such. At night, though, it makes it really hard to sleep. I’m working out a plan of how to get around this problem (fan works decently) but I think I’m gunna have to resort to the “krainin cold shower” method. I think it will be really funny when I go back home to feel cold in 60 or 70 degree weather. It’ll feel like winter to me (ha!).
Ok, I have to get going.. it’s almost 1pm and I should probably jump in the shower to cool off 
adventures in and around Jaipur March 24, 2008
Posted by rfarinel in : university , 1 comment so farThis past week was truly one to remember. Aman and I ventured out of Mumbai last Tuesday afternoon down to
Churchgate for some shopping then to Bombay Central where we got on a train for Jaipur. It wasn’t just any train – this was the Mumbai-Jaipur super fast train. The next few days certainly did go by super fast (ha).
The train rides to/from both took around 18 hours. It wasn’t that bad though because were were in sleeper class which meant we got beds (more like cushie long-ish seats) to rest on at night. I was able to sleep most of the night going up there. Upon arrival, we went to see Aman’s older brother, Bhawani, who is one of the nicest people I’ve ever meet. “Guests are treated as Gods in my country,” he told me on more than one occasion.
We spent the next two days going around Jaipur, The Pink City, seeing many different sites. It was interesting to see how different Jaipur was from Mumbai. Mumbai is much more fast-paced and large-scale, and probably other hyphenated combinations of words too. Jaipur had many more structures that I would consider “traditional Indian” like mahals, forts, and more extravagant temples. Mumbai, in most senses, is quite a modern city with lots of pollution, noise, and especially people. Jaipur had it’s share of people and noise, but the pollution was noticiably less and that was really refreshing. After seeing Jaipur city
, we headed for Aman’s hometown where his parents and family were waiting. We had a great dinner with them and enjoyed relaxing, trying to forget about life at IIT Bombay for a few days.
The next day (Friday) I got pretty ill. It was probably something I ate in Jaipur – Aman and I were playing Survivor Man (or “Men vs. Wild”) with food & drinks off the streets. I won’t go into the details here but the short of it is that I was pretty down-for-the-count all of Friday and I had to taste (and feel) Indian medicine. It wasn’t that bad – being sick is just no fun
Saturday was Holi, the celebration of good’s triumph over evil. We played Holi in Aman’s house briefly and mostly just hung out and relaxed. It was nice to not have any papers to write, quizzes to study for, and autos to catch. We watched a movie on my laptop that night and went to bed in the cool desert air.
The last day of our trip, we headed to a western-style fair that was only a 20-minute bus ride from Aman’s place. I got lots of good pics there and there were even some white monkeys (the ones in Mumbai are usually darker). The train ride back was pretty uneventful and I even made it back to IITB in time for my 9:30 Networking class. Aman didn’t make it (zzzz….. )
The pictures from my trip are posted on Flickr in a set here
.
Alibag & Janjira Fort March 9, 2008
Posted by rfarinel in : university , add a commentThis past saturday was a lonnnng day. We got up around 3:30am and took (almost) the first train from Kanjurmarg down to Colaba (southern Mumbai) and from there we took a ferry to Alibag. From Alibag, we took a bus to Murud and then an auto to the Janjira Fort.
The fort was a pretty awesome (in the literal sense of the word) sight to see. We took a tour with a local guy for 45 minutes. We did encounter a small language problem (mainly, the tour guide didn’t speak a word of english) but we found a nice man who translated for us. The boat ride over to the fort was on a small unpowered sailboat. Man-power is so cheap in India.
The trip was a total of about 20 hours of sights and I think the best way to see it is, well, to see it. Pictures are here and here (again, public links provided by Luca).
out of the woods? March 6, 2008
Posted by rfarinel in : university , 2commentsLately I’ve been doing a lot of project work. Mainly it’s been in the ‘edlab’ (or New Software Lab in iitb terms) with my lab partner, Aman. It’s all been really interesting though, so I don’t mind it much. I’m learning a lot – most of the classes I’m taking here are very practical and interesting to me (so that’s good).
On an unrelated note, I’m planning to do some traveling in the weeks to come. Next weekend I think a few of us will take various transport (bus, train, or plane) to Goa, a state south of Maharashtra and see the sites and such. The following weekend, Aman invited me to visit his family in Jaipur for the festival Holi. I’m really looking forward to seeing the India outside the limits of Mumbai.
One other thing – Luca, my friend from Italy, has posted some pictures of us running around and such. You can view the first set here and the second here (public links).
circus February 25, 2008
Posted by rfarinel in : university , 2commentsYesterday I went to the Kohinoor Circus! It was pretty fantastic. On the way over, we were discussing whether or not we’d even been to a circus. The general consensus of everyone was “I think I have, but I don’t remember…” So yeah, I’m sure a few of us will have to check with our mothers to see if this was
our first. They didn’t have as many animals as I thought they would but they did some pretty sweet stuff. I wish I had recorded the whole thing cause I could just hear Colin saying “dude, I could totally do that.”
Probably the sweetest part was when they brought out a giant elephant for some girl to hang from while spinning. Right before she started .. well, let’s just say “nature called” in the form of a waterfall. She didn’t get that wet, but damn it was funny.
Slightly off topic, my midsems went well overall and I’m trudging on with classes. In my Distributed Systems class, we have to do a semester project that we get to come up with. My friend Victor from next door gave me a pretty cool idea about collaborative lecture notes so I think I’m going to go in that direction. I won’t bore everyone here with the details, but I do have them if you’re interested.
midsems February 17, 2008
Posted by rfarinel in : university , 1 comment so farIn contrast to schools in the US, IITB has an entire week devoted to only mid-semester exams. It’s similar to our final exam time back at home; there are no classes for about a week but it’s crunch time for pretty much everyone (because there are no basket-weaving majors here ). My midsem schedule is looking pretty good – I have 3 exams total, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. My fourth class (ntk sec/crypto) has a large-ish quiz at the end of each month, so no formal midterm in that class (phewww). I should probably start studying now…
In other news, I received my first free t-shirt from IITB today. It’s from TechFest, the largest technical festival in Asia. It happened a few weeks ago (end of Jan) at IIT and I was totally going to write a post about it, but then I had other stuff to do (probably). I did get to see a talk given by Jimmy Wales, the founder of wikipedia.. that was pretty cool.
One more random tidbit of information – I got my first haircut yesterday and it was pretty sweet. It was like $5 for a wash, cut n’ style .. so yeah, I don’t think I need to join krainin and buy a hair clipper of my own. I would like to watch that thing in action though …
gallivanting February 10, 2008
Posted by rfarinel in : university , add a commentYesterday, two friends and I went exploring around Mumbai. We had several sites to see and I took some pics to show them off. Rather than going through all the details here, I’ll let the pictures talk for themselves.
For those of you who haven’t heard – there are no hot showers at IITB. Well, in the hostels there aren’t at least (I guess the guest house has them, but I don’t live there). I’ve finally worked out a solution. I call it SCSWA – the Self Contained Shower Warming Apparatus. It’s still in it’s development phase, but prototypes are coming along nicely.
One more thing – the Hardrock Cafe Mumbai is (a) very hard to find; (b) extremely loud inside; and (c) overpriced. Thought I would shed some light on that in case you were thinking about giving it a try. I still prefer indian-style chinese food at hiranandani.
routine February 3, 2008
Posted by rfarinel in : university , add a commentI haven’t had a cold like this since I was 8 years old. Seriously – I rarely get sick. It’s not that bad .. just annoying to have to sneeze like 230948 times/second. I did bring some allergy medicine with me. I was trying to remember where and when I got it (because I just found it in my little black bathroom bag) and I think I’ve pined it down – I remember getting stung by a bee in Melissa’s car last summer .. I think it’s the same benadryl from then. Glad I got that bee-sting. I’ll be better soon though .. it can’t last more than a few days.
A common question I’ve been getting is (quite obviously) about how classes are going. The classes are going well (e.g. lectures) and the assignments, although somewhat difficult, are interesting and help with learning the material. The one thing I’m trying to figure out is how to not do poorly on is the exams. I’ve had two so far and both were far more difficult that I was prepared for. I guess I just need to study more(?). I did recently buy a textbook (US $8.60) for my Networking class. I’m probably going to buy a few more books and try to really go over the material before exams. Wish me luck .. okay I’m off to get some really tasty noodles at Hiranandani… mmmmmm… noodles