18 August 2008

First Week, No Sleep

New Thangs 'n' Thangs

My new Nokia phoneRZ2 Games is a great place to work. On Monday, I met just about all the employees. Of course, I remember only two names, but I'll be improving that over the next few weeks. I received my new Nokia 2630 phone, which is a newer model than the phone I had in the US (Nokia 2128i). Besides making and receiving phone calls and text messages (called SMS here), it has a camera and syncs up with my MacBook. 

Me on the rental scooter
I've also rented a Honda 100cc scooter to get around. Driving in Goa is fun; you never know what will happen! For example, on Tuesday, I hit the door of a bus trying to avoid running into an auto-rickshaw. Shortly afterwards, what I think was a Tata Sumo moved into my "lane" and would have ran us off the road if it weren't for Tony knocking on their window. Needless to say, Tony doesn't ride with me anymore. 

The story doesn't end there. After work, I was retracing the path we took to work because it was the only one I knew. Unfortunately, I was heading down a one-way where two police officers on a motorcycle were. They pulled me over and demanded I pay Rs 700. I later learned the fine for traveling the wrong way down a one-way is only Rs 100. I told the officers that I only had US dollars and couldn't pay. They took my International Driving Permit and told me to drive back (without a license, mind you) to my office to get 700 rupees if I wanted to get my permit back. After I was back at the office, I stashed the Rs 3000 I had on me and headed to the traffic police office with our staff assistant, Pragosh. He explained to the officers in Hindi or Konkani that the fine was too high and that I didn't have Rs 700 because I just started working the day before. After threatening to call his relative in the police department, the officers agreed to accept Rs 100 each.

We got back to the RZ2 office and I was getting advice on how to deal with police corruption from everyone. Chris, who is a fellow scooterist, offered to show me how to get home. I followed him until I ran out of gas. My phone wasn't calling out for some reason so I started walking my scooter past a group of children-beggars (one of whom was carrying a baby) and futilely tried to explain that I had no food on me and that I wasn't having the best day. Chris circled back to find me and he then asked a shop owner to siphon a liter of gas from his car for which I paid three-times the cost. Eventually I made it back home where Jesse had fallen asleep waiting for me to go work out.

It's not all bad
My workstation at the office
Fortunately, the rest of my week has been much more positive. The projects I'm working on at work are challenging and fun. Plus, one of the perks of working in the game industry is that you get to play games! At the end of the day, most of the office stays and plays Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, or Warcraft. Also, I've been able to meet plenty of fun people by hanging out with Tony. My bedroom

Just a few notes

Haircut, Rs 75 (~ $2). They use sugar to make the Coke here and it's pretty good. Also, they use quotation marks seemingly at random. For example, "Contains Caffeine". There are always extra buckets and facets in bathrooms as well as extra switches on the walls. There are some things here that you just can't get in the US. Cuban cigars and Absinthe to name a few. Not such a big fan for either, but I had to try them. I taught Lucky, the bar tender how to make an Irish car bomb using his "home-made Baily's cream".

Check out more pictures at my Picasa Web Album.

If y'all have any questions or want to read more about something specific, let me know via the comments, email, or facebook!

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7 Comments:

Blogger Cavan said...

This is awesome man! Sounds like your having a really good and "interesting" experience. I look forward to reading more of your posts.

August 24, 2008 11:56 PM  
Blogger Jesse said...

Taebro! Looks like you're getting settled in nicely. How's the gym? Jorge taught me how to cook a meeeeeean steak, man. That goan beef is some good stuff - that's from "the man" himself! He was quite impressed at both the quality and the price. Consider yourself lucky. ;)

August 24, 2008 11:58 PM  
Blogger Cody said...

Damn son get some Black Magic on them tires!! lol Man fucc them cracker ass cracker police out there dawg you dont have to listen to them you're American boy!! Stay up playa, I'll keep SouthSyde afloat over here til you get back ;)

August 25, 2008 12:10 AM  
Blogger Daniel said...

I'm sorry, but I could not help but laugh while reading that. It was like something out of a movie. Keep posting! By the way, I fared rather well here in Melbourne, less than an inch of water in the bedroom only. Not too bad!

August 26, 2008 3:43 AM  
OpenID nammernguyen said...

sup senor james, glad to see you're actually in india, rather than only saying you're goin to india to go to a "better" place. But anyways, do they speak american there?

August 27, 2008 9:28 AM  
OpenID nammernguyen said...

my friend samira says the place you're at is really nice, it must be like the hawaii of india!!!!

August 27, 2008 8:41 PM  
Blogger Cavan said...

...fuckin nam...haha

August 29, 2008 5:27 AM  

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