Date archives "August 2006"

An Englishman in Chennai, India

Hey, check this out. I’m on my way to India! Off to Chennai in the Madras region, which in on the South East coast.

OK, so everything isn’t confirmed yet. I have to go to the Indian Embassy in London to get a visa, get several different injections for diseases like Malaria, Yellow Fever and Diphtheria. The injections are going to cost a fortune!

Then I have to book a flight out there, not sure whether to go for a cheapo option and save money or pay that extra and go with British Airways.

The BA flights get in to the Chennai airport at 4am! It takes 10 hours, so better take a few books to read.

If all goes to plan, I should be leaving early September time.

While I’m out there, I hope to work closely with a couple of webmasters that I currently hire and train them in areas that’s difficult to explain over instant messenger.

I’ll also get to meet the programmers that have been working on my projects for the last year – which will be really fantastic to put some faces to names. I’ll get to see their working habits, and push them in the right direction (more work, less chatter! Just kidding!).

Finally, I think I’ll be doing a lot of stuff with the owners of Agriya, creating some joint ventures and projects.

I’ll be staying as a guest of one of the company owners…I haven’t found a good time to tell him yet that I don’t like spicy curry!

My biggest concern about going out there is catching what is affectionately referred to as “Delhi belly”. It’s where you vomit and have the runs near simultaneously for days on end. Probably not too bad if you are in a hotel and can lock yourself in the room, but in a house where others are living, maybe not a nice experience!

I’ll be taking my camera (that reminds, me, must ask parents if I can borrow their digital video camera, mine only takes stills) and hopefully will get to post some cool pictures of my trip. If everything goes well, I should be out there for 2 months, maybe longer. Or I might not last 2 days!

Current temperature in Chennai: 25°C and it’s only 5am in the morning!