Ben in Berkeley: #7 - End of training and the first move

Ok, so I haven't posted here in almost 2 months. This is the first of three posts covering the time up until now (mid-December).

The training finished up pretty uneventfully. I went to Ooty for a weekend with some people. It was really laid-back, which was really good. And, it was cool. It was in the 50s when we got there. People were wearing parkas. We lit off fireworks because it was Diwali. The fuses were really fast, which made things exciting, and then we had the bright idea of wrapping multiple firecrackers in kleenex to light them off together. The kleenex would just start smoldering and go off unpredictably. Fun! Anyway, the road getting there was really, really rough:

There was a two-week-long final group project around that time, and then our big final test. It kept me pretty busy, but wasn't all that hard.
After most of the people left, I and the other people in my unit stayed for an extra week for some initial orientation. That was boring and we didn't do much.
So finally we went to Bangalore, and it was fun. Bangalore is a much bigger city, and there's more to do. However, the traffic and pollution are terrible, and Infosys is a ways outside the city. In traffic, it can take up to an hour to get to the center of the city. There weren't any good hang-out restaurants that we found, so basically the only thing we could do on Friday nights (because there's nothing on or near campus) is clubs. And that was ok and fun sometimes, but not always. But the hostel was better. The campus is much more urban. It's got a lot more buildings but they are all very close together.
I went to see the Harlem Globetrotters with my friend Mike. They came to Bangalore and played two shows. It was a lot of fun. One of the things they do is get people to do the YMCA dance. Mike and I were one of like ten people in the whole place who knew the dance. So of course we did it, we had to represent.
My friend Peter came down from Chennai (where he had been sent instead of Bangalore) one weekend. He was going crazy as he was basically alone in Chennai, and there was nothing to do there. It was a lot of fun.
One night, Alex and I came home from a club and watched a Hindi movie. This movie, Kabhi Alvida naa Kehna, was huge here in India. Of course, it's three hours long. It wasn't that bad, basically on par with a run-of-the-mill cheesy drama/chick-flick in the US. With song-and-dance numbers, of course. Take a look:
Where's the Party Tonight? - this has basically been the biggest song in India for most of the time we've been here.