It's great to be home.

We ended up going to Goa after all, and that was fantastic. Goa was sort of this unspoiled tropical paradise. Hemant got us booked in this 5 star hotel with a private beach. It was a great way to cap off this trip to India.

After Goa, I spent one more day in Bangalore before heading off to Toronto with a stop-over in Delhi. Some of the guys got together and got me a kurta (I'm probably spelling that wrong), which is this Indian style garment. It was the perfect gift, because I was thinking about getting one, but not sure where to buy one. Here's a sample:

While I was in India, merchants would constantly try to take advantage of me. I would ask them the price of something and they would look at me, hesitate and name an obscenely high price (you could practically hear them adding a "foreigner tax" in their heads). So while I was wearing the kurta, I decided to experiment and go to a few stores to see what would happen. I'm sure they'd know that I wasn't a local, but perhaps they'd think that I was a foreigner who'd been here a while, and thus was aware of the prevailing market-clearing price (which I generally was). The response that I usually got was they'd look at me, snicker, hesitate and name an obscenely high price. :) I also wore the kurta on a final trip to the office to say bye to the guys. I'm really going to miss them.

I had about an hour and a half in Delhi, before I had to get in another plane. What did I do? I took a cab and went to the nearest McDonald's. I got 3 orders of large fries, a chicken maharaja burger, a McCurry pan and of course, a coke. It was absolutely one of the best meals I've ever had. It was so beautiful. I just had to take a picture.

I've been back for about a day now. It's been great seeing friends and family (my aunt and uncle from Oregon are also visiting!). I'll write more about my experience in India and post some pictures a bit later. If you're in Toronto, drop me a line before I leave on the 16th.

Trilogy University is finally over. It's been a great 3+ months, but am I ever ready to get back home. I'll have about a week and half to see my family and friends in Toronto while I prepare for the move down to Austin.

On the last day, we had a project fair where we got to demonstrate the projects that we'd been working on. There was a lot of tremendous technology on display. Looking back at the whole process, I'm actually quite impressed that we were able to do as much as we did in such a short period of time. There's some incredible talent here at Trilogy and the best part is that they're fun to work with as well. After the fair, we headed over to Amoeba for a final TU bar night. I decided to end my 4-month-no-drinking streak and promptly got really drunk (I'll post pictures soon. You'll see what I mean). Most of the night was just a blur of vodka, "bumps" and yelling. Definitely good times.

It's likely, but not certain, that my flight will be delayed by 3 days because we'll be going to Goa. I've heard Goa described as the Cancun of India. It's sort of a TU tradition to take the TU batch on a trip somewhere if 75% of the projects are successful. I'm at the office right now as Mrinal and Sridhar are trying to put the finishing touches on their project, which would push us over the 75% threshold. We'll see what happens. :)