Vinay Kumar Meeting Minutes (and my own comments)

Ok...so here's the going ons of the meeting

overall feelings first:
Vinay Kumar is the man. The go-to guy. If we've got a questions, he's the one to bug ( vinay@icmis.org ). Also, the trip is much more laid back in terms of mindset, but not in content, than initially expected. Vinay seems like a cool, funny guy who is on top of things.

Here are notes in no particular order other than the order I wrote them down (which isn't chronological order)

• Vinay recommends a laptop. Right now we've got drew's, jcon's, and now mine. That's three times as many as last year, which he said would be very helpful
• one a side note, the dorms are wireless, so we'll have internet in our rooms
• on another note, unless there is any outcry not to, we will all have single rooms in the icmis newly finished dorms. they have a laundry service. they have security guards. there will be other indian kids living there. it takes 400 dollars off the program fee. we'll all be together. there won't be a commute. they've got a free shuttle that takes us wherever we want to go in bangalore thursday through sunday.
• the temp will go from 110ish in delhi to 60s and 70s in bangalore to 40s in the mountains, so a few layers are recommended
• we have two weekends to ourselves, otherwise we've got stuff planned for us
• bangalore is the second most cosmopolitan city in india (second to mombai or however you spell it)
• it grew from 5 million to 7.2 million in the last 26 months (which means that the school has been engulfed by the city, and rickshaws now travel to the school (so we'll have cheap transportation right there)
• cell phones
• the phones they give us have all emergency numbers as well as icmis numbers and taxi numbers programmed on them
• both international and local minutes can be purchased, although separately
• do no jog in town, jog around the campus
• in town would be dangerous and impossible to get up to full speed
• the starbucks of india is called coffee day
• there will be 6 other american students there for the first week or so
• they are a great resource on how to survive as americans in india
• what if you get sick
• CALL VINAY, and he'll set you up with where you need to go
• again, he is the man
• Health care is so cheap
• one kid last year got his eyes checked and bought custom glasses there (like 100 bucks for everything)
• Vinay's family will treat us all to a steakhouse in bangalore
• $5-$6 Fillet Mignon
• We need to buy a universal adapter for power
• We need to go see a Gold Class movie (36 seats, all recliners, with call buttons and servants to wait on you and food is included in the price (around $10 bucks))
• BTW -> Dede wants us to make a program documentary, so we'll be using drew's camera and my isight and jcons live cam to sort of video blog the trip a bit
• all fast food chains are there
• even tgi friday's and ruby tuesdays
• all with different menus, of course (i guess that could be of courses...hahahaha terrible pun)
  
• Vinay recommends we read No Full Stops in India by Mark Tully
• don't bring a swimsuit, unless you plan on dying after you use it (only one hotel had a pool, and it wasn't too enticing)
• every day at exactly 4:00 pm it started raining
• we should all start reading the bangalore daily news
• http://www.timesofindia.com
• click on bangalore
• read

That's about it for now

Troy