1 March 2001

Office is abuzz with four days before BangLinux begins. Registrations have been pouring in which is good but I forgot to tell the foreign speakers that you need a visa to enter India which is bad. Some—Damien Conway, Rasmus Lerdorf —were quick enough to spot this and sort it out. Yay. Some were not and assumed they didn’t need one. Boo. Visas usually take a week to sort out. We now have two days.

Welcoming me back to Bangalore, John gives me a friendly slap on the shoulder. Sorry - ex-shoulder, now huge heat blister. I scream accordingly. Dilip and crew refrain from doing the same. Hitting my shoulder that is—not screaming.

3 March 2001

Not much else to do now apart from wait. The US passport system flummoxes me. In order to get an Indian visa, one of our speakers has to fly 500 miles out of his way to Indianapolis to pick it up, yet he already lives in a big city. He can’t get it there? Anyway, two US-based guys have sent regrets as a result of no visa, so damn fine planning is going up in smoke. The European guys have already started flying here without their internal flight tickets from Bombay to Bangalore. The phrase ‘pray the message gets there’ echoes loud in my head as we phone Mumbai airport to tell them where to get them.

Meanwhile, the Mumbai team have arrived in Bangalore after the conference equivalent of a washout. MumJava then - denser than a lead balloon and just as buoyant in the Bay of Bengal.

4 March 2001

Arrival day

One day to go and main duty is now to welcome those speakers flying into town and get them into their hotel with a minimum of fuss before we say hello properly this evening. And so, starting at 6am, I have six roundtrips to make. Almost have heart attack when one speaker decides to get a later flight and doesn’t tell me. Smile as frightened Europeans leave airport to be mobbed by the swathe of cabbies hawking their overpriced services. That was me five months ago. Only two panics of the day occur when it becomes apparent the KDE and Gnome guys are occupying the same flight—possible carnage there—and that one of the ferryings is being made in the slowest motor vehicle known to humanity. Not a real problem, but I could walk faster. Have one cabby on commission by end of day.

5 March 2001

BangLinux Day 1. 6am start to go grab speaker shirts at hotel which of course don’t show until 7.30. But everyone is where they should be which is a minor miracle. Scratch that. Neither RedHat nor Compaq have actually built their stands yet. Neither have the power nor equipment to do it. As they are the platinum sponsors, you wonder how everyone else has managed it very well, thank you.

Indian IT minister comes to light ceremonial lamps with John and a full hall and several TV stations cover proceedings. Suddenly regret organiser shirt as its easier for the press to spot, wanting to be introduced to important (sic) people. Get grabbed by CNN for fifteen minutes while I should be chasing speakers to start their sessions, missing two who come and go without me ever seeing them. One of the guys from CDC Linux has stepped into the US void for a device drivers talk. Of course, he doesn’t really know how to judge how he’s doing so he’s only half way through by the time it should be finishing. Of course, it’s a full house, so what do you do?

Sun continues to shine and no one loses their head. A few egos from the local Linux group are bruised but no permanent casualties. Yesterday’s tame cabby shows up looking for a fare which he gets en route to first speaker meal at Tycoons. Grace casually informs me outside that Rekha has a big crush on me. And I’m expected to do what exactly? Best course of action - absolutely nothing.

6 March 2001

BangLinux Day 2. Know every patch of ground between halls 1 and 2 as my sprinting continues between the two making sure lectures start on time. Shoulders are finally healing after six days of muted agony. The Simputer is officially launched at one fo the sessions. One guy simply doesn’t turn up for his talk. Grumblings aimed at me but no-one knows where he is, not even his mates. Reschedule but end up running my own Q&A session at the end of the day as a result. Tame cabby turns up again. Not needed tonite but spends fifteen minutes arguing that he should be paid for the fuel he spent getting here anyway. Politely, he gets told exactly where he can put his fuel. Won’t be expecting him to reappear tomorrow.

Everyone jetting off after sessions tomorrow so tonight is the posh thank you meal. After some effort, hotel arranges six Ambassadors (the cars, not the diplomats) to take twenty of us out of town to an open air restaurant called Gulkarnas. In fact, the place is booked out just for us. Kingfisher flows and the food is served on banana leaves while conversation flows between last year’s BangLinux, open source as a business, and whether or not the whole Skynet scenario in The Terminator could actually happen.

7 March 2001

Banglinux Final Day. Shit - shoud have read email. Turns out missing speaker yesterday emailed me to say he was stuck in Mumbai. Also turns out Linux group and two of the other speakers could have covered it, but who knew? As sod’s law dictates, the one person whose sole purpose in life was to attend that lecture has found me and complains vociferously for half an hour.

Big audience around for futures day. Damien Conway on Perl 6, Michael Meeks on Ximian Gnome 2, Zope stuff, dope stuff and all the funky levels in between. I get a standing ovation for rebooting a Windows computer back into Linux on the main stage and the sessions end with a demo from the Indian Ministry of Defence of OpenGL running full blown aircraft flight simulators. Demo involves five people, ten extra boxes and a full replica lightning joystick. Lots of wows from the audience up until the point where the power cuts out for five minutes.

Farewell photos and standup routines for helpers, staff (us) and speakers folow. Those speakers not already gone fly off after last meal at the Gateway hotel, one of those colonial places kept open for formal occasions and a good beer or two. And so its all done.

8 March 2001

Paul off tomorrow so down to town for a tour with Tim and some souvenirs. As ever, beggar comes up laden with washing basket in one hand, small child in the other and slightly older child clinging to her leg. With no money forthcoming, she proffers the washing basket, takes the lid off and watches (while laughing?) as the three of us jumps five miles sideways as a large golden snake appears from said basket. Shudder. Back to office in afternoon, but no-one wants to work or even download mail. Paul treats us to TGI Fridays before he learns there is a 63% tax markup on imported alcohol. We do sub him a bit.

10 March 2001

Awake at five, remain knackered and spaced for rest of day while house becomes thoroughfare for everyone collecting and dropping off. Fridge now in dreadful state thanks to neglecting veg? in the bottom try for about a month. Even the lizards have stayed away. Vaguely aware of flying to Calcutta for last break before I leave back to Blighty. More aware that every local has poster paint in at least one color splashed on their face and torso. Another festival—because it’s the second Saturday of a month within a ‘r’ in it presumably. This one is just known as the festival of color.

Calcutta is a surprise—it’s quite cool. Instinctively reach for passport, remember I didn’t bring it ’cos I haven’t left the country, and groan because I need it to cash travellers cheques. I want a ticket for tomorrows test match India vs Australia but don’t have that much on me. Taxi gets hit from behind on the way in. Fortunately, hotel is not far away and has complmentary first day tickets for the match, so all is well even if the air conditioning system seems to have a loud speaker attached.

11 March 2001

Ninety thousand people crammed into Eden gardens to watch the first day’s play and I end up two seats across from the only other English people in the stadium; two girls on their last day in India. This is cricket India style —the scoreboard breaks down, the Aussie contingent is fenced in, you can tell where Sachin Tendulkar is on the field at any one time because the nearest quadrant of the stands has a thousand people’s faces mashed up against the fence, the seating is concrete covered with whatever cushions you brought and the queue for plastic bags of water is ten times longer than the queue for pepsi and fanta. Am mistaken for a lost Aussie in third session as their batting collapses from 190-1 to 288-8. Am also witness to first ever Indian hattrick in test cricket. Harbhajan Singh, if you’re interested. Wonder if I can get a ticket for tomorrow?

12 March 2001

Can’t be arsed with further abuse for being an honorary Aussie from the Eden Garden crowd, so move to explore central Calcutta instead. Learn that in general, it’s not that clean, as evidenced by the fact that if you wander around there for a bit and then blow your nose, your snot is black, the council literally shovels dirt off the street and that the Maidan, which is the largest city park in the world looks more like a rubbish tip and grazing pasture for sheep, goats and cows. The grim irony are the no smoking signs around the place. Even the high-rises aroudn the place are in a state of disrepair. It’s not the people that are the problem, it’s the vehicles.

All museums are shut today, so it’s follow the guidebook time. The planetarium has shows alternately in English, Hindi and Bengali. Looks like Calcutta crows are pro-Empire. Every statue of an Indian leader or yogi has a crow on it. Those of the English monarchy at the Victoria memorial are remarkably bird free. Past the zoo to the Indian national library. Want the complete works of Shakespeare in twenty India dialects? Here’s where you get them. Library canteen modelled on boys home dining room in Oliver Twist. Expect Mr Bumble to appear at any time and blast the skin off some humble library lackey. The five star hotel in Calcutta is just round the corner. Doormen replaced with guards with guns and slightly less friendly demeanour. Wonder who’s staying there at the moment?

Try to find the old British colonial centre at Fort William. Guidebook neglects to mention the two US-size freeways to cross and the copy of the Severn bridge crossing the Hugli river which splits the East and West centres of the city. River and its bridges likes the Thames in London but on a bigger scale (of course) and with more boat carcasses run aground on sandbanks amidst the fast-flowing water. More people have their daily bath-cum-urinations in it too. Fort William now army school so no access allowed but the lodge does have a radio tuned to the cricket which tells me Australia are still at bat. Walking up toward Eden Gardens, the roar from the stadium gives away the fact that their last wicket has just fallen. Strangely, there are no touts outside.

Walk north of the Maidan into the commercial area of the city. Stalls are two deep on both sides of the street. The word ’throng’ must have been coined here. Only places of calm are the little graveyard where the founder of Calcutta (Job Charnock) is buried and the site of the large, if incongruous, mosque to the East. The famed black hole of Calcutta is now a plaque on a wall near a street corner. Find the shopping street for foreigners and promptly get offered drugs and women. Just goes to show what they think of us.

13 March 2001

Wake up ill. The dirt and smog has got to me. Realise my trousers are a dark shade of grey. They were a light cream day before yesterday. Decide to escape back to Bangalore. Jet Airways office next to closest thing India has to HMV and sign reading ’Feed the Poor here, 9am, 5.30pm’. Like they are some sort of circus attraction? Mother Theresa did a lot of work here, God rest her, but obviously not enough. Get back to flat and feel instantly better after swim.

15 March 2001

Looks like BangLinux broke even. Given how much we weren’t charging attendees, that’s pretty good. Last day before Tim and I fly home in the evening. Have done our souvenir shopping and bags haven’t burst. Will have to pay excess baggage in Mumbai, that’s all but I can charge that back to Wrox anyway. Small meal last night to say bye bye to everyone. Of course, unable to convey to Wani that I won’t be in at all from tomorrow, but hopefully Bajaj will sort it out. John, Jo and kids back in a month. Sad to go, but keen to see everyone again.

Sigh. It’s been a trip.