FOSS.IN - Day 0 Arrival
December 5th, 2007 by aizatto
A few months ago, the International Open Source Network held an Exchange Grant for people in developing countries to visit a FOSS related event before the end of the year.
Having never gone for an overseas FOSS conference, I took the opportunity and submitted an application form.
A few weeks passed by with no reply, until I was informed that along with Ditesh I was one of the lucky candidates to go to FOSS.IN in Bangalore, India.
Not only would this be my first visit to a FOSS conference, but also to Bangalore, India. Many firsts.
Sadly the flight to Bangalore required a short transit in Chennai. The departure time for Chennai was at 8:20am, so I had to be in the airport earlier than usual to catch the flight. Both flights were okay, but they were packed to the brim.
I’ve always held this image that Bangalore was a modern city, complete with a fully automated public transport system, large streets, what ever the definition of a modern city is. But at least on par with Kuala Lumpur. Immediately after touch down, reality hit, and I was slightly shocked. This image is probably built because of continually hearing Bangalore referred to as the “Silicon Valley of India”.
Perhaps I should have read Wikipedia it before arriving.
After arriving to our service apartments, The Orchard Suite, Ditesh and myself preceded to the FOSS.IN location at JN Tata Auditorium, National Science Symposium Centre, Indian Institute of Science by the infamous mode of transportation, the rickshaw.
The rickshaw rides are bearable, with the only exception being that due to its open nature, I found my hair flying all over the place.
Nonetheless we arrived safely. While waiting fro the registration booth to open, we hung around outside, pulled out our laptops, and leeched off the Internet.
After a long hiccup, registration opened much much later after we arrived. Once we registered, we finally got to meetup with Colin. As it was already night time we preceded to MG Road for dinner.
Note: Blog posts are highly dependent on wifi availability.
You can follow my flickr feed while I attempt to take more photos with my Nokia e61i. Or follow the public flickr feed!
