James in Hyderabad

Hospital Visits My post today will be my experience with the healthcare system here in India. Its going to be a two parter, or more, who knows? To begin with, a little backstory. I have Dupuytren's contracture, a disease that creates thick bands in you hands, making your fingers contract. I had surgery on my right hand to fix this issue, which it did, kinda. In the left hand it has also developed. In the below pictures you can see the pinky and index are both being pulled towards the palm.     Since it's getting worse, I would do some investigation here, can I get surgery, cost, etc. After some search (Dupuytren's is not common here) I was able to find a doctor. Dr. Bandari . I set up an appointment at Apollo hospital. The hospital itself is very modern, both inside and outside. Very busy. After a short maze, I was able to find his office. It was in the orthopedist section. Apollo hospital (front entrance) Dr Banduri was very good. He spoke English as many, if not all, doct

 It has been a while since I've written anything on here, but that doesn't mean nothing has happened. At work we had an Iftar celebration several weeks back. Iftar is the breaking of the fast during Ramadan. A special food around this season is Haleem.  Haleem is a gravy of sorts. Meat cooked all day until it is basically a liquid then mixed with flour, wheat groats, spices, and as you can see in the picture, with cashews and ghee on top. It is very rich and thick. The party itself was full of people. People brought there kids to work, they were running around the office all day in waiting for the party. The two floors then emptied out for the party itelf. It was held in the cafeteria upstairs and every department brought something. My favorite was the shawarma. I do love a good shawarma. The next day I has another shawarma, That did not sit well with me and I had to stay home from work for the week. But work has been getting busier, but the project is almost done. I've be

 It has been a little more than a week since I last posted. Today I was the first time I felt like I was actually accomplishing something. I had written some small part of an app last week allowing the client to download a 10 lakh (1,000,000) rows of data. Well today, there might have been something wrong with it. Which was great because I felt like I got to actually solve a problem.  But the I am burying the lead, the real story is, this week, I did not have lunch one day. The person who makes my lunch had gone on a trip, and wires were crossed, and I went without for a day. I was hangry, and I asked the person who usually picks me up if I could be picked up early, 3ish, and he said 5pm. And then I relayed to him that I was without a lunch. 10 minutes later I got a call from him that he was in the lobby.  The worst thing that could possible happen is that you might miss a meal. He was sincerely worried for my health, like I might have died.  Well, that was a funny little side note to

Let's see, what happened last week fit to discuss. The work week was a blur. I did not really accomplish anything, no projects assigned, just in limbo. I often go up to the lunch room alone, I wake up early person, and eat earlier than most of the people at work. But, sometimes, I am joined by co-workers if they eat at the same time. This is nice, it takes my attention away from my thoughts. It slows lunch down for I usually just eat and go.  I was supposed to go to Charminar, a building that represents Hyderabad and holds a mosque, on Sunday. But a dinner took me away, so I was unable to. Next Sunday, perhaps. I did, however, run Saturday morning. There is a park, KBR. Running in India is particularly hard because sidewalks are few and far between. Parks are one of the few ways to get consistent space to run. KBR has two paths, inside and outside. The inside path is short and there is a fee to enter the park. The outside path is free, and longer.  I have run both. The inside is ar

     This last week went well! I met my point of contact (POC) in my group and he directed me to create a CRUD app using Nest.js, for practice. This was pretty easy or me as I have been working with Express.js and Node,js and Nest.js very, very similar. It is actually a wrapper on to of Node that allows for some pretty neat things. It automatically makes routes that the front end can use, and validation is simple. I quickly made it on Thursday. My POC then said to make another and connect the two modules, which is what Nest files groups are called. I was able to do complete this Friday morning AND connect it to Mongodb. Overall pretty easy stuff.     I am a little frustrated with these tasks. They don't know what I can do, and after sitting with some one friday who had no experience in backend or frontend development, I can understand why they want to make sure I am capable of doing the simple things. But still, I can do this, easily, and I feel like I am reay for ACTUAL work. Next

 W ell, one week down.      This week was a bit of a learning week, and next week will continue this.     Many who are not in tech, or hope to one day be in tech, don't know what an actual tech office is like, or the daily routine. You might find this unbelievable, but it's true. For the uninitiated, the tech world is a shadowy play where one goes to an office and does.... things. What things, in what order, are all a mystery. The office that I am in is quite large. think of two or three school classrooms together. It is open, meaning there are no cubicles, everyone can see everyone, talk and collaborate.     The first day I met with the head of the group. This group handles the tech needs large lab company in India. This company is responsible for blood tests and lab work. It is a very large company processing hundreds of thousands of tests per day. The room probably has forty or so people, clusters it seems like. Each cluster is working on a different aspect of the company