We are… Penn State!!!

I know it has been said that you can’t go anywhere in the United States without running into a PSU alum, but, I can say that I have travelled to the other side of the world and have seen Penn State here too!  Penn State is everywhere!  Some quick numbers: There are the four of us interns; Eric graduated from PSU two years ago and is working with Intel in Bangalore this summer; Steve’s friends’ sister Margaret who is working at Infosys in the city this summer; Dr. Petrick is traveling around India working for CSC interviewing people about globally distributed teams and for the most part, living in Bangalore for the summer; and even some random guy that we saw a guy wearing a Penn State hat at a mall about a week ago! So, right there, that is eight people associated with Penn State. Then there are countless Penn State alums working at Honeywell internationally.  It’s pretty crazy when you think about it - Penn State really is everywhere.

Yesterday, it hit me, there are a lot of people looking at us four interns, not just watching us and casually reading about our travels, but learning from us and preparing to do this again next year. There are a lot more people reading our blogs than I originally thought. This includes many people from Penn State and the college of IST and even corporate Honeywell people.  For instance, yesterday, I got two emails from two vice presidents of Honeywell both extending their best wishes to us and one said he enjoyed reading about our experiences.  Then he went on about his time in India years ago and how so much has changed since then.  I guess I like how senior management is so focused on interns - I guess we’re just special, and on the other side of the world.  It’s also exciting that they are both Penn State Alums.  I just have something to look forward to.  Even more Penn State news, Dr. Petrick is set to give an Innovation Workshop at Honeywell on July 23 and 24.  Should be pretty interesting, I will post more about this soon.

On the working front, I have been developing in Flex for the past few days, and I like it.  I think I like it even more than Silverlight actually. I just have to get used to the ActionScript. I have made a few working prototypes and am on my way to start applying some logical features to it, and then hopefully am going to have a live xml feed control it.  But, that won’t be for a day or so at least. And as soon as I finish all that up, it’s on to Google Web Toolkit to finish the last of my three analyses.

Last night, we went to the bus station and got our bus tickets to Mysore!  So, we are really going this weekend, no more “sold out tickets” for us. Now we have a 130km (~80 miles) bus ride to look forward to.  It shouldn’t be too bad, and for the price, I’m not going to argue.  It was only 390/- Rs. (9.15 USD) per ticket, so I am happy.  We could have gotten a car and driver from Honeywell for 6500/- Rs. (~153 USD) for the day, but, we wanted a more authentic (and cheaper) trip.  I am really looking forward to go to see the ancient buildings and temples.  It should be really interesting.  I just don’t like how we need to be at the bus station at 6:15 am!  Oh well, nothing I can do about it.

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