Another Friday Night in TWI Bangalore

Another Friday Night in TWI Bangalore

What did you expect? A bunch of people hunched over their laptops furiously working for their project?

Not really!

It was a fun night at the ex-pat party at the Taj. The client and I joined Hakan and Party boy (Deven). We came back to the office around midnight.

The usual weekend crowd was around – Sidu, Irfan, Shishir, Thanga, Amey and Palani.

I decided to hang around the office until my roommate lands in Bangalore at 1AM.

The Crazy rockers

Yeh tho Pathshaala hein

Pathshaala: Initially it was a slow start with Irfan playing on his electric guitar. Joined Sidu and Shishir as the spectators. Now shishir runs around and finds a guitar (He calls it acoustic..but whatever). Irfans tries to give some tips about guitar-ing, soon the music from U-tube goes more violent and loud.

Things appear to go out of hand. (Oh No)

Common room: The “rocker” geeks move to the common room, trying to outdo each other in finding the most violent rock music. Its horrible.

The Crazy Thanga

Thanga is a man on mission. The mission – Install all required software on his Mac and only then go home! He’s battling it out and (looks like his sleep won over)

The SCARY!

Things were looking wild and crazy. But that was not the end. Something really scary happened. Palani started laughing! TWI Bangalore may be the only workplace in the world where you will hear a laugh as scary as Palani’s.

It is very hard to describe the sound.

But I can say this – The entire office reverberates with the sound.

In the virtual world

Meanwhile I find Sripad online from UK. All’s fine with the UAT at Brighton. We start chatting about the situation in office.

Its 3:30 AM and the guys start to disperse. Palani and Thanga are nowhere to be seen, they must be sleeping in one of the rooms. Sidu and Irfan take off. Shishir complains he’s hungry. We move to the café ‘Java’ in DD, have a nice English breakfast and then head home.

The day ends at 5AM and the lights go off in my room. It was fun.

Bonked my Car

Dad happened to be in Bangalore for two days and was leaving on last Saturday. Since the airport was very close to the office, I wanted him to have lunch with me at the office before dropping him at the Airport.

A recruiting event was happening in the office and lot of TWers showed up. This was an opportunity to introduce Dad to some people in the office - my team mates, recruiting folks, TWs management folks.

We had lunch and it was time for Dad to catch the flight. So I dropped him at the airport and was coming back to office (in a hurry). I almost reached the office and that when it happens....

Screeeeeetch......BANG!, Crack!.

Accident happens, the "Crack!" was the crack in the windshield caused after my head hit the windshield. Damn! Should have worn the seatbelt. But don't worry I was not hurt. I guess this is what is meant by being "Hard-Headed"

Short Version...
The Car in front suddenly stops trying not to hit an Auto. I had to apply breaks, but there wasn't enough time and so..BONK!

Being a TWer had to be a geek sometime and so I just captured the scene through the wikimapi.



Here is a mail sent to my close friends...Mail link

Work at gun point

One day I found a gun in the office. Don't worry its a harmless balloon gun and it does not work.

Other random pics taken in office

(That's a gun)

Office Images

The last time my bro was in the US, he came with an NFL football. I picked it up from my home in Hyderabad and brought it to Bangalore to show it off in the office.

So the ball was on my laptop and an Idea (creative?) came up. Took out my mobile , captured an image and copied it to the laptop through the infrared port

I call it the "mirror effect".

The next picture is quite interesting. The image shows Sidey explaining something. Can you guess what?


He was using matchsticks to create one of the maps in the game Halo (xbox) over a smoke. The best time to get information from this guy including work related topics is to catch him in the smoking zone.

Revival: First Day in ThoughtWorks

Now I've been in ThoughtWorks for the last 6 months and lovin' every moment of it. As I feared, I stopped making posts after joining TWs. It was very hectic with work and lot of other activities. The time just flew by.

Now this is my attempt at reviving my blogging. Started off by purchasing my own domain www.keshavnarla.com and redirected my blog to it. I plan to add more content into my website including a professional blog (whatever that means).

So lets start off with a post that has been lying around in my notepad for the last 6 months. I wrote that on my first day at TWs. It is incomplete, but I would rather see it here.

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July 4th, Wednesday, American Independence day

It's sort of an Independence day for me. Independence from boredom, office politics, from insecure people, rules, policies, restaurant lunches and more. This day I joined one of the most coolest companies in Bangalore, ThoughtWorks .

Two months of eager anticipation and expectations has come to this point. so there I was 9:30 am sharp at our Bangalore office all dressed up. Very soon someone helped me get inside and that marked the beginning. I'll skip the basics and get right to the excitement.

Great things on first day
1. Laptop & Mobile
2. Free Food
3. The Beach
4. Policies - Travel, new office keep it small, leaves
5. Environment - toys, guns, games, movies, bats, balls, junk etc
6. Trust - CEO's address, sick leaves
7. Gaming


Crap things
1. Lotus Notes.(I think i can change that...)
2. Lack of parking. (@#$%)
3. NO BEER

The first surprise was the DELL Lattitude laptop, I browsed online about TW giving Laptops (Notebook), but I was not sure if QAs were given and I was never given a laptop earlier. Now you may be wondering whats all this fuss about a stupid laptop, but the laptop is a symbol of good things among the 1/2 million IT work force in India. In most of the companies, it's the leads, managers, support folks who are issued a laptop. So a laptop hanging on the shoulder is message of importance for others, although this is fast changing. NOW having a blackberry is like instant stardom, only the Heads, VPs and other heads of state (company) were issued!

So the IS guy walked in and was talking about laptops, softwares etc and then he said the laptop here is yours. WOW! Now i get a laptop, amazing, wonderful, Heart race increasing and I couldn't wait to brag about it to my friends at the old company. All this time I had this expression of "I mean business" , i didn't want to look like the village idiot who's never touched a laptop.

Lunch Time
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This is the interesting part for most of the people. FREE FOOD. Lunch is provided free and also includes meat, and it tastes good too. Apart from this you have snacks, juices, bread, noodles, milk, cereals, honey etc at all times (I actually have a packet of orange juice right now). So whats missing? Beer!. All the other TW offices across the world have beer stocked, unfortunately Indian gov does not allow liquor in office premises. BUMMER!

So then I was sitting in the dining room and eating, there was this information board and one topic was "What we do well", and there were many cards about great environment, interviewing, policies, culture etc etc. I was wondering why there was


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The text stops there, I don't remember why it stops there. But thats all that is in my notepad.

Trying to continue where it ended...

I was wondering why there was no card mentioning Free Food, Laptop and Mobile. So up goes my card among the "Things we do well"