Rohan | Bangalore | Week 3

This week was also an equally frustrating experience at work. The permission for me to use my laptop at the office has still not gone through – as one person approves it, there’s another who still says no. To ensure I still get my work done, I”ve been going to the office for a couple hours every day just to ask questions, and coming back to the hotel very early and continuing to work in my room. Since we’re already at the halfway point of my internship, and we’re still having logistical issues, my boss, Venkat, suggested that I don’t come into the office for the next 2 weeks and completely just work from the hotel, so I wouldn’t be wasting my time traveling and sitting there for a couple hours before returning.

Since I won’t be going anyway, I thought I’d take this as a nice opportunity to spend time with family. I’m heading to Hyderabad (catching an overnight bus in a couple hours actually) and will be staying with my cousins for the next 2 weeks. Venkat was okay with this since I told him I’d keep in touch and give him updates on my work as it moves along. I have close to 25 immediate family members who live in Hyderabad, so I’m very excited to be going there. And especially for the delicious home cooked meals. And of course there’s a pani puri stand right by my house (best I’ve ever had), which I’ve frequented on a daily basis the last 4 times I’ve visited.

I also took the easy week at work to go see the sunrise at Nandi Hills on Wednesday morning with some friends who are interning here in Bangalore as well – the same ones that I got dinner with a week ago. Tuesday night, I went to their place and stayed over and chilled. Since it was a 2 hour drive from Bangalore, we promptly left at 3:30 am to make sure we’d get there on time. The drive up the hill was treacherous – it was dark, rainy, steep, and completely foggy (barely had 10 feet visibility). Just going 9 km took us almost 45 minutes. Once we got to the top (at about 4300 feet), the sun began to rise but due to the fog we really couldn’t see it. Just saw the fog light up all around us – which was still a really cool effect, but we were a little disappointed.

On the way back down, thanks to the fog, we passed the view in the picture below, which was simply breathtaking. It was really interesting how the two circles of fog were just circling around that one peak. It took me almost 30 minutes to capture this picture. With fast moving fog, we would have just a second or two of visibility and then it would disappear again. We drove back down, got some breakfast, and I finally made it back to my room by 12:30. I had gotten permission from my boss to work at home that day, but after not sleeping for the last 28 hours, I crashed immediately. 

Rohan Dasika | Bangalore | Week 1 + 2

Hey everyone! It’s been two weeks in Bangalore so far, and although things got off to a rough start, things are looking good right now. My boss and the rest of my team are all incredibly smart, talented, and inclusive people. The first few days, Madhura (one of the team members) took me to the assembly plant and explained the whole process from start to finish, answering any questions I had along the way. Apparently, Mahindra Reva doesn’t actually do any manufacturing…all the parts come pre-made to size and workers assemble them in the plant all day long. The second day, Madhura and a couple others were debugging an issue in one of the newer model cars Mahindra is coming out with and took me along as well. It was incredibly fascinating…we hoisted the car onto a platform and connected a laptop to the TCU (Traction Control Unit), which is essentially part of the car’s control system. From there, we were controlling parameters like wheel speed, acceleration, braking, etc all from computer software and the car responded accordingly. It was really cool to actually see the system in action, as opposed to just models and pictures. For the next few days, I proceeded to read some of the engineering books they had there to brush up on concepts and go through some manuals to get a better idea of what the TCU is. Since I wasn’t allowed to bring in my laptop and wasn’t provided with one yet, I used to come back to the hotel early and took a couple days off as well to learn Simulink and Stateflow, some of the Matlab features that my boss said my work would be based on.

prototype model

charging station

As I got into the second week, I finally got a computer….but it was one of the slowest things I’ve used in my life, but I used it for a few days, and my boss, Venkat, was able to get permission for me to bring in my laptop. He even assigned me my project, which was to build a scanning algorithm using Stateflow that would take in power loss data across the battery, motor, controls, etc and find the optimal operating point. So, hopefully from next week onwards I should have no problem getting things done.

As far as travel goes, it’s been a little difficult getting in and out of where I’m staying, just given how far out Bangalore’s city limits we are. Electronic City is a place where people go to work and they return back to the city to stay. Given that I’m on the outskirts of Electronic City, finding transportation to get back is usually a hassle. Yongsoo and I went out on the first weekend to Visvesvaraya Technological Museum, which was a thorough exhibition of all the recent advances in science and engineering. From there, we checked out MG Road (Mahatma Gandhi Road) which was one of the large shopping markets in the city. We also visited Oliver for a couple hours the next day and he gave us one of his famous tours. One of my friends back home in Michigan has a couple friends who are also interning here, so I met up with them for dinner one night. They were both Computer Science students from Harvard who were interning at a HealthTech startup here, seemed they were doing a lot of cool work. They’ll be here for the next month with me, so I’m definitely planning on hanging out with them more as time goes by.

I’m really enjoying all the food here! Street food and chai have been some of my favorites, and with a small kitchen in the hotel room, I’ve finally learned how to cook with lots of help from my mom over the phone hahaha

Just trying to cope with my chai addiction

made biriyani for the first time

Bangalore is an awesome city, exploding with culture and is a great representative of the new wave of Indian modernism; I just wish I was closer to the city to experience it better. But, I’m trying to go as much as possible, and I know that I definitely want to come live here for a couple years down the line…so I’m not too worried 😛

Mom’s old office

Rohan Dasika | Nanjing, China | Pre-Arrival

Hi everyone!

Currently, I am studying abroad in Nanjing, China on a 10 week intensive Mandarin study program. I should be arriving in Bangalore next Sunday (7/19/15) and am ecstatic to being interning at Mahindra Reva Electronic Vehicles. On a side note, it’s kind of funny to think about the close proximity of these two countries, and the disproportionate travel time – it’s taking me almost 22 hours to go from Nanjing to Bangalore just due to bad connectivity of flights that I picked.

Traveling to India is not something new to me – with most of my family still living in Hyderabad, India, I make frequent trips every few years to visit and stay with them. Additionally, I used to live there (traveling between Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bangalore) until I moved to the US in 2002.

I’m honestly very excited to be working in Bangalore. In India, it’s definitely one of my favorite cities to visit, boasting great culture, delicious food, and some of the kindest people in the country. The location in Bangalore I’ll be working in is very close to my old house, so I’m hoping to take a couple trips down memory lane once I’m there. In terms of food, Karnataka (the state Bangalore is in) has some of the most authentic South Indian food you could find and is renowned for its especially tasty coconut milk. I’m just waiting to get my hands on some delicious street food!

In terms of the work culture, Bangalore is known as India’s Silicon Valley, home to many technology and information companies that put the city on the world map. I’ve always dreamed of working in such a lively environment, and with Mahindra’s headquarters right in the middle of Electronic City (the area that all these companies are located in), I’m sure to be totally exposed to many experiences and opportunities.

Reva was a small startup that was started by a Michigan grad years ago; they specialize in developing and automating hybrid cars for personal use and are now looking into expanding into the public use sector as well. Mahindra (one of the largest automotive manufacturers in the world) acquired Reva relatively recently and are jointly working on their hybrid car mission. I’ll be working in the New Technology Department focusing on how to implement solar charging systems into the car as well as building solar charging stations in the city. Although most of my work will be coding and simulation based (Matlab and Python), I hope I’m able to get my hands dirty and gain some field experience as well.

As far as traveling goes, my cousin studies in a college about a 7 hours bus ride away and we both definitely want to travel to the Coorg tea and coffee plantations and check out the beautiful scenery. I have a friend interning in Mumbai right now and never having been there before, I want to visit him as well. My hometown, Hyderabad, is also a nights train ride away, and I definitely will be making a few trips there to visit family.

Since I’m not in India yet, here’s a picture of me on the Great Wall hahaha