Day Two: Tours

Today we met with Ajay to tour Virgo's office in Pune (this is where Robert and I will be working).  The drive reinforced all Indian driving stereotypes I mentioned in the earlier post.  Also, we saw our first cow:

They really do just go wherever they like

Note the double solid line, and which side(s) of it the traffic going our direction is on 

Yes, this is a sidewalk, and that is a motorcycle

We also passed the Infosys building, an odd bit of famous architecture:

Once there, we went to the machine shop floor to look around, but not without donning the proper safety equipment first.

Jose and Robert show us how it's done

The shop floor was huge and full of activity:

Lathe

The ball from a quarter-turn ball valve, about the size of a beach ball

Raw castings of valve parts - inside they will be machined and perfected

The finished product, ready for painting and shipping

This machine is the size of a small apartment and can do in a day what would normally take a week 

Coolant is sprayed on the part and the tool while the cut is made

The machine carries a "swiss-army knife" of tools - it can automatically switch out which one it is using

huge calipers

The entire operation is divided into two sections by a ten-foot wall.  One side deals with international products, the other domestic.  For tax reasons, these two operations must be kept completely separate.  There is only one door that goes through this wall, and a government inspector drops by occasionally to ensure that it remains locked.

After our tour of Virgo, we went to Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital, where Ray and Jose will be working.  The hospital was built by the family of Deenanath Mangeshkar, a renowned Indian musician, and supplies 8 stories of medical care (450 beds) to the people of Pune for little or no cost to the patient.  We toured the facility and had lunch in the canteen, where we had masala dosa, a delicious dish consisting of a rice tortilla wrapped around something made of spiced potatoes (sorry I can't be more specific, I don't really know what anything is here).  So far, this has been the tastiest Indian food I've ever had.

After touring the hospital, we headed back to the guest house to change and go to the gym.  Abs gym is located on the 9th floor of an office building downtown, with an excellent view of Pune.  Some of the equipment is on an outdoor terrace.  We worked out for an hour and signed up for a two-month membership; we plan to work out here six days a week, after work.

While we were at the gym, it began pouring rain, a pre-monsoon storm.  There is very little drainage infrastructure in the streets, and we saw a bit of flooding on the way to the guest house.

If this is the pre-monsoon storm, what is the monsoon like?