Where in the world is Alexander?

Short answer; Bangalore, India.

Longer answer; my new employer which I started with a couple of months back is an Indian company with strong ties to back-end systems and support, hardware manufacture and design, and software services. I'll tell more as things progress, and I'll probably talk a lot more about how they plan to use Topic Maps to solve some really crazy and hard problems. But before I do those kind of detailed stuff, I wanted to just quickly show you this picture which pretty much summarises my first impression of this crazy, lively, contrasting, weird, interesting place, and if you can't read the sign, it says "Follow traffic rules." I realise that in India, if you ask kindly, they just might do what you ask, but riding as a passenger in a car through this traffic was, err, an experience I won't forget anytime soon. However, it's interesting that in a language such as my own (English, or Norwegian, or Swedish, or Danish) we base our expression mostly on words alone, while in India the reason traffic works is that they've got such a strong foothold in semiotics that makes it work. A honk here, two honks there as we pass a car, a blink of our beam lights racing past a "moto" (small scooter that's kinda rebuilt as a tiny car) ... I still have much to learn about this language. The cool thing is that it's global; even I can do it. Except I would never drive here. Never. Ever.

Anyway, I'm in India to train staff and meet and plan with them in all things black magic and drink their excellent Indian tea and eat their amazing food, and generally get a feel for the country, the culture, and most importantly, the people I'm working with, which so far has turned out to be a fantastic bunch. I'm here for another week or so, and I'll suss out the details and let you know all about it in due time. Until then, there's a chapati drenched in yummy chutney with my name on it. India is, truly, an amazing place.

P.S. Hey Barta, where can I get my sweaty hands on your TM as a filesystem? Would love a play with it right about now. Oh, and that near NLP query stuff you mentioned that one time in the back-alley while drinking gin and discussing the meaning of wife. Or life. Or whatever.