Andrew Aitken

One Week To Go

Posted in Goa MCPD Course.

Last week went well. We went over the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) books and passed the 70-513 exam with 950/1000. To be honest the course was too fast and I think I'll be keeping the books for future reference. WCF is vast. There is so much in there and to cover it all in three days was just not enough to really get to grips with it.

I can't beleive it's been two weeks already. The time has really flown past. So far we have completed eight books, two exams and we are halfway through the two data access in .Net 4 books. Once we finish that we will have another exam, then we will sit the MCPD exam. I'm not sure if we get any books for the last one, as it is more of a summary of all the other modules we have studied so far.

So far the data modules have been quite straight forward and tomorrow we start a module about using entity framework in an n-tier environment which I'm quite interested in.

Not a lot else has been happening. We went out for a drink on Friday after passing the WCF exam. We studied a lot this week and haven't gotten out much so not a lot to report.

Tags: MCPD , Goa , India , 70-513

Down The Road

Posted in Goa MCPD Course.

Well today went as well as could be expected. Gareth and I felt we were as prepared as we would ever be to take the exam (70-515) and decided to take it in the afternoon. We are a day ahead on the course and ideally would have sat the exam on Tuesday, but for some reason the test centre was closed on Tuesday so we decided to bite the bullet and go for it today.

What a relief. The exam questions came thick and fast but I felt very much on top of it. In fact, when I found out I had gotten 880 out of 1000 I was slightly disappointed. I honestly don’t know what questions I got wrong. Never the less, 880 is a pass and that’s all that really matters.

We headed back to the apartments early as we can start WCF tomorrow and we are still one day ahead of schedule. We picked up Marc and Ramu from the other apartments and headed out for the afternoon. We had a few (understatement) drinks in Hotel Fidalgo (I’m sure its Fandango) then headed back for dinner.

We picked up the almost everyone else after dinner and headed to the local hotel Vivanta for a drink. It was very fancy and very quiet but twice the price of hotel Fandango, still less than £2 for a beer though. After that we headed to the Marriott. It was a bit of a trek but we made it, hot and thirsty. The Marriott is a five star hotel and prices for beer are about the same as the UK, but again it was very quiet.

At this point a Gareth and Thomas threw in the towel and headed back to the apartments, but the rest of us soldiered on and headed to a bar we had heard of called Down the Road.

For some reason they don’t have regular music here, instead they have people singing popular songs. In Down the Road it was a man and his wife taking turns. They were very good and had some songs by the Killers and Jason Mraz to name a few. This place was much better. For a Monday night it was pretty busy and we agreed that it is where we should go on Saturday night.

Tomorrow we try to tame the WCF beast. I’m sure I will come out of this one with a few scars but passing this first exam has helped a lot and we are going to give it all we’ve got.

I’m a bit tipsy, gonna sleep now.

Tags: MCPD , Goa , 70-515 , down the road

Hello Bedsheets

Posted in Goa MCPD Course.

Well we’ve kicked it into high gear now. We are in class from 9-5, study at the apartment until 7:30, go for dinner, then go back and study until about 9 or 10. I keep getting really tired in class which is annoying because I’m sure I’m getting enough sleep. Divakar had coffee today and it smelled so good, I’m not sure if I trust the coffee machine though.

Tonight I went through 95 test questions for the 70-515 exam. Took around 3 hours in total and I’ve got a list of stuff I want to look into before the exam. Good news is I got enough right that it would have been a pass (821/1000). That’s a bit of a confidence booster because we have both felt totally overwhelmed the last few days.

I’m still a little worried about only having 2 days to study for the WCF exam. But we are hoping the WCF exam will be a lot more focused and easier to study for than the web development exam which covers such a vast amount.

Other Happenings

We took a walk down 18^th June Street the other day. There are lots of shops selling car batteries. We found the Bombay bazaar which seems to sell some nice things but the staff are constantly trying to show you things. Outside isn’t much better, I got followed down the street by a woman trying to sell me cashmere pashminas. I must have told her “no” about ten times. They are pretty cheap but I don’t know anyone who would want one. We got caught in the rain on the way back, it started off light but in about 5 minutes it was a torrential downpour. I did manage to run from Koenig back to the apartment without any anterior tibialis issues. It's been a while since I've been able to run that far.

Today on the way back to apartment there were two guys selling bed sheets on the street. As we passed he just looked at Gareth and said, “hello bedsheets,” in a husky voice. We didn't know what to say to that.

I updated my photos on Picasa yesterday, I don’t expect there will be much more for me to post over the next two weeks.

Sorry if this post seems a bit broken, I think my brain has already gone to bed.

Tags: MCPD , Goa , 70-515

Non Stop Tooting

Posted in Goa MCPD Course.

My stomach is fine, thank you.  Gareth and I went for a walk to find the supermarket after class. It's up to about 85% humidity today, according to MSN weather it's 30 degrees but feels like 39!

While trying to cross the main road a bus stopped to pick us up, so we sheepishly walked away. After about five minutes a gap opened up and we managed to sprint across the road with only a few mopeds having to toot and swerve. The locals look at us very strangely. I thought they would be used to seeing tourists around here but apparently not.  A lot of them just stare at Gareth, which is a bit rude.

The traffic here is insane. There's no other way to describe it. Walking to the mall the sound of horns is pretty much non stop, they peep when they over take, when they approach pedestrians, when they pull out and pretty much whenever they feel like it. At least they drive on the left. Most of the time.

We found the shopping mall and a KFC. It's quite a walk, about as far as I was willing to go in this heat and humidity. I've noticed there are a lot of security guards around some buildings, our apartment has one at the gate and there is one in the reception area at Koenig. The mall was a different world, it had 3 or 4 security guards at the main entrance. To get inside we had to go through a metal detector and get scanned by a guard. There were several security guards inside and a man was standing at the top of every escalator. The shops were all very trendy looking and were priced to match.  I bought some BBQ Pringles and a bunch of mini bananas.

For lunch today I ordered chicken korma. I thought this would be a safer choice after the bag of grey slime I got yesterday. I have no idea how they do it but the chicken korma was even more grey than the chow mein and looked more like a tub of gruel. Fortunately it only tasted half as bad as it looked.

Tags: MCPD , Goa , India

Goa Baby!

Posted in Goa MCPD Course.

Getting here was fairly uneventful. The wait in Heathrow was made easier by a long lunch and couple of pints of Staropramen. The plane to was a 747 and for some reason was about 28 degrees inside. Thankfully the aircon kicked in once we were in the air and it cooled down to a more manageable heat. We had two seats at the very back of the plane so we didn’t have to sit next to anyone else. In the nine hour flight I think I managed two, maybe two and a half hours sleep. Leaving the plane at Mumbai I thought I had walked through some sort of exhaust vent for the plane. I soon realised it was just the air. The temperature is around 30 degrees and humidity is a sticky 75%. When we got on the Goa flight, there was vapour pouring out from around the overhead luggage racks. I guess it was the dry air coming out of the air conditioning reacting with the humid air coming in through the door.

There was also a “Refusal Room” in Goa airport. See my other photos here 2011-06 Goa

The Apartment

The apartment is pretty much what I expected. We have a room each and Gareth’s room has an en-suite, so we have a bathroom each. The bedrooms have air conditioning which is pretty much essential for me as the heat doesn’t go anywhere at night. We get our breakfast and dinner served in another apartment. It’s in the same building but on a different block so we need to go down to the garage and back up a different elevator. The elevators have a sliding metal grate and can’t work when it’s opened, so they play a doorbell type of music to remind you to close it. Ours play “Home, sweet home” and one of the others plays “My heart will go on”.

Day 1 of the course

We went for breakfast in the other apartment. Fried egg, hash brown and toast. It was quite good and a pretty normal thing to have for breakfast after yesterdays chicken fajita. When we got to the classroom we got started fairly quickly. It’s only Gareth and me in the class. Our teacher had planned to do 8 modules today but as we are starting with quite basic stuff we got through them really quickly and managed to get 10 finished. Hopefully getting the extra work done today will mean we can have a bit more time on anything we struggle with later.

Lunch

I ordered chow mein for lunch today because it was the only thing on the menu that looked remotely recognisable. It came in a foil wrapped bag which took 10 minutes to open, only to be greeted by a really slimey, grey, onion filled sauce (I’m not a big fan of onions). I tipped it onto the plate and found a massive pile of noodles at the bottom of the bag. The noodles were good.

It’s still 30 degrees and it’s still incredibly humid.

Tags: MCPD , Goa , India