Posts tagged “goa”

It’s been another week and I’ve passed the last two exams. 70-516, accessing data with .NET 4 and 70-519, desgining and developing web applications using .NET 4. So I’m an MCPD now. Yay!

We’ve noticed it raining a bit more every day, but on Friday night it was non-stop downpour. It’s Sunday now and the rain is just getting silly.

After passing the last exam on Friday we decided to celebrate by heading north to Calangute where there are a lot more bars and clubs. Gareth, Marc and Sanjay came along for a few drinks. Thomas got a hookah with apple flavoured tobacco which was strange but nice at the same time. It was only Thomas and me who were up for staying out, so when the other guys got a taxi home, we headed across the road to a club called Tito’s.

It was 1500rs (£21) to get in, with free drinks all night, and they let us both in for the price of one. The inside of the club was actually quite small but pretty busy. As with every other bar we go to, the guys out number the girls about twenty to one. We stayed until about 3am then got a taxi back to the apartments.

I really wanted to go see an elephant but after lunch on Saturday I had to stay within close proximity of the toilet for the rest of the day. :(

My three weeks in Goa has been fun. Our apartment was clean and the food cooked for us has been excellent. With all the studying we didn’t get time to do very much else, but what we have seen has been fun. I think if I was going to come back it would need to be in the dry season, although I don’t think I could handle the temperatures they get over here.

I am looking forward to going home though. I’d do anything for a bacon double cheese burger just now. The food options here are quite limited. I seen a book today that summed it up quite well, “500 recipes for chicken”.

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.

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.

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 18th 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.

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.