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Published: August 10th 2010
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Restaurant overlooking the Arabian Sea
Great oriental meal with some of the team. Very good food and an even better view of the Arabian Sea. Day 3
It’s 5 a.m. here and I could punch myself for forgetting the Tylenol PM at home. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since Thursday and its Monday here. Oh well off to the gym soon and I’ll try the buffet again for breakfast. The bottled water here that’s complimentary has a strong smell to it so I'll try not to get dehydrated but I'm not touching this. I cannot wait to get a bottle of Evian even if it costs a lot over here I’m going to have to pay for it otherwise I’ll get dehydrated drinking just pineapple juice every morning.
Had a great workout and breakfast was good too. We had made to order pancakes so the morning started off really well. We made it to the office for the first time today. It was great seeing the Datamatics team(Prashant, Swarnima and Deepali) again who came to Omaha a few months back. I also got to meet Suman she's funny and several others I've not met before. The first thing Suman asks me is have I gotten used to the “Mumbai smell” yet. You know the black pepper smell I keep talking about in my other postings. I told her no because it’s all around in the hotel, the cars, everywhere but you get used to it. We share some more good laughs about the long flight and different cultural experiences.
We meet more of their Leadership team and head to the board room for presentations and get to business. I’m most excited after sitting in the conference room this whole time to meet the team who’s working on our BD project. They take us down to meet them and when we walk in the room everyone stands up and greets us by name. Remember like you had to do when a visitor came in your classroom in grade school. This entire team is very respectful and gives us a warm reception. I proceed to begin answering questions and training. This was a great experience they are so eager to learn and have such an optimistic attitude about the process that it’s the ideal training environment to be in. After this we continue touring the facility. The cafeteria is a small space that was full of associates wearing pants and long sleeve shirts. When the cafeteria door opened it was like a sauna that had been cooking for hours. They're all so comfortable sitting in this heat and not sweating. I could never acclimate myself to this temperature and apparently in May its 40 degrees warmer than it is now. It already feels like 110 degrees here so imagine even warmer? I see why everyone over here is so spiritual. I’ve just experienced what the heat of hell must be like it would be enough to make me pray often and be more spiritual myself. We head up for lunch and I must say it looked scary but tasted great. I ate everything and really enjoyed it and yes I had more than the saffron rice.
After work we do some shopping at one of the local stores. I bought some very cool Obama t-shirts and other things. Rohit left for the hotel and Deepali, Swarnima, and I venture out to experience Mumbai. We end up at a temple built to recount the life of one of their God's named Hare Krishna. We take off our shoes and walk around. This place is like nothing I’ve ever seen before I'm told they have 36,000 God’s they worship and it’s just amazing to see this architecture. I start to take pictures but security comes over and tells me they don’t allow pictures. I at least got one good one to upload to my Facebook album. I refuse to sit in an India prison so you know I put the camera away real fast. This temple is outside and it starts to rain again. I forgot to mention earlier it's the Monsoon season here so it rains every single day. Needless to say wearing dress slacks and my socks became painfully obvious and the locals all walking barefoot quickly smiled and pointed at me. Oh well i'm taking this all in stride and remaining positive about it because when will I ever get to do this again?
Next stop is off to Juhu Beach. The beach is right on the Arabian Sea and you have to google it it’s beautiful. It’s in a nicer part of the city near where a lot of the Bollywood movie stars live. I’m really glad to be experiencing something that’s not reminding me of the poverty on the other end of town. If all there was to experience were the slums, this could turn out to be a depressing experience. Deepali is more laid back and has a similar disposition to me. I think Swarnima is going to push me outside of my comfort zone like Rohit's been doing which I look forward to because if left up to me I'd probably stay in the hotel after working all day. At the beach Swarnima "the adventerous one" tries to get me to eat some roasted corn the locals are sampling but I politely decline and say I’m not a fan of corn. Now I think they believed me but obviously I’m from the Cornhusker state and love corn. I have to refuse because anything cooked locally outside of a restaurant could really make my insides do the funky chicken later and I’m trying to come home without being sick.
We head to a beachfront restaurant for dinner called Vue. It’s nice to see the sea and beach even though the sand is polluted with trash from the locals. Imagine going to a beach in California and seeing pop bottles and paper on the beach. It’s really sad actually that some people become comfortable littering this beautiful area considering it’s such a popular location for locals and tourists. The meal was oriental style so of course I had the fried rice with chicken and green peas. I prayed it tasted something like PF Changs or really close and thank God it did! It’s around 6 p.m. local time and I’m exhausted since I only had 4 hours of rest so we decide to head back into the city so I can get to my hotel.
What a big mistake leaving when we did because we hit rush hour traffic and they have roads shared by everything but cars it seems like. It took nearly 2 hours to get home because the traffic was so bad. I could only compare this to any major U.S. city minus a massive freeway system and leaving the burbs to commute into the city. It would take an eternity to get home like that everyday but over here it’s commonplace. The locals don’t eat dinner most times until after 9 p.m. as a family because it takes so long to commute home. I couldn’t imagine 30 minutes let alone a 2 hour commute.
I make it back safely to the hotel begin to work on checking in with email's and working on some projects for next day on the laptop and head in for bed. Alright well I’m going to catch some shut eye goodnight.
As always check out my Facebook page for all the photos. I'm using FB for now to upload the pics until I get home.
LMJ
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