Home Safe and Sound

To bring closure to my 4 weeks in India....

The DB Implementation team took myself, Brian, and Sheila out to ZK's on Tuesday night. That is the restaurant of the famed Indian Cricket Bowler Z Khan. Unfortunately Deepanita and Anku both bailed on the group so Sheila was the lone female representative. I decided I would drink some Indian wine my last night in the country so I inquired about the wines. Now, wine in India is not big like in the US or Europe. Most people (if they drink) stick to beer and liquor. On the menu it only gave me the 3 brand names of the Indian wines and not the actual type of wine. So through help of translators, I tried to find out what sort of wine it was. Nobody was understanding and it finally resulted in the waiter bringing out a sample of all 3 wines. It turns out the first wine I chose they did not have in bottle. The 2nd wine wasn't any good so I settled on the 3rd wine I tried. When the bottle came out, right underneath the brand it said cabernet - shiraz which is exactly what I wanted to know. No worries though as I got wine and the bottle was consumed.

Wednesday was my final day in the office and I spent it putting together a few assignments for the group to work on the next couple of days. Additionally, I brought in my jars of peanutbutter and jelly. I purchased pseudo ritz crackers from the cafeteria and then had my group (db implementation) and DB QA eat peanutbutter and jelly crackers. I told everyone that I have been eating their food for 4 weeks and now they will try mine. I did make them aware that not all americans will eat this but I do. Indians have a very sweet tooth so I was confident they would like it and they did. I had tried several of the Indian sweets and couldn't handle them they were so sweet.

My group also purchased me a little gift. It is an elephant with an elephant inside made our of wood. It now sits on my desk in Philly. It is the first thing that I own that is not only made in india but also purchased in india.

After work on Wednesday Brian, Rizvi, and I went to Yokos, which is a sizzler place. No not the chain of sizzlers in the US but a type of food. Basically everything is cooked together on a sizzling plate and then served to you on the plate. It was good. Shortly after dinner, I began my trek back to beautiful philadephia.

This is probably a good time to mention that on Wednesday, the airports went on strike. Earlier in the day there was an announcement of the winning firms for the privatization of the airports. So the workers who potentially would lose their jobs went on strike. Fortunately for me, it did not affect international flights. We just had to walk to the plane as the union workers that operate the moving walkway to the plane went on strike.

So the actual trip home took about 29 hours.

8:15 left the hotel for the airport. Checked in at 11:30. Plane left at 3:30 am. Flight was 8.5 hours getting me into Frankfurt at 8ish local time. The layover was til 1:30. During the layover, I thoroughly enjoyed a McDonalds cheesburger. Another 8.5 hour flight, customs, baggage claim, 20 minute cab ride and I was in my apartment.

Upon getting in the cab to my apartment, which was during rush hour, I was amazed at how quiet and orderly traffic was. Nothing like the driving in Pune. I fell asleep by 8pm on Thursday and then woke up at 4am. I watched Wedding Crashers dvd and a glorious hour of sportscenter before I decided to go to work. Walking to the office was an0ther great thing. It was while walking that I realized I had done almost no walking in India. A driver took me everywhere. In the US I walk to and from the office everday. Additionally, if I go to the supermarket or anywhere else I usually walk. When I'm in NYC, I walk most places. So it was great to walk again. On one of the weekends in India, I walked around the neighborhood of the hotel. When I told my driver what I did, he got mad at me and told me I should have called him and he would have driven me. He didn't understand that I wanted to walk and chose to walk.

The walk also made me realize how clean and quiet philadelphia is.

Here are a few pics from my classes. I should have all my pics posted to webshots in a few days.