Helen Stephenson's India Trip - June-July, 2006 - My third day at work

Wednesday June 21^st

After oversleeping the day before, the morning started off with the alarm clock and a hotel wake-up call, with another 10 minutes later if needed. Fortunately I had got moving when the wake-up call came, so I was able to cancel the backup call. I didn’t make it down for breakfast but grabbed a health bar out of the private bar in my room. I was outside at about the right time for my 9am rendezvous with my driver.

The car had rear seatbelts, so I thought I ought to wear a seatbelt, but found it quite difficult to get buckled. In fact, I got quite hot and bothered before I got it connected, which may have contributed to arriving in the office feeling very hot.

I took a few minutes to upload my night pictures of the hotel pool to Yahoo Photos when I got into the office and I also read my emails. I had several from the London office which had arrived overnight. Then it was time to unplug the laptop and take it into the cabin for my morning training session. Neha and Chandan were the only attendees on this occasion, and we finished exploring the mysteries of Thenon and moved on to coding standards. Very dry stuff.

My training session finished at 1pm, when everyone went downstairs for lunch. Today the canteen menu included a very nice bean dish. I was thinking that I hadn’t seen many beans since arriving in India, so it was funny to see beans turn up. Today’s drink was green mango juice. It was quite drinkable, but a different taste from ripe mango juice. I had a little walk around the basement car park with Ashima and Swagata after lunch. It gave us somewhere to walk without going out into the heat.

During the afternoon, I was hoping to get ahead of Neha and Chandan ready for our session the next morning, but got some emails from London giving me other work to do.

It was late when I got back to the hotel and I decided to go down and eat straight away. Saffron, the Indian restaurant where I have been eating, was practically deserted just before 8pm and the musicians arrived and started tuning up after I arrived. Apparently Indians (and people visiting India) tend to keep late hours for eating. I again went against the advice not to eat fish and had shrimp for my dinner. It was very nice, and I had just room for a platter of mixed fresh fruits afterwards, although I didn’t manage to finish all that was on the platter.

I've found a few more photos taken around the hotel to show you now, starting with this telephone table in the rear corridor of the hotel.

Here it is again from a bit closer.

The next picture was also taken from the rear of the hotel. I did try a picture from upstairs, but didn't get a good result, so this one's from downstairs, looking out through the arch and down the rear steps towards the swimming pool.

Finally, I've photographed the steps leading up from the swimming pool towards the front of the hotel, both by night and by day.