Helen Stephenson's India Trip - June-July, 2006 - My second week at work

Monday June 26^th

Another day at the office. The day started off with some desk reassignments. Gagan must have had it planned, as my training session for Monday was booked to start at 11:00am rather than 10:00am. I was quite impressed, as everybody unplugged their desktops, picked them up and moved them to their new desk and plugged everything back in again without needing a Technical Services person anywhere in sight.

Tuesday June 27^th

I didn’t draw my curtains before leaving my hotel room and got quite a surprise when I reached the end of the corridor and turned towards the lobby and found that they were squeegeeing water off the walkways. It had rained overnight, and heavily, too, judging by the amount of water lying around. It wasn’t raining by that time and didn’t rain again during the day.

I found that I got caught up in work on my London project during Tuesday afternoon and wasn’t able to devote as much time to Neha and Chandan as I would have liked.

I returned to my hotel room that evening and holed up watching Wimbledon on Star Sports. They have one of the Amritraj brothers as their main host, and he commentated on some of the matches. I suspect that some of their coverage is shared with EuroSport, as I recognized some of the other commentators as those who are to be heard in the UK on EuroSport.

Wednesday June 28^th

I got a directive from London not to do work on my projects there. I sent the main work requester an email saying that I wouldn’t be available until July 10th, and enclosed links to documentation which should enable other people to carry out the tasks that I’ve been doing.

Then I went into my first session of the day with Neha and Chandan and we spent three hours talking about maintaining database files and delivering files ready populated. We broke for lunch, but booked the same cabin for the afternoon, so I left the laptop in there. I’ve been enjoying the lunches served in the staff restaurant. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned them before, but they have a self-serve system where you pick up a metal tray with different sized indents in it for putting the various bits of food in. There is usually rice and three vegetarian options. I avoid anything labeled “paneer”, which means cheese, but eat just about everything else. There are also chapattis and poppadums to accompany the food, and on this occasion there were also bread rolls. I hadn’t had any non-Indian bread for days and enjoyed the roll very much. I also like the mouth freshener served at the exit. I think it may be aniseed. Sometimes it’s coated and sometimes there’s a separate bowl of sugar crystals to have with it. I always stop for some.

We returned to the cabin after lunch and did a bit more work on database files before turning our attention to stored procedures, about which Neha and Chandan probably now know as much as just about anyone in London.

I saw three cows sitting on the side of the road in the spot where the bulls seems to live. Some of those cows might have been bulls, as they were quite large, but they were sitting down and I couldn’t see their equipment, so I couldn’t say for sure. I saw a fourth cow walking along the middle of the road among the traffic. I think that one really was a cow. It’s probably just as well that the speed limit seems to be 40km considering that you can encounter a cow in the middle of the road!

I decided to try the other restaurant this evening. It turned out to be their Italian night and they had an Italian buffet. I don’t think I really got value for my money, as it was more expensive than many of the Indian meals I’ve had and I didn’t eat any more. I had quite a large salad to start, and then had a pizza, made without cheese. They have a pizza oven at the front of the restaurant and I got quite a good view of the chefs cooking pizzas.

There’s Wimbledon on Star Sports again, and in some ways I regret not getting room service, although I think they were showing Roddick while I was in the restaurant. Then they switched to the Federer-Henman match, which turned out to be not as good a match as people were hoping for.

The commercials on the TV are interesting. Sania Mirza pops up advertising Sprite lemonade. There seem to be two separate Sprite adverts, and both feature her. I am also entertained by the perfume deo-spray adverts. The product is aimed at men! It seems that here the men have to try hard to attract the notice of the women rather than it being the women who have to try and look good to attract the men, which seems to be how western advertising portrays the sexes.

Thursday June 29^th

This was another routine day at the office.