I might as well become a vampire...

To all of you who think that we are here in India just having a lot of fun, you are clearly mistaken. During the week we don't get much time. I am not sure about the other guys, but I wake up for work around 12:00 PM. Go to the gym for an hour, then get ready and eat lunch. By the time I am done with that, we have to head to work. We work from 4:30 PM to 1:30 AM the next day. By the time we get back to the hotel it is 2:00 AM. At this time nothing is open so the only option we have for food is the late night menu, which I think the four of us will agree on, sucks. By this time it is 3:00 AM and there is not much else to do, and since I don't like going to bed right after eating, I hit the gym for an hour. Then I take a shower and get into bed by 5 AM so I can get 7 hours of sleep.

So whoever thinks all we do is have fun, we don't. These odd hours don't leave much room for us to have fun on weekdays.

Hopefully I will be feeling better by tomorrow. I have not been feeling well the last few days, but someone at work gave me some medicine to try so hopefully it will work.

Other then the busy schedule, work is going well. I am not sure how much detail I can actually divulge about work so that is all I will say.

Culture shock...

Before I came here I knew the cultural differences would be vast, but I did not realize how vast. Today at work I was talking to the guys and we talked about me and some of my personality traits that don't jive with the Indian life style. I didn't do anything to make any of them upset or mad (at least I do not think I did), but they were telling me how some of the stuff I did they were not accustomed too.

I am going to try harder to tone it down. I may have not upset anyone yet, but with my luck it is bound to happen.

Everything has been going really well here. The team has been learning very well and they are very eager to learn some more. It is like they are milking me for as much information they can possibly get. By the time I leave here in three months my brain will be dry from all the squeezing they are doing. :-)

We have not gotten sick any more which is good. Mo and I have decided to be a little more ballsy with the food we eat because we figure our stomachs are now used to the food so we should be okay. Osama and Rodel do not feel the same way. I have been eating the free food work provides for the employees and I have not noticed any problems.....YET...knock on wood.

We come back from work really late and nothing is open and I get hungry so I have been ordering room service every day. Today, five minutes after I get back I get a call from the hotel people and they ask me if I am ready to have my food brought up. I didn't even order it and they just knew. How cool is that?

I have nothing else to say....shocking, I know.

How rude...

It is amazing to see how different our cultures are. There are many things I have noticed that just stick out.

These guys don't hold anything open for you. I am not saying this in a bad way, I am purely just pointing it out. You could be walking towards an elevator, looking at someone inside and the guy will watch the doors close right as you get close. Or you could be right behind someone about to go into the same door they are going in, and they won't even pretend to try to hold the door open for you. And this isn't like a once in a while thing, it happens all the time.

At first it really pissed me off, but then I soon realized why it is like this. There are more then a billion people in this country. If you hold the door open for one person, there are a thousand more people right behind them and you will never get a chance to let go of the door because they just keep coming.

I held the door open for this one girl, and I was about to let go when a large group of people started to rush through it. I had to finally just let the door go in a guys face. Oh well.

People don't look you in the eye either. You could be walking right passed them, but they won't acknowledge your existence. No "hi" or "whats up" or nothing. I am not really sure why it is like this. I guess they get tired of saying "hi" to the 1.2 billion people that live here.

However, if two people see each other, and they know each other, they will go the extra step to shake hands. I mean, I saw one guy on one side of the room going one way and another guy on the other side of the room going the other way, but as soon as they saw each other, they both walked half way across the room just to shake hands.

I am not a big fan of this hand shaking business though. I would rather just nod my head and say "whats up?" But then, I am like all the other Americans, lazy. But, like they say, when in Rome...

And the girls are so shy. I will look at one square in the eye and she will immediately turn away. Maybe it is because they think I am ugly, who knows. But they keep looking back at me but they turn away as soon as I look back. Not sure what is up with that. But its funny.

At first all these things upset me, but then I realized its just the way things are. Different continents, different cultures. I suppose if I grew up and lived here, I would be the same way.

First week...

The first week of work with the new team in Gurgaon is coming to an end. I do not want to talk too much about work, but I can say that we are very impressed with the team. They are all very intelligent and very hard working.

The operations room is on the 4th floor of a building owned by DLF. I have been inside the White House, CIA building, US DoJ building and FBI building, BUT the security over here is still tighter. They don't let you bring any kind of camera in, even on your phone. No jump drives or memory storage devices of any kind. Not even any optical media (thats CDs and DVDs for you less tech-savy folks). The security guys actually search your bags to make sure. It is crazy. Most of you have probably noticed that my wallet has the lanyard that sticks out of my pockets. Well, the security was even buggin' about that and they asked me to stick it in my pants. What harm could possibly arise because of a freakin' lanyard? Oh well.

It is a beautiful building. The area is like a huge campus. Many buildings, all either connected to each other or very close to each other. There are some food places on the ground floor. One of them is called Deja Vu. It is very nice, but very crowded. But then what do you expect with a country that has 1 billion people living in it.

Apparently, all the guys who work in the building get picked up and dropped off from there home. As if that is not enough, they ALSO get free breakfast, lunch and dinner. Now, you are probably thinking that the food tastes bad. It doesn't, it is actually pretty damn good.

We hung out with the team on Thursday at one of the restaurants. It was a lot of fun. All the guys are really cool and laid back and fun to be around. We took pictures, and most of them should be in it, except for one or two.

All in all this has been a very good week. The only downside was that the four of us (Mo, Osama, Rodel and I) got a little sick during the start of the week. Nothing major, just an upset stomach or two. It just took time for our body to adjust to the food in India. The hotel food is great and all the food we have eatin' outside is great too, but Indian food uses a lot of spices (whereas in America they use a lot of fat and oil), so it took time for our stomachs to get used to it.

When we first started feeling sick, we all went to a store to get some medicine and the prices are amazing. I got some medicine for a cough and some tablets for an upset stomach.

India driving...

Whoever thinks driving in New York is crazy has not been to India. Driving here is nuts. First thing, there are like a billion people on the road. There are rules but nobody seems to follow them. They will make U-Turns by going the wrong way on a one-way road. They drive in the middle of two lanes. A guy can make a right turn from the very left of the road. Or a guy can stop and start going in reverse on a busy road while all the other drivers maneuver around him. I even saw a guy stop his car in the middle of the road, make a U-turn and start driving the wrong way.

At first I could not understand how they drove without getting in accidents because even with the driving situation being so crazy, there are very few accidents. Then I noticed two things. First, they do not drive very fast. We had to have a long stretch of open road to get the driver to actually floor it, and even then he was not going that fast. He is going about 80 KPH which is around 50 MPH.

The second thing is there excessive use of the horn. See, in America you use the horn to let someone know they fucked up. They cut you off? Horn em'. They drive too slow? Horn em'. In India, however, they use the horn more as a system of letting the drivers around them know where they are. So every few minutes the driver would honk the horn to let everyone around him know that he is there. I have even seen signs on big trucks that say "HORN PLEASE." I mean, they actually ASK to be honked at.

It works great actually. No real rules, people just horn to let people know where they are. If a guy is driving too slowly, you just horn, and then maneuver around him, even if that means driving on the other side of the road towards on coming traffic.

I think we should use this driving system in America.

Anyway, tomorrow is the first official day of work. Time to get some rest.

Crowne Plaza Hotel (part 2)

This hotel is very very very nice. My absolute favorite thing about it is that the floors are very shiny and slippery. I can slide, slide, slippidy slide, all over the place.

In order to turn the lights on in the room, you have to put your keycard into the wall. If you take your keycard out, the lights turn out. This way, you cannot leave the lights on in the room when you leave. Kind of ingenious if you think about it.

I got a room with two twin beds (versus the one king bed the other guys got for the same price). I did this because the rooms do not have a lot of storage space, so I figured I could use the 2nd bed to arrange my clothes while I am here for 3 months.

The room also has:

• a tv
• mini fridge
• bathroom
• phone
• iron board
• iron
• very small closet

My fridge actually doesn't work right now, but I am sure the hotel guys will fix it for me (or move me to a different room).

The hotel has a beautiful pool and a gym but I can't take pictures of the gym. There is also a lot of nice art work through out the hotel. Overall, its a nice hotel but I can see myself getting sick of it very quickly.

Crowne Plaza Hotel

Our plane landed. Neither Osama or I had any luggage problems. Mo, however, did. What happened is, when Osama and Mo checked in there bags at Richmond the computer broke so the lady had to write there information down by hand. On top of that, Mo says, her handwriting was not that neat. So it he knew it would be missing before he even got here. So he waited in line for a little while to get all that taken care off.

There was supposed to be a driver waiting for us at the airport to pick us up, but he was not there. Not sure if it was because we were 2 hours late in leaving the airport or maybe he did not show up, either way, the guys were not very happy. Luckily, my Mom's planed landed right after ours so we were able to meet up with her. With her help we got a taxi and headed to the hotel.

I will continue with more details about the hotel shortly...

Get ready, get set, GO!

Okay, my plane is about to leave. Just letting everyone know before I go.

My plane leaves at 5:00 PM today and I will arrive in Gurgaon, India around tomorrow midnight. Normally the flight is not so long but we have a little bit of a layover in Frankfurt.

And, to those of you who did not get the memo, Rodel would not be traveling with us. It will be just Mo, Osama and I (I know some of you are proud of me for making that sentence grammatically correct). The passport people messed up his passport stuff so he did not get it back in enough time. Rodel will be leaving later this week so everything should be okay.

It is a business class flight so this should be fun.

Packing

Today is the day I leave. I am packed and ready to go. I got all my stuff into one suitcase. Then I realized I forgot some personal hygiene products, but they would not fit in the suitcase. So I had to take a new suitcase. Problem is, the second suitcase was practically empty except for a few things. So I asked my mom, who was also going to go to India, if she needed me to take anything for her. She had already packed her luggage but said she could probably find a few things to add some weight to the suitcase. Well I go downstairs to watch some TV and I come back and this is what I see:

From India - Befor...

She didn't just manage to find a few things to put in the suitcase, she managed to FILL it up. And with what you might ask? Junk. Stuff she has been collecting that she doesn't need and figures the poverty stricken developing country of India could use. It is kind of funny. She is nice like that, always looking out for other people. But it makes me wonder what my Mom thinks of India if she feels the need to take a baseball cap there.

But anyway, India, here I come. Oddly enough, I don't feel like I probably should feel for a person going to another country for three months. Bleh, I am more exited about the new Verizon LG VX10000 Voyager phone that is coming out soon then my India trip. Sad...I know.

Ready? Uh...NO!

bleh. i leave in a week. one would think that i am ready to leave. yet, i am not. i just wanted to say that.

people keep asking if i am ready and i figured i would share with everyone that i am not ready. actually, i do not think it has hit me yet.

my mind has not really realized that i will be in india for three months. away from all my friends and family and steaks. yes, you heard me correctly, STEAKS. man am i going to miss meat.

does anyone want me to get them anything from india? stuff is cheap there. clothes, jewelry.

bleh...i have nothing to do. i keep getting this feeling that i am forgetting something before i leave for india. oh well.

sittin' an' a waitin'

well the time has come. i am sitting at home, about 90% packed, waiting for it to get closer to 12 which is when my taxi gets here. i think i have everything packed. i hope i have everything packed. oh well, if i dont remember it, i dont need it.

i am leaving TX today and i will spend 25. weeks in VA before i leave for india. if anyone in VA has any intention of hanging out with me before i leave the country then you might want to call me before the week is over.

anyway...i think i am going to go play halo 3.

traveling plans

i will be leaving texas on october the 20th which is next week. i will be going to northern virginia to spend a week with my parents. then the week of november the 4th to the 9th i will be in richmond for work. then i will go back to northern virginia and then leave for india.

if anyone in texas wants to hang out with me before i leave, speak now or forever hold your peace. i have work to do and i have to pack but i am on my own work schedule and i can make time to hang out.

to the folks in richmond, i will be there for work but i still want to see you guys. but lets not make it a repeat of last night. i honestly don't remember most of what happend.