Pictures updated!

Pictures 38 - 67 are the lastest additions.

Link to a slide-show of my pictures.

Home again!

Home again, home again! I arrived home safe & sound about noon on Saturday. The flight was not nearly as bad as it sounds on paper. I slept about 6 or 7 hours, watched a movie, read my book, chatted with my co-workers on the flight with me, got to know the 2 women in the row ahead of me who were flying home to Connecticut and Seattle from a trade show they were attending in Mumbai.

I've had very little jetlag, for which I am abundantly thankful! I fell asleep around 8p on Saturday evening and slept until 9a on Sunday morning. I took it easy (read: didn't get out of my jammies) on Sunday, went to bed again around 8:30p and got up Monday morning feeling fine. I'm still just a little bit sleepy, but that's my constant state anyway, so I can't really call that jetlag. My body does seem to be having a little difficulty re-adjusting to what I assume is a higher fat content diet than what I was eating in India; I'll just leave it at that...

I am thrilled I got the opportunity to make this trip, and I already miss India (not to mention Santosh!). I'm back at work but have as yet not convinced any of my co-workers to be the office boy. I'm still working on it, though.

I do have one last set of photos that I need to upload, so check back here one more time in the next day or two.

Hope y'all liked my blog and got a virtual taste of Western India. Next time I go (which I hope to be within the year!), I plan to visit Delhi and the Taj Mahal. I'll keep you posted on that trip! Take care everyone!

Trip home

For those of you tracking my progress,

• our car arrives at the office for us at 4:30p IST
• we drive almost due west to Mumbai, arriving sometime around 9p
• we'll catch a light dinner (nothing too heavy before a 16hr flight!) and head to the International Airport
• our flight leaves at 1:50a
• 16 hours later I'll be arriving @ JFK in NYC
• and barring any international incidents or other delays, I'll be home late morning :)

Last night in Pune

Our last night in Pune, Ritesh took us up into the "Bollywood Hills" (my term because it reminded me on a much smaller scale of the drive up into the Hollywood Hills above LA. There is even a brightly lit neon-green sign that reminded me of the HOLLYWOOD sign) to a beautiful little resort called Garden Court where we sat outside on the massive patio (could easily seat 400) under the nearly-full moon and the stars and looked out over the lights of the city of Pune below us. We had an excellent dinner and drinks and reminisced about good times at S1 and funny stories of travels abroad. It was an excellent way to end a good week of hard work, sight-seeing and intra-company relations a world away from home.

Dancing the night away

On Wednesday evening several parties were held for different departments. Since I am here in a Product Development capacity, I attended their party. Although scheduled to begin at 730p, we Americans arrived at the club at 8p and we were the only ones there, but the rest of the group showed up seemingly en masse about 10 minutes later. The venue was a quaint little one-room club with a bar on one end of the room and tables & chairs around the perimeter. The middle of the floor was reserved for dancing, and boy, do these Indian men DANCE! Before the dancing began we bellied-up to the open bar for Kingfisher beer, Blue Star Shiraz, and hard liquor by the glass. Then we played a couple rather silly party games, but we all went along in the spirit of good clean fun. And THEN they turned the music up... and up... and up. And the guys DANCED!! and DANCED!! and DANCED!! Unfortunately, pictures being worth what they are, it is a real bummer that I don't have any to share of this auspicious occassion because if you've never been to an Indian dance club, my words will not do the dance style justice in the least.

Because Indian society is still quite conservative especially in relation to young women, it is rare to see a young Indian woman in a dance club. For this reason the two young, unmarried women developers at the party were pretty uncomfortable with all the dancing going on. But the men were completely undeterred by the lack of girls to dance with. In fact, they were so at ease dancing in the midst of the large group of men, it was obvious the norm for dance clubs is great multitudes of men just letting loose and dancing their hearts out and enjoying the company of their friends & brothers.

The dance style itself deserves some words: frenetic and frantic being two that come to mind most readily. Like American dance music, Indian dance music is very loud and fast with a strong beat, and the men move their entire bodies - arms, legs, heads, feet - in vigorous gyrations, sometimes it seemed with little regard for the beat. The craziest thing about this wild dance was the most mild-mannered guys from the office were the most intense dancers!

The dancing was a lot of fun to watch, so I thought it would be fun to participate as well. And since I'm 8000 miles from home, and, as the saying goes. "what happens in Pune stays in Pune" (or something like that), out onto the dance floor I ventured. The first odd thing about venturing onto this dance floor was I really was venturing out there by myself. Like I mentioned, women are not seen at the dance club too much, so no one was really inviting me out on the floor, but the music was loud beat was good, so to the dance floor I went. And it was a lot of fun. Of course. I had a great time (2 glasses of wine and a Kingfisher didn't hurt), and when Ritesh came looking for me at 10:30 saying he & John were heading back to the hotel, I reluctantly followed lest I get left behind.

What an experience!

Updated pictures

I've added to the slide show, so click this link again and see the latest. If you've already looked at the pictures, you can jump to picture # 22 (I believe) to see just the new ones.

ENJOY!

Link to a slide-show of my pictures.

A day at the office

To answer my aunt's question, yes a day at the S1 office in Pune is eerily similar to a day at the S1 office in Atlanta. One big difference is the work day doesn't begin until 10a. Starting so late is partly a function of the Indians trying to overlap as many business hours with their co-workers in Europe and the US as possible, and it has become a technology company standard in Pune. That late arrival time fits my normal body clock perfectly!

Another HUGE difference is the presence of "office boys." That term sounds rather derogatory, but it is the standard term for young men (older teenagers, really, I would guess) who are employed (presumably for a pittance) to bring coffee, tea, soda, biscuits (aka cookies to us Americans) and bottled water to guests of the office. My office boy's name is Santosh, and he's great! My fellow travellers from the US and Europe are jealous (and merciless!) because apparently Santosh has taken quite a liking to me, and I am never without 2 cans of Coke (regular, not diet... just ask Santosh, he knows), two bottles of water, a hot cup of coffee, and a plate of biscuits on my desk. And the fact that Santosh introduced himself to me is more cause for mirth among my co-workers. I call it establishing good international relations!

Other than that, it is pretty much business as usual here. The employees sit in cubicles, very similar to those in most office buildings in the US, with one main difference being the height of the cube wall is only about 3 ft; whereas in the US S1 offices, they are 5ft. There are no traditional offices but we have all been placed in a small extra conference rooms for the duration of our stay. We even all have printed signs taped to our doors. Mine reads BOOKED FOR JENNIFER DELMERICO FROM 26TH FEB TO 2ND MARCH.