3 days down 3 to go

Good morning.

I've been having a little bit of stomach troubles, I guess some of the food hasn't agreed with me. At least my toilet got fixed. I'm sure you are all very glad I shared that bit of information. Otherwise I'm having a good stay.

Keval, Bhargavi and I drove out to the temple yesterday during lunch, but when we got there at 14:00 the temple was closed until 16:00. I guess god was sleeping. So we had to reschedule and will try again today. We stopped at a food court near the beach on the way back called Planet Yumm. Instead of going up to order you just go sit down and each place sends a waiter out to you. Its like ordering food at 8 different restraints at once, a bit confusing as they each try to hand you menus and take your drink orders and then there are several checks at the end of the meal. I had some delicious masala bread and spicy prawns and some sort of bean gravy. A bit spicy but not too much.

Keval and Bhargavi have been trying to school me on the differences between North and South Indian cuisine and culture. For starters they don't speak Hindi down here, so my phrasebook is useless. In Tamilnadu they mostly speak Tamil. I should have done my research. Some of the developers got a laugh when I asked if they had girlfriends. That's not a common thing, and there are still lots of arranged marriages. Most people live with their entire family and their moms and grandmas pack lunch for them. Seems strange from my point of view, but I can definitely see the advantages when it comes to caring for children and the elderly.

Work is flying by, but I am exhausted at the end of the day. I've been doing about 3 hours of presentation in the morning and 3 hours of presentation in the afternoon. People start to fade at the end and I start to get silly, but we are making steady progress through my syllabus. At the current rate though I won't get done until the end of Friday. I will have lots of follow up questions to answer when I get back home.

After work Keval invited me out for a drink at the only Spanish restaurant in town, Zara. We had a couple appetizers and chatted over a cocktail and a beer. Keval's a great guy, and probably the hardest working man in India.

I went to bed early and got up at 6 this morning to catch up on some things. Sounds like the Poland visit round 2 is going to happen. I'm looking at spending 4-6 weeks in Poland starting at the end of April. I'm hoping to take those last couple weeks off and bum around Europe. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I will have to see what I can afford to do in that amount of time.

I ordered room service this morning, a sort of Indian breakfast sampler. It was good, my favorite part has been the teas and the breads.

Time to wrap this up and get to work. Ciao.