dhoom machale

Day one of our working summit was intense, as usual. Actually, it started well - we delayed the start until noon because Darragh didn't arrive from Dublin until five a.m., and we thought it would be nice to let him sleep. But then we worked on a presentation from noon to 7:30, with a break for lunch. However, the new office in Hyderabad is gorgeous - it's perhaps the best office of any I've been in company-wide (except for the fact that if you push the 'LB' button in the elevator, it doesn't take you to the lobby - it takes you to the lower basement, which is scary, since the elevator door opens on a v. dark, rubble-and-wire strewn disaster zone, which looked like it could easily harbor rats). They have an amazing cafe, and of course the service staff-to-employee ratio is about 1:1, so there are tons of people wandering around staffing various superfluous roles, like reminding you to swipe your badge to open the door, or the guy who made me a sandwich - he started by meticulously cutting off the crusts, which was nice of him.

After working, we came back to an apartment and had a fun time trying to order Dominos - we couldn't find a brochure, but luckily the Madhapur Dominos is in Google. Then, we discovered that the apartment phones can't dial out, and none of us have India cellphones - so we used Skype on Sean's laptop to call India from the US at 10 cents/minute. This resulted in bad voice quality, which made the ordering experience even more stressful than usual, but it all turned out okay.

My mother will also be pleased to note that we had a woman come to the apartment and do henna/mehndi tattooing - if she's lucky, my hands and feet will still be lavishly decorated at Christmas! It probably won't last that long, but I'm hopeful :) If nothing else, I will look v. exotic for the opening presentation that I have to give to our department VP tomorrow morning. Speaking of that presentation, I should really go to bed - the jetlag has been surprisingly good for me, but I hope to get some sleep tonight so that I'm ready to go bright and early tomorrow morning. Goodnight!