yay for india

I have a limited amount of time to write this blog post before my sketchy Indian cold medicine kicks in - I was feeling miserable this morning while sitting at work, so I called Ismail and asked him to pick up something for my cold. He brought me a strip of 10 pills (only 27 rupees - around 60 cents) called 'Coldact', which are lovely pink capsules with tiny little spheres of medicine rattling around inside. I took one, and the effects were rather immediate - my nose cleared, my cough slowed down, and I felt less feverish. The downside was that I alternated wildly most of the afternoon between completely giddy excitement and an extreme desire to curl up for a nap, which made it hard to focus on my meetings - but I probably would have felt this way anyway, since I've spent four days straight in the same airless conference room with the same people. Also, I just did a Google search for the active ingredient in this medicine, and one of the top results stated 'The FDA is taking steps to remove phenylpropanolamine hydrochloride from all drug products due to the risk of hemorrhagic stroke.' Yay!

Today was a much better day than yesterday. My blackberry was safe and sound; I'd left it in the car, and Shadie picked it up and kept it for me. The meetings today went really well, and while I am quite ill, the cold medicine really helped. Then, we had dinner at the Novotel, which is where I stayed last summer while in Hyderabad, and the dinner was nice. It's been good to spend a few days with Darragh, since I haven't talked to him as much as my role has morphed over the past few months, and in general the group of people I'm here with is really great.

Tomorrow, we have to sit in the room all day and discuss more stuff, and then I have to present to the VP when he dials in to get our end-of-summit findings in the afternoon, so I suppose I probably shouldn't take my cold medicine tomorrow morning. Then, we'll have to finish packing and will likely have dinner before going to the airport for the trip home. I can't believe my time in Hyderabad is over already...and I'm leaving for Iowa two weeks from today! That thought alone exhausts me, given how much I have to do between now and then. So, in an effort to make sure that I stay caught up on sleep enough to make sure that I'm able to be effective for the next few days, I think it's time to go to bed.