cut loose, footloose

I'm sitting in the lobby of the hotel, outside the bar in which they're playing a lot of really bad music, watching Indian men belch as they walk by. I'm not sitting here specifically to watch men belch, but that's a byproduct of needing to take three conference calls between 9:30 and 11pm, which is really cramping my style. Sadly I need to be in the office by 8:30am tomorrow, so I should really wrap up, go upstairs, and go to sleep.

But first, to recap the day. I managed to get up in time to get ready, wake up my dad, and have breakfast with him in the hotel before I went into the office this morning. I saw Ismail when I got there; people with insanely good memories will remember that he's in charge of the drivers for my company's expats in Hyderabad, and so I had spent a lot of time with him when I lived here in 2005. It was good to see him, and he sang my praises to my father; I get the impression that it's not as fun for him now that the expats are mostly 1-2 week revolving-door expats, rather than the group I was with who typically stayed for 6-18 months.

Dad then left on an adventure to Golconda Fort and Shilparamam market, while I slogged the entire day. It was nice to see people whom I hadn't seen in ages, and I got some work done (although it won't possibly be enough in the next couple of weeks, given how much there is to do for this conference). I left the office around 5:45, and should have stuck with the original plan of having dinner in the hotel so that I could have napped before my calls -- but instead I let Ismail talk me into using a car so that Dad and I could go out for dinner. We went to Little Italy, which didn't exist when I was living here, but became one of the expats' favorite restaurants in later years. It was good, but it of course took way longer than it should have (it wasn't open yet when we got there around 6:30, and so we didn't get done until around eight p.m.) Then, we drove back to the hotel, I took a twenty-minute power nap, and I've been doing work ever since.

Ah, well...I'm in India for free, so this isn't that bad of a price to pay, even if the belching of the men walking by is getting out of control. And on that disgusting note, it's really time for me to go to bed. One more full day in Hyderabad, and then we leave for Delhi on Wednesday!