1st Day Nonsense

Last night - horrible time sleeping.  I think between the hours of 2 am and 9 am I got approximately 45 minutes of sleep.  Not cool.

We went to breakfast at The Square - it was a buffet with very random foods.  Could definitely get some American food (like french toast, waffles, bacon, etc) but they also had Indian food - some of which I would consider a dinner (like soup).  We ate our food and decided to head back up to our rooms.  I attempted to take a nap but kept getting interrupted - first Dining called and asked if we were going to order box lunches.  I said yes so she was going to bring up the menus.  I said she could come right away....an hour later....she finally arrived.  I ordered my lunch for both today and tomorrow and said the meals could be delivered at 2:30 and attempted to sleep.  The phone rings...she had to make a substitution on our meal because something wasn't available - I said that was fine.  The doorbell on the room rings.  Since I'm attempting to sleep I was a little confused.  It rang again.  I got up to go answer - they had brought our food at 1:15....well before it was requested!!!

View out my window:

The security checkpoint on the way into the hotel.

I met Kelly, Kristen, and Dustin back at The Square for lunch.  I was adventurous and tried the Vegetable Cashew sandwich.  It was...interesting!  I think it was made entirely of beans held together by some sort of frying of the coating technique.  I ate about 1/4 of the sandwich and most of the fries (cause they were really tasty!)

Back up to the room for a quick change of clothes and back on the road to work.  The drive there was interesting....lots of sightseeing going on but no pictures yet .... don't worry I'll take some of the roads.  People driving everywhere, swerving to avoid potholes and people and dogs, people hanging out the sides of buses and cars, very run-down areas.

We arrived at the office and were taken to the main large conference room on the 6th floor - which we then learned isn't where we were going to be sitting...instead we were moved to the opposite corner where Kelly and I sat in a teeny tiny meeting room and Kristin and Dustin were set-up in cubes.  It was odd.  People would just randomly stop by to say hi and have a "casual conversation".  No formal meeting or introduction or anything.  Surya did show us around (ie bathrooms and coffee room).

We then proceeded to do not much of anything....did some random other work that could have been done from anywhere...like the US or the hotel or whatever.

For dinner, we headed down to the 5th floor cafeteria with our box lunch from the hotel.  Keep in mind, we got the food at 1:15...and it was now 9:15....and the food came to us heated at 1:15....so we were eating food that was sitting out, not in a fridge.  Yeah.  Not so cool.  My lunch box today from the hotel was Lunch Box 06-Italian.  It came with Penne with Grilled Chicken Breast and Tomato Basil Sauce, Chicken Parmegiana, some sort of mixed veg thing, Almond Pave (which was kinda like a cross between a really soft brownie and really stiff pudding) and a Apple Juice pack.  I didn't eat any of the meat since it had been out so long and the brownie thingy was weird...so yeah.

The fixed asset team area (picture taken sneakily):

After a LONG LONG BORING day...it was finally time to pack up and leave. 

Here was a sign for us in the lobby - yes, my name is spelled incorrectly.
(Kelly, Jaime, Kristen, Dustin)

We tried calling the driver and the number he gave us didn't work...luckily he was outside waiting for us.  Back to the hotel and now it's time for bed.  We are meeting at 7:30 tomorrow for a VERY quick breakfast and then we head out sightseeing at 8am.  We plan on visiting Charminar, Hussain Sagar (big lake with a statue in the middle), a temple made out of marble and hopefully we'll have time for lunch and some shopping!

P.S.  It's always interesting when the guy working at the hotel that you are coordinating your tour asks if you care about good hygiene in restaurants.  Umm...YES!  The first one he gave us he said it had really good Biryani but not good hygiene.  I asked for more suggestions on restaurants!!!!