First, a very important message: Today is my sister's birthday, which means it is a scant FIVE DAYS until mine. Yayayayaya! Birthday for me!
Message ends.
Now: India. So far it's been a lot like last time, except this time I have a coworker around to talk to, which is great; when you see a funny billboard, it's a lot more fun to have someone to nudge and laugh at it with.
The work is different too, in a good way. The team here got an email about my promotion (HA HA HA, ME = TOTES PROMOTED AIEE), so this time around when they ask me a question and I say, "It should work like this," they say, "Oh, okay," instead of their usual response last time, which was more like, "Oh, okay...we'll just go ahead and check with your boss first," which kind of negated the entire reason I was here to begin with. Muah ha ha ha haaaa, the POWER, waa haa haaaa!
So last night my coworker and I went to the hotel bar, called Entresol. A duo of extremely blond people, a.k.a. the band "Summer Dance," were playing some soft rock, singing in very thick accents. (I put my money on Lithuanian.) My coworker decided he wanted to request a song, and dedicate it to the pretty blond singer girl (Miss Anna), but he couldn't think of a good one. I suggested Roxanne, which seemed in line with the stuff they were already playing, and it wasn't until after he'd turned in the form that we remembered the song was actually about Sting singing to a hooker. Oops. A few songs later, they read the slip, laughed, and we got ready to listen to her sing "You don't have to put on the redddd liiiight," but apparently that wasn't in their repetoire -- so they played the next best thing, which *obviously* was a song called "Suzanna" that neither one of us had ever heard. I don't think the band had ever heard the song before either.
Tonight after work, we went for a good long walk -- one that I took last time, actually. Out from the hotel, down a big road, and across a bridge with motorcycles screaming by a few inches away. Honestly, you really have to abandon your fear of death to get around here. Along the way, we stopped at the Pune Central mall, which turned out to be a great idea! I picked up a few more CDs, and then I found a copy of the $20 Eldest, by Christopher Paolini, for like six bucks (score!) and then a copy of the $80 Larousse Gastronomique for like twelve bucks (SUPER TRIPLE SCORE!!!). So that totally rocked.
The best part came a little further down the road, where there was a set of stairs leading up a hill. So, you know...since they were there, we went up them. It was kind of dark, and it was definitely steep, but at the top was a temple we got to sit in for a while that looked out over the whole city. It's pretty remarkable to see all the streets flooded with a million headlights from a couple million people.
When I got back to the hotel, I decided to just go for room service. I had the traditional Indian meal of fried mozzarella, a turkey sandwich, and a coffee milkshake, all of which were good except for the fact that they really have no idea how to prepare fried mozzarella, turkey sandwiches, or coffee milkshakes.
Now I should be off to bed; I have a long day of Managing Projects tomorrow. Ha! Ha! POWER!!