Friday September 16th - Sunday September 18th

Every so often the teams here have an outing. We had our DC outing on Friday, September 16th. We weren't given to much advance warning. I think they told us on Wednesday. But I knew I couldn't miss it. I had heard a lot about past parties and this one definitely lived up to all the hype. Everyone goes crazy. The party was supposed to start at 8pm but because of bad weather that day everyone was late. I got there after most people had been there for an hour and they were dancing like crazy when I got there. They kept pulling me out on the dance floor to dance with them. The party was a lot of fun and actually a really great deal. It was rupees 500 (~$12) if you wanted to drink and only rupees 350 if you didn't drink. Drinks in Delhi are SO expensive. A glass of wine at the minimum is about $10 and that doesn't include the taxes, which is 25%. Not to many of the SCAs drank but the ones that did sure did go overboard! It was funny to come into the office on Monday because everyone was all grouped around talking about Friday night.


Emily, me, Jamie, and Folake. Jamie and I are the only DC SMEs in the picture but we invited all the other SMEs to party with us.


Abhishek and Rinku getting down


Group eating dinner.


Pawanm, Jayesh, Faiyaz, and Neeraj.


Ramandeep and Abbas. Ramandeep works with the Woodlands. He is so smart and might even know more than me when it comes to payments and YBR.


Group getting down.


Saturday night out - Neysha, Folake, and Chris.

The following Sunday we went to Old Delhi. This was my first site seeing adventure in Delhi. First stop was the splendid mosque Jama Masjid built in the typical Mughal style with two minarets and three domes. It is the country's largest mosque, built in 1656, where thousands of Muslims offer prayers. It lies opposite the Red Fort and is surrounded by a large number of shops, which deal in a variety of goods. The great mosque of Old Delhi is both the largest in India and the final architectural extravagance of Shah Jahan (guy who designed Taj Mahal) with a courtyard capable of holding 25,000 devotees. When we first got there they were in the middle of prayer so we had to wait a bit before we could go in.


View from one of the minarets at Jama Masjid - you can see Red Fort in the background.



View from the courtyard of Jama Masjid.


Both men and women had to cover their legs. The cover they gave combined w/ Abbas' shirt made him look more Scottish/Irish than Indian!


Rules for climbing minaret - thought some of them were interesting.


View from minaret.


View of people praying on our way up to top of minaret.


Women had to cover their heads to enter the Mosque - don't I fit right in!! :o) We had to pay to walk up to the top of the Miniret but it was worth it because it provided a really nice view. When we first got to the top it wasn't that crowded but there wasn't much space either. By the time we spent about 5 minutes looking around more people had gotten to the top and I was actually starting to get nervous it was so crowded. By the time we tried to head down the stairs we could barley move and it was real hard to get down to the first step to head down. Even though it was a cool day I was dripping with sweat by the time we got to the bottom.


View from entry of Jama Masjid. You can see how crowded Old Delhi is!

The next stop on our Old Delhi tour was to find a restaurant to feed the poor and/or homeless. Abbas had done this in Mumbai with his family so he wanted to do it in Delhi as well. Beth, Abbas, and myself each gave 500 rupees and feed 150 people. Basically we just asked around for a restaurant that did this and asked how much per person. The place we stopped at was great. We basically just pulled our bicycle rickshaw up right in front of the restaurant and sat there and watched as they organized things. When we pulled up there was all ready people sitting outside waiting to eat. Once we arranged everything they just started piling people into the restaurant. They were coming out of no where. The owner of the restaurant was there and I nicknamed him 'The Godfather'. He was very big guy with an all white outfit on, the rings and everything. He basically asked if we wanted anything and he got us a coke and then they were making Nann (my favorite bread) right in front of us so he got us some of the bread. Also at the next place over they were making some Sheermal which is now my new favorite bread. It is basically a sweet Nann. Once the food was ready and they started giving it out 'the Godfather' was handing me the food so I could give it to some of the kids. It was an amazing experience. Some of the people were so appreciative and gave big smiles.


You can see where they were making the Nann in the background and a little bit of 'The Godfather'.


Me handing foot out.


One of the cute little boys we gave food to.


restauranthe resturant.


They have these phone chargers in arestaurantse resturants in India - I found it interesting so I took a picture.


Monkeys hanging out on the side of the road on our way home.

Bangkok - September 9th - 12th

I didn't take to many pictures in Bangkok because I had been there once before and we didn't do many tourist things. Mainly just hung out with my friends, went to dinner, and shopped. Below is a picture of the street - it is sooooo clean compared to the streets in India!


Picture of our hotel - we stayed at the Banyan Hotel - it was so nice!


There was a roof top restaurant and bar at our hotel. It is the highest restaurant in Bangkok. We had reservations to eat up there but the weather didn't cooperate for us! We were going to have a drink before the rain came but our hair started standing strait up from our heads so we knew there was static electricity in the air and lightning wasn't to far away. Needless to say we got off the roof quickly.


View of restaurant - notice how open it is! It was really neat being up there.


View from the top. This one is a little blurry but I thought the colors were nice.


My friends that I went to visit. Michelle and Avery.


Picture of our food! I love Thai food!!!



















View of the pool - it is on the 21st floor.



















If you ever go to Thailand I recommend this place. It was really nice and we got 2 hour massages for $13 (and that included a good tip)!!

September 6th

I'm getting behind in my updates! I thought I'd have nothing but time on my hands when I wasn't at work but that is definitely not the case. There is always something going on. Either someone is leaving so we need to go out or it is someone's birthday or there is a good restaurant someone wants to try, etc. If we do anything after work with a group it usually means we don't get back home until 1am at the earliest! On Tuesday, August 30th we went out for Erica's going away get together. We went to Punjabi By Nature. It was an Indian restaurant so I was curious to see if I was going to like it as much as I did Bukara's. As it turned out I liked it just as much if not more - especially since it was cheaper! A big group of us went out.

Amritha, Neysha, Erica, Folake, Meenal, and me - the girls hanging out at the Grand after dinner. We stayed out a little to late this night - but it was a good time!


Folake, Abbas, and myself at the upstairs bar at Punjab by Nature - we closed the place down.


So I bought this outfit the previous weekend. I think it is called a Punjabi Suite. It is typical Indian wear at the office. I was excited to wear it when I bought it - for only rupees 500 ($12) - but the day I actually decided to wear it I was a little nervous about it. I just felt weird about it. It was so comfortable though. And the reaction I got at work made me want to go out and by 10 more!! Everyone loved it on me. The SCAs were so cute. Some made it a point to come over and tell me how good I looked. I got several sametimes as well. 'Ma'am you look beautiful today', 'Ma'am you look very nice today in your Indian clothes' - Ma'am is what they call me!! Makes me feel so old!!


So the ride home from work SUCKS (sorry Mom - but that is the best word for it)!! It is 9pm when we leave work and the days are always so long. The last thing we want to deal with is driving in a car/bus on the roads here for an hour. Plus there is always some hassle with leaving so we almost always have to wait around. We discovered that the driver of the bus will get us beer if we tip him well. I missed the first few times they got him to do it. Apparently the first few times he took the money and ran across the street and came back in a cycle rickshaw with all the beer. This past Thursday when I was on the bus I guess he stopped closer to the store because he walked there and back. The beer just make the ride a little more relaxing and bearable!!

Friday after work we went to a place called Dublins. It is in the Sheraton right around the corner from our hotel. It is very expensive but close and a pretty cool place so the SMEs seem to go there a bunch. This was my first time there. I was disappointed that an Irish sounding bar didn't have any Cider. Above is Meenal, Elliott, and Natalie.


Shelita, Situ, and Abbas' cousin Adil.


Adil, Abbas, Julie, Jason, Natalie, Elliott, Meenal, and me - Saturday night we went to the Park hotel for dinner and the club that is in the hotel. The restaurant was Indian food. Again another Indian restaurant that I enjoyed. This hotel was very modern and trendy looking. The restaurant was named 'Fire' - as you can see from the flames behind us.


We went out shopping on Sunday and this was on the corner along the way. Monkeys just hanging out!!


This was an outfit I bought this weekend. The complete outfit cost me rupees 300 ($7). Again a very comfortable skirt!!

So if you noticed above I said rupees and then the amount. That is how you are suppose to say it here! I was helping a SCA with an issue the other day where she was talking about giving someone money. She said she gave the person 'dollar 100'. It was cute. And then she even messed up and said 'rupee dollar 100' once.

I had been hearing about this Birthday tradition they have here where they smear cake all over each others face. That had been pretty much all I had heard. Well one of the DC PMs had a Birthday yesterday so I got to experience it for myself! They have a birthday fund here much like at Summit - so if it is your birthday everyone gets together and there is cake. It is a much bigger turn out than at home - everyone participates here. The tradition - I think in India is to feed the birthday person the first bite. Then what they usually do is smear the cake on the persons face - much like we do at weddings! They didn't actually smear the cake on the PMs face but during that celebration they realized one of the SCAs had a birthday on the weekend. When they went to feed him the cake they smeared it on his face. They said it was tradition to feed the cake but it was a Hewitt tradition to smear the cake!! :o)

Today I went to a presentation put on by a couple of the DC SCAs. For the Alcoa team they had a few SCAs go to Lincolnshire to help with the implementation. They basically gave a presentation on their experience. It was really funny to hear their side of it. Here are a few things I found interesting/funny!!
- When they first got to the US someone sametimed them and asked them to 'stop by'. The SCA had no idea what this meant - to him it was a total foreign phrase. He had to ask someone for the exact meaning.
-They are use to having their keyboard on a sliding thing beneath their desk. They seemed to be in total shock that it would be on top of the desk. Apparently that is all they have ever experienced so it was just funny that was one of the main things he brought up as an experience. He also mentioned that our desk were full of stuff - in India all the desks are very clean with only a few pictures or papers hanging on the wall. They were laughing at how if someone liked baseball they had all kinds of baseball stuff all over the cube. And they were even amazed that someone had a basketball net at their desk.
-They don't understand the concept of lunch at your desk. In India NO ONE eats at their desk - it is even not allowed, according to building rules (they said they had a rat/bug) problem. They were amazed at how many and how often people ate at their desk in the US. They also thought it was strange that where you get your coffee, tea, soda, etc that there were no seats to sit down and hang out. In India they have more free time than we do in the US so this is a very common thing to do.
-The SCA also mentioned how in India he does about 50 - 60% client work a week. He said when they were in Lincolnshire they did about 90%. He was very amazed at how much more work there was to get done when you were actually in the states. He was also amazed at the hours that people worked. They are use to about 8.5 hours, where in the US the average was more like 10.
-The funnies thing he brought up was how we talked about the weekend. He said that on Monday and Tuesday everyone talked about what they did the past weekend. Wednesday was a day that we took a break from talking about the weekend. Then Thursday and Friday we talked about what we were going to do the coming weekend. He laughed and said 'Even sometimes they talk about what they are going to do the coming weekend on Monday'!! It was funny to hear it from their point of view. They mentioned that they wake up Saturday and decide what to do on the weekend - no planning or talking about it!