Work hard, play a lot harder

Let's start where I last left you, back in Gurgaon (where the Msft Office is located, just outside of New Delhi).

Funny story of the week (pretty embarrassing but had to share):
Basically, my team has learned just how absurd I am. One day after eating a very large dinner, I thought it'd be nice to walk on the treadmill at a slow pace to help with not feeling so full. [Side note, apparently you shouldn't exercise after dinner as you need all the energy/blood you have to help with digestion.] I brought a good book along to read while on the treadmill and over an hour had passed before I finished my workout. By this time, it was around 10pm and the fitness center was completely empty except for me. I had just witnessed the maid coming to clean the area and close the door behind her and was ready to leave the gym myself. I grabbed my stuff and headed toward the doors. There were two large glass doors. I went to one and started pulling and pushing with no luck. I thought how strange it was that the door was locked and proceeded to the next door to pull and push, again with no luck at actually opening the door. Afraid I was going to break the door had I pushed or pulled any harder, I looked around frantically for a phone and could not find one. At this point, I was getting a bit mad and started swearing like a sailor, thinking how absolutely ridiculous it was that the staff would lock the gym doors with me inside. Luckily, the hotel restaurant looked right into the gym, so I pulled up one of the curtains and started tapping furiously at the window toward people at the restaurant and/or anybody who could see me. I waved my arms around like a crazy person, all the while basically swearing towards the hotel/hotel staff. This carried on for five minutes until a hotel guest left his dinner and walked to the gym doors and so very easily just pulled the door open. Yeah...needless to say, I felt like an idiot.

So aside from embarrassing stories, work has been good. It's been pretty busy as I'm wrapping up any loose ends before I leave, since surely no one will care to respond to me after I'm gone.


This past Friday, I went to the Kingdom of Dreams to watch a Magic Show (ironically with an American magician). It had to have been one of the worst shows I've ever seen...the magician showed mostly promotional 80's/90's videos of himself performing huge tricks and had very obvious slight of hand tricks. I think my mind could actually figure out what he was doing half the time (yes, it was truly that bad). Apparently, you can watch him in Atlantic City...though I would highly recommend against wasting an hour and a half of your life. On the bright side, I did get to ride a camel in the middle of the street for two bucks.

Aside from the camel riding, my team and I found this great ex-pat brewery where they brewed their own beer. The beer is pretty light and fragrant, just my type of beer. It tastes a lot like a Sam Adams...it's yummy! We had our fair share of beers and shots on Friday night, all leading me to head to bed at 2:30am....


Yeah, a little over two hours later, I was up again for my trip to the Taj Mahal. Totally hungover, for sure! It's interesting that even though the roads in Gurgaon are pretty modern with highways and interstates, etc, just a ten minute ride away from the city, you get pretty bumpy dirt roads with tons of potholes. However, in the middle of the fields, we managed to find smooth paved highways...does this make any sense? No, not much in India makes much sense to me. Four hours later on the road, we reach Agra, the city where the Taj Mahal is located. It's funny that herds of cows and goats in the middle of the road are no longer shocking to me. After almost being scammed by our driver (he said his friend could help us - for no charge - navigate the Taj Mahal lines as it's not safe and yada yada yada to which we said no thanks...note, do not ever accept 'free' services in Asia...nothing is free in Asia...the tip you will have to pay will likely be much higher than the cost if you had paid for the services elsewhere), we headed to breakfast at the ITC Mughal and then to the Taj Mahal. It's a beautiful site indeed, probably more beautiful had I not been so stubborn and turned down every "guide" that approached us, thinking I should be able to find an even better guide inside the gates. Epic fail, we had to go without a guide due to my stubbornness. My co-workers were not too impressed with the Taj, but I thought it was pretty cool! It's symmetry is incredible! The area that surrounds the mausoleum is gigantic (probably a bit excessive for a dead person's resting place).

Here's my fave picture of the Taj (we found an awesome bench under a tree with a great view!):


After the Taj, we went to the Red Fort (another cool Agra site) and the Oberoi Hotel for lunch. From the hotel, you could see a great view of the Taj...actually, you could see the Taj from basically most places in Agra...that's to give you an idea of how massive the Taj Mahal is!

So to finish up my weekend, I was able to bargain my way through Dalihaad, an "international" market (read, a market where every stall had the same trinkets/scarves, etc.). Afterwards, I met up with an old friend and teammate, Kiran, from a class I took while in Holland on Indian culture/business world. We hung out in a park in Delhi center-city. How crazy is it that I was in Delhi literally at the same time that she happened to be in Delhi for just five days!



Now back to the real world...and onto Singapore next weekend!

Corporate Yuppie - Indian style

WOW! I've had many adventures since my last post and have not posted any of the stories into this blog.

Here I go again, being seriously ridiculous around the world, though a little more business than usual.

Takeoff from Seattle: Unfortunately, I missed my "St. Practice Day" celebration in Seattle, but no fear here, my layover happened to be in Chicago where I could meet up with Brie and Lauren (no accident for sure). To appease my liver (read, further destroy my liver), Brie brought some Jameson for the car ride (NICE!) and we proceeded to an Irish pub for some drinks and lunch. Of course I had to eat a giant steak seeing as it's illegal to kill a cow in India, thus no beef for me for the next three weeks.


So I climbed onto my nonstop flight from Chicago to New Delhi a little buzzed for sure. Apparently, it's American Airlines' longest nonstop international flight, and probably not good for my health that I only got up twice the entire flight. The plane wasn't as filled with Indian families as I thought it would have been; there were quite a few tourists on the plane. Anyway, as soon as I sat down, a man approached me expecting that I switch seats with his wife since I was traveling alone and he wanted to sit next to his wife. Obviously, properly asking me to switch seats was just an afterthought...oh Asian manners...

After landing in India, I tried to purchase a SIM card, which would not work on my phone. The SIM seller was pretty mad at me as he had already activated the card. It's also interesting to note how often phones are used in this country; during the work hours, people's personal phones are just ringing blatantly and being answered no big deal.

Aside from randomness in the airport, work has been pretty good. It’s definitely exhausting as you’re with your team from morning to around 8:30/9pm. Working in an office away from main campus also requires you to work on Redmond time – I’ve had to take late night calls for meetings with managers, etc. and work around their time. Other than that, it’s not too bad. I work in a conference room with 6 other people, so it’s nice to be focused and not goofing around reading the news and such. After work, we usually go out for a pretty big meal. I think I’ve had every single Indian dish I’ve ever wanted to eat. Lots of kebabs, lamb, naan, and random food filled with yogurt and lentils, etc. Funny enough, my favorite food so far was from a Lebanese restaurant. Here are a couple of pictures:


Aside from Gurgaon, I went to Mumbai (Bombay) for the weekend. It was nice to get away from Gurgaon but I’m pretty exhausted. Traveling as a tourist in India is incredibly tiring, especially if you don’t have your own car/driver. I am constantly being scammed by the cab drivers! Of course, we couldn’t leave Mumbai without seeing an elephant for a ride on the highway…


Our trip began with a stop at the Gateway of India, probably named that because it’s a pretty large commercial port.
In going there, I was able to view the beautiful green Indian ocean water. Seriously, this country is probably one of the most polluted countries I’ve seen. Granted, I’m here during a dry season and probably did not expect as much smog and pollution everywhere since my benchmark is my last Asia trip, which was during monsoon season where the rain probably helped clear a lot of the pollution away.

Gateway of India wasn’t very much of a site, so Marissa (my coworker who is on the trip with me) and I had lunch at the Taj Mahal Hotel, which is incredibly nice, where we were able to once again have a great view of the waters (note the sarcasm, the waters are gross). Funny enough, Marissa and I ended up having dinner at the Taj as well. I think India is a little too insane to be doing much else…it’s just far too chaotic and without someone local, all you can really do is see the main touristy sites and hang out at your hotel.

Aside from the Taj Hotel, we went to the Elephanta Caves, which is an uncovered site Hindu gods’ faces carved into the rock slash side of the mountain. On the way there, I had a fun brush-up with a monkey. Note: Never dangle your camera around a monkey….bright, shiny objects tend to attract monkeys, surprise! Luckily, my camera was not stolen by the monkey, but here’s a fun picture of a monkey taking a sip of mango juice from a bottle.


At night, Marissa and I toured some local markets, full of bangles and patterned scarves. Basically, the usual trinket/tourist trap from any large city. We also found a beach near our hotel that was quite a wild celebration of sorts. Locals were celebrating Holi, a festival where one smears all types of bright colors on each other marking the beginning of Spring. On the beach, people were celebrating by having a bonfire and then running around the bonfire in circles, while also throwing colors on each other.

Before leaving Bombay, we also managed to go to Juhu Beach, where Marrisa and I were the only two not covered in bright colors, making us pretty obvious targets for Holi. We opted out of being Holied as we figured the planes would not let us back on covered in multi-colored powder (that incidentally is extremely tough to take off).



More to come next weekend!