Everybody's Working for the Weekend

Today is Sunday, a day which I usually reserve for doing laundry, cleaning and watching tv at home. But, I'm in India, and someone does my laundry for me, cleans my apartment daily, and everything on tv is either cricket or in hindi. Which is good news, because I'm heading to work again. Thurs and Friday we worked 14 hours each day, Saturday 8 hrs. I work hard during the busy season but usually not quite this much! It's our staff who are really working hard and putting the hours in. So to not come in when we live 5 min from the office would really not be right considering most of them have to drive over an hour each way to get to work.

Friday and Saturday were a bit more fun than usual working days. Every Friday here is jeans day, which also means sneakers day, which also means t-shirt day - very casual! We also ordered dinner for the team so they (and we) didn't have to eat in the cafeteria again. Pizza hut for 18 people - which was probably 10 or 12 pizzas (they are smaller here, but they are still good!) and garlic bread - cost $54. Pretty amazing. I talked to a girl yesterday who got 3 pairs of beaded sandals for Rs 550. That's about $3 a pair!!

Saturday I think people were a bit unhappy to have to come into the office. Most of our staff are new and don't realize that the busy season is only temporary (at least in India - can't say the same about Chicago!!). Even the "experienced" staff have only been working at Deloitte 2 years. So we and the team lead, Pranab tried to encourage everyone and let them know it's just a push for another 3 weeks or so. To help with this Kathryn and I surprised everyone with 2 chocolate cakes we bought from the coffee shop (again, this cost about $12 - so cheap!). It was a sweet surprise in the middle of the day. I've noticed that Indians have a really big sweet tooth!! We brought American chocolate to the office because we heard how much everyone likes it, and we go through a bag a day (so we are not bringing it in every day anymore because our stash is being depleted quickly!) Also people are always bringing in sweets for things like weddings and buying a house (one guy in our group closed on a flat this week, which is awesome!).

Finally at 9:30 Kathryn and I bolted from the office and rushed back to the Jayabheri for an expat party that was going on. There are probably about 45 people on the ground from the U.S. here right now, which I didn't realize. It's great because it shows what a committment our office has to making this whole India thing work! I love working with our team, but I have to say it was nice to hang out with some Americans (and Britons) for a bit. As soon as we walked in, a girl handed me a Jagerbomb and introduced herself. Wonderful!! We got to the party late so we left about 20 minutes later (I managed to grab a chicken quesadilla on the way out and it was so wonderful to eat meat!) to the Touch lounge - a very trendy club where the beers were $2, ha ha. We met up with Emre from NY office and Hiram (H) and Paula from London there and chatted with them for a while. Touch was cool but extremely loud techno music was on the whole time, fun but difficult to hear anyone!

Ah, I have to head to work again. I have some more stories from our first night out in India that I will continue later. By the way, I still think it's totally weird that I'm in India. But I'm really enjoying my time here!