On week later...

As you can probably tell from my lack of entries this week, I’ve gotten quite busy with work. I worked at least 13 hours every day this week, including Friday, and 9 hours on Saturday. Emotions are running high in the office here and at home, where it’s getting a little close to our deadline and things are running behind schedule. As usual. This happens every year so I don’t understand why it seems to be a big surprise. Regardless, everyone is working long hours. But, we are able to take little breaks every now and then. First, one of the expat managers brought in a huge bag of candy on Wednesday (American chocolate, which she somehow got here, which wasn’t exactly the same but it was close). People went crazy!!! I didn’t get up from my desk and somehow still managed to get 6 pieces. Everyone here is very into sharing – whenever someone has “biscuits” or chips, they will always walk around and offer one to the rest of the group.

Friday night we ordered our team dinner again, which was Chinese food this week. I ordered sesame chicken and stir fry vegetables. What I got was chicken that Kathryn and I called “red hot chicken” which was in a bright red sauce and some spicy yellow sauce that apparently had vegetables in it, but it didn’t taste that way to me. It was by far the spiciest Chinese food I had ever had. I thought of my grandpa who always said he could tolerate any level of spice and wondered if could have taken this in stride. We had some chow mein noodles with yogurt (interesting combo) that helped to cool things off. It was the first time I had noodles in nearly a month and it was glorious!!! To top things off, we bought ice cream for the team – choco chips cones which are like drumsticks, not quite as good but almost there. The ice cream here really is pretty good, and the flavors are interesting (I had mango the other day), but I am looking forward to coldstone when I get back.

Later that night, around 230am, we got into a discussion about American movies. One thing I have noticed about the office is that when 2 or 3 people get involved in a conversation, slowly but surely the rest of the group will stop working, get up from their desks and come to chat. It’s actually nice to all take a break like that at the same time. Some of the movies that were mentioned that people really liked were Love Actually, Beethoven, Armageddon, You’ve Got Mail…notice a theme? Seems like all the guys here are romantics and not afraid to admit it! We also found out that Bryan Adams is one of the most popular singers here because he gives a lot of concerts in India (true, I have heard people blasting summer of 69 at least 10 times since I’ve been here). Also Michael Jackson was mentioned and how did he come up with the moonwalk? We said we didn’t know. The best part of the night for me was that we finally found out the song that Neelakanta has as the ringback on his phone, which we hear twice a day, every day and love. Of course we didn’t know any of the words so we couldn’t tell anyone what it was. It is from a film called Geetangeli, about two lovers who are both sick and end up dying. Sorry to ruin the ending, but I figure you probably won’t be picking that up at Blockbuster anytime soon. A lot of the songs that are popular here are from films, and they said that is the one thing that is missing from American films is the song and dance.

Well I’m headed to the office again and NK is apparently in a crazy mood, so I can’t keep him waiting. More to follow. I actually went out and had a beer last night – only the 3rd time I think I’ve done that since being here.