The pool

The nice thing about the Novotel is that it has a great pool and hardly anyone uses it. I packed my swimsuit, but forgot the cap and goggles. Yesterday I found those items at Hypercity so I am all set to swim daily for the next two weeks. My freckles are already back in full force... sigh...

Throwball Tournament

This morning was our throwball tournament at the Lal Bahadur sports complex. It was a lot of fun, but we did not win either of our games. I scored a couple of points in serving but was otherwise not very helpful!

End of Busy Season Party 2010

Backstage after getting all done up - me, Kabina, and Christina. The room was soooo hot and we were all sweaty. :(


The setting... a covered area at Shilparamam - Sampradaya Vedika.


Kabina, Matt, and me

After the fashion show - Manjari, me, and Bhavana

Party planning

These are the dresses that we are supposed to wear for the fashion show on Friday - ghagra choli. First of all, the midriff-baring dress thing is not going to happen. No way! Also, we are supposed to buy them before Friday. Mais c'est Mercredi, et trop cher pour moi! Hopefully we can find a place where we can just rent the dresses...

Anyway, the whole office is getting really excited about this party. We had a few visitors come through our floor early this afternoon to get everyone pumped up about it.

Too many meetings

Somehow I've gotten roped into a couple of extracurricular activities around here which seem to be almost as demanding as my real job! I joined a women's throwball team and we have a tournament on Saturday morning against a few other teams within our firm. We had practice last Friday and we are supposed to have two more practices at some point this week.

Next, I was guilted into volunteering for a fashion show to be held at our end-of-busy-season party this Friday night. Today was our first fashion show practice which took an hour. An hour. To have me awkwardly practicing runway poses. Me. This is why I am an accountant. I am no model, folks. I am not graceful. I hate being the center of attention. And I had to practice strutting down an imaginary runway with an Indian tax manager telling me, "Stop there! Turn! Hand on your left hip! Turn the other way! Pose there! Twist your body more to the front! Lean back!"

Ohh emm gee. I wish I could have taken a video of the practice. Not a video of me. A video of the manager/fashion show producer.

The Hyderabad folks have a disco theme and will be modeling disco wear. However, they wanted to have the U.S. expats and short-term rotators do a fashion show in traditional Indian dress, which I guess means that I have to go buy a sari in the next two days.

After fashion show practice I had about one whopping hour to get some of my real job done, and then it was time for a team dinner. Since there are 13 Hyderabadi team members, I split the team into two groups to enable me to get to know everyone better. Tonight, the senior consultants and experienced staff went out. On Thursday, I'll take the newer staff members out. We went to a place called 36 Chhatees where I had more Indian food than I'd ever had in my life. The team was highly amused at the foods that I deemed spicy. Baby steps.

I forgot my camera, and my iPhone doesn't take great pictures in the dim lighting - but here's our dinner group (clockwise around the table): Anupama, Manjari, Vinod, Narayana, Gouri, Srinivas, me, and Bhavani.

Hooters

Womens' dress in India is pretty conservative. For example, women do not even wear knee-length skirts to the office. So I must say I was quite surprised to notice Hooters in Hyderabad.

Weekend 1 of 3

It's Sunday afternoon already, and I just realized that I only have two more weekends left here. It's been a solitary but enjoyable weekend.

Yesterday I intended to join a cricket match in Secunderabad for expats & rotators. Unfortunately, my sleep schedule got a little messed up on Friday, and I wasn't able to fall asleep until 7 AM Saturday morning. Needless to say, I decided not to go to the 8 AM event! Instead I slept until noon, then went shopping at the mall. The Inorbit mall is nice, but it's so westernized that I almost didn't feel like I was in India (except that I only saw maybe 2 other caucasians the entire time). I browsed in a few stores, but nothing seemed like a good deal. Plus, I wasn't really looking for anything specific.

Finally, I made my last stop at HyperCity - think Target - to buy groceries. I don't like Indian food or spiciness, so my options here are extremely limited! I'm already tired of my three main options from last week: (1) room service, (2) Subway, and (3) Zone bars. I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but yesterday I asked the hotel to remove all the items from my mini-bar refrigerator, and I stocked it myself. Behold the bounty from HyperCity:


By the way, this juice box is my new favorite drink. I hope I can find this somewhere at home. I don't know why this flavor is not more popular in the US... sooo delicious!