Bangalore or Bust: A Travel Log (Day 5)

Author's note: For the next several weeks, I'll be posting tidbits of a travel log, which I kept during a two-week business trip (the reason I was in sporadic contact with the world recently). Enjoy!

For those who haven't yet seen the other posts in this travel log, check them out:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

(And again, if you're interested in seeing more photos than I'm providing, check out one of my co-workers' blogs from the same trip)

Day 5, Monday (2/27):

I had thought during the flights to Bangalore that the scanner system had reset the watch I’d bought for the trip (since I use my cell phone for the time back home), but apparently the watch (Wal-Mart $7 special) is defective. After thinking I’d only gotten three hours of sleep (ugh), and sitting around doing odds and ends stuff for an hour on the computer, I noticed that my netbook clock (still set on Wichita time) was hours off from my watch. Turning on the television, I saw that I’d actually gotten about six hours of sleep. Great news on the amount of rest front, but not so much on the fact that I needed to rush to get ready for my first day back to work since last Tuesday (having taken last Wednesday as a vacation day). So, rushing around to get ready, it was finally time to head off to the office.

A typical traffic day in Bangalore

While sitting in traffic, you get to study the elevated "Metro" being constructed

Notice the lack of any lights at most intersections...makes for excitement

Our building (at least two floors of it)...again, no photos allowed inside. Is it a temple or a palace?

Another building nearby, still under construction

For those who don't know, these are makeshift cricket fields on the facility grounds

Apparently what happens when you tip the housekeeping staff...they organize your stuff and spread flowers around

In an attempt to make me feel more at home (apparently), I suffered with IT issues most of the morning. Fortunately, I had brought along paper copies of a few items I needed to work on. Once those were resolved, the rest of the day was spent catching up on e-mails and working out items with our Indian team members. Lunch was taken on the rooftop with the rest of the companies in the building (split into divisions. Sadly, I have this feeling there was something included in that meal which caused a little stomach trouble for several of us. Pulled out the Pepto for a pre-emptive strike…(note that the picture above was taken pre-Pepto)

As expected, traffic was even more of a nightmare than before. I longed for the streets of Wichita, where a trip across town doesn’t take much more than a half-hour. I’m not sure how close (straight-line) our office is to the hotel, but it took twice as long for far less distance traveled. Unfortunately, even though we left the office around 5:30, by the time we got back and went down for dinner, it was already 9 o’ clock by the time we were back in our rooms. Even the flowers which the housekeeping staff laid around the bathroom did nothing to energize me (though I can’t say the same for my allergies). Exhaustion was creeping in, and it was time to call it a day, until the next one.


And that's all for today...be sure to come back for the next installment...