Surviving India ... Part 2

Today is the 3rd day in Chennai (not counting the night when I arrived) ... so far so good ... can't complain.   This is the first night I dined formally (although every morning I did eat breakfast at the hotel too) ... tried their Indian food ... ordered a mild chicken curry with naan bread ... not bad at all.   I especially liked the naan bread ... quite yummy!!

Haven't really done much during this visit except work, work and work.   Today, did spend most of the day in the car ... first to go to the customer's customer's office ... then a very very long ride to the Air France office (so that my colleague can change his paper ticket to leave today instead of tomorrow ... but unfortunately no such luck for me) ... and then another long ride back to the hotel to unload the very heavy thinkpad bags ... and then another long ride to the shopping place (two of them, so double the long ride) ... and then an even longer ride back to the hotel.   And by the way, I didn't get a thing.   I have to say that after seeing this "fancy" shopping mall here, I think New Century Plaza is a super mall.    It was already 8pm when we got back to the hotel ... everybody was quite exhausted.

An interesting note about the car ... my customer was joking about how he couldn't understand why his customer sent him the taxi rate info 3 times when he told him that he doesn't need a taxi from the airport back to the hotel.    Well, when we were on the way from Air France office back to the hotel, the driver suddenly pulled over ... and this one guy dropped him an envelope.   Needless to say, the driver didn't say a word about this, but we noticed that the envelope has my customer's name on it.   So, we immediately asked for it, and it turned out to be a taxi bill for 2 days.    We finally realized why the taxi rate info was sent 3 times ... it's because the customer's customer ordered the car for him, and thus was trying to tell him how much it would cost, haha.   Just don't understand why they can't just tell directly ... fortunately it wasn't a big bill.    My customer (one from US and one from Pune India) had to wait in the lobby to get the 3rd day bill (which took like 30 minutes) ... and it ended up to be around US$150.

Well ... I'll be stuck at the hotel tomorrow till my flight at 11:45pm.   I requested to extend my hotel stay (I ain't going anywhere alone for sure), and was able to negotiate a half-day rate.   Guess it'll be spam and cracker lunch tomorrow ...

Assuming I will not have any problems tomorrow ... I have to say this is much better than what my dear friends and colleagues have told me ... fortunately for me, haha.

Took some interesting photos ... will share later.