Who Can Really Say?

It's late Sunday morning in the US, mid-evening Sunday here in Hyderabad. For those keeping score at home, I'm 10.5 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Standard Time. To convert in your head, subtract 1.5 hours from your time (say 9:00AM less 1.5 equals 7:30 AM) and swap AM for PM. So 9:00AM in the US equals 7:30 PM here in India. Or, you could use your fingers and half a toe.

We (I should say I'm traveling with a co-worker, Jessica) made the trip without a hitch. The plane to London was barely half full if that, which is really nice on a long coach flight. We had to leave the plane via a stairway and get on a bus to the terminal at Heathrow, which was the reason given for why we had to go through another security check before could go to the next departure gate. I'm glad I can tie my shoes quickly.

Yet again I'm treated to have Arafat as our driver. We arrived before sunrise and rode from the airport to the hotel in near darkness on a new section of loop highway under construction surrounding Hyderabad. It's so new the access ramps were practically inaccessible without some near off-road maneuvers. Something new was going through yet another security checkpoint at the hotel -- x-ray machines and metal detecting wands included. We're staying at the Westin Mindspace in Hyderabad, a brand new hotel only about a 5 minute drive from the office. That's a bit disappointing to me as I always looked forward to the 20 minute rides back and forth from the hotel -- there's always something new to see.

A major frustration for me so far though is that I can't get this Macbook Pro to connect to the hotel wi-fi. I spent probably an hour this morning with an IT tech in the room here trying to help me out. The temporary solution is to boot the laptop into Window Vista, and that OS was able to connect. I had a Windows partition installed on the disk when I got the laptop a year and a half ago and have hardly ever used it since. Had I been asked a month ago if I still wanted to use disk space to hold the partition I'd have been tempted to say no, let's delete it. Glad that didn't happen. But as it is, this means I need to boot to the OS 10 Mac side to process my pictures, and reboot into Windows to access the internet. A pretty clunky solution but I'm not done trying to solve it.

Anyway, Jessica and I had dinner tonight in the hotel -- we're dragging a bit but that's to be expected. I wanted to post some photos but the Windows part of this hard drive is having trouble accessing the Mac side at the moment. I'll get that sorted out and post some a bit later, or perhaps tomorrow.

UPDATE:

Let's see if I can get some of these photos up.

The airport in Philly was not crowded late on a Friday night.

We arrived just before sunrise, and as I was unpacking I took this shot looking out towards the east -- check out all of the construction underway in the foreground. I know I sound like a broken record, but you can't turn a corner in this area of Hyderabad without seeing another building under construction.

This is poolside at the hotel, around sunset.

The hotel is designed around an atrium that stretches from the lobby to the highest floors. Here's what it looks like from bottom to top.

Jessica and I ate in the Italian themed restaurant tonight. The waiter wanted to show us the dessert menu but we passed -- we were sated -- and so we said we wanted "nothing". Which is what he cleverly delivered to us 5 minutes later. He came back with a plate as if to serve us dessert but we said we didn't order any. He said: "You wanted nothing, right?" We agreed, and so with a bit of flourish he delivered nothing to us!

India has the best nothing I've ever seen!