Horn OK Please

Yesterday (Monday) I worked the day shift. I quickly found out that my guesses on how to pronounce names were off... not too much, but enough that I had to look at the printed name to figure out exactly who I was talking to. (I guess the accent probably didn't help me either). The morning passed very quickly answering questions, observing my team work and getting to know them. We took the team out for lunch. I had butter chicken. It was so good! We had some other stuff that was good too, but don't ask me what it was. We took team pictures then headed back to work. I felt bad because we left shortly after but the teams stayed and worked late to get the rest of their work in.



Shortly after I got to work, I found out that our system was down for a portion of my process. We weren't able to use our laptops (darn secure firewalls wouldn't let us through) so when we got back to the hotel, I jumped into the pool for a quick swim then logged on and fired off some frantic emails to IS to try and find and fix the problem. When my laptop battery was just about dead (I had left the power converter at work) I called it good. I cuddled into bed and tried to watch cricket (the sport). I was so confused! So I switched channels and watched an episode of "The Nanny" instead. Stupid snooze guy is still roomed next to me. But this morning the alarm first went off at 7, so at least it was better than 5:45!



Today was my team's busy day. The weekend mail volume is very heavy, so the team in Minneapolis is busy on Mondays so when my team comes in on Tuesday they have a lot of work to do. Add that to the issues that we had on Monday (fixed!) they had ~1500 items today! Yikes! But my team is so awesome - by the end of the day they were helping out other teams with their work load.



Again the day went by very fast. Yesterday I had mentioned to Hasina that I am almost always hungry. This afternoon around 4:30 she asked me if I was hungry. I was. She asked if I wanted to go to the cafeteria. I have been warned to stay away, so I declined the offer. Later I was in the hallway and she walked by with Swati on their way for a coffee break. She invited me to come, so I decided it was a safe option. We had a small cup of coffee and some cookies in the stairwell it was nice to be able to chat with them.

Traffic was bad on the way back to the hotel. Our driver taught us some Hindi. I told him I noticed that many vehicles had "Horn OK Please" on their back bumper. He said it is required for all trucks and large vehicles to have this. We laughed about that.

When we got back to the hotel the driver went to go get his family to meet us. In the meantime, I was hungry (surprise) so I ordered room service - tandoori chicken pizza. It was so good! We had a nice visit with his family. His wife is gorgeous! And his two kids are adorable. I'm sure we are the whitest people they have seen in person.

When they left to go home, I came back up to my room to finish my pizza and this post. Linda and Heather stayed in the restaurant for a late dinner. I no sooner got back to my computer when I got several IM's from my team in Minneapolis. They needed to get a hold of Heather. I went down to tell her to call her parents. Linda and I went to her room after Linda finished her meal to see what was going on and if she was ok... She found out that her brother committed suicide. She is currently making arrangements to leave India early. But she is not sure if she is emotionally ok to make the 24 hour journey alone. Please pray for her and her parents as they deal with this sadness.