Sunny skies.

Well the monsoon (knock on wood) seems to have finally cleared the air here, and what a treat to see sunshine! I haven't written in a while because I've been quite under the weather (maybe the changing of the seasons is to blame), but a lot has happened!

Friday we had two company visits. We visited Nerolac, an Asian Paint company, in the morning and the time there was quite interesting. I was impressed with the amount of innovation the company focuses on... because I don't think innovation when I think of paint. The visit was a little too lengthy for my taste, however, because it was very early in the morning and I had not gotten much sleep the night before. That made for a very antsy time for me during the almost three hour company visit. They had a really neat "Experience Room" though with software to test out what colors would look like painted on the walls of your house. Pretty neat.

After Nerolac, we headed to the other end of town, Churchgate, and stopped for lunch. We ate at a place called Jazz by the Bay which is well known for it's karaoke. I had a Greek salad which was quite tasty, and enjoyed the company I sat with at lunch. We then walked a few blocks to the Indian Merchants Chamber. Our visit there was very interesting, and a much better length. It's pretty amazing how many members they have compared to the York County Chamber of Commerce I used to work for! On our way out, we passed one of the biggest religious heads of the Hindu religion and it was sort of neat to see his grand entrance.

We then returned back to Matunga, and Stella and I headed to the gym. However, clearly my eating habits in Mumbai do no support a vigorous workout. Needless to say, I had not eaten enough and wound up burning more calories than I took in and was fell quite ill and almost blacked out. I am fine, made it back to the hostel and shortly after put myself to bed. I woke up Saturday very ill though, and spent the entire day in bed, which isn't a very nice feeling when you are on a rock hard mattress. I experienced a condensed twenty four hour bug, and was continuously interrupted by workers attempting to fix our windows, but pumped up on Vitamin C, took some Immunity Fizz and slept. I felt much better by evening, although decided to skip the gym for the evening (good decision on my part).

Yesterday, Sunday, was a really good day. We went down to Colaba to meet Zelon and Jaime from Temple. Zelon is the Director for Graduate Career Management Center, and Jaime is the Assistant Director for the IMBA Program. We met them in the lobby of their hotel and took them to a coffee shop for lunch. I ate, once again (a new trend I am enjoying) and then we hit Colaba Causeway to go shopping (of course!). I found some more great deals, so now I probably have more Christmas presents then people to give Christmas presents to! It was fun showing Jaime and Zelon around and got me even more excited for my Mom's visit (as if that were possible). I also met a shop keeper Rajesh who gave me a great deal because I told him I would tell all my friends to come and bring my mother back. And then a bunch of us went back to the shop to buy more, so I think I have a new friend in Mumbai.

After shopping, we headed over to Bandra to the St. Andrew's Theater to catch the play, "Double Deal." It was laughable... but wasn't a comedy! It was an overacted, melodramatic soap opera like performance and it really was entertaining and made us laugh out loud! I don't know whether my favorite part was the loud music/sound effects that were conflicting to the plot and unrealistic, the actors breaking the fourth wall and complaining about someone's cell phone coming off, or the female actress' main line a muttered "sh*t sh*t sh*t sh*t" under her breath. No, I think perhaps the best part was the morale of the play. The female lead kept being beat up by this strange man she met in the marketplace and agreed to drive home. Of course she entered his house, and then every time she tried to leave and he attacked her... she decided to stay!!! A glutton for punishment surely. We all wanted to yell out "Just Leave" and the play would be over! It was kind of like the Bollywood Film we saw... enjoyable for all the wrong reasons, but enjoyable nonetheless.

When the play was finished, we headed to a restaurant called Olive (confession, I will miss some of the Italian restaurants here... they all have amazing atmospheres and usually half decent food... but it's the atmosphere I will miss) that has a Mediterranean/Italian Cuisine. I sat across from Zelon and Jaime and it was really comforting to talk to them and touch base with Temple to get all of our questions answered (it looks like there's a 99.9% chance that I can make the big family holiday next summer, so a big sigh of relief for that) and it was exciting to hear about the next chapter. Zelon was also great to talk to about my future career plans, etc. The food was quite good as well, although, of course, didn't agree with my stomach.

We were at dinner for a long time! In fact, we didn't get back to the hostel until 1 am, which was quite unfortunate. The only nice part was that I was able to catch up with a lot of people from home, since Stella was staying up doing work anyway. We finally finished our preparations for our meetings with Jaime today and turned the lights off around 3 am. I woke up on the wrong foot as I watched a cockroach crawl across the floor...not a nice way to wake up. We had class at 9, so we were all dragging tail, especially because our 9 am class was IT Perspectives... a class for which the purpose we cannot derive and who's content is more than boring. I would have skipped it because I was so tired, but I plan on doing that next week when I am playing Daughter Hostess. This class is really quite pointless, and we have one class member that insists on asking questions simple to have his voice heard, and who's questions are perhaps even more irrelevant than the course itself!

We had a break before a meeting with Jaime and Zelon, so I just sat around and talked with some of my classmates, and put my head down for a while because once again I did not feel well. Me not feeling well simply progressed through the afternoon, and I wound up leaving the session early because I felt ill. I'm hoping to feel better by this morning, as I came back and rested and pumped myself with fluids. Zelon and Jaime came by to check out our hostels, they are hoping to improve the living situation for next year (or at least create some equality between the guy's and girl's living situations). I then rested some more, before heading to the Sheraton for dinner with everyone.

Tomorrow we have class at 10:30 and then I hope to feel well enough to go the gym before my one-on-one meeting with Zelon to discuss my resume. The countdown 'til Mom's arrival is optimistically small and I am very much looking forward to my time with her. In the meanwhile, I just need to regain my health and get through the week. One of the 15 of our members here just dropped the program last night, which came as a shock to us all. We are halfway through, so I really feel to leave now is a waste of time and money, considering the first half of our coursework was not for credit! But it was his decision, and it was probably for the best.

So... then there were 14.