Lunch is alive

New day, new people, no new clothes.
Off to breakfast in the bathroom slippers it is! (they're new...)
I'm kind of getting used to not having stuff already.
It's easy being a parasite and just borrowing pretty much everything there is to borrow. I've got an excuse now. Cable to load pictures to the PC, powercord, pills, slippers, t-shirts, skirts. The clothes are even ironed and impregnated with bugspray! Good stuff!

Sue, our self-appointed medical advisor carrying enough drugs to start a chain of pharmacies, gave a breakfast tour and was able to point out exactly which fruits had been washed with bottled water, which items had uncooked milk in them, what things to avoid and: oh my God Sandra! Did you drink from the orange bucket in the room!? (it sounds worse than it is, trust me.)
Looking at people's reactions however, I thought I would have instant Delhi belly (at least) but luckily, I seem to be used to more than drinking from something the colleagues thought to be a room humidifier (or a rice cooker). Hey, I eat at the IBM cafeteria...

Off to "class" where the CDC team (Bob and Cubby) told us all about Bombay/Mumbai, the key performance indicators for each of our projects and handed out the per diems.
Our new best friends, hotel manager Glen, Frontdesk Amin and housekeeping manager Mahesh (Laundry m'am? No Mahesh, not quite yet...) came to introduce themselves and we bribed them with tootsie rolls (nurse Sue brought about 5 pounds of them).

At about 2:30pm, we felt the time had come to strenghten the inner human and -finally- went off for lunch at a renowned seafood restaurant.
The food was so fresh, it first crawled over the table before returning to our plates in a less happy form (at least for them).
I'm not necessarily a big fan of meeting my food up close and personal but the Bombay duck (it's fish), fish curry and tandoori prawns were delish! Yum's the word.
And here it's "kush" meaning "i'm happy".
A walk on the market and a pair of sandals later, we went for a coffee, still wondering how we could have walked around all afternoon without seeing any foreigners.

Meanwhile back at the hotel no word on the lost luggage yet.
Susi, my German UK friend, told me it's only normal the luggage handlers went on strike after having to carry my concrete bags on the conveyer belt. Hmm... You think?

Red alert: mosquito in the room - off on another borrowing spree...











For more pictures: http://sandra.aminus3.com/