3/16/09 Noida, India

Ranveer was going to come and take us shopping today, but he was unable to because his car was not working. So we ventured out on foot from the hotel. The neighborhood looks pretty rough as do all neighborhoods here. We walked down to the end of the road where, if there is a light, it was not being obeyed. We had to walk carefully to cross as car, autorichshaw, truck, bus, bicycle tried to guess each others moves and ours while turning onto the cross street. No yielding to pedestrians, just dodging and honking. Some kids came begging and we told them no. They asked Tracey to take their pictures and she obliged. They were anxious to see themselves on the display afterwords. They wouldn't leave us so I waved and said bye bye. The kept saying something and holding out their hands and acting like they did not understand us. As we were crossing over to come back on the other side of the street, the kid waved and said "bye bye."

We walked over holes in the ground that looked like sink holes, but it turns out they were sewer man holes that disintegrated (we could tell by the smell and the flies).

We walked part way down an ally were the fronts of the buildings had no walls or doors on the front. Shops had bikes and bike parts, 50 foot pieces of rebar folded in half, paint, scooters, and other hardware, none of which looked new (except for maybe the rebar and some of the bikes). There was a couple of guys unloading a truck full of red bricks on the other side of the alley against a wall. They were next to some sand and gravel piles. Further down where we turned around, there were 3 cows on the other side (main street side) of the wall eating from what looked like piles of trash on the side of the road. I noticed there was a trough like gutter beneath the sidewalks with murky water in it and wondered if that was the sewer too (Ranveer later verified this is gray water sewer).

On the way back, I saw a Royal Enfield motorcycle parked on the side of the road.

Around 5, Ravinder, who is a native Indian, but a--n employee of the company we work for--and liaison for the reason we are here, Akhil, and Gogan came to pick us up. When we weren't quite done eating dinner. I ordered some shrimp in some kind of red curry sauce and asked for not too much spicy. When they brought it out they said "this is a spicy dish", and if I wanted they could add some cream. I declined and ate it. It might have been the hottest thing I have ever eaten. Tracey tried it (she likes spicy food) and said yes, it was very spicy. I ate a shrimp that was oven hot too and had to take a drink. When I did, it went the wrong way and I nearly choked to death while my sinuses burned from the spiciness.

We sat with the 4 of them for tea and coffee for a little bit before we left for the office. They drove us past about 5 other buildings occupied by other divisions of their company before arriving at our building. When we arrived, there was a crowd to greet us on the steps on the way in. We stopped in the building foyer to more greetings and applause. They had us light a group of 5 ceremonial candles and then put a red dot on our foreheads as a welcome gesture. (I later found that the dot is called a bindi or tilak).

We then were given a tour of the building and assigned to our "cabin" (office). We weren't in there very long as we started right away training.

At dinner time, we went out with Ravinder, Mohit, Gogan, and Petri to a Chinese restaurant. According to Gogan, they have the best "non-spicy" chinese food (it was very good).

We left the office around 5am and arrived at hotel around 550.