I’ve been anticipating this trip to come to our Mumbai office for almost a year and now that I’m here, this entire week has been a blur. Almost every hour of the 4 days that we planned to be here were spent in a single meeting room watching team overviews and having planning meetings. My role leading up to this point was identifying the breakout sessions that we needed to have, who the audience needed to be, and help facilitate the meetings. The whole reason we’re here was to learn about the existing team’s capabilities and also build out an app development team.
Everyone worked their butts off and I was told by my boss at the end that this was one of the most productive trips to India for him, which was great to hear.
The first day we came, we went down to the Starbucks for some drinks before starting our meetings. I kind of feel bad for the cashier who wasn’t familiar with western names but now everyone has a new nickname for the trip.
Andrew = Andro, Jeff = Jaff, Bryan = Brayen, Lucy = Tusi.
Because most of our days were just in meetings and we went home late at night to just eat and sleep. I didn’t have much to blog about except I feel like I need to write about my personal struggles here (I recognize I’m being melodramatic).
Sound
You never appreciate the quiet of a smaller city like Minneapolis until your ears get assaulted with the constant honking of cars in a 3rd world country. People really lay down the horn in traffic for like the smallest thing. Even though we were on the 4th floor of the office building, I couldn’t concentrate on work because of the noise from the street. I pointed it out to my co worker and he was like “What are you talking about” and he had to tune his ears to what I was referring to and he said that because he grew up here, his brain must filter it out, sort of like the chirping of birds.
Smell
Every time I walk down the hall an overwhelming floral smell hits my nostrils thinking a guest has overdone it with the perfume. I would walk past a tall black tower thinking it was a malfunctioning air purifier because it wasn’t pulling the smell out of the air but in fact, it’s the thing causing it. Our hotel has these electronic air “fresheners” with large canisters of scented oil inside that spray a fine mist into the air. In places where there are no outlets, they have urns with the oil with a candle burning underneath. Bryan Brayen and I have turned it into our own little game of unplugging the towers and seeing how long it takes for hotel staff to figure it out and replug it back in. After 2 days of playing this cat and mouse game, I realized I can keep the wall plug in and just unplug it from behind the tower. It has been at least 2 days and the staff have yet to figure it out.
Heat
It’s hot AF all day every day. Before coming, our Indian co workers were unsure about our plans to come in early May saying that it’s quite hot here. I thought “how hot could it really be?” I was wrong. It’s so hot here that when you first walk outside you can’t help but say “oofdah it’s hot”.
Taste
Coming into this trip, I was looking forward to diversifying my Indian cuisine palate. What I’ve realized is that I have a Minnesotan level of spice tolerance and I can’t handle the level of spiciness in the food here because I’m a weak baby. Actually I take it back, I’m sure Indian babies eat spicier food than me. Also, I bit my cheek last week and I have an ulcer on the tip of my tongue so talking hurts and any spicy food just feels like fire in my mouth.
We have a dinner buffet downstairs in the hotel restaurant. Every single one of the Indian dishes had green chilies in it.
When we go out for Thai food, I’ll ask for level 2 or 3 spicy. I would say the buffet curries were at least a 4 if not hotter. I’m sure if I could get past the spice, these dishes would taste amazing but I can’t do it. One of my co workers said I’m just a picky eater but if you’ve read my blog, you’ve seen that I’ve eaten live octopus tentacles, sheep’s brain, horse sashimi. I am NOT a picky eater, I just can’t handle Indian levels of spicy food.
Someone invited me to get ice cream at Apsara Ice Cream, she said the guava ice cream is so good because they put chili powder on top. To me, this is just an exercise in masochism.
I think that spicy food is just so ingrained in this culture that for someone to say that they don’t like spice, it’s like saying they intentionally like bland food or something. I will own the fact that on this trip I am that person that goes to a Chinese restaurant and asks for “normal” food like orange chicken.
Speaking of Chinese food, we were planning on going to a Chinese restaurant near the office and I looked up the menu…
HELP
Andrew – I LOVE your posts. Thanks for taking us around the world with you on your adventures. I’m glad life is going so well for you. 🙂
Hi Kristin! Good to see you here, my favorite HR person ever. This is Sandhya by the way. I worked with the Coalition group until a few years ago.
Because I’m a weak baby 😂 great post!
Andro 🙂 that oil spray is extremely annoying considering that they could just use tropical flowers which are available abundantly and can perfume a hallway naturally.