For those who have waited for updates, my apologies for being silent so long. Apparently, although internet connection is widely available in India, the new hotel (A luxurious 5-star hotel called Lotus Suites) I was moved to from Colaba charged rs150 per hour. Other than the Hotel, the surrounding area of Andheri Kurla road had only one internet connection that was less than stable.

It rained EVERY single day of the week I was at Lotus.
Here's a little something I've come up with to help you imagine the condition I was in. Come on try it, it would be fun. ;P

Take a heap of milo and add water to it slowly, (not too much mind you, we're not making milo drinks here) when it become a pile of brown mush, heat it up in a toaster. The resultant muck will resemble the state of the road called Andheri Kurla. At times it almost looks like a gigantic mars bar.

The Singaporean part of me had died and gone to hell. It screamed bloody murder and expired the moment I set foot into the brown sludge. Sure, there were auto-rickshaws everywhere picking up passengers, but no one actually likes to go to Andheri Kurla, and you were obliged to make a journey on foot sometimes.

I can understand this. Andheri Kurla is India's giant moving carpark. Almost at any time you would care to mention, the roads are jammed packed with vehicles of any description, taking every opportunity to make good use of their horns. If the driver dropped you off at any point on the road, he would most likely be caught in a three-hour-jam afterwards, thus losing any hope of making more money.

It's so jammed that pretty often you could stop your vehicle, go to a stall on the side of the road, have a cup of tea, come back and the traffic would still not have moved. That actually happened a few times.

Oh yeah, I've finally have had an explanation of why the people like to use their horns so much. A fair number of vehicles don't have side or rear-view mirrors. They horn everytime they make a move, so that people behind are aware that something's about to happen, be it a turn or a stop.

We were undergoing Induction at Banyan Park, a Tata facility maintained by the company. Yep, it's a park alright. Trees, birds, flowers, bats. Place is run like a holiday resort and even has it's own resident staff cooks. The induction focused alot on providing information and background of TCS and a few short interesting self-improvement talks.

et voila the first pic of the day. That's taken on the day we had a short introduction to Indian food culture. Here's the cast of characters sharing my little adventures so far.

From the left to the right
First Row, (Canada)Maixim & Guillaume (Ireland) Carl, (Chile), Avarro,
Second Row, (Brazil) Paulo, (Singapore) Yours Truly, (Canada) Abid, (Italy) Silvestre, (Senegal &Canada) Awa, (Brazil) Natalia
Third Row, Crouching, Daniel (Nigeria)

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we had ANOTHER party sometime in the week Also in a place which would burst your ear-drums to be there, celebrating the birthday of Marco from Uruguay. It was ...well...noisy, but I came away with treasure beyond measure, another friend.
(My, I sure am piling up with friends...)

She's called Winnie. Hi Winnie! If you're reading this, you got my message about the wrong blog address I gave you. Sorry. She's from HongKong and is working with United Way as an AIESEC trainee. She was an AIESEC officer too before...you know her Triin? ;p

It was a little too noisy at the party to talk much, but I managed to nab her contact details and set up for a little dinner on the Friday before I was scheduled to end my stay in Mumbai and fly to Trivendrum. More alittle later, I'm in Trivendrum right now and getting a slow death by mosquitoes. Now where are my malaria pills?