Chinese in India

I skipped gym this morning as I was really tired and chose to doze another hour instead only to be awakened by some crows who whatever reason at my window. Huh.

Tried some more of the Indian breakfast and am now able to put names to the dishes. Chole is some mild chickpea curry thing. Those fried herbal breadballs are called Mangalore Bonda and I had a little bit of some kind of non-sweet rice pudding called Vel Pongal.

British-Indian breakfast

Had another busy day at the office but we were still able to pop out for tea. Although I was hungry, I didn't have a samosa as I was looking forward to the Chinese team dinner tonight. Still the tea was absolutely fabulous.

Today I had seen the first Westener outside the hotel as we had coffees for lunch and I saw another two at the Chinese restaurant we went to with the IT, BT and Administration teams. I really feel a bit alien around here, being the only one amongst the Indians and I can now imagine how it must be for non-Europeans coming to Europe. People stare at us when we're waiting in traffic in our car. Not in an unpleasant way, just mild interest. Still, I just wonder how we;re being picked out from those amount of cars around, hehe.

Team dinner at the Mainland China was really nice. Although my colleagues spoke Hindi most of the time they we're nice enough to speak a bit English sometime or translated so we could understand them. Food was brought pretty much all the time as everyone ordered different starters which we're just handed around. This was said to be the most traditional Chinese to be found. Appetizers and starters were indeed quite amazing.
The mains however were a disappointment. I ordered spicy duck in a hot pot, but it wasn't the hot pot of spicy boiling oil where you fry your meat in. It was simply a clay pot with some duck in a thick sauce in it. Hm. And no veg with it.

Team dinner

Was good fun anyway, lots of laughs. It was almost midnight when we were back at the hotel, so I just quickly wrote this text and transferred my photos to my laptop, but was just too tired to edit them.