Thursday, January 17, 2008

Making Some Headway

Well it's been a pretty good day. First off I'm working from the hotel which is great because I have privacy and a phone right here at the desk - totally unlike the office where I have no phone and no privacy :)

Second I joined the Overseas Womens Club of Bangalore. They meet every Thursday here at the hotel from 10am - 12n so I went to check it out. There are a lot of expat "wives" but one of the women who I really liked said it was fine for single people as well she herself being one. She's lived in India for 27 years- she was married to an Indian but he passed away a couple of years ago. She has four dogs so you know I liked her immediately. And she gave me her card and said if I wanted to get together for dinner to give her call.

Anyway this club has a pretty good racket going on. So you pay to join which is cool because all the money goes to charitable organizations and then they have this pretty cool book they sell called In and Out of Bangalore which gives the low-down on everything. Food, shopping, apartments. And the club publishes a newsletter with activities like road trips and days at the races. So what the heck we'll give it a shot.

Then I decided to treat myself to a hot stone massage - 90 minutes of pure, unadulterated bliss. I came back upstairs, refreshed, relaxed and with a really good vibe going on. Had a very productive phone call with one of my work colleagues from another Sabre company and I'll be going to Mumbai on January 30th for the day to show him my product and pick his brain about doing business in India. And then at some point I'll go back and he'll take me around to some of the companies so I can do research about how they handle corporate travel.

And then I thought what the heck let me go to the galleria which is attached to the hotel and see what kind of shopping I can do. Bought a shirt and some silver bangles. The store I bought the shirt in also has all this amazing bedding - the textiles are wonderful and I don't even know anything about textiles - I just know what I like and this was pretty nice and really inexpensive. In the states the shirt I bought for $13.00 would be at least $35.00 and I can't even imagine how much the bedding would be. And the colors are so vibrant. Maybe it's time for me to re-think the whole black thing I have going on - as if!!!!!

Saturday one of my colleagues, who works for a different Sabre company , and I are going to Mysore. It's about a 3 hour drive and there are some temples and a museum of some sort. The driver who will be taking us is from Mysore or as they like to say - Mysore is his native so that should be very good.

Okay that's it for this post. I've got conference calls all night up to 11:30pm which is why today has been a mixture of play and work.

Oh yeah and at some point I'll take pictures of the property as it really is beautiful.