Our hotel home is fabulous. The staff is very friendly and helpful. Our rooms are large and simply furnished. The shower is the best part! There are several attractive of food and drink options in the building. We tried the Indian buffet restaurant first. The curried rice is very SPICY. I'll have to work my way up to having it as a main dish. The Japanese Noodle bar is fantastic and I am sure that our Deloitte gang will be spending lots of time in both the Cafe and Lounge. To compensate for all of this, the modest gym has everything I need. While I haven't made it to the roof top pool yet, maybe I'll be inspired enough to make a late night dip part of a semi-regular routine.
On Sunday, we had a preliminary meeting with our Deloitte hosts. We walked from the hotel to check out our future office location. I had heard a rumor that the Lemon Tree was within walking distance to our work site, but sidewalks are in short supply here and apparently so are driving rules. Luckily, transportation will be provided by Deloitte for daily pick up and return. In the afternoon, Katie, Danny - who had arrived from Philadelphia - and I took a taxi tour of Hyderabad and did some shopping at the nearby mall. There are plenty of American brands available, even some that made me homesick for my team in Hanover! Contrary to what I had read, the weekend crowd was pretty much like a busy weekend in the States.
The most impressive part of the tour was Lumbini Park and Hussain Sagar Lake. The 58 foot tall statue of Gautama Buddah was commissioned by N. T. Rama Rao, who served as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh in the 198os. Apparently, he was inspired by the the Statue of Liberty on a visit to New York. (I see what he did there.)
