Howaito-san

So, after the tummy trouble, Marcelo and I have (food-wise) turned into the anti-us. I had absolutely no Indian food today and Marcelo only had a little at breakfast. I think it's a combination of the stomach bug and a bit of ennui. For the first two weeks, we were pretty much eating Indian food 3 times/day every day. I think we've reach a temporary saturation point. So, to all my foodie friends, I apologize. Maybe we'll bounce back in the last week.

One interesting thing that Marcelo had for breakfast today was a sort of panini-like sandwich with creamed corn inside that was made in one of those infomercial-ish sandwich presses where you take a white bread sandwich, smush it, and it makes two triangle halves. Darcy and I have one. I had no idea it was so ubiquitous. Today's breakfast picture is Marcelo's plate because I wimped and had two dry pancakes, pineapple, white toast, and mineral water again.

As for the training, we have officially finished the formal lecturing by me, which I'm sure is a relief to everyone. Our fourth resource just started today, so the guys will be transferring their knowledge to him. The poor guy had to meet us on his very first day of work at SSS -- he must feel overwhelmed. Our entire team is in a temporary hotelling space right now until the new building is ready for them to move into on Dec 19.

At lunch, we went back to Mainland China and had dim sum dumplings and soup. Very tummy-friendly. I think that the novelty of being in India is wearing off, so I'm starting to get cranky about stuff like not being addressed directly (waiters only talk to Marcelo). I started butting in and answering because it was really getting on my nerves. I may not be welcome at this restaurant anymore.

In the afternoon, Shirish walked us through two possible frameworks for approaching the automation project. One was to record test cases (like we tried to do) and the other was to use programming instead and extract data from Excel spreadsheets, which was really cool. The spreadsheets contain all the steps and data, so anyone who can use Excel can literally create an automated test case that is run by a QTP script. It's really flexible and powerful. It takes a lot more skill to program those scripts than to record a macro, of course, but Shirish did this type of thing for years already, so he's ready to make it happen. We were amazed. I can't wait for you guys at AV to see it.

On our way back up to our offices, I noticed that someone was drying red chilis on the roof of the building next to us. When we came back down at the end of the day, they were gone so I guess it doesn't take too long in this hot sun.

Dinner was a wimp-out again. We asked our driver to take us to Pizza Express straight from work and we had a really quick dinner of Quattro Fromagi and Ham/Cheese/Olive pizzas and made it back to the hotel before 8. I'm looking forward to a great night's sleep.

The most exciting news of the day is that we are booked at the Taj Holiday Village for this Friday and Saturday night. This wasn't the hotel that we originally wanted to stay in, but it looks amazing as well. The hotel is directly on the beach and we will be staying in garden view cottages that have their own balconies and private lawns. The pool looks fantastic too. We'll see when we get there, but I think this weekend will be a lot of lounging and not too much doing. Maybe snorkeling. I'm soooo looking forward to it.

Hope you all are well. Goodnight everyone...