One more update.  The sun is up and from my hotel I can see the huge Hyatt hotel not a five minute walk away.  Between here and there is a shanty town of sorts.  Little handmade shacks and lean-tos, probably 50 of them.  Lots of mud.  Animals wandering around with the people as they amble between the makeshift buildings.  Abject poverty.  So I guess what I’m saying is that there’s still ample room to build more call centers over here.

I’m in India.  I arrived after midnight local time, so I can’t say I’ve really seen much of it.   There are lots of “helpful” people here who want to carry your bags, your friend’s bags, your friends, wash your feet, or pretty much anything else you might give them some rupees for.  Speaking of rupees, I’m feeling rich.  I traded $20 U.S. for over 1750 rupees.  Okay, so it isn’t worth much, but it feels cool to be wandering around with $500 bills in your pocket.

 

The hotel is very nice.  Quite a step up from the Holiday Inn Express in Belfast.  You know, I waited all day for some crisis to come up which I could fix and claim it was because I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I got nuthin’.   Anyway, back to Mumbai.  We went down to the dining room (which was still open at 1am) and had some food.  (I’m reluctant to label the meals as keeping track of the time is increasingly difficult.)  Oddly, we weren’t alone.  There were quite a few people there.  To be in the lobby of the hotel, the activity level looks more like 9pm than the middle of the night.

 

Oh, and the weather.  I will never complain again about the humidity back home.   Okay, that’s probably not true, but this is a whole new level of wet air.  It’s thick, with palpable moisture.  Walking through the air is like walking through a light rain – without the refreshing coolness and the desire to sing and splash in the puddles.  I can hardly wait to walk outside tomorrow once the sun comes up.

Well, what the Spanish lack in airport securlty, the Irish make up for. This morning, I endured the most thorough carry-on search ever. Every bit of my laptop bag was extracted. Every device had to be turned on. Every notebook riffled through. Then when she was done, she individually swabbed everything for explosive residue. Good thing we weren’t running late for the flight! In the end, I’m sure it was for the best. She did confiscate a tiny 1″x 1/2″ multi-tool. In the wrong hands this could easily have been used to puncture a seat cover. We’re all a bit safer now.

I’m considering a plot for a made-for-TV movle. The plane experiences mid-flight mechanical problems. The dashing young pilot is worried he’ll lose the plane. Right after the touching flashback where he thinks about his beautiful bride and the baby he’ll never see born, the haggared old vetran in the tower radios up the solution. Just remove that panel and cross-connect those wires. And this is where the tension builds. The camera zooms in on the panel, and to everyone’s horror, it’s affixed by two (key dramatic music) screws.

With nary a nail clipper on board, the flight attendants scour the cabin begging passengers for anything small and sturdy enough to remove the fasteners.

Meanwhile, the plane wanders near restricted air space, and Dick Cheny orders it shot down.

Oh, and there should probably be a small child on board who is awaiting an organ transplant.