India Blog - Day 5

This morning was the same thing. Get up, answer some emails, talk on skype, and eat the same breakfast at the hotel buffet: pineapple, french toast, bacon, potatoes, and pastry.

We drove to the Cognizant building and we met with the teams again. I got to spend some time just with my team that I work with every day. It was nice. I wish I had been able to spend more time with them, because it was good to get to know them and put faces to the names and voices.















For lunch we had catered food again. At 3:00, we had a "fun force" activity where the teams get together to play some kinds of games. There was one where you had to try to pretend you were somebody else and copy their mannerisms and such. Then I participated in a contest to see how much bread you could eat in 30 seconds. It was fun and I was sad that we really didn't get to spend that much time with the teams.

After that we left the Cognizant building to go do some shopping. Here is me in front of the Cognizant building:















Their building has some pretty funky architecture and colors.



















After that, Vasu took us to the train station and we rode the train downtown. Luckily, the train wasn't very crowded at all. Randy joined this guys hanging out the train, but I neglected to get a picture of him.



















On the way we looked at lots of trash and some slums, and some people playing cricket in a vacant lot.















When we got downtown we went shopping at a street called Ranganathan Street.















There were tons of street vendors and small stores and big stores. I bought some dresses for the girls at one of the larger stores















It was very crowded and hard to focus on stuff. One guy came up to me and wanted to sell me a drum. I was slightly interested in it, but realized it would be hard to fit in my luggage. I tried to leave but he followed me for almost the whole street, dropping the price from 450 to 400 etc down to 200 finally (about $4). Ganesh was with me and kept telling him to get lost. It was interesting.















Finally, Vasu took us all in the cars to a couple more shops. Then we took a really short "auto" ride (that's what these guys called the yellow cabs). If I can figure out how to upload the video of the ride, I will.















Finally, we came back to the hotel, had dinner with all the management guys from Cognizant, and went to bed.