Around the World

Yesterday evening was a yearly kick off meeting arranged by the office in china. Here all the employees would participate. Here would be a speech by the top guys of the company and then some games, some cultural program and then dinner.

I was invited as a partner to this meeting by my colleagues here. I was in a dilemma. This meeting mainly had drinking and eating; both of which were not suitable for me. It would get over only at 10 in the night and it was extremely far away from my hotel.

I told my colleagues that I would leave early as I would not have dinner. I said would just stay for the meeting.

The office shuttle took us there. It was a long 1 hr 15 min drive to that place. Then they put some mark on our hand which can be seen only by some torch kind of thing that they had. It was like some barcode which they would count when we go in and come out….some hi-tech stuff…

We went in and my colleagues ordered coffee for me. It came in such a big mug…it was black coffee as usual…I dint feel like having it. But I dint want to make a fuss and so finished it. At first there were snakes hanging in rings in every table. I was terrified. Then I was told it was German bread made in that shape and look. They had sprinkled some til seeds on top to give it the snake look.

I ate that snake like bread….with some orange juice and coffee…I know …very odd combo…but that’s what was edible by me…rest was not for me to even touch…

I clicked a few snaps and then was just chatting with colleagues….when I realized that te whole thing was going to happen in Chinese language…..oh what a waste of coming. It was no point. But I was not disappointed…in fact I was happy. I immediately said that I’ll leave. But they said they had ordered veg noodles for me….oh god….I dint ask for it…dint know when they did that…

That was kept now on the table. I had very little and I told them to finish it off..

One of my colleagues came with me to get me a taxi to the nearest subway station. I then took two different metros from there and got into another taxi from the subway station close to my hotel and got back home.

I had lots of office work to finish and the network was too slow. I spent almost 1.5hrs doing office wok and I totally forgot it was Thursday and I was supposed to do bhajan.

Remembered it only when I spoke to dad at 11 in the nite. Anyway…could not help…so just did some little stuff like bhajan and went to sleep.

That was the great escape from the dinner party…god’s grace…:)

The best part is that…today these people have got me a gift. It seems every partner who went got a gift…some nice spongy huge towel…they also got me the cute mouse doll on the table that I had admired for a long time  )….isn’t that great??