No Diving

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Swimming in India for the First Time

If I don't go to sleep soon, it will be tough to go swimming for a second time tomorrow, as I need to get up early for my first day of the assignment.... Actually, I'll need to get up early every day for the assignment, particularly if I want to swim prior to commuting.

Today, we checked out the biggest pool in the area, a public, community pool, and it was huge, except that it had showers like the ones at Dorothy Heroy, in the community where I grew up, i.e., a basic room with no lockers, no privacy and no mirrors. Would be hard to bring my work-clothes to that pool, and to change into them afterwards.

Still, it was fun to see serious swimmers here. After breakfast, I opted to swim in the hotel's pool (see pix from Pat's photo blog).

Around the pool

The heartiest palm trees surrounded me, with the thickest trunks I'd ever seen -- compared with Florida's and Israel's -- and with chipwirrels and crows the color of dark taupe with midnight purple wings.

What's a chipwirrel? It's the name that Pat coined at breakfast for the local chipmunks. The one we saw was giant, with thick stripes all the way down his or her back and a tail almost as fluffy and long as a squirrel's.

Yesterday, I blogged about wanting to be free to relish human variety and today, we marveled at flora and fauna variety.

Live music, delicious company and soothing food

Today, for lunch, we met my director in this assignment, along with his China counterpart. I loved that they included Pat during this first meeting, since it was during the weekend, and in any case. Pat photographed some of the experience and added the pix to her photo blog, though I took the one of the singing trio, as my chair was at a better angle than Pat's...and so if the quality's not as good as the other shots, it's not Pat's doing.

After we said goodbye to David and Lauge, we got 10 passport pictures at a one-hour photo studio that reminded me of the photo studio in The Notorious Betty Page -- in terms of architecture and decor; the photos actually came out nicely.

We had gotten them, as we were told that lots of things we'll want here, including cell phone service, require a passport photo, and then we tried to get cell phones with a post-paid contract from Airtel, and then learned that we couldn't until we had a real address to give them. We are feeling a bit nomadic and yet, if we had to be nomads anywhere, this gorgeous hotel is the place to be so.