Hello from Hyderabad, India!

Yes, friends, I am in Hyderabad.

I am holed up in my room enjoying air-conditioning. It looks to be quite hot outside, just judging by how bright the sun is.

I am staying at the Ista Hotel in Gachibowli. While my room isn't as big as what I'm used to when I go on a business trip to the US, it *is* pretty nice. I just discovered a couple minutes ago that the TV automatically mutes when you are on the phone (room landline)! How cool is that? I've never been in a hotel where they had that feature. Amazing!

I don't feel too good, though. It may be because of all the coughing and sneezing at the boarding area last night in Changi airport, while I was waiting to board the flight to Hyderabad. I am ordering breakfast in the room because I don't feel too well to go downstairs to get breakfast.

Today I have to call my teammate to tell him what time is okay to start tomorrow. Yes, my teammates are all meeting me tomorrow here at my hotel and they are going to take me around the city! I am so excited about this! Then I have to call the travel agency to ask them to have someone from their company come over so I can change US dollars to India rupees. I had US$100 changed in Changi last night so I have money to pay for the cab. The exchange rate was INR41 to US$1 so I got INR4100. I'm missing INR600, if we are to go by the going exchange rate. But 41 to a US$1 is still a pretty good deal I would say. Not like when I changed US$1000 to Euros in Schiphol. I only got around 600 Euros for US$1000. Can you believe that?!

I am waiting for breakfast while typing up this post. I should try to remove the SD card from my mobile phone so I can use my card reader to download pics. Windows sucks in that I can't use the bluetooth to connect to the phone and browse the SD card. Sucks! That's one of the things I love about my Mac---it lets me connect wirelessly to devices and browse its contents. The annoying thing with my phone (a Nokia 6700 classic) is that the SD card is a pain to take out! I think the probability of me taking off a fingernail is higher than getting the damn card out.