Tuesday, 1997-06-10                         Trip Report #3

In the paper this morning, I saw a note about "Monsoon reaches X"
(where "X" is some city I didn't recognize).  Oh oh.

Today I started teaching internals (in the morning).  I started
by mentioning that Sees Candy is a 3000 user ... and then gave the
students the two boxes of Sees Candy I brought from California.
That went over well, and the candy was gone by lunch time.

Gopi took me to lunch (at the Chimney).

After lunch, I did a two hour "philosophy of VSM/MM" talk, which
was video taped.  There were about 5 power outages during this.
I then had a 1.5 hour "3000s at customer sites" talk, discussing how
various customers use the 3000.

I left the building around 6:30 PM.  It had just started to rain.
I went to the street to get a taxi.  Eventually, an empty one came
by, and 3 other guys tried to hire it "on the meter".  The driver
shook them off.  I said "how much for Windsor Hotel?".  He said
20, I said ok.  By being willing to spend an extra 5 rupees, I had
a dry seat in the taxi, instead of being caught in the downpour
that broke loose about 2 minutes later.  Remember: about 36 rupees
per dollar!

I got back to the hotel, where they were having a "Kebab Festival"
(it had been mentioned in the Asia Times newspaper, which is how I
found out about it!)  So, I had a couple of kebabs (seekh kebab,
(minced lamb sausage, cooked in a tandoor), and shammi (?) kebab,
a really minced lamb plus ? (flour?), deep fried (very tasty).  I also
had garlic naan .. wow, a *lot* of garlic (tasted great!).
The festival started a bit late, because they tore it down when the
downpour started at 6:30, and set it back up again at 7:20 or so.

About 9:30 PM, the phone rings ... a voice in halting English
(probably a Chinese speaker) says "hello? Mr. Stan? With HP?"
And starts to tell me how thankful he was for the interview.  I'm
thinking ... who is this, and am I supposed to be giving or getting
the interview?  Finally, I find out he wants "Mr. Dan" with
HP Singapore ... who, I guess, is also staying at the Windsor Manor.
So ... he says "so sorry" about 10 times, and hangs up.

About 10:30 PM, the phone rings ... a voice in halting English
says "hello? Mr. Stan? With HP?" ... yep.

This time, after saying "wrong number", I called the operator and
said "hi, I'm not Mr. Dan from HP Singapore" :)

--