Daytime Food and Drink

I’m getting used to the food and drink options at the client, but it all takes some adjusting. For example…

There are guys in blue scrubs labeled housekeeping who do the janitorial functions in the building. One of their jobs is to walk around and distribute water bottles to every desk on a daily basis. This sounds like a fantastic idea, until you realize that the bottles are reused day after day, and the water is just the filtered water from the building. Hm. Now I know why everyone here never holds the bottle to their lips when drinking from it. However, ever since the flooding, they’ve been passing out sealed bottled water – excellent! Usually I just hoard bottled water from the hotel and bring 3-4 bottles to work daily. I’m guessing the switch to packaged water is because it’s not advisable to drink the regular water since the floods, even for locals. For this reason I haven’t been drinking any filtered water coffee or tea either.

There is free coffee and tea at the client, but only a limited selection. The dispenser machine on our floor has a few options. I’ve only tried the coffee, which is watered down with a lot of sugar and milk, and the tea, which is a cardamom tea, also with sugar and milk. (No option for black coffee or plain tea). The most amusing part is that it comes out in these tiny cups that feel like the size of a large thimble. It just allows for more ubiquitous coffee breaks, but shorter as well. There’s only so many minutes you can sit there and sip on a tiny cup.

As far as food, it’s not like American offices where there is food everywhere. US offices are always full of vending machines, treats that people have baked and brought into share, candy bowls, and leftovers from working lunches. Here, there is only food in the cafeteria downstairs, and most of it isn’t available in any kind of takeout form. This results in less snacking, which is healthier, but also less options on what to eat and when. Unfortunately, we have one of the least desirable cafeterias, so we sometimes venture out to other client buildings within the complex. The team favorite is the cafeteria with the Pizza Hut Express. You can get a personal size pizza for about $2, and yes, it takes exactly like the Pizza Hut in the US, altough I don’t think that’s to its credit.

I’ve been fairly budget-minded lately because of my low per diem, so I have been opting for the 16 rupee mini meals, which is usually rice, daal or some sort of soup, bread, and another small side dish. Today though, I wasn’t that happy with my lunch, so I treated myself to a prepacked ice cream bar for dessert. I splurged an entire 20 rupees! That was more than my lunch! True, my lunch was only 37 cents, but another 46 cents for ice cream – I can’t be doing that every day! ; )