Our last day was one filled with celebration. First off, it was the day before Republic Day, so the events committee decked out the office with the Indian flag colors of saffron, white, and green.
We also dressed in those colors, but each person wore only one color. We had to assemble like this to form the colors of the flag. I thought it evident of the more collectivist culture I witnessed in India.
Then we assembled to sing the national anthem.
For lunch, we drove / rode about 5 km to a place called The Great Kabab Factory.
This is how one valet parks in Hyderabad: leave the car here, then find the valet guy to move it.
I ate a bunch of small veggie patties and bread, and for dessert, we had kulfi, which is like a ground nut-filled ice cream on a stick that one eats like corn on the cob.
After lunch, we finalized the presentation for the project we had been working on over the past week. I prepared the presentation, which meant that I gave the presentation in the end. After some points where we thought we weren’t going to finish and we couldn’t agree on how to proceed, the last day of project work and the presentation went swimmingly. We had something we could be proud of as a group, and we got to present it as such to the rest of our India team.
Our hosts gave us gifts – small figures of the Charminar and Buildium mugs.
Then we opened one out of three liquor bottles that Coryndon brought along, a 100-something proof bourbon. Most of us drank it out of champagne flutes, some by choice, others by some quite overt peer pressure. The one bottle was enough.
The four of us visitors were requested to play a final foosball game in front of a rowdy audience. Then the finalists in the office-wide tournament played the championship match.
We went out for dinner to the place Anil took us on the first day, this time with almost the entire office. We said our farewells to the rest of the team with lots of handshakes and man-hugs and talk about the next time we might see each other, possibly at our 10,000 customer celebration.
By the end, I was overwhelmed with gratitude and eager to get a quick nap before our mid-night jaunt to the airport. Being the party animals that they are, Anil, Coryndon, Ian, and Brandon went to the bar to throw back a last drink in India.