Day 6 Oct 23 2009 - Lunch with some Ladies from SEWA and another traffic experience

The third day at SEWA we spent at the same office as the previous two days. As our regular driver was not available a member of the IT staff picked us up by rikshaw at the hotel. The drive to work took a bit longer than on the previous days as the rikshaw is not quite as fast as our relugar driver who sometimes does 80 km/h (= 50mph) when taking us to work. The advantage of taking the rikshaw is that one gets a better "feel" of the traffic and one has a better chance at spotting interesting things along the way.

Soon and me decided to continue the work on the modeling of the use cases which turned out to be a bit challenging as so far we did not really know what the process flow is especially out in the remote areas when applying for a SEWA membership. So we did it the way we would expect the process and future application it to be. As always the ladies at SEWA took really good care of us. At least twice a day they serve us delicious chai tea. From the second day on we ate with them in their "cafeteria", a larger room with several tables and chairs. While most of the staff there bring their own food to the office, the ladies always prepare food for Soon and me at lunch time. This time we received a large portion and they kept bringing us more. It was really delicious. Three ladies of the SEWA staff joined us at our table and they offered us a share of their food so that we could taste what they had brought along. Among it were some sweets named Dudhi-Heelva which was not too sweet and really tasty. As they spoke only limited English conversation with them however was a bit limited. I guess Soon and I both felt that we should be giving something back to them. Our general impression has been that people here in general and at SEWA are very hospitable.

After lunch it was back to the office to keep working on those use cases. Soon and me sit on a small desk above which a big fan keeps blowing air at us. At least once a day the fan also blows also the paper notes that are pinned to the pinboard down on the floor. One of them is an interesting saying which refers to Good and Evil and bears quite some truth.

After having done quite some work on the use cases, Soon and I were told that the rikshaw was ready to take us back to the hotel. Along the way home I took some pictures of the traffic conditions which are so much unlike Europe, especially Germany where people expect all drivers to stick to the rules. Here in India, traffic is more like the general approach to life, you just go and when issues come up one just comes up with some way of dealing with it - flexibilty rules. Attached are some pictures taken along the way back to the hotel.

As we had to get up really early on Saturday morning (around 4 am), to go for our day trip all of us decided to have dinner close by in a restaurant called Dum Phakt, which is just 200m from the hotel. Food again was very delicious - I had Shahi Paneer - a dish which comes with a green sauce and is eaten with Nan, an Indian type of bread which is flat and round and roasted before it is served. Very swadish (=yummy / tasty) as one says here. I for sure will have it again quite soon. After dinner we all head back to our rooms to pack for the day trip and to get at least several hours of sleep before our trip starts with a visit to a nearby bird sanctuary.