My Daily Schedule

So my second week in India is coming to a close, and I’m still unsure of how to feel about this place that I’m living. I’ll be here for 8 weeks, so it’s completely fair to think of it as my Home. However, juxtaposed to that idea is the fact that I don’t have a dresser in my bedroom and so I’m living out of a suitcase. This makes things feel very temporary. Regardless of this, my life is relatively stable.

Every morning, I wake up at 8 and shower, make a few notes about my precious day, catch up with friends and listen to a podcast about the news. I then pay 8 rupees ($0.12) to take a rickshaw with my two roommates to the office. It takes about 5 minutes and we all get squished in the back seat together.

When we get to work, we go and head into the conference room. Once there, office assistants, or more disparagingly called “Chai Boys,” come and ask what we want for breakfast. We have the same thing everyday: A bottle of water, a cup of coffee, some coconut and chocolate biscuits, and bananas. This will take about half of an hour.

After breakfast, at around 11, we begin our respective projects. Last week, we were all working together to analyze sales data from the electronics store that VIVA owns to find sales patterns. We then presented our findings to the store manager.

Recently, I’ve started meeting with the Real Estate Development division to understand what projects they are undertaking. As part of this, I’ve met with project managers, salesman, contractors and regulators. I’ve also done site visits to check out VIVA properties. One of the apartment complexes consist of 11 16-story buildings that are currently under construction.

At around 2, the office assistants will bring us lunch. Lunch is usually rice and dal, chapatis, some kind of dip, vegetable sandwiches, and then pineapple juice. The real winner is the pineapple juice. It’s fresh squeezed and comes with a thick layer of pineapple foam on top. Definitely the highlight of office lunches.

After lunch, we get back to work until about 7. At this point, we leave and go to my bosses private gym to workout. The gym is massive (probably close to 3,000 square feet) and we usually have it all to ourselves.

Then at 8:30, we go to my bosses house for dinner. We usually have a say in what they make, but is mostly Indian food. The other day we got them to make chicken sandwiches, which they did a pretty good job with, despite not wanting to make for us. They don’t think that it’s good to eat meat for dinner, and so most dinners are vegetarian.

We then return to our apartment via rickshaw around 9:30. At this point we shower off and hang out for the rest of the night.

This cycle repeats itself from Monday through Saturday with some slight variations for different projects. It’s definitely a different experience than working in the U.S., but I’m very thankful to have been given this opportunity to understand how business environments can differ.