Ekgaon

So here's where I work everyday. It's a tiny little basement. There are usually 4 people in the office - Carl, Me, Ranganathan (a software engineer who has been given the assignment to make sure we're ok), and "The Boy". Vijay, the CEO, would normally be there but he's gone....for the rest of the time we'll be here, which makes things very difficult. "The Boy" is basically like an admin/janitor. He's probably 18. He doesn't speak any English and everyone calls him "The Boy" like he's an indentured servant or something. He's really nice to us and is my favorite person here, I think. I don't have a picture of "The Boy" yet but I'm hoping to get one today.

After we got here we realized our project is completely different than we originally anticipated. In a way, this is good because we thought we were supposed to be meeting with potential partners to "sell" the business and we were kind of nervous that we'd screw it up since we don't know a ton about ekgaon. As it turns out we're mostly meeting with these people to do some market research for ekgaon's expansion. We think one of the main reasons Vijay is having us do this is because people will respond better to Americans. I guess we'll find out.

***Update!! So this morning Ranga left to go to a meeting and "The Boy" came and talked to us for a LONG time. Apparently he speaks better English than we thought. We found out he's 25, has an arranged marriage that will happen next year, and he's worried about his finances. He was a wealth of information about everything from Indian clothes to sightseeing in Delhi. He's from Panta area.

I also forgot to mention another interesting fact: the Indian workday. It starts around 9:30am and goes until 6:30pm. We found this out the first day when Ranga said he usually gets to work around 8:45. Luckily we didn't show up until 9:15 because then we only had to wait 15 minutes for him to come unlock the door. He then explained that he's always here by 9:30 but sometimes comes in earlier.