Got into Hyderabad this morning off a 9 hour leg from Amsterdam.  Simply just getting here was an adventure in itself..  My running commentary:

• Flying business class is the bomb diggity.  It’s pure gluttony up in there in the promise land with booze and food free flowing.  Within 2 minutes of me stepping on the plane, someone was taking my jacket, and I had a glass of chardonnay in my hand. 
• 5 hour layovers in Amsterdam are not fun when you arrive at 6am.
• Business class tickets automatically get you into the business class lounge for KLM.  I didn’t discover this until I was on an IM session with one of the other leads on Windows Marketplace.   I’ve never been into one of those lounges before… 2 words: Free lattes!
• With 22+ hours of flying and layovers, it’s impossible to avoid jet lag.  I did my usual “stay up the night before as much as possible to sync my body to the new time zone” and that failed miserably. On the second leg of my trip I was sleeping like a newborn when I should have been wide awake.
• The Hyderabad airport was a nightmare. Didi and I had to wait nearly 1.5 hours for our bags at the baggage claim.  I don’t know what was funnier — the occassional terrified looks that Didi and I gave each other fearing our bags were lost, or the new friend that Didi made in the airport that just would not stop talking even if her life depended on it.
• Driving from the airport to our hotel was pretty cool.  You learn a few things:
  • Off-leash dogs roam everywhere here, including taking naps at 3am in the the middle of the highway
  • The painted lines in the road dividing the lanes are merely suggestions.  Traffic is a free for all.
  • We were told that there are nearly 6 million people in Hyderabad alone.  This is 1/6th the size of Canda!

I only managed to get 3 hours of sleep last night but I seem to be bright-eyed and bushy tailed this morning.  I predict that by 3pm I want to crash and burn.. but let’s enjoy the ride until then