Last day at work

Friday.
Work as normal - well, sort of normal. Mostly it was spent saying goodbye to people. Hemal (the senior person there) gave me a present (a small wall-hanging with a wooden frame and little paintings of farm scenes), and Shagufta (one of the recent trainees) gave me some Indian snacks (like chick-pea noodles and Bombay mix (naturally!)) and a CD she'd put together of Hindi music which was really kind of her. I'm listening to it now. It's modern music - sounds like what the car radio played most days on the trip to work. I can just imagine doing the lightbulbs dance (imagine replacing a lightbulb with each hand whilst shrugging your shoulders).

Anyway, all good things must come to an end. I left at the usual time and went back to the hotel (sharing a car with Imran, one of our migration managers, but none of my "regular" colleagues, who were all going out for a night out that night). Final bit of packing, dinner, internet chatting, a brief visit to the spa (slightly disappointing: the hot tub wasn't up to the proper temperature and I couldn't be bothered to get the assistants to crank up the steam room or sauna). I didn't plan to leave the hotel until about 11.30pm (flight at 2.30am) so I filled the remaining hours watching DVDs - very keen not to fall asleep and miss my flight! In retrospect I wish I had managed a couple of hours of sleep - didn't get much of it later! I also passed a bag of goodies & leftovers to Nicola to give to Kirsteen (due to arrive shortly after I left).

So, I checked out (a couple of minor errors on my bill - always worth while checking!) and decided that it would be appropriate to hand out a few tips in my departure so I got reception to change 100Rs into 20Rs notes. The door man got one, the bag carrier got one, the driver got one and a chap at the airport who shifted my bag around got one just to get rid of him.