Right now I'm in the office and there is a huge thunderstorm in all directions. I'm leaving tomorrow for 4 days in Kerala, so I thought I'd write something now since I won't be writing again for almost a week.

Last night I went to the Birla temple, a huge white hindu temple at the top of a hill overlooking the hassan sagar lake in Hyderabad. The view was amazing becasue there was a full moon which was yellow and mysterious because of the pollution. Soum, one of my officemates took me and told me all about what the different parts of hte temple were, which was interesting because I have absolutely no idea about hinduism. We got in line and snaked slowly around the temple for a while to get to the big powerful god who was at the biggest alter (i don't even remember his name), and even at 8:30 at night it was hot. The marble was still hot from the day in the sun, and I can't believe anyone could go there barefoot during the day (most people don't).

Afterwards we went to a trendy pub and ate chinese dumplings and drank cocktails while photographers walked around taking pictures. I hoped I could get onto page 3 of the Hyderabad newspaper (almost all ex-pats make their way onto the hyderabad society pages at least once) but alas, I don't appear to be there yet ;)

Now I'm off from the office to eat chicken korma for dinner at the guesthouse where I anticipate the internet connection to be gone because of the storm.