Oct 16: Happy hour and a lucky encounter

I have not updated this in a long time. Been caught up in work and the particular type of weariness that happens after one gets home from work 😅

Anyways, onto the events of this day! Some folks from work had organized a happy hour at a bar near the consulate. This place was pretty cool! I dont remember what held me up but I know I arrived a little late. This spot had these cool wooden structures decorating the entire bar area and they were playing some superb music! I wish I could have nabbed their playlist or something because it was all of these EDM remixes of classic 80-90s music. Every track was super catchy. Since it their only customers at the time were consulate workers I bet that they put this on figuring it would be a crowd pleaser. At the very least this member of the crowd was pleased!

This was a nice chance to meet more of my coworkers and get a little more familiar with them. I dont remember everyone who was at the event at this point, but I do remember it was a pretty alright time! I showed up after the food, but still was able to enjoy some drinks. Though this was probably one of the first instances where I started noticing a strange thing about the mixed drinks here. I dont know what it is, but I believe that all the bartenders here use some sort of simple syrup in their drinks that I just cannot stand. It makes them far to sweet and almost cloying. I had two drinks and the same flavor was in both of them, even though they all listed totally different ingredients.

I didnt mention it, but this morning I had a lucky break. My local bank informed me that my account was now set up! Phenomenal news, because that meant that I would in theory be able to make my amazon purchase before their big Diwali sale ended. For most of my items I didnt care, but the it was very important that I get the order placed for my replacement headset since that would double in price after the 20th. So I tried setting up my account with all of the correct information but ran into a few hurdles. The information that my bank gave me mentioned an account number, but I couldnt find a way on their site to actually activate it. I had to reach out to the representative who helped me get things set up. Took a bit of time but eventually she was able to guide me through accessing my account and their banking portal.

Its a bit odd, but works nice once the machinery is flowing. There is a payment method here called UPI that is very popular. Having tested it out once or twice I have got to say it is really nice. Super convenient phone payments for lots of purchases. I hope that we adopt it in some form back in America. Anyways. After that whole rigamarole I started processing a money transfer from RBFCU to my local bank, but they said that the earliest their transfer would be done is MONDAY. That process had been very awkward. I had a lot of trouble finding the information from my new bank that I needed to process the transfer from RBFCU and I was very worried that I had done it wrong. (From the far future here - I totally did something wrong, not sure what but the money transfer never happened. I think RBFCU just canceled it) Ugh, so I was basically right back in the same position that I had started the morning in. I just resigned myself to paying extra for the items I needed and went to the happy hour.

All of this is relevant because while making conversation at the happy hour I ran into a fella who was traveling here from another consulate and he hit me with some really good advice. He was like "Bro, you've gotta get yourself a WISE account - they help money move in a flash." Which was a very nice reminder, because I already had a WISE account from a previous project that I had been working on earlier this year. So I just hopped on that bad boy and man moving the money from my American account to my new Indian one was beyond easy. Very glad that I ran into that fella!

The rest of the evening was uneventful. Just small talk with miscellaneous folks who I am still not sure how close I will be with. In my time here I have been friendly with everyone and everyone has been friendly with me... But the people who I will really befriend is still unclear at this point. Regardless! It was a mighty fine time and as the sun set I decided it was time to go home. Walked some of the way back with Willy before our paths diverged and invited him to hang out and play backgammon tomorrow. One of the few games that had arrived with my UAB.

Imma just skip to tomorrow and include that here. I dont feel like listing out whole different post because really the only interesting thing was our hangout. Willy brought over some pizza from a local chain called FatBoy pizza. I love their name becuase every time I think of it I hear the sound of a FatBoy Slim song where he introduces one of his own songs from a radio segment talking about it. Listen to this if you have a moment. Specifically this little bit of the outro "So you wanna hear that new FATBOY sound?"

https://youtu.be/l0i6jBM15Bg?si=_YQfZhbCUQw9rx6k&t=351

Anyways, the pizza was really good! Well some of it was. Their pies lean towards the personal pan size so we each had two. The best among them all was one called the Sudar Boy which has paneer and some sort of masala flavoring. Makes for a delicious pizza. I have returned to FatBoy many times since this evening and have yet to find one of their offerings that I like more than the Sudar Boy. Anyways. After having dinner we played a few rousing games of Backgamon, if I remember correctly the final tally was 5-4 my favor. A few of the matches had some very interesting rolls. All said it was a nice time. I was especially glad to be playing some board games again, I dont have many opportunities these days to do that.

When we got tired of rolling dice we decided to watch a movie. Ended up renting "Civil War" which was a very interesting film, and fun to watch. It is about wartime photographers in a fictional second American civil war. It was nice watching a movie with someone. That is also somthing that I hadnt done in a while and didnt realize I missed. When I lived at home we would watch movies and TV together a lot, and the same happened when I was rooming with my buddies after moving out of home. It's fun to consume and digest media with other people - it makes the entrire process more engaging and I think adds a significant amount of value to the final flavor.

After the movie Willy dipped and I hopped on discord for a bit to chat with the fellas who were online. All in all, it was a nice day!

I didnt think to take any photos of the bar "Luna Lounge" but I snagged these from online to show it off.