To celebrate a birthday in India is a lovely thing indeed

Thanks India for a great birthday! Martin somehow arranged with a local florist to deliver roses, wine and chocolates to my office which was received with many shrieks and much joy. I think he is still in shock that (a) they actually got delivered, (b) they came on the right day and (c) the delivery man didn't swipe half of the chocolate en route. Success!


Excuse the bad photo, taken with my phone in my office

The roses were beautiful, deep deep crimson red beautifully wrapped and tied with ribbon. To add the obligatory Indian twist, the flowers were sprinkled with silver glitter, the same kind you use as a child to make handmade cards. I now have a glittery work desk and found a piece of glitter on my face this morning when I woke up. Ah, the joys of glitter.


You can just about make out the glitter - plus the wine!

The best part of the delivery was the card - it's hard not to love oddly placed speech marks. Happy "birthday" indeed!



I also received a fantastic package from my parents with some essentials from home, including CHOCOLATE COINS. Holy bejeebus, it's a bag of chocolate coins. My Indian colleagues had never seen these before and they were all devoured pretty quickly. Our driver speaks minimal English and is therefore difficult to communicate with, but was clearly enamoured with these chocolates; I found him turning one over and over in his hand muttering 'looks like five rupees, hmm' to himself.



My new colleague, Laura, also spoiled me silly. On Tuesday she took me to The Breeze restaurant where there is the most spectacularly delicious all-you-can eat buffet. We had some gorgeous chickeny cabbagey garlicky broth followed by an enormous plate of spicy chicken, corn cooked in spinach, paneer butter masala, fresh naan bread, jasmine rice... wowza. It was a lot of food. We were totally stuffed but managed to squeeze in a bit of dessert as you can see below... beautifully delicate creme caramel scented with cardamom and sticky sugary gulab jamun, which is a sort of Indian version of a deep fried donut soaked in sweet syrup.


Lunchtime desserts; so decadent

To continue the spoiling, Laura later presented me with a gorgeous bag of gifts from my favourite shop here, Fab India. Included in this is my first dupatta which is a type of Indian scarf; I'm delighted about this as it will be invaluable on my trip to Ireland next month.


Gorgeous goodies from Fab India

Last night I went for a delicious meal with Juliet, Claudia and Katti, and we were joined by a Frenchman named Leo and an American tourist (a tourist! In Bhubaneswar!) named Joe. We had gorgeous big plates of Chinese food and I thoroughly welcomed the break from Indian cuisine for a night. I've no photos of the evening but it was marked by lots of good food and laughter. A quick pint in the Mayfair pub on the way home (the restaurant didn't serve beer - quite typical here) brought a close to the evening and put a grin on my face. Wonderful birthday, wonderful people. Thanks everyone!