At work, they have opened an outdoor cafeteria on the rooftop and I now know why the elevator is always headed to the fourth floor. The view of the city from the roof is amazing – especially in the evening – and the chanting from the mosque next door is amazing. Bill would absolutely love sitting on the roof at 5pm each evening.

Faisal has mentioned that there are plans to build a starbucks style coffee shop on the rooftop as well, which will likely make the outdoor cafeteria more popular than the crowded air conditioned room on the lower floors.

While most of the building resembles any other office building in the world, the elevators are another story. They are often slow to open, and I’ve been stick in them a few times. Luckily, I’ve been rescued after a few minutes. Shortly after I arrived in India, a woman was stuck in an elevator at work for over an hour. Once she got out, she proceeded to get into a different elevator and found herself stuck once again. Needless to say, many people often take the stairs when going from one floor to another.

Despite the many downfalls of living in a developing country, India has incorporated many technological advances in its buildings that I’ve rarely seen implemented back home. Power supplies are often low and brownouts or power failures are frequent. In order to combat this, many buildings have installed motion sensors that operate the lighting systems. If there is no one in an area, the lights will turn off after a short period of time. Once someone walks into a room, light will once again illuminate the area.

The other major difference between this office and one of its North American counterparts is in its bathrooms. Each bathroom in the office has a cleaner who stays in the room for their entire shift. They continuously mop up spilled water and clean the area. It’s very strange to walk into a bathroom and it occupied by cleaning staff all of the time and takes some getting used to. The up side of this is that the bathrooms are never closed for cleaning as they are in the North American centres and you don’t have to run from one end of the building to another in order to visit the little girls’ room.

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