Things are starting to roll, and I have celebrated my first Diwali!

This week was an interesting week at work. It started by me and my colleague Amit attending a jewelry fair to sell our LED lighting. It might sounds like a weird place to sell LED lighting, and frankly it was! The thought was mainly to market ourselves towards the other exhibitors since jewelry showrooms requires a lot of lights and they have problems with heating since conventional lights produces a lot of heat. It only took us a couple of hours to talk to all the stands though, so the rest of the time was pretty much just hanging around our stand. The fair was not that crowded though, so there was not so much to do. Fortunately we had a chess board so we had no problems entertaining ourselves, and I also got some Hindi lessons. Fortunately we only had to stay two out of the five days though, or we might have bored ourselves to death. What was funny though was that quite a few of the jewelry shoppers came and asked to buy our cheap glass statues that we used to demonstrate our lights. We should have sold them expensively!

Good thing with the jewelry fair was that lunch restaurant. There were unlimited amounts of food and we were served at the tables. Since I started to go to the gym this week this was very welcome, since I could fill a plate of the size of a huge pizza plate. Even though we decided to not stay for the whole duration of the fair some of us went their for lunch one day since we still had free lunch coupons to spend!

The exports also started to show results this week. I spoke to some companies that were interested, and one of them seems high potential for big scale cooperation. Pricing seems to be a bit of an issue though, and how do convince someone of the value quality of products that seems identical on paper. Will get to know during the coming week(s)! I also had the chance to go to a local radio station to record a short advertising. My voice were supposed to catch more attention than the locals! So now I will be a radio star as well! ;-)

On the social side a lot happened this week! The focus was Diwali celebrations, which is the festival of light and which could be said to be India's version of Christmas. The whole city was covered with lighting decorations and there was probably not a minute for several days when you would not see fireworks or hear crackers explode. One of the evenings we traveled through the city in a horse wagon to see the lights, and another in a car. I also had the pleasure of following two of the Turkish girls I live with to the nearby market where they forcefully tried to convince two elephant riders that they should get to ride the elephants  and take pictures of it.

At least we got pictures on the ground!

City overview from the roof top. I tried hard to capture some fireworks, but it was near to impossible!

Me trying to look like a Diwali superhero in the middle of the night!

I attended a Turkish night arranged by some interns here, and an AIESEC alumni party promoting the AIESEC India Alumni Congress that this year will be arranged in this city. Somehow I have managed to become the project manager of this congress… So I will get the experience of arranging a big event with two weeks of planning and execution in a country majorly different than Sweden. I must be crazy!

Today Basak and Buket left us to go back to Turkey, which is a pity since they were good housemates! They have inspired me through really making sure they get the most of their experience here. They always have some trip or adventure going on, and are good at capturing those moments on camera. I need to get so much better at using mine.

 Me, Basak and Buket last night before their departure

So much things happened this week that I probably could write one more page. I think I will try to write more often in the future to limit the post sizes!