Sickness and L&T

I can’t believe I am in a shape to type again. Last night and this morning, I was ready (at several points) to give in and call for a doctor. You have already read most of the gory details and they don’t even begin to really demonstrate how lousy I felt. I had one disposable thermometer that showed that I had a fever of 102.7 at one point. Even rolling over in bed was a breathtakingly painful experience with a stupendous headache from completely clogged sinuses. My fever broke at about 6 PM last night and I started feeling better, but then it hit me again at about 8 PM. Come morning, I was still in no shape to even walk around my room and I opted out of the morning lecture at SDM. I knew I had to get out of bed and force myself to rejoin the world and told Al to call me before the site visit to Larsen & Toubro. My morning continued with me drifting in and out of sleep, doing multiple inhalations and taking a long, hot shower at 5 AM. Since I had eaten nothing for over 24 hours, I forced myself to have some toast and cornflakes for breakfast at 9 AM.

Although I was feeling a little better, I was still a little woozy as I headed out for the L&T site visit at noon. They had laid out a sumptuous lunch for us on their campus. After that, we visited several buildings on their campus and were introduced to various L&T divisions. The “tour guide” was actually the head of EmSys, the embedded systems division of L&T. He was a fantastic speaker and very eloquent. He explained everything well and gave us a great insight into the incredible global supply chain management system that is our reality today. For example, L&T sources from Israel and manufactures on German equipment for construction projects in the United Arab Emirates using some IT managers in Mysore. They have product development teams consisting of managers from the client in the USA working with engineers in India. It was a very impressive visit – consistently fascinating. They even left each one of us with a gift. Tomorrow we go across the street to InfoSys.

In the evening, Al and I went shopping for some wine (yes, Indian wines are starting to make a mark in the industry) and a few other things. By the time we were done at about 7:30 PM, I was starting to fade and feel a little woozy again, so we headed back to the hotel and I started another round of inhalation. Still, the fact that I was able to be out almost all afternoon makes me feel better.