Emily in India

For the entirety of my time in India, I will be staying at Grand Mercure hotel in Bengaluru. This is where all KPMG long-term rotationals have lived for the past 7 or so years and the hotel has been in operation for the past 15 years. Grand Mercure is a chain in India so I’ve seen it out and about a bit. I accumulate Accor points for my stay which I’ll be able to use at affiliated hotels (mostly in Asia).

The hotel is in Koramangala – the most affluent neighborhood in Bengaluru. It is 6.6 km / 4.1 miles from the office and the commute almost never takes less than an hour. On Thursday it took 1.5 hours to get to work!

The hotel is fine. Like a lot of things in India, it looks great from far away and gets a little grungier the closer you get. There is not a grand entrance/lobby like in most of the nice hotels I’ve been to in India. But it is bright and active when you walk in. There is a restaurant (where KPMG pays for my daily breakfast and dinner buffets) with decent food and nice staff. The buffet is a buffet. Mostly Indian food but some “international” options like kung-pao chicken and pastas. Every night has different options. The desserts are consistently worth eating. One called “brownie pudding” is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten. They make delicious Belgian waffles, you know, the kind that are split into four sections. But they serve two quarters as a “full portion” so I have to order a “four piece waffle’ when I want one. They are sweet, crunchy, and fluffy.

My room is big. I have a small kitchen (stove, fridge/ freezer, microwave-oven, hotplate tea kettle, plenty of storage), a dinning table and area, a desk and working area, a small living room area (with teeny tiny TV and teeny tiny couch and coffee table), a small balcony with a table and two chairs, a large bedroom with king-sized bed, and a bathroom with a rain-shower shower). If you saw a video, you’d think, “Oh! That’s nice!” And if you saw it in person, you’d say, “Oh, yeah, I see what you mean by ‘fine’.”

There is a suitable gym that smells like the posterchild, Axe body spray (but gross) bro. I do not understand but it is definitely a scent used by the hotel. The pool is nice – I’ve swum laps actually! But the patio ground is upheaving in places and there is construction going on next door (and as Bryan says about construction  in India, “you can’t tell whether it is coming up or going down” but the bamboo scaffolding is awesome).

Another perk is that they do four pieces of laundry for me every day. And they iron it perfectly, fold it, and deliver it in fresh tissue paper. I’ve actually told them that I don’t need the tissue paper any more because it is so wasteful. They’d clean my room every day if I wanted them to but it’s total overkill so now they just wait for me to tell them when I want it cleaned.

One good/not good thing is that there are other KPMGers staying here. Currently, one from Atlanta, Fort Worth, and a few from the UK. It is nice when I want or need company – I can join them for dinner. But can get weird when I want to have a meal solo and some of them are in the restaurant. But I’m learning to be honest about when I need to be around people and when I want to be alone.