Last day at the Office

It's been 5 weeks since landing in Delhi, almost everyone now is looking forward to getting back to the UK to enjoy what we now consider the simple, yet most important things. Bacon sandwiches, fish and chips, steak, bacon sandwiches, decent cups of tea, proper vegetables, sunday roasts, bacon sandwiches etc. You get the idea. Eating nothing but curry and chicken flavoured sausages has driven the group to the point of insanity, with food being top of the "things I'm doing when I get home" list. I'd tell you what I'm looking forward to most but If you haven't figured that out, take a guess.

Our last day of work came in the form of the Time Trials on Wednesday at the Noida Expressway, a day long event which would consist of mainly sitting around waiting in the white hot sun, for at least an hour before anyone interesting crossed the line to be interviewed. As we had no shade, we were kindly reminded of the conditions by a picture of the roadside thermometer every 5 minutes on the big screen. The highest reading being at 44.4 degrees Celsius. Compared to weather in the UK at this time of the year, It's safe to say I would probably have been more comfortable chilling, half naked in a deckchair on West Street than in the stands at Noida. The day itself was interesting, team GNS acquired an actual office due to our outstanding contribution to media distribution during the games (so we like to think) and we were told by the boss to go mental and just interview any athlete we can find around the arena. Easier said than done. After an hour in almost 50 degree heat, I must admit, the last thing I would want to do is stand around and talk to a journalist about how the race went, a sentiment shared by the majority of the female athletes, who somehow managed to dodge every major broadcaster and reporter and just, well, vanish! Really, it was like something off the twilight zone, they all finished and disappeared with only the winner giving a couple of statements. Strange.

On my way to the office during the half way interval, I managed to brush shoulders with Scottish National Party Leader Alex Salmond MP, who was clearly present to witness David Millar get a certain gold medal and not at all about to leech off the glory as all politicians love to do. That and of course to give a speech at the closing ceremony the next day, which was subsequently hailed by a paper in Delhi as "One of the greatest spectacles of all time" (a bit drastic) although I had a bit of beef when they described the Games as one of the best the world has ever seen. Considering the shambles of it all in the lead up and the abysmal organisation of security and staff throughout the duration, to say that was maybe pushing it a bit too far. Kalmadi even said he hoped to bring the Olympics to India as his next goal. I think the Australians would have something to say about that, they haven't been the most tolerant of people as the games have gone on and a group of Aussie athletes even dumped a washing machine out their apartment window in the games village because they lost the cricket to India. All fun and games until an Aussie gets upset.

Back to Noida, the mens race went on and, as predicted, David Millar grabbed gold for Scotland and I interviewed him on what is probably his final medal of his career. I never thought I'd say this but hearing the Flower of Scotland was so refreshing after a week of listening to the Australian National anthem about 15 times. Not a bad anthem either, although I was desperate to hear "Danny Boy" at some stage. The closest I got to that was interviewing Michael Hutchinson who came 4th on the day. He is possibly my favourite interviewee, almost like talking to an alien. Some of the answers were scientific and precise, very articulate for a man with an accent as thick as his. For example, I asked him if the heat hindered his performance, rather than a bog standard, run-of-the-mill response, I got "Well I live 45 degrees longitude above the equator, I'm now 27 degree longitude above the equator, so you can imagine the rate of persperation I'm going through after that." Who answers a question like that?! Amazing.

On the night we arranged a few beers at the Infrostrata hotel in the north west of Delhi and chilled out for the night talking to the other supervisors, including those who I worked with on my day off at the rhytmic gymnastics (very fun, but more about that later)

So that was work! Now it's just a case of counting down the days until it's back to Britain and back to the lecture theatre for the final year of uni, with too many bacon sandwiches to be had in between after a whole 5 weeks of being deprived of it!