Me, Myself and I

So..the good news is my camera is back up and working. In fact, it is what has inspired this blog!

I thought it was high time that you got a picture of my roommate, a couple videos of where I am living and some photos of the ever-impressive clothing. So..attached you will find it all!

I am doing very well. Work is proving to be very demanding but in a good way. I am pulling a six day work week at about 10 hours/day. I am currently involved in four different projects:

1) Customer coversion from prospects to out patient (OP) customers (coming to the clinic for prenatal check-up, etc) and from OP customers to In patient (IP) customers (actually having their baby at the clinic). With a little luck tomorrow I will get to witness my first natural child birth (cross your fingers). The female head doctor at the clinic where I am placed loves me and is always trying to get me into surgeries which is super fantastic.

2 & 3) My second and third project is first working with the NHS to develop a clinical scorecard and second doing this for a developing country hospital (which is qutie challenging - there is zero data and no benchmarks).

4) My four project is working with the IHI (Institute for Health Improvements working out of Boston/Harvard University) to look into perinatal care and the effects of oxytocin on fetal duress. This is quite interesting.

My days range from doing hard-core data analysis of our existing customer base to speaking with the clinical staff about defining key performance indicators for the hospital and its expansions.

My overarching job falls under the label of "business intelligence" (pretty fancy!) but my day to day is very varied.

I am having a great time getting to know my associates and am learning a lot through teaching.

I am very proud of myself for negotiating with a local rickshaw driver who I am paying monthly to drive me to and from work. This elliminates the hassle of haggling every day and provides positive incentives to him to get me there as fast and efficiently as possible. I will get a picture of him and his rickshaw tomorrow. He sings while he drives me! He also has the same friend with him every morning which is pretty neat. The friend practices something called Sabarimala . Actually you see them all over Hyderabad. They wear only black and go only barefoot. They spend 40 days obstaining from all pleasures which includes taking cold showers every day - I say this because I TAKE a cold shower every day (does this mean I am half of one of them). I would go barefoot if it brought me even closer! hehe

In this blog I also want to say Happy Birthday to Chris. I love you honey! He turns VERY ELDERLY on Sunday.

Next week all of the fellows stationed in India are meeting in Hyderabad at the Acumen Fund country office for debriefing, etc. I am very excited to see familiar faces and just catch up with them all.

Enjoy the pictures and videos.
Scatter Joy!
Meghan