And they say it is 7*

Had a dinner with two persons from Shell - John Hoppe and Tom Hyde (the person who took my interview during the recruitment process) and it was in Renaissance - one of the best hotels in Mumbai.
Well, I have been to the place before and that was a pre-recruitment dinner with the UBS people. That time we (all shortlisted guys) were all into making an impression on them and were trying to hear all they say too because it could have proved useful for the interview. In all this, we had to ditch our concentration on the most important thing, i.e. food. When I came back, I had to order a Maggie in the hostel and well, as my friends say, it was a shameful thing to do. The UBS interview was just an icing on the cake in negative sense - a sad end to a sad happening.
And within two months came another invitation to Renaissance; this time from Royal Dutch/Shell (I never miss to highlight the Royal Dutch part ;-) ). And this time, I was determined to make this dinner a huge success. And there was another setback.
At UBS dinner, at least the food was typical Indian. Here, the food was total crap and I am not sure what exact menu it was - some mix of Chinese, Italian and Indian food but all (the soup, vegetables etc.) filled with leaves and arbitrary stuff I haven't seen in my life and which I didn't even find good. And there was this Chinese tea - just another version of hot water. And you are charging us a fortune for it. For what in the world? And then they say it is exquisite :-O. Even in the end, when we were looking for Desserts, we didn't even find normal Vertigo or Chocolate Avalanche. There were some arbitrary puffs and puddings which could be rejected on their very face. Thankfully we could make a special order for Brownie, which in fact was good.
IIT-D people were luckier in the sense that they had Indian people (Baljit and Deepak) with them and I am sure they had some great Punjabi lunch there (source: Nidhi Bansal).
All said and done, lemme also highlight the good parts of the Dinner. The first and foremost was meeting with John, Tom and the colleagues (meeting many for the very first time). Another was the beautiful backdrop of Powai and Hiranandani behind the glass wall. There was some good deal of interaction with all people there though we had to stretch out our ears when either of John or Tom spoke (we also came to know that there are some decibel limits in Rijswijk, the Netherlands office ... man, what will us Indians do there ... we are going to become the next whisperers :-P). But they talked about Netherlands and the seasons, they talked about the technologies, they talked a little about their plans and they talked about Shell! Amazing down to earth people and they looked highly motivated by the company's prospects in India and the upcoming projects. Even Nidhi feels the same from their meeting with Baljit and Deepak.
I know we are going to miss India and the food in Netherlands but it is going to be one helluva great work and fun there.