Lal Bagh

During my last visit, I went to Lal Bagh. While not Kew or Longwood Gardens, I decided to go back as it was nice to walk around before working the late shift.

350 year old silk cotton tree

I think he is from the the same family I saw last visit.

Take me home country roads...

John Denver's signature song has been a part of my life for a long time. Originally released in 1971, this song was the Fay Family travel anthem for many years. It woke us up many an early morning as we prepared for family road trips. Recently, it has become a favorite travel song for Labor Day trips to Snowshoe, West Virginia.

While I don't live in West Virginia, nor will I be traveling through it, it does remind me of home.

"Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong

West Virginia, mountain momma

Take me home, country roads"

Masala Dosa

Need I say more....the ultimate breakfast food! Served with Sambar, and tomato and coriander chutneys. Yummm!

Random Pics - II

I can't believe it's Friday and my trip is almost over. It has been a great trip, but I do miss Rose and Sean. We have been connected by phone, e-mails and the blog, but it isn't the same as being there in person.

Here are some pics from the last couple of days (notice many are food related!)

View from my hotel window


View of one of the shopping malls from the back of the hotel


View of the pool deck in back of hotel



Calamari Indian style (notice the sweat from the heat!)



Breakfast at the hotel


This outside the Hard Rock Cafe - Bengalaru (Bangalore as pronounced in Kannada). I'm with Allison, Monika (was here last time I was here, and is in town for Jason and Allisons leaving party) and Jason.

What's going on at work....

This is the office in Bangalore. There are a number of buildings in this complex, surrounding this plaza. The ground level has restaurants, bars, shopping and a food court. They have done a nice job fixing this up since last time I was here.

I have been really impressed with the team during the past week and a half. They are well prepared to assume the additional responsibilities I am here to teach them about. They are asking great questions about the scripts and about the results they are seeing. They have found a couple of things we have passed on to the technical team to look at.

The second set of sessions I have held with the teams has been to answer questions that they have, or that they get on a regular basis, and wanted to ensure they were addressing correctly. Again, they asked great questions, and luckily I knew them ahead of time so that I could prepare (don't want the "expert" looking stupid and not knowing the answers!). Going through their questions and walking them through some of recent enhancements to the system really gave us an opportunity to look at some of the more complex stuff going on, and to share with them some examples of how the system was being used by our engagement teams. The initial set of test scripts they are looking at are basic functionality, we will be phasing additional, more complex scripts over the next couple of months. That is where they will really learn a lot about the system and what it can do, which will then allow them to share advice and answer questions from the people who contact them better than they do today.

This is the Australia Shift team

(l-r Kirthi, Smita, Noor, Nisha, Narendra, Mai)

The UK Shift Team

(l-r Shwetha, Philia, Sailo, Mumpy, Navya, Khizer)

and the US Shift Team (daBoyz!)

(l-r Jerin, Fahad, Chandan, Digvijay, Sujay, Avaiz, Joseph, Weibert)

Cheryl and Dilini

Brunch at Oberoi Hotel

Sunday brunch is great here. The hotels and some of the restaurants do a set price menu with champagne, drinks and great food buffets. The spreads are very impressive. I forgot to take a pictures of the buffet, but here were the deserts I sampled.

The grounds of the hotel are awesome.

Ali and Ragu organized the brunch. Ragu knows everyone! Ragu's friend Brandon joined us, as did work associates of Ali; Ann, Maria and Ian. They were working/travelling together for a couple of weeks in India and had a day to spend in Bangalore. It was fun getting to meet new people, in a very different environment.

(l-r Brandon, Ali, Ragu, Ian, Ann, Maria)

The Demonstration

So basic rules of travel, stay away from rowdy groups of people, especially those demonstrating something you don't know what it is. If they are carrying an effigy and have a police escort, double the stay away factor. So I tried to do it, really. I was taking pics at the government buildings Saturday, when I heard the noise, saw the press with camera's, the police, etc. I was on the other side of the street and managed to take some pictures, out in front of them.

I got pretty far ahead of them, but then with the traffic, and crossing the street, they caught up. I was never that close, but got to see them burn the effigy.


and then the police put out the fire.


All in all pretty peaceful, but I suppose, I was closer than I should have been. It was interesting that along the route, there were a number of these water jet truck, meant for the group, if they got out of control.

A Relaxing Saturday @ Cubbon Park

Well, not too relaxing. I did manage to catch up on my blog postings and get some work done. In between, I walked around and saw some of the sites.
The aquarium is still the best bargain in town at 5 rupee

Not sure if you can see the blanket of violet flowers that have fallen from the tree.

And not sure who this is, but I'm sure there is a story behind it.

These kids were so good. You would never know that there were swings and slides right across from them. Not sure why they were just sitting there, but a cool picture.

I imagine if Charlie were an Indian dog, he would look like this.

This the Vidhana Soudha which I took a picture of last year. Notice the fancy entryway.

It is covered in colored twine and jasmine. It smelled great!

Pictures

In case you did not know, you can click on the pictures to see the original size (which in most cases means bigger than your screen can view), and you can also right click on the picture and "save picture as" if you want it to save it to your computer to view.

By the way, the camera is doing great. I'm very happy with it so far!

Random pics

This is MG Road. Traffic on this road is crazy, ridiculous, etc. They have decided to put an elevated railroad right down the middle of it. Makes sense to me.

I love that the scaffolding is made of wood

And yes, it is great to be here! Note the temple in the background.

Thursday night we had dinner at Ginseng at the Royal Orchid Hotel. Probably some of the best oriental food I've ever eaten. It seems like everything at our local Hudson take out tastes the same. Not here. Each dish was delicious, with such great subtle flavors. The waiter of course had perfect timing in serving my food.

And finally, I love the signs here:

And of course stating the obvious with a star!

It's Friday (TGIF) - a day late

It's been a long week...jet lagged, long and varied work hours, change in diet...I'm looking forward to the weekend. My friend/coworker Cheryl is off to Kerala to spend the weekend with some of her friends on a houseboat cruising the backwaters of the west coast of India. I was invited, but decided it would be good for my body, mind and soul to spend a relatively quiet weekend that did not involve trains, planes, or automobiles.
Looking back over the week, I have managed to have a couple of great meals in between work assignments.
Monday Night Cheryl and I went to Samarakand, which features northwest cuisine, with Allison, Jason and Samila. The three of them are from Australia, and work for HP. The food was great and we sampled tandoori grilled foods and curries from that region.

(L-R Samila, Jason, Cheryl, Allison, me)
Tuesday night was a celebration for Cheryl's team leads. They were recently promoted, so this dinner was in their honor. We had dinner at Ebony, as I mentioned here. We ate on the outdoor terrace, which was great since the weather has been so nice. The meal was great (again). We had a number of traditional foods,

and of course the traditional, celebratory Sula Champagne.
Here is Nisha, Joseph and Philia toasting their accomplishments.

And finally, me with the city lights in the background.

All things in moderation

As in, I need to moderate the comments posted on my blog. Not that people are being rude, or nasty or anything like that. It's worse. I've had a couple of comments that contain links to questionable sites. Again, not rude, nasty or anything like that sites, but do you want to click on links in peoples comments and have to worry about it. No. So I'm protecting you. There, big brother has reached my blog. Ughhhh!!

So, if you post a comment, it will not appear until I can approve it. The one good thing is it that it forced me to review the way people can post to the blog. For those of you without Google or Blogger accounts, it means you just have to add you name in the field like I have done below

You will also have to do that verification thingy they ask for

All it all it should make it easier for my friends to post comments (hint, hint! It's good to see comments, it means you are out there!)

Time flies...

Wow, I can't believe it's Saturday already! I have some stories to share, but I think I'll go exploring...

How to make training not boring...

Not always an easy task, but I know I hate to be bored, so I try to make the training not boring (at least for me). As I mentioned in the last post, it is good to make personal connections. When I introduce myself, I show a picture of Rose, Sean and I, so that they can see my personal side. For these sessions as an ice breaker, I asked them to share something about themselves that no one else knew. Not easy for them, as they work in close knit teams, but it proved to be fun. There was one person who did not like music, sitting next to one who sang classical music. One of the guys admitted to watching the Travel and Living channel and then there were some others that were pretty funny that got quite a laugh from the team.

Then I trained.

Finally to wrap up, I showed some more pictures, this time of some of the people they know from their virtual interactions. Last year I got to go to London to meet with some of the country team members that we work with. I shared with them this picture.

They really enjoyed putting a face to a name.
Finally, they got to see Charlie


and Cleveland snow.