Day 26 and 27

I hope you enjoyed reading about my Indian Adventure. It had an interesting time but I'm glad to be going home. 26 days is a long time to be away. One thing I have learned is that in a lot of ways things here aren't that different. They have Domino and McDs; Old Navy and Nike; HBO and EPSN; Snoop Dog and Bon Jovi. On the other hand you don't see many wild cows, dogs, and monkeys on the street back home.

Thanks for reading!
Adam

Day 25

Finally finished all the export stuff and started CMM. CMM is the king of TLA. It includes AMP, PMP, VPD, VPF, QCP, PQP. I thought the class was glassy eyed for all the RW10X stuff. There are 71 slides on CMM. OYE! We will finish CMM tomorrow morning and then I'm done. Vishal will review any topics they want next week and then he is done.

Godzilla did not return last night. I guess he did escape out the balcony door.

I'm leaving for Bangalore at 7:30 pm. I'm flying Air France flight 191 leaving Bangalore at 2:05 am, arriving in Paris 10 hours and 15 minutes later at 8:50am local time. I have a 6 hour lay over in Paris. I hope to be able to do a little site seeing. We will see how it goes. At 2:50 pm Paris time I get on American Airlines flight 41 landing in Chicago 9.25 hours later at 5:05 pm.

Door to door I will be traveling for about 33 hours.

"Dude, where's my car" is on! Sweet!

Anyone know when Lost will be available on iTunes. Don't tell me anything about it yet.

Day 24

Vishal went over more RW10X and ERW stuff today. All we have left is OOS and CMM. For those of you not from work I didn't make any of that up. We use a lot of TLA (Three Letter Acronyms).

After class the whole team went out for dinner. They took us to the Olive Garden. Same company different restaurant. This one has mostly Indian food and some Asian dishes as well. It was a very nice restaurant.

I got home and there was a lizard in my room. See picture from Day 11. I called housekeeping and they sent some one to get it but by the time they got to my room the lizard has run behind the curtains and was not to be found. I'm trying to convince myself it somehow got out....

I might not sleep tonight. 2 more days....

Day 23

Today in class we went over some of the issues we had with exports yesterday. Turns out the alerts don't support some of the values we were trying to use and the export special processing function doesn't work at all and doing multi record imports are ridiculously tricky. Anyway we got that all straightened out and then started the RW10X and ERW presentation. The work flow activity went over very well. The students split up into 2 groups. Each group has pieces of paper with the names of all the different systems as well as descriptions of what each system does. They tape all the systems to the wall and show how they are related and they also have to match the system description to the system.

3 more days. Vishal and I went out for dinner tonight. We went back to the same place we went before since it was so good. Hmmm. Kabobs, tandori chicken and naan.

That hand made silk shirt never got delivered to me. I called the front gate and told them I was getting something delivered. I pretty much knew when I hung up the phone there was not a chance that shirt was going to get to me. Here is a transcript of the conversation.

Security Man #1: Front gate.

Me: Hi there.

Security Man #1: Yes

Me: Yes. I'm getting a package delivered today. Can you...

Security Man #1: Yes

Me: Yes. Can you call me when it comes and I'll pick it up

* I hear the man say something to someone else in another language and then *

Security Woman: Yes

Me: Hi? Uhm. I'm getting a package delivered today. Can you call...

Security Woman: Uhh package? No.

Me: No? Yes. A package. A shirt? Being delivered from a store?

Security Woman: Shirt?

* Now she starts talking to someone in another language and I get passed to a third person *

Security Man #2: Yes.

Me: Hi, I'm getting a package delivered today.

* Now inadvertently I start talking louder, because for some reason I think that will help them understand me *

Me: CAN YOU CALL ME ON MY CELL PHONE WHEN THEY ARRIVE?

Security Man #2: Yes

Me: OK. MY NUMBER IS 91875887453. Call me when it arrives.

Security Man #2: Yes

And then he hung up on me. No way he wrote down my number.

After work I went over to the front gate to see if the package came. There was a lot of head bobbling going on but I don't think they understood what I was saying. I certainly didn't understand them. I left pretty convinced my shirt was not at the front gate.

I got back to my room and called the shop. I was able to piece together that they tried to deliver the shirt and were turned away. Apparently I was not the only ones who had a hard time communicating with Infosys security. I picked the shirt up before dinner.

Comments....

"#2": Did I not make it clear last time that I was not buying saris. You got a scarf and you will like! :>

"D-Law": Lost is so cool. Thanks for letting me know about the commercial. I can't wait to call the number when I get back home. Check out these really good Lost blogs. The Lost Notebook and Lost... and gone forever

"Nose": You crack me up. I'll see what I can do about the monkey. Customs may be an issue. You missed a great Test. Rahul Sharad Dravid hit a double century including 12 6s and bowled a wicket on a mean slow curler. Da-na-na Da-na-na.

"Royal Goy": Usually the Cubs are not completely out of it until June. Oh well! Get on the cricket band wagon! Otherwise I noticed Bears mini camp started. Only 4 monthes til Bears opening day!

"Boss man": Indian airline food... Yep I'll never forget this trip! Thanks for the opportunity.

Day 22

Vishal was still traveling today so I was on my own for Power Exports. Apparently there is a lot I do not know about Power Exports. Nobody in the class was able to get the special processing function to run. There were questions about the alerts. We were not able to figure out how to use the multi-record file format to import the file we exported. We didn't even try the last part were we pass in a parameter. What a mess! Hopefully my collegues back in the US can help me out and we'll fix what went wrong with everyone tomorrow.

Only 4 more days left. I getting really sick of Indian food. There has not been a huge variety of food. It's pretty much the same 3 or 4 dishes every night. I'm going to go out for dinner at least one more time.

Day 20 and 21

I stayed in Mysore this week. Saturday I hung around the pool which is beautiful. There are actually 2 pools. The first pool waterfalls down 15 feet into the second smaller pool. The main large pool is about the size of half a football field and has a island in the middle with a gazebo. All around the pool are wood deck chairs with umbrellas.

Today was really hot so I stayed closer to my room and read on my balcony for a little. In the evening I went shopping and got some souvenirs. I got myself a tailor made silk shirt. They are going to make it tonight and deliver it tomorrow. It was only Rs. 1500 or about $30. How much do you think a tailor made silk shirt delivered the next day would cost in the US?

I had Dominos last night and again for lunch today. I'm getting sick of Indian food. I miss pockets, McDonald's, Nemo's, Toons, Y2K (What's the damage).

I think Indian Coca Cola is different than US Coca Cola it tastes sweeter here.

Anyway 5 more days. I'm dreading the 33 hour trip home but I can't wait to get back and sleep in my own bed.

Comments...

Denise: According to the Infosys web site they hire people from Indian and US universities but I think the people they hire from the Us stay in the US. Everyone in my class is a graduate of Indian Universities. I think it is more common to go to grad school in the US.

Carolyn: I added more pictures of Goa to the posts from Day 12 - Day 15.

Leave a comment if you haven't already. I'd like to hear from you.

Day 19

We finished the import activity today; it took most of the day but everyone did well. Monday I'll give the export presentation and activity.

I downloaded Lost from iTunes, what a great ending! I think Michael was sent by the Others to free Henry. They are probably using Walt as leverage or maybe the "good" people are going to start turning into "others".

I wish I could download some of my other shows. I don't understand why every show and movie ever recorded is not available for me to download for $1.99. Let's go already!

One more week left. I'm going to start packing on Tuesday.

Comments....

Denise: I should be able finish the book on my 33 hour trip home. It's all yours when I get back.

Mom: I erased the spam (commercial).

Carolyn: Surprisingly Cinco Day Mayo is not really celebrated around here. :>