Thursday, August 31, 2006
Headed for home
Today's the day (well tomorrow really...our flight leaves at 12:30 PM) we head for home. I haven't done as good a job as I wanted keeping up with my reporting, but I will stick with it until I have covered the entire trip. Won't be till I'm back in the states though. Stay tuned...
Shopping!
So today was shopping day. We left the hotel about 10 and made the hour or so journey into downtown Chennai. We stopped at the city center mall, which looks very much like any mall you’d find in the US. We quickly determined we couldn’t find what we were looking for here, so we adjourned to Spencer’s, a mall with one department store and piles and piles of small shops and stalls selling all kinds of stuff. Dave and I managed to drop a bunch of rupees fairly quickly. Dave was finished, but there were still a couple of things on my list, so we kept hunting. I bought myself another kurta pyjama because they’re so cool to look at. Don’t have many opportunities to wear it, but it’s nice to have if the occasion warrants it.
We headed back to the hotel for lunch and a little more nothing and preparing for training at Newgen.
We headed back to the hotel for lunch and a little more nothing and preparing for training at Newgen.
And sure enough, there’s a temple in the bay!
It’s quite a place here! I pulled open my drapes in the morning and discovered that our rooms look out over the pool to the ocean and a little inlet where there’s a Hindu Temple. What an incredibly relaxing place, and boy did we relax. For breakfast, I had a couple of small bananas that were in my room. They were the yummiest bananas I’ve ever tasted…definitely bananas, but with a hint of a citrus flavor that was outstanding.
“Nothing” included catching up on my blog, a bit of reading, and watching some television. We have not so many choices for TV, a couple of movie channels (HBO, only with commercials in the movies), a cartoon channel, a couple of religious stations and a station that played old shows like Seinfeld and Friends. But it helped with the nothing-doing.
Dave and I met for dinner and we arranged with our hosts at Newgen to take us into Chennai on Sunday for a bit of shopping. Dinner was a restaurant right on the water called The Wharf. It’s an open-air thatched-roof sort of place that specializes in seafood. Part of their ‘schtick’ is that their kitchen is “interactive”, so you get invited up to the counter separating the cooking area from the dining area and see the operation.
After dinner we were treated to a couple of card tricks by the wait staff. The first went wrong somehow, so the waiter did another. After appropriate oohs from Dave and me, we departed back to our rooms.
“Nothing” included catching up on my blog, a bit of reading, and watching some television. We have not so many choices for TV, a couple of movie channels (HBO, only with commercials in the movies), a cartoon channel, a couple of religious stations and a station that played old shows like Seinfeld and Friends. But it helped with the nothing-doing.
Dave and I met for dinner and we arranged with our hosts at Newgen to take us into Chennai on Sunday for a bit of shopping. Dinner was a restaurant right on the water called The Wharf. It’s an open-air thatched-roof sort of place that specializes in seafood. Part of their ‘schtick’ is that their kitchen is “interactive”, so you get invited up to the counter separating the cooking area from the dining area and see the operation.
After dinner we were treated to a couple of card tricks by the wait staff. The first went wrong somehow, so the waiter did another. After appropriate oohs from Dave and me, we departed back to our rooms.
Every Shing a ling a ling, that they’re startin’ to sing…
The next day we wrapped up training. We discovered that Word 2003 Professional is what’s required for users to see the XML tags in a document, and we didn’t have it. But the IT staff at Integra was very responsive and got it installed on all the machines over lunch and we were able to do the exercises afterward
After training concluded, we went to a conference room upstairs and met with Sriram and Anu, the CEO and CFO of Integra. They had just returned from England and came in to the office just to meet with us. We discussed next steps and then headed for our weekend on the beach at Temple Bay. On the trip back toward Chennai, we took the coast road, much of which is right along the Indian Ocean. Much of the land here was under water after the tsunami in December 2004. We were pleased to see that the palm-frond huts that were erected to house people temporarily were being replaced by more permanent structures, even though they were very close to the beach still.
The coast road passes through several small towns along the way, all bustling with activity. I just barely caught a great picture of a woman walking along with the leads for two goat kids in one hand, a shopping bag in the other, and a load of something-or-other balanced on her head.
We arrived at GRT Temple Bay around 8:30, had a quick dinner and then retired for the night. Dave and I agreed that we wouldn’t make plans, but would do some major chilling on Saturday, and would just connect “whenever” during the day. It was great to spend a lot of time just relaxing.
After training concluded, we went to a conference room upstairs and met with Sriram and Anu, the CEO and CFO of Integra. They had just returned from England and came in to the office just to meet with us. We discussed next steps and then headed for our weekend on the beach at Temple Bay. On the trip back toward Chennai, we took the coast road, much of which is right along the Indian Ocean. Much of the land here was under water after the tsunami in December 2004. We were pleased to see that the palm-frond huts that were erected to house people temporarily were being replaced by more permanent structures, even though they were very close to the beach still.
The coast road passes through several small towns along the way, all bustling with activity. I just barely caught a great picture of a woman walking along with the leads for two goat kids in one hand, a shopping bag in the other, and a load of something-or-other balanced on her head.
We arrived at GRT Temple Bay around 8:30, had a quick dinner and then retired for the night. Dave and I agreed that we wouldn’t make plans, but would do some major chilling on Saturday, and would just connect “whenever” during the day. It was great to spend a lot of time just relaxing.
Headed South
On Wednesday we started the trek across the country from New Delhi in north-central India to Pondicherry in southeast India. It started with us checking out of the hotel. As a part of that process, I asked to confirm our reservations for our return stay. Of course, I had to move from the check out desk to the check in desk. Since, as we’ve already discovered, there’s no shortage of manpower in India, they have separate people to do the checking out and checking in.
Good thing I checked. They had almost everything wrong. The previous night I made reservations for Dave and me both, but the next morning, only I had a reservation and it was for only one night instead of the two we needed. According to their records, I made the reservation on the internet, which I didn’t. They asked (or told) me at least 5 times that I had. It was a very frustrating experience. Finally I handed them my business card and said fix it and email me the reservation information. We were getting late.
The trip through the airport was quite something. We had to show our itineraries before we could even get inside the building. Then we had to go through their baggage security check. They run your checked baggage through the x-ray machine before checking it.
Remember all the salt I bought? I forgot to mention that I had some of it in my carry-on luggage when we left Paris, and it nearly got confiscated. Apparently the little vials of crystals looked a little too suspicious. They eventually let me have them, and I swore at that point to be sure and have them in my checked baggage from then on. But with the security screening method in Delhi, they found the salt in my checked baggage and asked me what it was. Since the language on the containers was French, they couldn’t tell for sure what it was. Again, though, after some period of deliberation they decided it was ok, sealed up my bags to prevent me from putting anything else inside, and let me go.
The flight to Chennai was uneventful, but pretty awful. The rows were very close together, I suppose to account for the generally smaller Indian stature. But for a big guy like me, it was extraordinarily cramped. And since it was a 2 ½ hour flight, it was a lot of unpleasantness.
We arrived at the airport in Chennai and almost immediately spotted Shorav Kasera and Mohan from Integra. Shorav is the new (compared to last year) account manager for Thomson and Mohan is the fellow we had as a driver last year. Mohan is a fellow with bright eyes and a great big smile who wants you to think he doesn’t know any English, but I suspect he knows way more than he lets on. They went outside while we collected our baggage.
We had about a 2-hour car trip to Pondicherry, where Integra’s offices are. It was a long, but uneventful car ride. We saw a couple of monkeys along the side of the road, which was kind of cool. We also saw lots of people wearing orange clothing walking along the side of the road. Shorav explained that there was a festival at a local temple, and Shorav explained that it was an auspicious occasion and orange is an auspicious color.
We checked in at Hotel le Dupliex, where we stayed on our previous trip. It’s a French colonial building with its lobby and restaurant outside in the courtyard. The rooms have 20-foot ceilings with a little loft area on a “second floor” in the room where the television is. The walls and floor are covered in teak wood and the furnishings are all antiques. It’s quite a stunning place. Our stay last year was memorable for its quality. This year it was memorable for other reasons. My air conditioning was not working when we arrived and the power in my room went out twice in the first 3 hours or so. Power outages are a fairly common occurrence, and that’s what I thought it was at first. But when I realized that the air conditioning (which had by now been fixed) was still running, I figured a fuse or circuit breaker had blown. Anyway, everything eventually settled down and we had lunch and dinner in our rooms while we refined our training materials for the next round.
The next morning, after a shower with no hot water, we headed over to Integra’s new facilities. Wow, what an impressive location! They have one of the tallest buildings in Pondicherry, and in fact, we learned they are the largest private employer there. Their previous facilities were in 14 or so buildings which were connected via the network, but which made for some difficulties for groups who needed to work together. Their new facility is 6 stories tall with plenty of room to grow. One of the first people we met was Bhuvana, one of the trainees from last year.
The class was made up of a few “repeats” from last year, and about a dozen new folks. We were pleased to se that a couple of project managers joined as well. We started with the review of the “old” training material and then launched in to the new workflow. As with the previous locations people’s eyes lit up when they saw how complete the information package is in terms of both scope and detail.
After class, we had a tour of the facility with Shorav and Shyam. We learned that Integra has an industrial engineering department where they analyze tasks done by their staff, set norms for how long a task should take, and then analyze the data that is returned on completed projects. They also have a robust workflow management system that charts the progress of work through their system. We talked about populating project-level information directly out of the PPF and eventually accepting two-way feeds between their system and IPS.
We’ve discovered something very interesting about elevators (at least some elevators) here. Manufacturers seem to load only one song into the music system for their elevators. The elevator at Integra features a musak version of the Carpenters’ “Yesterday Once More.
Then Shorav took us on a bit of a sightseeing trip. We visited a very famous temple to Ganesh (a deity depicted as an elephant), where we were ushered inside (after removing our footwear), and were then treated to a service that concluded with us receiving a blessing from the priest, complete with ashes on our foreheads and a gift of a flower from Ganesh. An incredible experience we’d never attempt to do on our own. We stopped next at a couple of Catholic churches. One was Sacred Heart, I believe…not sure about the other, but it was painted a salmon pink sort of color. We went inside this one since there was no service going on. We were surprised to see the driver come along with us and cross himself and genuflect as he entered the church. Shorav explained that it’s very common for Hindus to worship in Christian churches. Since theirs is a polytheistic society, adopting another god or another style of worship is not a huge leap.
We then met up with Shyam and Sagayrag, Innodata’s CTO for dinner. We ate at the restaurant atop the Promenade, a hotel we’ll be staying at next time. The restaurant is open-air, and that, plus the food and company, made for a very pleasant end to the day…if you ignore the fact that the elevator was made by the same company as Integra’s. “When I was young, I listened to the radio waitin’ for my fav’rite songs…”
Good thing I checked. They had almost everything wrong. The previous night I made reservations for Dave and me both, but the next morning, only I had a reservation and it was for only one night instead of the two we needed. According to their records, I made the reservation on the internet, which I didn’t. They asked (or told) me at least 5 times that I had. It was a very frustrating experience. Finally I handed them my business card and said fix it and email me the reservation information. We were getting late.
The trip through the airport was quite something. We had to show our itineraries before we could even get inside the building. Then we had to go through their baggage security check. They run your checked baggage through the x-ray machine before checking it.
Remember all the salt I bought? I forgot to mention that I had some of it in my carry-on luggage when we left Paris, and it nearly got confiscated. Apparently the little vials of crystals looked a little too suspicious. They eventually let me have them, and I swore at that point to be sure and have them in my checked baggage from then on. But with the security screening method in Delhi, they found the salt in my checked baggage and asked me what it was. Since the language on the containers was French, they couldn’t tell for sure what it was. Again, though, after some period of deliberation they decided it was ok, sealed up my bags to prevent me from putting anything else inside, and let me go.
The flight to Chennai was uneventful, but pretty awful. The rows were very close together, I suppose to account for the generally smaller Indian stature. But for a big guy like me, it was extraordinarily cramped. And since it was a 2 ½ hour flight, it was a lot of unpleasantness.
We arrived at the airport in Chennai and almost immediately spotted Shorav Kasera and Mohan from Integra. Shorav is the new (compared to last year) account manager for Thomson and Mohan is the fellow we had as a driver last year. Mohan is a fellow with bright eyes and a great big smile who wants you to think he doesn’t know any English, but I suspect he knows way more than he lets on. They went outside while we collected our baggage.
We had about a 2-hour car trip to Pondicherry, where Integra’s offices are. It was a long, but uneventful car ride. We saw a couple of monkeys along the side of the road, which was kind of cool. We also saw lots of people wearing orange clothing walking along the side of the road. Shorav explained that there was a festival at a local temple, and Shorav explained that it was an auspicious occasion and orange is an auspicious color.
We checked in at Hotel le Dupliex, where we stayed on our previous trip. It’s a French colonial building with its lobby and restaurant outside in the courtyard. The rooms have 20-foot ceilings with a little loft area on a “second floor” in the room where the television is. The walls and floor are covered in teak wood and the furnishings are all antiques. It’s quite a stunning place. Our stay last year was memorable for its quality. This year it was memorable for other reasons. My air conditioning was not working when we arrived and the power in my room went out twice in the first 3 hours or so. Power outages are a fairly common occurrence, and that’s what I thought it was at first. But when I realized that the air conditioning (which had by now been fixed) was still running, I figured a fuse or circuit breaker had blown. Anyway, everything eventually settled down and we had lunch and dinner in our rooms while we refined our training materials for the next round.
The next morning, after a shower with no hot water, we headed over to Integra’s new facilities. Wow, what an impressive location! They have one of the tallest buildings in Pondicherry, and in fact, we learned they are the largest private employer there. Their previous facilities were in 14 or so buildings which were connected via the network, but which made for some difficulties for groups who needed to work together. Their new facility is 6 stories tall with plenty of room to grow. One of the first people we met was Bhuvana, one of the trainees from last year.
The class was made up of a few “repeats” from last year, and about a dozen new folks. We were pleased to se that a couple of project managers joined as well. We started with the review of the “old” training material and then launched in to the new workflow. As with the previous locations people’s eyes lit up when they saw how complete the information package is in terms of both scope and detail.
After class, we had a tour of the facility with Shorav and Shyam. We learned that Integra has an industrial engineering department where they analyze tasks done by their staff, set norms for how long a task should take, and then analyze the data that is returned on completed projects. They also have a robust workflow management system that charts the progress of work through their system. We talked about populating project-level information directly out of the PPF and eventually accepting two-way feeds between their system and IPS.
We’ve discovered something very interesting about elevators (at least some elevators) here. Manufacturers seem to load only one song into the music system for their elevators. The elevator at Integra features a musak version of the Carpenters’ “Yesterday Once More.
Then Shorav took us on a bit of a sightseeing trip. We visited a very famous temple to Ganesh (a deity depicted as an elephant), where we were ushered inside (after removing our footwear), and were then treated to a service that concluded with us receiving a blessing from the priest, complete with ashes on our foreheads and a gift of a flower from Ganesh. An incredible experience we’d never attempt to do on our own. We stopped next at a couple of Catholic churches. One was Sacred Heart, I believe…not sure about the other, but it was painted a salmon pink sort of color. We went inside this one since there was no service going on. We were surprised to see the driver come along with us and cross himself and genuflect as he entered the church. Shorav explained that it’s very common for Hindus to worship in Christian churches. Since theirs is a polytheistic society, adopting another god or another style of worship is not a huge leap.
We then met up with Shyam and Sagayrag, Innodata’s CTO for dinner. We ate at the restaurant atop the Promenade, a hotel we’ll be staying at next time. The restaurant is open-air, and that, plus the food and company, made for a very pleasant end to the day…if you ignore the fact that the elevator was made by the same company as Integra’s. “When I was young, I listened to the radio waitin’ for my fav’rite songs…”
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Innodata day 2
The second day’s training went well also. One thing we’re not used to that we get a lot of here…the power will go out for some unexplained reason. It happened a couple of times each day at Innodata. It’s a non-event, it seems, for folks over here but it does take some getting used to.
Mike Burggren, a production guy who’s going to be based over here for several months, joined us for the training during the morning. We met up again in the evening for dinner.
Dave and I kicked around the idea of tacking on a couple of extra days and have a couple of meetings. We’ve had some great conversations with Vikas about next steps with production automation at Thomson. So we concluded our day by meeting with the stylesheet developers from Innodata to lay out points for discussion for a follow up meeting. After discussing it with my manager, we changed our flights and made hotel reservations back in New Delhi for Wednesday and Thursday nights. We’ll meet with Innodata on Thursday and ITC on Friday.
Mike Burggren, a production guy who’s going to be based over here for several months, joined us for the training during the morning. We met up again in the evening for dinner.
Dave and I kicked around the idea of tacking on a couple of extra days and have a couple of meetings. We’ve had some great conversations with Vikas about next steps with production automation at Thomson. So we concluded our day by meeting with the stylesheet developers from Innodata to lay out points for discussion for a follow up meeting. After discussing it with my manager, we changed our flights and made hotel reservations back in New Delhi for Wednesday and Thursday nights. We’ll meet with Innodata on Thursday and ITC on Friday.
Round 2
The training today is hosted by Innodata. We have people with us from Innodata, ITC and ICC. Dave and I looked at the setup of the room and realized that we wouldn’t be able to sit at the table and still project our slides for the attendees. So we suggested that we move the table around to the side a bit and get another table for the projector. We started to move it ourselves, but were soon surrounded by four people to help us arrange things appropriately. Vikas Verma, our main technical contact at Innodata in New Delhi joked, “there’s no shortage of manpower in India.” How true.
The other thing there’s no shortage of in India is attentiveness to visitors’ needs. When in training situations here, you barely have to mention that you might need something and it will be fetched for you with all speed.
The training went very well…we started as usual by reviewing the training materials that we sent ahead of time, and then we launched into the new workflow material. As we work through the sessions, we’re continually alert to opportunities to improve. Dave leapt up at one point and proposed that we do an impromptu exercise to keymark some content (on the whiteboard), then create the map to TLDoc elements, and then create our draft TLDoc from that (all done manually on the whiteboard). It was a great way to show the very close relationship between the keymarks on the PPF, the keymarked manuscript, the XSLT snippets on the PPF and the draft TLDoc. Our thinking is that if the vendors know the steps of the process, they’ll be able to offer better suggestions for improvements along the way. I think the exercise helped tremendously to do exactly that, so we’ll be incorporating that exercise in future rounds of training.
We met with Udai from Innodata after the training session. We were supposed to take the Innodata folks out to dinner, but Udai suggested that we instead go to the Red Fort in Old Delhi. He said they have a great light and sound show that presents the history of Delhi. So Dave and I went back to the hotel for a quick dinner and then met Vikas for the trip to Red Fort. The trip took us through one of the main streets of Old Delhi, which by itself was fascinating. The hustle and bustle of the traffic (pedestrian, two-wheeled, three-wheeled and four wheeled; I don’t recall seeing any four-footed traffic) and the small shops lining the road kept Dave and me craning our necks back and forth the whole way. It’s a wonder we don’t give ourselves whiplash trying to take it all in.
So we arrived at the Red Fort only to discover that it is closed on Mondays. Bummer. So we made our way back through Old Delhi and then Vikas took us around India Gate, the President’s house and other government buildings here in India’s capital. Afterward, we were delivered back to our hotel where we were able to delve into some of the day’s email and prepare for the next day’s training.
The other thing there’s no shortage of in India is attentiveness to visitors’ needs. When in training situations here, you barely have to mention that you might need something and it will be fetched for you with all speed.
The training went very well…we started as usual by reviewing the training materials that we sent ahead of time, and then we launched into the new workflow material. As we work through the sessions, we’re continually alert to opportunities to improve. Dave leapt up at one point and proposed that we do an impromptu exercise to keymark some content (on the whiteboard), then create the map to TLDoc elements, and then create our draft TLDoc from that (all done manually on the whiteboard). It was a great way to show the very close relationship between the keymarks on the PPF, the keymarked manuscript, the XSLT snippets on the PPF and the draft TLDoc. Our thinking is that if the vendors know the steps of the process, they’ll be able to offer better suggestions for improvements along the way. I think the exercise helped tremendously to do exactly that, so we’ll be incorporating that exercise in future rounds of training.
We met with Udai from Innodata after the training session. We were supposed to take the Innodata folks out to dinner, but Udai suggested that we instead go to the Red Fort in Old Delhi. He said they have a great light and sound show that presents the history of Delhi. So Dave and I went back to the hotel for a quick dinner and then met Vikas for the trip to Red Fort. The trip took us through one of the main streets of Old Delhi, which by itself was fascinating. The hustle and bustle of the traffic (pedestrian, two-wheeled, three-wheeled and four wheeled; I don’t recall seeing any four-footed traffic) and the small shops lining the road kept Dave and me craning our necks back and forth the whole way. It’s a wonder we don’t give ourselves whiplash trying to take it all in.
So we arrived at the Red Fort only to discover that it is closed on Mondays. Bummer. So we made our way back through Old Delhi and then Vikas took us around India Gate, the President’s house and other government buildings here in India’s capital. Afterward, we were delivered back to our hotel where we were able to delve into some of the day’s email and prepare for the next day’s training.
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