And Here We Are

We left Thursday afternoon. Adrian drove me to the airport. It was nice to have a time to say good bye. He's very understanding that my nervous system cannot rush to the airport. We were there very early. A line down the side walk was daunting. I thought I was cool, able to stroll up to the counter without a delay. I forgot the TSA. They check your check-through luggage. I was destined to be stuck in that long line. LAX is the worst. After that line, I had to get in a different line to have my carry-on luggage checked.

This picture is of that last line after I'd turned a corner. A friend just got new luggage for a trip. I hope it has the kind of wheels that go all ways. My don't and I often had to drag my suitcase as I went through that first long line.

We flew Business Class. Oh my gosh. This is amazing. First, you get special treatment in the business class lounge - "free" drinks and snacks. Then you get to board first. Then you get the most amazing seats. I was pushing buttons forever. You can actually lie flat for sleeping. Since this was a 20 hour flight, lying flat was a good deal. And you get to see every movie that you missed last year. I saw The Queen, Dream Girls and about 10 others. The food was really good, too. I liked the Indian food the least. That had me a little worried.

Deplaning wasn't bad. You need to know the address of where you are staying. I hope future travelers will have that jotted down for reference. You pass through all officialdom very quickly. I'm glad that I will be there to greet my friends as they arrive. There are lots of people there asking you questions, wanting to give you rides. One was the man who was picking us up, but I was looking for Chandan. Chandan had to work, so I had to apologize to the man I'd brushed off. Don't worry, I'll be there. I'd heard it was a zoo at the airport, but there were many fewer people there than I imagined.

I'm staying in a hotel for the first two days. Harriet is here with her husband, they will stay at the hotel because it is better to be close to the city for siteseeing. Which is what we did today. I am dizzy from all we saw. First, the traffic:

I'm sorry, I took that through the window. There are three-wheel yellow cabs, motorcycles, busses (lots of them) and a few cars. All are searching for a lane. It is crazy, but the driver was unperturbed. He had his horn.

I took lots of pictures of buildings. We saw the oldest British Libray, many beautiful government buildings, a garden (they chased us away, we were not allowed to park), and several temples, mosques and churches. Here is a temple and another mode of transportation:

Hinduism has many gods and there are temples around town for each one. Our driver's name was Murali. I chatted him up shamelessly. He was proud of the fact that people of many religions live closely without problems in his city. People don't live in a particular area to be with people who have the same belief. We also talked about how people just drop in on their friends whenever they want, without calling. He thought that was a good thing. I'd be appauled. I like my privacy too much for that stuff. But he went on to say that it doesn't matter which social level you are, when you drop in, you are treated as an equal. This from a country that still has a caste system. I'm sure what he says is true, just interesting.

We went to the Tipu Sultan's palace and this palace of the current monarch of the region. This is Harriet and Harold. The palace is being restored by many hands. It will be beautiful when they are done. It's filled with teak and rosewood and many pictures of this guy when he was little. What sweet pictures. He is now 54 and huge with no offspring. This is a good picture of Harriet and Harold, but I didn't take any pictures of the front of the building. Here is a picture of restoring the ceiling

I hate to tell my friend, Lynda, this, but we haven't eaten much since we got off the plane. No great food finds to report. But we did find a good bar in the hotel. It is very hot out there. After about 11:00, I was too hot. I persisted, but this last palace was away from all trees. It was at least 90 degrees and I forgot my hat (for the last time.) So we went back to the hotel to rest and write blogs, but not after a visit to the bar for a couple of beers and a gin and tonic. Ahhh, human again.

We are going out to dinner tonight with Chandan. I should have more on the food front to report tomorrow. We are also driving out to Mysore tomorrow. That should be fun.

5 Days to Lift Off

When I was a kid, my dad was scout master. We went on hikes at least once a month (or so it seems.) He taught me not to look up hill when I hiked. Just take one step at a time and soon you will be at the top, looking down at the long-windy path you just climbed. That's what I've been doing for the past two months. This hill is so steep that it leaves me breathless. And now I'm nearly at the top. And, of course, I've been reflecting.



When I return from India, I won't be talking to all my friends on the phone every day. Yes, those poor, often angry people who call with computer problems are my friends. A friend in need is a friend in deed. That must be why I consider them my friends. Each conversation lately has been the last. But, because I've been just putting one foot in front of the other, it hasn't sunk in until today. Sad for the moment, but they will forget about us and I will be finding new friends.



Other than reflecting, I've been buying. Part of the steps up the hill have been preparing for 11 weeks away from home and familiar things. My purchases have been from the mundane (new clothes) to the sublime (a new camera) to the silly (a book bag full of chocolate.) First the silly: Suresh and Teena love chocolate and say the chocolate in India is not as good as what they can buy here. I love chocolate! They also just drink beer and hard stuff, not much wine. No chocolate, no red wine! Wine is too heavy to haul over there, but chocolate... that's a different matter. The woman who sold me the bars of Valrona and Scharffenberger and others thought I was crazy and was sure I was going to rush to the car and stuff the 3 dozen chocolate bars into my face. The goal is to make it last for 11 weeks. Or the duration of the flight.


The new camera is great. I took two pictures at work yesterday to try it out. This is the funny one that got me started about thinking about, really thinking about, leaving The Times. This goofy child is my great niece with goofy glasses. I say hello to her every morning when I turn on my computer. Nothing like a smile to get your day started right.



The second picture was of Dean. He graciously sat for a photo while we discussed how he cannot be sick in the month of April and will keep Bill informed about the health of the Help Desk while I'm away. Do you see this portion of my office? I like the holes in the wall. This was a series of offices and we really wanted to keep track of each other. It helps when problems occur in the network, you can hear bits of other's conversations. We became much more effective with holey walls.
So, 5 days until my plane leaves for India. Time to review the final documentation written by the guys from IBM, time to test the infrastructure from India to here, time to make sure that the new employee (from IBM) set up process has all the elements that I can help provide, time to make sure that the Citix environment that IBM will be using has all the elements that I can help provide, time to say good-bye to everyone. 5 days is not much time.

Argh! Technology!

After working with people on their computer problems all week, I came home Thursday to a laptop that won't turn on. Now that will need to go to some tech guy to fix. Since I'm leaving for India in less than two weeks, that doesn't leave me much time. Can't bore anyone else with how this puts me in a bind. It's not about anything important, just loading books on my ipod. See, boring. I'll figure it out. And I need to find Natalie's blog address. That was on that laptop. How can I see dancing Maggie???
At work we're finally getting over the major Day Light Savings Time fiasco. So whose computer is still messed up? Mine. I can't get the computer to see my contacts. I have distribution groups in there that I need to do my job. Oh, to be truly technical.
But it wasn't all bad. I got to give 3 minute reviews on Friday. They were due some time ago, but we have been so stressed and swamped I haven't been able to give them. I wrote them in November or December. You may gather that I love these guys. Telling them what they have done well last year is a pleasure. Most of them are leaving, so talking about their future was a little odd. Cynthia and I shed a tear. She was asked to come work with us when we had to let people go a year or two ago. She was sceptical, had heard that it was hard to work for me. We've become friends; she is a calming influence on me. Those who know her will find that amusing, but it is true.
I got my review, too. Bill didn't write it in November or December. Luckily, he'd written it recently. It was very nice. At least a couple of things worked right this week.

Are We Dying?

I keep reading about the death of newspapers. This morning I was watching my favorite TV show, CBS Sunday Morning. They did a full segment on the death of print. Even though they didn't interview anyone at The Times, they did show an article in our paper that mentioned Hiller. Amazing how you can see something familiar as it whizzes by.
It is certainly bad days. Our circulation guy is threatening us with treason if we don't subscribe. I stopped my subscription when I learned that our jobs were being outsourced. Long ago, I was the training supervisor for Circulation. I worked with a great guy, the head of home delivery Dave Stevens, on a few projects. He talked about all the care that was taken in getting a dry paper to subscribers, on time. Through talking with him, I realized I had to subscribe. One of the women who worked for me put together a product knowledge class for new hires. It was her idea and a great one. How can you sell your product (keep people from stopping delivery, in our case) if you don't know that product? She was right, Dave was right. That was 25 years ago and I've hounded my family to read the paper ever since.
What changed? Well, the paper. With costs so high, the content is lower. Favorite sections and features come and go at a whim. I know it isn't a whim. People think long and hard on these decisions, or at least I hope they do. And they outsourced the jobs of the people who hear about delivery problems and they outsourced the delivery jobs to people who deliver lots of different newspapers. Neither group has the attachment to The Times that the employees did.
Another old timer from the pressroom taught me BOHICA. Bend over, here it comes again. We would say that about the newest initiatives, because if you'd been around long enough, you'd seen them before. Marching employees through new initiatives to improve their problem solving or performance evaluating skills is one thing. But I'm getting a sense of bohica when it comes to the paper. Something else lost, something else re-worked to make it better. It's all just bohica to me.

This Was NOT a Gift

Okay, so these idiots in Washington, D.C. decided it would save folks on the east coast a few bucks in lighting costs if we would just all agree to move Daylight Savings Time up 3 weeks. What the heck, who could it hurt? I guess they didn't talk to their technical support people. Many computer programs are based on time, especially things like calendars.
We have just gone through 3 weeks of hell, getting all our employees moved over to a new Outlook server that will be able to support the time change. Our group worked as hard as they could; employees were as understanding as they could be, considering they had no email; but it was killer.
At the same time, we were preparing for the outsourcing to India. We've become very fond of Suresh and Teena, so their presence is not painful, just time-consuming. Here's some pictures that they took of our hard working group.
On the left we have from the left Gernard, Clif, Dean, Teena, me, and Idalia.. To the right from the left, we have Gernard, Clif, Idalia, Teena and Fred.
And below, we have Teena, Cynthia and Suresh.
We don't look exhausted, do we? This was early days in the migration marathon. By the end of the migration, Dean had been out with a bad back and I was at home unable to talk. I don't know what will happen with my friend Eddie's group. They were doing the front end work, all through the night for weeks. They must be running on threads of adrenaline. Yes, this was not a gift, nor a very good law. Who were those idiot congressmen, anyway?