Dinner Party and New Arrival

Those who know me well know that I love to cook. I don't know why it has taken me eight weeks to invite people over for a party. I invited Chandan, Avinash and his wife Sowmya, and belatedly, Suresh, to dinner on Saturday. I had great plans to travel all over town getting what I wanted to cook, but decided to try to make a meal from what I have in my cupboard and what I could buy from the FabMall in the apartment complex.

I had such a surprise when I started to cook. The new houseboy I have here on the 4th floor saw me smashing garlic as I started to cook. I was making a chicken dish and had already brined the chicken. Adrian taught me that chicken always tastes better if you start by brining (soaking in salted water.) Since I wasn't sure of the quality of the chicken, this sounded like a great idea.

Anyway, Santhos, the houseboy, asked if he could help me peel the garlic. OK. Then he looked at me and said, "Onions?" Of course. So as I browned the chicken, Santhos cut onions for the chicken, then peeled and cut cucumbers, washed tomatoes in bottled water then sliced those, peeled and cut carrots into thin slices. That was salad, beautifully arranged on a plate. Then he cut cantaloupe and seeded it. He did put that in the freezer, so we had beautiful blocks of flavor. He seeded a pomegranate and put the seeds over the frozen cantaloupe.

I added dried fruit and chicken bouillon (from Per) and green olives and vermouth to the chicken and let it simmer for a long time. I sauteed shrimp, or rather Santhos did, and then I added pesto from Per and that was the appetizer. The rest of the meal was basmati rice that I cooked and two veg dishes that I got in packets at the store for the vegetarian Sowmya.

Yes, too much food and it was wonderful. The food was good, but the feeling of preparing it and working in such harmony with Santhos was wonderful. He came back when we were done eating and cleaned up. Then he prepared the dessert, mangos with vanilla ice cream. Chandan manned the bar. I didn't have to move much and as the evening went on, I couldn't. Avinash brought an excellent red wine from India. So there was plenty of reason to be immobile.

I did help Santos put things away, but he never let me clean. That is his job. Sauteeing chicken is such a messy business without a splatter screen. When I started to clean up when I was done with that, he told me that was his job. OK.

The next day we picked up Laura from Chicago from the airport. She had taken a long flight from Chicago to New Delhi, stayed 12 hours in Delhi (we had convinced her to go to a hotel, too long in that little airport) and then flew a domestic airline to Bangalore. For someone who hates to fly, that was an exhausting trip.

We got her at 9:30 and then went to the Leela Palace for brunch, as we like to do for new comers. I've become so tired of Citrus, even its excellent brunch, we went to brunch at Zen. They bring sate' to your table - lamb, chicken and shrimp on skewers. They brought dim sum and tempura shrimp and vegetables. The buffet was filled with sushi and marinated vegetables. It was fabulous. I think that will be the last of the Leela. But it was a great last hurrah. After brunch, Laura and Nancy went back to the apartment and I stayed to have a massage. Teena joined me for a facial. It was great. We all got to meet Teena's husband. I liked him in their wedding picture. He is better in person. Maybe we will get to meet and talk for longer than 2 minutes sometime.

Busy weekend. Fortunately, we took Monday off for Memorial Day. The ladies came over for tea and cookies (Nancy brought them to the party from a shop at The Forum. Really good.) It was a quiet day. A good day for memories.

Sorry, I'm Going to be Late Today

We are experiencing pre-monsoon weather or peri-monsoonal weather as we older women would call it. We left the apartment yesterday in thick air. In the car, I told Ramesh in an ominous tone that it would be raining somewhere in Bangalore today. He smiled and said, "no, it is raining somewhere in Bangalore right now." We laughed because he had done this Jedi thing before. Then, lo and grow old, it started to pour just a few minutes later. Pfoummm, all the water in the sky dropped. And a cow came ambling down the road. She was sort of aiming our way, oblivious to the rain. Had it been me, she would have been steak the next day. But Ramesh is a much better driver than me.

So on the way in, I kept imaging the phone call to work. "So sorry, I won't be in today. Ran into a cow when a monsoon hit." Only in India.

Then I asked Ramesh if he would drive us through the gates at IBM and into the compound, rather than have us trudge through mud and cascading rain. He agreed kind of quietly. I thought he didn't want to wait in the long line to get in through the gate. But he knew. Somewhere in Bangalore it was not raining. Like at IBM. Only in India.

Another Sad Goodbye

Nahum is leaving tonight. He has been such a productive member of our team, I will hate to see him leave. When he arrived, the group was just starting to take mock calls. He saw that they weren't using their tools correctly, so he spent a lot of time working with them and drilling them on how to use their Tribune tools. This has helped considerably. Group 2 has it very tough. They have two very demanding groups, Chicago and Orlando, and two less demanding groups, Sun Sentinel and Daily Press. There is a lot to know and remember. KJ always stressed using their reference material for Orlando and Nahum has done the same for Chicago. Please have patience, folks in those cities, they will get there, given a lot of calls and time. It will be easier for them because Nahum cared so much and worked so hard to get them started on the right path.

Sophie and Nahum will always be the eaters in my experience in India. The fact that they were picky eaters is beside the point. They didn't seem to like to eat at the apartment. That's where I'd rather be, but we tend to stick together. Now that Sophie has gone, we've eaten out less, but still more than my body needs. I did take Nahum and Nancy to the Blue Ginger on Tuesday. This was one of Harriet's favorite places and the place where KJ learned to eat with chopsticks. It serves Vietnamese food and looks like a cabana. It has a high roof and open sides. I ate my obligatory scallops and a mango salad. Nahum had lamb chops and shrimp fried rice. Nancy had a delicious chicken and noodles soup and a chicken dish. The food was great, but the fun was the monsoon. It started to rain, then lightning and thunder, then the skies opened and dumped water. You can't call it rain. It's like the shower I've been dreaming of. Hummm. Next time, I'm taking the shampoo outside and finally getting my hair really clean.

We got there before a drop of rain fell. This gave us time to admire their gardens and start our lunch. Then the heavens opened. Holy cow! You can see them lowering the plastic curtains to keep out the rain. Anyway, the plastic kept the rain out and the whole thing stopped just as we were leaving. This is some resaturant. They even provide a floor show.

Goodbye Hello

It isn't that interesting things aren't happening every day. They are. When KJ was here, we would check each other's blogs every morning. I had to get my thoughts up quick or my Karens (Jennings and Campbell) would be asking what happened. Then Nahum and Sophie came and KJ left. These two aren't bloggers. They are eaters. We were constantly out in the afternoon looking for food that they would eat. Nahum isn't as picky, but Sophie is pickiness champ. That took a lot of our time and energy and isn't very interesting to blog about.

On the work side of life:

The LA team is constantly improving and feeling more confident. Harriet came up with the brilliant idea to ask for phone number instead of name. Most times the phone number in our ticketing system is right. If you put a %last 4 number (%2591) you will get just a few listings and you can find the person very quickly. Brava, Harriet. This saves so much time in getting to the right person. We are making sure that all teams do this. We have had such complaints about this part of the call taking forever. But we have been able to cut down our average time per call from 11 minutes to 5 minutes. This will make for much happier callers. Well, that's a little optimistic, but that should be happier.

They should also be happier because I don't ever remember seeing a more collaborative group. They know they don't know as much as old-timers do, so they pore/pour (they both seem right to me) through every reference document they can find. Poor Ratish has been scouring the Right Answers knowledge base through TechLynx. He found that users could have a lot of profiles in Outlook. He came over to me and asked why someone would do that. How the helk would I know? People do weird things. But he was just interested and really wanted to know. Poor Ratish, he went away with just that type of answer.

We had one call from Duke Helfand, an education writer, asking about an Outlook issue. There were 5 people researching every aspect of the problem. It's sometimes difficult to get to the whole answer because you don't know the chain of events that lead up to the problem. But they were looking at every resource and trying all solutions to come up with a good answer for Duke. The folks in LA have experiences that they can rely on to give them quick answers. The folks in Bangalore will get that experience over time, but they have a great team to rely on.

On the traveler side of life:

Sophie left last Saturday early in the morning. Just before she left, Nancy Carey joined us from Newsday. The Newsday team was very happy to see her. Other than a delightful but brief visit from Rob, they haven't seen any of the people they support. So Nancy has been a welcome addition. Nahum and I took her down to the local food store and pool area at the apartments. There are a lot of families here. They have a children's playground, a basketball court and swimming pool by the store. The pool looks so inviting. I don't wear bathing suits for good reason, but I am so tempted to slip in one night in my tank top and shorts. Very late when no one is around. The big lock on the gate was pointed out to me. Nahum said I could climb the wall. Funny guy. I'm just now getting better at stairs!

We have cut back on our searching for food and have just gone out to restaurants a couple of times. We went to Citrus at the Sophie, er, Leela Palace for their Sunday brunch. I have to say that going there so often has completely taken the shine off that place for me. We enjoyed it, but I may try something a little different for Laura's first weekend. Nahum, Nancy and I had found a good Indian place in the Forum Mall around the corner. That was really fun. We got into a three wheeler and went around the block. Nancy is very game for this type of adventure. It was just her first day here. What a trooper! Nahum had wanted to go to a movie, but the show was sold out. Spiderman III. Someone up there was answering my prayers. So we went to this Indian place instead.

It was modeled after a train's dining car in the old Raj days. Totally beautiful. And very inexpensive. We all enjoyed our food. It was prepared and presented beautifully. And my camera was at home. Sorry, Lynda. We tried to negotiate our normal price for going home and the drivers all said no, there was no place to turn around. Who knew that Bangalore was such a hopping place on Saturday night? Not me, even after 7 weeks. We met 3 of the guys from the Chicago team and they negotiated a 30 rupee drive. Then we kept going on forever because, you guessed it, there was no place to turn around. I gave him 50, which is what the first driver said. Considering how much money I've spent here, you'd think I wouldn't fight over 50 cents. Shame on me.

I did have my camera for our trip to Sunny's. Nahum is counting down the days until he leaves. We are visiting some of his and Sophie's old haunts. This was a real favorite. He got his lamb chops, Nancy got a delicious looking pizza and I got tempura vegetables and shrimp. A little eclectic, non? Nancy took the pizza to work. It was huge.

Nancy is having problems with the wifi in her room. None of us remember KJ having this issue. However, it just came to me that she connected directly to her laptop from the modem a lot of the time. I hope that solves the problem. It is hard to be without connectivity when you are so far from home. And she is having problems with the phone and no clock. Talk about being adrift! Actually, it sounds like my first week. Except I have a Blackberry that has a clock and instant email access. Rob and I were in touch throughout the early part of his visit, thanks to our Blackberrys. I don't know how one can survive on a business trip without one.

I'm having problems downloading pictures after that first one. Maybe another day you can see the great picture I took of Nancy and Nahum. I should ask the LAT team why this is happening. There would be 10 bodies all over this laptop.

Go Live Party

We had a party on Monday to celebrate LA going live. We've been live for a week, but on Monday we started taking calls from 8:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night. We take 30% of all calls. I think Chandan almost had a heart attack when I said we should take 100% of the calls. We're still a little slow, because everything is new. But we will get faster as time goes on. The party was in the cafeteria. They had cake and prizes. We gave awards to the people who had done the best in each group. It was a gift certificate to a local mall, very nice. Group 2 (the one with Tribune, the Sentinels and Daily Press) gave two prizes because they are so big. The Times' winner, Avinash, is on the later shift, so he wasn't there to receive his prize. Pinaki took the picture of Chandan giving the prize. I can't take credit for that excellent job of capturing the excitement of the moment.

Bill has been getting feedback from our users. They hate outsourcing, so that is reflected. The realists at The Times understand that this is going to happen and that we have a room full of new agents, so they are gracious and accommodating. We are striving to make everyone happy, but there are some people that nobody could make happy and some who haven't had a good experience. The ones who gave us a hard time in LA are giving the people in Bangalore a hard time. The difference is that now someone is asking their opinion. Yikes. We're working hard to get better at the things that can be improved on this side of the world.

It will be easier for the LAT and Newsday teams now because we got our remote access tools working. I was showing the Times team how to use Carbon Copy. I was sure that I had remoted in to my computer in LA, but someone was on it! We started chatting using Notepad. I was so rude. "Can you move the task bar back down to the bottom." Who would do that to my pc! You all must know by now that it wasn't my pc. I had gotten two other asset numbers and remoted into some guys' computer by mistake. He was very nice to let me go on. But then, I couldn't hear what was being said in LA. He's too much of a gentleman to call me the names I think I deserved. We all lived and the LA and Newsday teams now know how to use Carbon Copy. They have done so and say that it is SOOO much easier when you can see what the user is looking at.

We are usually in the farthest right aisle of the 3 aisle production room. The other two aisles get inundated with Team 2 and 3 staff when they are taking mock calls or semi-live calls (a terrific idea from Newsday for their helpdesk to conference users into IBM and then stay on the line. Very helpful.) It is a zoo to me. People in India are used to sharing space and over-crowdedness. It makes me cringe. Some of the people decorated the room beautifully for the go-live celebration. This picture will show you some of that AND the plethora of people in the room. I sit across the aisle and ask Teena and our team to come see me for any questions. I can't get myself to be in the midst of all that noise. We seem to manage.

Somehow.

But First a Word From Heaven

This is the beginning of a very busy week for us. And I will write about that tomorrow. First, I want you to come with me to heaven. Sophie talked me into spending the weekend at the Leela Palace. Our goal was to have a massage and facial on Mother's Day. We did all that and more.

We arrived at 1:00 and I was hungry, of course. I threw my bags into my gorgeous room and ran downstairs to a restaurant called Zen. I had read on the web that they have dim sum. Say no more, I'm there. I ordered a wonderful green tea served in this adorable little cup. The room overlooks the most peaceful garden. And I was alone. Utter bliss. I had little pork buns, tofu egg rolls and sui mai dumplings. Yes, it was too much. No, I didn't eat it all. But it was bliss.

The other high point of the weekend was the shower. You all know my shower. Poor water pressure, a bucket, a dipper. Quaint, but home. Some day I'll show you pictures of every aspect of the room I stayed in. For now, you get to see the bath and million dollar shower. It poured hot water on you as long as you can stand it. That's pretty long. Stuff came out of my hair from the first week that I was here. Ahhhhhhh, heaven.

I seem to recall that we ate at Citrus yet again that night. It is Sophie's favorite. I'm okay with it. Especially when I can eat Confit of Duck and sauteed spinach. Yep. Even here. Duck. This is one woman's crusade to rid the world of this bird. Hopefully, I will never come close.

Sunday breakfast was compris (we already paid for it in the price of the room.) It's like the Sunday brunch, but a third the size. In my opinion, the good third. Lots of fruit, carrot juice and wonderful cheese. Then on to the massage.

No pictures of moby dick. This was the best massage I've ever had. I haven't had many, but this was the best. I will be back. Not to the room, etc. but to the massage. This woman was utterly fantastic. I felt like a million bucks. Thank goodness. The facial was also good. Much better than Delhi. She even massaged my head. They, too, had a shower to die for and a lady in the dressing room who dried my hair for me. Neat.

I went upstairs to finish the Easy Rawlings book that Harriet lent me. I like Easy and his friend Mouse. It was easy reading and enjoyable. KJ left me another summer beach book that I will start when I get home. I sat out on the porch and felt like a queen.

We ate dinner again at Citrix, but Nahum and Chandan came. Avinash and his wife came later to whisk the kids off to a loud disco. Yea, right up my alley. I happily went up to my room and played with my computer. She's aging. Sometimes gracefully, most often quietly. But happily.

Nahum came back the next day to have lunch and then go shopping, looking for some salt and pepper shakers that Sophie admired. They went to Citrix. I honestly couldn't do it again. What I could do was Zen. This time I only ordered two dishes. One was what may have been a pot sticker in bao-ish dough. It was really good. Then I had a sushi roll with lump crab tempura with salmon on the top of half and eel on the top of the other half. OMG, OMG, OMG. Abolutely fabulous. This, too, was too much, but I ate every grain of rice. Zen. I will dream of you. You and the weekend in heaven.

LA Goes Live

Sorry for the delay in posting. We have been busy. On Tuesday, we started taking live calls from Los Angeles. It was determined that we would start slowly, so 30% of the calls coming into the HelpDesk between 9:00 and noon would be funneled to India. We didn't consider that LA has 3 people on the HelpDesk and Bangalore has 10. Sure the guys in Bangalore are new to this, but they won't get any experience if they just take one or two calls a day. So on Wednesday we upped that to 100%. Even with that, the large number of people we had on the phones allowed each agent to have plenty of time to process what they were hearing and learning. The three guys to the left have new names because their names were misunderstood by LA folk. We have Nitish (Nick), Ratish (who was often called Radish, so we call him by part of his last name, Americanized to Shaker), and Prithvi (Paul, the cute Beatle.)

I remember my first days on the HelpDesk. I'm not a techie. I'm a people person. I knew most of the people at The Times and I knew exactly how everything operated. Everything except the computers. "I can't log on." It took me a long time (it seemed to me) to remember to say, "log on to what?" We have a lot of passwords, you can't make assumptions. I also had the advantage of Fred. Fred sat on the other side of the partition from me. I would listen to him to hear how he solved issues. I would ask him what to do. I would toss "dumps" over the wall. It wasn't the people I was dumping on Fred, it was a problem that confused or scared me. Soon the dumps got fewer as my confidence built, but I was blessed to have Fred there to help me. We have Sharon and Sowmya in the foreground to the left. Teena is watching over all that's happening in her beautiful embroidered blouse. Pratchi and Sanat have their backs to us. Working hard.

These guys in Bangalore have had a lot more training. They know computer hardware better than I ever will. But they don't know everyone in the building or the building for that matter. They are getting a sense of how things operate, how a newspaper goes together every day, but they still have a lot to learn. And they are learning. Every call is a learning experience. Boy, do I remember how that felt. I was over 50 when I started on the HelpDesk. Some old dogs can learn new tricks. I would marvel at all the new things I learned every day. This is how to keep a brain young. Learn a whole new language (tech). So these younger pups get to learn something new everyday, every call. And they have to do it without Fred. Avinash seems to be doing very well. He may become the Fred for future agents.

They have Teena and Suresh and me for now. When we were taking mock calls last week, I knew what the questions would be and I knew all the answers. In real calls, you get some pretty strange questions. It's kept us all on our toes. Another interesting thing is that none of them has the role of Fred or any of the other 10 people that used to be on The Times' HelpDesk when we had a large staff. I came into the department as the only new person so I had plenty of Freds around for support. This group only has each other. They are very collaborative and will work through solutions with others in the group. It's fun to watch. They will get an answer. And I'm there to make sure it is the right answer. By the time I leave in just 5 more weeks (but who's counting,) they will have some very good experience under their belts. Vishak was working next to Avinash yesterday. He is very charming on the phone.

On Monday, they start covering most of the hours that The Times HelpDesk is currently open. This is probably 2 shifts here. I'm not sure who will cover 8 a.m. to 5:00 and who will cover 11:00 to 8 p.m. We've been having some great review sessions with the whole group. I'm going to miss them. Since we won't be taking a high percentage of calls at first, I'm hoping to get training room time to review calls and perfect performance. It seems vital to me at this point. Chandan and Avinash can expect a visit from me on Monday.

Nahum is here from Chicago. He's just been put in the position in Chicago of helping us get our Citrix servers working and set up. He did that for the first pair and is here when the final work is being done. So he's been spending odd hours helping those who remain in Chicago with the set up of the last servers. He was on the helpdesk at Tribune for a longish time, so he knows how to troubleshoot "with his eyes closed" (that's how I answer questions on the phone when I can't see what's happening.)

We Start Taking Live Calls

LAT was supposed to start taking live calls first. On Monday we would be taking live calls between 9:00 and noon PST (or PDT, what is it?) But there was an issue, so we will start taking 30% of all calls coming into the Times' helpdesk on Tuesday. All the rest of the teams were taking their first mock calls.

We were all there. From Orlando Sentinel, we had Sophie and KJ. We would be dropping KJ at the airport at the end of the day. Nahum was there from Chicago Tribune. And Rob was there from Newsday. It was pretty exciting. Lots of people were there from IBM as well. The calls started flowing in and Jennifer, pictured to the left with Rob, thought she was taking a mock call from Newsday about a network password being locked out. It was her first live experience with a new program called Active Roles. It's sometimes hard to find people in there, but she succeeded and got the guy's account unlocked. Then we learned that a live call had slipped into the mix. So Jennifer took the first live call for the Tribune/IBM Daksh helpdesk. A first little step.

After all this fun, we had to sadly take KJ to the airport. I know that Steve will be very happy soon. Last we heard, she was in Frankfort.

I got home to the best surprise. My friends at The Times, Per and Tom, sent me a care package which Shelli and Tyrone did their magic on. KJ got a package once that cost her $200 in custom fees. I never have any problems, thanks to Shelli and Tyrone. But back to the package. It was a treasure chest. Per and I have lunch together almost every day. He knows what I like (besides, he asked.) He sent the canned tuna that I wanted, but threw in canned crab. Does he know me? I got more Wasa crackers to keep my body healthy and dried fruit for similar reasons. He put in Pesto from Trader Joes! It was a definite Oh My God moment. I have boullion base so I can make good soups. As Per would say, hubba hubba. Tom had gone to the Festival of Books and sent a book bag with this year's logo. I wanted to cry. Gosh how I missed that event. And he sent me a DVD with books on it. I have the best friends. Thanks, guys.

A Traveling Weekend

For most people, a traveling weekend would mean that they were traveling. For us it means that travelers are coming and going to and from Bangalore. In addition, this Friday I moved from apartment B901 to B406. I was looking at an apartment for Nahum, arriving Friday night. I fell in love with the apartment they showed me. Real size refrigerator where I can even make ice. The perfect couch and chair. Lots of closets. Queen or king size bed in the spare room in case someone wants to visit. And the ugliest vase I ever saw. This woman has a ring in her nose. She's who you see when you walk into the apartment. AND I have a new house boy. I keep seeing Deepak, so he hasn't dropped from the face of the earth. But the new guy is great

We picked Nahum (from Chicago Tribune) up on Friday. Rob Rosenthal was coming in from Newsday on the same plane. Rob is the IT VP from Newsday Nahum was our guy, however. We whisked him back to the apartments and fed him tea and cookies while he came down from his flying high. It is such a long flight. It's good to come down slowly.

We spent the day around the apartments and KJ and I went to pick up her boss, Sophie, from the airport Saturday night. Sophie and I have been talking on the phone for a long time. KJ will be sharing an apartment until she leaves on Monday midnight. They got to yak until the cows went back to where ever they hang out.

Sunday we had brunch at the Leela Palace. Nahum and Sophie are leery about eating here. This is a good place to get over your fears. You've seen the pictures of miles of food. If you can't find a meal there, you aren't looking. This group was pretty stiff when I took the first picture, but I asked them to look like they liked each other. I really like this picture of them.

We came home and dealt with our cleaning people and naps. Tomorrow I get to pay for my new apartment. I think I'm going to tell Girish that when we ask for them not to clean, to go away until tomorrow, we really mean it. Sunday night we had dinner with Chandan and Rob and an IBM Sales Manager. It was at an Indian Restaurant at the Leela Palace and it was very good. Rob had had a quick tour and shopping trip in Bangalore in the morning. Because we are so many, we couldn't use Ramesh and his car. So Rob got him. I'm hoping Rob is feeling better about Nancy's arrangements here in Bangalore. I know he is feeling very comfortable with Ramesh and I think he is feeling comfortable with me and understands that Nancy will be among friends.

All-in-all, a good travel weekend. In will be sad to see KJ go, but we have to. If she doesn't go, the rest of us can't. Sort of a time-travel theory, we all have to leave when we're supposed to or the rest of us will get stuck. KJ's family is in Virginia. That's where I'm going sometime soon, so I may get to meet Steve. I hope so. Being stuck aloneish in Bangalore for 3 weeks will make fast friends of some people. I'm very happy she was the second person here. It set a great tone for the rest of our time in India and I really enjoyed her spirit and the time we spent together.

This Post is for Harriet

Teena has been wearing the most beautiful necklace this week. It is gold beads alternating with red coral beads. I took KJ to a store that Harriet and I had visited together. Karen wanted a lot of specific things for her friends and family and I knew they would have them at this store.

So while I was waiting, I was thinking about Teena's necklace and asked to see some red coral and lapis lazuli (my favorite deep blue stone) while I waited for her to buy out the store. The lapis necklaces were okay, but I really fell for this red coral one. KJ took this picture, avoiding all my chins. Doesn't it look great. Be prepared to see it a lot.

I just looked up red coral on Wikipedia. It will change color as an indication of illness. So it might not be dirt from all that wearing.

And the Number is - 9901943757

It is 5 weeks into my visit here and I finally have a sim card for the cell phone that Suresh and I bought 2 weeks ago. Last night I asked Ramesh if he could help me with this. And almost like The God Ramesh (TGR) we consider him to be, he had it for me when he picked us up today. Nah, nah, nahnahnahnah, Hey, Hey, Heyallo. There was certainly joy in the car as we got the cell to work. So all you fellow travelers, you will have a contact number if you need to reach me or have someone else reach me.

It was a good day yesterday for the LAT team at IBM. They took two hours of calls. They are dissecting the calls now and learning all they did wrong. There is a lot of that, because they are new. But there was a lot of really good stuff, too. They speak clearly and have the basics down. With practice, they will do very well. Because we on the helpdesk in LA have been doing this for a minimum of 5 years, it's hard to realize all they have to know. With this good foundation and eagerness to improve, we will be in good hands with these people. The Newsday people were in class while LAT was taking calls. But they are here today listening to the critique. This will be very helpful for them when they take calls from their groups. And remember, they will be taking calls for LA as well. It is all good.

My sister, Karen was looking out for me yesterday, as always. (I do have a lot of good angels who watch over me and take care of me.) She wondered if I had made hotel reservations for my birthday weekend in Sonoma. Of course I hadn't. I reserved the cooking school and selected a menu and wines, but hadn't taken care of lodging. Karen took care of all that for me, so all we need to do is just go up north and have fun with my siblings, our children, in-laws and out-laws. Family. What joy.

Hello, this is Bangalore.

The LA Times' team took it's first phone calls last night. We had a bit of a rough start, but that is to be expected with something new. Employees at The Times called our new 800 number and participated in mock calls with the sometimes noticably nervous agents in Bangalore.

I am pleased to report that both sides of the world did an excellent job. This dipping of the big toe in the call taking waters was perfect from this side and The Times' guys were very patient. A good experience.

We are preparing to take even more mock calls tonight. Today Pinaki taught everyone how to use the phones. I know, a little late; but he went into great detail so that will not be an obstacle today.

KJ and I went shopping this afternoon at the shop Harriet and I went to, Asian Art Emporium. KJ bought out the store. I just bought one little necklace. I'll wear it tomorrow. It's really beautiful. I was still admiring the cow for Palmer and Torin. Today I found a lovely lion or a squatty elephant for Maggie to climb on. It's fun to think of the kids climbing all over these things. It's even more fun to think of their parents accepting delivery of same at the door. Julie, don't you think a several hundred pound reclining cow would look good in your back yard?