Yes, We Work

It has been noticed that I rarely mention work. Well, here's everything you want to know about the last two weeks. The first week, Teena and Suresh taught the LA Times crew about our site specific applications. We did not have Citrix (the means by which IBM will access the Tribune network) for the first week. A lot of emails and hard work on both sides of the world got that functioning properly by the next Monday. They did a good job of explaining what we do without being able to show the applications or what happens. LAT has/had 12 people on their team. I learned all their names and then David left. He and John had the easiest names to remember for some strange reason. The pictures here are of Teena and Suresh teaching. Chandon is sitting pensively. He is the project manager on the IBM side. We were beginning to make him sick at this point. He had to go back to New Delhi to recover. I'm afraid it was my fault. He was my rock for the first couple of weeks. Whenever I had problems I would call him and shove the phone at the person who was causing my problem. He says I didn't make him sick, but I find that hard to believe.

The students were tested at the end of the week. Suresh and Teena wrote an excellent quiz and all must have passed, because they are all still here (except for David.)

On the second week, we were joined by a mere 40 more students. Well, maybe slightly less. After a brief introduction to Tribune and newspaper in general, the classes were divided in two, in two different training rooms. We now have the other traveling teams from IBM here. Most teach some of the lessons. For most of the week, Panaki and Rishi taught basic hardware and MS Office (including Outlook.) The folks have a lot of documentation to rely on, but what really pleased me was the class exercises. We had Panaki and Suresh working together in our classroom. They would divide the group into teams. Each team came up with a question that a user would ask. It was the task of the other team to ask good questions and resolve the issue. At one point, Suresh wrote down all the questions they asked and pointed out why some were way off, why some could have been better and why some helped resolve the issue. This was perfect. Knowing how a computer or Outlook works is one thing, but asking the questions that will get to the true issue quickly and resolving the problem quickly is key. You can almost see this begin to make sense to the team.

Here are the folks in our room in their native costumes. I dressed as a native Californian. I don't think that's what they were expecting.

Shopping with Harriet

Yes, I am on the helpdesk, but even I misdiagnose problems from time to time. It appears that the socket by my bed is toxic. It killed the converter, not the adapter. The good news is, my wonderful laptop is functioning beautifully. No bad news here.

Here are some pictures of our last shopping trip together. Harriet was trying to decide if she should get a beautiful necklace or not. As I waited, I bought a string of an unusual sapphires.


Harriet had seen some wall hangings that are made out of old wedding sari's. Amazingly beautiful. But she knew that she could get a better deal for them, so we looked at this place. Well, while she was deciding on the necklace, I was shown every wall hanging. I realized that I could take pictures of the wall hangings and decide what I really wanted (or if I really wanted). I think I like the picture best. The wall hanging I fell in love with is $500.00. And what wall to hang it on? It would end up in Adrian's room. He is so worth it, but probably wouldn't care one way or another.

Harriet also looked at chess sets. The carving of the King was of a man on elephant. Elephant had a peacock blue fan on his butt. It was very pretty. I thought my little niece, Maggie, would like to play with that. But I knew the little nephews, Palmer and Torin, would not be as amused. What would they like? And then I found this cow. It's big enough to ride. I could see each of them on the cows back. It would look lovely in Julie and Adam's stand of trees in the back yard. Too bad cost and shipping were a consideration. The little chess piece, on the other hand, would slip nicely in a suitcase.

Bye For Now

Two people and a thing left my life for the moment. First, the most joyful. I finally asked cooking boy to not visit me in the morning. Oh, my life is so much more my own now. This is all cultural. I'm sure no one at the apartments understands my desire to be alone. I don't wait for his knock, his lack of knock; I don't miss his hovering, his head weaving. Ah, peace.

And Harriet has left. I've known her for years, but we hardly talk. We hardly stopped talking here. It was so much fun to be with her. I'd never have bought all the gifts I bought or the pretty necklace if it hadn't been for her. She actually worked hard to get me eating again. I'm not sure that it is fortunate that we succeeded, but I'm back to being my normal self. And the people here at Daksh really liked her. They can't wait until she returns.

And I lost my laptop. First I thought it was the power cord/adapter, but I blew out the one Harriet left me last night. So there will be no pictures on my blog until I can get this resolved. One of the instructors, Pitaki, used to troubleshoot laptops for Dell. He's going to diagnose it on Monday since I left it at home. This also means no chatting with Karen or Adrian. Maybe they can get some peace as well.

Finally, I made it to the grocery store in the complex. It is right next to the beautiful swimming pool. I bought a chicken to make soup, lots of garlic (to kill vampires and whatever alien still resides in my stomach), american cheese (all they had) and other stuff. I'll be cooking this weekend. It is a very good store and I never had to worry about where to get staples. I just needed to explore more.

It Won't Be Easy

This is the second week of training for LAT Helpdesk and the first for about 40 other people. What a lot of folks! IBM hired a large number, knowing that some would not be able to pass the voice and accent training. And there is some attrition. They want to make sure that they get off to a good start with enough people to make it through the learning cycle.

There is so much for them to learn. They are all college graduates in IT or other sciences. But they don't all have practical experience with our hardware and standard software. It would be easy if they only needed to learn the specialized stuff. So this week we are covering Hardware and software. The class yesterday was very thorough in covering all the parts of a computer and laptop and what could go wrong and how to fix that. The challenge of being on a Helpdesk is that you have to do this without actually seeing the problem. You get good at chatting with your eyes closed, trying to picture the issue.

Today I will get to hear their take on Microsoft Office products. I hope they include Outlook. We, at The Times, get a majority of calls about email. You just can't run a business without email. This was underscored for us, of course, with the email conversion throughout Tribune. I'm surprised we were able to publish, considering all the issues. We are good at overcoming these obstacles, so we did publish; but IBM must know all aspects of Outlook VERY well.

I talked with the new group on Monday about their feelings about talking to Americans. They all professed to be, if not scared, a bit leary of the prospect. I told them they should be scared. Many employees were not looking forward to the change. They like their Helpdesk staff. But the bottom line is that the Helpdesk is only there to get people whole again, make their computer issues go away, and get them back to work. So as the people here gain the trust of the people stateside by resolving their issues, getting assistance quickly when they can't resolve the problem and following up at each step, the barriers should drop.

It won't be easy, but by the time I leave I expect see that this is happening.