Friday May 20th 10:06am
I have almost completed my first week of training in India..
The Indian people are my favorite part of this whole experience. I have a classroom full of young (21-25yrs old) college graduates.(Mostly male - only 3 women in my class) They are all so eager and happy to be working and for most of them this is their first job out of college. They are extremely smart and learn quickly. They are also very patient.. we have had a lot of IT issues with the systems we are using - but they never display frustration or complain. They also love to play training games- We played a BINGO review game on Wednesday that they really enjoyed. We also brought them chocolate from the US (snickers, reeses, etc) THEY LOVE IT!
The trainees are very curious about America and they like to ask me a lot of questions about our country. One of them asked me if I was excited Osama is dead. (They saw all the Americans celebrating on the news). I just smiled.. I wasnt sure what to say.. and they quickly said "Thats okay.. we are happy he is dead too!" Lol..
One thing that is unique is when they nod yes instead of nodding front to back .. they nod side to side. It can get confusing.. because they are trying to indicate yes.. but it looks more like no to us. So we converted to the "Thumbs up!" system to indicate yes!
The facility we are training in is very different then what we are used to .. It is a tall building and we work on the 9th floor. The building leans a bit .. and is slanted.. which has been making me really dizzy and sick to my stomach (causes some kind of weird equilibrium imbalance). I am pretty sure the construction is not up to code. In addition, there are small little mice that scatter about in the training room and break room. The bathrooms have cockroaches and other various bugs. We just work around them and have a new appreciation for the office back home.
I need to take a picture of our training room - because you will be amazed. The perfect tag line would be.. Got Obstacles? We have 33 trainees in a room that should hold about 20.. the rows are so crowded we can barely walk through. There is about a 3 foot space in front of the room with a huge stand up projector screen set up for the LCD .. I have tripped on it about fifty times.. and I am sure I will eventually face plant before the end of training. There is no desk for Amy and I .. one of us usually sits in the middle of the room with a little cart for our laptop and lcd machine. We sit on a plastic lawn chair. (see below)
We are treated like royalty though.. they have servers that constantly check on us and bring us water, coke and little plates of cookies. They also bring us menus every evening and take our orders for dinner. They pick the dinners up and serve us. They are extremely accommodating and concerned about our comfort.
I normally venture outside the office on our breaks - to get fresh air. I have seen so much during my short breaks to the street. I witnessed a man fly off his motorcycle (he was ok) , watched a "cop" beat a bum with a stick .. and there are people scattered all over the sidewalk sleeping...and a lot of stray dogs everywhere. There is one stray dog that always returns to the front of the building at night.. he is very non aggressive - he just curls up and lays there. Last night some men were kicking him and hitting him with a stick... they thought it was funny. It was unbearable to watch.. and made me angry. The dog ran away. After my dinner break, I went back downstairs and tossed the dog some scraps from my meal :) It made me feel better.
The whole experience has been very surreal so far..
I have almost completed my first week of training in India..
The Indian people are my favorite part of this whole experience. I have a classroom full of young (21-25yrs old) college graduates.(Mostly male - only 3 women in my class) They are all so eager and happy to be working and for most of them this is their first job out of college. They are extremely smart and learn quickly. They are also very patient.. we have had a lot of IT issues with the systems we are using - but they never display frustration or complain. They also love to play training games- We played a BINGO review game on Wednesday that they really enjoyed. We also brought them chocolate from the US (snickers, reeses, etc) THEY LOVE IT!
The trainees are very curious about America and they like to ask me a lot of questions about our country. One of them asked me if I was excited Osama is dead. (They saw all the Americans celebrating on the news). I just smiled.. I wasnt sure what to say.. and they quickly said "Thats okay.. we are happy he is dead too!" Lol..
One thing that is unique is when they nod yes instead of nodding front to back .. they nod side to side. It can get confusing.. because they are trying to indicate yes.. but it looks more like no to us. So we converted to the "Thumbs up!" system to indicate yes!
The facility we are training in is very different then what we are used to .. It is a tall building and we work on the 9th floor. The building leans a bit .. and is slanted.. which has been making me really dizzy and sick to my stomach (causes some kind of weird equilibrium imbalance). I am pretty sure the construction is not up to code. In addition, there are small little mice that scatter about in the training room and break room. The bathrooms have cockroaches and other various bugs. We just work around them and have a new appreciation for the office back home.
I need to take a picture of our training room - because you will be amazed. The perfect tag line would be.. Got Obstacles? We have 33 trainees in a room that should hold about 20.. the rows are so crowded we can barely walk through. There is about a 3 foot space in front of the room with a huge stand up projector screen set up for the LCD .. I have tripped on it about fifty times.. and I am sure I will eventually face plant before the end of training. There is no desk for Amy and I .. one of us usually sits in the middle of the room with a little cart for our laptop and lcd machine. We sit on a plastic lawn chair. (see below)
We are treated like royalty though.. they have servers that constantly check on us and bring us water, coke and little plates of cookies. They also bring us menus every evening and take our orders for dinner. They pick the dinners up and serve us. They are extremely accommodating and concerned about our comfort.
I normally venture outside the office on our breaks - to get fresh air. I have seen so much during my short breaks to the street. I witnessed a man fly off his motorcycle (he was ok) , watched a "cop" beat a bum with a stick .. and there are people scattered all over the sidewalk sleeping...and a lot of stray dogs everywhere. There is one stray dog that always returns to the front of the building at night.. he is very non aggressive - he just curls up and lays there. Last night some men were kicking him and hitting him with a stick... they thought it was funny. It was unbearable to watch.. and made me angry. The dog ran away. After my dinner break, I went back downstairs and tossed the dog some scraps from my meal :) It made me feel better.
The whole experience has been very surreal so far..
Juliet: Glad to hear that you are settling in and finding the positives in the experience. It sounds like you are providing a rich, rewarding experience for your students as well. Take good care of that puppy and yourself.
ReplyDeleteBe safe. and hugs. Charlie and Scout send kitty kisses.
Sounds like a real interesting time. Check and see if any of the roaches have relatives in our garage.
ReplyDeleteHave you seen that show "Outsourced" or something like that? Sounds like what you are going through. I lost my job at Intel because they outsourced the IT support to India...so it's funny to me that they had IT issues! At least the support line is a local call.
ReplyDelete