Back Home, Session(s) Saga & Accident(Again)….

Yes, I got back home yesterday after spending a week at Banglore. It was supposed to be a light week with no adventure expected( or asked for) to happen but somehow, still the week didn’t go very smooth. May be because when you are injured, have a group of a little distracted delegates and thinking about home, this is inevitable.

If you are a regular here, you would be knowing that I met with an accident-a big one! What I was asked actually by the doctor that I should take complete bed rest to get my wound healed but since this session was a long time back scheduled one and also wasn’t very tough, I decided to go for it anyways. Yes, I definitely needed to carry my medicines along with the dressing that I was supposed to do daily twice over the wound. Since I couldn’t travel by public bus and the AC bus timing was not suiting me, I started the travel by taking a cab from home to Delhi. Fortunately, the cab was a good one( the driver was a moron) and all I did was that I just took naps. There was nothing adventurous that happened along the way and finally, I was at the airport. Surprisingly, Kingfisher airline despite being just pathetic, was flying on time. I finished my check-in formality and entered the departure area. I hadn’t eaten anything so I thought that I shall have something. The T3 Terminal offers lots of choices and I have tried quite a few of the outlets already. This time, I wanted to try something from Yo-China and that’s from here itself, I think I started to get a feel that not everything in this trip would be going smooth. There was nothing available from the outlet except the dim-sums because something in their kitchen went wrong, some machine I guess. So I went back to one of my favorites SubWay to grab a sandwich. After waiting for a while, it was time to board the flight and set out for Banglore, away from the heat of Punjab and getting into the chills of the amazing Banglore, not to mention to kick off a basic session for possibly a group of new hires who would be just stepping their feet on the path of a long journey to learn this amazing software Oracle database!

But as like always, its not always the path that has to be interesting or amazing but the traveler must also have a will to set his foot on that path and be ready for the challenges coming along the way and not all has a heart or will to do the same.

In my last two sessions, the one that I conducted last week and one preceding it, I found one thing common among the delegates-a lack of enthusiasm for the learning. Yes, it doesn’t apply to all the delegates who were in the session but when a major lot shows their indifferent attitude for the learning and just a handful show the interest, in general, its right to call the entire group non-focused and non-interested towards learning. And just when you have such a group to manage, the last that you can ask for is the machines not to behave properly and having issues with them for not just few minutes but for few days. And that’s what comes out to be a perfect recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, that’s what I was having with me in this week.

The machines that I was supposed to be using were not available because of the non-availability so I was given a new set of virtual machines which was made by someone else (so I didn’t know what to do with them). Now, in general the virtual machines are bound to be slower but when you run them over a slow host, the machines don’t run but crawl and at times, just barely! And when such thing happens, a disinterest definitely creeps in. For two days, I struggled with the machines to understand how to make them work and then finally, with the help of one of the delegates( among few who were actually willing to learn) , things started to get on the track. About the overall impression of the session, as I said, the delegates seemed that they underestimated the complexity of the module and thought it would be just as fun filled and easy to go as their last two sessions went. But this is Oracle Database we are talking about people and if it really was so easy, everyone would be doing it and just about everyone would had been come out as a master in it as most are in using Microsoft Office’s Word or Excel but thank god its not and that’s what makes it so interesting to learn and follow. This is a learning that I tried to feed into the minds of these new hires that don’t think it would be an easy thing, interesting definitely but easy, hell not! I am not sure that how well they have received this advice of mine and how well they are going to follow it so all I can do is just to wish them all the best and hope they all would do well in their new jobs.

Just like this session, my last session also had the similar story. This was a session about which I thought I shall talk about but couldn’t because of the damn accident. This was one of those sessions which I really don’t want to ever recall and whenever I shall do, I shall be just fuming with anger. It was meant for three days but the module offers tons of stuff which needs a very dedicated person and also, the timing of the module is very less. Three days for that module is actually a very tiny time given that it has so much packed in for learning. So when I started the session, I told this as the first thing to the delegates that we shall be requiring to stretch the timing about an hour daily if we want to run it smoothly with ample time given for both lecture and practice. But the delegates told me upfront that they can’t do it because they have shuttle cabs to catch and no way its possible that they can miss the timing of the cabs. Well you can’t have it in both the ways. So if you can’t give me time, don’t expect me to go smoothly. I shall go fast because I have to finish the course in the scheduled time and its your problem now that how and when you would do the reading and also the practice. Definitely, I did explain the procedure that how the delegates can use the practice environment in their homes using the remote VPN but telling is one thing and following and doing the things is another. As expected, no one did the practice and when it was the time for rating, it all came down to me. I got the worst possible rating that I ever got without any fault of mine. I am still not able to forget and digest it though I should move on from it but that’s not my nature to just let go things so it would take time. Just like the delegates of this session, it was another example where people preferred not to bother about the effort spent by their company and instructor and they let it go in drain. At times, despite your best efforts, there is just a little you can do to make things go well and some times, it still doesn’t happen. These two sessions fall in the same category. Hope the next one goes better, god you are listening , are you?

Oh and in all of this chaos, I was doing the dressing twice, having about 6 tablets twice a day and was in constant pain!

Finally, it was Friday and it was time for me to get back home and stay at home for a week to get myself healed a little more before I leave for overseas next week. I started from my hotel on time and reached the airport as well at the right time but just when I reached, I came to know that the damn Kingfisher has shown its color and the flight is delayed-fortunately for 30 minutes only and it stayed like that too. I had a cheese croissant with the Cranberry Snapple and was waiting for the boarding since the pain in my leg now had increased and it was becoming a little tough for me to bear it. The boarding did happen on time but the flight didn’t fly on time. It was still funny though that the crew kept on announcing that the passengers must take their seats ASAP so that they can fly on time-after being late for 30 minutes already from the scheduled time.  The flight took off at 9-20pm from the scheduled 9pm time (which was already a delayed time mind it)  but thankfully, captain made us land at Delhi at 11:30pm still which we were not expecting as it takes 2.5 hours from Banglore to Delhi. Anyways, it was a very painful thing for me to walk towards the belt, get my luggage and then wait for the bus. There is bus service from the airport to Punjab, an air-conditioned and a very comfortable bus service. All was going fine and we did start of from the airport on time as well. For me, I can’t sleep ever in the bus, car or in flights except taking a nap for few minutes and waking up so I was almost awake all the time. Now, I don’t know whether its a bad time going on for me or what but while coming back home, I met with another accident. Well, technically it was my bus but since I was sitting in it so its not completely incorrect to say that I met too, isn’t it? What did happen was that my bus driver was trying to overtake a truck which was not giving him side. So he tried be a little dare devil driver and crossed him from a wrong side. Now, when you are doing such stupidities on a road while driving a big vehicle like bus, things can and do go wrong and that’s what happened. The bus’s rear did collide with the front side of the truck which gave us all a good jerk and broke off two glass windows as well. It was quite a scary thing but except that there were two gals screaming their lungs out, no one got injured and we kept on moving and without any such thing happening again, I reached in one piece at home too. As I said, I don’t know that its just a bad time going on for me or something else. Hope all would remain fine.

So its Sunday today and I have a week with me as free. I shall be visiting the doctor again in the evening and hopefully, he makes me better in these upcoming days with those two(at times three) injections and tons of tablets, dressing that he is doing daily. Not a very interesting way to spend free time isn’t it!