Travel, Thoughts,Once Again-After A long time….

It’s been a whole month since I have written anything here. Though there are three sessions that I have finished since the last time I updated my blog and I wanted to write about all three of them, for different reasons but some how, I got struck in many many other distractions, tensions, whatever you want to call it! No, I am not going to mention those things in this post and thinking about it, probably not in the near future as well. But yes, I shall mention about the sessions, briefly, in this post before anything else.

I deliver mostly very senior level sessions, where the modules talk about quite a bit of fancy tough. Since I like this oracle database stuff so very much, its not a problem. What one thing that is very hard to tackle, for me, for probably anyone who does even the least amount of public or any kind of speaking, is the handling of the people. Its tough to make people listen to you and when the audience is more experienced and if I may say, filled with pride, the job just becomes so more challenging. This challenge once again came in front of me three weeks ago when I had to do a session for a very very large multi-national company. A pool of their probably most senior folks were coming to the session and they had their doubts about the workshop and also they wanted to get to know the instructor. The talk went on for a long time and though it did end on a good note, it left me worrying about the whole session this much that I had to call my delivery manager to ask for suggestions. He being very kind, mentioned that do what you do best and its going to be all right! That was a big boost for me and I decided to go ahead with whatever little I know about that module. As expected, the guys were very senior and not just that, very knowledgeable as well. Some how, we got started and from minutes, it turned hours and finally the first day got over. In our industry-education and training, its a well known fact that if you get past the first 3 hours, you should be doing fine for the rest of the week as well. Since I had passed the entire day, successfully, I was now a little hopeful that the next remaining days would go fine as well. And fortunately, that’s the same what happened as well. Not only the session did go very well, I got to hear very very kind words from all the delegates. One delegate mentioned to me while leaving on the last day that not only that you(me, Aman) have excellent technical skills but also, I am a very nice, down to earth and friendly person as well. After him, there was one very senior delegate was there(who was also within the con-call) who was just so kind! He mentioned to me that its been 20 years that he is in the IT business and he had worked with Oracle Corp as well before for many years and was an instructor many years ago himself. According to him, this was not one of, but the finest training session that he ever attended till now! He also said that there are a lot of people, in his team and those whom he know very well, who are quite vocal about their expertise level but don’t really go that deep into the technology as they speak. He was very very glad to see that I somehow was able to go a little closer to those standards which he considers very high and essential, if you are calling yourself a SME(Subject Matter Expert). I am not sure that you will believe or not but he was standing there after the session got over and for about 10 minutes just was saying, again and again, that he is not able to find words to say how happy he is to be in the session and he would go back and recommend my name only for the next trainings! If you know me, these words are far more bigger than I deserve but to be honest, I was just so so happy to hear them! I did say to him that you are saying more than I deserve to hear but you have made my day, not just this but probably many more to come as well! Hearing from someone who himself is an experienced and knowledgeable person, is just something that can’t be explained in words! I am too small and know much less than he actually said, many times! All I can say thanks, from the bottom of my heart to him and to all the delegates who came for the session. It was a pleasure to meet you all and share a words of my little knowledge with you. I sincerely hope and wish that we meet again, in some other session soon. 

After that I got my next session, very close to my home, at Noida! And the session was a very basic session for the fresh hires in the company. TBH I feel very scared to go for this module now. You can say whatever but when I lost my dad, at that time, I was in the middle of the same module. So I am now always very sceptical about going to deliver this basic session.But on the other hand, its quite exciting to teach the fresh brains because they haven’t got their brains already filled with (wrong) information. But some times, even though all sounds and looks okay, it doesn’t go like that. I had very high hopes about the training but right from the beginning, it had issues. The very first issue came when I showed up for the session and was stopped by the security saying that they have no information about the training and I must wait for their superior lady. Only when she would come, she would check, confirm and would grant me an entry. Okay, I said and I started waiting. I checked for her number and called her. Don’t know what she was up to, she just didn’t bother to talk nicely. Very rudely, she said , I am coming in 15 minutes. When it already was an hour since the last I spoke with her, I called her again. Well, she again gave the same reply. It was now 1.5 hours and I was visibly very upset. I again called her and this time she said that she has reached and coming to the reception area where I was sitting. When she came and I approached her, she told that there was an email already with the security and there shouldn’t had been any issues at all! WHAT! SO COULDN’T YOU JUST CALL THE DAMN SECURITY AND TELL THE SAEM TO THEM STUPID WOMAN!!I was just so mad! That idiot guard now promptly checked some email which now, magically, had my name and he said sure, you can go in! Of course, I said and I went in! The students were already waiting for me and I apologized to them for this delay. Now, when I was about to start the session, there were no markers. I again went to the reception to check for the facilities inter-call number and spoke someone. He came back after 30 minutes with two markers. In all this, it was almost the lunch time and guess what, we hadn’t even started yet. I somehow started of the session and for two days, it worked okay. On the third day, without any prior notice, our training room was blocked by some other team for some conference even when we had it booked for the whole week. So we had to find out an alternative and what we ended up at was a meeting room which had no connecting cables, no water, heck, even no markers! But that’s what we had and we were told to manage in that only! In between of all these issues, the delegates seemed to be nice. There were about 10 gals and 2 guys in the session and since they were all just came out from their colleges, they all seemed to be very excited. But I had noticed a phenomenon that they were more interested in anything else than Oracle database. For example, about their salary, about the dance performance which they had to put together in the coming week etc. On 3rd day, all the gals told me that they need to go at 4pm since they had to practice for their dance routine. Well, go ahead , I said since I had understood that they were not much keen about oracle database anyways. In all of these days, I was there way before anyone would show up(at about 8:15/30) since I was staying very close, would leave by 5:30pm after everyone would leave and in the lunch breaks, for all the days, was helping the participants to create test environments on their laptops. And on the final day, got some good comments from few participants. And guess what, even after doing all this, finishing the training on time with nothing left, I got a very poor rating from the delegates. I can still digest it but when I saw that they have marked me as unpunctual, it just blew me off, completely! Heck, even the security registers are there as my proof that when I was coming, leaving and I did finish 5 days of work in 5 days so how can I be not punctual? But as in our profession, we have to digest whatever we get and move on. So that’s the same what I did! I moved on and was looking forward to finish have a week off from the work which was really required to cool me off.

After being away from the work for a week, I had an online session. No drama happened in that session. All the delegates were very senior folks and despite that it was an online session, we had lots of discussions. The course ended with a very good note. This comment(out of many given by others) just made me forgot the last week’s sourness completely “Instructor was a standout.. Very good and communicative. Good course Aman thankyou for hosting it. “

So these were those 3 sessions which I mentioned I would talk about. Now, something about the current week!

Now, I had a day off before I was supposed to fly to Malaysia. Yes, you heard it correct! There was a session and since there was no instructor over there and I believe at Singapore, so I was asked to fly there. And I am sitting in my class room right now writing this

I won’t talk about the trip or anything else related to my travel over here. But I would mention about the session though for the reason that I am not sure that why some times, some delegates fail to say the right despite that it’s been repeatedly told to them? The same happened just now when two participants have mentioned about a point which I not only mentioned to them in a separate document that I shared with all but also just now. Still, they have mentioned “disagree” for it and that has caused a major mess up in the overall rating. Not sure what to say when the very last week you finish the same program with such a high score and this week, you are barely meeting the minimum rating bar and that too, when you have changed nothing in both the weeks,neither the way nor the content, nothing! Guess just have to swallow this one too which is much hard to do than to say, trust me!

I shall be moving towards my hotel in a while. Too bad that I have got the flight for the next day. Yes, I can change it but it would cost me extra charge and I am not in a mood to explain anything further since already the rating issue, I may have to explain! Signing off now!