Finally,A Wee Sigh Of Relief….

It’s been two weeks since I had posted the wee travelogue. Though I had thought to post a quick update about the (boring) weekend but I was just so tired that I decided to mention about it in the final post only. Not only this, I was also worried about the outcome of the sessions of mine as well and that’s why, was not able to really sit and write any thing except just doing the preparation. Today it’s Friday evening which means, I am done with both of my sessions with rating of 1st one as “awesome” and of 2nd, “a full house” ! So I can finally have a little sigh of relief before starting to panic about being my return flight.

The tour started pretty much the way it should had been-without any drama. I took the cab from home and reached airport at about 5am. My flight was leaving at 9am and as I had done the web-checkin already, I had plenty of time to get through the immigration and security. Once I was done with all of it, I grabbed a quick McCheese Roll from McDonalds followed by a Latte from Starbucks and started to wait for my flight. Fortunately, flight was on time. Once I boarded the flight and checked the in-flight program, I figured out that it’s going to be a long and boring flight as all the movies in the in-flight were either old or just plain boring. After 5 hours, I landed at Singapore. After clearing customs and immigration, I took a cab and headed to my hotel. I guess I must had been tired like hell because after reaching in my room, I just crashed on the bed and realized in the morning at about 6 that I had slept for about 12 hours. I got ready and reached the office. Since I had delivered this module already, so I was a little relaxed. The delegates were also very friendly and co-operative and the whole week passed like a breeze. I always say that if delegates have a smile on their face when they are leaving, it’s a sign that you have done your job well. Not only the delegates had smiles on their faces but also they took couple of pics with me along with giving a good rating and saying some very kind words. I was done for the 1st week and now, I had a weekend waiting for me and after that, a tough week which I not only had to survive but also had to come out as a winner.

But before that, I had a weekend in-front of me that I had to live through-harder thing to do than even delivering a tough module, trust me!

Anyone who travels a lot (work related) would tell you that the toughest thing is to spend a weekend-especially when you have visited a place already and know about it. There is nothing much that you can do except, either you would revisit all the places again or you would try to take as much rest as possible and prepare for the next week. I mostly would be at the same place where I have already been because of the nature of my work and that’s why, almost all the times, I choose the 2nd option and this time also, it was the same thing. I slept, studied,  again slept, again studied and in-between, visited few restaurants to have dinner. Yep, very boring indeed but that’s all I could do as I was super paranoid about the coming week. A very tough challenge was awaiting for me and thinking about what to do to make the weekend interesting was at the bottom end of my things-to-be-worried about!

And finally, that week was there now!

You might be wondering that what was making me so concerned about this week, isn’t it? Well, I was going to deliver a very new and very tough session and a huge faith was shown by my manager over my when she gave me this session. So living up to her faith and not doing any mistakes were two worries (besides the other ones about the module itself) which were making me so worried and concerned. Anyway, the module started of okay. Though there was several hiccups but eventually, everything went fine. As I said in the starting of the post, I got a “full house” rating and the delegates went happy and smiling. So I am very happy that somehow, the week ended up on  a good note and most importantly, I could live up to the expectation and was able to keep the faith of my manager. A BIG thanks to her guidance, support and encouragement without which it would had been a very tough ride or probably, wouldn’t had gotten the opportunity in the first place itself. And also, thanks to the delegates for both the weeks for being so co-operative, friendly and for giving such an awesome rating! Hope we shall meet again in some other program soon.

Now, normally that’s where I shall wrap up but this time, something else also did happen and was completely unexpected which is worth mentioning before closing this post.

At the same floor, where my session was going on, in an other room, same session was delivered by one of my colleagues. I was out in the lobby area having my 1st cup of coffee of the morning when two delegates from his session(which wasn’t started yet) came towards me and introduced themselves. I didn’t recognize them at all but very surprisingly, they knew me from my contributions over various online forums and other such contributions. Both were very very kind and after some time, my colleague came to me in the break and mentioned that all of them (they were a batch of ten) were talking about me and was telling him about me! Now, if you know me, I really don’t feel very comfortable listening about me and that’s the same I was feeling at that time too. He said, they are all like that they have met some celeb today and I told him that there is no such thing and I am not even close but I am thankful for their kindness. And in fact, I am feeling embarrassed that I don’t know any one of them. Finally, the day moved on and I was again got busy in my session. Next day, while the lunch break was going on, I heard a knock on the door and a guy came inside. He mentioned some names and also said very kind things. Just when I was thanking him for the kind words, he asked whether I would mind taking a selfie with him? Well, I said to him that it’s a little too much but if he really wants, it’s okay.So below is the selfie that he took.

That was a little too much if you ask me but still, a HUGE thanks to all the folks for being so kind and showing so much of respect towards an ordinary guy like me who by no means is special! And yes, I am aware that I am looking horrible and so is the smile on my face.

So finally, it’s time now to close the post. It’s time now to get going with the packing and be ready for the travel-an equally tough thing like struggling with a tough module  related to Oracle database, or may be even more harder than that too!