Back & Forth….

That's what is happening since the last 3 weeks!

I am sitting at the moment at New Delhi's T3 International terminal and waiting for my flight boarding to start. I just finished yesterday a session at Banglore(which went just great) and I was supposed to stay back at Delhi only. Since there was just one day between my next travel, I decided to stay at Delhi. But thanks to super-intelligent travel agent, after getting the visa processing done, he sent the passport back to my home. So despite that I had no reason to come back home(which would had been for just a day), I still had to. Now, coming back home is always just so good but it's just that this time, it wasn't planned like that. Since it's mid-December and the temperature is already about 5 degrees centigrade with so much of fog, it's not easy to travel at midnight 1am.But when you got to do something, you just got to do it! So I had my cab booked and we started at about 12.45am and reached at home at about 7.30am. Needless to say, I was just shivering and was icy-cold-despite that the car had heating on all the time. Hello December!!

If the journey from Delhi to home was chilly and icy-cold, the travel from Banglore to the airport was just nerve cracking. I booked the cab to drop me from the hotel to the airport one day prior. It's always a big crunch of the cabs on Friday evening and to avoid any last minute issues, I always book my cab a day before my travels. And never I had any issues, except this time. The cab service sends the information of the cab 20 minutes before your scheduled pick-up time via text message. Yesterday, their text message read "we are unable to find any cab at your area at the moment. We are looking and shall get back in 10 minutes. In the meanwhile, we encourage you to make alternative arrangements." HUH? Are you kidding me? How on earth it's even possible? I quickly checked with my hotel and they said that in about 20 minutes, with a little extra charge, they can arrange the cab. It was a big relief as at least now, I had an alternate arrangement. At exactly my scheduled time of pick-up, I got a call from a cab driver of the cab company that he is coming to pick me up. When he arrived, he told me that it was just now he was informed to rush to my hotel. Seemed like the advanced booking paid of. Finally, I had the cab and we started. Just before I thought that all is fine, I realized that the driver is driving at a fixed speed of 60kms/hour only. When I asked, he said, cab is having some issue and he can't push it for more higher speed. Amazing! And just to make things interesting, almost the entire way, he kept on talking to either some other customers or with fellow drivers whom either he was giving the work or was taking bookings from them. A journey which shouldn't had taken more than 1.15 minutes, took 2hours 10 minutes. Fortunately, I had done the web-checkin already so I was okay. I dropped my luggage at the web-checkin counter and was ready to go. The flight flew without any issues and surprisingly, despite the fog and all, it made an early arrival as well!

The travel woes are always there but the good thing was that the session went really well. It was supposed to be a basic module for very novice guys but I got a mixed audience where few were having less experience( they were not completely novice) and few were already expereinced in the technology. So it was a good fun to mix some things that would help the experienced guys along with keeping the not-so-novice guys engaged as well. The delegates were just really good and friendly! Besides the technical discussions, we also had some great laughs discussing many other off-topics. And they also gave a very kind rating with very good words. So thanks a lot fellas, it was just amazing to be with you all and I hope we would meet soon again!

The earlier week was free for me but the other week, I delivered a session at Hyderabad. I wanted to write about it as soon as I was done with it but I fell sick when I got back. It was one of the best sessions that I delivered. The delegates were just simply amazing! They were not only just so smart but were also so friendly, supportive and filled with just so much of positive energy. I knew some of them already as they were in my previous sessions. So that session turned out to be just so great! We had so many discussions, on-topic and off-topic, few of us had breakfast and lunch almost all the days together and very kindly, not for once even, the guys let me pay! It was just so much great and I can't say it enough I guess! Thanks so much guys! You made that session just so great and I am so thankful for all the kindness of yours. I really really hope that we shall meet again very soon in some other session.

Back to reality, which means today and the week that's going to start tomorrow. It's going to be one of the toughest sessions that I am going to deliver for many reasons. I am just crossing my fingers and hoping that Santa Clause would be kind enough to make this week go fine even though I am working on Xmas! Let's see what happens!

Since I had started at about 1am last night, I am feeling really tired at the moment and sleepy like hell! So I am wrapping up this post and shall go and get a quick cup of coffee. If you are not working in this coming week, have happy holidays and I wish you a Merry Xmas and a very happy 2015! And if you are going to work, well, work hard and I wish you a great week!