Goodbye and Hello

Friday/Saturday is changeover day.

Last night, a big batch of people from the company arrived in the early hours (same time flight that I'd been on), including Adam & Rambill, from the same team as me. Unfortunately, two others got left behind (fault of the hotel, who didn't have a list of names) as they had baggage problems, so were a bit disturbed by their first experience of India (power cut at the airport, private hire taxis, overcharging: not great.

And this morning, Phil went back to the UK. It was very sad to see him go (although the jammy so-and-so is flying business class because his trip is so short, so limited misery, really). The transfer from the hotel was really straightforward: they have a load of cars sitting outside and at the time you want to leave, you just go to the travel desk and say that you want to go to the International airport. The driver asks which airline you're going with as they each have different departure doors. Got the obligatory cheesy photo outside departures:

Just along the front of the building from where I took this (it's a beautiful long curved front) is another proud sign, saying ISO9001 / 2000 Certification. Never seen that on a UK airport. As soon as we got out of the car, someone turned up with a trolley, which Phil turned down (on the basis that the trolley-pusher would ask for money), and it's only a 20m stretch between the car and the door. Or less.

Then I got back in the car and drove round in a big circle, down a level (Arrivals is below Departures) to await the arrival of Phil's replacement, Sam.
This time, they had arranged to put her name on the board, which was nice. Below you can see a very very very small crowd waiting for the flight. When I arrived at 2am, there were about 50 hotel boards up, and probably 5 times the number of people waiting. They were all piled up like pickled people in a jar.
The driver from the hotel showed me that I could go into the A/C waiting area, which, since her flight was about an hour after it was promised, was a nice relief.
She arrived safely, having had a nice chat with the boss of Jet Airways on the plane in Business Class. (He was pumping her for her opinion of the flight etc. but she didn't find out who he was until after, when the cabin crew fussed around him). Seems like a pretty good sort of customer satisfaction survey. He even gave her a little wave in the car park as he passed by in his executive car.

I got back to the hotel about 12 (the time I'd arranged to go out for the day with Adam & Rambill) and then helped Sam check in and said hello to people who had arrived today. I also got a print out of my room costs... and I'm glad I did because they'd managed to overcharge me for a meal on my second day (had I left it to the end of my time here I'd have forgotten all about the details). Otherwise it seems to be reasonably within budget.

It's odd seeing new people arrive: odd because almost all of them are going to be here for about 3 months, so they'll see the whole process from training to 'go live', and yet most of them have had no involvement in the project until very recently, but are 'just' experts in their particular process. Whereas I and my project team colleagues have been preparing for this, one way and another, for about a year now, but in just three weeks (or less) we will be done here and say goodbye to India. And the work that we've prepared will be handed over to the new arrivals, and to the Indian workers, out of our hands. I just hope they like our work!

But the bad news is: it's Mosquitoes 1: Livia 2. Livia still ahead but mosquitoes making a comeback.