Pune

On Friday I went on a road trip to Pune (pronounced Poona, not Poon or Puny, or so I'm told) about 150km away from Mumbai – just under 4 hours by car). Early start - dawn! There’s an office there that some of my colleagues are based at, and I had some trainers to monitor and a graduation party of some trainees to attend. I was picked up at about 7.30am by Hemal and Anumita and Matthew the driver (he had a great big smile when he saw me: he drove us last Saturday and we all got on well). We stopped off en route for breakfast at a roadside service station. No McDonalds (phew!) but just an Indian diner place. I had Idli, which are a sort of rice cake, with some runny sauces to dip them in. Plus a sweet lime soda, a nice refreshing drink that you find a lot out here.

We drove through / past Lonavala, the hill station that we’ll be visiting on Sunday I hope. The mountains look very scenic: I didn’t take any photos of the views on this trip on the assumption that I’ll be able to stop and get better ones on Sunday. However, having now looked at the weather forecast for the weekend (cloud, rain, poor visibility) I wish I’d snapped a couple on Friday.

We got to the office by 11am (the roads were very good and not too busy). Pune (from the bit we saw driving through) seems much tidier and smarter than most of Mumbai. There didn’t seem to be nearly as much in the way of slums or “ongoing renovations” or digging up roads and forgetting to put them back. We went past the barracks of the Bombay Sappers. Sounds like a good name for a project team! The SAPpers!

The office in Pune is 10 years old, but is currently getting refurbished. Cameras are not allowed inside (although I forgot, and it wasn’t spotted in my bag check: but I was honourable and didn’t take photos when I’d realised my mistake). I met up with some of my ex-trainees (who are now training their own staff) and observed some training. Some constructive feedback & training tips given but generally they were doing just fine! And I got talking to the trainees and did a bit of floorwalking of them doing some Siebel training.




After a late lunch we got back in our car and went over to the Graduation venue: the Athena. It has a good size room for the event and was in a nice part of town (actually quite near the apartments that some of our staff are staying in). The senior manager had organised an elephant to greet us and throw flower petals at the guests! Unfortunately just as I arrived it started to pour with rain (not the elephant, the weather!) so I scurried into the porch to avoid a soaking.











The event was fun: There were pretty decorations: this WelCome is made out of coloured sands on the floor! There was also a greeting party who smudged ochre and rice on our foreheads as we arrived. Waiters came round with interesting coloured drinks: pink (lychee and cranberry), blue (blue Curacao) and green (kiwi fruit). Then the event started with the usual speeches and thanks and so on. The Academy trainers got several special mentions, which I hope I’ve recorded some of on my little video camera to show colleagues later. I hadn’t actually been directly involved with training this bunch so my presence was purely symbolic of “the Academy”. I felt slightly out of place too because everyone else had come in traditional Indian dress, even the British staff, who had been out buying pretty pink (etc.) saris (or sarees as it is often written on shops here). But I wore my company badge with pride (under my pashmina – it was very cold in there! Air conditioning is a marvellous thing). Afterwards there was chocolate cake, champagne and a finger buffet and loud music and dancing. We left at about 7pm to return to Mumbai.

The sun was just setting as we were leaving, with some gorgeous colours in the sky. Then the rest of the drive home was dark. We stopped off at another service station for a quick bite of dinner. I had a deep-fried potato thing in a roll (a Vada Pav), which was tasty and quite spicy.

Home, phoned a friend, wrote up my journal (to be published next time I go online) and took a photo [censored] of my mozzie bite - well, one of them: the score is rather disappointingly now standing at mosquitoes 3: Livia 4. I know I’m still ahead, but it’s a high-scoring round and actually the first bite I had has now been discounted as it was tiny and not itchy at all, the 3 new ones (acquired in the night – so much for my theory that mozzies don’t get into hotel rooms because of the distance from the front door and the macerating effect of air-conditioning systems) are large and pink and hard and really, really itchy. This is even after I’ve taken anti-histamine pills and smeared it with cream and cooling sprays. Ow. OK enough feeling sorry for myself!