Why don't you take coffee or tea?!

I thought I was going to start running out of blogging material, but today is a big one. Sorry!

I am sure some are wondering what the work conditions are like at the CSS office in Chennai. Let me provide some insight:

Environment:

Of course it's air conditioned.

I made a remark to Laura and Tiffany in HR that I want better chairs based on the nice comfy chairs that they have in the CSS office. They told me we have nice ergonomic chairs already. I respectfully disagree:)

Bathrooms:

Is anyone dying to know what the bathrooms are like? Well, overall I'd say they are at least as good as our office bathrooms, if not better. Each toilet actually is it's own mini-room - there is a door, and it is completely enclosed, it is not a stall. One interesting thing to note is that there is what looks like a hose attached to each toilet with a spray nozzle. I am guessing it is used for umm...cleaning up after you know what.

There is an attendant in the bathroom that is constantly cleaning up and making sure the paper towels are well stocked, etc. The only downside? It feels like there's no air conditioning in there, so it is a bit stuffy:)


Why don't you take coffee or tea?!

There is a gentleman named Bhaskar (seen here in this picture, also notice the picture of the cubicles with little GD magnets) that goes around the office doing things like bringing coffee and tea to people in meetings and stuff like that. On the first day I got there he came by and asked if I would like any coffee or tea or biscuits (aka cookies, which are very yummy). I said yes to the biscuits, and no thanks to the coffee and tea. Now, if you know me, I don't drink any hot drinks at all - and I simply don't like coffee or tea. Well, that wasn't an acceptable answer to Bhaskar, who takes his position very seriously and has a strong and genuine desire to serve. So, he continued to come by every 30 minutes or so and ask me if I would like coffee or tea. I told him no thank you every time.

On the second day he figured out that I liked diet pepsi. So, that choice got included in the mix. However, he hadn't given up on wanting me to have coffee and tea, and I frequently received those requests. Yesterday he had given me a diet pepsi which I hadn't drank the whole day, and I actually felt so bad about it that I decided to take it back to the hotel with me so he wouldn't find it sitting in my office unopened!

Finally today he decided enough was enough, and asked me to please allow him to give me coffee, to test him (in his words), since he was sure I would like it. So, I said ok, and I had a cup of coffee...which I didn't drink much of. So, this afternoon I ended up with 2 more cans of diet pepsi.

Lunch Update:

For lunch Sathya took me to the Raintree hotel, which has a restaurant buffet of mostly Indian food. It was pretty yummy overall, and of good quality. The visit to this restaurant had a dual purpose - I was also there to scout out a different place for anyone coming over from GD (including myself) to stay in the future. The hotel is less than a 10 minute drive from the CSS offices, whereas currently I am currently up to 30 minutes away if you factor in traffic (it's probably really only a few miles at most, but traffic can be umm not good here). It also should be more cost effective:). The good news is that it was much more modern and newer, and we checked out the rooms as well and they were pretty nice. So, now we have a nice, comfortable, and modern hotel for visitors from GD to stay at!

Day 3...I think....

I only took one picture today, which is here.

Lunch update - I had lunch at what looks like a western fast food chain restaurant that is actually in the bottom floor of the CSS building. They server chicken burgers, fries, etc. I wanted to get the fast food experience in Chennai at least once to see how fast food is translated to this area. Well, this was probably not the best place to try it at:). It was ok, but probably not on my list of places to eat at again. There is a KFC and Pizza Hut in Spencer Plaza, so I think I need to try one of those before I go, despite the fact that those are my least favorite fast food places.

Every day I have been here now we have had a significant (probably about 2-3 hours) a day session of training with the offshore team. Before I had left for India I had obtained some powerpoint slides from Paul Benavidez in the GD training group that they use for training new call center employees. It is a good presentation to introduce the GD business process and customer experience, from the store through activations, reloads, etc. I then took these slides, did some research, and made modifications to them to include some system level content that I intermixed with the business process. Finally, I went over to Kay in retail and she hooked me up with all kinds of sample product, posters, and even a small display they use in retail stores.

This is the material we've gone through for the past several days, and we've had good conversations that have spawned out of it. This process has helped fill in some of the gaps in understanding in the offshore team, and there is no way it could be done except in person. So what is the goal? As I have always told the QA and CM teams, and now the offshore team, at GD one doesn't need to understand everything - the system is so large and complex that any one person have detailed knowledge of every process is probably not feasible. But very often one is called upon to work on something that one is not familiar with, and to get it done umm...really quickly. In that situation the real goal is to be able to know what the right questions are to ask so that one can get the information one needs in order to get the job done. How do you figure out what the right questions are? Well, having a broad perspective of how the system and business works is a pretty good start.

What do you think about this?

Mexican food???

Pictures are here

Our project manager, Sathya, had spent some time in the US consulting for CSS, and had developed a taste for Mexican food while there. So, when he told me that he had found an authentic Mexican restaurant here in Chennai I thought, I have to try this!

Well, it was interesting to have "Indianized" Mexican food to say the least. In the US we have many places that serve Americanized Mexican food (or Americanized anything else - how close is PF Chang's to real Chinese food?), so apparently the analogy holds here as well. I had some chips and salsa, a burrito, and a couple pieces of a quesadilla. I took a picture of each, as well as the menu (which as you can see they had many choices, Mexican and otherwise).

The restaurant itself had a very cool layout, and was pretty nice. The total cost for a meal for two at a nice restaurant? About $15. Not too bad.

If you look through the pictures I took a few from the front of the CSS building, and I have a picture of Lakshmanan the driver (right) talking with Sathya (left) with the Hyundai Sonata I've been riding around in.

I also finally got an opportunity to get a picture of 4 people (yes, 4) riding on a tiny motorcycle - man is driving with his wife on the back, and their 2 kids are on the bike as well. I see this countless times during our drives.

Oh yea, I also did some work today...I promise!

First day at CSS

Pictures are here

Lakshmanan picked me up from the hotel this morning at 9am, and we slowly but surely drove through the crowded streets. Today's driving experience once again reinforced my desire to never, ever drive in India. I am amazed I did not see any accidents. There are motorcycles, auto-rickshaws, cars, and buses weaving around everywhere - yes, buses weave too. It was interesting to see women sitting on the back of motorcycles and sometimes even 3 people on a little 150cc motorcycle. Fortunately Lakshmanan knows what he is doing, and got me to the office safely.

Today I met most members of the team and got to see Arul and Mitali again. They turned out to be a pretty fun and interesting group. I also met Sathya who is the project manager currently assigned to the Green Dot account, as well as Jai who is Sathya's supervisor. The CSS team treated me very well and was very considerate, trying to make sure I was taken care of. I can't even count the number of times I was asked if I needed any coffee or tea:).

Jai took me to an authentic South Indian restaurant (a pretty nice one), and I was ableto have a large assortment of food. Overall it was pretty good.

I also have achieved all my dreams and finally got my own office! There is even a picture of me in there looking like I'm doing some serious work (OBVIOUSLY it's staged, it's not like I'd do any real work, I'm just a manager).

I had brought over quite a bit of sample product (cards, posters, packaging, even a small display) and HR stuff like pens, notepads, etc (for those of you who have seen Office Space, this is also known as "flair"). We spent some time going through some training material regarding the our various products and how the sales process works, and hopefully it was useful. I also was able to spend some time talking with various team members, which was good.

Looking around

Click here to see pictures of Spencer Plaza

The Sunday Brunch

The hotel has a sunday brunch buffet that was excellent. They had a few western things but most was Indian or at least Indian influenced. They also had a grill where they were cooking prawns and lobster as well. The variety and quality of the breads was pretty fantastic. I already broke the rules and ate some cold, uncooked food, but it was an Indian dish that turned out to be really good. And, I feel fine. Well, that is until I got the bill - the buffet was nearly $30 (about 1000 rupees), which if you know me is way beyond my norm (I am normally just fine with Burger King:). But for what it was it was a pretty good value, and it was good!

Spencer Plaza

Spencer Plaza is a big mall next to the hotel (Taj Connemara) that has an incredible number of stores. I think the number of stores easily outnumbers the ones at Santa Anita mall, for example. It is compact space, but it was pretty big overall. The layout of the mall and parking lot is haphazard - It doesn't seem as if anyone cared too much about the layout. As a result it was pretty difficult to find my way around, and I had to search for the exit I came in at.

Parking was interesting - I've never seen so many motorcycles in my life. I included a couple of pics of that.

I bought a couple of items from Waseem, who runs a small shop in Spencer Plaza. In general it seemed as if the people selling kashmir carpets and similar items were the ones that tried pretty hard to get you into their store and look at their items. Waseem was a very nice guy, and it was interesting having to bargain to get a reasonable price (well I hope it was reasonable:).

There were quite a few western stores in the mall as well, and even some electronics stores as well.

Fast Food? Well, in Spencer Plaza they had Pizza Hut, KFC, and Subway. There was a food court, and I even saw a Japanese noodle shop which if I'm brave enough I may try.

There was also a taxi driver (of those yellow auto-rickshaw things you can see here - this picture was taken as soon as I walked out of the hotel gate) that tried hard to allow him to take me on a city tour and to the beach. Needless to say it didn't look like a terribly good idea.

I have arrived

Flight - what can I say about the flight? Well, it was LONG. All the connections were on time fortunately, since I only had about an hour and a half between flights. Here was how the flights went:

• 9:45AM Friday 1/25 - LAX to Seattle (2h45min), arrived about 12:30pm


• 2:05PM Friday 1/25 - Seattle to Paris CDG (9h30min), arrived at 8:50am Saturday Paris time (I believe it was close to midnight PST)


• 10:25AM Saturday 1/26 - Paris CDG to Chennai (9h20min), arrived at 12:30am Sunday Chennai time (which I believe is about 11am on Saturday PST).

Along the way the plane flew over Europe, then directly over Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. I noticed the flight path deliberately avoided flying over Iraq.

I now know that international flights blow away domestic ones. There was no comparison to quality - Air France was many times better than domestic. The last time I flew internationally was on United, which I recall was nowhere near as good as this trip anyway (though that was in the days before TV's at each seat). I am not sure an upgrade to business class would even make a huge difference, economy was really not that bad...and it helped that I had the aisle seat and that there was no one sitting next to me:).

When we got off the plane I stepped into a different world. It is umm...really different here. I had no problems going through customs, and it was very quick to do that and get my bags, which showed up! Once I stepped out of the airport there were hordes of people waiting to pick up passengers. Mr. Lakshmanan from CSS was there to pick me up, and off we went to the hotel.

On the drive over I quickly (maybe immediately) made up my mind that I should not ever try to drive in India. It was in the middle of the night and the roads did not have much traffic, but it was still an experience. The infrastructure is nothing like we are used to in the US. I'll need to take some pictures.

The Taj Connemara has probably the best service I have ever seen at a hotel - they are very attentive to your needs. I was greeted by probably about 7 or 8 people as I can in the door and checked-in. The facilities and room are not bad either - I included a few pictures - one of the room, one of the bathroom, and one of the view outside my window. I also see I can get a burger and fries from room service. I'll try this out at some point and see what it is like!

My Vonage softphone works very well from here, I don't even hear a delay or anything, and the sound quality is fantastic. Unfortunately I haven't been able to figure out how to get the data of my blackberry working - I can't seem to send or receive emails with it.

Weather - it feels pretty much exactly like Hawaii right now, so I feel right at home. Only in that sense - otherwise, it is pretty different:)

So today I am going to do a bit of exploring at Spencer Plaza, which is a mall next to the hotel, and of course I need to get unpacked and get ready for tomorrow.

What to do when flying for a day

I have never flown for 22+ hours before. I have tried to come up with as many activities as I can to keep myself busy on the plane. Interested? Here is a list:

1. Reading - I have brought a few things to read, including "Business and Government in the Global Marketplace", courtesy of my next MBA class; the latest issue of National Geographic; .

2. Cell phone switch - I have 100+ phone numbers in my old cellphone, and I don't know of a easy way to switch them over to the new one except manually. So I figured being stuck on a plane would be a great time to make the switch.

3. Work - I won't have use of my laptop, but I still have a few things to work on.

4. Sleep - I have never been able to sleep on planes, so this might be difficult. However I have various drugs that should possibly help in this. Also, I'm hoping that "Business and Government in the Global Marketplace" will do the trick as well:)

5. Movies - hopefully they don't suck....

Counting down...

I finally received my visa today! Though it was a little too close for comfort, it took longer than normal to get it. Anyway I also took some pics of a bunch of people from the GD team in Monrovia - click here to see their happy faces. I guess I should put some people's names up or something but i'll save that for later.

Pre-trip

This is my sweet new blog. I will be posting a status of all the good stuff that happens on my first trip to India, including pictures! Right now all you can see is who is going to miss me when I'm gone - see them all here.