My June and July in India - Part I
Oh, it's been a while! Asha, believe it or not, your message was an important catalyst for this post, thank you! Since I have a lot to say about the past 2 months, I thought I'd divide this update into several parts. Here is part one...
* Monsoon season: To follow up on my last post about Indian weather, the monsoon season arrived in late June and is still here. And as it happens, some of us are complaining again, this time about the rain :) The monsoon season in Hyderabad is nothing as intense as that in Mumbai (which, as you might have heard on the news, experienced massive floods due to rains earlier this week). Here, it’s usually a bit of a drizzle during the day and some rain in the evening or at night. However, there were several occasions when it POURED in Hyderabad, too. When that happens, streets get flooded (up to 30 cm or so of water) because of the inadequate drainage system, people spend hours in huge traffic jams and if it's windy, we arrive home completely soaked, since auto rickshaws that we use to move around the city don't have side walls in their vehicles.
* New job: Some of you know that I spent my first 2 months with Satyam (after 2 weeks of induction) with Enterprise Applications group, where I was being trained on Oracle apps in order to become a functional consultant (someone who works with clients to map their business processes and requirements and then uses that information to customize the ERP package that the client wants to implement). However, I was never entirely happy there because I wanted to be in a role related to sales and marketing. So in mid-June, I was finally given an opportunity to move to a role that was a better fit for me. I am now in the Vertical Business Unit Retail, a team that manages business development and delivery activities for clients in Retail and Consumer Goods industries. Among other things, I get to learn more about the Retail industry (oh, all that behind-the-scenes work that us shoppers take for granted!) and the sales process in the IT industry. Things are still a little slow but I'm happy to be in the area that I was aiming for in the first place.
* Familiar faces: My friends from Toronto, Tien and George, visited me for 3 days in June. The duo spent 3 months traveling in India (2 months in the North and 1 in the South) and was on their way home. They seemed pretty tired of traveling. In fact, they said that after a certain point you start feeling kind of 'self-indulgent' and want to get back to life with work and responsibilities. It was great to catch up with them and to hear about their experiences in India as our impressions of the country seemed to be very different (a perspective of backpackers versus that of a person who has settled down). Something that I'll be taking into account when planning my post-traineeship travel: they found the south of India is much more orderly, clean, women- and tourist-friendly and pleasant than the North. (Not to mention that they thought that Hyderabad looked like a North American city – now that’s a bit of a stretch, if you ask me!).
Okay, more to follow… I promise!
* Monsoon season: To follow up on my last post about Indian weather, the monsoon season arrived in late June and is still here. And as it happens, some of us are complaining again, this time about the rain :) The monsoon season in Hyderabad is nothing as intense as that in Mumbai (which, as you might have heard on the news, experienced massive floods due to rains earlier this week). Here, it’s usually a bit of a drizzle during the day and some rain in the evening or at night. However, there were several occasions when it POURED in Hyderabad, too. When that happens, streets get flooded (up to 30 cm or so of water) because of the inadequate drainage system, people spend hours in huge traffic jams and if it's windy, we arrive home completely soaked, since auto rickshaws that we use to move around the city don't have side walls in their vehicles.
* New job: Some of you know that I spent my first 2 months with Satyam (after 2 weeks of induction) with Enterprise Applications group, where I was being trained on Oracle apps in order to become a functional consultant (someone who works with clients to map their business processes and requirements and then uses that information to customize the ERP package that the client wants to implement). However, I was never entirely happy there because I wanted to be in a role related to sales and marketing. So in mid-June, I was finally given an opportunity to move to a role that was a better fit for me. I am now in the Vertical Business Unit Retail, a team that manages business development and delivery activities for clients in Retail and Consumer Goods industries. Among other things, I get to learn more about the Retail industry (oh, all that behind-the-scenes work that us shoppers take for granted!) and the sales process in the IT industry. Things are still a little slow but I'm happy to be in the area that I was aiming for in the first place.
* Familiar faces: My friends from Toronto, Tien and George, visited me for 3 days in June. The duo spent 3 months traveling in India (2 months in the North and 1 in the South) and was on their way home. They seemed pretty tired of traveling. In fact, they said that after a certain point you start feeling kind of 'self-indulgent' and want to get back to life with work and responsibilities. It was great to catch up with them and to hear about their experiences in India as our impressions of the country seemed to be very different (a perspective of backpackers versus that of a person who has settled down). Something that I'll be taking into account when planning my post-traineeship travel: they found the south of India is much more orderly, clean, women- and tourist-friendly and pleasant than the North. (Not to mention that they thought that Hyderabad looked like a North American city – now that’s a bit of a stretch, if you ask me!).
Okay, more to follow… I promise!
