Bangalore Bound

This week is back to India…. After leaving Wipro earlier this year I hadn’t expected to be back so soon. This particular visit is a lot about meeting with some key Indians who run our Centre of excellence there, and spending some time with a handful of key Americans who are also travelling to Bangalore this week. We are essentially setting the strategy for 2012 and seeking to understand where, when and how we can work together. We’ll see how that goes because I am still relatively new to everything.

I won’t actually be in Electronic City (the place where Wipro are based) and apparently it will be difficult to see old friends because although both sites are in Bangalore, its sheer size (60km by 60km) and treacherous traffic mean that there is at least a 2 hour journey between the two places. Apart from meeting a number of new colleagues this week, I am pretty sure that one of the highlights will be a trip to see a school in rural India on Friday. One of my colleagues had kindly proposed to take me to see some random palace, but I asked him if we could do something where I can get more of a feel for rural India. I’m looking forward to it already.

This is now my third trip to India. Hopefully they will let me in – last time I arrived in Mumbai and they stamped my passport twice (in Mumbai and Bangalore after a domestic flight) so it may appear that I have never left India (if you can believe that!). The double stamping caused something of a ruckus as I was leaving India the last time so we’ll see what happens when I arrive in 30 minutes or so…

The best thing about this flight so far, apart from the fact that you leave Europe at 11AM and arrive around midnight so it is pretty much like a normal day (except for the fact you’re in a plane), is the fact that they had the movie Cars 2. Maxime loves the original Cars movie and I have been desperate to see the sequel to try and judge how much of a success it will be with him (it’s all about parental research, honestly). The plot of Cars 2 is completely different, much more focused on Tow Mater, and generally more complicated, but you still have a nice life lesson or two in there (e.g. the importance of friendship, the importance of having wings and machine guns fitted to all cars etc.). I personally was disappointed we didn’t see more of Ms. Sally because I have something of a soft spot for female purple Porsches, and although I doubt whether Maxime will sit through all 1 hour 50 minutes of it, I am pretty sure that we’ll be investing in the DVD when it comes out.

Right time to sign out because I don’t have much battery left because I have actually done some work on this flight…so now it’s time to start reading Craig Storti’s, “Speaking of India, bridging the communication gap when working with Indians” – a present from an old (European) Wipro colleague…