Tag: otn

I woke up today feeling a little dodgy and for a moment I thought it would be a repeat of my morning in Jalandhar. Fortunately, once we got moving and I drank some really sweet tea, everything was OK.

Today’s event was based at the Sharda University in Noida. We were introduced to the crowd, presented with some flowers and lit a ceremonial lamp to mark the start of the event.

I attended Aman Sharma’s presentation on Oracle Certification and the ACE Program. The students are very job-focused, so they were interested in certification and also what opportunities were available in the community.

My first session was quite tough. The audience was a mix of external delegates who were Oracle users, students who had some Oracle knowledge and some students who had little-to-no Oracle knowledge. That’s quite a tough audience to tackle with a PL/SQL presentation. I tried to simplify things for the non-Oracle people, but it still scared a few off. In trying to simply the content, I probably undersold it to the people who knew Oracle, so it wasn’t the best of starts for me.

Based on the response from the first session, I switched the second to a talk about virtualization, which was more general, so not so challenging for the non-Oracle people in the audience. That definitely seemed to go down better.

Outside of the sessions, I spent a lot of time chatting with the students and external delegates, answering questions on a number of topics related to Oracle, so it was really good fun.

My thanks go out to everyone at Sharda University for making us so welcome. I hope everyone who attended was happy with the event.

Tomorrow we fly to Mumbai.

Cheers

Tim…

Day one did not start well. I woke up and couldn’t stop throwing up. I got to the Lovely Professional University, thinking it would stop, but it didn’t. The people at the University were really helpful and took me to the University doctor, who gave me an injection to stop the nausea. A few minutes later, things calmed down, just in time for my first session…

As soon as I hit the stage I felt fine and the session went well. Adrenalin is a wonderful thing! After the session I started to flag a little, but I was taken to get some food, which picked me up. India is a great place for a vegetarian. I was a little nervous about eating after the events of the morning, but the food was great and I felt much better after it.

In the afternoon I had two back-to-back sessions, which I got through without any incidents. After that, we spoke to a number of University staff members, including the Chancellor of the University, about the event and what we thought we achieved. I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone at the University for helping the event run smoothly and the much needed medical treatment!

From there it was off to get some food before our journey to Noida. Once again, the food was great. Thanks also to Aman Sharma for organising everything and for our presents. 🙂

After the food we got in our cab for the drive to Noida. We were told it would take 6-7 hours. By my estimate, it took about 10 hours. This included a couple of suspected tire problems and several breaks for the driver, who was falling asleep at the wheel. Towards the end of the journey, Raj Mattamal fell asleep, but I felt duty bound to stay awake, as I was having to stop the driver hitting curbs, launching headlong into barriers and missing our turnoffs. We eventually got to the hotel in Noida at about 03:30. By the time I had checked in and got to my room it was 04:00.

I was meant to be up this morning at 06:00 for a trip to the Taj Mahal, but after the events of the previous day I figured it would not be a great idea. Instead I slept until 14:00 and I’ve woken up feeling a little disorientated, but generally OK.

I’m going to try and do as little as possible today and hopefully be back to normal tomorrow for the next event. Fingers crossed!

Cheers

Tim…

It’s been a really tough lead up to this tour. I’ve already blogged about the panic over my visa and flights. Since that post my flights were cancelled, switched to some different flights, then switched back again. I only got the final confirmation on the Thursday night before leaving on the Sunday.

What with that and me stressing out about some stuff going on at work at the moment, I felt like cancelling so I could lock myself in my house for 2 weeks and not speak to anyone. I’m in definite need of a holiday!

Today started off with a last-minute shop for a new suitcase. I had forgotten mine was broken, so I rushed out and bought the first thing I saw. I got home, packed, then got a banging headache. I had a couple of hours before my taxi, so I went to bed to try and sleep it off.

The first flight was from Birmingham to Dubai at 20:30. Nothing too eventful there. I finally got to see “Gravity”, which was nice to look at, but not totally awe-inspiring like the trailers would have you believe. Unfortunately, no sleep during this flight.

After a 2 hour wait at Dubai, it was on to a 2 hour, plus change, flight to Delhi. I did a little bit of head-flopping during this flight, but nothing I would consider sleep.

It was my first time at Delhi airport, which feels spacious, bright and really clean. One of my flight combinations would have had me sitting there for 16 hours. I wouldn’t have fancied that, but spending a couple of hours there was fine. India does the “first port of entry” thing, so I had to get my bags, go through customs and check in for the internal flight. After a two hour wait at Delhi, it was a 1 hour flight to Amritsar. During the flight I asked the young man next to me about our destination. As we left the flight he was mobbed by admirers wanting photos with him. I said, “It seems you are really famous”, to which he replied, “I play cricket for India”. It turns out it was Harbhajan Singh. 🙂

It was a 2+ hour cab ride from Amritsar airport to Jalandhar. This was my first experience of driving in India. OMG! Lanes are irrelevant. The direction of the road is irrelevant. We were literally driving along a dual carriage way with cars and motorbikes coming towards us in our lane. All those photos you see of crazy things on the streets around the world are every day occurrences here. Multiple people on a single motorbike, including people holding children in bags etc. Few of the cars or lorries had working rear lights, so driving in the dark was an experience. Somehow, I managed to get to the hotel in one piece, but I think we did get hit by someone. The driver got out to check the back of the car, then carried on…

So that was about 16+ hours in transit after a full day in the UK. I’ve really got to learn how to sleep on these flights. The overnight things are killers…

Cheers

Tim…

In November I wrote a post about my possible inclusion in the OTN Yathra 2014 tour. That has been confirmed now, so I’m representing OTN and the Oracle ACE Program at all the cities in the tour.

• Jalandhar – 18th February
• Noida – 20th February
• Mumbai – 22nd February
• Pune – 23rd February
• Hyderabad – 25th February
• Bangalore – 27th February
• Chennai – 1st March

I’m a little bit scared by this trip. The OTN tours are good fun, but they are hard work. Doing seven conferences in 14 days seems like an awfully big task. I could have skipped some of the events to make my life easier, but that feels a little mean. At least when I get back from this tour I will have a week at work to rest before I go off to OUG Ireland… 🙂

So now I’ve got to get my visa sorted out…

Cheers

Tim…