Tuesday, August 3rd
Namaste! Today started off early at the ripe old time of 7 am. Though to be honest, it wasn’t too bad, because my body was programmed to survive on about 4 hours of sleep so I kept waking back up every few hours or so. Some might find this annoying, but I tell you that nothing is better than the feeling of waking up and realizing that you can go back to sleep. Ahh heavenly.
Today also marked the start of our business visits and we were starting off with two big ones: IBM and GE. We might’ve started out first with them because they were busy and this was the only time available or maybe because they wanted us to start off with a bang, but personally I think Dr. Mur’ray arranged the order of the company visits by increasing length of their name. Can’t get much shorter than GE!
IBM
Well we are starting off first with IBM, so that just completely shot my theory out of the roof. Damn. Today was one of the few days that required us to dress up in business professional (like full out pant suit). I actually enjoy dressing up, so it wasn’t too bad, but it definitely wasn’t the coolest of attire. Luckily, the weather here has been very pleasant.
Upon arriving at IBM, we are immediately given super cool ID badges. See? Hell yeah, I feel like part of the ‘in’ crowd with my new fancy shmancy red leash around my neck. (They didn’t let me keep it, damn it).
We are told that in certain areas we weren’t allowed to take pictures, like outside the building or in the main entrance. Hmm I found this very interesting and upon returning, I immediate checked Google Earth to see if you could see the outside of the building or if they blurred it out in order to remain as top secret as they seem. Alas, no street view but you can see the IBM buildings from the sky. Just FYI.
So I just wrote out a huge long post going into all the cool things about this visit. And then promptly deleted it. No one cares about this stuff, so I decided just to give you guys the bullet points:
· Welcome Ceremony: We were formally greeted and asked to light the welcome lamp. Five people got to light one candle that symbolized the five different elements, and the light symbolized….something…. I do remember that by lighting the candles we symbolically banish ignorance (represented by darkness)
Lighting the welcome lamp |
· Security Restrictions: No filming of the presentations, nor pictures of the powerpoints. Also, people who worked for IBM could only get into the specific areas that they worked in and badges must be worn at all times. Made me feel a bit like we were in a bank vault, except more spacious and less giant wads of cash laying around.
· Seclusion: Several major businesses (i.e IBM, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc) would group together over a couple blocks, would rope themselves off behind high security and create a mini-city, complete with everything you could ever want, and you would never even know the rest of India existed.
· News Monitoring: BBC and CNN are constantly playing and monitored so that they can help deduce reasons for servers crashing (i.e. they are all underwater because of Hurricane Katrina)
· Shifts: The IT people worked in shifts depending on the time zone they were monitoring. So the Australia shift worked from 3 am to noon to be on the correct time.
We were also led to a room to view the people monitoring all the servers that IBM is in charge of (which are a lot) after a presentation. We were all standing there in a separate room, pressing our grubby noses against the glass and gawking. That is until we discovered that the glass was two-way. Awkward turtle.
We were running a bit late (I like to think it was because our awesome and insightful questions that we asked), so we ended up having to push our G.E. visit back an hour so that we could still get lunch. Well that’s it for the IBM visit. I have about 5 pages of notes, if you are actually interested about the business aspect of it, but to be honest, I doubt you are.
Lunch
Lunch was at this very fancy Indo-Chinese buffet, and once again, we were the only people there. Hmm mildly disconcerting. Despite it being Chinese-ish food, it was still devilishly hot. But I believe my mouth is beginning to cope better! Or maybe I am just killing the majority of my tastebuds.
General Electric (GE)
Upon arriving at GE, we are immediately told that we would not be able to take any pictures.
At all. Anywhere. Even of the sign out front. (And I checked Google Earth later, too. Nothing but vague outlines. What sort of things are they doing?)
We were stopped at the gate at the security desk where they made us show a form of picture ID. Business cards, library cards, passport numbers, none of that would suffice. It had to be a valid picture ID. Dayummm. They then took our mug shots at the unflattering upward angle and made us temporary badges with our name and pictures. Somehow, I was less thrilled about these badges than the IBM ones.
An hour later (this is an extremely long and hot ordeal), we finally manage to get ourselves situated in a small conference room with the general manager of GM, who is giving the presentation. I give the opening introduction of group (he just stares at me and goes ‘okay’, making me feel like an idiot), and then he presents. There is just him (as opposed to the five at IBM) and he is dressed pretty casually, as is everyone else. This was interesting, as the majority of the people at IBM were wearing suits.
Now he is actually a pretty funny guy, with a pretty dry sense of humor, but his presentation didn’t go that much further than what the GE site covers. Everyone really liked the guy, but to be honest, something about him just didn’t click with me. And this was mainly due to the fact that he was the most evasive person I have ever talked to. IT WAS SO ANNOYING. (Though I’m not sure if anyone else noticed, so maybe I’m being unreasonable). He kicked out our camera crew for the Q&A session, because he said it would limit what he was able to say, but then he didn’t really say anything at all, unless a very specific question was asked. At first I thought it was because he either didn’t really understand the spirit of the question, or just forgot, but after more and more questions were asked, I began to recognize the signs of a Sly Evader (being somewhat one of one myself, I could pick up on the clues).
Now don’t get me wrong. The guy could do his job. And very well. He was just starting to piss me off.
However, the really cool part of this trip was getting to don our sexy safety goggles and hit up the GE labs in the research center. Lots of million dollar machines doing things like shooting electrons through materials, adjusting the top ten nanometers of a sample, creating super strong metal and the like. The funny thing for me was the fact that these million dollar machines were incredibly ugly…and several were held together with tin foil and green duct tape. No joke. It made me laugh.
Alas, on our way out, we were not allowed to keep our photo ID badges, which taught me a very valuable lesson. While sometimes “all you have to do is ask”, there are other times where it is best not to ask, subtly pocket the badge, hand back the lanyard quickly and briskly walk away with the crowd. Damn. Next time.
A Comparison
All in all, I think I enjoyed the IBM visit more than the GE visit (as you might’ve been able to tell), which did surprise me. I was really looking forward to the GE visit. I’ve always been a huge fan, but I now wonder how much of that is the result of a very effective and influential ad campaign. Though major props on that, btw. To give GE some credit, everyone there seemed to really working there so that’s a major plus.
Overall, IBM was much more welcoming, honoring us with a lamp lighting ceremony, having waiters at our meeting, have five different people present on different parts of the business and what not. They also gave us a lot more information on what it actually means to do business in India and how to incorporate it within the larger, multinational organization. So sorry, GE. Despite the fact that I was rooting for you, IBM knocked you out of the ring on this one.
Dinner/Supper/the Final Meal of the Day
Dinner tonight was at a North Indian restaurant that was once again very fancy. Gold plates and goblets? When do we get to do the whole ‘eat with your fingers at a street restaurant’ thing? Alas, probably never, cuz I doubt they wanna be held liable for our adverse bowel movements that would probably result.
Bar and Rickshaw Races
After dinner, we are left to fend for ourselves, meaning that they cut our chains and set us loose on the city. Watch out Bangalore, here we come! Bear in mind that we are a rather large group of obvious Americans wandering the streets in an unfamiliar area. The Cultural Assimilator inside of me is so uncontrollably cringing that I am fearing a minor seizure, but eventually we find a cool place to plop down for the night.
It’s a lot of fun and there are enough people there that we don’t stand out as a large group, which is always a plus. Though, once again, this place is not cheap, so I highly doubt I’ll be doing this every night. But it was nice getting to talk and meet other people – it’s my favorite part about the bar culture.
Bars in India close really early (this one stopped serving at about 11:15 pm), but the funniest part about it was that as we were leaving, the manager gave us all to-go cups for our drinks. This is AWESOME. No wonder they have ‘Don’t Drink and Drive’ signs up everywhere.
Choosing the illustrious rickshaw as our transportation home, we hail down several to take our group back. Naturally, being a large group of competitive business people, the ride home turned into a race home. We were flying down the streets, four to a rickshaw (they only hold three, so I, in an oh so ladylike manner, sprawled across the laps of three others). We lost unfortunately, mainly due to the fact that our driver got lost (I was asleep at this point so I missed this), but personally I think we won because we paid half the price that the other guys had to. Suckers.
Well, that’s about it for this day. Most people stayed up later, and as it often does, drama ensued. But I was happily asleep in my comfy bed, so I was blissfully unaware and thus content :).
Over and out.