A quick summary

So I’ve been in Bangalore (which is actually spelled Bengaluru here) for nearly a week. In all honesty, my experience here is rewriting the awful, wretched, very bad, no good experiences we had with our insane upstairs neighbors in Boston. I’m starting to believe that those neighbors—the Ferals—were the aberration. My team and my colleague’s team of associates are nothing at all like the Ferals. In fact, the differences couldn’t be more stark. (Should that be starker? Microsoft Word certainly thinks so.)

I already told you about Monday’s amazing dinner (still in awe of how fabulous it was). Tuesday, J and I were on and began training our new associates. We started with a quick session on cultural differences. We’d had our US associates answer two questions:

• When you think of the US . . .  and
• When you think of India . . .

And then we had our new associates in India answer the same questions. That made for some good conversation. We concluded that part by asking our new associates to provide us with five areas that they believed would help promote team communication and collaboration.

The rest of the week has been spent on more job-specific materials and I have to say, these guys are sharp and quick. I’m really pleased with how things have gone and think the five I am picking up are going to help our team produce even more at a very high quality.

On a non-work note, last night J and I went to Commercial Street. We didn’t realize that the drive was so long but it was wonderful to get out, see more of normal Bangalore/Bengaluru and do some shopping. J snapped a selfie of us and yes, she’s quite tall:

She’s gone now, or nearly so (her flight leaves around 9PM local). I’m here through very early Thursday morning and will be joined by two other colleagues Tuesday evening.

I hope you have a great 4th of July holiday. I’ve certainly spent my fair share of Independence Days in non-US locations but I never expected to be in India on this day!