Aha … what a fun ! I am not the guy who needs or loves pampering and the reason for both is same. I love my job and do that  with best possible sincerity and you need not to motivate or reward me for anything.   But yeah, the last two days have been exceptional blast while being very productive at the same time. I am feeling pampered :- D

It was a short Business trip to Greenville, South Carolina where a team building workshop has been planned. Couple of us have driven from Atlanta while my client manager operates from Greenville. She is currently in the process of building a good team together and like a adept manager, she believes that by such workshops, the team can sit togther and complete the tasks which otherwise would have taken weeks to complete and at the same time, we can have some good time together. I love these business trips, for these are invariably  hard day work followed by exceptional great evenings.

I would not say much on the work part, for I am sure that none of my readers (except office colleagues !) have ever heard of Pega or DCO. Btw, it was demo of one of the Pega tool modules that I work on and I would say that it was better than the given by Pega director himself as it was more real and not an attempt to sale (do i mean oversale?) something. There was healthy discussion of the real time projects problem followed by MoM.  Guess, you must be convinced by now that it was not just fun trip : -) This has been real productive and believe that it cleared many of my apprehensions and doubts about the tool.

But here begins the excitment. My manager has been generous to ask her husband who’s real humble geek Engineer to give us the plant tour. If I would have to describe the plant in one word then it would be HUGE. The machines were huge, the turbines were huge, the blades were huge, the cranes were huge, everything was huge.  David has been real nice to give us an absorbing tour detailing about various turbines, businesses, processes and answering all of our stupid questions. I did come to know what’s real Business? Thank you sir.

The plan was to go for a sumptous dinner in the evening and then roam around in downtown and did I mention that we had Indian lunch and dinner. It’s one of the best Indian food that I had in recent times. I adore you, Ms Manager ! It was our team accompanied by cool dad of my project manager and beautiful niece of Client Manager. After Indian dinner, we had American Ice-cream (I was under the impression that Ice-cream is ice-cream but as always, I proved to be wrong :- P)

Team bid us adieu leaving me, my manager and her niece. She told us about the falls which are nearby and we decided to take a stroll.   Honestly, I have not expected any falls in the downtown but to my excitment, there was proper falls with cold water running, a hanging bridge, a good restaurant and a lot of people. This country has everything in abundance except people so I always feel like India when I see lot of people together :- ) Some of the Shakespeare play was going on besides the falls, many couples were sitting on the swings, it was like a small fair. Wow !We have taken lot of snaps, I have been at the funny end couple of times where the girl was having difficulty in understanding my accent. Though I believe that my manager has become champion in understanding Indian English dialect by now.  It was great end of full exciting day!

Second day, it was regular business with more meeting with more people. The greatest part was that me and my manager were able to work real time on the demo module and generate the required documents that we have attended yesterday.  I didn’t anticipate that we would be able to complete the exercise this fast but finally it makes me feel good that I am fast learner :- D

The above’s mainly a travelogue, which I initially don’t suppose it to be.  If my manager wished then she could have asked me to attend the demo virtually and then assign the task to complete. She knows my capabilities and aware that anyhow, I would get the work done but the way workout has been planned and then she has given me great time, it kind of inspires and attachs importance to the job that I do. I always believe that a manager doesn’t have any work if she has a good team and believe me, if she doesn’t then there can’t be worst job. I love my job and I love my manager !

Regards,

Pawan

Photo Credit: Thanks to Ronaldo for this wonderful pic.