My Bangalore buddies

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least - Stephen R. Covey

It's Saturday afternoon. I left Bangalore airport at 19:20 and arrived in Hyderabad at 21:00 in the evening. I've spent Friday working at the IBM Hyderabad office.

It's now Saturday afternoon, I've found a moment to relax in the apartment living room.

Loud garish Ganesh festival music and prayers from the nearby temple are streaming across my balcony, flowing in with the gentle tropical Southern Indian breeze.

I'm thinking back at my wonderful 2 weeks in Bangalore and how I miss the kind IBM'rs that cared for me and made me part of their busy lives.

I'd like to especially thank 4 men who introduced me to my first India experiences; Arun Purohit, Sathish Paul, Tara Chattopadhyay & Anand Pultoo.

Arun Purohit:
Up until I met Arun, I had only seen a few blocks around my apartment, the route from my apartment to my SAP GRC courses via the back seat of a rickshaw, and the inside of the building where I had courses.

It was Friday, classes had just let out and I walked down the block to the Shanti Sagar Hotel to meet Arun and go out on the town in the booming exciting city of Bangalore!

Arun arrived and we jumped into a rickshaw and headed towards MG Road.

We first went to a huge shopping mall called Bangalore Central, catering to the Bangalore yuppie and trendy crowd, but with India prices.

Arun and I had fun looking at cloths, colognes, people, eating all kinds of exotic delicacies, and talking about our cultures, expectations and standards that traditional Indian families place on the shoulders of young Indians.

We found some particularly nice t-shirts, 2 for the price of 1! It cost us €7 for top quality t-shirts. Being a typical guest friendly Indian, Arun of course said that he must pay.

He had paid for everything so far, refusing to take 1 cent from me. After literally elbowing him out of the way, I was eventually able to pay for them.

After we left the mall, we headed to a typical Indian restaurant. I'm sorry, but I can't think of the name of it... it starts with a 'N'... I think. Arun gave me lessons on how to eat with my hand.

They just dig down into the food grab it up and shove it in. It doesn't matter how greasy or how messy. You can say that they really 'get into their food' literally! Just so you know, they only eat with one hand.

Now, this is my first quiz for all the non-Indians. Can you guess why they only eat with one hand and not two?

Of course, after the meal, Arun beat me to the register and paid for the meal.

We walked towards my apartment until we got to a location that was convenient for him to get back home and it was simple enough for me to find my way back to my apartment.

He had to rush back home and get rest because tomorrow was a work day for him.

Before we left, we talked about all kinds of things for about 15 minutes, and then he spent another 15 minutes warning me to be careful and to call him when I got back to my apartment.

I had such a great time; I only wish I had more time to spend with him.

Tara & Sathish:
We contacted each other via the IBM diversity program. When I first met them, I could see it right away that these were two smart, good looking guys who I felt I could trust.

They were so much fun and spent the most part of the weekend with me.

They had a whole itinerary planned for me to keep us busy the whole weekend. We flagged a rickshaw and we were on our way to several beautiful places in Bangalore.

-Bangalore Fort: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore_Fort

- Tipu Sultan's Palace: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipu_Sultan

- Bugle Park:. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugle_Rock


- Lal Bagh Park: We were molested by clever little monkeys!

We were sitting on a park bench watching the people walk by, when a monkey came up to us and grabbed the large bottle of orange drink from the hands of Sathish.

I thought to myself that this monkey will just play with the bottle, but it ran up a tree and actually turned and opened the lid, just like a human, and started drinking.

It's a beautiful park and well maintained, definitely worth the visit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalbagh

- We had a lovely meal at a Brahman vegetarian restaurant. I received further instructions of eating with hands! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shivalli_Brahmins

- Chin Lung: It’s a cheap, cheerful, often spirited and certainly spirits filled bar, where all manner of low life, foreign life, and high life mingle and share stories over drinks.

Very cool and hip with men dancing to Bollywood songs. Amazing talent! A must see; the roof top is also wonderful with nice views and tropical breezes without mosquito’s. http://www.flickr.com/photos/roy_sinai/sets/72057594081135949/

After hanging out with these two wonderful guys, I knew I would miss Bangalore.

Anand Pultoo:
Actually, I had contact with Anand before I came to India.

He was one of the people that helped Samantha and Mirjam make this whole thing possible.

He found a very nice, but affordable place for me to stay in Bangalore and gave me a lot of advice before I came to India.

We had arranged to meet up on Wednesday, may last day in Bangalore. When we met, we instantly hit it off. He also had planned a nice evening of fine dining and drinking.

- The first place we went to was Sunny's. Fabulous!!! Besides the name being the same as my nickname, it was a pleasant break from my daily dose of constant curry input.

This first class restaurant could have been in Amsterdam or any other big international city. It was stylish, full of fancy (rich) Indians, foreigners, young, old, and children. And, a pleasant change, I could eat again with a knife and fork instead of with my hands! http://www.sunnysbangalore.com/

We had a 3 course meal with incredible Indian wine. Did you know that India produces excellent wine? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_wine

- We then walked to Coco Grove on Church Street where we finished off the evening with killer mojito's! http://www.metacafe.com/watch/694430/bangalore_diary_coco_grove/

Musical magic at the barber

It was about time for me to get a hair cut.

After class I was told by the men at reception that it's just across the street on the 1st floor.

The plan is (was), rush over, snip snip snip, and then get home quickly to empty my e-mail inbox on my IBM computer.

I ran across the street (yes, literally ran - see below posts 18 & 17 August) to have my first experience at a Bangalore barbershop.

After asking about 8 different people and bravely walking up any ol' narrow stair case I could see and practically in several people's living rooms, I finally found it.

As I walked in, I found 2 barbers, a small boy, several Hindu god posters on the walls and about 5 shrines with idols in any available corner, very clean and tidy and no customers.

They all stopped what they were doing and stared at me. They were probably thinking "Where on earth did he come from and how did he ever find us?".

I walked in and smiled, and of course, typical India, their faces lit up with the most beautiful smiles (and perfect teeth), their heads started wobbling as only an Indian's head can wobble and I was politely and kindly ushered in.

They instructed me to sit down for a hair wash, head & shoulder massage and hair cut for just a couple of Euro's. Massages seem to be part of the ritual here at the barbershop, and I'm not going to complain.

The person giving me the wash, massage, and haircut was, to my surprise, the little boy. My first reaction was, OMG child labour!

Then I noticed that he had a moustache. After a while of struggling to communicate I asked him how old was. To my surprise he was 18 years old. He looked 12! India is full of surprises.

Eventually another customer came in for a shave. Yes, in India, men go to the barbershop still just for a shave.

The other customer started talking to me in perfect English, with a slight accent.

It turned out that his wife is the head of marketing for IBM India an he's a hotshot head of finance for FGI Group (they build airports around the world). His name is Bi Shyam Balasubramanian, say that 10 times fast!

Somehow we got on the subject of Indian music and he told me that he is a fan of classical Indian music.

He asked me if he could give me a cd of some of his favourite music! Wow! What a kind thing to do? I actually had to ask him again, with nuances in case I misunderstood him.

After we were both finished (BTW, the boy gave me a perfect cut) he pulled out his laptop and started downloading the most incredible music for me.

As he was downloading, he explained all about Southern India's (Carnatic) history and music, all the while listening to the music he was describing.

By now a few other people had entered the shop, I hardly noticed because I was so engrossed in Bi's story and the music.

The barber turned off the volume of the TV (TV's seem to be permanently on all over the place) and we had a bit of a jam session while Bi's laptop pumped out the most heavenly beautiful music.

He finished downloading and handed me the cd. After thanking him, I said good bye to my new found barbershop friends and Bi and I headed down the stairs.

We were ready to part our ways, when I mentioned that I loved my haircut, was particularly happy with the shoulder massage, but was disappointed because it was only a few minutes of massage.

He then mentioned that he was heading to an ayurvedic health centre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayurvedic) to pick up some medicines and that they give full body massages for just €7. He goes there 2X a month.

He asked if I'd like to come along and check it out and see if I'd like to have a massage.

We hopped into a rickshaw and headed a few kilometres to another part of town and came to the Charakass Ayuredic Health Centre. (http://www.greenmango.co.in/localbusiness/Bangalore/New+Thippasandra/Charakass+Ayurvedic+Health+Centre/-8889199546070153830)

I set an appointment to come back later and then Bi and I headed in Rickshaw back to where we met.

On the way we had such a good conversation about how he handles such a difficult function as head of finance, our lives, poverty and corruption in India and any thing else that came up.

The rickshaw dropped him off and I continued in the rickshaw onward to my apartment... smiling.


(BTW, after being so inspired by Bi's music, I created a new feature on my blog. If you look to the left of your screen you should see YouTube links to Indian music.

If you see some other types of links besides Indian music, just refresh your screen.

Hint - click on the video's while reading the blog! It adds to your Indian sentiment while reading the blog)

SAP GRC 101 (or SAP GRC for Dummies)

And now... for something totally different... WHAT THE HECK IS SONNY REALLY DOING IN INDIA?!?!

By now, I'm sure you may have taking a few seconds and wondered what is this SAP GRC thingy that Sonny is doing -

No, IBM has not sent me to India to go in the jungle and collect sap from the trees. And, no I haven't started behaving like an out of control 'sap' so IBM has shipped me out to India until I behave myself.

For a quick and dirty definition, SAP is a company wide, web based solution for businesses which has a single database and business process modules 'plug' into the single database allowing them to communicate in synch (on-demand) with each other.

The resources (employees) that are using the company's computer system, access' to the system, is configured to allow them to only see, edit, or pull reports from the system that are needed for their role in the company.

Now comes the GRC part:

GRC is one of those above mentioned modules that 'plug' into the companies system. I will break it down to ABC's.

G is for governance: This means taking care of business, making sure that things are done according to the company's standards (and those of the auditors).

It also means setting your expectations of what should be done so that everyone is on the same page with regard to how your company is run.

R is for risk: Everything we do involves an element of risk. When it comes to riding in a rickshaw through the streets of Bangalore or dancing wildly to Bollywood music in public, it’s pretty clear that certain risks are just not to be taken. Ha!

However, when it comes to business, risks MUST be taken in order to succeed and grow. Managing those risks are a way to help you protect what you have, strategically expand your business and add new products & services.

They all come with risks that when managed, are good and healthy for business.

C is for compliancy: It's all about being compliant with the many laws and internal company directives affecting businesses (and taking time away from THE business).

This also includes putting certain controls in place to ensure that the company remains compliant on a proactive basis.

This could even include things like monitoring your factory’s emissions or ensuring that your import and export papers are in order. Or, it might just simply mean that all roles are separated properly to help avoid fraud.

For example, the same person should not be creating vendors and at the same time cutting checks to his brother-in-law José on the side.

Compliancy also relates to laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), which is all about stopping another Enron from happening. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480484.aspx

In a nut shell, GRC is not only taking care of the business by establishing standards, managing risks and complying to audits, but it's basically about making a paradigm shift in your company, helping it to change and run more efficiently in a more proactive way.

Note: If there are any SAP / GRC experts reading this, who really know what SAP GRC is all about, please feel free to (discreetly) send me corrections and comments in order to make this post as accurate as possible.

Hot stuff go'n on!

It's been a while since I last wrote in my blog. The reason is that I've just been so busy every day since the course started.

Last week Wednesday I started my 3 day SAP GRC 300 course. The prerequisite for this course is that you have to have already a working knowledge of the SAP program.

All the other students in the course had plenty of work experience or at least have completed courses in SAP already... I didn't even know what it looked like, never seen it before. Needless to say, it was quite a challenge to grasp how to use the tool.

On top of that, at the end of the day, it was my only time to answer my IBM work e-mails. Before I knew it, it was time for bed.

But at the end of the course, after plenty of sweaty moments, I passed and I'm certified in GRC 300. Today I started GRC 310 which will end on Wednesday. I've attached a video of my class and classmates.

You see me in the end of the video staring at the computer in a state of confusion and throwing my hands at the computer in despair. (More about SAP & GRC to come)




Then in the weekend, I was lucky enough to have made contact with 3 wonderful IBM India colleagues living and working in Bangalore. I was able to contact them via the IBM diversity program.

I simply asked if they wouldn't mind just having a drink somewhere to give me ideas of what to do while I'm in Bangalore.

Never tell an Indian you're new in town, know no one and would like to just take up a few minutes of their time if you'd much rather be alone in your apartment feeling lonely.

From the end of my classes on Friday to Sunday night, they took my hand (literally - that's normal in India) and gave me one of the most exciting and welcoming weekends of my life!

Note: I look rather 'well fed' in that photo, I'm not THAT big, it's just that all those Indian guys are so darn healthy and thin!!!

(More about Arun, Tara and Sathish to follow!)

Tropical Cubbon Park

This morning I decided to take up jogging again after a few weeks of little healthy activity.

Ajay, my buddy at the check in counter at Mélange, suggested that I go to Cubbon Park to jog. It's just down the street from the hotel. At 7:30 in the morning, I daringly put on my shorts and my t-shirt.

The reason I said daringly is because as of yet, I have not seen any Indian man in shorts. (Not including those little wrap around diaper things that I see guys walking around in, usually accompanied by bare feet and lot's of dirt - if anyone knows what they're called, let me know).

I left the hotel room and took off running. There were a few blocks I had to run before I got to the park. I remember thinking why it's a good thing that people don't jog on the streets in Bangalore.

If you don't get killed by speed racer rickshaws and scooters, then you'll certainly have a slow painful death from breathing exhaust fumes. I decided to walk the rest of the way to the park just to avoid breathing in deep.

I got to the park. What an oasis of green. This 120 hectare park is 'green lung' in the city. It's full of massive tropical trees, flowers and vines. Very beautiful. I was thinking to myself how lucky I am to be in such a beautiful tropical area.

I stopped to walk a while. In this blog, I will write because I wanted to smell the flowers. (But in reality I was out of breath)

There are scattered every where all kinds of stray dogs of all shapes and sizes which I don't really mind. They don't even notice when I ran by (I started running again) and they're all rather cute and surprisingly look well fed.

It's also surrounded by very beautiful old government buildings and museums from the British Empire days.

But the most fascinating and inspiring thing about this park is the people in the park. You have all walks of life together all doing exersises, jogging, power walking and yoga everywhere in the park.

Every where you turn there was someone doing some sort of yoga breathing, or movements. I found it all very beautiful.

Some of the men looked like they were monks or priests because of the robes they were wearing. There even were people who looked homeless, all doing different exersises and yoga.

When I got to the other side, I found a running track full of yuppie & university looking Indians. It was about 1 km long. I did one loop along with my fellow Indian healthy people and decided to head back.

I think that my morning ritual will be to go to Cubbon for my morning jog before I start the day. Tomorrow my SAP classes begin, I'm going to try and get some sort of health routine going.

Here are some video's I found on YouTube of Cubbon Park:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QRDk_8egT0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjeF1PbGp4M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLk6UbQbLwo


So far, I'm really loving it here!

First day in tropical Bangalore

I stepped out of Mélange Garden Apartments and turned left around the corner just as Ajay told me, the clerk at the front desk. He had drawn me a map himself with his name and apartment phone number, just in case and waved me off with a warm Indian smile.

I was sure I'd be able to handle it, walking on my own, just a few blocks, just me and my wits on my way to the supermarket, Gourmet Food World!

I walked out into pure mayhem! Can there exist busier streets than Bangalore? You just have to experience it to believe it. Take a look at these videos of Bangalore traffic on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYjG_S8XJM4
& http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM&feature=related & this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7oBBBAAS9o&feature=related

This is not an exaggeration! Isn't that hilarious? Well, in real life, it's not so funny. Notice that that the cars don't stop for pedestrians.

It's like playing a game of dodge ball. On the one hand I was getting an adrenalin rush dashing through masses of speeding cars, trucks, rickshaws, bikes, scooters, even horse and buggy, but on the other hand, I was wondering if I would return to the apartment.

Another thing that I found 'concerning' was that the sidewalks were often made out of slabs of long stone about 2 meters long and about a meter wide.

They were often stretched across bottomless pits balancing on ledges at both ends. Sometimes they would have gaps between them 30 meters wide (a foot length).

I had to concentrate on not falling in the holes and at the same time pay attention to all the action and movement around me. I don't know how they do it! I saw groups of little children, old people, fast walking and talking business people all walking over the same stones as I was, but they weren't even looking down. Maybe it becomes a sort of 2nd sense?

Eventually I arrived at the super market. After figuring out how things worked I brought my groceries to the check in counter. It took 4 men about 20 minutes to check out my 15 pieces of grocery. When the whole procedure was over, I just smiled a big smile, said thank you very much and went on my way.

After all, it was quite an experience watching them trying to figure out how much the items were, how to get the scanner to work properly, when it wouldn't work, they needed to look up in their catalogue the prices and try to match the item number to the paper with the pictures of the items. It was fascinating!

If I were sensible, I would have taken a left and back tracked the way I came, but I was starting to get cockier and feeling like I had this India thing under control. I firmly grabbed the bags in both hands and I went right...

Well, it was pretty obvious, I would just go back down the hill and take a left at the first street and then I'd be back at the apartment. After all, it was only just a few blocks away.

I got to the first corner; up until now, everyone I passed on the streets were Indians. In this street there must have been some sort of tourist attraction around there. Because there were suddenly a lot of people around me that looked like tourists.

This was also the first time I was harassed by guys wanting to sell me ridiculous worthless junk. To be honest, I didn't really mind the stalkers. All I could do was smile and say no. I even found them interesting.

There was this guy who followed me 3 blocks trying to sell me some worthless 'fine crafted' wooden snake. I told him from the beginning that I did not want to buy his snake but he just kept on insisting that I take a better look at its amazing craftsmanship.

Actually, I didn't mind his company, but then I starting to get the feeling that I was loosing my way. I had passed a street on the right already, but was distracted by the snake sales man.

Instead of going back to the street salesmen area, I decided to just take the next right I come to. I came to major street and it seemed like the right one I needed. But then, it seemed to go on for quite a long time. There were several more streets that I came to and I kept on taking rights at every street. Then street I was on suddenly turned into a dirt road, then mud, then as it became more and more narrow, the housing kept closing in.

It was though a real interesting area with (gaudy) temples of all colours and denominations and all the houses were painted pastel colours. I realized that I was possibly a bit lost in a very old part of town. There I was, with the two big grocery bags in both hands trudging along, determined that the apartments were 'just a few blocks away'.

Suddenly I realized that 2 hours had passed. I had to admit that I was basically lost and the apartments were NOT just a few blocks away. I came out of the residential area and came found a major street. I found a traffic police station and asked for help. They told me that I was 3 kilometres from where I was supposed to be!

They flagged down a rickshaw for me, and made sure I had a decent price and the rickshaw scuttled me back to my apartment.

Red eye to Bangalore

After a very sad goodbye with my Peter, I started walking away from my life as I know it. As I turned and waved for the 10th time, the 11th time I waved I could no longer see him because there was a crowd of people walking between us.

By the 12th wave goodbye I saw the car drive away from the airport I waved again anyway even though he probably couldn't see me... I took a deep breath and dragged my luggage onward into the airport.

It was a nice flight especially since I coincidently met a friendly SAP specialist from HP named Arvid. He fly’s all over the world helping HP customers and he really seems to enjoy his work. When he overheard me saying to the flight attendant that I was going to Bangalore, he mentioned that he was flying there as well. It was pretty amazing that I ran into him. During the flight he answered all kinds of question about SAP for me.

When we had our stop over in Paris, since he has a gold frequent flyers card, he took me to the luxury business lounge with a stocked bar including breakfast foods, drinks and alcoholic drinks. I'm usually not a drinker in the morning, but I thought, why not be a bit decadent, this doesn't happen every day and had champagne with my croissant! Actually it was a 'mimosa' cocktail, mixed champagne with orange juice. Yes, I know I'm bad!

Normally I despise flying, unless I'm in business class because I have never figured out what they expect me to do with my legs and arms. I'm just too big for those little tiny airplane seats. However, the rest of the flight was actually enjoyable with the new monitors that are on the back of the airplane chairs. I watched several Bollywood films, some animation films and I was finally able to see 'Yes Man' with Jim Carrey. I thought it was a very good film.

I was enjoying my phantasia of films so much that I thought it was a pity when we arrived at midnight in Bangalore, India. I was just starting to watch my favourite Bollywood films 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi' staring Shahrukh Kahn when we started to land.

All ready to go!

It was months ago when I first heard that I was accepted in the IBM SAP Booster Program. It was exciting to know that IBM was willing to make the investment in me to make me into a SAP GRC consultant. I was happy enough just to be accepted in such a career changing opportunity.

But then, the double whammy came during my interview, when the executive in charge of the program, mentioned that part of the training would be in India!!! I try to always keep a poker face during these types of meetings, but when he said that, my mouth dropped open in disbelief and joy and excitement must have been written all over my face!

Not only would I be trained as a consultant in one of the hottest software tools currently being sold, but I would get to have the experience of India on top of that! He explained that half would be course work in India and the other half would be gathering experience working with the Indian team before coming back to working with our clients in Holland.

Later it turned out that because the course package in India was incomplete, I had the deeply disappointing news that I would not be going to India after all. Instead I'd be doing my course work in Den Bosch, Netherlands and Brussels. When I heard this at first I was irritated and a bit angry.

But then I realized how lucky I was to be in this SAP booster program whether it was in India or NL/Belgium. I then made an attitude adjustment and just thought about how nice it would be to be with my Peter at home and just be making small trips to other cities for training. It was the simpler and easier route with no huge cultural experiences that could interfere with learning all about SAP.

Lo and behold, out of the blue on Tuesday I was told that I'd be going after all! The two lovely IBM education women, Mirjam & Samantha, told me they had worked it out that I would start my SAP GRC courses next week in Bangalore. This meant that I would be leaving this weekend (16 August) and would not return until 16 October!

When I first heard the news, I felt so excited. But then, to my surprise, as I walked out of the room, and as I thought I'd call Peter and let him know, I felt this feeling of sadness. I would be leaving my beloved Peter, all my friends, my routine, my safe and 'gezellig' home life in De Kwakel and stepping out into the great Indian / SAP unknown.

IBM is making a big investment in me (during a world economic crisis time) and have put their faith in me, that in 2 months I'd be ready to consult the client in SAP, a tool that I have yet to even see, and the courses are starting next Wednesday! Besides the sadness of missing Peter and my world I have here, there is also a feeling of nervousness following me around as I prepare for my trip.

India has always fascinated me, but at the same time, it's never been on the top of my list of places to visit. There are all the colourful Bollywood visions in my head of temples, warm sunny climate, nature, the exotic foods, religion, people and cloths. And, there is also the 'Slum dog Millionaire' side of India with poverty, crime, hygiene, caste system and illiteracy I know exists just as strongly as the colourful vision.

I am certain that this will be a life changing experience. Not only with my experiences in India, but also because I'll return as a knowledgeable SAP consultant.

See you all in 2 months!

XXX
Sonny
(You can call me 'Sappy Guru' from now on! ha ha!