The Journey to India (post from old blog, Sept 30 2007)

I have about an hour left before I have to leave my hotel to go visit Infosys. My first meeting is at 10AM so I decided to take this hour to tranquilize and loosen up a bit. My journey to India has been strenuous and pleasant at the same time. The journey started on Friday morning, Seattle time, little under 80 hours after I arrived to Seattle from Toronto. As always, packing started at the last possible second but I’ve travelled so much this year that I’ve become very proficient at it.

I got to the airport a couple of hours early so I could work on the presentation I have to deliver to Infosys this week but I ran into a manager from Microsoft and decided to chat with him instead, and hoped to work on my presentation during the flight. I was expecting the plane to have a functional power outlet since my laptop gives me a paltry two hours of battery life. Unfortunately, my seat didn’t have a working power outlet and so I used up my battery life to work on the presentation as much as I could.

I spent the remaining 8 hours eating bizarre airplane food, watching movies, and reading a book called ‘Presenting to Win’ by Jerry Weissman. The book was wonderful and thorough; I learned so much about how to design presentations so they are inherently easy on the eyes and minds of an audience. The most important thing I learned was that successful presentations are those that present the concepts, ideas, and/or proposals in such a way that the audiences don’t have to think, and insinuate graphics and text in a manner that makes it pleasant and predictable to the human eye. I took several key notes to incorporate into my presentation later.

I had 4 hours at Amsterdam’s airport before my flight to Delhi so I rushed to the business centre and plugged my laptop in and started refining my presentation. At the end of my stopover, I still wasn’t done and I cursed myself for not working on the presentation earlier. Nevertheless, there was still more time over the weekend to finish it off.

By this time I was completely frazzled and slept through my flight to Delhi. I got to Delhi airport, at 1030PM India time on Saturday. For the first time ever, I was at an immigration booth in which I wasn’t asked a single question. The officer took my passport, stamped on the page preceding my Indian visa, and returned it. I was to spend the night at a hotel near the airport. They sent a chauffeur to pick me up and 20 minutes later I was lying on a bed for the first time in over 28 hours. I called my friend Kshitij who lives in Delhi and we made plans to meet up at 6 in the morning to have breakfast and to go sight-seeing. I called home and was surprised that my parents didn’t sound worried. The next morning, I was back at my room at 1030AM after sight-seeing for a few hours. I ordered lunch to my room and worked on finishing off the presentation. I had to leave for the airport at 1230PM and I still wasn’t done with the presentation – This thing will never end!

I got to Pune at 430 and to my hotel room an hour later. Delhi was a much cleaner city, Pune was very dirty. I laid down in my bed and turned on TV which only had 10 working channels, all of which were in Hindi. I spent another 2-3 hours wrapping up my presentation and emailed it to my manager in Seattle. I slept at 9PM hoping to wake up at 6AM but I woke up at 3:00 AM instead. I did my daily email and facebook check and started rehearsing my presentation in the most stentorian tone and crisp articulation that my fatigued vocals could muster. After a couple of rehearsals I decided to make a few more changes and emailed it back to my manager.

I now have at least 50 hours of meetings over the next 3 weeks, and I am yet to finalize the agenda of all of them. I also have to deliver a minimum of 4 presentations to hundreds of people over three locations and two cities – Infosys, Wipro, and the Microsoft India Development Centre, Infosys being in Pune and the latter two being in Hyderabad. This is not a blog of gripe, but one of profound excitement. This is what I love doing - talking to and meeting with new people, and giving presentations to large audiences. I am grateful of the fulfilling opportunity provided to me by Microsoft and the conferment of a responsibility of such magnitude at such a young age. I love the adrenaline rush, the excitement, and the challenges that I’m given. I love the fulfillment that I experience when things go right, and the lessons I learn when things don’t go right.