Since I have whined, it’s only right to report on the good times.
Everything came together today. I rolled in and delivered my final seminar – which I was able to take at a relaxed and deliberate pace – knowing that there was no need to prove it in the lab. This was mere exposition without need for anything more than “I have done this, and you could too – using these tools.” I talked about a little, off the cuff, about big brain stuff. Where scientific computing is going – that sort of thing.
The big boss from Apple, the sales head for all of India, arrived and obtained sign-off from the customer that they were well and truly satisfied that I had delivered the training. This completes a delivery that started in April, and now said Apple, the re-seller, and us will finally get paid. They were quite excited about that, and we are too. We went with his team for a leisurely lunch at a sit down place, with tablecloths. We ate Indian style, sharing an assortment of appetizers and entrees surrounded by raita and garlic naan. We talked about our families, and then I tried to explain the American health care debate.
After lunch, I finished up all but one of the customizations that had been stapled on at the last minute. I taught an APC battery unit to send mail when the power went down – installed a linux virtualization layer on top of OS X, and fixed various other things.
And at the end, suddently, we were all friends. When I started making signs of wrapping up, the whole lab got together, and everyone (every single one) demanded a picture with me. Then a group photo. Then a group photo with the cluster. Then just the young guys from Apple, and so on. I’ve got the group photo, along with my slides, here. The grad students shared their aspirations of post-docs in the US, and the big boss of the institute invited me back any time.
The young techies asked me to share my photos, so I plugged in my phone, pulled up ‘terminal’ and started typing. “You share photos from the terminal?” they asked, shaking their heads in astonishment. “That’s how we do it in the old school,” I replied. “Hardcore,” they said.
I write these words from the back seat of a tiny car, hurtling through Kolkata traffic on the way to the airports. My driver is doing what can only be described as “jabbering” into his cell phone in Hindi, or perhaps Bengali. I honestly can’t tell. At the airport, I will board a flight to Delhi, to be met at the airport by that same big boss from Apple. I will go to my hotel, and I will fall sound asleep.
I will wake up in time to be picked up at 9am and taken to the Apple offices – where I have every intention of absolutely winging two days of ad-hoc training. I have re-written a day’s worth of slides in the evenings and mornings for three days running here. These last two days were stapled onto the end of this gig at my insistence. They fulfill my requirement that I don’t do international travel for periods of less than one week. I have the strong impression that now that the customer is happy, we’re going to have a chill sort of session.
Peace, out.
Addendum: my Verizon cellular wi-fi card works here – but my iphone does not. Weird.
