@OUGN Impressions

It became usual for me to write post blog posts long after the events. Shame on me, I need to be more careful.
It all started bad but continued and ended as much great as can be. I had my last tweets at the aircraft until I heard captain saying that “we have a valve problem and trying to sort it out”. After restarting the aircraft for a couple of times, we again heard his announce saying “we’re changing the aircraft”. That was great.! Headed back to airport and waited for new aircraft to be ready and after a delay of 2 hours and 10 minutes, we were on the way to Oslo.

About to land to Oslo, looks still snowy

But no, it wasn’t the first disaster that happens to me. I saw Jan Karremans and we waited for Luis Marques at the airport (of course see good friends upon landing is not the disaster 🙂 ), then we headed to train and headed to Oslo city center. Train was amazing with WiFi and electric sockets near the seats.
We started walking to our hotels (it looked like our hotels were nearby) and I hit the rock again. I found the one of the six of Radisson Blu Hotels, where my reservation was not there and need to go back all the way to central station. So I took bus to get my Radisson Blu Plaza back. 🙂

OTN Yathra Tour 2015 – Highlights

For India;
Initially, India is a very exotic country. People are friendly and always in a hurry. After having some couple of hours, I realised that there was a second language when you’re driving. It is the sound of horns. If there’s an electronic magnetic impulse, which effects horns to failure, traffic will stop.! Generally traffic rush starts at 8:00am and ends at 7:59am next day. 🙂

I saw many small accidents during my stay and people are get used to it, they even do not get out from their cars, if it is a medium damage in the car or motorbike, they only swear. I saw some traffic lights and policemen who want to put the traffic in right order, but nobody cares about them.

Heaven for vegetarians. They can make 1000 types of dish with only using potato.! Spices are their lifestyle, they don’t taste anything without some spice on it. There were a couple of places where there were meat, but all meat are generally chicken “white” meat. No red meat. Even in Dominos, Mc Donalds, KFC, or other well-known fast food brands do not have meat in their menu. 😦

Cars are all small, in order to preserve fuel. There are not known brands. Regular cars look like trucks next to Indian cars. And there’s a regulation for engine volume in cars and motorcycles, 150cc is the upper limit for bikes. You cannot have larger than that. That regulation makes a lot of noise but none of the motorcycles is moving fast. At the back of trucks, it is generally written that “Horn OK Please”, where it means that if you horn, I’ll move to other line. But as far as I learnt, most of the truck drivers are uneducated and this makes traffic unsolved.

Tata is everywhere. Even Starbucks is powered by Tata. If you want to make some job in India, Tata is the key. Their hands are in everything. Cars, trucks, household, even vacuum cleaners or toasters. You can use only Tata products and you won’t need anything else. 🙂

OTN Yathra Tour – Bangalore

Bangalore was the last stop for me. We had a great time in Bangalore, especially with two guys where they called themselves as “fan of me”. I didn’t know – up to then – that I had fans. One of them (Bhabaniranjan) is working in Oracle and he got in touch with me when I was in Hyderabad (via GTalk) and he said that he couldn’t get permission to attend all my tour. It makes you feel honoured when you have people saying those. I nearly spent all day with them, talking about Oracle Data Integrator and tried to share my experiences with these young ODI developers. They were all sitting at the front in my sessions, asking questions and listening carefully. 🙂

You can check the pictures of Hyderabad which AIOUG posted in Google+ and mine important ones are below.

OTN Yathra Tour – Hyderabad

Next stop was Hyderabad. After missing Gustavo in Pune leg, I saw him again in Hyderabad. I expected to see Glenn Schwartzberg, but unluckily he couldn’t make this conference, I missed you a lot there Glenn. Especially, to explore the cities we’re in and I really needed your guidance to food & dishes. Hope to see you somewhere in sometime soon.

After landing in the evening, I noticed that, even the moon is not usual for me. I thought this is why Indian people are thinking that they are all forward and the rest of the world are backward (opposite).

We went to Tech Mahindra this time and it was great organised. Because our being foreign, we had a guide for the whole day and whenever we needed something, she made it happen. Thank you very much again.

Conference started in an unusual way and after the opening session of Tech Mahindra’s CEO, we went to stage and lit candles, they lit all day long. 🙂

You can check the pictures of Hyderabad which AIOUG posted in Google+ and mine important ones are below.

OTN Yathra Tour – Pune

This is my first Saturday conference here in OTN Yathra Tour. The tours or the conferences I attended, generally starts either Sunday or weekdays. Let’s see how it went.

Conference started in awful position, because the alarm that I’m using was the alarm that I use for waking up to office and do not screams on weekends. And I woke up at 9:22am.!! My session is at 10:00am. I immediately called Psy (organisator of conference) and there were no response. It was because he was in his keynote session. I went down to lobby and get in the hotel cab. And reached Oracle office at 10:30am. There were some people which wanted attend my session, but Psy let them to different sessions. This was my first time – ever – to miss a session. But luckily, there were some empty rooms that I had 3rd track, which I called “Pirate Session”. And I gave my session at 11:00am. #SavedTheDay

We had a great dinner with some of my offshore friends and it was really great to meet them, since we always talk via phone or Lync.

You can check the pictures of Pune which AIOUG posted in Google +.

OTN Yathra Tour – Mumbai

It became a habit (I guess) that I started to write post the event(s). And I’ve missed to blog about some events (still on my mind — LA OTN Tour and Oracle Open World 2015), maybe I’ll write later, but now, should concentrate on my near events.

This was my second OTN Tour, but my first OTN Yathra Tour. Since I work with an Indian Company (Wipro), I thought it would be nice to visit India and meet with the Oracle Community around there.

Because of heavy show conditions in Turkey, I landed Mumbai Airport in the early morning (6:00am – supposed to land at 5:00am) and picked up by hotel driver. Hotel was close to airport but it took half an hour to go there (fact of Indian traffic). I met with Gustavo Gonzalez at the breakfast and after the breakfast we went to see city a bit. We didn’t like the first place we went, then hired a tuk-tuk to go to a better shopping mall, which my offshore friends suggested.