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. 🙂

For event;
Special thanks to Oracle ACE Program and Oracle Technology Network to make this event happen. It was a pleasure for me able to share my experiences with Indian Oracle Professionals. It is – again – so privileged to be an ACE Director.
This was a well-organised event. I had airport pick-up & drops on time (even with the flight delays) and I went conference venues on time. Lunches were good and AIOUG board members took care of us.
But it was obvious to understand that, lots of preparation happened very late. We had our Oracle ACE Program approvals 1-2 weeks before and there were not much time to prepare for the planning and documentation for visa. Luckily, I prepared documentation from either AIOUG and Wipro because, if there’s something wrong with the documentation, I wish to be safe and use these additional documents for recovering. If you are an ACE or ACE Director who want to attend OTN Yathra Tour in the future, do please keep these in mind.

Here are a recap of my posts about OTN Yathra Tour 2015;

OTN Yathra Tour 2015 – Mumbai
OTN Yathra Tour 2015 – Pune
OTN Yathra Tour 2015 – Hyderabad
OTN Yathra Tour 2015 – Bangalore