I paused the video so she could take a rest

Too mule to train

My Brian would love the role of a personal trainer, bless him, but not if I could help it. For one, I respond better to gentle persuasion than instruction. 4 years of secondary boarding school was enough of being ordered around that I was unpersuadable about going to sixth-form school and my mother who was a principal then could have obtained entry to any school of choice, but she could not get between my ears.

Obviously, he has taken interest in my return to the gym, discipline and persistence are rivals to my continuing to the point of seeing benefits. The topic of music for my workout came up again and his suggestion just was far from impressive. Yes, I could say to rowers in Cape Town, “Put your back in it, just a little more.”, God forfend in my sweating exhaustion I play that back to my own hearing to urge myself on. [YouTube:Masters at Work – Work at your leisure.]

My drumsticks hurt

As for calling me chicken as if to dare me, what I decide to do is what I do, names are just that, names. Don’t forget chickens are probably the hardiest and most maltreated animals in the whole, yet they thrive in whatever condition they are in. To be chicken is to have tenacity, the will to live and hold life sacred without unnecessarily courting danger.

I picked up a little more speed in my brisk walk on the treadmill, going at 6 km/h for starters and then up to 6.6 km/h for the last 15 of 25 minutes. I worked up a good sweat. Then moved to the floor exercises, going back to an old favourite Rebecca-Louise Smith on YouTube and she left me in the dust. It would take time. Maybe I should take the advice of a comment. “I paused the video so she could take a rest.”

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Meanwhile, for my workout music, it was Anita Baker which strangely was not on my phone, I had it in the cloud on OneDrive and thankfully, the gym offers free Wi-Fi. To stream directly from the cloud, I use the CloudPlayer Premium app.

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Suffice it to say, by the time my timeslot was up, I was ready to up and leave. Tomorrow is another day.

Incredible India: Up Against the Koenig Imperative

Boot camp revamp

I had a major falling out with my trainer this morning on a number of issues regarding the delivery of the curriculum leading to a certification I am in interested.

When it comes to boot camp training, it can be difficult to balance the issues of time, complete coverage, teaching, explanation and preparation for tests.

Much as I will like to attain my certifications as soon as possible, my learning methodology has never been by rote, accepted views or concepts have to have undergirding logic and I need to know that I am extending my body of knowledge.

The burden of history

For someone who has been in the ICT profession for 23 years, one can safely say a good deal of the concepts we take for granted today have their foundations in fundamentally primitive things we did decades.

People new to the field may have no need for the history of how, why and what things are today, maybe that is an advantage or disadvantage but it is impossible to expect those who have experience to just become sponges of new thinking without referencing knowledge they already have or activities that have practical affinity with the topic under discussion.

Intensive versus effective

Again, the curriculum is delivered in 6 8-hour days and sometimes Sundays, the danger of saturation looms, the trainer wanting to cover the requisite material, the trainee wanting to pace the absorption so that the quality becomes of greater significance than the quality.

In other words, there might be a case for 5 hours of effective training over 8 hours of intensive training, each trainee knows what they can handle before they begin to wilt and that is only just human.

Delivery prowess

Then, there are amazing differences between the two trainers I have had, the Microsoft Official Curriculum is tied to Powerpoint slides that were followed quite closely and made the taking of notes less easy especially in a one-on-one teaching setup.

The better delivery method with regards to the Powerpoint slides should have been having the slides offered as notes to trainees to annotate thereby helping link discussion with concept and reference.

In the case of my CCNA trainer, she is no less than prodigious, in the 4 days of my training already, she has not one referenced a note, she fills the board with point after point with literal total recall, in the probably 500 sentences she has written on the board, she has only once asked if one point had been written and that point was probably the least significant of the lot.

Rhyme without reason

Things began to reach a head yesterday when first certain definitions appeared to challenge the conventional use of language, English being the medium but meanings appearing to indicate the opposite.

I could not absorb the idea that Least Feasible Distance could go on to mean Best Option, regardless of tone, context, syntax or semantics, this was an exceptional anomaly and I felt quite uncomfortable with this.

I dare say English is not really the same between what is spoken and written in America and what the English speak especially when there is a purist determination in one’s mode of expression – that is just a fact.

English usage and meaning

I have worried that I might get caught out with American usage and Americanisms and a typical example I give is our pants are never exposed whilst Americans wear theirs openly. Alright, pants are underwear in England but trousers in America if viewed from an English perspective just as a negative is always a negative on our side of the pond no matter how many you string together whereas in America the mathematical double negative take precedent to yield a positive or the affirmative.

Another usage of Active and Passive which had the implication of opposites in the class seemed to be given a much more acceptable reading when explained in another context from other material I reviewed.

Just as we have English and US English dictionaries, I am beginning to think whilst allowances can be made for similarity and difference, there might be a case for clearly differentiating the material and not assuming English is really the same around the globe.

However, it was when a formula was written on the board that combined two unrelated units that I had had enough. I was not in class to jettison my engineering background and there had to be a reason why that formula was the accepted code.

Oranges and apples

At this point, I was impervious to the illogical and scientifically incorrect; I could not imagine that all the engineering in Cisco had produced a dimensional and mathematical inexactitude without reason.

That reason was not forthcoming, I was to absorb this by law and learn it by rote – for a person who was first precocious, then inquisitive, interrogative, curious, questioning, researching and challenging assumptions no matter how widely held, this was one of those moments where without reason there could be no progress.

Yesterday, I got up, closed my book, slammed the lid of my netbook and was ready to walk out of the course, she was able to placate me but I was far from satisfied.

Now, I know

On returning to my hotel, that was the first topic I researched and then I saw the extensive formula that got condensed to what was written on the board, the engineering and mathematical proof was evident – that for me is what you call the impartation of knowledge and the fulfilment of understanding – the why and how was there to see.

So, in the morning I took my discovery to my trainer and she acknowledged she knew this but it was beyond the scope of the course I was on. Whilst that was appreciated, I felt a conflict brewing because I was not just going to take everything as gospel but will require clear detail where assumptions are made that seem to challenge the concepts of language or science as predicated from my “wealth” of experience.

Fracture!

By the time we had exchanged a few good views about the material it was time for my trainer to say she could no more continue the training and I felt we had reached an irreconcilable impasse.

I then had a meeting with the officials and technical manager where generally what they seemed to be concerned with was the method (The Koenig Imperative – course material delivered within constrained time-frames leading to certification).

In some ways, I acquiesced and we agreed to continue the course because the curriculum is really an abridged version of the more serious engineering concepts that I will find more interesting and aligned to my engineering background.

Patching up

I can understand my trainer’s frustrations though I cannot say she fully appreciates that I cannot extend my knowledge of these concepts just by faith without seeking the fundamental reasons for why and how such conclusions were arrived at – it is just the bane of my kind of background, that I have become a somewhat difficult and impossible trainee after her having delivered this curriculum to well over 500 trainees is unfortunate.

I am not a robot, God help my intellect and we both need a healthy dose of patience with each other.

We appeared to patch things up and continue with the training, an interestingly eventful day. 

Incredible India: Incredible Dissatisfaction

Water wasters

A long eventful day it was for my first training day. My day schedule indicated I was to be picked up at 8:45AM in the morning for the training centre but I had set my alarm for 7:00AM to ensure I could have a shave and what passes for breakfast at the inn.

We are encouraged to waste in an unconventional way because the hot water is only available in the mornings and evenings except on Sundays when we have it for the whole day.

The hot water is not on the tap per se, we have to let the water run down the drain for nigh on 10 minutes before it gets warm enough for our cossetted sense of welfare. Then my bathroom sink drain had no plug, a problem that was solved with a bit of improvisation – tissue, but hardly water tight – I have to pinch myself with the realisation, I am far from the comforts of my land.

Rather than wash from a bucket like I did before, I decided to use the shower this time, I probably saved more water with that.

Peanuts don’t taste like pistachios

Trainees usually get picked up at 8:10AM, I first spoke to the concierge who muttered incoherently unsure of what information I needed and I went for breakfast. I decided to get on the 8:10AM taxi about the time the concierge asked the driver about the later pickup. The driver asked to see my letter, read it as if he comprehended it then gave me back the letter without a word.

I concluded, the many task-driven men around could only follow clear instructions, they had no aptitude for initiative, the most they could offer was an apology, sometimes the genuflection of the Indian nodding head and not much else.

There was no point expecting the epitome of professional dispatch and alacrity, so I rode with that early group to the centre.

A penalty of expression

We were sat at the reception for a while before we were called into a room to start the registration process, though none of the staff for almost another 20 minutes suggested why we were there.

As the silence got deafening, it got too unbearable for me, so I broke the ice speaking out and prompting those gathered round to introduce themselves, then everyone got talking which made for the passage of time before the staff brought in forms and more forms to fill in.

I was surprised that the extra days trainees stayed before or after training were listed as penalties, a topic that never came up when the original arrangements were made, I will suppose it was more a deficit of language on their part than anything else.

It was just unacceptable

The back page had questions about the arrangements for airport meetings and other issues. It gave me the opportunity to excoriate the process that allowed for passengers on the same flight to receive two different sets of instructions which lead to my having to wait another 70 minutes after seeing the driver who came to pick me up.

As the manager tried to belittle the situation, I forcefully made it clear that it was untenable, appalling and an outrage that such a simple arrangement could be so utterly mishandled that it would weigh heavily on my assessment of the arrangements around the course. I stated that the many issues I have will appear on my blog.

After that discussion, I was allocated a training room in another building and I was surprised to find I was the only trainee with the luxury of one-to-one training – I had felt a group will make for more interaction – I cannot say I have appreciated the full benefit of this arrangement yet.

A sick bag almost utilised

After introductions, we went through the schedule of the training scheme and began to work on the subjects.

Meanwhile, I had to book lunch on the management system and I was in shock that brought me close to severe emetic tolerance when the drop-down menu revealed such exquisite restaurants as McDonalds, Subway and Dominoes amongst others.

At the risk of snobbery most unintended, I gave the trainer a synopsis of my background that tailed off with the phrase, “… we don’t do McDonalds.”

These are places where even if one did have a pet, such will not be found masticating those substances pretending to nutrition and I did not travel 6,300km to India to end up in such places.

On advice, beside the training centre was a vegetarian buffet offering varieties of cuisine, though there were security checks at the door – with the help of my trainer, I found out what to do and had vegetarian sandwiches for lunch.

One expects

In all, the day was productive and useful; I gained knowledge of many things whilst at the same time I was able to share some of my experience. I would have had a coffee but the setting of the coffee machine was so foul that I gave that a miss; one will surely remonstrate on the morrow about the condition of that place.

For all the equality, egalitarianism and affordability taking courses in India offers, there are areas where the apparent excess of men to perform seemingly menial tasks has not been efficiently deployed. Such minutiae should not become a distraction bordering on regret and so amends will be expected to be made.

After training, I made arrangements to visit the Taj Mahal in Agra in two Sundays time and on returning to our inn, we first had room service of a roll of bread and a cup of soup and then managed the dinner which was barely edible but for the good company the setting provided.

I have decided I will not apologise for being so Europeanised in my outlook, if one expects, it is not vexatious to demand essential change.