Hello from Russia

I send many greetings to all after more than year gap. Many interesting things happen meantime, but there is no time and space for writing all of them. But about one I will tell you as I sucessfully returned from my second trip to Russia.

We had started works on implementing the greatest ERP system ever (SAP) for our Russian partly sister- and partly subsidiary-company in the last months of year 2006. Nevertheless, our colleagues from mother-company made the whole thing a little bit easier, I have to admit, but the time was heavily extended. But not to write only about work. We have arrived with signed fine concepts and as far I think it will have a right direction now.

We have been to Russia for two weeks this time. The whole weekend we spent in Moscow and I have to say I really looked forward to it. In Kaluga, we just work from sunrise to sunset and see nothing. Yes, we have been to some space museum there, but... Moscow is Moscow! It is amazing how wide streets (6 lanes in one direction and 6 in the other) can be so overcrowded. And the style of their driving - not like in India - I would say in India the traffic was chaotic at the first glance, but after some time you can see that Indians drive carefully. Russians do not care about other drivers at all. We had a former mafian driver (I only guess but if you see, you will agree) - he was able to move from the most right lane to the most left one in 100 km/h speed on really crowded road may be even faster than me on the same road without any other car - he needed just 70 metres, may be less - it was aweful.

During the weekend, we have visited Krasnaya Plotschad (Red Square), Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral, Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Russian Historic Museum and -of course- Moscow Subway (Metro). Everything was (of course) amazing, I like sightseeing very much, but most I liked metro :-) Its architecture was really different to any subway I know from western Europe. It was bigger (as everything in Russia), larger (as everything in Russia) and more fancy (not as everything in Russia). I will try to post some photos, but I guess everybody knows.

One last thing I found out about Russian by own eyeball - they drink a lot. Even young women. One example for all - we waited for one of our colleague near an exit from the subway. Than young pretty woman came out of the subway (we are only men, of course we noticed :-) ). Suddenly, she fell down with hands next to her body and face to the ground. It seemed really teribbly, I thought she would be heavily injured. After few seconds, she just stood up and continued with her walk. Nothing happened to her just some little dirt on her clothes - she was only drunk.

As for the weather, in Moscow it was OK for west-Europeans (the temperature was around zero) but the previous week in Kaluga... oh :-) it was down to minus 25 degrees of Celsius (and this is really cold for me!!!). I was really freezing just while going from the pub to the hotel and it was less than 5 minutes :-)

Have a nice day, I will write something more next time.

How does a monsoon rain look like

July is month of Monsoon in India. Actually, it starts from June and last about three months or so.

Originally, I thought it will be raining all the time, but when I came to Aurangabad last week, I was told this area is on the edge of raining area and from here to the east is the dry area.So the whole last week sun was shining and there was almost no rain. The first real monsoon rain I saw started yesterday. The nature here was already green, obviously because of the rains in previous weeks. But only after this rain I knew the purpose of bridges built across dry ditches and river-basins. After whole-day rain I also realised that there were no drain covers along the streets. In the afternoon, the sides of streets were no more visible because of the flowing water. Later, the water was also on the middle of some streets. The water was falling from the sky so strongly that one become wet after several seconds being outside. It looked like if you pour the water out of the bucket.

Luxurious buildings like shops where we used to buy different things or hotels where we stay or restaurants where we used to eat use as a base material marble. It is very glossy and looks fabulous, but it is not very smart to put it on the floor which can be wet. Now I know it very good that it is not clever to step on a wet marble like on any other material :-)

I hope rains like this will help this country not to have so bad droughts afterwards. It is strange - I do not like a lot of things here, the dirt, unkept public areas, people who do not appear to think much of their lives - but somehow, as I think this visit is my last here, I feel I like many things here and want to come here again. To see the progress this country is making really fast. To see the people I know once again. Or just to be here, breathe this air and see the nature when it is green. I know I will somehow miss this country.

I have to go now. Good bye, India!

Fundamental success in India

Hi again from Aurangabad, Maharastra, India!

We are here again, this time it is the final stage - going live with the SAP system.

Everything looked well last several weeks and after adopting of one important resolution about one business problem I will not write more about almost everything was clear and easy. Easy is not a good word, but easy for us - we knew about all problems, knew how to solve it and work on that solutions.

On Saturday, this situation ends in a great success - going live and singing the confirmation (or acceptation) form that SAP can goes live - status of testing was satisfactory without any further remarks. After so much work and effort we put in it... I have to say it is a great weight off our hearts. Finally...

We will be here for four more days as a productive run live support; we will do the support from MB afterwards. I am sorry I use these abbreviations, but I am very used to - nobody here says Czech Republic or Mlada Boleslav, each and every one says just MB. I know this habit to be american, may be through all the films and movies it came to India, too :-) The most important about using these abbreviations is to keep the original meaning of it - as I have heard from our teacher who had been in US for a year, noone knew the meaning of VCR, and more - nobody knew what videorecorder meaned.

As usual, many of us are having some stomach problems here. What's new is I have these problems too. I am really looking forward to return to the Czech Republic, because it is the second place where I have it. At first, I had some stomach problems on my holiday (I have been to Crete for a week just before I left to India). I spent two days in bed there and now almost the same time here. Fortunatelly for the project, it was half of Saturday and almost whole Sunday. As it is Monday today, I feel better, but others are still feeling sick.

C U in April!

VIVA ZIVOHOST 2005!

Weekend in India

I send many greetings from India again!
It is Monday and that is why I am going to write something about the weekend
- my weekend and typical Indian weekend.

In India, the length of a weekend varies week by week. Each second weekend
Saturday is work day, so the weekend is only one-day - Sunday. Most Indians
here lives apart from their families, but distances in India are much bigger
than those in Europe. So they are not used to go to visit their parents or
relatives every weekend; the common interval is once per one or two months.
Usually, they stay in their homes here in the place of their work and do
some sports - or - spend time with their families if it lives in the same
place too. It is also good time for weddings, but wedding of wealthier
citizens usually last from two to three days. Therefore it is better to do
it during the two-day weekend. Yesterday in our hotel there was a small
wedding which we saw (some of us joined, too - but not me).

Last weekend it was two-day weekend, but we worked on Saturday too.
Therefore our only free day was yesterday. We have been to the Pithalkora
caves about 70 km far away from Aurangabad. I have to say that in the Czech
Republic we have very very very good roads - especially after this trip.
Last 10 km we had to go very slow not to harm the car a lot so it took
around one hour. It was very hot weather and nobody was inside the caves
except for us. More, the caves were nothing special in comparison to Ajanta
and Ellora. On our way back, we stopped in Ellora once again and went to
some other caves we had not visited during the previous visit. Those caves
were amazing, it is really unbelievable how the people did such a big rooms
- everything from one piece of stone (rock) - just by cutting into the rock.

In the past, India had to be really wonderful country. Now, it is really
fast developing, but it needs to be developed still a lot :-)

Greeting from Aurangabad (again)

I send greetings from India again. We have a lot of work, that’s why I did not have a time to write here earlier. Tomorrow, here will be nonworking Saturday, but we will have to come to work too. It is getting a little bit tough…

I have to do something for the Controlling to be approved in the written form on Monday and I have to do some other tests and development in the system, too. The big problem we have again is the Indian taxes. The main problem is that it seems to me that nobody from India fully understand the issue. SAP says that they developed everything to cover legal requirements, but it is at variance with SAIPL’s requirements. The worst thing is that we had to perform integration tests, which have to be done just before the productive go live, in the moment when everything is clear, and it is no time to have such discussions. I am really curious about the results of our visit – I just hope it will not be extended :-)

Last evenings (or nights) we used to go to restaurants to have a dinner, but today I do not plan to do it so as I am really tired and want to have a rest. When having a dinner, we come to the hotel around the midnight, then at 8 AM we have a breakfast and immediately after it we go to work. So… a little bit busy :-)

I have to go on with the work now, have a good night (or afternoon in Europe), I will write on Sunday again I suppose.