First day at school ;-)

I awoke at 7:30, hit the snooze button then remembered I had to turn on the geaser for hot water and a nice hot shower, did that and went back to bed. Alarm went off again and I decided I had to get up, emptied all the stuff from my back pack, packed the laptop and anyhting I thought I might need that day. Had a nice hot shower (not a power shower by any means). my co student friend Andy knocked on my door and we went to breakfast.

The dining roon is located in the garden next to bananna trees and lime trees. We were told on the information pack to look out for "snakes and scorpio" when in the garden and walking into town, I must ask my fellow students here (Andy, Jason and Peter) what their star signs are....

I seem to have fed some mosquitos last night and I hope they enjoyed the deet 50/50 flavoured white meat...
Breakfast was a choice of cereals with hot milk?, toast, eggs, butter, cheese and jams.
The transport for the training centre arrived at 8:30 (they always seem to be early) it was 15 mins ahead of time. but luckily we had finished and we headed out for the centre. It was nice and cool at 8am compared to Delhi. I definately made the right choice in choosing Dehradun rather than Delhi.
We arrived at the training centre after swerving past a few cows that just like to lie in the middle of the road. The training centre looks half built, well thats because it kind of is.... But the parts that are fully constructes are serviceable and there is aircon throughout. There is a gym in the basement (not a brand new techno gym but would do), the kitchen and dining rooms and the Yoga room. On the ground floor are the classrooms and corridoors. The one to one room are smaller and have 3 workstations, the normal classrooms are bigger. Now its interesting to point out that one to one training is obviously better but also costs more, Andy started the course on the same day as I did and he paid for one to one training. I was also the only person to start the MCSE 2003 this week so I will also recieve one to one training for the duration of my course (thanks Andy, Ill buy you a beer mate). Jobs at Konig are very sought after, recently they advertised for an IT trainer, they had over 5000 applicants and some people had 8 interviews. You might think that this means its a cushy job, but far from it they work these people to the bone. The accomadation manager at the Guest house works 6 days a week and is onside 24/7 he gest one day off a month! My trainer who for the life of me I cant rememebr ore pronounce her name was told to come to Dehradun from Shimila yesterday at mid day, this trip for her involved traveling on 4 street class busses (like the prison train but over the very rural road surfaces), and a traveling a total time of 14 hours, she arrived at the training centre at 4am the day she was to start to train me. This she says is a very good job and she is used to the travel. She was undistanably tired and was in agony from the poor bus seating and road conditions, I gave her some of my industial supply of drugs..... I recieved my first two books today dealing with XP, we spend the day going through half of the first book, only stopping for lunch. Lunch was decided in the morning and the home made pizza looked the safe bet until I saw what else there was, looks like pizza again tomorrow ;-). My trainer was very thourough and she could andswer any questions I had. the course today was covering RIS installations of XP, drives, images and the basics, pretty straight forward stuff, but things needed to cover to get the "Microsoft terminology to pass the exams".
The taxi cam to pick us up at 5pm and we headed back to the Guest house avoiding lazy cows as we went.
Now andy and I had noticed 2 of our co-students partaking of a beer and enquired where we might purchase said beer. 15 minutes later and a walk up a mountain path past lots of Indian universities being built we found "the English wine shop" RESULT!! they had all kinds of vodkas including smirnoff and absolute and a few scotches, we though lets take it easy so decided to buy a box of Indian super strong beer. This shop was tiny but we loved it. (pics coming next time we go as i didnt take a camera, also saw more monkeys). The beer bottles were just over a pint abd cost less then a pound each. Walking bacl down the hill past the military accadamy with the armed guards (who all smiled and waved) we notice that we were getting lots of attention, it seemed like they have never seen two white Englishmen carrying a case of beer down the hill?
At one point 2 young lads on a bike passed us and said "yo dude", we smiled and kept going, on the second pass they "hi-fived us" and carried on. We couldnt remember which turning on the right our dirt track was but I seemed to remember it was right at the cow in the middlw of the road..... After carrying the beer down the hill in the heat we decided to chill out in my room with aircon and fans on full sampling our goods from the trip. We also went over course work and did some study. It was now time for dinner, the "western choice" was chicken tika masala so we all had that. Chicken seend very scarce here and we have never seen any around, lots of cows that we cant eat though! And as such it seemed that all our group can find are chicken legs LOL. served in a really tasty sauce with chapaties. Too much bone and not enough meat, but hey this is as the locals eat... now wheres that pizza hut menu? Another beer some study and another beer lead me and Andy watching Bruno on my laptop, I think the combination of Indian 8% beer and Bruno had us in stiches and ive never laughed so much in ages. After the film we decided it best to get some sleep and not empty the fridge of our beer ;-)
Im now taking this opportunity to finish up some bloggs... Hope you enjoyed it and I promise to try take some pictures of the training centre, the Country house and the gardens tomorrow.....