I’m off to India again next week. Four different companies in three locations (Pune, Bangalore and Mysore). At each company we have an 8 hour meeting, although running under Indian time, it could well be more. These companies (Danaher GDCs) are the very best that India has to offer, so my expectations are high that we can find a low cost region contractor that will suit our needs.
In particular, I’m looking forward to the drive from Bangalore to Mysore and back, in rush hour and about 3-4 hours each way.

27-12-07: We have been working with our chosen supplier for 6 months now. We’ve sacked both the developers and only kept the test engineer. We have, once again, been very disappointed with the quality. The attraction of employing engineers at a quarter the cost in the UK is outweighed, I’m afraid, by the poor performance of these engineers. Sad, but this approach is not going to work for us

My wife suggested we put a picture up in the lounge to remember our trip to Rome last year. This was my choice. Obviously not the usual tourist snap. I don’t know who the cardinal is; we think they were from South America on a pilgrimage. Amongst the hustle and bustle of St Peter’s Square on a Sunday morning, these pilgrims arrived walking backwards. What makes people do this? Is it their 15 minutes of fame?

One thing that amazed me when we were inside St. Peter’s was the poor organization. Here we were, at the head quarters of one of the largest and richest organizations in the world, people were attending the main mass on a Sunday. But old and crippled women were sitting on the cold hard stone floor in order to be at the mass because no adequate seating was provided. Isn’t St Peter’s designed to hold masses? Well, no. It seems tourists are more important.