#MumbaiDiary

Day 2 (Day 1 of training)

I was up early the next morning and was ready for breakfast by 8:30 a.m. Training was about to start at 10 a.m.  I was witnessing new faces in restaurant in the morning. I was having my breakfast and an old aged short man came and asked 'You got your room? Everything is comfortable na?' I nodded to him before seeing the i-card of New India on his shirt. He was the most senior memeber of support staff of the company. He had a big smile on his face and he left after I nodded him to his few more questions. Soon I was joined by my room mates and the group of Gujarat. We finished our breakfast and headed towards the banquet hall of the hotel where training was held. Being a marketing guy I was analysing marketing strategy of the hotel and the ambience is most important part of marketing as far as hotel is concerned. So here is the review on the ambience of banquet of the hotel.

As soon as I entered into the banquet hall, I thought I have entered in 20th century from 21st century. Management of the hotel still used those bulbs with yellow light which were being used in banquets in 1980s and 1990s. The lighting made the banquet look dull. Apart from light the choice of texture on wall was also very depressing. Imagine how does a room looks with dark pink and brown texture under that bulb light. It was obvious that not even a birthday party was held in that banquet hall. Only meetings and training were held there. Meeting se yaad aaya that I saw Arvind Kejriwal in the same room last day. Being the permanent member of association of last benchers I chose to sit on the last table.

Training started at 10 a.m. exactly. We welcomed DGM and and HR head of the company. DGM told us about history of the company and then HR head asked for the introduction. I was introduced to fourteen new people academically. Only I was an MBA, 13 were engineers and one guy from surendranagar was B.Com. There were four air-conditioners in the hall and all four were on me. So by the time introduction was over I was frozen. Thank god! There was a break at 11:30 a.m. and as I got up to go out I was unable to walk properly. It was my left leg's muscle. It was because of that fall at station and cooling of AC made it an ailment.

After the break it was a session of interaction in the class. The activity was like that one topic was given to the group of four and we have to discuss it for 40 minutes. After every 40 mimnutes group and topic changed. It was a great idea. It helped us to get along with each other quickly. It was great to know all of the colleagues. Basically all the people were from either Maharashtra or Gujarat. Gujarat candidates were from Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Surendranagar, Mehsana and Sidhpur. While Maharashtra candidates were from Mumbai, Kohlapur, Nasik, Pune, Sangli, Aurangabad and Jalgaon. Rest of the whole day was about interacting with each other and it was a good session.

First day of training ended at 5 p.m. and we were thinking of going out. It had rained all day long but it stopped at 4:30. We planned to go out at 6 p.m. and headed towards our respective rooms. At 5:30 p.m. it started raining again and it didn't stopped then. We decided to stay in our rooms only. We were given the time table of training in the morning and I was going through it in the evening. It was full of all the types of general insurance. The word insurance itself is a bore imagine how boring will be its types? I am kind of guy who search for funny things in every situation. So I decided in my mind that I will try my best to make these sessions fun or these sessions will be soporific.

Insurances were about to begin from day 3 of training but next day was a session of motivation, team work and customer satisfaction. So I hoped that it is not going to be that boring.