The heat is on...

And now back to our regularly scheduled program...yikes, time has gotten away from me....I am pressured by teammates to put the latest experiences into the blog, where shall I start...

We've now completed week two and are well into week three of our four week assignment in Turkey.  BIG YIKES!!!!  Yesterday was a busy day for the Textile Group.  We made an early morning flight to Istanbul...(quiet please, refrain from bursting into song, "Istanbul not Constantinople") to meet with our primary stakeholder Istanbul Textile and Apparel Exporters' Association (iTKiB).  This was a long awaited meeting as our goal was to meet with our stakeholders in week one.  Not bad might I say that according to our calculated Turkish time, a meeting in the third week is quite punctual!  :)

 

...ha, have you been singing?  If not, I bet you will be now...

As we've experienced many times during this trip, we again yesterday were hosted as VIP IBM representatives.  Much to our team's admiration, we were greeted at the iTKiB office by a caravan of media vehicles outside and entered the building to find cameras strategically placed to catch the much anticipated arrival!  What an honor!   Perhaps having Hollywood movie legend Bruce Lee (Charlie) present was influential in getting the much sought publicity for our team?!  What ever it takes, we will do!  :)

We met for a little over 3 hours with a number of iTKiB representatives as well as a Cisco representative to discuss our project objectives and ensure that we all agreed on the direction that our team is going.  We had a great discussion and I believe we "shocked" them all by the wealth of industry knowledge we have acquired over the last two weeks and the assessment of the application that Cisco has developed for industry collaboration.  We definitely felt a commitment from our stakeholders and can also see that they have high expectations for composing highly influential strategic recommendations within the next 1 1/2 weeks!  That's one TALL order!

While many members of the larger CSC team have been complaining of their hotel rooms being too warm, mine has remained comfortable...until yesterday that is.  The temperature in Istanbul was cooler than Malatya yet Pallavi and I had a continual sweat going all day long.  As I wondered how bad I was starting to smell, I started to sweat more...that is kind of a vicious cycle!  The airplane ride home was extremely warm and upon returning to my hotel room, the heat seemed to be extremely high.  Is this coincidence that with only 1 1/2 weeks left on our assignment, we can really feel the added heat!?  While I have previously admitted that I feel my best work is done under pressure, I'm begging for someone to please turn down the thermostat!!!

WARNING:  While not all content within this blog is factual, it remains critical that one keep a light heart and make the most of every situation...you choose what is real or not...please remember to always ENJOY!