23-09-2007 _ Southampton, UK _ Sensa Fiber Optics Course and Vacation

Sensa XT - Cross Training for Managers

In an attempt to get a free flight to the UK, I managed to get myself on a Fiber Optics training course being held in Southampton. I will be transferred to work at this place next year so it was a good chance to talk to them about it.

I was originally scheduled to go on the two week course for field personnel but some people complained that it was a waste of money sending me on a course there. End result I was taken off the course and someone who would gain absolutely nothing from the course went instead. That was the end of my trip to the UK, lucky at the last minute my old manager withdrew from the one week "Cross Training for Managers" course and I was given his place :-) Due to visa issues they could not send anyone else so it was either me or no one, and the $4000 for the course was non refundable. In total my location sent 7 people to this course, 4 doing the 2 week course and 3 doing the 1 week course.

I spent a week in Southampton in a fancy hotel and eating all I could on the company. The course was ok but the pace was a bit slow at times; neither the less I don’t think many of the Azeri people understood what was going on. The material was mainly focused on marketing / sales; the week started with an introduction to the technology then presentations focusing on what we can do and what our competitors can do. There was also some data interpretation stuff stuck in the middle to show in what applications DTS is worthwhile.

After the course finished I had two weeks vacation booked in the UK. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to organize any trips abroad but I still managed to do a lot of sleeping and relaxing. The highlight of my time off was going karting; it was pretty expensive but definitely worth doing. Justin had booked 4 karts for a three hour racing thing, lucky for me a lot of people had cancelled and I managed to go in one of their places. I have previously been karting twice with SLB in France but these karts were much faster; SLB may request to use slow karts to minimize possible accidents. These karts have two engines, one of each side and top speed is around 70mph, there was definitely some potential for injury but I only suffered a few minor crashes into the walls :-)