Tuesday to Thursday I was running the training course for CWI.
When I arrived, there was an embarrassingly large banner with my picture on it! Who is this guy? Sounds like a great course!
The first day was focussed on AI, though it seems most participants weren’t particularly interested in that bit & were far more interested in Power BI. Not sure why they needed me to fly all the way from Australia to train them in this but anyway.
Towards the end of day 1, I gave up on the AI part & decided to start the Power BI early as this was what they were interested in, I could see it would go slowly, plus I was running out of AI things to show them anyway.
Hassan came in to meet me for dinner on Tuesday, which was very nice of him. Although I think he was a little offended that I hadn’t contacted him earlier to let him know that I was coming to Islamabad. I’d forgotten that he was here & was thinking he was in the south.
For day 2, I made the mistake of telling participants the actual start time of the course, thinking they’d mostly be on time. When people were still arriving an hour after this time, I realised my error! A bit annoying as then they’re all behind & wanting me to personally show them what they need to do to catch up! I had a bit of a go at them & asked them to be on time for the next day … not that it made any difference!
On the last day, the course organisers told me they wanted to finish an hour early so they could present everyone with their certificates & do photos. Ok … I’ll just leave out even more content!
It was a very formal ceremony for presenting the certificates & everyone had to come up one by one to get their certificate & photo with the official photographer they’d hired. On top of this, we also had to do photos on their phones plus more photos outside the hotel! My mouth was tired from smiling so much!
In the evening, the course organisers took me up to Manal, a series of restaurants at the top of a mountain overlooking the city.
We ordered the local equivalent of an Uber & a guy turned up in a beaten up tiny hatchback that looked like it’d be lucky to drive on a flat road let alone up a mountain.
Our suspicions were confirmed when he almost failed to make it up a fairly steep part of the road, with tyres slipping & the car almost falling backwards into the vehicle behind! Fortunately, due to some miracle, he found some grip, floored it and we continued our journey to the top.
We went to an open air restaurant & they ordered a mountain of food. We did our best to make our way through as much of it as possible before it went cold as the air temperature was only about 5C.
Fortunately, I’d worn my thermal pants & puffy jacket! Because the winter is much longer here, people still go out & also sit outside even in winter… unlike Perth where we just wait for a few weeks for the weather to warm up again.
We drove back down the mountain it a car with brakes then stopped for some chai tea … at another open air restaurant, about 10 minutes walk from the hotel then walked back together afterwards.