The Handover Lunch

I bought JG lunch at Pizza Express in Canary Wharf last Friday to pick over his experience. It was good to see him again and pick up some tips.

1. I shouldn't worry too much about my Centos installs, as they will let me install RHEL v6 in India.
2. I must remember to make the man pages (makewhatis) during the exam.
3. Continuously tail /var/adm/messages during the exam
4. Go over the practice questions 4 or 5 times.

He thinks I should pass, which is a bit of a leap of faith.

As to the town of Dehradun, and the location of the Country House. I gather that everything is on the Rajpur Road. Starting in Dehradun, a little further out is the training centre and beyond that the Country House which is my chosen base. I just looked on Google Maps and there is a Pizza Hut on the road. Surely not!

Beyond the Country House, at the end of the bus route, is a little village. About 20 mins walk, where beer and snacks can be purchased to fill up the fridge. There is also a ruined temple near here overrun by monkeys. Think Jungle Book. My camera will be coming with me I think.

JG ate curry at least twice a day. Which sounds like heaven. The Country House cook is apparently pretty good, but I think I'll head into Dehradun a couple of times for the restaurant experience.

Essentially on this course you train & practice questions for 12 days. Monday - Saturday, Monday - Saturday. On the third Monday you travel back down to Delhi on the train (First Class - 6 hours £15). Tuesday is exam day. The Tuesday I'll be there for the exam is DIWALI. That's quite a big deal. It's like doing an exam on Christmas Day. Surely that won't actually happen will it??

The Delhi accommodation is basic, with small rooms but really near a massive street market. This sounds good. JG located a veggie restaurant nearby that did fill meals for 60Rs. That's a bit less than 1GBP. I will stay here on my first night too - and have been advised to find a multi-plug socket thing as there are only one or two wall sockets per room in the Country House in Dehradun.

After the exam - 3 days for a bit of shopping & sightseeing. Unless I need a retake. This could be a bit tricky to arrange and the advice is: go for the one-take and revise like mad.

JG got 82 & 86 on the two exams: pass mark is 70 he thinks. The exam day was supposed to start at 10, but was delayed for 3 or 4 hours as the test equipment needed to be rebuilt. Although JG was a bit cross about this he used the time to teach himself postscript. Honestly he sounds a lot more resourceful than me.

This reads a bit like a brain dump, which is partly due to me being hungover from last nights leaving drinks in Canary Wharf. Our team has pretty much finished a project and we are now all going our own  separate ways. It was a tough project with lots of weekends worked. I now look forward to my training & a new speciality. Well at least that's what I thought. However I have been tapped up by another bank and it looks like I am going straight from one contract to the next. They don't seem to mind I will be away for 3 weeks.

My two weeks off playing golf has disappeared. Sad face.