As some of my friends may know, I've been away from my desk at Borland Singapore recently. I was sent to the CaliberRM Training at Borland Atlanta from 17 to 21 Oct. It was quite an exciting time for me, as it's my first visit to United States, and Atlanta, and when I wrote to the newsgroups enquiring on behalf of my wife about things to see and do in Atlanta, I got lots of replies from people who are enthusiastic about Atlanta.

People from different parts of Borland attended the training. There was Steve from Amsterdam, Rajini, Swati and Gurvinder from Cupertino, Stephen from Silicon Valley, James and Matt from Santa Ana, Robert and Jed from Atlanta. Two people got nicknamed by me, Cookie Monster and Austin Powers/Dr Evil, due to their characteristics.

During the training, we learnt about features from the upcoming CaliberRM 2005 Release 2, how to troubleshoot issues involving CaliberRM, various licensing schemes for CaliberRM and where revenue paid for technical support goes to (portions to R&D, portions to pay the salary of technical people who handles the cases, among others).

Everyday around lunch time, we would have some food (thanks to Julie who arranged for all these food), and people from different parts of Borland would dial in to Atlanta (for a teleconference) to ask questions and learn from the trainers (who are senior technical support engineers, and people who worked on or wrote CaliberRM as their duties). There were labs on CaliberRM cases, where we troubleshoot cases, or attended to our support cases, and learnt from the trainers. Time did not stand still for these trainers when they trained us, as their support cases or bugs piled up, while they trained us, so they had to work late to get their job done after they've finished training us.

In the evenings, we would go for food together, drink beer in the hotel lobby of Hawthorn Suites (Atlanta Northwest) for a cheap quarter or dollar, depending on whether you're charitable or not. And some of us would visit places we wanted, to either window shop, or buy stuff for our kids. One of the best staff at Hawthorn Suites is a Georgian named Pamela, who spoke with a Southern drawl, a drawl I've since young, heard from, when watching Star Trek episodes on the TV. In addition, I had the opportunity to sample a  “mint julep” (courtesy of both James and an excellent waiter of the Soho restaurant located at 4300 Paces Ferry), a drink I've always heard / read Dr “Bones” McCoy order when watching / reading Star Trek shows / novels. 

The training at Atlanta was quite an experience for me, because it finally allowed me to put a name to a face, know why things were done the way they were, among others. Thanks to all who made it possible: Lawrence, Michael, Glenn, Gary, Jerry, Julie W, Mark, Scott, Steve, Jed and Jack.