June - Week Two

June 8th - 12th: I left early Sunday morning to head back to California, this time to San Ramon. I was facilitating a week long training class for Sales Admins. I was facilitating with a co-worker of mine, Kelly Horaney. We mesh well and always have a good time when we work together. I didn't get many (if any) pictures from this week, but it was mostly filled with boring work stuff anyway. I have a couple somewhat entertaining stories I could tell from the trip.

1. At most Marriott hotels you can expect excellent customer service, but every now and then I run into one that is just so bad, it's almost comical. The hotel where this training was at was one such hotel. Nobody seemed to know anything and didn't care to go the extra mile to find out. I have been to San Ramon and was familiar with the area somewhat. I had recalled that I visited an area just over the hill that had restaurants and shops, etc. I asked several people and everyone looked at me as if I were crazy! Finally the valet guy said he knew what I was talking about and called us a cab because the place I was thinking of was too far to walk. We waited 30 minutes for the cab to arrive. We got in and 2 minutes later the cabby pulled up to this market place thing, literally a 1/4 mile from the hotel. We tried to explain that this was not the location we wanted, but he acted like he didn't understand what we were saying and seemed to not speak very good English so we just got out. We ended up having to pay $15 because that's the minimum fare in San Ramon. It's not like Chicago where you can hail cab from pretty much any street corner. We ended up just finding something to eat at the place he dropped us off at and then ended up walking back to the hotel. Which took us about 5 minutes. So basically we waited for 30 minutes and paid $15 to get to a place that we could have walked to in 5 minutes for free!! You can bet we let the valet guy our thoughts on the matter.

2. There were all these people walking around the hotel wearing these white robes or white linen sheaths or skirts. They all looked like hippies for the most part and smelled of incense. You'd walk around a corner and one would be sitting there in a meditative state. I always felt like I had to whisper everywhere because you never know when you'd happen upon someone in full meditative trance. Anyway, we finally asked the front desk clerks if they knew who they were and what they were in town for and it turns out they were Amma followers. Amma is guru that passes enlightenment to her followers through her hugs. She hugs thousands of people day after day supposedly enlighten their spirits to heal themselves. Now I'm am all for whatever is going to make you happy and if hugging Amma is your thing, I'd rather you do that than go out and shoot a bunch of people. It might seem weird, but at least it's a positive thing to do with your life. So more power to you. In case some of you need a hug, stock up on white linen outfits and visit Amma.org to find when she'll be in a city near you. :)