good job!

am back finally from my 1-day overseas training trip. was superbly tiring and i must profess, such trips are getting more tiring as time passes. in another words, i am getting old! haha!

well, the day started early and ended very late for me. woke up at 3.30am, did my final packing and checks and got to the airport by 4.20am. checked in and since i have more than 12kg of notes and handouts, i had to check my luggage in... the trip to jakarta was rather uneventful. we arrived 6.30am local time (that was one hour behind singapore time) and had a quick breakfast as we waited for the driver to pick us up at 7.30am. it seemed like the airport has changed quite a bit since i was last there a few years ago. things seemed a little more organized and cleaner now. other than that, things has not changed much. the people are still as friendly, they have have the easy-going attitude and pace is still rather slow, positively speaking. but becos of this, i was faced with constant challenges throughout the day.

first, when i arrived at the training site, i realized the so called training room was a boardroom and there was hardly any space to organize the class! such a layout will not do for soft skills programs due to the many activities planned. but well... we had no choice, we adapted. secondly, although it was agreed that it would be a 7hr program and i has planned it to be so, things turned out even more challenging as the people were never punctual. 15min breaks turned into 45min breaks, and they took an hour for lunch instead of the half hour agreed... and to make things worst, the participants had a habit to leave the room quite often. it didn't help that even the organizers didn't control the participants but instead justify and gave excuses for their absence/ lateness! their bosses called them... that's the way things are here... she said. thankfully, i half had expected this to happen and had contingencies planned. i had to cut down on the briefing, cut down on the activities, and tell more stories instead, start once more than half the class turned up, focus on the key points, refer them to hand outs whenever needed, etc. it was a whole day of constant adaptations of the materials, program and the conduct... 

well, these are the constant challenges of trainers anywhere, but to have to do that through the day was no easy feat and seriously mentally draining. thankfully, despite all these challenges, the participants were highly attentive when they were there. the energy levels was high and there was a lot of laughter and fun. and the feel good factor was very high when we ended at 4.30pm. good job and i learned a lot too, my executive who accompanied me there said. well done! my boss texted when i updated him via sms that everything went smooth, we love it! we want more, everyone expressed. excellent program and wonderful experience but the training site could be seriously improved, a quick scan of the training evaluation feedback suggests. as a trainer, such feedback and feel good factor after the training encourage me and iterate that the things i do are relevant. 

it was a superbly long day and i was exhausted by the time we checked in at the jakarta airport. we arrived back in singapore at slightly past 10pm, after experiencing a 45min flight delay due to runway congestion at jakarta.

:-)