Being a mid level executive in a large multinational comes with lots of responsibilities and hard work. And being in the middle, you face pressure from both sides. On one hand the pressure of managing your juniors and on the other the pressure from your superiors to deliver good results. But it does come with its rewards. Increase in your pay package, responsibilities, profile, designation and eligibility for off sites meetings/ conferences to various sometimes exotic locations. In fact the last i.e events bring a welcome respite from the mundane hum bug of the office and daily grind.
And guess what having spent more than a year in current organization (a diversified conglomerate), I too had my prayers answered for a break partially in form of a attendance for a conference being organized in France. A week away from office, that too in France, was too good to pass up.
The conference was the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy (ICKMKE) being held in Paris from 24th to 26th June. I decided to leave on 20th , a Saturday to have 3 days of sightseeing before the conference began.
I had my tickets booked on Air France. And I was actually looking forward to seeing the famed charms of France. The Charles De Gaulle Airport is magnificent, a massive one where you could easily get lost. Also keep in mind that hiring a cab here could be quite expensive so unless the hotel you are staying is offering you a free pick up get the metro instead.
Oh, also if you are on short trip like mine, instead of using your phone on international roaming, it would be better if you pick up a local French SIM card in India. I got mine from Matrix, and can you believe just paid Rs 175 for rental as they charged me only from the time started using the phone in France. In fact the total bill came to Rs 972 only where as if I would have been using my Vodafone as one of my other colleague did, the bill would have come around 10,000 Rs as during the conference we were supposed to provide daily updates to our head office and since my incoming was free, I saved a lot of money from my daily allowance of 50 euros which was supposed to cover my telephone expenses too. One more benefit was since I picked my sim in even before I landed in France, almost everybody knew the number they could contact me on.
So after checking into my hotel in Paris, I took a TGV which I booked online on sncf.com to Marseille. Marseille lies on the south coast of France. Its a beautiful city with lots of peaceful beaches and calanques. June and July is the best time to in the French Riviera. I stayed for a day in Marseille, paid a visit to the famous Notra-Dame-de-la-Gaurde , then set out to see the calanques of Cassis.
The next day I went out to visit the celebrated film festival destination Cannes. It’s a very small town, famous for rich and fashionable ladies, with big money bags and little dogs. Very close to Cannes is the F1 city Manaco, but since I was short on time and there was no race happening I decided to give it a miss.
On my return to Paris I spent a day at the City of Lyon, which is the third largest city of France. Lyon has a very distinctive & strong French culture, with a lot of ancient monuments and castles.
Next day was the Conference and even that was interesting experience which I shall be telling you about in my next blog post.
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