200 minutes on the road

that was every day, and that too, at least 200 minutes -- in the past few days, while i was on business travel.

this is more than three hours every day!
considering that i usually spend about an hour and a half every day normally - maybe this was not so bad.. i know some colleagues who spend that much time in Bangalore every day - living close(!) to 50km from the office.

one day, i had to visit four different office buildings for meetings from early morning till late evening.
the cab driver was wondering which office i worked out of, as he was apparently used to dropping visitors off at one facility in the morning and pick them up in the evening.

but the comment that triggered my thoughts were by the cab driver in Bangalore who had come to pick me up from the airport.. he was the same person who had been been driving me to and from the airport almost every week in the last few weeks, when i have been spending two to three days away from Bangalore - he asked me very innocently : Sir, don't you have any work in Bangalore? :-)

while it seems to be a lot of time in transit, and i believe and have been one of the regular users of technology for team working, there is no substitute to face to face meetings to establish the instant connect.
at least, i guess, it will stay that way, till most people are comfortable with not having face to face meetings.

for those that do, i use a lot of the 200 minutes for phone calls! otherwise, that is useful time for reading the newspaper or catching up with books.

i can now fully empathize with : bus drivers, cab drivers, travelling salesmen, pizza delivery boys [!] and many more professions that need their teams to be out on the road many more minutes, every day..