Our Big Adventure

For the next seven weeks, Ann and I will be in India. Ann has a work assignment in Bangalore for six weeks and I am going along. We’ll explore Bangalore and the area around it on weekends, and then spend a week’s vacation going further afield.

Ann works for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, writing documents that are submitted to the FDA. When Wyeth applies for approval for a new drug, they submit a huge amount of documentation that covers all the testing (clinical trial) they have done or will do on the drug. Some of these documents are routine, and Wyeth has out-sourced their writing to a group in Bangalore, India, the “out-sourcing capital” of the world.

This trip was first proposed in the fall of 2008. The head of Ann’s department was looking for a handful of people to travel to India to work with the writers there, and Ann thought this sounded good. I also thought it would be great to go along for the ride, and so we made provisional plans to go in March.

In the middle of January, everything looked solid, then suddenly, the people in India thought that it would be better for her to go in July and August (monsoon season!) or later, i.e. the fall of 2009! We were very disappointed, and felt that the chances it would actually happen were 1 in 4. A week later, Wyeth announced that it was being sold to Pfizer, throwing any plans for next fall into limbo. We thought the trip was dead.

The sale to Pfizer alarmed the writers in India, who are concerned that their jobs may be eliminated in the sale. They lobbied for Ann to come in an effort to increase their value to the new, combined company. Ann will be able to establish working relationships with people she has only “met” on the phone and through email. She will mentor the writers, helping them work through technical and cultural issues as she looks for ways to improve the quality and timeliness of their writing. Ann has her work cut out for her!

So on March 9 we left for India, flying out of Boston on Lufthansa by way of Frankfurt. Leaving at 5:30 PM on Sunday we will arrive in Bangalore at 1 AM on Tuesday morning, 24-hours of travel plus a time change of 9.5 hours. While the company is paying for Ann to fly Business Class, Chris sits happily in couch, trying to read the 1236-page Lonely Planet guide to India cover-to-cover. (There is truly a lot to see and do on the sub-continent.) And tomorrow, March 10, we begin our new, temporary life in India.