TJ's Kaleidoscope

A Dozen Travel Observations

In a follow-up to my last post about my travel experiences to India back in 2006, this one talks about the journey I took in 2009. It turns out, my iPhone wasn't completely useless, given I had it with me at all times, I just jotted down things as they came to me. Of course, the standard caveat that these are my interpretations and observations.

1. I blame Hollywood for two things: every time an English man says "Hello" expecting him to say "poppet" right after, and second, hearing airport announcements in the English accent and thinking I'm at the Umbrella corporation.
2. Mobile technology in India is booming and yet very different. The iPhone doesn't turn heads here. This does.
3. The Delhi smog has a charcoal smell to it, the type you get from an earthen kiln. The LA smog does not prepare you for it. Don't worry, you'll get used to it pretty quickly.
4. Crossing a street in Delhi is like playing real-life Frogger.
5. In Delhi some of the best food are in hole-in-the-wall joints. Word of advice, don't try and convince the chef to cough up the recipe. Relish the memory and move on.
6. If you want to enjoy all the sights and sounds, expect to get sick. You're not from the area and the local microbes know that. Pop in a couple of broad-spectrum antibiotics, and you're as good as gold.
7. When in queues, the notion of personal space ceases to exist. Queues for that matter cease to exist.
8. In Delhi, like LA, the automated flush will go off while you're still using it.
9. Anthony Bourdain is right, you'll always like the food you loved as a child. I will always love rajma-chawal.
10. Indian food is a lot better in India, but Glenfiddich & coke tastes the same, unless it's Glenfiddich and Thums up which is exquisite.
11. There's something very magnetic about the sound of evening prayers rising above the city din.
12. LAX needs a face lift bad.

Quote of the Day

You can observe a lot just by watching.

                                             --Yogi Berra

Update:

One of the anonymous feedback I received on my post about resolutions was the use of the word irregardless. The sentence has now been rewritten.

Too much political freedom? WTF!

From Stanford University's Jackson Blog:

Rajiv Singh, vice chairman of DLF, India's largest developer, questioned whether a 9 percent plus growth rate is sustainable without corresponding infrastructure improvement.

 

Mr.  Singh mentioned too much political freedom, too many legal rights, and too much media as the major deterrents in the system to support infrastructure fixes.

 

What the #$%^&! Too much political freedom, too many legal right? What does he think India needs? A dictatorship? Yet another proof that just because you're a billionaire doesn't mean you know what you're talking  about.

Quote of the Day

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too. - W Somerset Maugham

Eight Reasons to Visit India

Some of my friends are rather apprehensive to visit India. Perhaps my accounts (verbal and otherwise) of the trip has made them even more reticent to visit the land of a billion people. To help clarify why I feel every one who has the time should visit India atleast once in their lifetime, I've come up with eight reasons. I could have come up with ten , but ten sounds too official. I could have narrowed it down to seven, but seven looks like a prescription. so I stuck to eight. Eight of my reasons why you should visit India atleast once in your lifetime.

 

8: The Dollah Goes a Long Way

Well, this probably seems obvious, but if you spend judiciously, and understand that haggling is part of the Indian culture, the US dollar (or any western currency for that matter) can go a long way. What would be called a budget vacation in Europe could end up paying for a princely stay in India. I personally found it amusing that once the mall staff recognized you were a 'high-roller', they assigned personal helpers who carried your bags for you etc. Believe it or not, if you plan it right, the most expensive part of the stay will probably be the air tickets! 

7: You Can't Get Away From It

India, in the words of George Soros, has become the flavor of the world. The odds that you'll be working with someone from the Indian subcontinent are going up. In the last three years of my professional life, I've without exception had atleast a one interaction every month with Indian outsourcing companies. So, what a better way to break ice and to understand your Indian colleague than to say 'I've been to India'?

6: To Ride on Indian Roads.

Indian roads are notorious famous for their by-your-seat excitement. Let me tell you something, no nintendo-playstation-xbox piece of sh*t software can come close to replicating the mixture of terror and excitement that you get by driving on Indian roads. Imagine driving on a two-lane road, and two cars coming on both lanes straight at you, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

5: The cauldron of contradictions 

Learn first hand the cauldron of contradictions that is India. If I you see opulent wealth, you will also see heart-wrenching poverty. If you focus on the seemingly countless languages and ethnicities, you'll miss out on how somehow these disjoint people find it in themselves to be called Indians. One second you're making statements like "India is <blank>" only to be disproven the next minute. Try it! Make a stereotype, and watch it come crumbling down.

4: See Bollywood

Well, if you think Bollywood is a real place, well just look it up in Wikipedia. The bottom line is you get to witness the world's largest movie industry (by ticket sales) and see how stars are look up as almost demi gods. Also, you can then laugh at Colbert's skits like you really understand them!

3: Witness Less is More

To Learn that people can do a whole lot more with so less. For example, the famed Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) are known for its illustrious alumni, from Sun co-founder Vinod Khosla, to former McKinsey world-wide Managing Director Rajat Gupta. However, IIT's Delhi campus, while big, probably has less quality facilities than an upscale Orange County high school.

2: Food!

If you think the lunch buffet at the neighborhood Indian resturaunt (ubiquitously named either some derivation of Tandoor, India Cook House, India Sweet's and Spices, or Nataraj) is Indian food, you are in for the lesson of your life. Read my earlier blog on this subject.

1: Get a "I Survived India" T-Shirt

And the number 1 reason you should visit India, is that you can visit one of the Tantra's many stores in India and buy a T-Shirt that says "I Survived India", or settle for paying five times the cost over the web. Tantra are these cool T-Shirts that attempt to portray many of India's contributions and quirkiness through humorous T-Shirt emblems (not all of which are kid friendly ;-) ).

Note, that these are my reason's. If you're looking for Ministry of Tourism material, click here.

 

PS: Now while India is special, its certainly not the only special one. So for those reading this blog from other countries, please do come up with eight reasons of your own, and just post it as a trackback. Perhaps we can start an internet chain and give the global tourism industry a big push! In times like these, we need understand each other more, not less.

A Definition of Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a dangerous thing, for when it hits you, it completely blind sides you, entrapping you in the myriad of emotions that it brings. In fact, I would argue that the more forward-looking person (i.e., workaholic) you are, the stronger the emotion. Workaholics seldom stop to reminisce (or take a breadth for that matter), and when they do, they have a lot of reminiscing to do!

I realized this when I visited some of the previous homes I stayed at in India. Some of them no longer exist, bungalows that have been eaten up by the need of high-rise housing, and other others I couldn't take pictures of as they were in an Army cantonment and I was no longer part of the Army 'family'. I did manage to take a picture of one of the houses that I stayed (below), and even then I had to be discreet about it. Didn't want the current residents to get all worked up over some strange man taking pictures of their home. 

 

 

As I was driving down this street, and I felt like I was in the Sting Fields of Gold Video. Everything had changed, and yet I was completely in a different era, visualizing the same street as it used to be when I was a teenager. The cute girls across the street that I had a crush on, the cool dude down the street who I used to hang out with. The Merchant Navy officer who used to live on the flat (that's apartment to you folks in the US) above with funny tales about the 'outside' world. All my mom's friends who somehow thought it necessary (much to her amusement) to keep reporting to her where they had seen me in the city and with whom ;-) It was in this cacophony of thoughts I came across what I feel is the definition of nostalgia.

It is the sudden desire to meet the people of our past to let them know that you remember them and think of them warmly, and if only could would love to play catch up over a cup of tea or a glass of wine.

The Year That Was: Part 20 (The Tata Group)

First, my apologies to my devoted readers waiting with baited breadth for my next post. I kind of got engrossed in the festivities of the season, and fell off the blogging bandwagon.

I think I'll make this the last of my India photo-blogging series. That's not to say I won't have anything more to say about my trip, its just that with five more days left in the year, I have some more photos I'd like to go over before 2006 bids adieu.

Today's blog (if the title didn't give it away) is about the Tata group. The Tata group is perhaps the single most pervasive enterprise in the Indian marketplace. They make everything from Soap, Tea, Watches (Titan), up-scale jewelery (Tanishq), to cars, trucks, SUVs and even IT services. Its probably an unfair comparison given that GE has a $388 billion market capitalization to Tata's 'measily' $24 billion, but GE is what comes to mind when thinking of an American equivalent. But then is it? If they were compared in terms of market penetaration, GE would be number 1 or 2 in the following US markets:

1. Steel
2. Large Automotive (Trucks etc)
3. Automotive
4. Jewellery
5. Retail Stores
6. Soap
7. Tea
8. IT Services
9. Education
10. Medical Services
11. Watches
12. Premium Hotels
13. Locomotives

And while doing so would have to have record of no worker strikes in 75 years of operation, or gauranteeting laid-off workers full-pay until retirement.

Of course I'm oversimplifying, but I have an excuse: I'm not an MBA.

 

 

Above: Our mode of transportation while in Delhi, the Tata Indigo LS, a 1.4 L Deisel sedan. A sprity little thing (one thing about Indian roads, you need an agile not necessarily a fast car).

The Year That Was: Part 19

Well, we're still in India because even though the trip was only for 15 days, there was so much to see and talk about. I already touched upon the overcrowding of roads and here is an example:

 

Contrary to what you may think, this is actually a three lane road where two of the lanes ended up serving as parking lots. So in effect, on a very busy shopping bazaar, instead of a three-lane street you have shopping traffic (cars, scooters, cycles, rickshaws and people) snaking through a single lane. Quite humourous actually.

The Year That Was: Part 17

Long live commercialism. Long live capitalism. Long live competition...oh wait...Wal-mart is set to enter the Indian retail market next year...

 

Above: A sneak camera shot of a Shopper's Stop retail outlet in Delhi.

The Year That Was: Part 16

India is becoming the land of sub compact and compact cars. This is mainly a factor of prosperity combined with necessity. More people have money to afford cars, yet the infrastructure is so poor that, the roads don't allow for cars any bigger than a Suzuki Swift like shown below. Yes of course, there were Toyota Camry's, Honda Accords, Mercedes S class, and even little known brands like the Skoda. You have these new generation cars competing with old Ambassador cars, auto rickshwas, cows, and even elephants (yes, I saw on on a freeway!). All this makes for some very entertaining driving. There wasn't one day where I didn't have a "oh sh*t!" or "Holy crap!" moment.

 

The Year That Was: Part 15 (Indian Food)

One of the first things that you notice when arrive in India (other than the crowds) is the huge variety of food available, local and international. I know this is pretty much true of any culture, for example, chinese food is probably much better in China than it is in the US. But in the US you mainly get two types of Indian food, North Indian and South Indian and are led to believe that that's all there is. Well, not quite. There's Punjabi, Gujarati, Mughalai, Andhra, Kerala, Maharashtrian, Bengali etc., (there's even Indian Chinese!). So you can imagine my delight when I was re-familiarized with all this variety. My taste bud's got a workout, at the expense of my belly fat, and I loved every minute of it!

 

 

This is a picture from a mall food court. The extreme right is a pizza place (where you can actualy order a chicken tikka pizza), Nariyal Chutney (south Indian, specifically Tamilian), More Than Paranthas (imagine a shop dedicated to just serving every conceivable form of Indian bread), and Rasoi (traditional food from the state of Uttar Pradesh).

Now, More Than Paranthas deserves a special mention for a dish that I had there (I think it was the Shahi, i.e., royal, parantha). Imagine two naan breads the size of a laptop keyboard, deep fried with eggs, between them you have a filling that is a mix of paneer, lamb kabobs, chicken kabobs, and chicken tikka seeped in a buttery sauce making for one gigantic parantha 'sandwhich'. Good thing they cut it into four slices, for I couldn't finish more than one slice. I guess this was feast meant for princes who rode horses went into battle and burnt 5000 calories a day. I am no prince.

Ok, that's all for now, I need to clean off the drool from my laptop.

The Year That Was: Part 14 (Heathrow Part 1 of 2)

I must say I wasn't prepared for my visit to Heathrow. We flow into terminal 1, and then had to walk through this long passage way that looked like an entrance to a prison. Our London to Delhi flight was out of Terminal 4, so we had to take a bus between the two terminals, what we saw upon arrival was most perplexing.

For those who haven't been to either Terminal 1 or 4, terminal 4 looks like the backwater of the airport. Very poor lighting, very few terminals showing arrival or departure times, almost none of the food vendors took credit cards, here I was barely 10 hours out of the US and longing for something I never thought I would: McDonald's and that too for a cup of coffee. Finally we found a sandwhich shop that would take credit cards and could get some grub. The highlight of the stay over was the Bentley at Terminal 4 which quite honestly stuck out like a diamond in the rough. And I kept thinking to myself, "is this the famed Heathrow airport?"

Now before you start making generalizations based on what Heathrow, I must point out that the people were awful nice, and so it wasn't like we had to deal with a lot of stonewalling. Moroever, this is just part 1 of the story, stay tuned for part 2.

The Year That Was: Part 13

The next couple of posts will be about my trip to India, for that was definitely the highlight of the year. It was my first visit to the mother country in almost ten years.

 

 

The British Airways flight at LAX, the one that we were about to board. I guess it was because we were flying out on a Monday, but there was hardly any queue, and we were done with security  etc in less than an hour with three hours to spare. A word to the wise:

1. Check-in online, it was probably the single biggest reason why there were no lines.
2. If you book early enough the price difference between World Traveller (economy) and World Traveller Plus (economy++) can be justified, and is completely and utterly worth it!
3. Don't get surprised (as I did) when the rules of queueing in the US don't apply elsewhere.

Using Statistics To Change Perceptions

I came across this excellent presentation on the misperceptions on the developing world that researcher Hans Rosling gave at the TED conference earlier this year. What's most interesting is the fact that he uses raw data to turn commonly held myths on their head. The amazing graphics combined with his engaging speaking style make it a must watch.

 

 

On a side note, it sure seems that this has become more of a photo/video blog in this past couple of days. I think that's all the better, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth an entire book!

Indian Mall Security

One of the things you'll notice when you visit malls in India is the rather tight security (for a mall). For instance photography isn't allowed inside the malls, all the pictures I took inside of the mall were done in a rather clandestine manner, and whenever I was 'caught' I just feigned my not-from-here ignorance (which I according to my aunts is not hard as--much to my dismay--my hindi now has an accent :-/ ). Anyway, here is a clip I managed to take peeking from a small window inside the mall of how they check for cars when entering the mall. Notice one of the guards reaches inside the car to wand the driver and the passengers.

Indian Navy Band Practicing

As promised here is the first of many videos I took with my camera. This one is one of the performances of a small Indian Navy band contingent that were actually waiting until dark to do a televised performance with the Presidential Palace (Rashtrapathi Bhavan) in the back drop.  The one thing you'll notice when you visit New Delhi, is the constant haze that really mars visibility. Think about this, the Rashtrapathi Bhavan is right behind the India Gate (around 2-3 miles), it is 2:00 PM in the afternoon, and yet, you cannot see it. Its all the cars I tell you, yes most of them are subcompacts, but when each family starts having 2 cars and multiply that with the size of the population, you can get an idea of the smog levels.

Socio-Economic Analysis: Indian Women

Keeping in with the theme of my recent visit from India, I'll talk on what I think I saw that was interesting and encouraging, today's topic: Indian Women!

The biggest benefactor of the Indian boom has been the 300 million strong middle-class. This boom largely in outsourcing and some in manufacturing has given large amounts of disposable income to a middle class that until a decade ago had few avenues for the creation of wealth. However, the biggest change that this economic juggernaut has brought has the way it has empowered the Indian woman.

The West it seems has an endless pile of work for Indians, and India despite it large population is having a resource crunch where in companies are having to fight with each other for talent leading to some very generous pay packages (ex: health insurance for parents, free car shuttle service for floor staff etc). Already, this is showing up in increased billing rates.

Anyway I digress. This shortage of labor has given Indian women the opportunity to step up and move into the workplace. Either in Delhi and Hyderabad, I saw women piloting aircrafts, dressed in business suits heading for the tech power centers, managing huge retail outlets etc. It seems that due to sheer economic necessity, the glass ceiling seems to be cracking, and social norms that usually dissuade women from taking positions of leadership in the workplace are fast crumbling.

This new earning power has given the Indian woman a distinct and strong voice of independence. There was a time when parents would be consider it taboo to send their unmarried daughters alone to another part of the country 'just' for career. It used to be that the only reason a woman would have to move out of her parent's home is to get married. However, now it's becoming more and more common. Women leaving homes because the jobs require them to do so, instead of their husbands, and what's more surprising (and encouraging) is that the attitudes are changing too. Hear of women living alone today in a large city, and no one bats an eyelid.

Perhaps the closest historical precedence that comes to mind is the empowering of American women in the years during and after World War II. As most men were in the battlefield, there was no choice for employers but to hire and train women for all kinds of jobs that traditionally were reserved for men. Women were working the same jobs as men building tanks, trucks, and cars and were no longer relegated to either the homely housewife or the dainty personal secretary. A smilar economic need is now fueling the sea-change in the composition of the Indian workforce where the lack of skilled labor is opening the flood gates for hundreds of thousands of Indian women who have been now given the power to change their own lives and those around them. I bet all the companies are drooling at this prospect as it is well known that regardless of culture or country, women are better shoppers than men, and if these women have their own independent spending money, all the better!

Now, before I paint a rosy picture, there is still a lot of road for improvement before horrific practices like dowry etc are on their way out, decades and centuries of wrong thinking cannot be wiped out overnight, but this is a start.......

Most Frequently Asked Question

A lot of people have been asking me how I enjoyed my trip to India, what did I like and how much I think it has changed since I left its shores back in 1997. The answer is in two parts:

A) I found that much has changed exponentially, yet a lot remains unchanged.
B) There are so many changes that I want to talk about and no road map per se to begin listing. So I'll just talk about them as they come to my mind.

Anyway, I have to head to the gym to try and wipe off two weeks of decadent eating. More later.

More on the Heathrow Story

Well, I thought I'd give an update on the Heathrow fun I had on the way back while I sit here watching live score updates on the Federer-Nadal semi-final at the Tennis Masters because no US channel will @#$%-ing carry a live-feed.

On the way back from India, turns out Heathrow got stricter on their cabin baggage allowance. So what was allowed on BA flights was actually not allowed by Heathrow security. So I had to take a last-minute UK transit visa (HM Immigration officials were very helpful), go out of the terminal, and check-in as a passenger boarding from London. The bright side is, I got to see Terminal 1 from the outside and if you went by my passport it would look like I visited two countries instead of one.  For those who haven't been through Heathrow, while Terminal 4 looks like a dump (literally), Terminal 1 on the other hand has the glitz and glamour of a high-priced mall and could give Orange County's South Coast Plaza a run for their money. I took a picture of a Ferrari, and now regret not pouncing on the 2 for 30 Pounds Jonnie Walker Black Label deal that the local duty free. Oh well.

Match Update: Federer beat Nadal in straight sets. I guess he's getting closer to completing his G.O.A.T (Greatest Of All Time) resume?

In Heathrow Again

Checking in from Heathrow, which had its share of fun, more on that later

Start of Last Leg

I'm sitting here blogging from the departure terminal of the Indira Gandhi International Airport finishing what have been a long due trip. I'm glad I made the trip, and happy to be back home. In the ten years that I have been away, India has changed in so many ways, and yet in many more ways yet the same. Its growing by leaps and bounds, yet like the rising of the bread dough the growth is uneven, meteroic in some areas and negative in others. It remains as the late Rajiv Gandhi put it, an old country but a young nation.

Photo Updates

New pictures are up. Couple of highlights:

A) The local Honda City Car

B) India Gate pictures

Photos and Missed Opportunities

I missed a golden opportunity today to capture the sight of an Elephant (yes, an actual domesticated elephant) walking on an Indian freeway. Of course it was with its mahout, but the whole idea of an Elephant sharing the same space with cars going at 50 mph was just too funny. Darn!

 

Anyway, there are some more pictures of Delhi from around the Janpath area, as well as street-side parking desi style. As you will notice, this three-lane road has now (during peak hours mind you) been reduced to a one-lane street.

Globalization fosters Multiculturalism?

In a showing of HBO's Real Time a few weeks back Lou Dobbs shocked me by saying, "Multiculturalism doesn't work". I actually like a lot of the things he has to say, so I hope he was having a Mel Gibson moment and ended up saying something he didn't really mean. The US is a shining example of a multicultural society. America has been defined by its openness to other cultures as is evident by the millions wanting to come to America every year.  India too is an excellent example of a functional multicultural society. This came to plain view when I boarded my flight from Delhi to Hyderabad. The airline was SpiceJet--a self proclaimed budget carrier. If the level of service inside the aircraft is the criteria of eligibility to be called a budget airline, then when compared to SpiceJet Southwest would have to be demoted to thrifty.  Anyway, here was an Indian startup airline, flying an American made Boeing 737, with Captain Mohammed Zaki commanding ( a Muslim), Captain Agnihotri as first officer (a Hindu), and Ms. Geetika D'souza (a Christian) as the lead flight attendant. Globalization was forging this diverse workforce where who you were born as or where you came from has little bearing on where you can go.

So here you have the world's strongest (USA) and largest(India) democracies as thriving examples of multi-culturalism. Perhaps it is globalization that Mr. Dobbs is afraid of, the crusade against illegal immigration a mere facade. If so, I hope he'll take off his tunnel vision goggles.

PS: As a testament to Secularism and multiculturalism, in a land of 600 million Hindus, the President is a Muslim, the Prime Minister a Sikh. Multiculturalism doesn't work? bakvaas!

Bakvaas: Hindi for Nonsense

Woh Lamhe Video

This video and song is currently extremely popular in India, and I'm hooked on it:

 

 

BTW, the stunning chick is popular actress Kangana Ranaut.

India's Mall Culture

One of the first things you notice as you traverse metropolitan Delhi and Hyderabad is the permeation of the mall culture. Its seems there's a mall every two city blocks (especially in Delhi). Here's how the math works:

India has a very large population, and a very high percentage of whom are below the age of 30. As is common knowledge, the BPO, IT and manufacturing outsourcing has empowered these new comers with tons of spending cash. That combined with the ease it is to get car, house, and even personal loans (I saw a primetime TV ad encouraging viewers to take a personal loan as long as they had a paystub).

Malls of course, provide a one stop shop into the glamorous world of high fashion, diverse food, and movies. That combination makes it an excellent date spot too (a significant percentage of the young people were couples holding hands). The biggest crowd comes in the evenings when the professionals come right out of their IT hubs right into the malls to spend it. No surprise that in NOIDA, all the major malls are clustered around the campuses of IBM, Dell and the likes.

So there you have it, young professionals, with a large influx of cash, are becoming India's first generation of mall rats. When their kids, as teenagers start hanging out at the mall, will we have the Indian version of the American mall rats.

Another thing I noticed was rather interesting; in the US, when my colleagues and I would go out for lunch, we would try and be discreet about our company badges, if nothing just to avoid unnecessary questions (my most FAQ: are you services or sales). However, here to have an IT badge/card reader is a status symbol, those who have it display it proudly when roaming the malls.

 

Photo Updates

I added some pictures about the CenterStage Mall in Noida (including that of an in-mall Chevy dealership), a Chevy on Indian roads, and my local fan club. Sorry for the hazy picture, for some insane reason, no photography is allowed in any of the malls.

Another Update

I guess all the hectic schedule and the spicy Andhra food caught up with me, and I've been under the weather these past few days. In any case, I've managed to post the pictures I've taken so far on the web. While I'll be adding descriptions later, here's an outline of the pictures I took (in the order they appear on the page):

• Mall Culture in India (I will have a lot to say about that)
• The Maruti Suzuki Swift (Looked too close to the Mini Cooper)
• Shopper's Stop, one of India's many chain stores
• The Lotus Temple
• Akshardharm Temple (pity they--like the lotus temple--didn't allow cameras inside, no picture, professional or otherwise comes close to describing the breathtaking beauty inside).
• Pictures from my recently concluded trip to the city of Hyderabad.

Quick Update

Sorry I've been horrible in updating this blog, but between balancing the hectic 'vacation' schedule (including some urgent work committments), I haven't been able to post new pics online. Perhaps tonight.

Vacation Update

Sorry it's been a while since I posted. The lack of a readily available Internet connection combined with a very hectic travel schedule has left me like a man on a very busy island. The trip is going good so far. Delhi is a fun place to be, one more day and I will be making my way to the southern city of Hyderabad.

 

Here's another installment of pictures taken on our first day in Delhi (all of us were feeling the effect of a jet lag as the pictures will show). The pictures were taken at the Pacfic Mall at NOIDA. and our property in Gurgaon (both satellites of Delhi).

I have some more pictures that I took in another camera (as well as some short movies). More of that later.

End of Leg One: LAX to Heathrow

Well, I'm sitting here in Heathrow terminal 4 waiting for the Heathrow to Delhi leg. The flight, all in all is good. We had World Traveller Plus seats. One line seat-review, it is more like coach ++ rather than Business--. Yet, its not coach, and in on itself that's a big relief. The longer the flight the more you treasure every extra inch front or sideways that you get. Check out some new photos, including that of a right-hand-drive Bentley at Heathrow.

Start of Journey

I am sitting here at gate 105 of the Bradley International terminal waiting for BA to begin boarding. The checkin process went pretty smooth, considering that going to the checkin counter, then to the TSA screening counter, and then through the screening at the gate entry are the norm nowdays. And given that I've seen worse, it was a very refreshing that we were done with the whole process in 45 minutes. Three cheers for online check-in and for actually arriving for the flight four hours ahead of time.

There's a slight fly in the ointment tho, before I even started on my journey, I already (apparently) lost my favorite Watermark fountain pen. Bummer, it was my favorite. I'm still hoping I threw it into one of the checked-in baggages, but let's see...

I've taken a few pictures, mainly of my parents (and my mom watching a movie on my dad's PDA) and docked plane. More to follow.

And finally, a shout out to my buddy Dan. Thanks a bunch for house sitting for us! It certainly brings my entire family a great deal of relief!

Well, folks gotta rush, stay tuned for updates....

Ah! The good ol days of flying

I was surfing YouTube (it can be very addictive!) when I came across this classic British Airways commercial. I saw it as a small kid in India and it was a huge success there. It came to signify the glamor of flying, of seeing people from other cultures and this image of a world that was just waiting to become as one entity. A different time. I'm sure BA carries more passengers today as do other airlines, but somehow among the strip-searches at the airports, bad airline food, the thrill has gone. This combined with the general atmosphere of distrust in airports given the current geo-political situation just makes you treasure this ad even more.

 

In three days I fly BA, I'll let you know if it was as good as a feeling as this ad proclaims.

Merry Christmas & Other Stuff

First, Merry Christmas to all my friends where ever you are. This is the time to season of giving, sharing, and rejoicing, and that's a universal emotion we all can relate to. Christmas is cause for additional celebration in my family as my dad is a christmas baby, so happy birthday dad!

Second, as some of you know I was supposed to be in India this Christmas break, and was planning on blogging like crazy about my first visit to the mother country in more than eight years. I had setup my blog to accept email posts from my gmail account, and setup a photo album for the tons of pictures I would take (my dad even bought me an extra 1GB flash card to store all the pictures). But unfortunately, due the health situation in the family we decided to play it safe and postpone the trip to possibly summer 2006. So yes, I am disappointed because I was actually looking forward to this trip if only to satisfy my curiosity and see first-hand how India had changed. I guess what's a six month wait when you've waited eight years.

On the positive side, it does free me up to do all the work I intended to do while on the break and after I returned. So I've earned an extra two weeks where I can catch up, make plans, and finish work (starting with setting up the Christmas tree). Every year we put up lights and a christmas tree, this year we decided to put the lights but skipped the tree since we weren't going to be home (the outside lights would be on timer, but that's not too safe an option for indoor lights). So the Christmas tree is up, the outside lights are up, and I'm up on Christmas eve writing this blog.

Good night and Merry Christmas.

PS: I chose the Mariah Carey album cover as I thought for my age, a gorgeous diva in a body-hugging santa suit would be more eye pleasing than a bearded guy with a pot belly (sorry Santa, but I'm all grown up now)

India, Open Source, Outsourcing and Employee Retention

India has been in the news a lot lately. Two articles that I think are noteworthy, not only for their brevity but for the insight they provide into larger powerplays happening in our industry. The first is about the open source play happening in India, on how Indian federal, state, and local governments are having to walk the tight rope of keeping western companies (i.e., Micrsoft) happy, and yet show economic prudence in selecting open source software for their needs. Even though the call for use of open-source software has come from the Indian President himself, the Indian government officially remains neutral in its stance.

I do believe that only in emerging mass markets like India (where Microsoft never had a significant toe-hold to begin with) can the duo of Linux and OpenOffice.org become a truly popular alternative. Not yet completely familiar or comfortable with the Windows OS, the user can make the switch to Linux without worrying about lock-in, licencing, or being held hostage to paid upgrades. The story has not been the same in western countries, where Windows has such a strangle-hold on the desktop that Linux is experiencing the fastest growth in servers, but yet to make a dent on desktop deployment (where it remains a geek cool tool for early adopters).

The other story is about the struggle for Indian outsourcing companies to hold on to talent. Out of the 350,000 engineers India graduates every year, less than 30 percent are ready to join the workforce and hit the ground running. This makes the experienced employees even more valuable and hence harder to retain. As I've mentioned before in my one-on-one discussions with friends, the Indian outsourcing industry is currently suffering from the problem of being low on experience, and shallow in their bench. Unless they do something quick to rectify this problem, outsourcers may face a backlash from their customers and clients. Dell taking back its corporate customer support to its Dallas offices is a case in point.

The Akshardharm Temple

I got this email forward that talked about the Akshardharm temple built by the BAPS foundation in Delhi. Built on 250 Acres of land, the temple is breathtaking. Excerpt from email:

The Akshardham monument, built without steel, is entirely composed of sandstone and marble. It consists of 234 ornately carved pillars, 9 ornate domes, 20 quadrangled shikhars, a spectacular Gajendra Pith (plinth of stone elephants) and 20,000 murtis and statues of India's great sadhus, devotees, acharyas and divine personalities.

The monument is a fusion of several architectural styles of pink stone and pure white marble. Pink stone symbolizes bhakti (devotion) in eternal bloom and white marble of absolute purity and eternal peace. The monument was built after over 300 million man hours of services rendered by 11,000 volunteers, sadhus and artisans.

The website is here, the pictures are slow to load (but completely worth the wait). I've saved a local copy of my favorite picture (below).

New Delhi Blasts

I am stupified, dumbfounded, angered, flustered over what happened at New Delhi this weekend. From ten thousand miles away, sixty people dying may not sound much (this year alone, natural disasters have taken hundereds of thousands times that), yet this cannot be overlooked. The terrorists struck on the eve of the festival of deepavali (The Festival of Lights--a hindu festival meant to celebrate the victory of good over evil). For the uninitiated, deepawali (or diwali as it is more commonly known) is India's Christmas and 4th of July all rolled into one. The whole nation joins in the celebration, and like Christmas takes on a secular persona where people of all walks and faith join in the festivities. Diwali is celebrated by buying new gifts (preferably clothes) for every member of the family, decorating home and places of work with elaborate lights, distributing mouth-watering sweets among friends, and best of all (and close to every Indian boy's heart) the lighting of fire-crackers. For two days cities, towns and villages across the nation come alive with the sound of fire crackers and the night feels like day.

Understandably, diwali also ends up being an hectic shopping season and much like christmas, as the day approaches the shoppers are increasingly just last-minute shoppers or bargain-hunters. Many of the bargain-hunters aren't the socially well-off kind (the outsourcing boom hasn't helped all sections of society yet), but people who live on a daily wage, sometimes on less than $1 a day trying to look for a deal. These are everyday wage laborers trying to buy little trinklets for their family, looking forward to celebrate the best way they can. Among all this chaos and din, come these bomb blasts that not only rip apart bodies, but tear down dozens of lives with them--all because someone wanted to make a statement.