David Lamond :: Blog

Happy New Year dear reader!

I had thought to use this blog to explore how to end and begin a year and, indeed, that is how it unfolded, as I flew from Sydney to Singapore on my way to Delhi for the ISDSI conference, overnighting here in Singapore for New Year's Eve on the way through.

Resigned to a quiet night at the hotel for New Year's Eve, I'd contacted my good friend Richard Ng to see if we might meet today for coffee and a "catch up" before I headed off to Delhi, but he wouldn't hear of it. Instead, he invited me to his home to join his family for their New Year party celebrations, and was good to his word, picking me up at the hotel about 20 minutes after I had checked in (the M Singapore). What a thoroughly enjoyable evening! Welcomed by Richard, Miriam and the whole family, we ate barbequed sea food, duck, steak and a veritable cornucopia of yummies, as Richard worked hard to ensure that I left Singapore heavier than when I arrived (which I suspect, dear reader, I will be doing). My special thanks to Richard and Miriam for a great way to end the year - with the warmth and comfort of being surrounded by "family" and friends, and, at 9.10pm Singapore time, I was able to ring Kerry at work in Sydney and wish her a happy New Year, so, while we were separated geographically and in time, there was still some sense of seeing in the New Year together.

I had also had the pleasure of meeting Richard's friends Bernd and Doris Grammer - Bernd works with Richard at GE and Doris is VP-AP for Bosch. We shared great conversation about a broad range of topics, including whether there was "too much" democracy in India vis a vis China and Singapore (and whether the same was true of Germany as its seeks to incorporate/reconcile East and West, especially in light of the imminent entry of Poland and other Eastern European countries into the EU). Bernd and Doris planned to go to Mt Faber (pronounced Farber in the German tradition) for the New Year's countdown and fireworks and, given its proximity to the hotel (and the fact that Bernd and Doris were great company anyway), I happily agreed to join them. At once we would enjoy a view of the fireworks in good company, and relieve Richard of the burden of getting me back to the hotel at some stage in the early morning.

However, the best laid plans of mice and men are oft tae gang awry, as Robert Burns once wrote. We tried a number of different ways to get to the top of Mt Faber, one leading to a dead end and the other to police with flashing batons turning us away. In the absence of "Plan B", we finished up back at the M, hoping to find a vantage point there from which we could watch the fireworks. Again, no luck - the helpful staff pointed us in the direction of a taxi to another hotel which would provide the view we sought, but it was just on midnight by this stage and the 7 minute drive would just about take care of any chance of viewing a moment of the fireworks.

We were just about to part company, thinking "well that's that", when I suggested a coffee before we went our separate ways. Bernd was ready to head off, but Doris was up for coffee, so we proceeded to the hotel cafe, which had just closed! While we were cursing our luck yet again, the great guys at the cafe, who were getting ready to go on to party upstairs, invited us to join them in a drink - and what a drink it was! About an hour later, after chats and laughs with the cafe manager and his colleagues, we'd managed to demolish just over a bottle of Mumm champagne and to toast a great, albeit unexpected, beginning to 2008.

So there you have it, dear reader, an end to one year that was characterised by a mix of great family fun, on the one hand, and the disappointment missing the fireworks on the other, and a beginning to the new year that was a totally unscripted, but wonderfully upbeat experience. At this point, Doris, Bernd and I parted company looking forward to the rest of what 2008 will bring with great relish.

The last week has seen me in the bosom of my family, dear reader, although the time has flown by so quickly, I really do wonder where it's gone. Just before I left Kochi and in the time just after I arrived in Sydney, I had had communications with the good folks I can now call my erstwhile employers and we agreed that we could call my assignment with KiBS successfully completed.

I had been involved with the School for six months - four of them in India as you have been reading - and found it a rich learning experience, but I don't know working on one continent while my family is living on another very well. Having been back in Sydney briefly in early December, and notwithstanding the experiences of St Vinnies and so on, I realised how much I had missed Kerry, Fiona, and yes, even Luke! Returning to Kochi via Delhi reinforced what the next six months would be like and I decided that, in the best interests of everyone, it was time to say au revoir to India for the time being.

That being said, I think I can look back over the last six months with some pride. The idea of "successfully completing my assignment in India" is borne out by my having established and gained FIBAA (Austrian government) accreditation for the School's MBA program (the program will be taught in conjunction with the Management Centre Innsbruck, of the University of Applied Sciences in Innsbruck); my having mapped out the teaching program for the inaugural intake of students in September, 2008; my having developed and produced the School's 2008 prospectus; and my having had key inputs into the design of the KiBS teaching facilities.

I look forward to fresh, new challenges in 2008. In the meantime, this week is a time for some reflection (and a juxtaposing of some of the photos that I've taken over my time in Kochi and surrounds to look at where we were and where we got to across professional and domestic fronts. It's also a time for me to deal with an unwanted addition to my Christmas chores.

Unfortunately, Santa brought me one thing extra that I hadn’t anticipated – a “fried” hard disk, that wasn’t fully backed up. I’m in the embarrassing situation of having to confess to my friends, colleagues and wider professional network that I’ve lost all my emails for the past 5 months (just as well I keep my contacts backed up on a different system).

In the circumstances, I've had to ask them if they can check whether we have any outstanding email correspondence, and they’re expecting an answer from me on a particular matter. I find myself having to work through any outstanding matters methodically but at some pace in order to clear the decks for 2008.

Please don’t feel embarrassed about having a chuckle at my expense, dear reader – I’ve already done that (if somewhat hysterically). Anyway, I suppose it does allow me to enter 2008 with something of a clean slate.

You can't take anything for granted in India, eh dear reader?

A couple of points as a postscript to my T 'n' b 'n' p blog.

First, you'll be utterly unsurprised to know that the landing in Delhi was delayed and the subsequent flight to Singpaore didn't take off for an hour after schedule (this is not such a bad thing as it's one less hour to spend sitting round Changi waiting for the Sydney connection).

What I hadn't appreciated is that the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) domestic terminal in Delhi is 12 kilometres from the International terminal and there is no form of transport between the two except for the taxi service. This was again a "telling" experience as I landed outside to discover there is indeed no shuttle and taxi is the only option. The "friendly" tout outside the terminal said he could get me to IGI international for INR700, noting that the charge inside was INR750 and he could save me INR50. I knew that was outrageously overpriced and offered INR400, to which he turned up his nose. I proceeded back inside the domestic terminal and purchased a prepaid taxi voucher for INR140! This included payment for transport of two bags.

I don't resile from any of my comments about JAA's anal approach to its reservations system but I do offer a big bouquet to the cabin staff on SQ408 from Delhi to Singaporte - they were great! I even made a point of advising the Cabin Services Manager - I hope I get some of those folks again on another Singapore Airlines flight.

Off to find coffee and croissant now as I get closer to Sydney and home.

Dear reader, the title of the blog has nothing to do with the first two modes of transportation and all to do with the last - I just didn't want to waste the song title (see yesterday's blog for explanation).

The purpose of this blog is to warn you against having anything to do with Singapore Airlines if your itinerary is subject to change or in any way out of the ordinary!

Some time ago, I had booked my flight home to Sydney for Christmas to depart from Delhi (I had anticipated being there for a series of promotional sessions on behalf of KiBS following the APROS conference, but events overtook these plans and I finished up in Patna and then Kochi instead). For the last week or more, my travel agent in Sydney has been struggling manfully to try and get my itinerary changed from Delhi-Singapore to Kochi-Singapore so that I can take a much later, more direct flight to Singapore and reduce the elapsed travelling time by about 9 hours. But would Singapore Airlines (SA) make that change? Nooooo. As far as SA was concerned it had to reticket the whole itinerary and not just the India-Singapore section, and had to wait for a cancellation before being able to re-ticket the Singapore-Sydney section.

Yes, dear reader, you've already spotted the fatal flaw in SA's position haven't you - I would be that cancellation (coz I'm already on the plane!) and they could simply issue the new tickets! But no again folks, that's too logical. So each day I would play Julius II to Ian's (my travel agent's) Michaelangelo Bonarotti, asking (eventually pleading) "When will it be at an end" and hearing "When it is finished" in reply. I had got to the stage yesterday afternoon (remember there's a 5 and 1/2 hour time difference between Kochi and Sydney to take into account as well) when I decided with one of Ian's offsiders that the opening was looking highly unlikely and so I proceeded to confirm my Kochi-Delhi flight and check-in on the Singapore flight from Delhi (you have to do that so that you don't get crap seats like the ones I got on the way to Delhi from Sydney earlier this month because the SA computers wouldn't play nice with me).

I had resigned myself to the extended travel itinerary until I saw my emails this morning (I have been without 'out of office' email connection for the last 24 hours because Tata Indicom insisted on evaluating our claim for a replacement USB modem and I didn't get back online until last night at 9.00pm, only to find the Tata PCMCIA we purchased while we wait a week for the replacement Tata USB modem that the folks at Tata finally decided was warranted). Ian had written to say that it had all been sorted finally - someone else had dropped out, and I could get the Kochi-Singapore connection. All I needed to to was to pop down to the SA office in Kochi and get them to reissue the ticket.

This brings me to the following excerpt of an email that I've not long sent to Ian in Sydney, bless his cotton socks:

"Dear Ian,

Thanks for your emails regarding your success in changing the booking - well done! What the folks at JAA (Just Another Airline, my new name for SA) neglected to tell you is that today in Kochi is a public holiday (for a secular state, the Indians do very well in grabbing every possible opportunity to claim the religious holidays (this one's a Muslim holiday) as their own). Accordingly, the JAA and Silk (JAAOA - Just Another Airline's Other Airline) offices here in Kochi are closed and I am unable to pop down to the offices and get things fixed."

So today will be another day "lost in India" as I head out to Kochi International Airport for a 2.10pm flight that takes me north to Delhi via Hyderabad, arriving at 5.30pm, so that I can wait for the 9.00pm flight to Singapore, arriving at 4.55am, so that I can wait for the 9,40am flight from Singapore to Sydney, arriving at 8.15pm, then home to the bosom of my family.

What I added to my email to Ian, and I share now with you gentle reader, are the following wishes:

I trust that you experience the peace and joy of this Christmas season, and that 2008 brings you everything that you would wish for yourself.

I was going to call this blog "Trains and Boats and Planes" after the Billy J Kramer hit of the 60s, or "Trains, Planes and Automobiles" after the John Candy movie of the same name, dear reader, to cover a variety of topics (or is that a multitude of sins?). Anyway, after nearly being "cleaned up" on three separate occasions by two different trucks and a bus just now, while travelling in an autorickshaw back to the School from my visit to the bank , however, I think the Moody Blues variation is much more apropos. I'll get to that part of the story a little later.

As you might recall, my trip from Patna to Kochi, via Delhi and Bangalore, was something of an elongated one. At one point, having exhausted my reading materials, I was moved to even read the ads appearing on the "flight map" page of the TV (one neat thing about the landing at Bangalore was that the whole thing could be viewed on the screen via a camera in the nose of the plane - fascinating for one such as me not bothered by the flying experience, but a whole new way of being scared witless by those so disposed). If I had any doubt that India is a "man's" country, that doubt was dispelled by one of Kingfisher's ads for its own services:

"Fly Kingfisher this season of good times", it said, "Because the queen of your heart deserves to feel like a king". Apart from the deep-seated gender issues that such a cross over might generate, since when did a queen need to feel like a king to be better off? No, dear reader, this is not just me being pedantic, or even politically correct. I see this as a statement reflecting the "real" understanding of the place of men and women in India, at least among the ad team that came up with this brilliant line as they sought to appeal to the typical fliers who would be viewing the ad. Or is it just me?

The last paragraph covers the "planes" part of the original titles and there are no trains or boats to speak of (very fortunately for me in regard to the trains as far as Subho is concerned), but there are things to say about the auto(mobiles) and to share a story about one person who has a special place in my experience of India - Jayaraj, the auto-rickshaw driver, who picks me up each morning to take me to the office and sometimes drives me back to the apartment at night.

This photo shows us standing beside Jayaraj's auto this morning just outside the Suryakanthi Apartments that have been my home for these past months, just before we headed to the KiBS offices. Jayaraj is very proud of his auto and treats it with as much parental as proprietorial concern, and why wouldn't he? He is on the road every morning at 5.15am and so has been driving around for about 4 hours before he picks me up at 9.00am. After dropping me off, he heads out to another fare or two before he is required at the bicycle shop at 10.00am, where he stays until 8.00pm at night. It is at 8.00pm that he comes to pick me up on the return journey to the apartment and the beginning of another 3 hour stint in the auto before he arrives at home. This is his routine, day in day out, as he seeks to provide for his family and to repay the loan for the new apartment that he is in the process of purchasing.

A sense of the "parental" concern for his auto is given by his answer to my enquiry about sub-leasing the auto during the day while he is at the bike shop, and so maximising the return on that investment: "No, maybe damage". He has had the auto for about 11 months now and in all that time on Kochi's crazy roads, he has had only one minor bingle which produced a broken indicator light and a bend in one of the panel joints (about which he was most distressed as he recounted the story). He couldn't face the thought of any damage to his auto, especially if it was the result of someone else driving.

Along the way, Jayaraj has proved to be the most reliable thing about India - unless there is a "block" (traffic jam") he is punctual to a fault (sometimes even being early and catching me just out of the shower in a demonstration of my own tardiness), he is careful on the road and a pleasant conversationalist to boot. From time to time he passes his friends in the auto business and there is always a friendly wave and a smile to punctuate the encounter.

This stands in stark contrast to the two auto rickshaw rides that Raju and I had on our way to and from the State Bank of India Broadway branch, where the driving was "variable" to say the least and it looked like everyone on the road had already enjoyed too much Christmas "cheer". The trip to the bank was mainly sedate, with the "spurts" restricted to sliding into defined openings in the congestion, but on the way back, it became a real ducking and weaving contest as we and the other traffic, large and small, played the familiar game of "chicken", as we wandered on both sides of the road to get ahead (or eventually to lose one?). At one stage, I thought we were going to be the vehicle in the "auto knocks down pedestrian" as our auto brushed a lady crossing near MG Road (in fairness to the driver, she was doing the "you can't hit me coz I'm not looking at you" approach to crossing, and then she was complaining to the folks who had already crossed about the behaviour of the auto driver!). And hence, dear reader, the shift to the "Ride, Ride My Rickshaw" title.

Every day in India is a rich experience, and yesterday afternoon after I had signed off on my “purple is a fruit” blog was no exception. Ajith had kindly organised me on the Kingfishers flights via e-ticket (which, of course, is supposed be paperless, but you can’t get into an Indian airport terminal without a “ticket”. You might remember, dear reader, my experience in Mumbai back in August when Jay and I had to fight to get me into the international terminal to leave India because I didn’t have a “ticket”; just a piece of paper with the details on it, but it kind of defeats the purpose of the “e”, doesn’t it?)

Anyway, at my request, Ajith had sent an email to the Centaur so that the “ticket” could be printed out and I could get into the terminal. He had not accounted for the woman who had taken his call the night before to confirm that the email had been received and that a copy of the contents would be printed out and passed to me not bothering to actually print out the email. When I came to check out then, and asked for my email …. Ta da! … nothing had been done. The circus began then when the banquet manager led me down a corridor to a room where the “secret computing business” took place and proceeded to try and log in to a Gmail account with a vsnl.com domain email address. All the while the bell “boy” (a nice guy of about 50 years) was haranguing me about the need to get to the airport.

On the basis it was clear the banquet manager had no clue, I simply gave up and walked out, hoping that I would be able to do something at the airport before we passed into the terminal. I was assuming I would be at the right terminal sooner rather than later but this too was a misapprehension. Kingfisher flies out of terminal 1A at Delhi but the taxi driver took me to 1B, insisting that I was in the right place and then looking askance when I refused to give him a tip for the bags I had. It was just as well I hadn’t tipped him because that would have added salt to the wound of his deliberately taking me to the wrong terminal!

I had noticed the road signs and was surprised when we ended up at 1B – on the other hand, I’ve also learned not to take much notice of signs here so I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d arrived at the right place. It was only after I’d walked for 15 minutes over to Terminal 1A, past heavy traffic flowing into and out of Terminal 1A, I realised that he’d dropped me off at 1B because he didn’t want to negotiate the 1A traffic! Insult was added to injury while the Kingfisher front counter lass gently berated me for being late (as if I had chosen to be so) then encouraged me to “rush” into the terminal to get checked in (at least she gave me my “ticket”, duly presented to the CISF officer at the door). Inside I was given another chiding for my tardiness, along with my boarding passes in crappy seats for Delhi-Bangalore then Bangalore-Kochi – at least I was getting closer to my objective. Well at least in terms of distance – we were delayed on the ground by ¾ of an hour before took off and so the 1 hour turnaround at Bangalore had now been reduced to 15 minutes.

With a sense of the most simple solution (forgetting the 300 OHS regulations that would have been broken if we’d been in Australia, the US or the UK), when we got to Bangalore we were “de-planed” and kept waiting on the tarmac while our bags were unloaded and the 10 or so of us who were making the Kochi connecting flight were shuffled across the tarmac to the waiting turboprop that was going to take us to Kochi (again an hour late, given “the late arrival of an incoming aircraft”). The ever reliable Ajith was there to pick me up and take me, via a masala dosa at the Dawarka restaurant, back to the apartment, where I unpacked bags, packed the washing machine and packed myself off to bed. So there it is, another adventure filled day here in India, and no lazy Sunday afternoon for this little black duck.

This is the claim made by Homer Simpson when he was trying to justify his continuing delight in donuts and why they are just junk food. This morning while I had breakfast in the coffee shop of the Centaur Hotel, near the IGI airport, I got closer to a sense of what he meant when I had toast with a mix of confitures – honey, strawberry jam and orange marmalade. Whether there was any fruit in either of the jam or marmalade was definitely open for consideration but there was no doubting the colour and so I would be moved to say, if purple is a fruit, then so is “red” and “orange”.

I had enjoyed the toast after an excellent masala dosa (even better than the one I had had the night before, with vegetable somosa as an entrée), and along with a most interesting conversation with the waiter about the developing economies of Australia and India (and the growing relationships between the two countries); the likely competitiveness of the upcoming Test cricket series between Australia and India; and the failure of the Europeans and the Mesopotamians (the waiter’s term) to appreciate the enlightenment reflected in Hindu lore and the experiences of the great Hindu holy men. Accordingly, I was somewhat reluctant to leave the breakfast table in the hotel’s café, but the day beckoned.

Because you are perceptive dear reader, you’ll have noted that I write this blog, not from Kochi where I was supposed to arrive yesterday evening, but from a hotel in Delhi. Another reason for my observation about the Indian airline schedules in the “Time after Time” blog is that I was a victim of them once again yesterday. My flights from Patna to Delhi to Kochi were originally supposed to begin at 9.00am on Saturday morning (with a 4 hour layover in Delhi, while I waited for the 2.15pm Spicejet flight from Delhi to Kochi). Jeena from the KiBS office had already alerted me to a 2 hour delay in the Patna-Delhi flight several days earlier, so I was pleased that my “lay around” in Delhi would be reduced by two hours. I duly arrived at the Patna airport at 10.15, only to discover that the flight from Delhi had been delayed such that the flight would not leave now until 11.55am. Again, I was “happy” to have the layover time further reduced.

Unfortunately, the delay extended, and extended, and extended so that we did not leave Patna until 3.00pm and duly arrived in Delhi, just after 4.00pm. I was hopeful that the delay was generic and that I could count on all the other flights being duly delayed but it was not to be. The Spicejet flight (from 2.15pm) had only been delayed by just over an hour and so I had missed my last opportunity to get to Kochi on Saturday afternoon.

The IGI airport experience was a series of frustrations as, first, the Spicejet booth at the baggage counter was unstaffed. Then I was to discover that I needed to go the Departures Hall (a separate building at IGI), where, having finally convinced the Indian Civilian Security Force (ICSF) member that I needed to get into the Departures hall even though my flight had already left, I found the Spicejet ticketing counter labelled with the “Counter Closed” sign. I made my way to the check-in counter to be told I needed to go to the “Counter Closed” counter (by this stage, someone from the “Counter Closed” counter, which wasn’t really closed – it just looked like it – had spied me and chased after me to take me back to the counter). Having been made to walk back to the “Counter Closed” counter, I was told there were no more Spicejet flights to Kochi that day (why I couldn’t be told that about 3 walks earlier is beyond me, but there you go).

A phone call to Ajith in Kochi and eventually I was booked on this afternoon’s 3.15pm Kingfisher flight to Bangalore (yes, dear reader, Bangalore) and then the evening Bangalore-Kochi flight (all the other direct flights to Kochi having already been booked out). But the fun wasn’t finished yet. I needed to get back into the Arrivals Hall to make arrangements for hotel accommodation. The ICSF man, who clearly had minimal English, would not let me into the arrivals hall, then his 3-striped boss (whose English was also minimal) would not let me in. Serendipity had a Kingfisher employee with reasonable English passing by and, following a discussion in Hindi between the three, in the context of a growing horde, I was ushered into the Arrivals Hall with flourishes from all in attendance.

Ajith had given me the names of the Airport Hotel (right at the airport) and the Centaur Hotel (a little further away) and I presented these to the government tourism operator in the Arrivals Hall (hence my need to return there). His response was a reasonable, “Which one?”. My response, in turn, was “Well, which one would you stay at if you had the choice?” First, he pointed out the locations of the two on the map and then said, “Well, the Airport Hotel is close and the rooms have recently been refurbished”. “What about the Centaur?” and it became clear that his concern was about which cost more. I refined my “search question” and asked.”What if you had the choice and the money?”. Without hesitation, “The Centaur”, he replied.

Off to the Centaur via a car duly organised by my tourism operator friend, where I discovered that, while the Airport Hotel has recently been refurbished, the Centaur is somewhere in the middle of being refurbished. Still by this time of the day (6.00pm) and a desperate need to just lie down, I was not overly troubled. Checking of emails and so on, a quick dinner of masala dosa and veg samosa, and it was sleep time, which I extended to a luxurious 8:15am this morning (I’m not sure how I’m going to get back into the 5½ hour time difference in Sydney when I arrive on Friday night, but right now, Sydney looks a very attractive proposition). And so I pack up to head off to Bangalore and Kochi (eventually).