Activating the debit card

 

This morning, I finally got around to visiting the grand old bank near my home to activate my debit card. I have been their customer for more than three decades, but just about four months ago they thought I was worthy of having a debit card, and sent me one. While other banks pushed these cards down your throat or shoved them into your pocket, the grand ol’ one kept revisiting their QA processes to assess my suitability…

 

The envelope had been lying on my desk all this while; I was eyeing it everyday but never could muster the courage earlier to do the task. Every interaction with the grand old bank gives me the shudders.

 

Other banks send you such cards and ask you to wait for the T-PIN or something. This one asked me to contact the branch. I asked the fellow at the security desk and he guided me to the teller counters. There were long queues in front of the first three, and the last counter had only one person. I joined him. The teller was stacking notes as I joined. She then started counting the notes on a device beside her.

 

The machine counted till 79, then went “ER 08” – Beep !! She pressed some buttons, then tried again. Same result : “ER 08” – Beep !!  She tried with a different bundle of notes… and again, “ER 08” – Beep !! It was obvious to everyone that the machine was trained to count till 79 only, but she did not understand, and was oblivious to the queue behind me, that was getting longer by the minute. After about six or seven trials, she took all the bundles of notes and went to an old fellow sitting quite a few counters away. We waited.

 

She finished counting all the bundles there, came back, entered the data on her system, then released cash to the fellow in front of me. It was my turn, finally !!

 

I told her I wanted to activate the debit card. She said, “Why here ?” I told here that the letter said so. She brought out a small device and asked me to enter my account number. I did. Then the device asked for my phone number. I entered my phone number, and the device said, “Time out !!” She looked at the device, then at her screen and asked me to go to the ATMs where the security guard, who was apparently trained in these things, would help me out.

 

Made my way to the room beside the branch where the ATMs were housed. People were waiting patiently in a fairly long queue for updating passbooks and withdrawing money, and the security guard was nowhere to be seen. Apparently, he had stepped out for a tea break.

 

He returned after a while, and I was once again number three in the queue. He called me to one of the ATMs. The key pad of that machine was well and truly hidden from view. I inserted the card, entered the account number with great difficulty and the machine said, “Time out !!”

 

The guard offered to help. On the second attempt I rattled out the numbers in rapid succession while he entered them. First the account number, then my phone number. SUCCESS at last !!  

 

My debit card was finally active !! Time taken from start to finish : 1 hour, 20 minutes.

My experiences with ecommerce

This may be my very own unique set of experiences, but I am sure many of you will have your own stories to tell as well… With the rise of these e-commerce websites and their non-stop advertisements, I thought of giving them a try.  

Over the years, I have purchased many things off these sites, from transistor radios to undies. The common thread running through these purchases, with a few exceptions, has been one of surprises and compromised quality. Now read my litany of woes…

Wooden stand lamp : What can go wrong with this ? The lamp came with three pieces of wood that could be fitted together, a lamp shade, a lamp holder, an LED bulb and wiring. I assembled it and set up in my bedroom. Very nice !!

On day three, the bulb died in a minor explosion !! A first in my life. I replaced the bulb. Three months later there was a burning smell in the room, and the lamp went out. The wire had short-circuited !! I replaced the entire wiring – not taking any more chances.

Transistor radio :  I purchased a nice transistor radio with a retro look. Worked flawlessly for six months. Then the rechargeable battery died. It was a pretty unique battery that took me a while to replace – again off the Net. That lasted for about four months. Now I run it as a radio set plugged into a power socket. The band selector switch requires a few slaps and tweaking every morning before any sound comes out of it, and the volume control has a mind of its own.

CD/DVD player : Purchased a fairly cheap CD/DVD player from one of the web-sites. Ran perfectly well till the monsoons. One thunderclap near our place one rainy afternoon, and the player got so scared that it refused to recognize any CD/DVD after that. Could not lodge any warranty claim – that is a different story.

Purchased a replacement player after a few months – the earlier model was not available anymore. The warranty card asked me to register the purchase on the manufacturer’s website. The list of products that they have on that website, does not include the device I have bought !!  Now I am on my own, hoping this product will last. It is working, though, with the odd hiccup now and then.

This episode reminds me of a conversation I once had with a roadside Chinese vendor somewhere in southeast Asia. I had asked about the warranty of the product I was buying. He had said, “No warranty lah !! You want I give. You buy, I forget.”

Paper shredder :  Purchased a paper shredder encased in a beautiful blue plastic box. I could shred only three sheets of A4 paper, before one of the rotating blades bent and went out of alignment !! Now it is a beautiful piece of junk.

Cargo shorts : I had purchased a pair of cargo shorts abroad that lasted me for about seven years. Thought I would buy a second pair. Purchased it off the Net once again, since the retail shops did not have it. The material was very thin, and I had to get a tailoring job done to replace all the zip fasteners and parts of the stitching. Thereafter it was usable.

Ordered a “repeat purchase”. This one came in a different colour and material. But it was of a better quality than the previous one. They changed the meaning of a repeat purchase.

Undies : The less said the better !! Some purchases were outright scams. Some purchases were of poor quality – possibly factory QA rejects, some were of the wrong size.  One piece was bright, post-office red !! Who wears post-office red undies ??

Books : There is a particular book that I love reading time and again, but it has been out of print for many years. Wanted to present it to someone and went on a search. The website said they had two copies. I ordered one. Received a completely different book by another author, but with the same title !!

Multi-meter : I needed a multi-meter for many reasons. I had used one of SANWA make, many years ago and was thrilled to find it on the Net. Ordered one. What came to me is a fake / replica product “SUMWA”… But thank God, it works.

Lens cap for Nikon DSLR camera : I lost the lens cap of my camera a few months ago while trying to ride a horse and take pictures at the same time. Purchased a replacement off the Net. Got a CANON lens cap, although I had specifically ordered NIKON. It fits, though.

Do those websites take responsibility ? No. They conveniently pass it on to the source companies. And the worst part is that, for weeks together, they will flood you with advertisements about the product you have recently purchased !!

Now tell me, can we ever compete in the world with this kind of business ethics ? In my opinion, never !!

This English language !!

 This story is from the mid-nineties, when I was on assignment in Hanoi, Vietnam, and my family had joined me after a few months.

 Our infant son was rapidly growing out of his clothes, and we had decided to buy some new stuff for him. Back in those days there were very few shops that specialised in baby clothes, and even fewer shopkeepers who could understand English. I consulted my office colleagues, and they directed me to a couple of shops near the Hoan Kiem Lake area.

We entered the first shop – their shelves did have a very wide variety of baby clothes. After a bit of searching and trials with my fidgety baby, we settled on a set of clothes that we thought, would last him at least a few months. (A couple of sizes bigger, if you know what I mean…)

 My wife, while checking the fabric, asked the lady shopkeeper, “Is the colour fast ?”

Her instant response was, “Yes, Ma’am, very fast”…. Then her face clouded as she wrestled with the dual target of closing the sale, and satisfying her customer… Then remarked, “No, no, I mean colour is slow… very slow,” and brushed her hand over the clothes slowly, to emphasise the point.  

 We pondered over her statement for a while, then bought the stuff. She packed the clothes in a big plastic bag and assured us once again, “Colour very slow, Ma’am, no worry.”

 Well, she was indeed truthful – the colours never faded in the few months my son wore those clothes, and indeed remained the same long after.

 The colours were slow indeed… I mean, fast. I think they should do something about this English language.

These changes...

 The parting day lends its farewell glow

To everything that is down below;

Were there joys and sorrows in every task ?

Time to reflect, time to ask.

 

Forever, down the stream of time

The sun has ruled, with its rays sublime;

Our lives, our songs, our daily chores

Harvests and festivals, our social mores.

 

Now electric lights have changed the game

Days and nights can be the same;

We have longer hours for work and play –

Totally delinked from night and day.

 

The birds in the trees, they no longer sleep

When the sun, in the west, goes down deep.

Sunflowers in the evening – bright and gay,

And bats fly freely during the day !!

 

Too many changes of fundamental ways,

‘Tis worrisome if each one stays;

We need to re-boot, re-align –

‘Cause Nature’s ways are always divine !!

A business trip – Chicken Lava sandwich and EWEW airport

 Had to travel to Hyderabad the other day… Was shocked at the airport itself, trying to enter. At the entrance they asked if I had the Digi Yatra app and I said no, and they looked with pity at an old man. Then asked me to queue up “there”… “There” was a melee, many folks, all confused, waiting for something. I too, joined them. A young man asked me to step on a pair of shoes painted on the floor, and then viola !! They took a mugshot. Gave me a small slip with a QR code. Asked me to go to a hi-tech gate with Perspex leaves. Another young fellow snatched the slip with the QR code, put it on the reader, and wow !! Another mugshot !! The leaves opened and I was allowed to enter the hallowed terminal.  (I just wonder what could happen, if I had decided to go home after those two mugshots… A red alert across the city ?? I wonder…)

 The rest of the experience was routine – just like in the past. There is this budget airline that always lectures us poor souls on the virtues of being on time but is almost always late by more than fifteen to thirty minutes. This time they had messaged that the flight would be leaving ten minutes early for “operational reasons”, but took off about twenty minutes behind schedule – again for “operational reasons”, I suppose.

Things were OK, till we were in mid-air, when they served me the pre-ordered food. It was supposed to be chicken paprika sandwich. Two bites, and I had molten lava going down my system. They did not serve coffee or tea because of some turbulence; had given me water only, which is not affected by turbulence.

I studied the package. The sandwich contained chicken along with all the reputed spices from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, mixed of course with a host of numbered chemicals. The poor chicken which had given up its life to grace my sandwich never got a chance to make its presence felt amidst that battalion of spices. The coffee came quite a while later, when the pilot decided that we had had enough of turbulence. By that time the chicken molten lava sandwich was almost finished, and I had water running down my eyes and nose… Possibly ears, too – did not check.

In all my decades of air travel, airline food has always been bland, with some sauces added to get a feel of taste. This was a commando operation by a budget airline.

Rajiv Gandhi international Airport at Hyderabad airport is now all snazzy and beautifully done, but designed to make all people passing through it, healthy. Very healthy indeed, by forcing them to walk through its carefully designed halls. We all walked for more than 15 minutes to reach the luggage carousel, hoping that the luggage would have arrived by then, but no !! We had to wait for another thirty minutes or so for that. I have decided to rename RGIA as the EWEW airport (Endless Walk, Endless Wait).

The return leg was not so bad. The security personnel at EWEW airport were much more professional and elegantly graceful in handling an old fellow without the Digi Yatra app.

How slow can you go

 This story is from the mid-eighties, when I was into my second job, handling a spot of sales for a light engineering company in Kolkata. Those were the heydays of militant trade unions, lockouts, different flavours of “strikes” – tool down strike, go-slow strike, gate protests, long processions blocking roads and traffic… the list was endless. I always felt then that the issues were far less than the number of strikes and protests. Few decades on, I still have that feeling.

Coming back to the story I wish to narrate – one day, I was asked by my Sales Manager to go and pick up a Tender Paper from a Government Undertaking and pay Rs.100/- for the same. (It was a princely sum those days, in case you don’t know…). That office was about fifteen minutes by taxi from mine.

I went off happily to do his bidding. It took me about an hour to reach there because some people happened to be lying on the main road protesting about something, till the police came along and created a pathway for the vehicles to proceed.

The office was a staid, old British era building with ornate, hand crafted wooden staircase and ugly tubelights fixed beside those old mini-chandelier type light fixtures, the odd cobweb here and there, and you get the hang of it, right ?

A few more inquiries from the half-asleep doorman and a tea vendor who would only speak to me after I bought a cup from him, and I was at the window where the tender paper was being sold. Told the clerk at the counter about my mission and he directed me to another window at the other end of the hallway to make the payment and collect the receipt, provided I had the one-rupee revenue stamp with me. (Back then, we all kept these revenue stamps in our wallets.)

That exercise cost me almost half an hour because of the long queue – people were making payments for so many reasons.

Came back to the first window, the fellow greeted me with a smile and invited me into the room.  Then asked me the name of my company. I told him. He pulled out a huge register laid in on the table, asked me again the same question. Then started searching for the letter “O”.

“A…B… C…” it went on till the end of the register was reached, which was “M”. There were alphabet markers, and he could have easily found that at the first go, but no – he had to go through some pages of each alphabet before he concluded !!! Gave a sheepish smile and said he would have to get the next volume. A good ten minutes passed before he emerged from the depths of his office with another equally large register. Laid it on the first one and started searching for “O”. We finally found the elusive character – much to my relief.

He then took my receipt and started entering the details in the register – wonder of wonders, it was not a normal entry – this fellow was definitely into calligraphy or something !! Back then we all used to get handwritten degrees and diplomas from the universities, and names were beautifully written in special styles… This fellow’s writing was far better than that. He kept writing the company name, address, payment date, amount in that beautiful calligraphic style, in the register. Got exhausted, call for the tea vendor, offered me some more tea, then asked me to pay for both !!

After tea, he went back into those dark corridors, to fetch the hallowed Tender Paper. Returned with a smile and said he needs to make another set of entries. Again, the same exercise followed – he entered the Tender Paper details in the register, and my company name on the Tender Paper, all in that same calligraphic style.

By the time I emerged from that office, a good two hours had passed. It was a lesson in patience and calligraphy.

An experience of a lifetime !!

Waiting for rain...

 

An ageless assembly of sentient beings

Waiting in silent thrall,

Of the storm that should have come that day;

A rain-and thunder squall…

As usual, the weather proved them wrong,

The storm, it went away –

Light rain and winds, they let us know

That it would come, but another day.

Business of God

‘Tis the season of worship they say –

We’re losing the fervour by the day !!

 

Allocation for the deity is ten per cent or less;

Food, decor and alcohol complete the mess.

 

Visiting pandals far and near;

The priest chants something that none can hear.

 

The people – do they come to pray ?

Watch them closely and have your say.

 

Spirituality and religion live far apart –

One is in hiding, the other in the cart.

 

Blaring speakers and soulless tunes;

Wave after wave, like desert dunes.

 

With smoke and sound – crackers galore –

Where is the Diwali we used to adore ?

 

The courts and police they all have failed –

But will find an alibi when the ship has sailed !

 

Public peace put on the line -

The Business of God is working fine !!

 

DK - 28/Oct/2019

Working from home

This work-from-home paradigm rings alarm bells -

Success and glory lie in little coloured cells !!

While deadlines keep coming both thick and fast -

Rushing to the airports is a thing of the past.

Home stay (Tinchulhe)

 Tinchulhe, or Tinchuley is a small hamlet in Darjeeling district of West Bengal, about twenty-five kilometres away from Darjeeling town. This experience of spending some time at a home stay in Tinchulhe was a novel one and pretty enjoyable, even for a seasoned traveller like me.

We were practically “off the grid” during the twenty fours we spent there, with mobile connectivity being intermittent at best, and internet connection almost nil. The place had no TV either. They did have a Wi-Fi connection, but that was only slightly better than mobile connectivity. Had to spend time watching white clouds rolling over blue hills, listening to crickets and myriad other birds and insects, while the Kanchenjunga lay hidden behind dense clouds. Went back to my childhood days for a while. And then there were those Tibetan prayer flags fluttering in the gentle breeze, braving the dense fog that kept rolling in from time to time.

The business is run by a middle-aged lady, her son and daughter, both in their middle to late twenties. The charges included room rent, breakfast, lunch and dinner at very reasonable rates in these times. Food was good, to say the least, and given the layout of the village, not available anywhere else on the solitary street.

They also owned a small tea garden behind the building, and all tea served at the establishment comes from this garden – organically processed. Very fragrant, I must say.

Just behind the garden lay the forest, where they said, wild animals like deer, bears and cheetahs, live, but are rarely seen. The cheetahs apparently come down once in a while to prey on puppy dogs when they are born !!

It was amazing to hear their stories and how comfortable they were, co-existing with the wildlife. It was equally amazing to see how the three of them managed all of that work day in and day out – guests, food, tea garden, tea processing, and so many other activities that go into managing such an establishment.

When it was time to leave, they presented us with a small memento – a white silk scarf and prayers for our onward journey.

Amazing, simply amazing, in these times, when respect for traditions has taken flight for the society at large !!

 

 

Technologically challenged

 All of you who travel across India may have noticed the signboards citing numerous restrictions and defining certain fees, at all tourist spots controlled by the GOI or State Govts., or their agencies. The specific focus always is on charging a fee for these new-fangled technologies that emerge from time to time.

There was a time when there was a fee for carrying a camera (Rs.10/-) into one of those places. Then came the fee for a hand-cam (Rs. 50/-).  When the DSLRs were born, the camera fee shot up to Rs. 30/-, and they politely asked you not to take videos !!

With the passing years, as the mobile phone camera-cum-videorecorder became ubiquitous, these signboards vanished. Some places still do charge a nominal fee, but that’s it.

Nevertheless, while emerging disruptive technologies forced the world to discard old paradigms, they did not affect our sedate Govt. Babus, comfortably ensconced in their air-conditioned offices.

The Lamahatta Eco Park is a vast area atop a hill, full of pine trees and other flora, with an artificial pond at the top - visited only by the doomed or intrepid tourists. 

At the  gate, there was a new one : “Drones not allowed” !!! That’s it – no fees or fines, simply “not allowed” !!

Obviously, the Babu who ordered this, was sitting with a bleeding butt on the cutting edge of technology looking backwards with binoculars, and, one may deduce, blissfully unaware of the capabilities of this new class of devices !! 

 I had to laugh for quite a while.

***

Pic : A drone in use at Rishyap by fellow tourists trying to go over the clouds to see the Kanchenjunga.

Ghana memoirs – baby names

 

One of the interesting things I discovered during trip during my trips to Ghana is how the locals name their babies.

Believe it or not, babies are named after the day they are born. Thus, you can estimate that all the men in this country have just seven names between them to share. Ditto for the women.

 The former UN Secretary – General, Dr. Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian, is Friday’s child. And their first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, revered as the father of that nation, was born on a Saturday.

 The list of baby names below was prepared for me by the receptionist at my hotel. She had one word of caution, though – the spellings were as per her language – I do not know what it was, and it could very well be different in others – and I do not know what those languages are, either… (BTW, Ghana has over 50 major languages !!)

DAYS	BOY	GIRL
Sunday	Kwasi	Akosua
Monday	Kwadjo	Adzoa
Tuesday	Kwasena	Abena
Wednesday	Kwela	Akua
Thursday	Yaw	Yaa
Friday	Kofi	Afia
Saturday	Kwami	Ama

 I was chatting with the hotel staff after receiving this list, when a thought struck me.

 Try to imagine a similar practice in Bengal, with a few million men, each having one of only seven names, like – “Shombar Dey”, “Mongolbar Kar”, “Budhbar Gupta”, “Shonibar Dhar”… We do have Sundays in our names, though – Robi Banerjee, et al…

 And how would the local telephone directory look like ?

 *****

 

Ghana memoirs - local English

As most of you will know, English is spoken right across the world in diverse local flavours. In India, given its many local languages, people think in their mother tongue first, then speak in English, giving rise to the phrase “vernacular English”. Ditto for the Vietnamese and Chinese. I guess their languages do not accommodate the concept of space, time and direction with the result that it takes some time for outsiders to figure out the exact meaning of what they say.

One can write many hilarious pieces based on this use of English across the world, but that is for another time. This piece is about how English is spoken on the African continent – more specifically Ghana. I began to understand the local accent towards the later part of my stay in Accra.

The following list will give you some idea of English as it is spoken almost all across the African continent : (I must confess I took the help of a local web-site to compile this, before I could begin to chat with them like old pals….…)

Bad - you sleep on it in the bad-room

Beds – creatures associated with flying and cholesterol-free meat – hawks, crows, sparrows, doves, etc.

Beg - container, as in shopping-beg, hand-beg

Chetz - where worshippers go on Sundays to pray

Detty - opposite of clean

Driva - holds the steering wheel of a teksi

Duck – It was very duck at night

Ebbon - Urban

Erriors – Areas (Like - Ebbon erriors are safe in Ghana even when it is duck.)

Ewways - Airways

Eth – Earth

Fest - the one before second and third

Guddin - where you grow kebbijees

Hair – female pronoun - as opposed to hiss

Heppi – Happy – I'm so heppi – it’s Freiday

Hiss – male pronoun – masculine form of hair

Itch – Each – as in “itch and avairy pesson goes to chetz on Sunday.”

Jems - little bugs that make you sick

Kah - what you drive around in

Kebbijees - vegetable

Len - to acquire knowledge

Pee pull – Give powa to da pee pull….

Pesson - one of pee pull

Shex - houses in squatter camps

Shit of peppa - something to write on

Spitch - speech

Sweamas – pee-pull in a sweaming pul

Teksi – kah for hiah

Thest – Thirst

Wek – Work – You goin’ to wek now ?

***

Ghana memoirs – the flight over the Sahara

The flight from Dubai to Accra takes a little under eight hours, six of which are over the desert lands of the Arabian Peninsula and the African Sahara. I was elated over the possibility that we might be flying over Egypt, but that was not to be. The plane turned southwest and flew over Saudi Arabia and Sudan, then headed straight west over Chad and Niger, before turning south again to hit the Atlantic coast and follow it to Accra.

It is a day flight, over a sandy waste interspersed with dark brown hills and mountains, otherwise mostly featureless and harshly reflecting the sunlight. The reflected glare off the lifeless, endless wasteland was so strong that the airline crew asked us to down the window shutters, and that is how we travelled for the entire six hours over the Arabian Desert, the Red Sea and the Sahara. At 40,000 feet we could sense the heat… it is easy to imagine how terrible it is on the ground !! Time to time I would raise the shutter a couple of inches to peek down – the view rarely changed, except for shape of the sand dunes and the brown hills here and there…..  

To think that there are so many countries in this area, each of them ready to fight or die for a piece of land that holds virtually no life, is to come to terms with the frailties of the human mind, the inherent fallacies of our thought processes…..

The only beautiful and heart-warming feature of this endless waste lay in the Sudanese part of the Sahara - the Nile, cutting across the desert, its turquoise blue waters silently meandering north, with patches of grasslands and familiar green-brown stripes of agricultural fields on either side, standing out in stark contrast to the yellow sands immediately beyond.

On one of these flights we hit a sandstorm over the Sahara. Its intensity was such that the plane kept bouncing even at 40,000 feet and all on-board services had to be stopped for a while. Outside the window nothing could be seen, except for a bright yellow cloud – so bright that even sunglasses did not help, and the shutters had to be drawn. We flew through the storm for well over an hour.

It is said that these sandstorms over the Sahara can be seen from the International Space Station as they carry fine sand to the Atlantic Ocean to the west.

***

The return flight is in the evening. It flies east along the Atlantic coast for some time before turning north to cross Nigeria and Niger. Then it turns east over Libya and flies over Egypt and Saudi Arabia to reach Dubai.

All we could see for most of the time were a brilliantly star-studded sky in a deep purple-blue hue and an inky black nothingness below, which met along a horizon, faintly visible in the star-light. That was the Sahara at night.

A few hours into the flight, I noticed an array of brilliant lights stretching into the horizon to meet the stars above. Switched on the plane’s monitor to check – we were approaching Luxor in Egypt. As we got closer, the Nile was visible as a black ribbon running through a brilliant pattern of yellow lights on either side. I do not recall having seen a more brilliantly-lit city in recent times. We were flying too high above Luxor for me to make out any of its famous monuments, but the brilliance of its city lights, against the backdrop of the velvety black Sahara and under a diamond studded sky will remain etched in my mind for a long time...

I have tried to capture this night view of the Sahara in one of my poems :

“... Deep blue night o’er a sleeping land;

Blood-red dawn across desert sand –

Flying high with the sun so low

That quickly turns into a fiery glow;

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

Two-hour sunsets and four-hour nights;

Endless days on morning flights –

Over forests, plains and coasts we go

Over burning deserts and mountain snow;

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!”

  

CHINA – first impressions (this story is of 2010 vintage)

 A friend of mine just returned from a 10-day business visit to China. It is the height of winter in the northern latitudes and definitely not a very good time to go there, but business is business…. I list below his impressions just as he told me – which can serve as guidelines / warnings to all those who wish or plan to go there in future.

Beijing – Daytime temperatures were between -2 and -7 degrees Celsius, but there was bright sunshine and no snow… There is a tremendous pressure on the general populace to start speaking English, smile and bow, as soon as they meet foreigners, in preparation for the upcoming Olympics.

It was difficult to find money-changers – almost all signs are still in Mandarin… And then one policeman came out to help my friend…. He said, “You money ? Me money !!! Give 800 Dollar, I give 700 Dollar in Yuan !!” My friend, the poor visitor, had no choice – he handed over 800 US Dollars to the fellow and he vanished into the crowd.

A few minutes later a lady constable came up with a broad smile and said, “Sit, sit. No worry !!” Our friend, lighter by 800 dollars, had no intention of cooling his backside on a steel bench in sub-zero temperatures, and continued pacing up and down. After about 20 minutes the policeman returned with the widest grin possible and gave him 700 dollars worth of Yuan and the policewoman who had been watching him from a distance all this while, said, “See ? No think !!”…. That is money-changing in China for you.

 Xi’an (pronounced Zee-an) – He went to Xi’an the next day. This city, located in a province with the same name, is south-west of Beijing, but mountainous and extremely cold because of its proximity to Mongolia. It was grey and snowing the day he landed there, and he was unable to take any pictures at all…. The runway was being cleared of snow by a few men using brooms and shovels…. The plane skidded a couple of times on a layer of ice as it taxied to the tarmac. The plane stopped about five metres short of the aerobridge, and passengers were asked to come down the stairs, walk a few metres in the driving wind and snow and climb up into the aerobridge through the side entrance…..

Public toilets – The public toilets in China, apart from the ones in the largest of Beijing hotels, have one common feature – they do not have doors. Neither do you get any toilet paper. And all toilets are the “squat” type – or what we call “Indian Style” toilets in India.  My friend found out pretty soon why everyone goes around carrying an umbrella in the snowy winter. They use it when they have to use the toilets !!!! You go into a public toilet open your umbrella, and do your stuff….. This is true for both male and female toilets.

 In fact the average Chinese are apparently so used to this that when they do use a toilet with doors, they do not bother to close it…..

Outside the airport at Xi’an, men with shovels were employed to clear the snow from the roads…. And the leftover snow had become a hard, black, slippery, surface – one on which cars, two-wheelers, three-wheelers, cycles, rolled and slipped with gay abandon…..

To summarise, here are a couple of travel tips if and when you do want to visit China :

·         Carry an umbrella (by now you know why)

·         Stuff your coat pockets with toilet paper – as many ply’s thick as you can – again, for very obvious reasons.

More later, as and when I get to hear from him……

A Boss... And a friend

 I met him about two decades ago in Brunei and went on to work for him for well-nigh six years.

He was a Singaporean Chinese, who had set up a company in Brunei. He had a distinctive sense of humour – bordering on the racist – but then we never worry about those things in these parts.

 One incident, very early on, is etched in my memory, and has changed me forever. We were having a serious discussion on a project, evaluating pros and cons of different approaches and he asked, “Do you agree with me ?”

I, true to my Indian upbringing, answered, “No, I think so too !!”

He looked at me, repeated the question. I repeated my response.

For the third time, he asked, “Do you agree with me ?”

I said, “No, I agree with you.”

He said, “All Chinese living outside China are very confused, and you Indians make it harder !! Do you, or do you not agree ? Yes or no ?”

I said “Yes”. Then he said, “Stop beginning your sentences with a “no”. Problem with all Indians that I have met. And then some of you shake your head in a way that leaves the whole world wondering whether it was a “yes” or a “no” !”

Lesson learnt – I now use this incident to train people.

He was very fond of wines, beer and golf.  I had started attending the gym, when one day over lunch he said, “I too have six packs of beer gut covering the original set.” On another occasion, I said something about believing his words and he said, “You are a fool to believe a smiling Chinese businessman...”

And boy !! He could party !! A few months down the line, I asked him to celebrate the completion of our project. He asked me what kind of food I would like to have. I, like a fool, said, “Authentic Chinese food.” He smiled and then a few weeks later organised a dinner in Singapore.

That was one dinner I will never forget – I got to have seven new animals – cooked in northern and southern Chinese styles... The list included sea anemones, sea cucumber and geoduck, among others. Pretty tasty and all that, but then, at his request the Chef brought an uncooked geoduck to show me. Holy smoke !! I could or would never have eaten that thing, but then I already had !!  You readers can look up the “geoduck” on the net.

 He was a person fairly steeped in Chinese traditions. A few years later, someone asked him over lunch where I was present, what made him hire me. He said, “Look at his forehead. That is the forehead of a hard worker and an honest man.” Oh ! My God ! And I thought my certificates were responsible.

 He was Roy Tan – my boss and friend. Roy passed away on 30/Sep/2021 – another COVID statistic.

In his own peculiar way he touched many lives while working the restricted market of Brunei. He touched my life in more ways than one.

 Rest in peace, Roy – your time came a bit too soon. And I will remember you till my time comes.