Time

Talk about pressure!! Why is it that these days time is measured by the events that take place and not in the standard way of minutes, days, weeks….etc etc. It’s only been a week since I landed and yet I feel as if it’s been so long a time, I haven’t yet gotten an apartment to move into and I don’t have a job to join!!

Apartments…..i frankly don’t understand why we are taking so long to decide on which apartment to move into since every one of them looks the same. They all have brown exteriors, they all have entry secure phone systems, they all have street parking, they all have more or less the same square feet too…its only the locality and the rent that differs. And yet when I enter a possible place, some of the flats give me yes this home feeling as opposed to some that don’t.

What’s painful though is the hotel food, especially the breakfast; it’s the same stale croissants, stack of brown and white breads, cereals and fruits. Nothing wrong with the spread in itself but the fact that it’s not HOT and nothing is cooked, it’s all ready made.

Patience truly is a virtue! :(

My job hunt however has started only from today since I didn’t have an address to quote on my CV so far and now thanks to Shaiwal’s colleague I do have one. The jobs listed on the sites don’t give me an iota of confidence that I will be able to bag one, everything is in the banking and insurance domain since Edinburgh is the hub of insurance and banking companies. Miseries of misery, I haven’t done a project in that domain, except for a small one with Metlife insurance. Anyways, I am no domain expert I am on the product side, right? So are there any openings there….well truthfully, no. :(

Seriously, time these days are marked by events, if something happens its always – oh so soon….and if nothing happens then its like – my god how long its been!!

Crowds and Strategy

Scotland versus England – RUGBY Match!! Yep it’s a big deal and it happened today in the stadium that’s right down the lane! Ask me, coz when I went out a while ago and I was headed towards the market, I chose absolutely THE wrong moment to do so and THE wrong direction coz the public was headed towards the stadium which is in the opposite side!! It was like walking against a tide of people. Usually you get to walk down the street here with an odd passer-by passing by you every ten minutes or so and suddenly today it felt as if the entire population of Scotland and a good portion of the population from England had stepped onto the streets and everyone was headed towards the stadium.

People were milling in from every side street, as if there was a pied piper playing at the stadium. There were people in traditional attire of the Scottish kilt, people in good cheer screaming on top of their lungs in support of one of the teams, people with families, friends, children, elders…….reminded me of India a lot. The spirit was so infectious that it soon had me in a good mood. It’s so nice to see so many people all in good spirits looking forward to something :)

By the way, came across this nice article on Starbucks coffee, which talks of its history and how a plastic salesman was behind the vision of selling coffee as an experience!!

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Starbucks-Made-Coffee-History&id=613405 – check it out.

Reading this article had me wondering when is Starbucks coming to India ? As per media accounts, its already tried twice and gotten irked, by our “lack of transparency in rules governing FDI in retail.” Hmmm…it would be interesting to figure out IF starbucks were to make an entry into India and if it did so with a JV with Kishore Biyani of Future group as it tried to do so earlier, then what would be their strategy here? Would it be positioned as a premium brand or would it be coffee on the go brand as abroad? I guess time will tell, although my money would be on the premium brand positioning strategy. :)

New experiences

Most of the times I get to hear how our (read as ASIAN) manners are not quite accepted here and how the English get offended, disgusted, disturbed or all of the aforementioned due to them!! Coughing aloud in office is not done, littering is not done, black leather jackets are soooooo not on, nails with dirt underneath, shirts with creases, no funny noises, no loud conversations…..etc etc…..For the large part of the list its all good manners and nothing to do with English or Asian. What sort of irritates me is the fervour to adopt these good manners while in the company of white skin and not on the whole in your day to day life.

The fervour springs from the need to be accepted and be smiled upon and talked with. Hmm….sometimes we are so into a moment that we tend to forget what is important. Impressing the client is vital and trying to fit in a good strategy, however being all too aware of what is ON and what is NOT is sometimes a little to the extreme!!

Anyways before I get too preachy, shall we move on? I went to Boots yesterday, a famous pharmacy chain in the Europe, to get cough syrup for Shaiwal and inadvertently also stumbled on some meal deals. A sandwich, a drink and a packet of chips all for 2 pounds. One thing that’s lovely here is the number of deals that keep running and that these deals are truly value for money. An interesting tidbit on Boots – started way back in 1846 in UK, it was sold off to an American company sometime in the 1920’s and then history saw it being sold back to UK hands in 1933 presumably an aftermath of the great depression.

Weekends round the corner and I have the task of figuring out what we can do!!! Not that I volunteered for the task, but my better half is stuck in office with no computer or net connectivity and a whole lot of negative energy bundled in him for his plight! :)

Before I sign off – if anyone goes to Starbucks coffee, then beware before putting nutmeg topping into your coffee, it is spicy and sort of kills the taste for those of us who have a sweet tooth, the rest of us black mean coffee drinkers please go right ahead. My vanilla latte was so completely ruined in my enthusiasm to discover new things!!! :(

Scotland it is....

Went to the market side yesterday, I guess I shouldn’t say market coz that conjures up a very different image than what is reality. By market, people here tend to refer to streets lined up with stores of not vegetables, fish or any such but of Marks and Spencers, Debenhams, Boots, BHS and the like. To the one side of the street were stores that ran on and on, however, what interested me more was the opposite side of the street. There at the other side were old structures built atop a small hill and try as I might I was unable to capture the entire beauty or the length in my camera.

It was lovely to say the very least. Again I wanted to desperately just go in and see but then everything closes down by 6 pm here and it was already 5:30pm. We went to a bus office to get monthly passes done, while Shaiwal was busy with the mundane I started picking up from the hoards of leaflets available on where to go and what to see. People here are talking about the easter break that’s coming up (April 2nd to 5th) and I gather that they have been planning trips from just after Christmas. Translated that means that if Shaiwal and I were to do sightseeing during those days then we should restrict it to the local ones since accommodations are all out elsewhere. :)

Before I digress further, remember I said shops all close off by 6pm, well slight correction, not all, the ones run by Asians remain open till 9pm and more often than not, these shops are small supermarkets with eatables, mobile recharge coupons, magazines, etc. Asians in origin but perhaps more UK since they talk and look as if they were born and bought up here. I guess despite being bred here, we Asians still carry the thirst for money, maybe to send back home or maybe in reminiscence of the underprivileged deprived days that we have seen.

While I see foreigners looking at me on the street as I pass and nodding to say hi or giving me a slight smile, I notice that Asians tend to look down, up sideways, i.e, anywhere else other than at me or any other unknown Asian so that they can avoid greeting or acknowledging. I wonder if this phenomenon is just Asian to Asian or is it Asian to Europe as well.

Yesterday a middle aged Asian came to clean the room and he wasn’t able to understand English so I tried in Hindi and he was well relieved. Seems he thought I was a Sri Lankan and normally Sri Lankan’s do not know Hindi and he was scared if I would complain. Well he is from Bangladesh, been here for 3 years now, came here to make enough money to wed his daughter off and set his son up in business. Unfortunately hasn’t been able to learn English so far. Gets by doing all cleaning jobs but gets scared when he has to take interviews for visa and the like.

Yesterday we also did some house hunting, saw two flats, one was outright rejected and the other is under consideration. Have circled on 4 more flats and if we get appointments to see them today then we are done with our house hunting exercise hopefully and move on to house finalization a.k.a house moving in exercise. :) All flats here seem to be handed over to property dealers and people like us call up and fix appointments to see the property with these dealers. At the appointed time one of their salesman comes up opens the place up, gives us a tour, hands over some forms and instructs us to get in touch with the office for further procedures!!! What a cool job is that. You wear a suit, drive to different places, take 10 minutes time to show a place and then you are done. I guess it might not pay too well, but hey no stress and total division of labour. This guy doesn’t do any smooth sales talk, his job is to just show you the place which he does!!!

Kinda liked that process, not like a business analyst who doubles up as a project leader, project manager, test lead, testing manager, onsite coordinator……..lets face it almost everything other than the sweeper….well fear not the days not far for that to happen!

Travel Travails

After 8 years I am touching the country I grew up in, it feels familiar and yet vague. The UAE, more specifically the Dubai Airport, I can’t go out since I am in transit for UK. Every moment there is an announcement, my ears perk up in attention only to find that the announcement is made first in Arabic and then in English. Reminds me a lot of my childhood days, especially when I saw at Duty Free Patchi Chocolate collection, the very same chocolates that my dad used to get me for my birthday and which I would carry to school every year for my friends and teachers. God, how things have changed? Growing up in UAE, latter part of my school and college education at Kerala, final touch of my education at Chennai and then so many more years there itself for my career, married into a family who is settled in Pune and now travelling to Scotland UK.

Its 2:15 am here now, India time 3:45 am and Shaiwal is sleeping away, I feel disoriented and perhaps even a little disturbed, I would love to go out of the airport right now and slip into the city. Not knock on the doors of either relatives or friends staying here, but just roam around and see how far the city has changed, go to familiar spots and just silently say hi……maybe someday I will.

The next leg of my journey begins in 4 hours and I suppose we have another 6 hours of travelling to go before we reach Glasgow and from there an hour by road to reach Edinburgh. It will be only 12:30 noon UK time when we finally reach but it would be almost 24 hours of journey for us. Need to reach and make sure we don’t sleep till at least 9pm so that we can reduce the effects of jet lag as much as possible.

Anxious moments – I started shivering from the cold in the flight from Chennai to Dubai itself and that’s just a/c, wonder how Mother Nature will greet me there in UK? I heard it just stopped snowing a few days back. Even with the tonnes of warm clothes I am carrying and wearing I still somehow get the feeling that It’s all going to be inadequate. The bright side however is that I might be able to burn calories trying to withstand the cold. :)

Tuesday – 9th March

I am in Scotland now, reached yesterday afternoon. Its definitely cold here but its bearable if you have tonnes of layers of clothing on and gloves and woollen caps and muffler…..oh hell when you have your entire wardrobe on you are okay? :) I saw snow peaked mountains for the first time and they reminded me of the Himalayas. Luckily for me the snow has mostly melted off so the temperature has picked up. However I did see traces of snow on the way from Glasgow to Edinburgh.

Our hotel which is called the Original Raj hotel is Indian in its décor and UK in its management, its even got pictures of Gayatri Devi hung up in the sitting room. Inside our room we have a heater which allows me to come out of my clothes cocoon for a little while. A healthy ten minutes walk leads us to the nearby shops. I enjoyed the walking part, made me feel alive, although I must admit that the cold wind cuts right through my clothes and makes my skin feel as if it had been in cold storage. I saw a post office nearby and a church, two things which made me happy.

Got our food from Greggs, which I gather is a famous chain for sandwiches, bread and baked products. It prints on its food stuff the calories in it, like for example a chicken salad sandwich we bought has 380 calories in it. The speciality of this place is that it sells bread items which are made freshly on that day itself, no old stuff. The sandwiches are lovely albeit with no salt and no spice, but still very yummy. I am hoping to keep a count of my calorie intake and try not to balloon up out here.

The fruits look amazing especially the green apples, I got a particular kick while picking them up since we rarely get them in India, if at all we do. There is a small castle near the hotel and I am just itching to get inside, Shaiwal however assures me that I would get prosecuted the minute I did. There are a lot of Keep out signs hung all around the small castle, well you win some and you loose some, right?

Once I get more used to the weather here I plan to go for long walks, right now I almost had my ears frozen off after just a half hour walk today morning. I hope we find a decent place to stay at soon, not that the hotel is any bad but because it’s so inconvenient to live out of your suitcases, I keep thinking I have to pack all this back when we have to move out.

Oh yeah i almost forgot i had this lovely moment today where the hotel receptionist called up around noon and enquired whether i would require any room service. I declined since i had already stocked up some sandwiches. Later however, i discovered that what i had declined was not food but an enquiry as to whether i wanted my room cleaned out or not!!!! Boy - o - boy, what a mess!! :D

Signing off
Exuberant Traveller

Juggling books

Sidney Sheldon is one of those authors that you just don’t miss out on during your growing year if you are into reading. Well I didn’t miss out either. So when I suddenly spotted this book on the stands “Mistress of the Game” sequel to “Master of the Game”. I couldn’t help but grab it. On closer look I discovered that it was written by Tilly Bagshawe. Well Duh-huh, after all its been 2 years since Mr. Sheldon said good bye to the world.

Well after polishing off a 100 odd pages, I have goose bumps all over, coz it’s so creepy. I forgot how Sheldon novels used to be, crime, manipulations, sex, enmity, child rape, psychiatric depression ……well everything that’s wrong in this world and you have it in the novel. However I find my appetite for the evil is far lesser than what it used to be in my college days. I find that after 10 something atrocities I need to keep the book down and take a breather. So shall I stop reading it altogether? What you saying ….. Impossible!! How will I ever rest without knowing how it ended?

So that’s when I discovered why people end up reading more than one book at a time.

Me, I love reading one book at a time, for I am in that one make believe world and those characters are people I live with at that particular time. Can’t have too many worlds or too many characters going on at the same time. But with this book it feels like I am choking if I stay too long in this world, so I chose a safe book on L K Advani – “My life my country”. Reality and fiction, two different worlds and easier to exist in both at the same time.

You know I remember a time when I first realised that people juggle multiple books at the same time and I was totally astonished as to how they managed it. My first boss, a very nice, well respected and eminent person, used to juggle 3 to 4 books at a time. I was already in awe of him by the time I discovered that fact. Slowly it started registering how in interviews of CEO’s, CIO’s….heck all CXO’s, on the question of what are you reading now? It’s never a simple one book answer, it’s always multiple.

I do recollect how my boss had said that he enjoyed reading 3 -4 books at the same time, for it gave him an opportunity to relate content of different authors and draw his own conclusions and parallels. Whoa!!! Its one step at a time for me, I am now managing to juggle two books. Perhaps when and if I reach the advanced stages of book reading I too will be able to lay claim to what my boss has.

Bollywood AAJ KAL

After a dry spell of no movie watching I decided that my life was missing something and I had to get some spectacular visuals, good songs, happy endings and funny lines come my way. After a solid 3 movie watch I sat down with the satisfaction of an overfed obese. New York, Love Aaj Kal and Kurbaan – not bad at all!!! :) Lovely time spent hugging popcorn and peeping into the make believe world of other peoples’ lives….

And then my brain cells got ticking, quite a rare phenomenon but it did…..and I realised that all the movies I had watched was based out of foreign locations, not just a song or two in Switzerland but the characters were staying there in FOREIGN lands…….no way could these movies be hit after all the Indian masses could never identify with these guys. Well the movies were kinda nice but then I guess that’s how the chips fall. Whoooaaaa wait a min let me check the trade pundits’ reactions before I declare these movies a flop and then get to be the butt of jokes “in case I was wrong(!!)”

New York – Hit!!!

Love Aaj Kal – Mega Hit!!!

Kurbaan – Flop!!!

Okay so at least one of them was a flop. So there! But hey the other two are hits and did quite well too. So does that mean the average movie goer Indian masses are now okay with the hero – heroine being based abroad? Are we able to identify with these characters? Well intellectually speaking people are the same everywhere and the needs are the same – Roti, Kapda, aur Makaan! Just that some have white skin, others brown and yet others black and then of course there are coconuts. Whatever!!!

Okay let’s dig a little deeper shall we? There were 100 odd movies released in 2009, 114 approx if websites are to be believed. I chose out of the total, 10 movies, all of which had the entire plot based in foreign locations, the movies being –

• Aa Dekhen Zara                                           • Blue

• Chandni Chowk To China                             • De Dana Dan

• Kurbaan                                                       • Life Partner

• London Dreams                                            • Love Aaj Kal

• Main aur Mrs. Khanna                                  • New York

Offhand I already knew Aa Dekhen Zara, Chandini Chowk to China, Life Partner and Main aur Mrs Khanna were flops. They just didn’t fly…..or did they? Okay so back to the research board.

AAAANNNDDD the findings are – out of the 10 films 5 were flops (Predictable) and the rest 5 were a mix of hit, blockbuster hit (no guesses on that one!), above average and average performers. So that’s a mixed result we have there – it gives no conclusive idea as to whether its worth making a movie based at foreign locations or not. Shall we dig a bit deeper then?

Main aur Mrs.Khanna (MAMK) admittedly one of the most poorly done movies of 2009 and justifiably declared a flop. Right? Well a 22 crore budget movie which didn’t do well at the Box office but one of the most well performed movies on DTH, it grossed 21 crores from this source alone and went on to make a tidy profit when combined with the traditional sources ,i.e, theatres, music sales, etc. Chandni Chowk to China, this movie judged to be not an ordinary flop but a MAJOR flop made with a budget of 51 crores and said to have done a business of 75 crores. Guess the producers aren’t complaining are they?

Guess that sort of tips the scales doesn’t it? After all, of the 10 movies we listed, while 5 were box office declared successes, two more although declared failures were actually financial successes, which makes it a decent 7 out of 10. Which means to say that the acceptance level of films that are based in foreign locations are high. As a country we have, I guess for quite some time now enjoyed seeing lovely foreign locations, after all weren’t all Yash Raj movies of yore applauded for the lovely songs and the locations they were shot in? But to a large extent we were as an audience still not ready to identify with the majority of Indians who were living abroad and with their lives. They were after all foreign and hence a little alien to us.

With movies like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge, K3G, Bend it like Beckham the tide started changing slowly but surely. For not only were we enthusiastic to see their (Read NRI) lives but more importantly they were interested in seeing those movies. Overseas turnover was nothing to be sneezed at, with gross revenues ranging from 44 crores to 10 crores across different movies. This of course translates to a major impetus for producers and directors to make such movies.

At home our Indian Television owning homes grew from 88 million homes in 2000 to 105 million homes in 2007 to 134 million in 2009. More importantly the number of CABLE homes in India is set to cross the 100 million mark in 2010 from 90 million existing in 2009!!! As per studies conducted by TAM media, the number of cable homes has doubled in the last 6 years. Translated, we are now as a country more exposed to the world outside than ever before, which could be one of the reasons why we now have movies based abroad clicking with the Indian masses.

Also, as per the WTO projections, if current trends continue 50 million Indians will travel overseas annually come 2020. More and more Indians are today travelling abroad on business yes but also on personal vacations. Airfare to Malaysia, Singapore is far more economical than to travel within India from South to North or vice versa. As a society our aspirations and our exposure has truly enhanced.

While a Lagaan evokes an emotional response from us beyond measure a “Love aaj kal” doesn’t turn us off at all, does it? Bollywood bring on all the overseas based movies you can, for we, the Indian masses are today a truly glocalized society.

Sources – Nytimes, Business Standard, http://www.boxofficeindia.com, http://www.planetbollywood.com, http://www.wikipedia.org, http://www.pranaygupte.com

Disclaimer – Figures used in this article have been collected through secondary research and should be taken as only approximations not actuals.