Improve My Life !

While talking to a colleague in Brussels this week, she said she wants to "improve her life", what she really meant was she wants to improve her work-life balance - apparently her Dutch did not translate correctly in English. I tried to find that out of course (I am not the one who trusts on first impressions either !), I asked her, did she mean she wants to change her identity and run away to Canada or perhaps find a new partner (bling! opportunity!!) - no she did not mean neither. She meant her well deserved holiday should not be jeopardized with our commitments on her time. Of course we did not listen to her, I bought her some Leffe and explained to her the importance of work and life (yes that pithy four letter word reserved for magazine writers!)

Everybody talks about it work-life balance and if one asks people to define it - they would generally end up giving you a book to read - but can not define themselves. It is such a vague concept. It does not tell you if you should have more fun or do more work. And what if people enjoy the work that they do? Should they be working more to achieve work-life balance or less? We keep complaining that work is bad - I think that is primarily an urban thing. I don't seem people outside cities complaining about their work - or maybe it is just me. I think the civilization as it stands today has made life more comfortable and that includes millions of people doing work. Imagine you take a vacation at the same time hotel staff is on vacation, how the hell you are going to enjoy the vacation? You want to go on a picnic to improve your life and the petrol pumps go on holiday too! So if one part of the society has to enjoy life the other part still has to do the work. Is that what is work-life balance is all about? I am sure it improves the life of several million people at one go!

Friends in Small World

I was in Europe couple of weeks ago. While in London I met with quite a few friends. Friends with whom I spent most of my youth. It was an interesting experience, we would fight for or cup of tea in most cheap places in Pune and there we were drinking Starbucks on Kensington high street, like couple of snobs (I even used cab in London – I am really getting indulgent). People who could not have afforded a bottle of beer between them were drinking lager in posh London lounge! Of course we have come long way from cheap (er.. economical more like) college students to some kind of office workers. So we make some money and spend it; however we did not plan this future. A friend of mine is now Queen's subject, another one is a development executive (and a pitiful bore at that!), third one runs a company. In big scheme of things these are not small achievements. Everybody has worked hard for this. However the bond that connects has remained same. It was great fun to recall old days and talk shop.

One good thing about meeting close friends is that you don’t have to be socially polite or have inhibitions. I can be very frank, I can tell them what happens to me or my work, I don’t have to underplay it. I don’t have to gloss over the difficult subjects. I feel very relaxed in their company. This is a typical challenge I face nowadays, I can not share what I really feel to many of my office colleagues or people otherwise I meet around the world. Most of the times they are business contacts with vested interests and very few actually qualify to become good friends.

We talked about our lives and realized that the world has really become small (my mother argues that we have grown big – but then she has been commenting on my weight for a while now). We could meet as easily as we would meet in Mumbai or Pune. The travel times have come down and travel convenience has increased (still Asiad buses in India of 80’s and 90’s were better than modern day business classes of most of the airlines). Most of my friends shuttle between US, UK, India, AP and it is such a common thing. All NRI’s have their relatives distributed around the world and it makes traveling continents a necessity than novelty. The dreaded visa and other regulations are dissolving rapidly – for example one can get visa for bulk of countries in Europe at one go. This is convenience. Eventually passports and visas would become biometric so we don’t have to carry these pieces of paper around us. The world as we know it is becoming much smaller.

In my college days, I recall we used to talk about how people feel going around the world. One of our friend was in merchant navy and we had quite a bit interest in his life as he goes around the world. After a while when we all started visiting different parts of the world, the novelty kind of wore off. In our office-speak it is more important to remain connected than where we are physically. My phone keeps ringing even at odd times – in global village and 24/7 work environments, people on wrong side of time will always suffer. And I think we are getting used to this lifestyle – even to the extent that the word ‘globe trotter’ has become a bad word in social circles. People speak of going to international shopping places for Diwali. My wife likes to do shopping in Singapore or Dubai (haven’t taken her to either places since I learnt that – if she spends her money on shopping binge that is her problem; nobody is buying Prada handbags on my money – ever!). Airline delays become national news. In my childhood, when my brother first traveled on airplane from Aurangabad to Mumbai, it was a celebration moment – now my nephew complains of headache in direct flights between Mumbai and Atlanta.

I don’t know is it simply because of convenience of travel or because we are becoming more dependent on things around us. The Soya requirement of China is causing depletion of Amazon jungles, gold consumption in India has caused challenges on London exchange. Open trade and bigger businesses are causing the world to shrink to the point that everybody feels connected with each other – no matter where they are. I think that would be the greatest achievement of our times in 20^th and 21^st century – returning to a small world – where we started a million years ago!

Keep Safe Distance

How close you can be to other people? This is a perpetually troubling question to me. I am an asocial person (or in plain English a complete jerk). I do not have social skills to interact with others.  When people come and visit me at my home I have no clue what to talk to them. When I go and meet people (which happens rarely), I do not know what to speak to them. I have very few friends, something that I can count on one hand fingers, even with them I am not in touch for a long time. My wife tells me that I should be more active listener in order to be more socially conscious. My brother advised me to take interest in others lives. I find that simply boring, I realize this appears almost selfish but it is not. I mean I am not that interested in my life too! (perhaps it is too short for my taste :-)). 

I realized this inability (of being asocial) very early in my life. In school I would befriend with only those people who would follow me or listen to me. Thus I had very small group of friends. They are very loyal but I did not follow-up with them in my later life. It continued in the college life. Although I think we had a good group in the college. 

The experience of socializing with opposite sex has always been a disaster, first the girls that would befriend me would be either little light in the head or primarily interested in getting some work done out of me. There were some exceptions who had crush or too many hormones  (in either case that would still count as category of light-in-head). The fact is even at this age, I do not have a friend of opposite sex other than my wife. 

My social circle is too small, and I think I am primarily responsible for it. I can never figure out how to develop the social relationship. If I remain too distant and meet occasionally then I think I am not being nice. If I am too close, I almost feel as if the other person is getting uncomfortable with my kind of closeness – and frankly I am uncomfortable in close relationships too! It almost feels like invasion of privacy – when all people are asking is what you had for dinner.  I think there is some unwritten social rule about how close you can get to people, just like on the road, if you can not see the rear wheels of the car in front, maybe you are just too close. On the other hand if you can not read the number of the car, may be you are too far off.

It is same thing in social life, if you don't remember the name of an acquaintance then you are far off, you are discussing deoderants and coffee habits you are practically tailgating!

The Modest Country

In my knowledge, I think Scandinavian countries are the only countries in the world which are most modest. I recently finished my trip to Denmark (my childhood dream of running between mountains of cheese finally fulfilled!). The city of Copenhagen is a typical old European city with old castles and courthouses mixed with latest sky scrapers. The socialist democratic dogma is still attached to the dealings of the people. The cycle riders are many and far more fearsome than New York taxi drivers. This is summer so everybody was riding cycles, to my untrained Indian eyes, an office worker wearing suit jacket and tie and riding on bicycle was a new sight.

However what gets you most in Denmark is the modesty. The most famous Danish beer, Carlsberg is advertised as "Probably the best beer in the world" - I kid not, one can observe this on their, appropriately titled, "Probably the best website in the world". People are by and large very modest, even with per capita GDP of $46K, they still describe prices of house in matter of fact tone. Several families adopt children from Africa and Asia. Charities have been a way of living for people and most of the times it is not considered as favor to poor countries. My mind was comparing this "give" attitude with "take" attitude in my country and the contrast hit me very hard. The owning of most expensive cars is still considered a social taboo, even if it is affordable - as in person showing off things - not really acceptable in this country. The rich people do not want to show off at all, the poor people don't want to describe the poverty (hey but there are no poor people!). The economic achievements are described in simple tones, as if it was the most natural thing for a small country with hostile weather in northern seas to be the most advanced economic power.

In Denmark, either as part of the culture or simply by habit, the achievements are down played. The historical achievements are rarely mentioned, not many people describe Niels Bohr as national hero (but physicists rarely get that honor, Nobel prize winner or not). You have to actually read the Wikipedia entry to know the top industries (I mean other than Lego) in Denmark. No lavish advertisements, no history in making arguments or we-made-the world go round arguments. Simple facts, stated in such an undertone, that make you think about veracity of the claims. But then it is all true, Danes, were the big viking navigators that actually established sea routes. One of the largest merchant shipping company in the world, Maersk is Danish. Danish hospitality and open arms when it comes to charities is well known. It was also the first country to legalize the pornography. Even the advances are stated in undertone. A casual listener might feel that this country needs lot of help. In fact it is almost reverse.

Scandinavian countries outdo each other in generosity and cultural achievements, but Denmark is probably the most advanced and possibly more modest.

What do you do?

I met my old friend from school days at office today, and she asked me the most dreaded question, "What do you do other than your job?" and I fumbled (yes actually!).

I thought I had this part figured out. I thought I had a great work-life balance, but when she asked this point-blank, I really had no answer. I told her about my parenting (not very good at it -I admit), attempts at outdoor sports and she was visibly unimpressed.

This was really difficult question to answer. No matter what you do, if you can not answer this question, you are practically doomed. It means you have no life outside your job, it also means that you are really asocial person and do not meet people outside your office acquaintances (I remember an old joke - "are you asocial or do you just enjoy living in the Antarctic?"). It also means you have no hobbies and/or life (literally!).

It also reflects on the choices you have made with your life. It almost appeared as if my choice was to work for a large corporation with no identity. I tried to think hard, what was that thing that kept me running, and I realized it was all about being engaged in some creative activity. I did not start my job as a mechanism to make money. I started it as a creative gig that could also give me some money. The general idea was I could do lot many things outside the job such as painting, research, writing, reading, trekking (if health permits).

Today, I do not do any painting, my research is limited to finding new ways to teach mathematics to my son, writing does not go beyond blogs, reading is limited to newspaper and trekking - I do not do at all. I recall once upon a time I dreamed of trekking Annapurna mountains. The closest I have been was the base camp and recently to a lodge with the view of Kanchanjunga in Sikkim. The last time I held a painting brush was 3 weeks ago to clean my headset.

This was very depressing thought. I realized in the haste of living life, I actually had forgotten what it meant. Without getting too philosophical, I think somewhere in between I lost the part of life which was beyond the 9am-9pm job. It is almost time to find out what the world looks like outside the walls of the prison.. er the office. I am going to start looking for that world. After all I don't have much time.

One of the first things I would do is to go and thank my friend for opening my eyes. The only problem is, I will have to go to office for that.

Depression House

Hospitals are very depressing places. They claim to be happy places which care for people but in reality they are great big machines creating depression all around. It is difficult for them to grasp the concept that people can be happy even if they are sick. I have a terminal sickness, so I know what the end result is, however nurses still try to patronize me, junior doctors give me assurances that it will be all right. It is almost like rubbing salt. I have several scans to go through, so I go to hospitals alone (as it is they are boring places, why make others suffer?). So comes the first question,
"who is the patient?"
"me.. all of me!" (my sarcasm does not leave me, I should get rid of it some time!)
"who is with you?"
"me", by this time staff is thinking I am in a wrong hospital..

If there are people with me then they keep hampering them to leave the 'patient' alone. As if it is not important for others even to be at that place. Right.. only patients get the right to be depressed.

I am at nuclear scan and I am joking about the warm glow of radiation within as an example of pure soul. The young doctor takes it as a spiritual comment. She goes on explaining to me about death and life. I have observed it before, medical curicula should contain some sense of humour built in. Another patient with similar ailment is an old woman. She is worried about pains of radiation therapy (there are none!) and word 'cancer' has unsettled her, so I am joking with her. The lab assistant does not like it;
"Don't talk in the lab, you are a patient, be depressed; I should know, this is depression house and I work here"
He may not have said it exactly like this, but he sure meant it !

A Day Lost is a Day Gained

Back on traveling days, my wide (ok wife, little slip of tongue there... but she never reads my blog anyway) claims that I have certain liking for travel. I suspect that might be true. I was thinking about this while entering the Los Angeles International airport, and the smell of airport lounges and stale restaurants hit me really hard. The suspicion was not true after all. I hate the international travel. Crossing five continents in 3 months is bad, flying in aluminum jets is worse. With international travel come the unique problems that Columbus never faced. For example, the international date line. I am starting my homeward journey now from LA on 19th April and by the time I reach Singapore it would be early hours of 21st April. It is as if the 20th April never existed in my life. There are 24 hours in my life which would forever go unaccounted for. Would that make me younger than rest of the world? Rest of the world would be enjoying the Friday of 20th April, having meetings, dinner dates, fighting with their wives, but not me. I would never have this day in my life. When 5yrs down the line I am on my deathbed and accounting for all the good or bad things I did in my life, this one day I can never account for. Somebody would ask me, what were you doing on 20th April 2007, and my answer would be "what is 20th April 2007?", I don't even know if that day is applicable to me.
This opens up several opportunities, e.g. I could have set up all my meetings on 20th April and people would call me for attending, and could never get me. As if I am in hyperspace transitioning from one dimension to other. A complete blackout... few seconds in my life would mean 24 hours for the earthlings. Wow, I am really onto something here. The biggest possible scam of the life. I would doing this feat again in May when I travel to San Diego for another conference. As it is I have lot of less time in my life, this crossing date lines in reverse direction is costing me several more hours.

I wonder some times how much time I might have spent in travel. It could be some thing that I should be able to reuse, you know, like reclaiming the life spent in sitting in the airplanes. It would be fun that way, like, give me back my 20hrs wasted at Tokyo, due to canceled flight. I think I could make at least a year this way.

Traveling is always tiresome activity. No matter how glamorous it may appear. Sitting in one seat for 20hrs is no joke, neither is getting too many unsolicited requests of help from unattended old ladies (one even used my phone to call somebody... I am feeling terrible about it now!). I think it is my face, I look like a person who is gullible enough to be fleeced. Even the beggars become very forceful when they are talking to me. All over the world I get mugged, cheated, fleeced for money. I think like interpol, the anti-social elements world over must be having record of world travelers, and I must be ranking pretty high in the category of 'easy-to-rob'. The cab drivers always ask me for tip, while several others get away without. The check-in lady is always very arrogant with me. The airport helpers always show me the 'tips please' board, and probably are always remarking on my back. Invariably I end up spending more money than I can afford to. Just the bad luck I guess (or gullible face) whichever way you look at it, it is a personal characteristics that affects me a great deal. And I am saying nothing about all those days I am loosing simply because of the rotation of earth.

Disneyland Nightmare

After 24hours of back-to-back flights over Indian Ocean and Pacific, I am back in US of A again. The event I am attending is for some ironical reason is in Anaheim CA i.e. *very* close to Disneyland. The customs officer at Los Angeles airport was encouraging me to visit the theme park. I disappointed him informing that I really have to attend bunch of business meetings.

After flying in world's smallest flight to Orange county (for some stupid reason my corporate travel desk thinks it is easier to take flight from Los Angeles to Orange County and then go to Anaheim than just drive the 26 miles in 35mins from Los Angeles to Anaheim), I landed up in Disney's Grand Californian Hotel. Disney owns several places around Disneyland (duh..) including bunch of hotels. I did not realize what was going to hit me, till I saw that the hotel valets dressed as Cinderella dwarfs... argh! The reception counter staff dress looks like carpenters; I asked Cheyenne (blond.. figures) what the dress meant, she did not know. She wanted a photo-identity and did not know that passport has address in it. But worse was yet to come...
The hotel was full of children and their families; Family is a good thing to have... at home. In hotel you expect an alert staff, good room service, clean towels, not children running through the passage! The room was another nightmare, modeled after Winnie the Pooh's house, there are poster bed (ahhhh) and the TV shows 4 channels of cartoons. The window opens the view of Disney theme park. Several tourist-type people with camera bouncing on their bellies are walking around in shorts and sneakers. I am in the tourist paradise. The bed side mints are in the shape of Donald duck. The breakfast menu contains 7 varieties of kiddie breakfasts, including but not limited to, 'Mickey Mouse shaped Waffles'. The restaurant is called 'Storyteller's Cafe', idea being children would be told stories while parents stuff them in this land of plenty. The hotel has special road to Disney park, every normal adult comes out with Mickey ears on their heads. In my house I watch cartoons all the time due to my son, in here I pay $224 per day to watch SharkTales on TV (3 times in the day!) and cheering children shrieks from theme park (the room is very close to the them park) in the background. I was dreaming pager boys dressed as chipmunks.. maybe too many of Mickey mouse chocolates.
Disneyland, of course is and was famous for its marketing. When it started the TV advertising actually made it so popular. In smack middle of there is Disney Drive, Downtown Disney and Disneyland Street. It is like a set of people living inside a theme park. I wonder what their suicide rate would be... It is just too much of advertising. Thankfully Starbucks came in standard cup and tasted same (another reason why you love the consistency introduced by Americans).
A visit to Disneyland is of course on the cards, but without my son, I will have to be fairly drunk to spend $50 for a theme park visit (and actually do it). Maybe I should get my family here too, it might be a pleasant change to have my son spill some his ice cream on the hotel passage.

Well I have to live through this Disneyland nightmare, my only revenge is to watch tacky action movies on TNT...

Land of Artificial Islands

I think Japan is probably the only country in the world which creates land (of course Dubai is catching up, as my friend pointed out). It sounds little creepy, a-la Lex Luther style. The country is so small and densely populated that they simply run out of land so they end up creating new one.
My last day in Japan, I am sitting on one such artificial island based airport (Kansai) it is little scary when the plane takes off and lands, all you see is South China sea on both sides and no land.
The first thing that hits you when visiting Japan is density. It is ironic for a person like me, coming from one of the highly populated countries in the world, but there it is. There are no vast open spaces, there are simply houses and houses and.... houses, well you get the point. Every vacant place is taken up by something or other. Everything is compact and close, the houses are so close together, that it almost seems like one long house in the lane. No wonder Japanese are high on suicide rate, it just gets on your nerves. Even the temples and monasteries are closely packed together. I went to the Golden Temple, it turned out to be complex of several temples hidden in the woods.

As necessity drives invention, the hotel room I was staying is 12feet by 16 feet including a bathroom and oversized bed (well it appeared oversized to me relatively!). The bathrooms are made of plastic (I kid not) and fixtures are attached to the walls. Japanese people, ever the inventors, have found simple yet risky solution for the land Vs density problem... High rise buildings! simple because you can get many people sleeping on each other (pun intended), risky because earthquakes and typhoons. I was surprised to see so many tall buildings in a country which is practically sitting on a earthquake-mine. Tokyo is the worst... and all this time I was worried of increasing FSI in Pune.

The city of Osaka where I lived is 'B' grade metropolis with all 'A' grade amenities. Japan was reconstructed after WWII by Americans so all cities look alike, barring few temples, evidences of Japanese electronic giants, and Japanese names nothing is Japanese about cities. Perhaps villages are more, but I never visited them. Kyoto, which my Japanese friends recommended as 'the' old city, looked more like some California town, complete with 'American Chopsuey Noodles' being sold at nearby restaurant. My hotel had shopping complex selling ever-so spreading McDonalds and Starbucks. I must confesss that this was the only time I liked consistency, i.e. I knew exactly what I was getting. I could not say the same thing for all other Japanese eateries.

All the menus in Japanese hotels were in Japanese (prices in English numerals!), and by looking at picture everything looked like:
a) fried
b) noodly
c) some fishy thing with seaweed.
My friend, who was my escort for weekend picnics went out of the way to ensure I get to test everything original Japanese, so I practically tried every kind of Japanese food, except Sushi (I never liked this stuff!).
I also had a typical Japanese evening, which translated in English means, sake with some Japanese snack food, served by pretty waitress - sake without any food served by grumpy old men in a different bar - cold noodles (SOBA) served by old waitress with green tea as dinner.
Of course, I could not test Sake due to my medical condition but I had lot of food, including the SOBA. My chopstick skills were really tested in Japan, some hotels were considerate for gaijan while others simply wanted you to convert, so you sit on floor, drink lot of green tea with your lunch or dinner and make fool of yourself trying to eat noodles with chopsticks. Interestingly in Japan it is ok to slurp noodles, my son would love the country. I can never get used to slurping the noodles, so I suffered silently, even at a times by burning my lips and tongue.

Everything in Japan smells of fish or sea-weed. Hotels, dishes, cups everything. Even in cities which are not close to sea, like Kyoto, general smell in the air is of fish or sea-weed. I particularly did not mind it, but it takes little getting used to. I remembered the experiences from 'Geisha Story' where the heroine gets harassed because of her fishing village smell.

Japanese are voracious when it comes to fish, they practically eat 117 types of fish (translated in quantity that is huge amount of fish - tons of fish every year). I wanted to visit the fish-market but could not make it, perhaps next time...

I had several impressions of Japan before, some of them are still valid, i.e. Japanese people are very friendly, they go out of the way to help foreigners. Unique experience for Indians!

Everything is compact and neat, this applies from dinner table to sleeping bed to automatic toilets (well the toilet functions... you still have to do your job). The legendary service and respect in daily lives, even the policeman bows to you. At the airport, customs officer was practically groveling after looking at my business card. I never carry my card with me, in this electronic world none are needed. However in Japan the culture of exchanging the visiting cards still exist. So I was sitting like a fool when everybody came by and presented their cards to me, I had very few to return back. Japanese women are really beautiful and wear really skimpy clothes even on the cold day. The tea ceremony is for real and costs 500 Yen (with small dessert). The bowing by juniors to seniors is real (even in business world with highly modern business model). At meetings you see everybody practically groveling to each other. Culturally 'respect' is far more important thing in Japanese life than anything else.

It is an interesting country, with lot of friendly people. Just keep open mind when eating the raw octopus...

Deodorant Terrorist

The airline security becomes more and more stupid (I think there was a phrase about dumb and dumber). Yesterday travelling domestic, I was required to trash by deodorant and aftershave and toothpaste. Apparently the security took me for somebody who can cause sufficient damage with a can of deodorant, some aftershave and tiny travel pack toothpaste. I practically felt like a high flying terror suspects using chewing gum as explosives. This was my moment of glory and I was not going to let it go. I ask the public servant (aka CISF - your safety is our concern!), the challenge with scanning my handbag. He does not like people questioning his authority, besides he has his orders. Ok.. using my stubborn Indian attitude, I want to meet his supervisor. Supervisor is very emphatic in describing that security is the foremost concern. I agreed, after all I was the one who was flying, not these uniformed public servants. However he could not answer logically for banning the deodorant. I used my final tact, and started talking in Hindi, but my suit wouldn't allow him to talk in Hindi. He sticks to 'propah' English. By this time I am getting little frustrated, after all this was an issue of personal hygiene. I was going to stay for a day and I am used to living in land of deodorants, like Rohinton Mistry's characters, BO was not in scheme of things. All I saw was despair and disaster facing me. The officer still is scrutinizing the bag.
I said, 'Do you really think if I had something interesting in there, I would have argued with you so much?, C'mon be serious'. He is serious.
'We have orders and we are just doing our duty, and this is for your safety.'
'Do your orders say that AXE Deodorant is dangerous for passengers?' I thought for a moment that he took the Ads for AXE rather seriously (and probably has never heard of 11th commandment).
'Couldn't you read the board? You look like a person who can read. It says no gels or liquid'
'Ok but you scanned *this* liquid, if it would have been pressurized nerve gas and I was playing my presumed terrorist role, I would have spread it by now!'
'We have orders and we are just doing our duty, and this is for your safety.'
'Ok, once again, explain to me how combination of AXE Deodorant, Anchor Toothpaste and Nivea Aftershave lotion can be dangerous to flying public?' Apparently I was missing a great deal and using this deadly explosive combination for several years... in the hindsight this explains my
cancer. Tired and frustrated, knowing my plot of causing sensation in fellow human beings regarding my personal hygiene has been foiled, I took out my terror equipments and trashed them. The officer is happy, I am happy and the world at large is far safer than it was before. The moment I landed, the first stop was buy a new deodorant. However while returning I was more blatant in displaying it and apparently not everybody in CISF is that worried about deodorant brandishing terrorists (read sensible blokes).
This episode was revealed number of things to me, such as why all terrorists have long berds (no need of after shave), why Osama uses goat shit as deodorant (there is no security restrictions on carrying your pet goat with you, but carry a deo from the supermarket and you are busted) and why terrorists have to live in cave (nobody cares about the breath). The experienced terrorists have learnt that using things like deo, aftershave can actually get them on the security radar. The aspiring terrorists like me, on the other hand, make these silly mistakes and get caught.
Anyway lesson learnt, no more deo for me when travelling, and if it bothers the fellow passengers, so be it, it is for their own safety. The al-Qaidas of the world are going to miss me but deo-free, safer world is better world.