From dan at rohtbart.com Mon Jan 2 22:31:31 2006 From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart) Date: Mon Jan 2 22:31:34 2006 Subject: [Travel] Cheese, shampoo, and other Indian phenomena Message-ID: <1239.202.54.251.220.1136259091.squirrel@webmail2.pair.com> Greetings from New Delhi! This trip has been an amazing whirlwind so far. New record for time to first antibiotic: four days. But I'm up early, ready to bite the ass off a bear, and ready to share some fun observations. I realized that the problem before was that nobody was doing stupid things. After New Years, the ice is broken. A quick aside on Delhi vs. Mumbai. Mumbai, for all its poverty, was a bustling and active city. Very high energy. Gorgeous vistas over the Arabian Sea. The New York of India (or is New York the Mumbai of the States?). Delhi still has the feel of an old colonial town. Swooping traffic circles have parks inside them (with no squatters). There is a shopping area straight out of Hanoi...small shops with eight feet of frontage pack side to side, some with awnings, some without. All with wares in their windows. Aged concrete towers fifteen feet above you, with an arch someone once thought was decorative. We always sweated in Mumbai, but here in Delhi, it's like October. So everyone has a change-of-seasons cold. So my last question: how do you stop people from re-filling Aquafina bottles with local tap water and selling them as bottled? On every bottle here, there's a label "crush the bottle after use" Seriously. Not reduce-reuse-recycle. Crush. It's a real hierarchy-of-needs issue. Clean water comes well before low landfill. The best unintentional comedy moment came hands-down at the Ministry of Planning. They are responsible for inter-departmental mediation, long-term vision for the country, and coordination between departments such as utilities, infrastructure, health and education. We had an hour with the Minister of Planning, and just after he said that beyond infrastructure, India needed to look at other significant issues like poverty and education...the power went out. Complete blackout. Snickers. The Minister assures us that the power will come back on in a moment. When it does, there are grins and knowing glances across the room. After the meeting, we all trooped off to the bathroom before our bus trip (average time 1 hour) only to find that the faucets don't work. As the old joke goes: at Columbia, they teach us not to pee on our hands. But the faucets don't work! At the planning commission! India is most definitely a developing nation. It's got a ways to go. So how did we end up in a blackout with the Minister of Planning? Connections. Our meetings have come through the developed networks of the families of our organizing students. One kid has two personalities on the phone. During the daytime it's "Hello Dr. Piramel. This is Dr Mehta's son, Rajesh." But at night, it's "Dude, it's Rajesh. Where are we partying? No. Not good. Get your whole bus and meet us at Park." Last night he mobilized Wharton and Stanford to meet us for drinks. How did we know they were in-country too? We're all so obvious. Seriously obvious. Big tour buses. Meetings with the same executives (some meetings are already happening with other schools, but our networks got us similar meetings. When one executive presented to us, her Powerpoint included "Columbia Business School" but the title of the file was "Presentation to Stanford Business School." We'll forgive her: her daughter is at that school. She was the second person Rajesh called to party last night). There's a little bit of rivalry between the schools, through the general Sour Graps approach to each others' agenda. Each school is here for about 10 days, but approaches time differently. Fifteen minutes into a tea with Wharton, their organizers circulated the room, muttering "Drop and go. Drop and go" so the students put down full plates of excellent food and ran to the bus. Great, guys. That's totally how you should act as guests at the Prime Minister's mansion. Yes, we were guests at the Prime Minister's mansion. Yes, the speech was awesome. After a few minutes of opening remarks, he opened the floor for questions. He answered serious questions regarding competition with China, priorities for his administration, and his learnings about leadership through the years. He was a genuine and humble man, and a great joy to meet. We were very lucky. So was Wharton. Stanford, however, had an entire section reserved and missed the meeting. Yeah, a third of the room was empty. When they came in, as the photo-op was happening, they got a few minutes standing around with the PM, and then he left. Turns out the President kept them long. Should we be impressed? In theory. But on the trip to the PM's home, before we knew about Stanford, the Indians on our trip told us about the President's role. Generally a figurehead. Almost useless. Truly useless is the Vice President. So Stanford missed intelligent Q&A with the most powerful man in India, a respected former professor whose financial reforms opened India, to have tea with the figurehead. Can you hear the sour grapes? This trip has been tremendously different from my summer trip to Asia, and I'm settling into accepting that. These cities are not driven by tourism. We hardly make a blip, and we're staying at business hotels at bulk rates. This trip can't afford me a close encounter with a normal local family, nor even the chance to see rural markets. It's not wired for that. But it's wired for access, and I've been enjoying the time immensely. Though I'm not generally star-struck, I made sure to sit front-row center for the PM's talk. And sitting there, relished that I was 20 feet from him, hearing him talk about the difficulties of his country. A huge experience, and a trip of a lifetime...a different life than I had when my highlight was 10-cent beers on the streets of Hanoi. So I've learned some stuff about India and developing countries, and I figured that it makes sense to share, so you can Please Please Please correct me if I am wrong. First off, to answer Dave Nurenberg's question: Indian Food in India is really freaking good. Paneer is my new chicken. Paneer is a soft cheese with a mild flavor, imagine a less-dense buffalo mozzarella. Looks like tofu, tastes like heaven, and I don't have to feel all vegetarian when I eat it. Tofu makes me feel like a wimp. Paneer makes me feel adventurous. India is complex. Each of the 27 states has its own language. Their climate runs from the Himalayas to the Equator. They have two disputed territories in the North, one with Pakistan (Kashmir) and one with China. The PM was quite happy to tell us that relations with China have progressed to the point where he believes that they can begin talking about the territory. States, I suppose, move very slowly. I'd already have offered a best-of-three rock-paper-scissors. India is complex, and complex is hard. Approaching the trip as a business school student, I've been trying to learn about not only production/outsourcing here, but also the difficulties of deploying a new product. When a foreign company comes to India with an existing product offering, they need to deal with at least 27 cultures, a handful of major religions, and families that often can't put together enough Rupees to make decisions we take for granted. American Shampoo came to India in American-size bottles, but did not sell well. When the same shampoo was put into 5-ml packets (promotional size), it sold very well. Indians needed to buy shampoo in small quantities because they could not afford to invest in a large bottle, even if it meant reducing their per-use costs. This analysis cuts a broad swath across the social and economic trends in India. But it's not complete. The rich are getting richer, and bringing any products to them is its own puzzle. The gap is widening between them and the poor. And the key to success here is still family connections, not education. Education can lift an Indian to a job as a engineer, where he will be paid well compared to his neighbors, but still a fraction of what he would earn in the West. Our debate here has centered on whether that's enough money. Should the Indian dream be something above the global lower-middle class? Many of the leaders we've met have couched their corporate desire for growth in nation-building terms. An industrial company is building a stronger India, and laying the foundation for future growth. They have a strong petrochemical interest and have a chain of gas stations. The most brilliant item on their agenda is to set up truck stops along the new national highway system. They will be THE truck stops, and a major advancement in Indian truck stop technology. Seriously! Right now, along highways, there are cots under vague tents, with a random walla or two selling meat on a stick. This company will put in American-style truck stops, circa 1960, with actual places to shower and sleep. It's a huge change. And it's just an example of the industries that will crop up around Indian growth. India's national highway system is somewhere between nonexistent and useless. So the government plans to run thousands of miles of highway to connect Mumbai (west coast), Delhi (north-central), Kalkata (Calcutta: north-east coast), and Chennai (Madras: south-east coast). This road has clearly been named by a nation of engineers: *The Golden Quadrilateral.* After the giggling, I remind you that the Golden Triangle is not necessarily a compliment. The opium center of southeast Asia, at the boundary of Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar is also called the Golden Triangle. OK, time for me to find Betsy and discover the joys of international price discrimination. For the non-business-school set, that means stuff is cheaper here. Happy New Year to all, a bit belatedly. Sorry I haven't been replying to your emails as quickly as I'd like, but time is a bit short here. All the best, Dan From dan at rohtbart.com Mon Jan 9 16:07:06 2006 From: dan at rohtbart.com (Dan Rohtbart) Date: Mon Jan 9 16:07:21 2006 Subject: [Travel] Jet lag writing...the rest of the trip Message-ID: <4k6l9v$4gd45c@smtp01.mrf.mail.rcn.net> Greetings from New York City! So maybe I fell behind in these updates. But now I'm home and jet lagged and fresh from a phone call to Vietnam to order more suits. So aside from Sportscenter, food delivery, and wireless internet in my room, I'm ready to share some more experiences. Sorry for the length, but it seemed better than a handful of short emails over the last three days. First off, forty people on a bus will get sick. Especially when a dozen like late-night clubbing. One guy had the doctor come up to his hotel room and leave a bag of drugs. At one point, I slept 24 of 30 consecutive hours. Betsy was a trooper, never missing a beat. When I was growing up, my sister and I used to split turns in the front seat. She'd sit there on the way to the store. I'd sit there on the way back. This was, of course, before children in the front seat was a sign of parental incompetence, a mortal sin, and bad for college acceptance. OK, I made two of those up. And in those halcyon (also now illegal, though for good reasons) days of 1984, sharing time was a good resolution. Betsy let me sit on the aisle for our flight to India, bearing with two connections and crunching next to Chris, a friendly classmate who clearly played high school basketball. Naturally, I offered to take the middle on the flight home. And the first leg seated me next to a different friendly classmate, who had clearly played high school football, and who was bundled in a sweater and jacket, but still shivering because of his fever. He crammed into a window seat as well as he could, and I too whatever space remained. So my jet lag is no better from sleep. And based on that sentence, my English is shot too. What haven't I told you? Everything. A few hours after my last email, we got some fun news. Our meeting with the Prime Minister had been picked up by the press. Articles in three newspapers. Photos in three newspapers. Photo of the PM with three Columbia students behind him. Such quality. We left the hotel giddy, teasing our classmates about their fifteen minutes of fame. They each called their families and had them pick up extra copies of the newspapers. After my crankiness about people not opening up, I realized that I was too quick, and had been missing late-night drinking sessions. The openness led to humor, both intentional and unintentional. On the road to the Mumbai airport for our flight to Delhi, the bus was stopped by the police. After a few minutes, our local guide said "I guess the police are looking for a little money" and stepped off the bus. He yells at the police, who yell back. Shout shout shout. Handshake. Gets back on the bus. The bribe: 50 Rupees. A buck and a quarter. Talk about underestimating demand! That wasn't the only bus-related entertainment. We snapped pictures from bus tours. And as we toured Mumbai, the bus rolled towards a building with American flags flying.and armed guards. The tour guide yelled "Put your cameras down! If the guards see them, they will detain us for six hours! Stop laughing! Don't even show them your cameras!" as we saw some moderately interested local security guards surrounding the compound. And on our way from Delhi to Agra (onto Agra in a moment) Rajesh (club-loving kid with two phone personalities) decides that he really wants a cup of coffee.so when he sees a statue on the side of the road, he announces "Look at that huge statue of Vishnu! Let's stop for photos!" and charges off the bus the second it stops. Professor Wadhwa looks out the side window, shakes his head, and explains to the bus that the statue is Shiva, and Rajesh is simply thirsty. Before Agra, one last meeting. An outsourcing center in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of Delhi. Gurgaon is to Delhi like Burlington/Waltham is to Boston.if those suburbs had been undeveloped land before the dotcom boom. We hear about the cost benefits to the client, which work out to 30-40%, even after additional telecom and management costs. After the presentation, we hit the call center floor. Wow. Cube after cube of people handling support calls. The whole engine runs on two metrics: average call time and customer satisfaction surveys (1-10% of customers are offered a survey). I was allowed to sit next to a support pro and listen in on a support call. Customer: My cablemodem still doesn't work. Support: Let's try plugging your cablemodem directly into the comput- Customer: I tried that! And it didn't work! Support: I'd like to run some diagnostics here, but I need you to connect the modem first. Customer: Oh, ok. Support: Can you please hold while I run the diagnostic? She puts the call on hold and takes off her headset. I ask with a smile: "Are you really running a diagnostic, or just cooling her out?" Smile. She's running a diagnostic, but she needs the customer to cool off. She tells me that the customer isn't ready to accept her support. Very cagey. We get to chatting. This is her first job out of college, and she's happy with what she's doing. She plans to stay for the foreseeable future, but would eventually like to get into HR, because she likes working with people. And for how she is treated, she says that you just keep your eyes on the two numbers, and everything works out. The minimum education requirement to work there is a college degree. They get English language training, with the accent of the client company's choice. And the industry average salary is $400 per month. The salary is good for the region, and buys them a good lifestyle. We didn't get to go into details about her life, but she was happy with the job and the pay. So to understand how good this business is, just think about how much more a US tech support rep would cost, and bear in mind that the savings to the client are only 30-40%. No wonder a major US company bought this outfit just before the little call center had its IPO. And that's all the business we had. Great trip. Very educational. Now the tourism. We drove from Delhi to Agra early in the morning, amid Rajesh's confusion over the statue. The highways were clogged with traffic, mainly when some cattle was drawing a cart, slowing down a truck that we wanted to pass. The highway custom in India is to honk before passing, as a warning. Our driver beat a staccato rhythm for five hours to Agra. Driving is on the left side of the road, moderately disorienting, but you get accustomed to it. Our two sightseeing days, Agra and Jaipur, were perfect: clear blue skies, temps in the sixties, very comfortable in a shirt and jeans. A complete miracle. (side note: just made a cup of Masala Tea, which brews much more bitter than junky black tea I'm used to) We first saw the Taj Mahal from the Agra Fort, where Shah Jehan lived and watched over that tomb of his beloved queen. Late in his life, he was imprisoned there by his son, and lived out his days gazing at the Taj Mahal. Absolutely gorgeous. Myself, I would have picked a location a little farther from the highway. All the honking disturbs the romance. At least it reminded me of my apartment. They are protecting the Taj from pollution, so busses can only come within a few kilometers before you transfer onto an electric bus. (yes, that's no less pollution, but the powerplant is far from the Taj). We pile onto the bus Indian style, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder. We pass camels and elephants and pile out at the gate to the Taj. We walk through an unplugged metal detector and into a nondescript atrium. A hundred yards later, we turn right and see a magnificent red gate, six stories high with a four story arch. Through the gate, under the archway, in the relative darkness, and the Taj glows in the distance. Out of the arch, and we're in front of the Taj, a half-mile away. The Taj is as beautiful as you think it might be, and supremely photogenic. Those towers on the corners are actually much closer to the main building than they appear in photos. The Taj sits on expansive grounds, with two reflecting pools, and a pair of red buildings on either side. The central building is a mausoleum, and the two red buildings are a mosque and guest quarters. You need to remove your shoes before walking on the highest level, because of the mosque and the tomb. The tomb is ornately carved with flowers emerging from the marble. All floors are solid white marble, for hundreds of feet. As I looked around the mosque, the Muslim call to prayer rang out. A lone muezzin stood before the mosque and called out his majestic, musical song, with the Taj Mahal squarely set behind him. As we meet the group to leave the Taj Mahal, five guys come back to the group breathlessly laughing. Greg's walking boot is making a clicking noise. Jay's jeans are grass-stained and torn at the crotch. He pulls his shirt up a few inches to reveal a slightly bleeding brushburn, the kind you'd get from running through a bush or belly flopping onto the ground. Turns out he did both. See, there's a little contest going on among the first-year students. We have a book assigned to us before the semester starts, and the contest is to show yourself reading it in the most outstanding circumstances. Brad got a snake charmer to lay a cobra across his shoulders while he read the book. Rafique pretended to run from a herd of cattle outside the Taj Mahal. And then these guys decided that they wanted to get a picture of the monkeys at the Taj Mahal with the book. I love monkeys. My little guy in Cambodia was awesome and more fun than a barrel of, um, he was fun. But monkeys are much stronger for their size than humans, and I would never play with an animal strong enough to break my finger. Or a wild animal. That travels in packs. These geniuses found a smaller monkey that they determined were not the local alpha monkey. They set the book down on the path with the only food they had: some Chiclets. They turned on their videocamera and watched the monkey approaching the book. And then its mother approached, saw the guys, and bared her teeth. Jay decided that he was bigger than the monkey, could intimidate it, and bared his teeth back and hissed. When you went into the woods for the first time, didn't someone tell you not to mess with a mother and her baby? She'll do anything, even buy a very expensive trendy stroller to fill up my elevator and block my sidewalks. The mother charged Jay, and as he turned to run, a male monkey came from the left side and charged the other guys. They move in packs, guys! At this point the video gets choppy. There's a lot of swearing. You see Jay turn in panic and run through a bush. The camera shakes from running and one guys yells "there's a man down" as Greg's boot breaks and he trips, gets back up, and keeps running. You see Jay stumble for no reason and bellyflop onto the grass. The monkeys barely moved from their original position. Most people give up now, but Jay needs his copy of the book back. He'll later try to get an elephant to pick it up, where it gets covered in dirt and elephant snot, and begins to stick to high hell. But the monkeys won't let the guys near it. The most diplomatic of these panting geniuses asks a tourist to please pick up their book as they walk by. The camera is rolling, and you wait for screaming, but the monkeys are only mad at our mental midgets and let the new guy walk by and pick up the book. Monkeys are not the only animals that can use tools. We pile onto the bus and count the losses. Monkeys 2, students 0. Jay gets an alcohol swab and Neosporin for his trouble. If any of these guys get summer jobs before I do, I'm adopting a parrot and training him to sit on my shoulder and yell insults. The drive to Jaipur is dark and memorable. Without a web of highways, India offers us a single-lane road with dirt shoulders for the five hour trek, but it is the main road between Agra and Jaipur, so we are constantly driving on the shoulder to let traffic pass in the other direction. As celebration or distraction, our local tour guide pulls a case of giant beers from the front and passes them around. Then a bottle of scotch. Then another. We're well and truly tanked by the time we arrive at a truck stop for a bathroom break. (I'm sparing you the intermediate bathroom breaks and the drunken irreverence, photos, and chasing of photographers) The truck stop opens for us, as the forty of us eat forty grilled cheese sandwiches and fries. Loading back onto the bus, almost everyone passes out. Ten people crown the back of the bus with more drinks and party the rest of the way. I sleep like a log in Jaipur. Jaipur is different. Exotic. Desert kingdom, complete with pack camels that have patterns shaved/branded into their sides. Market town with stray cows and wild monkeys. I could be any time. We drive up to the fort (elephant rides have been curtailed since a tour guide was trampled a few months earlier. The existing elephants were replaced by new, unionized elephants, who may only carry three trips per day and spend the rest of the day posing for pictures. The elephants are beautiful, large, strong, and grey, with elaborate designs drawn on their faces and trunks with multicolored chalk), driving past camel-drawn carts and tour elephants returning from their last tour of the day. Livestock lingers on the sides of the alleyway up to the fort: cows, boars. Stray dogs roam everywhere, as always. People are bathing, working, resting, selling. When we arrive at the fort and look down, it's clear how strategic the high ground is. This ten minute drive would be an hour's hike under a rain of arrows from the fort. How did anyone defeat these kingdoms without air cover? The fort was built for a king and his twelve wives, each woman with her own quarters and her own stairway for the king.he never had to reveal to the other eleven whose bed he was in that night. We saw similar heating and cooling mechanisms as Agra Fort, miracles of luxury in the desert. Cooling was done by trickling water over marble screens, intricately carved and tapered at both ends so the wind accelerates as it passes through. Putting your face near the screen leaves spots on your cheek buffeted and spots tranquil. In the old market area, the city's roads are choked with traffic from cars, tuk-tuks (called moto-rickshaws here), rickshaws, motorcycles, people, camel-drawn carts, stray cows, touts selling their wares, and any of the above parked on the sidewalk. Betsy and I break from the group and investigate the largest stone observatory in the world, Jantar Mantar. It's fantastic. There are ten foot sundials all over, gauging the sun's position in the astrological signs. There are devices measuring sun angle, position, and path. There's a traditional (time-telling) sundial that's so tall I get a little dizzy standing at the top of it. It's accurate to 20 seconds, through carvings in the giant marble arc underneath. Its older brother sits just behind it: ten times bigger and accurate to 2 seconds. All this was built in the eighteenth century, and copies of it were built in four other cities. Betsy and I took a picture in front of the world's largest sundial, which she is proud of, because she is with the world's biggest nerd. In sickness and in health. Our evening in Jaipur was at "Desert Trails" which we were told we could not travel to by taxi; we needed to meet the bus at 7:30 at the hotel. It was dark as we left. We turned right, turned right onto a driveway, and didn't see another person for twenty minutes. Dirt road, no lights, no signs, no guard rails. After fifteen minutes, we started joking about marauders, until we saw some guys sitting around an idling jeep, smoking cigarettes. Real horror movie stuff. When the bus slowed, people started muttering about not helping them fix their jeeps. But it turned out that the last few miles were too rough for the bus, and these guys were going to drive us up to the dinner. After some big turns and dips, we crested a hill and saw some bonfires going near a lit stage. And halleluiah, an open bar. It's 40 degrees, we're in the desert, but we've got fire. A dance troupe takes the stage, twirling in what must be traditional Rajasthani dances. The girls put some rubber halo on their heads, then a jar on the halo, then HUH? they light the jar on fire! Twirling, twisting, dancing, smiling, a wonderful routine. They give the firepots back, and one girl steps down from the stage and puts a stack of seven pots on her head. More spinning, dancing, but with more dipping and worm-like motions. She picks up a piece of paper from the ground with her teeth, while balancing the jars on her head. Her assistant puts a pie pan on the ground, and she steps in and balances by tipping it. Then he adds some glasses in the pie pan, and she balances on the glasses. Amazing stuff. Smiling the whole time. More dancing, some food, more dancing, more fire, a fire eater. The fires are dying down, so we add more logs. If a log won't go up immediately, the fire eater pours something on it. Don't try this at home. The lights go out. Boom. Fireworks. Absolutely beautiful. I can't believe Stoney bought them for only $50. Yes, one of our guys bought fireworks. And yes, he was going to fire them off before we got on the plane. But when I congratulate him, he points to a pile of boxes on his chair. Those fireworks came from the camp. His fireworks were ready to go. I hid. No questions asked. He busts out some sparklers, roman candles, and other toys, then goes off to the concrete slab to launch his big fireworks. Some bottle rockets. Two real fireworks. No injuries. Counting our blessings, we notice that there are no performers, but music is coming from backstage. One of our guys, Night Vic, is partying with the band. Vic (like Rajesh) has two personalities. Daytime Vic and Night Vic. Daytime Vic is pictured with the Prime Minister of India. Night Vic gets wasted and sings with Professor Wadhwa on the tour bus. And Night Vic is dancing his own Indian Jig to the raggedy music in the backstage hut. Tea all around, clapping, singing, chanting, laughing. We head out of the dressing room and back to our fires. Pretty soon we're on the buses and back in our hotel rooms. Our last morning, some guys come down full of stories, but without a look of satisfaction in their eyes. Drinking in the hotel bar, they learned that a beauty pageant queen (and actress) was staying in the hotel. They found her at a bar, breezed by her security guards, and one guy asked her if he could buy her a drink. As she looked appalled, the actor sitting next to her told our guys that it was a private party, not a good time, and they should just head out..and our guys listened. Then spent a while scheming how to apologize. Flowers? A cake? Sooner or later (probably later) they realized how stalkerish they were, and gave up the ghost. Word is she left the hotel early in the morning with an armed escort. Don't worry.they're just finance nerds. Maybe she thought they might audit her. And the rest is conclusion. We left Jaipur at 10 am by bus, and watched the scenery change from camel-drawn carts to fields of bright yellow flowers to farms to Gurgaon, where all the new firms are building up offices. Traffic. Smog. Dinner. Airport. We limp onto a 3 am flight. From our hotel to our apartment, traveling home took 40 consecutive hours. On the upside, our last flight included two guys I knew from college, so we caught up for ten minutes until one guy said "I don't know if you think I'm drunk, but my sleeping pill is kicking in now. We'd better talk more later" and then he was out. So all told, a great trip. Met the Prime Minister. Saw the Taj Mahal. Wasn't attacked by monkeys, but got to mock some people who were. Ate well. Saw lots of camels and elephants. And I haven't even scratched the surface of India. I feel like there's a lot I don't understand. And while I saw southeast Asia as a place I'd visit once (and needed to get the most out of), I will be back to India. I may even grudgingly go back to Mumbai and Delhi, if there's a good draw. But I still want to see the east, the south, the west, and more of the north. So that's everything. Wow. I'm looking forward to going back. All the best, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/travel/attachments/20060109/69f74fa5/attachment.html