BRAToSPHERE

Category: ARTICLE

  • Flight to Catch

    I just spoke about  Business travel and here I have an episode to narrate of just missing a potential stranded situation.

    After many days, and many a cancellations, I was bound to travel to a southern city earlier this week. The plan was simple. I fly out through a Jettly charter in the evening, spend the night in a hotel and return the next evening after completing my business in the city. A short sweet business trip, like the countless many I have had.

    This trip seemed to have been jinxed right from the word go!

    The trip planning begins about a month back. I was to visit three cities in a span of 10 days, and i book my tickets for some time in mid-November after confirmation to the stakeholders and aligning everyone. For once, I had made all the bookings well in advance.

    I had scheduled an action packed week.

    Alas! Like most of the planning, this was not to be and the trip had to be postponed due to some circumstances. All three trips had to be cancelled. While cancellation I was made to realize by the travel agent that the flight tickets to this south Indian city are not refundable and I could rather reschedule the trip for no penalty. Nice! I would hate wasting the company resources, and once again after aligning the requisite stakeholders I reschedule my trip to the first week of December.

    I again start planning.

    One night before the travel day, I happened to meet a friend who was visiting from the same South Indian city. We had dinner together and caught up with each other’s lives and work. It was a wonderful evening and the background thought all the time was – I am to visit his city the next day. What a coincidence!

    On the day of travel, I pack my bags in the morning ensuring I have all the essentials to cover myself from both the sultry hot south Indian weather and winter wearing for my return to Delhi back, the next night. I was all prepared.

    I had booked a cab for myself a good two and a half hours before the take-off time. The last meeting gets extended and give an internal signal to myself. Half an hour more and I leave, even if the meeting is not done. Two hours before the take-off time is good to reach the airport and complete all the check-in formalities.
    The meeting is done right in time, and I pack my laptop and head off to the airport. Here I get a mail from my colleague announcing that the business in the city has been postponed and I could cancel my ticket. What? Not again! I decide to go on and finish the other part of the business and push for this first meeting to be scheduled the next day. I sure could postpone my trip by a day. I so did not want to postpone this already delayed trip. The traffic on the way to the airport is bad even during this time of the day. Pity people who ply on this road everyday especially during the peak hours, I think to myself.

    The phone rings, and a quick chat later I realize the reason for the postponing of my scheduled meeting. I was now unnerved. Is it really that bad? I call up my colleague and check the situation. She gives no hope! I am still on the way to the airport.

    Now, with potentially all my meetings getting cancelled there is no reason I need to go to Chennai. But would I get a refund on my air tickets and the hotel? I have already web checked in to my flight. But what do I do after getting there? Battling these thoughts in my mind, i am suddenly shaken by the jerk of the car. He has taken the turn to the airport. I have less than 5 minutes to be deciding.

    I call up the hotel and check if I could cancel my booking. I would not want to waste so much money – flight and the hotel! After a brief wait, they confirm that the room would be cancelled without any penalty. Awesome! I ask them to hold on.

    Now it is the flight cancellation. I call up the travel agent incessantly but to no avail. What do I do?

    The cab enters the departure terminal at the airport and halts. The driver looks at me, and in a moment I signal him to go on. He looks at me in a confused manner and I speak, “Wapas office le chaliye” (take me back to office). He is still confused and gives me a puzzled look. He turns to look in the front and drives out of the terminal.

    The travel agent is still not reachable. The decision has been made. I tell the reason to the driver on why we are returning. He now seems convinced. I make calls and announce my return. Still not sure if I have made the right decision. Should I have carried on and pushed my way through the meetings? Maybe. Or maybe not! It probably would not have been worth it. Nevertheless, no point thinking now. The decision has been made.

    I return back to office and walk to my Manager’s cabin – “I returned back from the airport”, I exclaim, telling him my reasons.

    I then head straight to the travel desk.

    “Where are you guys?”

    “Why are you not answering my calls?”

    The guys give me a puzzled look.

    “Can you please off board me and cancel my flight ticket to Chennai?”

    The next day morning I get a news alert on my iphone – “Chennai Airport shut for the day due to rains”.

    Pictures start flowing all day of the inundated city with water logging everywhere. The news alert in the evening – “Chennai airport to remain shut till Sunday”.

    #PrayforChennai

  • Business Travel and its Joys

    It has again been a long gap and I have no reason except for my sheer lethargy and multiple commitments resulting in non-management of my time in the best way possible. Phew! After that long sentence, I hope I can reduce this guilt of being away from long.

    I would personally like to blame this long gap on the frequent travel. Only issue here is that the travels were much frequent in earlier years and the post frequency then was much better than it is now. So, back to square one! No real reason!

    Talking about Business travel, a necessary part of today’s corporate life. When did someone close a deal, or influence a new investment over a phone? Video Conference you say? Well, that is just a glamorous way of seeing different people across the geography and deciding on when to meet next to close it. Please don’t even try suggesting the phone. These have long been abandoned even by the College lovers. They prefer facetime!

    Many people would equate business travel to a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, and no blame there. I, after all these years of Business travel, still love these. But well, there are many of my friends who state having a different experience.

    As per these friends of mine, few unpleasant things are as glamorized as frequent business travel. Really? Don’t you like being up in the air?

    Their argument – frequent travel leads to unhealthy lifestyles (e.g., poor diet, lack of exercise, excess drinking), while jet lag causes stress, mood swings, disorientation, sleep problems, and gastrointestinal problems, all of which impair job performance.

    Ranting on, they state the need to be resilient enough to cope with the adverse effects of frequent travel on them and their families. Clearly, these guys sure have a high price to pay for reaching the top frequent flyer status.

    I have been in corporate for more than six years, and one thing that I have realised over all these years is that Business Travel is here to stay. A recent Economist article states the multifold increase in the number of travellers over the years. Yes, this is in spite of the huge strides in Communications technology.

    To survive in the corporate world, and to survive as an individual, one needs to travel. Full Stop.

    There are some things that we can take care of though, to ease the pain (if any) out of these Business Travel.

    1. Plan Early and in detail (If you have someone to plan your itinerary, do ensure that the person knows your preferences in terms of kind of room, kind of airline seat and the airline timings!)
    2. Stay at the Right place (This does not always mean the best place in town. This would mean the place closest to your area of work in the new city and close to the airport too, if possible!)
    3. Talk to new people and try absorbing the new culture. (During my last visit to Lucknow, in spite of having stayed there for a good two years of my life, it felt so refreshing to have a chat with my cab driver on the way to the hotel. It was like him fast reading the newspaper of over three years, in less than thirty minutes!). So, no matter how many times you have been to the city, the local guy there always knows more than you.
    4. Savour the local cuisine – be keen to try out different kinds of food. If you are not the vegetarian types, the world is your playground. Of late, even vegetarians are having a gala time! There is so much to see and eat around us! No?
    5. Read the local Newspaper – This is one thing that I have always been fond of. From my childhood days, during our long summer holidays train to Rajasthan, I made it a point to buy newspapers at different stations and then see what is happening local to that place. Helps put in a perspective.
    6. Walk Around – nothing better! Serves the health bit too
    7. Learn some local phrases – This helps in making an immediate connect with the city as well as the locals. And you learn something new.
    8. Read and Spend time with yourself – Contradicting to my earlier suggestions, but well the long flights and the innumerable hours spent waiting for the delayed flight at the airport terminal is the best time to be spending time with yourself, sipping on a cup of coffee.

    In Short, Live Life. There is so much to see and do around us, and Business travel is a wonderful opportunity. As they say, seek opportunities in difficulties and you would always be a happy person (refrained from saying man, lest the feminists take offence!)

    Overall, Business travel is not as terrible as my friends think. Having the right attitude could actually make it a wonderful thing. Now, I would take your leave, as I have a plane to catch…

  • The Ruined Engineer

    I was excitedly waiting for the sunday morning. My office laptop got upgraded this week and as per the company policy, I could keep my old company laptop for myself and use it completely as my own personal laptop.

    Post B-School I have always used the company laptop, and have stayed within its restrictions. The company laptop more often than not is a good configuration of some boring make and has genuine good computing power. But well, it is of little use personally as any attempt to install any software (even the innocent age old winamp) would prompt a window to open – “Please enter administrator password”.

    The computer administrator is seriously the most powerful of the administrators in any company. He holds key to all the cerebral information being created and can potentially wreak havoc! Well, wrecking a havoc he was, with the geek within me being restrained and limited. I could not use any software on this laptop, and the only software beaten to death is MS Office.

    There is a wonderful opportunity for computer makers here. Make a laptop which runs only MS Office – Word, Powerpoint, Excel and throw in a outlook for communication and la! You have just made the perfect corporate laptop. Majority of office goers do not use anything else am sure. Maybe a browser to access social media. Dread those companies where even that is banned on the official network.

    With all these constraints, I was thrilled to get myself a personal laptop finally. The very thought of installing random software and games and throttling the CPU to its maximum gave me the high. I got my hands on the latest Digit magazines for all the software it bundles in the free DVD’s.

    I still remember my engineering days when I looked longingly at the overly priced Digit magazine at the stands. At 100 bucks it was way out of my budget, and thus I relied on a friend who had a subscription. I would get to his home the second week of every month to borrow the DVD’s. The magazine I could read in the college library.

    I was looking forward to the Sunday morning which I had scheduled to setup the laptop. Ah yes, forgot to mention here that the all-powerful Computer administrator emptied the entire harddisk before handing it over. So it had to be built from scratch. No issues baby. Get on the OS and ola! The machine would start galloping.

    Installing an OS is a cakewalk, or so I thought. I got my hands on the latest Windows 7 OS. 7000 bucks? Really? Never thought of this whenever I used Microsoft. Anyways, now that I have all the tools in hand, it is time for the magic to begin. I switch on the laptop and press F8 continuously (ah! Now this is nostalgia at its best), wait.. a little more wait.. and then a little more. By now I hate this “ThinkPad” in bold letters screen. Come on.. move.. move.. you have an awesome config!

    “Beep.. Beep” and the screen goes blank. Why is this beep sound? And what is this written on the screen – “2100: Detection error on HDD0”. What does this mean?

    Thankfully I have my office laptop (the new one) where I google the error message. 15 minutes and two youtube videos later, am still not sure what to do. I try restarting the system (the best solution recommended by top notch IT technicians) and press a different function key – F10. Maybe keys have changed over the years.

    Nopes! Still the same error message. I try restarting multiple times with various combinations of function keys. Nopes. That is not the solution. I get back to my new office laptop and google a little more and try different combinations again. No success. In the frustration and haste I end up permanently deleting a folder on my office laptop. And now I am googling “how to restore a permanently deleted folder”.

    This is going nowhere I realize. The wife amusedly looks at my despair and comments, “Now you know why I profess that things are best left to the experts. Let people specializing in things do them for better time utilization and better results. Take it to a computer technician and he would do it for a pittance”.

    “What about the curiosity” I try arguing, and “I am an engineer! I can sure install a damn OS on a computer!” I assertively tell her burying my ace again in google pages.

    “And ofcourse I can get a system running on Windows. I have installed Ubuntu during my college days and got the same system running with it!”. She sighs and walks away. She clearly does not realize the difference.

    An hour later I am still there where I started. The damn laptop just would not listen, and with a heavy heart, and more importantly, an empty stomach, I give up. I think I should listen to the wife. I Google for a computer technician nearby on my office laptop.

    Now I know why we get a laptop from office with all functionalities locked. As they say in management, “Make it dumb proof”.

    Evening, during my regular Sunday evening cuppa tea I introspect over a conversation with the wife.

    Have I really become a Runied Engineer?

  • Being Single and Happy

    As an afterthought to my previous post on the limitations of Being Single, I think being single also has its own charm. There are many a plus being singe – be it woman or man.

    This is like a dossier to those on a constant look for love. Well, wait a minute, catch a breath, not every grass on the side is actually green, even if it appears green. Appreciate the present being, and you would be much happier.

    How?

    1. Healthier social life

    We have all been there when a very good friend has ditched us in favour of the new found girlfriend. Single people have the liberty to meet anyone without any prejudices from the significant other. You are free to catch up with anyone you would like to meet at any time. No Obligation. You automatically become a part of all the guy’s night out playing poker with beer in your hands. No regrets or guilt at all. And no nagging phone calls in the middle of a wonderful hand.

    1. Allowed to flirt with anyone

    You like that hot girl in red top at a party. Go ahead, flirt with her as you are what they say in Dilli – “Khulla Saand”. All this innocent flirting, in spite of being innocent can lead non-singles to enough heartburn. Singles are in no place to get into such awkward situations. Be what you are wherever you are!

    1. Get all the “Me Time”

    You want to read the book tonight, or want to watch the entire season 5 of Game of Thrones this Saturday? You can if you are single. You get all the me time and are free to spend it watching mindless TV or sleep all day. Your time, your wish. Nobody interferes.

    1. Move geographies

    A good career opportunity but you would have to move cities? No problem. You can keep an auto yes mail with your boss. No questions asked, no need to discuss with anyone. It is worth the move, you move. No considerations!

    1. Do what you want, when you want

    You like being awake all night and sleep all day. Please do. You hate the sight of the mall? You don’t need to go on that road itself. You feel like eating pasta early morning, you shall eat it. Your wish is your command, and no one else’s wishes are into consideration. You do what you want, whenever you want, in the way you want it! That’s it. No questions to be answered.

    Looking at it, Being single seems like a great situation to be in.

    Well, as they say, every coin has two sides. Whichever relation status describes you presently, that is the best thing that could happen to you. No grass is green, it is all pale. Accept it and move.

    p.s.: Maybe, all grass is green. Does not maketh any difference

  • Being Single

    As a continuation to my earlier post on Marriage Rights in India, let’s see how the single ones fare here.

    Talking about single, being Happily Married (a misnomer?) myself might seem contradictory but well, I just got married less than six months back. (Yes, a couple days more for six months, and I just realized this!). Now please, will you? Ignore smaller facts that I was not really single before the marriage too! Let’s move on? Shall we?

    Not having a boyfriend/girlfriend these days is such a trouble. Everyone in your peer starts doubting your straight preferences.

    People just can’t seem to come to terms with the fact that being single actually rocks! Really.

    Well, not really. There are many things like freedom, can-do-anything-anytime, can hit on anyone and the explorer mindset that can be explored if you are a single, but still there are some things where you’d prefer not being one. The fact that all of your friends are not in the single zone anymore adds to the misery.

    1. Restaurants – it is no fun ordering the entire Pasta at the newly opened Johnny Rockets all by yourself. It is too huge a portion anyways.
    1. Holidaying alone – Who does that? Well, I know backpacking is a wonderful kind of a holiday, and you explore wonderful things, but well, not all the time. There are times when you wished there is someone who could do the planning bit of the trip!
    1. Party – Well, pubbing without a partner is just no fun. Many hip pubs do not even allow single entry. Anyways, if drinking alone is the agenda why bother with a pub?
    1. A good listener – All of us have sometime been in a mood were we just want to rant off about the irritating colleague, and wished there was a patient ear to take it all. Well, as I had mentioned, friends no longer being single does not help a bit!
    1. Coffee? – If you are a single girl, well everyone and his cousin wants to ask you this question. Mostly everyone. And the ratio of jerks to non-jerks is no great in this country, so all the best to you. Guys, it is no fun here either. For once you would want to go to a pub and mind your own business on the dance floor rather than conducting a psychographic analysis of every single female sitting out there.

    I could go on with such instances, but the fact of the matter remains – being Single is no Fun.

    With these little thoughts to ponder on a beautiful Sunday evening, I am off to my Happy Married life. See you till then.

    p.s.: An afterthought tells me, things can be rosy being single too! Does grass always seem greener on the other side?