I Wandered Far Away From Home..

This is my 6th post under the "Final Two Weeks In America" section and I guess this one is going to be the last. I promised 10 but I will have to say sorry and promise some stuff from a new place I will be in 18 hours.

I am wondering if I should be nostalgic about the three years I just finished in US. These were wonderful times( except for the loss of Lakers this year and USC in last three years). Barack will soon be president and USC is expected to go all the way this year around....but should I be feeling nostalgic?

Juneja left for India last week and he asked me the same question...should I feel nostalgic? I said No!! I am asking the same thing from myself and I want to answer with the same emphasis...a strong No...but somehow I think I am gaining some cat character...getting attached to places....wondering what really is my home? So many cities have happened in last 10 years, Jaipur, Delhi, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Los Angeles, Portland, Mountain View, Santa Clara....and then in between, all those cities I spent a week to a few hours for consulting work...I really don't know where I now belong to. Is it good? Again, I don't know but I guess it reflects the times we live in. Being too emotional about one place seems to be so yesterday...so grand fatherish...almost something which should disqualify you for every job!!

So as a final observation of a ritual that started last week when I had lunch with Juneja near the jumbo point here at San Francisco, I go to the same place with my apartment mate Mit...the place was closed so we find a place to park the car, see some planes land a mile( I should start thinking kilometers!!) away in a gloom filled cloudy background. I let it sink for a minute...

And I am ready to move on...Did someone shout somewhere that Pune was a great place? Good to know that, I will be there soon!! I see that someone is waiting for me in Delhi too...

Let the good times roll...let the good times roll..

Can I upgrade from Economy to Business class? Sir, Why don't you go and f$%& yourself!!!

Great experience...another proof of why what is taught in the business school is such bullshit. You do all the classes on channel management and tons of other stuff but it never leaves the classroom and hits the road....at least for a lot of
airlines...definitely for Lufthansa!!!

I am going to travel for the first time with Lufthansa in a couple of hours and I am
already reeling with their stupidity. I bought an economy class ticket to Zurich and then found out that I can travel business on a company trip. So I call up Lufthansa and ask them how much money would it take to upgrade. They promptly refuse my offer to take more money and ask me to go and talk to the agent who issued the ticket( though she does tell me that there are 10 business class seats available). The agent is another masterpiece. She takes a day to return my call. When she finally calls back, she first makes me feel guilty( I am wondering if she is trying to remind me that choosing indulgence over sacrifice is so non-Indian!!) for trying to fly business and then tells me 3 hours later( after a lot of effort) that I will have to incur all kind of penalties to help Lufthansa earn more money. I think about it and then say No( Am I trying to spread sacrifice now? Well, talk about effects of bad company!!). I would rather travel economy then go through this torture.

Now I should have stopped but then again, I cannot believe this is happening. Someone somewhere surely would understand that I want to pay more money!! So I go to the counter and ask them for a upgrade. The Lufthansa rep tells me that I cannot pay money and get an upgrade. I will have to cancel my ticket and buy a full price business class( with the assumption that I am buying it 3 hours before the flight).

So I am beginning to wonder what the heck is going on. I am very irritated...the only logical reason I can think of is that there are very few people who pay cash to upgrade from economy to business and hence the system hasn't made a rule for such a case. But then, I also wonder if airlines can afford missing out on such exceptions considering that an international flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt would not earn more than 5000 dollars for Lufthansa(for domestic flights, on such long routes as LA to NY City the number is as low as 200 dollars!!). Well, talk about sacrifice all over the place...Lufthansa wants to sacrifice the money I want to give them and
they want me to sacrifice a more comfortable flight.No wonder, these airlines lose money all the time. In fact, I found out recently that airline industry in US has cumulatively lost money since deregulation in 70s!!

And by the way, what happened to channel management? Shouldn't a company try to push
business through direct channels or at least upgrade and earn more money from people who call up their customer service directly?

The Story of 2 Hs, USC and Lakers....

In recent times, two Hs have troubled me: H1 and Hillary Clinton.

The day Hillary dropped out, it was such a serene feeling for so many reasons. David had triumphed over Goliath...the unbeatable Clinton juggernaut was dead and for all of us who love to challenge the odds, the hope was still alive. If Obama could beat Clinton, really, what is impossible? Seems like a perfect Adidas ad!!! I am sure Adidas would love to have Obama on with Impossible Is Nothing written below...not sure, how much Mr. President would be interested!!

The other H got nasty and I was amongst the 20% people who did their Masters from a US university but did not get selected in the lottery that was conducted. So what I planned to do in December is happening six months earlier. It was a sudden reality check because I needed to take some decisions fast. Bottom line is that all worked out well. I will be working out of the Pune office of my company starting 21st July.

Some part of me does say that if it had happened the other way, with Hillary getting the nomination and I getting my H1, I would not have been happy. To be forced to watch her day after day would have been worse than all the quick fire preparations I have had to do recently to go back.

Final two: USC and Lakers...I am hoping that USC will win a national championship this time around. We came close in my first year in US( Damn you Vince Young!!! Long Horns can kiss my A$#) and then it just slipped out. This year might bring a different result and I will be watching for it.

And Lakers...well, what could be said for what was a brutal ending for a beautiful season...131-92???? I am sure Kobe and the gang would do the unfinished job next year and I will be cheering from back in India!!!

Pregnancy Does Not Count in Palm Beach County, Only Penetration Counts!!!

I am promising myself that before I leave, I will write at least 10 more entries....some kind of a final good bye to this country. So this is he first one in a series of 10 you will see in next couple of days before I fly off to Zurich.

Lets talk elections..this season has already had so much fun. For me, it is probably the first and the last one and I am sure I will be watching everything unfold from India. I was, and I am still, a strong Obama supporter. Despite whatever he might do after getting elected, and be assured: world is littered with stories of charismatic uld have crossed over the magic number of 270 electoral votes. It became all the more important because Al Gore could not even carry his home state of Tennessee. So it all came down to Florida....and as Tim Russert famously said at that time...it would be FLORIDA, FLORIDA, FLORIDA. Exit polls showed a comfortable win for Gore and all the channels, including Fox, declared Gore the next president. Then results started coming in from different places and it became plenty obvious that someone did not do a good statistics class. Sampling error was big and it messed up in a big way cascading into a number of as high as 10%. So as more and more results came in, Bush soon got a lead and Bush team led by Karl Rove were able to get Bush declared winner by first getting it out on Fox. Gore was on his way to a concession speech but soon decided against it when it became clear that the margin was much much less than 1% of the vote which would prompt an automatic recount and there were good chances that Gore might win especially if Palm Beach can contribute.

The biggest problems reported were in Palm Beach County. This county was home of a big Jewish elderly population and since Gore's running mate was Joe Lieberman, it was expected to go heavily democratic. It did not go that heavily for Gore and there were unusually high number of votes that were disqualified...and more surprisingly, Buchanan, who was a candidate of the independent party had a surprisingly good showing there. Now why is Buchanan's performance surprising? Because he came down hard on Jews during his campaign, even questioning the Holocaust. So two factors seem to have suppressed a very big win for Democrats: 1) Voters did not know how to punch the card(and important here is that chad had to come out at least from one corner and not just get "impregnated") and 2) too many people ended up voting for Buchanan whose name was next to Gore Lieberman thinking that they were voting for the latter.

It seems obvious that there was nothing Democrats could do about the latter situation but warring parties soon formed to squeeze out votes from the first situation. The whole story ended when Katherine Harris stopped accepting results after 5:00p.m. on Tuesday beyond which legal battles finally ended up in the Supreme Court where a conservative majority bench gave Bush his 1st term by 5-4.

What is the best lesson about that situation seems to be, and it is still true today,that America is so much divided between red and blue that such nonsense would still find partisan support. You would find very few people who would stand back from their loyalties and call the chaos of the situation by its proper name. There seems to be certain acceptance for "EVERYTHING GOES" during election time and it seems to have started from the 2000 elections with the way Bush went after McCain and how the verdict was finally given...when even the supreme court judges, each one of them, voted according to their political affiliations( I must note that independent research groups in a project after the election was long over concluded that Bush would have won in a recount).

When Texas Blows, Kansas Sucks!!!

If you are thinking of some double meaning in the heading, then please don't stop yourself because Oklahomans want you to think exactly that. I have been working on a client site for two weeks in Oklahoma City and one thing that strikes right away is how much wind the place has. Sometimes I wonder if people with lesser than 100 pound weight aren't in danger of just flying away!!!

So at this client site, there is a lot of manufacturing activity and you get to meet some finer Southerners. And believe me, if something defines a Southerner, it is his straight talk, a fine sense of humor and a genuine warmth towards the other person( and trust me, if you started your life in US in Los Angeles, then when people talk to you in Oklahoma City, it is quite a difference)....and of course, the accent.

So this one guy at the client site tells me that the huge wind that blows all the time is because "Texas Blows & Kansas Sucks" or vice versa depending on the direction....I don't know what better way to communicate a fine rivalry...be it Sooners vs. Longhorns or anything else. These people love to crack jokes and laugh out aloud. So if you like to tell stories on just about everything and you have a hearty laugh, then South is the place for you.

Work Hard, Laugh Often and Keep Your Honor

As I look back at my 3 years in US and the final two weeks that lie ahead, one fixture has been how much I have learnt from watching television especially cable news. I know that everyone loves to bash 24 hour news channels but I have my favorites. Tom Brokaw, Larry King, Anderson Cooper, Chris Mathews, Joe Scarborough....but the biggest of them all was Tim Russert....and it is so sad to write was and not is!!

When the news was developing in the afternoon about the sudden death of Tim Russert, Washington Bureau Chief of NBC News, the shock slowly transformed into some kind of a disbelief and then memories. Tim came across as someone who had a lot of passion for his job and it was obvious that it rubbed on the people around him. And the guy earned his reputation over the years doing a fine job every Sunday on Meet The Press. I have seen some of his interviews on Daily Show and Colbert Report too and you know that he loved talking, he loved explaining his world view and he loved to remain objective.

I will miss you Tim as the finest journalist I have seen on television and remember this line you wrote in a letter to your son, Luke, at Boston College:
"Work Hard, Laugh Often and Keep Your Honor"