Friday, August 6th
Gooooood morning sunshine! The morning started off quite lovely with a once again AMAZING breakfast at our hotel. Sighhh, I’m going to miss this service. These people are the nicest people I’ve ever met.
The Bank
The first stop for the day is the conference room at a local hotel, where a bank representative from the Indian Overseas Banking, a nationalized bank, is waiting to give us a presentation. Apparently, the bank didn’t have a space big enough to accommodate 20 students and 7 adults, so we were housed in a bare, empty room with plastic chairs and a projector.
So, just to summarize:
1. We listen to a long presentation that sounded like a brochure regurgitated. Oh yeah, and the guy thought the US had universal healthcare, because he saw it on John Q.
2. We ask great, insightful questions to learn more about the business of banking.
3. Just when we were patting ourselves on the back for our intelligent inquiries, a whirlwind blasts through the door, yabbering about traffic and meetings and being late.
4. We proceed to have another presentation, followed by another Q and A. Except this time, we used up all our good questions already!
But that’s not all. The highlight of this business trip was the incessant blackouts that occurred during the meeting (or should I say the ‘no light’? hehe I crack myself up).
[Okay, some background. Every since we got here, there have been blackouts happening throughout the entire city. You would be in a store and then BAM the power would go out. Apparently, India has been growing much too quickly and has very poor infrastructure. Most of the time it would only before a few minutes, but sometimes it would be for an hour or more.]
But the funny thing? The man didn’t even blink an eye during the presentation. Like not even a slight falter in his sentence. And we were thrown into pitch blackness. So after several questions during the Q&A, I decided to finally mention the gigantic elephant in the room, and inquire as to how the blackouts affected business. I was a little worried that it might be considered poor taste to talk about it, since he didn’t mention it at ALL.
So I asked. And he didn’t understand. So I asked again. And he responded with an entire explanation of how money flow causes a growth in technology. And the whole time, the room is silently cracking up at this ABSURD answer that didn’t even address the issue. Even the other bank guy in the room was snickering behind his hand. I tell you what, it was the hardest thing ever trying to keep a straight face with everyone around me snickering. Eventually, Dr. Mur’ray tried to clarify the mistake, but we got the SAME ANSWER. We gave up after about 15 minutes. Ah well. They did give us tea, coffee and biscuits afterwards, so it wasn’t a completely useless visit.
Egon Zender International
The next stop, after lunch, was to the tenth floor of a very fancy building where Egon Zender International was housed. For those of you unfamiliar (as I was up until about 5 minutes into the presentation), Egon Zender is a headhunter. Not the bones-through-nose, skulls-on-spikes headhunter, but an executive search firm, designed to find your next company a CEO, or HR director, or CFO, or whatever.
We were put into a small room that had a conference call set up. So we were basically staring at ourselves on a giant flatscreen tv. We were all slightly confused. Was this presentation going to be virtual? Turns out it wasn’t. The head of the company came to talk to us, and he was actually a fantastic speaker. Used a lot of American slang and idiomatic expressions, very funny… And this guy could read people. An expert in body language.
However, the most impressive part (at least for poor, old sieve-for-a-memory Ellen) was the fact that he had us say all our names the first time we spoke, and he remembered them whenever we spoke again! That got him an approving nod plus golf clap combo in my book.
I still have no idea why that video camera was on the whole time, though. Super distracting.
All in all, a very interesting visit. The guy was super charismatic and made all of us want to go into that business after that presentation. However, the adults didn’t like him apparently, because he went to the University of Chicago business school? Any business people reading this that can provide more insights on that?
Dinner with the Fam
After a round of filmed interviews with David and Damon (that may or may not have ended with me being held at knife point), I left the hotel to grab dinner with Andrew, a friend of the family. [When I was at our family reunion earlier this summer, my cousin Steve (who has been coming to India for years) offered to arrange contacts in several of the cities I was visiting. Andrew was one of such contacts.]
So all I know at this point is that Andrew is planning on picking me up from my hotel at 7:30 and is taking me back to his house for dinner. That is all the information that I know. After being slightly late (power went out and I had to sprint down ten floors of stairs in the dark), I am directed to a van where I see a man, his wife, and his daughter waiting for me. A brief introduction confirms that yes, this is Andrew and his family.
Ok which do you want first? The cultural revelations and discoveries? Or ‘de sh*t dat went doooown’? We’ll start with Cultural:
Andrew and his family live in a small, fairly nice apartment, with a kitchen, living room, and two small bedrooms. They were all Christian so on the walls were lots of pictures of Jesus and Mary and other religious paraphernalia. It was cute too how when I inquired about some of the framed pictures of people, he would pick it up and kiss the person in the picture.
However, Andrew and his family didn’t live alone. His brother and his family lived below him and his widowed sister and family lived above him. His two brothers also came over to visit so it was a huge get together with everyone super excited to see me. It was so incredibly welcoming! One of the small boys (about ten years old) made me a picture of a car and his name (Joshua) made from glitter. Awww! Still have it :).
It was great getting to tour the different apartments and to talk with everyone. Everyone was all about making me comfortable, bringing me drinks, food, showing me around, letting me pick out the music (which I actually hate doing. Ahh! So much pressure!).
I also learned the reason behind the blackouts (poor infrastructure, electricity trade agreements that weren’t holding up, an inefficient government, etc) and how they were getting worse (power used to be out about two hours a day. Now it’s up to four.). Everyone also explained the reason behind the pubs closing at 11:30 in Bangalore (a woman got stabbed in a club in 2007 - ouchie).
But it was really great getting the chance to meet and talk with real Indians. Businessmen don’t count because they are a bit secluded from the “real” India, and the people on the streets are generally trying to sell you something (“You like, madam? Special price, just for you”). The power did go out at one point for about an hour, but a battery powered light and candles, made it so it wasn’t much of an issue.
Now for the Evening Events:
Okay, the explanation I got was that they work hard Monday through Friday. So the weekend is the “party time”. Sounds like good logic to me! And let me just say, these men can throw down. It was a ton of fun actually. Andrew makes his own wine (which was delicious), but beer seemed to be the preferred drink. One of Andrew’s brothers was a DJ and so he played some great music. Most of it was a combo of Bollywood and Western music.
What was the most fun about the evening was the dancing. Everyone was having a blast dancing every which way in the living room. I learned some bhangra too! Sahweeeeet. It was so cute how Andrew pulled his young teenage daughter out to the dance floor and she couldn’t stop giggling from embarrassment. Ohhh been there, done that. Totally can empathize with being embarrassed by the antics of one’s parents :P
The interesting thing was that apparently no one eats dinner until after everyone is done drinking and socializing and whatnot. I was a little iffy as to whether they were waiting for me to ask to eat (while as I would normally wait until someone else inquired about eating), so dinner didn’t really happen til 11:30 and it was just me and Andrew. The food was amazing! But I hope everyone else ate earlier and weren’t waiting until after I had eaten…
I got back to the hotel around 12:30. Everyone piled into the van to say goodbye and take me back. Awww! How touching. However, Indians don’t really have the concept of a D.D. (despite the overabundance of ‘don’t drink and drive’ signs everywhere), but I got back safely and intact :). All in all, a great eventful evening and I really enjoyed the chance to meet Andrew and his family. [Thanks, Steve!]
Well that’s it for today. Tonight was the last night in Bangalore, as tomorrow afternoon we head out to Delhi, the capital city of India. Ciao!