Being famous!

Hi everyone

A very short one today. As you can probably understand from the headline I right now having, well, a beer.

But anyway, this is the main headline in the biggest newspaper in India today, so I have to publish it.

Talk to you soon and promise a longer article
Karsten

Some nice customer service experience

Hi everyone

A few weeks back I wrote a post about the fantastic good service I got from Flipkart.com. Yesterday I had another, almost surealistic, good experience with a local vendor.

It al started on Monday. Everyday when I drive to the office I have to get a token which indicates that I can park at the Capgemini area. Most often a very simple task, but on Monday I realized that I was not able to close my window after having rolled it all the way down. Frustrating.

Do I called the sales person. Luckily I bought the car through a certified vendor. He told me to come over as quickly as possible. Due to some meetings I couldn’t go until the evening.

When I got there a nice guy who spoke decent English met me. I told him wha the problem was and he told me no problem we will this tomorrow. Usually when someone tell me that something should be done by tomorrow I get worried. But I didn’t have any options so I left the car there. He also asked if there were some other things he wanted me to get fixed. I asked him to get a new mirror, as one has been broke for a long time. He said ok. Off course he did.

Yesterday he called me up and told me the price and asked me if I still wanted the mirror fixed in addition to the window. The price was not at all alarming so I said yes to this.

The best thing was when I picked up the car. It was ready. The window worked. A new mirror was there. And they had even washed the car! It also turned out that I had misunderstood the price. I thought it was INR 1400 for the mirror, but it turned out to be INR 1412 totally!

I tried my best to give INR 1500 but he completely refused. When I got to the cashier to pay I again tried to give some extra for good service. Again they refused and gave me the correct change back. When we got out to the car I tried one last time but with no success. How is that possible? Maybe I should try the same with a police man also soon…

Talk to you soon
Karsten

Live cricket – Mumbai vs. Chennai

Hi Everyone

It’s a big day in Mumbai today. Cricket is back. Mumbai Indians play against Chennai Super Kings, and yes, we have tickets.

This is IPL or Indian Premier League, the biggest cricket league in the world. Actually it is called IPL 5, as it is the 5th season of IPL. Except that in India it is not called season but edition. It might sound more snobish? Or more like Bollywood? I don’t really know.

But this is surely a massive game! Mumbai have Sachin Tendulkar at their team and Chennai is lead by Indias captain MS Dhoni. And CSK have won the last two seasons, sorry, editions.

Most people here off course support the local team but I do support CSK. The reason for this is simple; when I started to follow IPL two years ago (3rd edition) I was supposed to move from Norway to Chennai. At that time I worked with two Indian colleagues who supported Mumbai and one who supported Dehli. So off course I had to support another team. CSK was at that time in the middle of the table. But they did very well to qualify for the play-off. And can u guess what team they beat, or rather trashed, in the final? Yeah. Easy guess. After that CSK went on to win even last season (4th ed). And like I tell my local friends; you can change you car and shift your home, but you can never change your team.

Go CSK! Will try to update the blog during the match.

Talk to you soon!
Karsten

Reaching target of sponsoring 20 Nanhi Kali’s

Hi Everyone

When I reached 10.000 hits on my blog, I promised to sponsor 1 Nanhi Kali with education for each 1000 hits up to 20.000. Late April, hit number 20.000 came up on the blog, so I have now increased the number of Nanhi Kalis I’m sponsoring to 20! Sponsoring a girl with education for one year is surely a nice thing to do. But to really help her out of poverty, and to be able to get a proper job, she has to be followed up for the whole duration of her education. So I have decided that I will do this, and sponsor these girls for up to 10 years! So for every 1000 click on the blog you will from now and onwards not sponsor one more girl but you will help to make sure that they will be able to continue their education. Thanks a lot to all of you for helping in this.

You might ask about what kind of girls it is that get this opportunity from Nanhi Kali and wonder a bit about their background and such. As a sponsor to Nanhi Kali, I do get regularly updates about the progress of the girls. But Nanhi Kali also has quite strict rules about what can be published and what cannot be published. So I do have to be careful about what I can say and not. The information has to be anonymized. Let me here try to tell you the story about two of the girls, in an anonymized way. I do like to give the girls some names, not just girl A and girl B. So maybe we should call them Katrina or Kareena. Or no, I will call them Priyanka and Deepika. And for those of you who follow Bollywood, you surely know from where I have got those names. So here we go.

Priyanka is nine years old. Her mother is 25 and an agriculture labor and her father is 28 and a farmer. Priyanka have 1 brother and one sister. The family’s yearly income is less than INR 7500, – per annum. Priyanka is a friendly and cheerful girl. She likes reading and singing. She attends school regularly and enjoys learning new things. Her favorite subject is Telugu. She wants to be a nurse when she grows up. Priyanka helps her mother in household chores. She usually keeps good health. As her family can’t provide her with enough food she has the midday meal at school regularly. This ensures a daily quota of basic nutrients. Priyanka have been provided with an educational support kit comprising two sets of uniforms, two sets of clothing a pair of shoes, five notebooks and stationary. This sponsorship has motivated her to continue with her studies.

Deepika will turn 9 years old this summer. She is the only child and both her parents are skilled workers. Her mother is 32 and her father is 36. Even this family has a yearly income of less than INR 7500, – per annum. Deepika has scored good marks and is working towards improving her performance. Her inclination towards studies is clearly evident by her academic performance. The Nanhi Kali sponsorship is an added incentive for her to continue schooling. She loves to paint and to play with bright colors. She has enthusiastically participated in several sports and academic competitions organized in her school. Deepika’s family live in a small house with no access to basic common facilities like toilets etc. They live in a rented house which consists of only one room where the entire family sustains.

So this is the story of two of the 20 girls that currently are getting the education paid for by you my readers! Most of the girls that I sponsor have a similar kind of background and a very similar story.

Talk to you soon!

Karsten

Expat blog

Hi Everyone

Before I moved (or shift to be Indian correctly…) to Mumbai, I did some researching on a number of web sites. One of the sites that I came across that time was one called Expat blog. This site has now recently been upgraded, and they asked me if I could put a post on my blog about the changes they have done to their blog. As I’m, mostly, a nice guy, I can surely do that. So please read below. All information here is provided by the team at expat blog, so please do complain directly to them if there is something you don’t agree with.

What’s Expat blog? It’s a web portal launched in 2005 by expatriates, for expatriates. Its ambition is to help people living or willing to live abroad, wherever they are from or would like to go. Expat blog is the most active online community of expatriates, with 420 000 members from 206 countries and 400 big cities.
Who is it for? For all the people living or wishing to live abroad. It is a platform of expression and exchange, an information source about expatriation.
How does it work? The website offers various tools to help expats and potential expatriates:
- discussion forums
- expatriate blogs directory
- guides
- photo albums
- business directory
- classifieds.

New features : Jobs and Housing sections
To meet the demands of expatriates and soon-to-be expatriates in India, Expat blog has launched two new dedicated spaces: a jobs section and a housing section. They are aimed at helping people in their job and accommodation search, two essential steps when expatriating.
The idea is to get access to job offers in India, wherever you are.You can have access to the [pays] job offers, per job category and job contract. You can also create your CV and contact potential employers. Here is the link to the India Job section: http://www.expat-blog.com/en/jobs/asia/india/

The India Housing section enables you to look for or to offer an accommodation: rental, sale, flat share, flat, house…it’s up to you! You can see pictures of the apartment and get in touch with the person via Expat blog (you need to be a member of Expat blog to post an ad).

Talk to you soon!

Karsten

Bombay hash

Hi Everyone
Yesterday it was time to take part in of the more traditional English, or maybe I should say British, events. And mind you, I didn’t say that this is THE most traditional British event, as well, Britain is full of traditions.

Anyway, we were doing “hashing”. And no, this has nothing to do with any narcotic substances. Hashing is, as I said, a very old British tradition that is some kind of a pub crawl. Except that it is more of running and less of crawling. And the way we did it yesterday, it was actually not that many pubs involved either. Hashing originated in December 1938 in Kuala Lumpur, then in the Federated Malay States (now Malaysia), when a group of British colonial officers and expatriates began meeting on Monday evenings to run, in a fashion patterned after the traditional British Paper Chase or “Hare and Hounds”, to rid themselves of the excesses of the previous weekend.

I had to wake up at 6 o’clock in the morning, as the event took place at some area a few hours’ drive from Mumbai. It was some kind of a farm that was the venue for the event. When we got there, we were given some directions about a track for running. And of we went! And it was really, really, really hot. We started in a positive mood with some serious running, but soon realized that it was a bit too ambitions to run to hard, so we had to slow down and walk most of the trip. I did the normal, stupid think to not carry enough water, and to forget to use sun cream all over the places. So today I’m on the office with a bad red neck. When will I learn? But for sure, it was really nice to be around in the “wilderness” outside Mumbai. I have maybe said it in blog posts before, but I have no problem to repeat that I do really like to take the opportunities to get out of the city when possible. The area outside Mumbai is actually quite good for trips like this.
After we came back to the farm, it was time for some beers, and to get to know other people who were there. There was also some “rituals” for us who did this for the first time. As I hope that some of you readers will take part of this event shortly, I don’t want to tell too much detail about these things.

I do really like to do things like this for sure! It both gives me an opportunity to get out from Mumbai, and it also gives an opportunity to meet a lot of new people, and even people from a completely different background and who do different things than what I do. This is what make life in Mumbai so rich!
Talk to you soon!
Karsten

A dead man…

Hi everyone

Most mornings in Mumbai, like all other places I guess, are just like all other mornings. Not so today. Outside my balcony there were a lot of people gathering. Add to that a police car and a fire engine and you can easily imagine something is wrong.

The whole crowd were looking into the stinky pond next to the house. I could spot something that looked like a person in the water. According to one of the servants here he had jumped… S few days back I discussed with my Norwegian neighbors if we would survive a swim in that poluted water. Now I think the answer is given…

All photos are from some distance. I will update the story if I find out more about what has happened.

Talk to you soon
Karsten

Love or hate the IPL

Hi everyone

Some time back, I suggested that I might should outsource my blogging. One of my very good friends in Mumbai, Sarang, then very gently said that he would like to write an article about IPL, and here you have it:

“What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity.” David Hume, in his ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’ has said, and I do agree. Human mind is an amazingly complex structure which stores a collection of different perceptions, sometimes exactly contradictory to each other, at the same time, in the same location. Moreover, it is notoriously fast in processing and bringing forth such contrasting perceptions in a flash of a moment, dissecting one’s self into two separate personalities with contrasting thought processes imbibed into one another.

Ever since the inception of the sports entertainment extravaganza, the mighty IPL (Indian Premier League), in to the game of world cricket, I have also experienced this extraordinarily singular anomaly of the human mind. There’s always a fight within, as to whether the IPL is beneficial for the growth of the global sport or a disaster, whether the IPL is a total loss of hard-earned public money or the most effective way of converting black money in the market into a white one, whether it is being used as a platform by the newcomers and strugglers to get in to the national team or just a medium of making astounding sum overnight, whether I hate it or love it, and most importantly, whether it deserves abomination or a due respect for what it is, be it cricket, another sport, an entertainment, or even a joke.

‘One me’ hates the IPL like anything. For it, the IPL is just a trash. Everything related to the IPL is crass. The owners and big wigs of the teams whose knowledge of the sport is as good as Kapil Dev’s knowledge of classical singing, the auctions where players are ‘sold out’ and ‘bought out’ for an exorbitant amount of money as in the horse trading, the opening and closing ceremonies which are mostly an embarrassment watching together with family (and more so when you have an elder at home who happens to be a passionate cricketer of his times, watching in amusement, the risqué that’s telecast on a cricket ground), the fact that the star players make themselves available for the full tournament straight out of the hospital bed, and the retired ones who rise like a phoenix from the ashes (read: deathbed of their careers) once in a year exactly at this time of year to refill their bank balance, the presence of Bollywood fraternities in the presentation ceremonies, and on the cricket ground performing gags and giggling around with the female anchors, actors and actresses promoting their soon-to-be-flop movies during the ‘extra innings T20′, the clad dressed cheerleaders, post-match parties, and finally the media and advertisement house’s role in creating a hype and mass hysteria around this whole package, it’s all crass. It’s not a sport, but a mere shameless show of the powerful, money minded, profit mongering business houses, advertisement big shots and page3 celebrities of Bollywood.

‘One me’ also believes strongly that the current state of the Indian cricket team which has been thrashed left and right by the English and the Aussies recently in all forms of the game, is due to the IPL and the T20. He also believes that the test cricket which is considerably the highest form of cricket, is in dire straits with the promotion of the IPL and such tournaments. It feels that the commercialization of cricket due to the IPL has not only put immense strain on the very basic nature and the building block of this sport, but also taken the sheen out of the game, and the quality, passion and intensity with which it is ought to have been played.

The ‘Other me’ has a contrasting view of the IPL. Yes, the other me indeed loves and respect IPL for what it is. A perfect blend of sport and entertainment for the viewers, total cost of ownership and the return on investment for the owners, talent and opportunity for the players, dreams for the young and survival for the retired legends of the game, and most importantly, a revenue generating model which not only establishes India firmly as the economic superpower in world cricket, but also generates tremendous business opportunities for small time entrepreneurs and employment to a great deal of poor Indian citizens. This other me, asks the one me, to think for a moment, about that particular snacks vendor standing in the hot sun outside Wankhede stadium in Mumbai, selling his stuff and making 100 times more money on the match day than a normal routine day to earn the sum which might be used to fund his son’s education or his daughter’s marriage. This other me, also asks the one me, to think about that construction labour, who, after a day-long hectic work at the site, comes home and gets glued to the TV catching up with the excitement and the buzz, rooting for his home team and cheering for his beloved players, temporarily forgetting the hardships of his life enjoying the action on that black and white veteran idiot box.

And when it comes to the quality and worthiness of the sport itself, my ‘other me’ also argues with my ‘one me’ to think of the very basic nature of the sport, when I was first introduced to cricket during my childhood. What’s the very basic nature of this sport, I thought, recollecting my initial stints when all I knew was that the bowler will bowl, and I have to see the ball and try to hit it out of the boundary lines either grounded or in the air. The sophistication of taking singles, doubles, rotating the strikes, planning strategies etc. came much later in the cycle as we grew older and became more mature in the knowledge of the sport. Similarly, as a bowler, all I knew was to get one of the three wickets of the batsman by making him blindfolded with either the spin or the pace. The very basic nature of the game doesn’t change. It has never changed. It’s our legends in the sport who have changed it over a period of time which has been accepted and adapted to, widely, and yet, we are afraid of the recent change that’s called IPL and the T20.

And then my ‘other me’ also asks very intriguing questions to which my ‘one me’ has no real answers apart from the hypocritical ones.

Would Sehwag’s upper cut as an answer to Shaun Tait’s extreme pace differ in quality when he hits it in an IPL match than the same shot played in the test match? Would Dale Steyn be a treat to watch when he bowls the scorcher of a spell in a test cricket than the one he bowled in an IPL match few days back? Can some young talent’s confidence boost and experience gained be measured in sums when he plays with the likes of Dada, Tendulkar, Dravid, Vettori, Muralitharan, Steyn, Gilli, Peterson, Gayle etc. and trains under the watchful eyes of Donald, Rhodes, Lehmann, Akram, Bayliss, Upton, Leipus etc.? Is 30 minutes of a carnage less significant and trivial than two sessions of stolid defence? What difference it makes to the passionate lover of the game when a diving Suresh Raina picks a blinder with one hand to dismiss a tail ender in an IPL match versus the similar act of brilliance by him to dismiss Mahela Jayawardhane in CB series?

My ‘other me’ reminds me every now and then the butterflies I have in my stomach when I go to bat for my organization inside Microsoft in a friendly cricket match against another team in the same organization where more than half are my acquaintances, and no money, no audience pressure, or a win loss prestige is at stake. It reminds me to respect the players who still have to work hard to be able to get picked up the next season, and to live up to the viewer’s expectations, not to forget the owner’s as well. Also, it is very easy to comment on them sitting here writing loads and loads of articles, but even with the sum involved, it is not an easy task to just be able to play for the sake of money, and not for performance when almost every other person in your own team and the opposition is a big star and the world is looking after your performances in relative terms to not only those who are established but also with those who are yet to make a mark. Even if one assumes that these players are money minded, passionless lot when it comes to IPL, they still have to work hard and perform, to make sure they get picked up for a better sum next year, and one must respect them for what they do.

And lastly, my ‘other me’ reminds my ‘one me’ about paying my taxes judiciously when it talks about the owners and the players being money minded, commercialized profit mongers, for it doesn’t make me any different than them when I save one single rupee unethically by not paying to the government and utilizing it for my personal reasons howsoever convenient it may seem. And just when I question the owner’s decisions which are taken out of the commercial reasons and not cricket, it asks me to introspect why I backed off the deal which offered me lesser price for one of my goods and sold it to the one who offered a li’l bit more. And believe me, my ‘one me’ has no answers to any of these. To conclude with, my ‘other one’ often ends the fight with the popular saying,

‘All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.’

Sarang also have his own blog, and I would highly recommend that you take a look at it. He writes quite well, and has some interesting observations.

Talk to you soon!

Karsten

Greeting from Norway

Hi everyone

During the Easter holiday I had a friend from Norway visiting me. Here is his report from India:

Greetings everybody

This Easter I travelled to India and visited Karsten. I was invited as a guest blog to write about our trip inIndia. First of all you have to excuse my writings in English, my job and life does not involve a lot of English speaking or writing at a normal day, so I am a bit rusty.

I was in India for almost two weeks. When I told friends and colleagues that I was going to India there were two kind of response. One was a positive response. The other was “do you really want get sick during your vacation?”. Many of Norwegians have this impression about India. When you travel to India you get sick. And the statistics says that 40 % of all people who travel are getting sick. I have to be honest and say that was also my biggest concern. But the key point is just to be aware of what you eat and drink. You have to drink from bottle water which you also brush your teeth in. In the shower, close your mouth. Eat at nice looking restaurants and ask that the meat/chicken is well done. In the beginning I was really careful but since it is so good food in India, at the end I really did not care what I ordered. I had a slight degree of stomach problems, but not so seriously.

When I left Norway the spring just had arrived with around 10 degrees. But it was a big difference to come Mumbai at night time which had around 30 degrees. In Mumbai I used time to do some shopping. The prices at malls down there are around 1/3 of the price back home, so for me this was cheap. I have to admit I bought too much. I almost did not get the suitcase closed when I went back home and I came to Mumbai with an empty suitcase.

Before I went I bought the book Shantaram, which is obligated to read before you go to India and Mumbai according my colleagues. Because of the book, I had to see the restaurant Leopold, Gateway of India, Taj Mahal hotel, and Marine Drive. To get to these places we went by train. Karsten warned what to do and the ride met my expectations. It is strange to see people standing in the door or no door when the train goes around 100 km/h. It would never been allowed in Norway. On the way back home we went by taxi and took around two and half hour. Mumbai is BIG. After two days in Mumbai we went to Alleypey and boarded a houseboat. I have to say that was the best part of the trip. They say Kerala is God’s own country, which I believe is true. We had a big houseboat with separate bedrooms. The nature and the channels were just beautiful. The food we got served was excellent and we really had a good time onboard. The only negative was that I got cockroaches in my bedroom when I tried to sleep. There were no use to kill them because after you killed one, there came another one. Luckily we had a boat with three bedrooms so I went to sleep at the empty room. But overall, I wished we had some more time on this.

After that we had some days in Kochior Fort, in Kochi which the island is called. We got to see the Chinese fishing nets and other things. Even it was a relaxed atmosphere there, I would not recommend to stay there too many days. After this we went to Benguluru. We stayed with a colleague of Karsten who had opened the home for us which we are thankfully for. For me this was just a big city and reminded me about Mumbai.

After this we went for Goa. We stayed at Calangute/Baga Beach. I liked the cabanas on the beach with palmtrees in the background. It is good that it was not build hotels close to the beach. Then it looks more natural. The ocean was salty and going into it was almost not cooling since the temperature was high also there. We rented motorbikes one day. When we rented these bikes I said that I am not renting before I get a helmet. Yes we got a helmet, but it was no strap. So if I crashed the helmet would just have absolutely NO meaning to protect. But the renter just told us that you only need helmet when you go on the highway(?) Anyway we rented the bikes and went to see the beaches up north which was Anjuna and Vagator. If you want a postcard beach, you have to go to these places. Next time I am going to one of these beaches to stay. And it was fun to see hippies are still there.

When I was in India the cricket season begun. It is not a big sport in Norway, so I had no expectations to it. Before I have always seen this as a boring sport which take too long time to watch. But I have changed my opinion. After Karsten has told me about the rules, we tried to watch one game pr day. It is interesting to see how the different tactics is in the game.

A culture difference I noticed was concept of time. To schedule to meet a person at a certain time is no use. InNorwaywe get angry when people are too late. This is not an issue in India. There you schedule a time, but it is just for saying a time to meet, you will probably meet this person two hours after you scheduled. This is very much an example of the difference between the M-time and the P-time.

But overall, I really liked India. I liked the people, food and atmosphere. It is an exotic country and compared to other countries in Asia, like Thailand, they still have preserved their culture.

I hope to go back sometime this autumn if Karsten is still located there.

This weekend I was up in the mountains to ski on snow. It was strange feeling to ski since few days before I was swimming in the ocean of Goa.

Cheers

Frode

Talk to you soon!

Karsten

Being a teacher

Hi everyone
The last two Saturdays have been quite interesting, or maybe I should say different, for me. I have been a teacher. No. Not kidding. I have worked as an English teacher for Sujaya Foundation. This was one of the most interesting experiences I have had in India!
Working with, and contributing to young kids, like I do with the Nanhi Kali program is off course very nice. But in this case, I worked with youths in the age of around 16-18, and the advantage with this is that it is much easier to get a good and clear feedback from them.
The program that Sujaya has is a summer school program, where students come in and work on their English skill. It last for a number of weeks, six days every week. Monday to Friday they work with new topics, and on Saturdays they try to get in volunteers to work with the students.

When I entered the school, the whole group of students worked together and had a session with another volunteer. After this session they got divided into four groups who worked with different volunteers from Capgemini. In my group there were 5 girls and 2 boys. First I got all of them to introduce themselves, and I also introduced myself to them. When the first informal introduction was over we started to work on some exercises. In one of the exercises we worked with different tenses. We used some simple phrases like “doing homework” and they should make sentences like “I did homework yesterday”, “I will do homework tomorrow” and so on. Initially they struggled quite a bit with this task, but they had very good progress, and it was very funny when the whole group kind of shouted out the sentences all at the same time! You can imagine how all the other groups looked at us and wondered if we had gone crazy! And seeing the smiles in their faces really made my day.
The Sujaya foundation was established in 2002 and works to provide education for the underprivileged. By helping them to get a better grips of English it will be possible for them to get jobs that they otherwise would have had no chance of getting.
Talk to you soon
Karsten