ZIGGY STARDUST

What is a good time to write a post? I don’t think I have completely figured that out. But, like with most things, I do have an opinion on it. There was a time when I made up my mind about writing three posts a month, so after a week of writing one I’d browse through my thoughts and my past for another. Then came a time when I relied on sitemeter; whenever traffic reduced to a trickle I’d put something up. Of course some events are inherently post-worthy, dramatic breakups, first few days of a job, encounters with insomnia and so on. And sometimes I relied on the truly bizarre, like my facebook biorhythm application. Days that are announced as truly exceptional on the intellectual front often coincide with a post here.

Currently my intellectual levels are pretty average (Source: FB) but I shall take the risk of going ahead with a post because not only has this site been reduced to receiving visitors only interested in photos of the Great Khali, but also its author has just returned from a very colourful overseas trip.

It was a few years ago that I took my first flight. I was travelling with a girl and was for some strange reason determined to not let her know that this was my maiden voyage. Somehow I figured out the entire process of baggage screening coming before check in followed by a boarding pass leading to security check and finally boarding. I maintained elegant poise throughout; even though internally I had been reduced to what would be the plight of a school teacher trying to sell shares at a stock market. I just couldn’t believe what is happening. Of course I had the girl engaged in beautiful conversation and impressed her with my knowledge of the theatre and of films. Judging by my confidence and how matter of fact I was being with the whole process of getting into an aircraft she would have thought I was born on one.

Of course; my life, being one that is peppered with tiny tragedies; my quota of beginners luck was particularly small. Just as we were moving for security check I held out the tag I was handed by the lovely lady at the check in counter and cried out loud, “What the hell, what did she give me this for?” And then to underline my stupidity I strapped it around my wrist. The girl smiled and swirled not because she found me funny like I first thought but to hint at where my tag should actually go.

“First time??”
“Umm... Yes.”

And just to add insult to injury, I couldn’t even figure out how to strap the damn thing around the bag, she had to do it for me.

Of course now I am an expert at domestic air travel and regularly try to run over slow exasperating first timers with my trolley. At the security check I lift my arms only about thirty degrees and show particular disdain, unlike your animated first timers who will stand like Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. And I don’t look as exceptionally thrilled in the bus to the aircraft as I once did. Although I still haven’t managed containing my excitement during take off, or my panic at the slightest hint of turbulence.

Thankfully I was travelling to Singapore alone and had the luxury of goofing up and floundering at the international airport in private. For example, who arrives at an airport three hours in advance, especially for a morning 8 AM flight? Or who doesn’t realise that the in-flight movies can be paused and you needn’t wait till the end of the film to go to the loo. In my defence I figured this out on my return flight and that too all by myself.

Ah but what a way to travel. Every possible magazine (other than the inappropriate ones) you’d want to read, movies, music, alcohol, exceptionally hot air-hostesses, more alcohol, the view, as much alcohol as you want! The only downside was being told “DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICERS” just before we landed; I thought it was a bit rude. But I was too drunk to really care.

Changi airport is some place, its hard to believe how quiet and clean it is. I think I was the only one making any audible noise there because I had the only creaky trolley at the entire airport. Oh I must make mention of my first meal, I had what an Indian would describe as boiled rice and water and salt with some boiled bits of pork, fish oil and strange slimy vegetables and/or sea food. Also it was just a few degrees cooler than the centre of the earth. I burnt my tongue at least a dozen times eating that strange culinary experiment.

Few things could be better than finding yourself, accidently, in a Mercedes Benz paid for by the company meant for someone else taking you to a five star hotel while realising that like its airport Singapore is as clean as everyone said it would be and quiet (nobody mentioned that.)

I had arrived separately from the rest of my team and by the time I got to the hotel they had already scattered themselves all over Singapore. So I used this bit of brilliant luck to discover the city by myself. And being a tourist not of the traditional variety my first course of action was to walk to the MRT find a 7-11 and buy four bottles of Jim Beam and Cola. Back in my room I ordered I grand lunch, and drank all the Jim Beam, while watching Die Hard 4.0. And then exhausted with all this effort I fell asleep. When I woke I think I had already got as much as I would want from a holiday.

Over the next week I accompanied others to time-honoured destinations like night-safaris, amusement islands, and all night shopping centres, all places I think I could visit only once. I preferred my aimless walks through the city centre, malls and quays. The city was only larger, cleaner, more orderly, and quieter than the ones I had seen back home. Essentially the differences were minimal, which is why I didn’t really feel I was in a foreign land. I also realised I’d love to live in a city like this. But you can’t really be sure of such things until they actually happen. The people were brilliantly and colourfully dressed, the girls had the loveliest legs, nobody, absolutely nobody had a regular hairstyle, the music shops were fantastic, I had my first brush with Starbucks (average, other than the freshly brewed coffee) and Burger King (spectacular), I drank a crate full of Jim Beam and Cola and spent a fortune on some fantastic dark chocolate, I got caught in a sudden downpour and waited under a tree for half an hour before realising that cabs here didn’t stop simply because I was yelling for them, I successfully managed conversations with cab drivers and realised that they think and behave exactly like those back home, I got lost, I discovered Cream, David Bowie and Death Cab for Cutie on my Ipod, and revived my love for Radiohead through I am a Wicked Child, found no such success in the case of Coldplay, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to Pink Floyd or read The Metamorphosis which I have now carried in my bag for five months, I ate the widest variety of meat I had eaten and ruined my health. It was a whole lot of fun.

Oh, I was there to be trained on my selling skills. And when the weekend ran out and the College began I quite dreaded it. But it was spectacular to say the least. For the first time I got a sense of the organisation I worked for, how big it was and how people it employed were largely similar even across countries. I met some of the brightest, nicest, and most charming people I have met in the longest time. And it also fulfilled a long time desire of mine, of meeting completely new people. People I had no prior connection to, and it gave me a huge kick to know I could get along very well with them. All through I felt I’d rather be working with them than with my colleagues back home, because of how well I got along with them, but someone ruined it by saying it would all change once I was competing with them. I like to believe it won’t.

Also, there was something to be learnt from them, they were as driven as I was when it came to work but at the same time violently possessive of their own lives and weekends and families. I guess they realise the importance of life outside of work if one has to sustain oneself at one’s job. Guess the day I feel I am here for good it’s one of the things I will have to consciously change about myself, I will have to separate work from my life. Anyway it was a great experience and lot of fun working with those people, and I look forward to being in such an environment for a longer time.

Hmm… And then I was off to Pattaya and Bangkok.

Q: Who goes to a country without a Visa?
A: Two men who realise that this will separate them from all the others (women) at the airport and give them a chance to discover Pattaya all by themselves.

Our plan worked and the on-arrival Visa took us two hours and when we got out of the Suvarnabhumi Airport we were confident of having gotten rid of the girls.

“Heyy Guys! How long we have waited…”

So there we were two guys and five girls in a cab hurtling down the expressway from Bangkok to Pattaya. And then certain hormones that are excreted every time a man wants to avoid shopping to go watch football or get drunk, hormones that help in the construction of elaborate excuses and ploys were released in bountiful quantities in our heads. I pretended to fall asleep (of course I took it too far by actually falling asleep) and my friend directed the cab to where the women were staying in Pattaya. See we had anticipated this situation and as Plan B we simply didn’t book ourselves into any hotel. My friend asked the women to wait in the cab, then went inside and checked them in, came back and informed us that, sadly enough, the hotel had no rooms and that we would be staying in the adjacent property. Then he almost threw out their luggage and we left, I was still sleeping as we travelled to the other side of the town and checked ourselves into ‘Bella Villa Cottage (See Facing)’. We also didn’t have phones by the way, so we met the women only three days later, at the Bangkok Airport.

It was one in the morning. And we did what any good decent Indian man would do at this hour of the day. We headed straight for Walking Street. And all of a sudden all my wishes of being in a foreign land were instantly fulfilled. How can a city exist simply on a foundation of massage parlours, go-go bars, and other exotic aspects of sex tourism? There were European men walking in underwear with three girls under each arm, and women shouting, “Aa yoo seksy maan, yoo bigga maan, wanna boom-boom??”, men with snakes, and women selling squid, and nudity, and young girls who would just appear from nowhere and cling on to you and not leave till you paid, and eunuchs, and alcohol, and karaoke. We walked through the place pretty stunned, and entered bars and almost immediately left the first few times. And at four in the morning we returned to Bella Villa completely disgusted.

Oh Pattaya has this interesting setup of young men who ferry you across the town on their bikes for not much money. The trouble is that their knowledge of English extends to okay and you-okay. So the next day when we woke up around lunch and decided to meet at the a pizza place near the beach we weren’t prepared to be dropped at two completely different pizza places on two ends of the beach. The essential items that one needs to survive on one’s own in a foreign country were carefully divided between the two of us. My friend had the money, the map and the credit cards while I had the hotel keys and the passports. Hmm, it was only three hours later and through a stroke of marvellous luck that we found each other. Not that we were looking, both of us just happened to go to the same place for lunch.

That evening we met John and Chris, two American marines, at Burger King. They invited us to sit and said how they felt that Indians were really smart and spoke great English, and that our economy was booming and that China was a threat to them and that McCain would win the elections, and that Americans are just doing what they can so that no “shit happens” any where in the Middle-East. They were typical nice, god-fearing, bush-loving people. Chris wanted to join college and study architecture while John wanted to serve in the navy. It was strange how they seemed quite aghast with the in-your-face nature of Pattaya; they said Hawaii was a far better place. “The women there are more of a challenge, but then it’s worth it, here we only care for the beer.” They took our email ids and left.

Bangkok has the world’s biggest malls and liars. The hotel we booked said walking distance from city centre; it wasn’t even walking distance from the road. But the two pretty girls at the reception made up for it by being really nice, one of them even walked into our rooms to wake us up. Wake-up calls are taken more seriously in Bangkok it seems. Oh the highlight of the day was the steak place we had lunch at, the best food of the trip.

Singapore Airlines will avoid giving you drinks by serving you food while looking at the ceiling; you have to be shameless to get them to fork out alcohol. And shameless I was, all the way back home.

I got lost once again at the Delhi Airport - went and stood at a line of passengers that I thought were from my flight and were queuing up to exit for baggage claim. As it turned out, they were boarding a flight to Canada. It was a mistake that the airport authorities were not particularly pleased with. And then I was led to the wrong immigration counters and Mr. Gyanesh Prasad Singh mocked my inability to understand the floor plan of the international airport and the fact that I was not carrying a pen.

Hmm, think I will love travelling, maybe that’s a good job opportunity, travel and write about it. But I am not sure how many people would prefer travelling like I do. I have been carefully studying this British Airways ad that offers a return ticket for ten thousand buck. It might lead to something very soon.

Sweet Wine – Cream

Who wants the worry, the hurry of city life.
Money, nothing funny; wasting the best of our life.

Sweet wine, hay making, sunshine day breaking.
We can wait till tomorrow.

Car speed, road calling, bird freed, leaf falling.
We can bide time.

Sweet wine, hay making, sunshine day breaking.
We can wait till tomorrow.

Car speed, road calling, bird freed, leaf falling.
We can bide time.

Who wants the worry, the hurry of city life.
Money, nothing funny; wasting the best of our life.