Gurgaon, the Millennium City

Gurgaon is the city we based our small company in.
Five years back they told us: "It's a posh place". I never understood what they meant. As a small company we didn't have the means to lease an office in the few new MNC-buildings. We had to go with the regular places, where also normal people are living.

During the years I have seen:
- lots of big projects coming up, including thousands of skyscrapers
- these skyscrapers are for a big part not used, as can be seen from the few lights that are burning inside the flats in the evening
- though flyovers have been constructed, and a metro, the quality of the regular roads is really pathetic
- the city gets more and more crowded with people, vehicles, ...
- lease prices going up till 2008 and collapsed in 2009 (according to me to never come back to the old levels)

Though my wife and I considered for a while buying some property in Gurgaon, I'm very happy that I didn't take the risk. You can just see how much cheating, stealing and robbery is going on with these constructions.
Buying a flat in Gurgaon? With the levels of maintenance accepted by Indian people ? Not in a million years ! It's lost money.

The video from this link clearly describes what is going on. The report is in Dutch but you can easily follow the video by the witnesses.

I will not mention the social inequality which is apparent everywhere, but not shown hard enough in this video:
There's the woman pretending to find no single beggar. However, if I myself walk ten minutes from my office, then I see hundreds of families living on a waste belt. I will shoot some photographs and place them here one of the next days.
The same woman tells openly that "her maid is not allowed to leave the compound". Now the shown maid is an adult but in India the majority of maids are just kids below 18. In my eyes that is sheer child-slavery.
It's very disturbing to hear Indians talk openly about this shame!

I hope they will be able to enjoy their Commonwealth Games.

Can curiosity kill the cat?

I read today, Sunday 13th of June 2010, in the paper this intriguing crime-question: "CAN THE TWEET KILL THE BOOK?".

My mind wanders away and several other questions arise.
Can Facebook kill the book? (2008)
Can the internet kill the book? (nineties)
Can the television kill the book? (eighties)
Can the movie theater kill the book? (twenties-thirties)

More questions come up ...
Can the digital camera kill the analog camera? (nineties)
Can the computer kill the typewriter? (eigthies)
Can the email kill the phone? (eigthies)
Can color television kill black&white? (sixties)
Can the car kill the horse? (end nineteenth century)
Can the bulb kill the petrol lamps? (19th century)

What would questions like these actually mean ...
Would somebody ever have the idea of asking them before
they actually happened?
Can Cliff Barnes kill JR? (asked in 1979)
Can Oswald kill Kennedy? (asked on 21th November 1963)
Can Union Carbide kill 15,000 people? (asked on 2 December 1984)
Can BP kill the leak? (before there was one)
Can Cobain kill himself? (before he actually did)

What about these questions ?
Can the laptop kill the desktop?
Can sex kill the Roman Catholic Church?
Can the car still kill the train?
Can online ecucation kill the classroom?
Can becoming an adult kill your youth?
Can Google kill Microsoft?
Can DDT kill the insect?
Can copper kill iron?
Can iron kill stone ?
Can China kill democracy?
Can money kill love?
Can Symantec kill the computervirus?

Some questions can become really dangerous if you would start digging too deep:
Can my wife kill my marriage?
Can the Indian politician make a killing?

There's only one real and meaningful question.
Knowing the answer to it is necessary, before you look for other answers.
CAN CURIOSITY KILL THE CAT?

Online Banking with ICICI (PART 1)

I can't help it, but I keep having continuous problems with using the on-line banking website of ICICI.
I think I'm entitled to call myself an experienced computer user, but despite all my endless efforts and my nights of studying the on-line banking system of ICICI bank, all these efforts have been in vain till now.
I had to apply 6 times (this is not an exaggeration from my side!) for new login credentials before somebody at ICICI found out that their website is not supporting Mozilla Firefox ! It took 4 months before I finally could log in.
I found out afterwards that it IS supporting Firefox after the first login however.

Since then my experiences with ICICI on-line banking have been worrisome. I try constantly to pay my bills electronically, like the lease every month. Let's follow the first step in this process: logging in.

I go to www.icicibank.com. The result is this impressive screen:

Forced by my never-ending quest for money, first thing that catches my eye is the 5000rs cash back offer. For a short moment my mind already dreams about offering my wife a good meal-with-meat in one of the many hot spots in Gurgaon. I will make quite an impression on her if I will pay the bill from my own pocket. So I start to read. Damn, again I need to spend much more money first before getting the 5k. Based on experimental evidence I decide to not ask my wife for that money. I'll have to find other ways to impress her.

After reading all the options in the screen and doubting a bit which button will open the Gates of Eden, I realise suddenly what I was about to do: paying a bill asap.
So I press the "Personal" button under "Login" at the left side of the screen, as I don't consider myself in a corporate state today.
What would you expect? Right: a login screen where you can input your credentials.

Not at ICICI bank though. This is the page that shows up:

"Important alert" the message screams into my face. I read it cautiously since it's important. Wow, I got to hurry myself if I want to pay my landowner. ICICI will finally upgrade their on-line banking system. Huh ? Upgrade ? No: only maintenance they will do. And they need 18 hours for it ! Tomorrow already ! So I really need to hurry up. My deadline starts to count before I even got started... Even finishing this blog will be impossible, as I have so much to say about the ICICI banking system.

Then there's the safety notice. Hmmm, what to think about thàt? Do they have safety issues perhaps ? It seems so. Is it dangerous to enter this site ?

I don't know what kind of personality you, reader, have, but I myself don't like to have to click twice on a "login" button. To me, this is like I want to enter a restaurant where the guard holds you, tells you that tomorrow they're closed but that you'll be safe with them, and then asks you if you still want to enter the restaurant now that you know that they do everything they can to ensure your safety. I would spontaneously think then that something must be wrong entering that place.

"Tony, keep your nerves. You were going to pay somebody and you'll be able to do it in a safe way. Even if you refuse the 5000rs we would like to give you". So I press "Continue to login".

A separate pop-up appears.
"WHAT ? A POP-UP ? Is this safe ?"

Again an important Security Notice from ICICI. I need to check 3 security controls.
The first step asks me to check the URL. Seems to be OK. The URL in my browser shows exactly what is described, but what security check is this ? Any pirated popup could tell you: "Ensure the following before logging in: 1. URL address begins with http://...." after which they fish for your credentials. The security-aware reader will have noticed that I deleted the "s" from "https://"

I'm becoming very worried now ... what kind of security advice is this?

"Let's be brave, Tony. You've come to India to live here and you cannot succeed without trusting the Indian ways of doing the things. So, don't hesitate and go to the second security check."

"2. DO NOT ENTER login or other sensitive information IN ANY POP UP WINDOW."
WHAT ? This login-pop-up is telling me NOT TO ENTER my credentials in any pop up window ? They must be kidding, right ?

As I'm dead sure now that some Russians are waiting for me at their side of the cable to enter my login and other sensitive information into this pop-up, I quickly press the QUIT button.

I think I'll write a cheque.

(blog to be continued when I feel ready to climb further this Himalayan website)

When will China and India catch up ?

http://blogs.tijd.be/bbb/2010/06/wanneer-india-en-china-het-vk-en-de-vs-ingehaald-zullen-hebben-.html

Ten years ago

I remembered suddenly that more or less ten years ago I explicitly forbid my daughter to wear a small nose piercing. What I cannot remember however, is the exact reason why.

This photograph was shot at a wedding ceremony near to Nainital.
The number of small jewels at the bottom of the ornament is representing the number of sons the woman has, they told me. After counting them, I doubt however that is true. Anyway, who cares, it's a nice story and these are beautiful people for sure.

Belgian Belly

or ... the Revenge of Mother India

After years of complaining about the danger of eating Indian food and warning visitors against eating out in India, I managed to give my wife, myself and - that is worse - a business partner a hefty "Delhi belly" (= infection of the intestines with diarrhea).

Indeed, finally we moved to a more homelike office with a good kitchen in it. So we bought everything we needed to start cooking ourselves.
The first meal on my planning was a spaghetti bolognese. In absence of a minced beef/porc combination (after all: this is India), I thought that a goat/chicken combination would be tasty.
Well, tasty it was! Even so that my wife, our guest and myself did eat a good amount of it.

After the meal our guest had to head to the airport, which is only half an hour from our place. And by the time he must have arrived there, my wife and I both already had gone to the toilet twice.
I can assure you that I never saw more sense in having a toilet connected to each bedroom than in this situation.

I didn't dare to think about the condition of my guest.
But on Monday morning I heard that he had been so sick during the flight that he almost fainted a few times ...

So far my first experience of cooking myself in India.

The moral of this story ?
I think I will watch my words a bit when discussing things happening in Mother India as she seems to have her own strange (I cannot use the word "subtle" for this) ways of taking revenge.
I feel that she told me very clearly: "If you're such a big shot and you think you know everything better, then proof it to me before criticizing my people!"

My belly whispered to me for two long days: "Didn't you ever think there are reasons why Indians are how they are and do what they do".

Always be aware for the good advices from expats: they always are based on limited experiences and consists of stupid generalisations. This applies as well to everything you can read in my blogs.
Perhaps these attempts to rationalise, explain, find reason and give advise are all nonsense.

As Westerners we prefer to live in the illusion of rationalistic control above to cope with the irrational aspects which are there in life.
I can easily refer to the movements of the stock markets nowadays and the endless analyses of the same by "professionals". Especially the short half-hour panic last Thursday in which the stock markets in the US fell almost 10% in just half an hour. Despite all the computerisation, giving the illusion of full control, this illusion is confronted hard with reality whenever something unexpected happens (a human error?). It looks like the illusion itself is even causing the unexpected!

Mother India confronts you with many aspects of life overlooked in the "developed" world. It's my honest belief that Hinduism is the reason behind that fact (there I go again !).

The world should cherish Hinduism !

The waiting Indian

One of the things that came in my mind lately was that I observe Indian individuals often have problems with serial thinking. When confronted with a rather complex task, a lot of Indian individuals are unable to analyse the task into logical/serial steps to take. Of course this depends a lot on the length and quality of their education.

Because splitting up complex tasks in parts (process/serial-approach) is a common practice in Indian businesses, a manager can be fooled to think that serial thinking is typical and well-accepted in India.
Well, it isn't.

The problem in the Indian approach is that every step in the serial chain is assigned to separate individuals. Often the employee who is active further in the serial chain has no idea at all what is happening before him or what is done with his work after him. I often experience that they don't even care about the broader picture. It's like if Indian youth is trained to do a well-described individual task. Without an explicit order from someone higher in the hierarchy, nothing is done or undertaken.

As a consequence the Indian employee prefers always to have a written-out procedure. If such a procedure is available, then of course he follows this procedure meticulously until a slight variation is needed. Suddenly, the guy then is paralysed and doesn't know what to do or how to proceed any more. This paralysis is a bad thing, because in combination with a strict hierarchical work organisation, often the guy doesn't dare to ask for advice or take a decision except when it is decided by his direct superior. If that superior is not available right away, the employee tends to wait until he is available again.
Such a scene can take hours.

Indians have a special talent for the broadly practised Indian activity of waiting. In fact, they have to wait their whole lives.
- When they are born, they have to wait between 1 and 12 months to be given a name;
- When going to school, they have to wait every day to see if their teacher shows up;
- About the time their hormones start to demand attention, they have to wait till their parents tell them it's about time to marry someone of their parent's choice. Often then they have to say farewell to their lovers and wait for the suffering to end while they are married already to someone else;
- In supermarkets they have to wait in endless chaotic "rows" and every time an article is not labelled (which I estimate is the case with more or less 5% of the products sold) the waiting can extend to almost an hour. I experienced this myself one more time yesterday, when "a problem occurred" and all 7 of the cashiers left their row and went staring at the problem "being solved";
- In traffic they discover that buying a four wheeler is perhaps good for their status, but not good for reaching the place quicker;
- Once they got their degree and are full of expectations to land in a good job, they have to wait before they find out that the heralded 8% growth a year can't make even 20% of Indian youth get a suitable job;
- If any decision must be taken, however small it may be, they wait till the whole family discussed it and agreed;
- They wait for the power cut to end, they wait for the next water supply, they wait for their wives speaking again to them after a fight, they wait till summer's over, they wait for winters to end, for the next promotion, for the next salary increase, for the fast to be over ...;
- They wait for a Sir, a Boss, an American or a Crore Pati to give them a positive remark, they wait for a radical change in karma, they wait for Ganesha to notice their life, ...

They dream about a better life for their kids.

They are waiting for an Indian summer.