Monday’s my first day into Banjul (the hotel is in Serrekunda, a small town very close to Banjul on the Atlantic coast). Banjul is interesting. The streets are dusty (rainy season is still a bit off), but in relatively good repair (though of course only the major thoroughfares resemble streets as we know them, mostly cars turn off these streets onto dirt paths). The population is colourfully dressed and we do not see anyone in the time we’re here that would appear to be desperately poor.
There are a couple of goats in the streets. Here, and then again over there a block over. This intrigues me – I do not see anyone who appears to be herding them, yet surely livestock would be too valuable to let it run around on its own? The newspapers are usually a couple of days old, and do not evidence a desire to gainsay the government. On the first day I read an article that a leader of the opposition was arrested for Possession of Loudspeakers (without a license) and find an editorial next to it which attempts to point out to the reader that this shows how the law applies to everybody – a triumph for the rule of law in the Gambia. Aha. Shows you how valuable such an editorial is, because it wouldn’t have occurred to me to interpret the facts quite that way. ;-)
Then there is the usual West African experience of people trying to bum some money off us in one way or another. Most start with a friendly “conversation”, which seems hard to avoid – tell someone you don’t want to talk to them when all they’ve done is wish you a good day and maybe (usually) ask where you’re from. Then, after the young man has told me (in passable German) of his time in Germany, he presses into my hand a little necklace that he tells me they make for tourists around here and even sell in the markets, but he wants me to have it as a gift. I know, even as I take it, that taking it is wrong because it’s got to lead to the next stage, and sure enough it does. He would much appreciate if I had maybe just a tiny little token of appreciation for him as well. Just a few Euros, or maybe just one dollar? And of course he doesn’t immediately take the “gift” back when I shake my head, creating the difficulty that I can’t give it back (certainly don’t feel like throwing it down, I don’t want to insult) but don’t want to keep it either (not without paying, and I don’t want to pay).
This is when I realize something that’s been dawning on me for a while: Polite honesty works. “Look, my friend, I only took the gift because I felt bad about rejecting it, but now that I realize you expect a gift in return, it doesn’t feel like a gift at all, more like you’re trying to sell me something – and I don’t want to buy anything.” “Yes, I realize that in the market I’d have to spend money for something like it – but only if I really, really wanted to have it, which I don’t”. One can take this method further:
“No, I don’t.” ... “You don’t believe I don’t have money? Well, excuse me, I thought when you asked me if I had any money you meant do I have any money that I feel like giving to you, and the answer to *that* question would be ‘no’.” ... “Well, because it’s *my* money and I’d really rather hang on to it”. Etc. Not easy to stay polite while on the other hand honestly saying all those things that politeness would usually make us not say, but very much worth the effort. It seemed to create an impregnable shield against several touts desperately probing my defenses, without ever giving rise to aggression. I think I may be on to something here.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
KL 2010: The Return
Of course, I get to spend some time in Delhi airport again first. Sheeesh.
I walk out of the airplane and straight towards the transfer desk, but am stopped by an angry soldier who, in barely intelligible English, tells me to go back and contact the airline. Going back I am waved down the rolling escalator towards Immigration with everybody else, and after some asking around, told to “wait here”. With a bunch of others. “For whom, or for what, were they waiting?” Apologies to Manowar for the quote from “The Warrior’s Prayer”, and of course the answer proved much less interesting. What we were waiting for turns out to be someone else, with a handwritten note on which there were the names of some, though not all, of our group. We were told to follow this person, who, via a different route, though past the same soldier, takes us to the same transfer desk. At which, again, and predictably, we are told to wait. I’m used to this now, so just remark that I prefer to wait in the business lounge and walk off.
This time I’m outbound on Air India, so told to go to *their* business lounge. Which, I am sad to report, compares unfavourably to any I’ve seen so far, including Malawi and Papua New Guinea. Of course, the floors are marble (if in need of cleaning), but even cheap carpet reduces noise. They’ve got a telly on, of course, and it looks as though it’s the same stupid cricket game still going on. Sunday to Wednesday – that’s actually possible, I guess.
A young attendant practically forces his help on me to get an internet connection established and then, predictably, asks for a tip. I pass him a dollar note, seeing as I know I couldn’t have gotten one established without such help, though his vocal disappointment at the size of the tip fails to move me. This place is just as loud, and cold, as the other lounge was, but it’s smaller, the restrooms are decidedly unappetizing and the food on offer isn’t much better. I’m glad I don’t actually have to get something done, these are not conducive circumstances.
When nearly an hour before the flight no one has come to issue me a boarding pass yet, I go up to the front to inquire and meet an apparently recently arrived gentleman in the process of accosting random strangers to find out if they might be the individual whose name he’s got on yet another handwritten note. Which proves to be mine.
I am, again, asked to follow and duly do so – our way takes us past all manner of other travellers, half of which this person seems to know well enough to chivvy in one direction or another. One man stops us to (apparently) shout abuse at my guide (something about his bag, which looks alright to me) and after a number of similarly strange intercessions I am brought back to that same old transfer desk (I had suspected this by now). Where a heated conversation ensues between various people, sounding a lot like “^vS@fg$% ;"#[\ boarding pass hjx&” going back and forth in various shades of hostility. I am, in the end, issued a boarding pass, and, along with another woman we’ve picked up at the transfer desk seemingly at random, brought to yet another gentleman who compares my name to yet another handwritten list. He’s asked the woman in front of me for her name (while looking at her passport) – I’ve got a snide answer to that on my lips when, instead, he asks me where I’m going. While looking at my boarding pass.
They then take us to identify our baggage (I had found it worrying the first time around that they’d ask me to describe my luggage, which the Air India personnel in DC had assured me was checked through to Kuala Lumpur). Sure enough, in an unsupervised corral of baggage sits my trolley, with the KL-issued bar code tag on it that says “KUL - IAD” (IAD for Dulles airport in DC). My guide is happy about this and produces another bar code tag which he attaches to it. As it also says “IAD” (though preceded by “DEL”), I don’t object. He then tells me that now I am “free”. It’s half an hour before boarding time, so I head back to the lounge for a snack and to begin writing this down. Shortly thereafter, on my way to the aircraft, I am made to go through scanners twice, hand-searched twice, my hand luggage is scanned twice, and my passport and boarding pass are requested and regarded by five separate people with attitudes varying from intense scrutiny through boredom to cursory neglect.
What strikes me about the whole process is that in the end, all of these handwritten notes were produced somewhere ahead of time, before the individual in question had actually met me. Which proves that the e-ticket booking had in fact created a representation of all the necessary data here in Delhi before my arrival. That they could (and did) produce a bar-coded baggage tag for my suitcase means that there are machines somewhere that handle bar codes, and that they knew about my bag beforehand. So why, in the Hindi thousand (or thereabouts) gods’ names, do a dozen people have to consult handwritten notes? This is where we outsource our IT development to? Really?
If this was a place busy dragging itself out of abject poverty, I wouldn’t complain. And now that I’m in my almost full-flat seat for the return flight, I’ll stop complaining.
I walk out of the airplane and straight towards the transfer desk, but am stopped by an angry soldier who, in barely intelligible English, tells me to go back and contact the airline. Going back I am waved down the rolling escalator towards Immigration with everybody else, and after some asking around, told to “wait here”. With a bunch of others. “For whom, or for what, were they waiting?” Apologies to Manowar for the quote from “The Warrior’s Prayer”, and of course the answer proved much less interesting. What we were waiting for turns out to be someone else, with a handwritten note on which there were the names of some, though not all, of our group. We were told to follow this person, who, via a different route, though past the same soldier, takes us to the same transfer desk. At which, again, and predictably, we are told to wait. I’m used to this now, so just remark that I prefer to wait in the business lounge and walk off.
This time I’m outbound on Air India, so told to go to *their* business lounge. Which, I am sad to report, compares unfavourably to any I’ve seen so far, including Malawi and Papua New Guinea. Of course, the floors are marble (if in need of cleaning), but even cheap carpet reduces noise. They’ve got a telly on, of course, and it looks as though it’s the same stupid cricket game still going on. Sunday to Wednesday – that’s actually possible, I guess.
A young attendant practically forces his help on me to get an internet connection established and then, predictably, asks for a tip. I pass him a dollar note, seeing as I know I couldn’t have gotten one established without such help, though his vocal disappointment at the size of the tip fails to move me. This place is just as loud, and cold, as the other lounge was, but it’s smaller, the restrooms are decidedly unappetizing and the food on offer isn’t much better. I’m glad I don’t actually have to get something done, these are not conducive circumstances.
When nearly an hour before the flight no one has come to issue me a boarding pass yet, I go up to the front to inquire and meet an apparently recently arrived gentleman in the process of accosting random strangers to find out if they might be the individual whose name he’s got on yet another handwritten note. Which proves to be mine.
I am, again, asked to follow and duly do so – our way takes us past all manner of other travellers, half of which this person seems to know well enough to chivvy in one direction or another. One man stops us to (apparently) shout abuse at my guide (something about his bag, which looks alright to me) and after a number of similarly strange intercessions I am brought back to that same old transfer desk (I had suspected this by now). Where a heated conversation ensues between various people, sounding a lot like “^vS@fg$% ;"#[\ boarding pass hjx&” going back and forth in various shades of hostility. I am, in the end, issued a boarding pass, and, along with another woman we’ve picked up at the transfer desk seemingly at random, brought to yet another gentleman who compares my name to yet another handwritten list. He’s asked the woman in front of me for her name (while looking at her passport) – I’ve got a snide answer to that on my lips when, instead, he asks me where I’m going. While looking at my boarding pass.
They then take us to identify our baggage (I had found it worrying the first time around that they’d ask me to describe my luggage, which the Air India personnel in DC had assured me was checked through to Kuala Lumpur). Sure enough, in an unsupervised corral of baggage sits my trolley, with the KL-issued bar code tag on it that says “KUL - IAD” (IAD for Dulles airport in DC). My guide is happy about this and produces another bar code tag which he attaches to it. As it also says “IAD” (though preceded by “DEL”), I don’t object. He then tells me that now I am “free”. It’s half an hour before boarding time, so I head back to the lounge for a snack and to begin writing this down. Shortly thereafter, on my way to the aircraft, I am made to go through scanners twice, hand-searched twice, my hand luggage is scanned twice, and my passport and boarding pass are requested and regarded by five separate people with attitudes varying from intense scrutiny through boredom to cursory neglect.
What strikes me about the whole process is that in the end, all of these handwritten notes were produced somewhere ahead of time, before the individual in question had actually met me. Which proves that the e-ticket booking had in fact created a representation of all the necessary data here in Delhi before my arrival. That they could (and did) produce a bar-coded baggage tag for my suitcase means that there are machines somewhere that handle bar codes, and that they knew about my bag beforehand. So why, in the Hindi thousand (or thereabouts) gods’ names, do a dozen people have to consult handwritten notes? This is where we outsource our IT development to? Really?
If this was a place busy dragging itself out of abject poverty, I wouldn’t complain. And now that I’m in my almost full-flat seat for the return flight, I’ll stop complaining.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Kuala Lumpur (cont.)
The workshop at least goes well. My two presentations on Tuesday are very well received, both by the audience and my coworkers, some of each go out of their way to tell me how much they liked them. That they particularly liked their balance of down-to-earth procedural aspects and the more abstract goals included is particularly welcome, as I’ve spent some time lately to adjust them that way.
So Tuesday passes relatively well. Late in the evening, internet problems notwithstanding, I manage to Skype both with my dad in Germany and my wife in DC. We decide on a new approach to get things sorted out at home, which helps my general well-being. And it turns out that my coworkers who asked me to come along to a supposedly famous bar that evening haven’t left until I’m done with all this, so I come along for a nightcap. I feel that I earned it (and there’s no alcohol to be had on the grounds, this being a state-owned facility in a Muslim country).
The place in question is closed. So is the alternative suggested by the taxi driver. But my coworkers (French, the lot of them) spy a “Deutsches Gasthaus”
as we drive by and I drily remark that at least it likely has decent beer, which is enough to have us ending up there. So I’m having beer with a bunch of French people in a germanesque pub in Kuala Lumpur. It strikes me that when I had dinner with a bunch of international people in a Korean bar in Tokyo this seemed impossibly strange (and cool). Now I’m just happy to have a Warsteiner (though it seems to have spent a little too long in the bottle). I seem to be growing jaded frightfully quickly. Wednesday there’s more of the workshop – I’m not really involved in this segment (which is why my flight leaves this evening), but want to see what the module organized by the Banque de France is all about. So I’ll quit after lunch. Should allow just enough time to pack my things and maybe for a second dip in the pool.
I want to come back here.
Kuala Lumpur, of which I’ve only seen glimpses through taxi windows, appeals to me. Sure, on first glance it’s just another big Asian city. And the advertisements everywhere for next week’s F1 race don’t intrigue me in the least. But even the slums are colourful, mostly the city is clean and it’s full of plants in riotous greens. Heat and humidity are not my best friends, and though they are sure to be one’s constant companions here, I think I’d like it here. And there’s supposed to be fantastic hiking here, not just Mount Kinabalu on Malaysian Northeast Borneo, but supposedly even quite close to Kuala Lumpur in peninsular Malaysia.
In short, having a longer workshop here, with a few extra days to spend in the end, would seem like a wonderful thing to do. I find myself pondering things like whether and how I could take my wife along, what to do with the kids in the meantime, etc. I don’t know. But KL isn’t going anywhere, so all sorts of chances may come up again. So I’m not regretful, though it seems that this trip had a lot of opportunities I felt the need to ignore. Well, one effect of cutting down on the ridiculous amounts of traveling I’m currently doing (I’m in the top quarter of this Fiscal Year’s travelers already, and only been with the unit for half of its length) should be that I might capitalize on one or two such opportunities during the year. And let me spend more time with my family – to which I shall now return. Another 30 hours, 22 of which in an airplane, but I’m looking forward to it.
Kuala Lumpur
It strikes me in the airport that I was here not that long ago, on my way to (and from) Singapore for the on-site audit we did last summer.
I take the “Ekspres” train into town from the airport and a taxi from the train station – this gets me to Bank Negara Malaysia (the Malaysian Central Bank) cheaper and faster than taking a taxi from the airport. The taxi driver has never heard of the Lanai Kijang training center of the bank, but they have a shuttle from the main office building.
The place is run like a hotel - check-in is fast, I jump into my suit and end up in the conference room two hours after touchdown (and only about 10 minutes after start of the workshop). Given that it takes a bit of time to get baggage and exit the airport, and that the airport is an hour and 15 minutes away by taxi (that’s how everybody else got here, only yesterday) I am quite proud of myself.
The organizer tells me to take the afternoon off – they’ve got a few presentations schedule for which my input isn’t needed at all (and which I’ve heard before, in one form or another) and they take pity on me. Which is nice, only – if I go to sleep now (which is oh-so-tempting), there’s no way I’ll sleep at night. I need to adjust to the local cycle, and that takes daylight. And I need a haircut. So I take a cab into town to the mall suggested by the very friendly people at reception.
It’s right underneath the Petronas Towers, so I even get a bit of sightseeing done. I get a haircut, and buy a pair of eye goggles for swimming on sale while I’m at it – they have a pool at the training center.
I try it out when I’m back – I still have almost two hours before the bus takes us to an arranged dinner, and am sorely in need of some movement, as well as some relaxation. Swimming provides both. It’s a 25m outdoor pool, with a pleasant water temperature. The goggles keep the chlorine out of my eyes and it’s the best thing that has happened to me in days.
In general, the facilities here are brilliant. While WiFi doesn’t work equally everywhere, it is often possible to get a pretty decent connection, the room is nice, the bed is large and firm, the shower is nice, they have a huge fitness room and apparently you can book a massage. If it wasn’t for me worrying about home all the time, this would be a brilliant trip.The evening entertainment features traditional dance. It’s in a dimly lit hall, and after a few bites from the buffet I literally almost fall off my chair as the fatigue catches up with me. I cannot keep my eyes open, so make my apologies to the organizer, get a cab back and fall into bed. I sleep for nine hours straight.
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