Closing time and new beginnings

It's been almost five months since my last post, and since this is my last day in India I thought I should write a new one before I travel home.

The last months have been very introspective. Introspective to the point that social life ended up far down on the priority list and did not even seem that appealing. I have been trying to really get a grip of what direction in life I would both enjoy and excel at the most. Even though I found a lot of answers there are still many things I am a bit unclear about, but I guess perfect clarity is more of a journey than a destination. I have accepted that I can not come up with a grand plan right now, so I am planning to go home and be open minded about the next few steps since in the end all roads lead to Rome. I really want to work either directly or indirectly with the issue of sustainability though, so there I will start looking. Anyone that sees any interesting job openings feel free to drop me a line! ;-)

So what else have I been up to since last time? Just before Christmas my computer got stolen from our office and I lost all the pictures I had taken during my stay here. I had the chance to explore more of India through attending an AIESEC event in Jalandhar in Punjab and a conference in Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu. Work also took me to some different cities around the state. At work I designed and implemented a lot of different systems for managing things more effectively in the company. I applied for Vice President Organizational Development in AIESEC International, but I was not what they were looking for. It was a very uplifting process since I received so much positive feedback while collecting the required 360 degrees competency assessments and endorsements. Even though I did not get selected all my adjustments of self-awareness was in the positive direction. So, now I feel super empowered in finding a new cause to burn for!

In general I have mainly been excited about going home again but now I am starting to become a bit emotional about it. Interestingly I feel a little bit claustrophobic (fear of small spaces) about it. I guess it comes from cutting all the ties to everything and everyone I have been engaged with for the last eight months, and not having anything concrete to head for. No home. No job. Most friends scattered all around the world. I have to create a new life when I come home. I feel grateful for the experience I have gone through here in India. I have learnt a lot and just as planned it was a great opportunity to let all the personal development I have made the last few years sink in. Thanks to everyone out there that have been a part of this amazing experience!

Taj Mahal - One down, six to go

Coming home from work a Saturday night, being really tired from a hard week of work and reflections about the coming year wishing for everything except having to be social, planning to just eat, relax, eat some chocolate and maybe read a book - I get the question from my two new Australian house mates if I wanted to follow to Agra to see Taj Mahal. I was thinking, sure that could be interesting, and asked when they were going. The answer was just pack your bags and we leave after dinner. The instict was a big resounding nooooooooooo, but for some reason I answered OK let's go! Thanks Steve and Nick for getting me back to my senses to start exploring things outside work again! =)

Off we went in a bus that arrived early morning even before the gates opened. Fortunately we found an open café that were proud to anounce which items on the menu that were recommended in Lonely Planet. Then we spent the rest of the day exploring Taj Mahal and Agra Fort before we had to take the bus home again. So, now I have ticked one of the new seven wonders of the world of the list and only have six to go!

Line to Taj Mahal 6.30 in the morning

One of the gates of entry

Taj Mahal itself

Taj Mahal and... me! :)

Inside Agra Fort

Inside Agra Fort

On the way home I had ran out of money and went off to find an ATM while waiting for the bus to arrive. Apparently the man who was so confident about the directions to the ATM was wrong, so there was no ATM to be found. I found some kids on the way home though who thought it would be a good idea to start a wet handkerchief war with the foreigner passing by. It really made my day since they were so happy and seemed to feel so special that I gave them my attention. They all seemed to want to become Bollywood movie stars, so we made sure to make a video.

Happy kids 1

Happy kids 2

What happened at work recently is that we hired a new staff member called Ashok. Since I earlier submitted some suggestions on how to improve the training of new staff members I ended up with the great honor to be responsible for his introduction. He seems to be a smart and proactive guy, coming up with many tricky questions putting me to test! I also made an effort to once and for all get rid of my frustrations of not having all the very detailed and specific technical information about our whole product range, so I spent a whole day going through all our documents and catalogues and ended up writing a four pages long document with questions that I sent to our manufacturing facilities! They will probably hate me for it but it felt awesome! =)

I and my colleague Amit also went for getting our hair cut. We went to this small back alley place who charged us 40 rupees (60 euro cent, 7 SEK) for getting the job done!

The result, shot 15 cm in front of our noses...

The applications to the AIESEC International team also came out, and I spent quite some time talking to different people in order to increase my understanding of the current state of the organization. Big thanks to everyone who took the time to help me with it!

Settling down and looking into the future

Hello dear readers!

I am sorry for letting you wait so long for a new post. I guess my lack of creativity and drive for writing comes from me starting to settle down with life over here and not having too many new exciting things and experiences to write about. Some interesting things have been happening, but I am afraid I have to confess to all of you that I am applying some censorship to my writings since there are local people here following my blogging and everyone might not enjoy being put up for public display! For curious people you can always catch me online for more in depth sharing of what is happening over here! ;-)

Since the battle of figuring out the basics of how to live here is over I have lifted my eyes from the surroundings to the horizon. The last few weeks I have been reflecting a lot on where I see my life heading and where I want to go next. The problem is not that I have a hard time figuring out what I think I would enjoy doing, its rather the opposite. There are so many things that I think I would both love to do and be good at, so the hard part is to decide what not to do. Its like standing at a buffet table with all my favourite dishes from all around the world, and only one stomach to fill. Things that have crossed my mind is everything from entrepreneur within renewable energy & energy efficiency or training & leadership development, to becoming the prime minister. From becoming a hardcore intrepreneur within the public sector, to becoming a professor in science or theology. From becoming a management consultant in change management to becoming a reseacher in space science. From becoming an author to becoming a teacher. I am not sure if I would succeed in all of that but there are many interesting things to do out there! Bottom line is to find the place where I feel that my contribution to life on this planet (and beyond) would be the greatest. Good thing is that I have my whole life to make the decision. What I have decided though is that I want to continue to explore and develop my leadership potential in the most fantastic organization in the world, AIESEC. I have started to prepare for applying for the AIESEC International team for the coming year!

OK, back to earth. I got carried away a bit there. My colleague Jackie says that I am thinking too much... ;-) What else happened recently is that I bought a guitar. It feels great to have a great way to express myself besides blogging again. :P I was also sick for a few days. I was going to go to get tested for swine flu just in case, but after spending an infinity getting passed around from one line to another, from one hospital to another, and waiting in lines my health improved so much that I felt I was at full health again and I gave up and went back to work. The escape could also have been due to me not wanting to go to a place specialized for swine flu testing standing a few hours in line with some people that definitely got the flu. It felt like a statistically more healthy option to just get the hell out of there!

Work has been a little bit slow. All these companies I have been talking to about LED exports are so slow to take any decisions. My "to-do list" contains about 90% "Waiting for" entries. Local sales is still a bit of a question mark as a foreigner, so I managed to talk myself to get GO to a bunch of suggestions for how to improve some internal things. I am learning a lot about international trade and supply chains & distribution channels here so the experience is definitely very valuable even if it is not as challenging as last year's President job of AIESEC Sweden.

I received some questions about what books I bought at the Indian bookfair I was at few weeks ago, so I thought I would share my latest additions to my library with you all. When I think of it I realize that I never shared about the bookfair here, I only did it as a facebook feed. Sorry!

So, the latest addition to the library (In order (or non-order) of standing on the shelf)
The Holy Bible
The monk who sold his Ferrari – Robin Sharma
The future of India – Bimal Jalan
Strategies for real estate – Donald Trump
The theory of everything – Stephen Hawkin
Memoirs of a geisha – Arthur Golden
The art of happiness – Dalai Lama
Brida – Paulo Coelho
Awaken the giant within – Anthony Robbins
The Bhagavad Gita
Winning – Jack Welch
The End of Poverty – Jeffrey Sachs
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Hot Flat and Crowded – Thomas Friedman
How to become a rainmaker- Jeffrey J. Fox

All in all I think I did not pay more than 100 euros! More like 70 but I don't remember exactly. Any other book recommendations are welcome! I am interested in most things. :-)

See you soon!

Integrating to India - Behind the scenes

Hey guys!

As I mentioned in my last post I will not post some of my reflection on my integration to the Indian society and culture. I will try to outline some differences to what I am used to in Sweden, challenges I have had and thoughts that have been provoked. This will be a purely reflective post so for those of you who want to hear stories of what I am doing and to see some more pictures; you have to wait until the next week! :)

First of all I have to mention that my current integration experience is not just about changing country from Sweden to India, but also from being a student and active member of AIESEC to post-studies life. In AIESEC we often speak about the post-AIESEC "crash", meaning that people that spent a long time in the organization can have a hard time adjusting expectations about things when entering normal working life. I have spent the last six years in various leadership roles in an organization that attracts many of the most talented and ambitious young people in the world. During half of these years I was in the highest responsible role in the entity I was part of, meaning that I had control over everything, insight into everything, and indirectly the authority to shape the world around me according to my own view of how things should be. For this reason many of the frustrations I experience might not be right to blame on India, but rather on me having to adjust to others to a greater extent than I am used to.

So what are the differences I have experienced here?

First and foremost is how people relate to time and order. In the parts of India I have seen time would be considered as relative rather than absolute, even in AIESEC, so its not just about change of organization. If there is an agenda or schedule very little emphasis is put on actually trying to stick to it. Things take the time they take and no one really bothers if things go off track. It took me a while to adjust to this. I was facilitating an AIESEC conference soon after I arrived to India, which put this issue to  a real test. For the first few days I was really stressed since timings changed all the time and since things got messy I felt that I could not live up to the expectations of the people around me. After a while I realized that people did not really expect that things should be on time and in super order, so I managed to start feeling relaxed in the to me perceived chaos.

A connected phenomenon is planning ahead and preparing for things. It does not really happen.  When booking sales appointments here you normally get a meeting the same day as you are calling, or the day after. Even with very senior people. The time you get is often not that specific either, and being on time or not doesn't make a big difference. Sometimes meetings are a few hours late, but everyone involved adapts around the circumstances and do not make a big deal out of it. I don't think I would judge this as something negative about the system here though, even if it feels like it spontaneously. It is just different. Things get less predictable and harder to plan, but at the same time more flexible. I am sure stress is a much less occurring problem in India than in Sweden for this reason.  In the beginning I was quite frustrated when getting asked to do things without getting any time to prepare for them, such as being asked to run a very important sales meeting five seconds before entering the door to it during my first week in the country. I still do but I am getting used to it! ;-)

Two connected things I have experienced is less effort spent on organization/structure and communication.  Many times it is not clear who is responsible for what, instructions are poor, there are no clear communicated goals or plans and there is low consistency between different things. This has been very challenging for me to cope with since my brain is wired in the way that I want to connect the dots. I constantly have to challenge myself by keeping to work in what seems to be to be like walking in the dark, instead of waiting for someone to turn the lights on. This might not necessarily be something negative, since having things done this way means that everyone has to take ownership over what they are doing, or nothing would be done at all. Well, the latter seems to be frequently occurring as well. It also adds a lot of freedom.

Listening does not seem to be a commonly valued activity to engage in; it is more about pushing arguments and getting your voice heard. Connected to this is one of the biggest differences to what I am used to, namely the view of authority and hierarchies. The whole Indian society seems to be centered around gaining status and authority, compared to the Scandinavian "jante law" of 'Dont think you are special or better than anyone else'. The leadership style are not that inclusive and it is more about telling people what to do than to facilitate dialogue and consensus. This is something I have had quite a hard time with. Not by being directed, my boss are good to deal with in that sense. Problem is when having to lead myself, which I had the chance to experience by becoming the project manager for the AIESEC alumni congress here. I am definitely not good at pushing people around! It felt quite alien to have people telling me that I need to tell people what to do, how much to do, when to do… Not like the Swedish way of involving everyone in the decision making and asking rather than telling. I guess the more authoritarian view of leadership is required to make things happen in the, in my view, disorganized and unclear environment over here.

Something I admire a lot about India is the pride people have in being an Indian. Not pride in a negative way but rather as a strong uniting force for doing great things for the country. This is especially admiring since India should not really be considered a country but rather a continent. There are so many different religions and languages, and comparing one state with another can be as comparing two  European countries with each other. Still there seems to be a strong national entity even considering the tremendous diversity. I almost felt like an Indian myself when I went to this AIESEC conference where there were sessions about India as a country and AIESEC's role in it.

A general comment about my integration is that I probably been in a slight denial about the challenges with it. By being an easy going optimist trying to adapt to everyone else I think I made the self image of myself as an intercultural superman not having any problems with integrating. I might have managed to  smile at the issues and my own frustrations making it easy for me to cope with them, but that does not automatically mean that I am integrating well. There are surely new behaviours I need to master to not just being able to enjoy my experience here, but also to become a more effective member of this society. I am using the excuse of cultural differences to myself way too often, which limits my efforts in doing the best I can.

OK, I won't receive the Pulitzer price  for the structure and coherence of this post, but I am getting too tired to clean it up. And, if I don't finish it now I am not sure when I would get it done. There are also so much more I could write on this subject, but I will stop for now and write more another time!

Thanks for reading this far!

How lucky can you be? It only happens in India...

There are moments when you start to wonder if there really is someone up there interfering with the happenings on this small planet in the inifinite universe.

This week me and Amit went for a meeting at a fancy five star hotel that is being built. When we arrived we realized that the back tire was punctured. The look of Amit's face was priceless! (Yes it was Amit) What he was thinking? We just spent half an hour driving far outside the city and far from the civilization. How much time would it take to push it all the way back? I laughed at it and said it would be a fun adventure to blog about, but he could not let it go and he had a very hard time to focus on the upcoming meeting. (OK I'll admit he beat me three times in chess the other week to compensate for making fun of him here) The meeting was the usual. We went around checking the layout of the rooms and received some blueprints and specifications to work around. We agreed to make an analysis and give them a proposed solution and quotation later in the week.

So, time to start pushing. It didn't make it easier to have two bags with laptops and a lot of books and paper to carry also. Should be a few hours of fun to end the day with. It was the final thing we did during the day, so it was not like it would be paid exercise during office hours. When I asked if no repair stations have pick-up services he just looked at me... Since problems are just a matter of perception I decided it was just some good fun. Fun didn't last more than 200 meters though...

Look what we found 200 meters down the road! A tire repair shop! A tire repair shop in the middle of nowhere 200 meters from our "accident"! It costed us 3 euros to for a new tube and to get it installed. Amit must have had a good connection with someone up there since it really can't just have been a coincidence! (Or could it? ;) )

Now you might be disappointed that the lucky story was just about getting a tire changed. That is the world of media though; add an interesting headline and it sells! So don't complain, its just the same thing that makes you buy the evening newspapers! =)

Other things that happened this week was that me and Amit managed to get an order of three of our biggest solar water heater units to a domestic user. I can't say my role in it was much more than trying to look like an important foreigner though. :P

Compared to last year's work in the national office of AIESEC Sweden this one is a walk in the park. Now I actually manage to have spare time and a social life! This week I got second place in a poker tournament losing the final rounds to a Russian guy, Sasha, that never played before... It was going so well all the way through and then I lost two all-in's in a row and the game was over. DUH! At least I won 110 rupees which covered the travel back and forth and some of the snacks at least! :) I also went for a shopping spree and some ice cream for nearly four hours with a colleague of mine. I bought two suit pants, three shirts, one leather belt, one pair of ray ban copy sun glasses and some cologne for approximately 50 euros! My colleague, Jackie, played a tough bargain game with a local store ending up buying four pieces of clothes of which name I have no clue, tailor adjusted to her size and all, for 10 euros. I'll probably give all my old clothes away when I leave India and fill my bags with high quality tailor made stuff from here! :)

The week ended with another football game interns vs locals. We won with 10-5!

Next time I will share some thoughts about my reflections of my integration to the Indian society and culture. Stay tuned!

Thanks for all the comments

I would just like to send out a thank you to everyone that have written comments to all my random thoughts and experiences. Even the shortest ones bring me a lot of joy since it means that I know that someone is actually reading and thinking about what I write. If you have any input to what is interesting to read about or not please share, since there are so much things to write about and I am not sure what is of most interest. I have spoken to so many people that said that they read something interesting on the blog, so please comment more! =)

Things are starting to roll, and I have celebrated my first Diwali!

This week was an interesting week at work. It started by me and my colleague Amit attending a jewelry fair to sell our LED lighting. It might sounds like a weird place to sell LED lighting, and frankly it was! The thought was mainly to market ourselves towards the other exhibitors since jewelry showrooms requires a lot of lights and they have problems with heating since conventional lights produces a lot of heat. It only took us a couple of hours to talk to all the stands though, so the rest of the time was pretty much just hanging around our stand. The fair was not that crowded though, so there was not so much to do. Fortunately we had a chess board so we had no problems entertaining ourselves, and I also got some Hindi lessons. Fortunately we only had to stay two out of the five days though, or we might have bored ourselves to death. What was funny though was that quite a few of the jewelry shoppers came and asked to buy our cheap glass statues that we used to demonstrate our lights. We should have sold them expensively!

Good thing with the jewelry fair was that lunch restaurant. There were unlimited amounts of food and we were served at the tables. Since I started to go to the gym this week this was very welcome, since I could fill a plate of the size of a huge pizza plate. Even though we decided to not stay for the whole duration of the fair some of us went their for lunch one day since we still had free lunch coupons to spend!

The exports also started to show results this week. I spoke to some companies that were interested, and one of them seems high potential for big scale cooperation. Pricing seems to be a bit of an issue though, and how do convince someone of the value quality of products that seems identical on paper. Will get to know during the coming week(s)! I also had the chance to go to a local radio station to record a short advertising. My voice were supposed to catch more attention than the locals! So now I will be a radio star as well! ;-)

On the social side a lot happened this week! The focus was Diwali celebrations, which is the festival of light and which could be said to be India's version of Christmas. The whole city was covered with lighting decorations and there was probably not a minute for several days when you would not see fireworks or hear crackers explode. One of the evenings we traveled through the city in a horse wagon to see the lights, and another in a car. I also had the pleasure of following two of the Turkish girls I live with to the nearby market where they forcefully tried to convince two elephant riders that they should get to ride the elephants  and take pictures of it.

At least we got pictures on the ground!

City overview from the roof top. I tried hard to capture some fireworks, but it was near to impossible!

Me trying to look like a Diwali superhero in the middle of the night!

I attended a Turkish night arranged by some interns here, and an AIESEC alumni party promoting the AIESEC India Alumni Congress that this year will be arranged in this city. Somehow I have managed to become the project manager of this congress… So I will get the experience of arranging a big event with two weeks of planning and execution in a country majorly different than Sweden. I must be crazy!

Today Basak and Buket left us to go back to Turkey, which is a pity since they were good housemates! They have inspired me through really making sure they get the most of their experience here. They always have some trip or adventure going on, and are good at capturing those moments on camera. I need to get so much better at using mine.

 Me, Basak and Buket last night before their departure

So much things happened this week that I probably could write one more page. I think I will try to write more often in the future to limit the post sizes!

Fairytale wedding and enjoying my first Bollywood movie

Oh boy what a week!

I always heard that Indian weddings are special, but WOW! If I would have seen the venue without knowing what it was for I would have guessed Eurovision finals, and if I would have seen the wedding without knowing who was getting married I would have guessed the royal family. Unfortunately my camera was not charged fully so I could not take that many pictures. I will get the collected pictures from more people soon though, so I can share more later!

Married couple 1

Married couple 2

During the first day of the ceremony we finally got to perform the dancing we had been practising for the last two weeks. The final rehearsals were quite bad, but during the big show I think even I did not miss that many steps! We had a professional camera guy there to record the whole thing, so I can share the videos as soon as they are finished. Normally I am not that fond of dancing, and my learning curve in it's arts is horrible. I really enjoyed doing it now though since it was a good challenge and a chance to step out of my comfort zone and do something different. At some point I stopped thinking too much about memorizing the choreography and started to listen to the music instead, and suddenly learning it became easy!

First dance performance (And last pictures before camera ran out of batteries...)

The wedding went on for a couple of days, and every evening presented something different. There were dinners, dancing, enforced staying over at another place, among other! It was fun to be on the dance floor with many generations of people dancing to crazy Indian music.

After the wedding was over most of the younger generation of the "inner circle" went to the cinema to watch a movie. We watched a movie called 'Wake up Sid' that was in Hindi, or well - a huge mix of English and Hindi. Even if it was like three hours long and I only understood 5% of the words I managed to stay awake and actually understood most of the movie. The movie in itself was just like any teenage Hollywood flicks, so besides the language it wasn't really anything new. It was well done though and I really liked the music.

To summarize the week it was just a lot of fun and not that much learning more than Indian wedding traditions.  I am still fascinated of the concept of arranged marriages. My spontaneous analysis why it works is that the love and care of the family is valued higher than the love to your spouse. A wedding is family business and not your own individual business. For you Indian readers out there interested in discussing it further please go ahead! =)

On the work side I now called all the targeted companies in Sweden dealing with LED lighting. Next week will be about following up with them and see how they see our product range. It is very exciting times since the result will shape the rest of my stay here. If we are competitive in the Scandinavian market I should have interesting work to do for as long as I want to, and if not it will be uncertain what I should do to add good value here.

See you soon!

Intense week at the fair and bollywood dancing

Coming home from NLDS (AIESEC conference) I went directly into two fairs for my work. We were showcasing our products and trying to sell them on the spot. It meant working 9.00-21.30 every day which made the week very intense. I even had to work on public holidays and Sunday. It was interesting to meet all these people, especially at the property fair since at least there they spoke decent English. When I had to move to the 'A touch of class' fair the language became a problem and it was quite boring. I entertained myself by handing out flyers and making it a sport to give them out to as many people as possible without getting rejected. It took many confident smiles and well placed hellos and other words of courtesy. I also learnt some useful phrases of Hindi to break the ice.

I lost my camera battery and charger so I don't have any new pictures to share this time! :(

I made a good friend with a guy with limited English level that I was working with. He taught me a lot of bad words in Hindi and was very social in general. One of the girls I exchanged business cards with during the fair actually called me one night wanting me to come visit her. I didn't know how to react, but I agreed to meeting her the day after if she would send her address. She never sent her address though, so I did not go. Then she called again few days after wanting to set up another meeting, but reception was bad so she said she would call again. I don't know her intentions so I'll just let it be and see what happens... =)

During the fair I found out that Amit that I am working with is a successful chess player, so we'll make sure to play some later on. I also got to meet two of our new colleagues. Sankeit and Tarun. Sankeit was at an AIESEC internship few years ago and is a fun and social guy that I get along well with. Tarun is a very straight forward guy saying what is on his mind and asking a lot of direct questions not wrapped into anything. Even if that is far from the way Swedes normally communicates I don't mind working with him and he is a good guy.

At home we are practising bollywood dancing for the landlords son's wedding the next week. We have six different dances to learn and we practise two hours every night. Due to the fair I missed many days in the beginning, so I have a lot to catch up with. It is a lot of fun though, even if its hard to follow since everyone else practised a lot more and most of the instructions and talking is in Hindi...
 
Me and my housemates also had some nice music evenings where we play guitar, flute and sing. It feels so great to get the chance to play guitar again. If Eva, the girl with the guitar, doesn't bring it back to Switzerland when she moves back in a few weeks I will propose to buy it from her. Nittin aka Lucky, another housemate of mine, showed me a nearby gym, so as soon as my cold is over I will get back into physical exercise.
  
Here are some pictures from my house that I took a few weeks ago. We are a bunch of AIESEC people living on the upper floor of a big two floor house. I am sharing the room with an Indian guy, Gautam, who also used to be an active AIESECer.

Our combined desk and closet

My bed

The common kitchen

The inner "garden"

What else puzzled me recently is the male-female relationships and customs. Before going to India I read that approximately 70% of the weddings are still arranged ones, so I had the prejudice that boyfriends/girlfriends do not happen that much. (I guess I don't really know what arranged wedding means either) Having been here for over a month I still have not figured how things works. Some people are in relationships, some girls gives hugs when saying goodbye and others only shakes hands. I was also asked to remove the pictures I uploaded from the prom in the last blog post from my facebook pictures, since she would get in trouble if her parents saw them. The whole thing makes me very curious so I think I will have to find some "expert" here and get the system explained! =)

Exports, crazy train, AIESEC relapse & prom

Hello everyone out there!

I am sorry for not updating you in a while; I have been out traveling!

Two weeks ago I went to a training in LED lights at our manufacturing plant outside Delhi. I got to know about it the same day as I was going, which was stressful since I was in urgent need of getting the laundry done since I was about to leave for a one week's conference! And my sister usually complains that I don't plan far enough ahead, so I guess I am starting to understand how she feels with me now!

I have started to get the feeling that Indian people expect foreigners to have very high requirements. My "guide" for the training day thought it was near to impossible to find an OK hotel for my budget, and the place he found was 10 times as good as what I could have asked for. When I ask people about restaurants they start to talk about 5 star ones, etc. I wish people didn't feel like they have to get out of their ways to make me comfortable, even though I appreciate the effort. I have no problem sleeping in a sitting position amongst the bags in a train.

Good thing with work now is that it is more clear what I have to do. I will start to research the Swedish market so we can start looking at exports.

Last week I went to an AIESEC conference. The train ride there was just crazy! We were 25 people or so crammed into a few seats playing a lot of different games. There were no AC so it was extremely hot. Sleeping on hard plastic bunks in that temperature made me just as wet as a swim would have!

The conference in itself was nothing but amazing. Now I have to new families and one more country. LC Jaipur, my Fictious LC (Home group), and India. Compared to Swedish AIESEC conferences this one was so much more focused on having fun and bonding the members. There was a Talent Night where the LCs could show off their non-AIESEC related talents, long plenary sessions with fun and interactive content, and finally a prom the last night. Everyone was so excited about the prom that it kind of became the focus of the conference.

My fictious LC

Me and Saloni on the prom

I had the experience of getting auctioned away for the prom, but it was fine since I ended up with the girl I was going to ask anyway! It could have had something to do with me asking the organizers to go and encourage her to participate specifically. ;-) Saloni is a fun and energized person who became the president of her fictious Local Committee, and was brave enough to also apply for president of all the delegates (FMCP)!

During the conference I managed to finally lose my self-image of not being that good at small talk or striking up random conversations. The result was that I probably ended up speaking with 200 people or so! I guess the releasing factor was all the friendly Indian people and the natural attention given by being a foreigner, but I also felt a change of mindset in myself.

Now I am back in Jaipur again and ready to work. This week we have two big fairs to attend that will go on for the rest of the week. I had planned to go to Agra with two guys from Norway and Denmark, but now I got to know the fair goes on even on Sunday...

See you soon!

Survived the first week!

First week passed and I am still alive!

Now it feels like I got the hang of the life over here. Work is going good, getting back and forth from work is no problem, I have gotten into things socially, and you know what? I have found the supermarket! Below is my first complete self cooked meal!

I don't know how you think it looks, but I think it looks great! I have to admit it did not taste super well though, since it was way too spicy! Funny that first time I thought the food was too spicy in India was when I cooked it myself... For the connoisseurs out there that are wondering what this is I am happy to anounce that I will share the secret for free. It is instant noodles with fresh onions, tomatos, chilies, and..... a lot of spices. Stay in tune for next week's master piece.

The only thing that makes me feel a bit out of place at the moment is getting around the city. To get somewhere I need to use the auto rickshaws, and I don't know what to find where, or how the things are connecting. It might sound expensive to use taxi everytime you want to go somewhere, but it is not that bad. If you spend 2 minutes bargaining it is no problem to get the price down from 100 rupees to 50 rupees. (14 SEK to 7 SEK for you Swede's) It is funny that if you are 6 people going somewhere you can get quite far for 1 SEK each! I am considering getting an Indian drivers licence for motorbike and to buy one, since it would add so much freedom to be able to get around by myself without having to bargain with drivers thinking I am a tourist.

Since I, as most people here, am working Saturdays today was the first day off. For most of the day me and a guy I met from Norway, Preben, went for some sightseeing. We went to the fortresses Amber and Jaigahr. They were HUGE and were built in the 16th century or so. Besides getting to see some marvelous architecture we got to see things such as the worlds largest cannon on wheels, and water tanks built 400-500 years ago gathering 2.2 million litres of rain water through an advanced gathering system in the mountain.

Amber fort from a bottom view

The inner courtyard 1

The inner courtyard 2

Sitting in a window in another courtyard

 Picture of Amber fort taken from Jaigarh fort

Standing on the top of the top!

The largest cannon on wheels in the world. The barrel is 6 meters long, it weighs 50 tons and is charged with 100 kg gunpowder and 50 kg bullets. I wonder what you shoot at from the top of a mountain with that! Ever heard about the saying 'Shooting mosquitos with cannons'?

After the sightseeing we went to play some football; interns vs locals. We won with 5-0 and I was the goal keeper of the second half! :)

The winning team!

Two of my flatmates, Daike and Keite from Japan (Sorry for spelling guys!)

All in all it has been a great week. At work I have been to a big amount of sales meetings. Two of them was a bit outside the city, and on the way there I saw 34 elephants! It got me wondering why you have an elephant to ride on when you can fit as much people on a horse. I guess the elephants is India's answer to USA's SUV's!

Now I am starting to feel that I understand the products we are marketing and that I could start to sell by myself soon. One meeting was quite scary though. After having followed to 10 meetings or so (9 in Hindi) and having had no time to read about any detailed information about our solutions I was asked 15 seconds before entering the meeting if I would like to hold the meeting. It was a very important meeting since selling there would be a good reference and give us much credibility. Of course I said no thanks! Then my colleague introduced me as an R&D (Research and Development) expert from Sweden. That wasn't a literal lie depending on the interpretation since I do market research, and business development, but we were meeting the chief engineer and the intention was to give the impression that I was a technical person. Guess if I had to do everything I could to avoid technical discussions! I should get an Oscar for my act of being a confused technical foreigner with a hard time to communicate properly in English and a hard time to cope with the heat.

This was a great week, so I cannot wait to start the second one tomorrow!

Where do I get to buy real food?!

Hello again!

Another interesting day has passed, and I though I would share some highlights with you!

The day started with getting up at 6.45 to get early to te office for some training on solar water heaters before the normal action started. Now I know everything about vacuum tubes and aluminium nitrid coating! ;-)

For the rest of the day I went to different sales meetings around the city, on the bike as usual. Since we need to bring samples at some meetings the bike gets a bit packed at times. Take a look at the picture below! And people here don't understand why I would like to buy a helmet even though I am not required to by law...

Most of the sales meetings have unfortunately ends up in Hindi, so I am not really adding much value at the moment. I manage to pick of a few things here and there though, and getting to hear what happened in the meeting afterwards are giving some hints about what is important and not for customers. Indian business culture also seems to be quite interesting. There are pretty much no small talk or social talk at all, it just jumps right into technical details and negotiation. One meeting was about two minutes, and many do not last more than 10-15 minutes. On the other hand I have only been here for two days, so it is a bit early to draw conclusions.

One of the products of the company I am working for is solar lanterns. The project is mainly targeting NGOs for supplying the rural areas with poor lighting conditions. Many people are facing issues of health problems, fire accidents, and poor lighting making it hard to live during night time, among other issues, since the normal source of lighting for many are burning kerosene. (Fotogen for Swedish speakers) These lights are both cheap and very effective for addressing many social issue. The main "problem" though is that all the costs are up-front and then adds no costs for the rest of its lifetime except change of relatively cheap batteries every two years or so. Many poor do not have the possibility for that kind of investment even if the payback is less than a year and then free and sage lighting for decades, hence the use of NGOs for distribution.

At night I tried to scout around for shopping food, which turned out harder than one could expect. There are small stores at kiosk size every here and there with a very limited asortment. You cannot browse the goods easilly and you just have to tell the shop keeper what you want, which was hard since I had no clue what I could buy. I asked around a bit and got to know that there should be some bigger super market around, even though no one seems to know where. Soon I will find somewhere to buy other things than bread, cheese and eggs!

Stay in tune, and I'll send you another update as soon as I have enough interesting things to share!

Arrival

Hey all and welcome to my blog!

After a few months of waiting and about 28 hours of traveling I finally reached Jaipur in India. Traveling internationally definitely shows the concerns about the swine flu. Before every stop with the flight I had to fill in health declarations and where I have been and where I will go. The tracking of the disease seems to be taken very seriously.

On the bus ride from New Delhi to Jaipur I managed to see a monkey sliding down a drainpipe, a lot of dromedaries (or was it starved camels?), an elephant and dozens of cows walking down the roads. Apparently I took the wrong bus and ended up on a cheap low class bus where no one spoke english, instead of the Volvo bus with air conditioning and half the travel time. It was a bit complicated since it did not state the name of the stations and no one spoke English, but  I don't regret it for one second! I probably managed to see more of "real" India than taking the tourist crowded buses.

I am staying in  a house with I don't know how many people, but so far I have met two interns from Japan, three interns from Turkey, and one old AIESECer from India, but there are plenty of more rooms from which I have not met the people yet. The place is quite far from where I work (20 minutes with Indian three wheel motorcycle taxi non-peak-hour), so I might get relocated to another place soon.

First day at work was great. I was introduced in more details to some of the products, and then had the chance to follow to three different sales meetings in the field. I was going around the city on the back of the motorcycle of Amit, one of my co-workers, and have to admit that Indian traffic is crazy! There are probably 70% motorcycles, 10% bikes and 20% cars, and everyone is trying to win the competition of honking the horn as many times as possible. (About 60 times per minute!)

Unfortunately I have had my camera packed down in a bag, but I will try to share more pictures in the future.

I will try to not get so long winded in the blog, so stay in tune for next post!