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! =)