Skydeck

The lift took us up 88 floors in 37 seconds! And we were atop the tallest artificial structure of Southern Hemisphere, the Eureka tower or Skydeck.

The MCG.

The view was ‘maast-o’ in Jai’s words. It was all through tinted glass though that we saw the city of Melbourne spreading in every direction. The building sways upto 60cms in the winds. And there is a place called the Terrace, where you are allowed to feel the ‘air force’ through nets.

There were a lot of extras which were supposed to be attractive, but not to me. There was something called the Edge where you are gradually taken 3 metres outside the building in an enclosure. You will be standing on glass, and the street below will be some 900 feet below. You are expected to be frightened but do not worry if you aren’t,…….because it wasn’t scary at all. We got free tickets anyway from yesterday’s trip. And here they didn’t allow cameras so that they would take your photograph (whether you like it or not) and charge 25 dollars for that.

Australia Unplugged

This was a grand experience. I will talk mostly through pictures here, after I give a general intro. It was the Great Ocean Road Trip organized by the RMIT. The people: 5 of us (SM included) + a British girl whose name was something like Tunisia (she was of Indian origin but was born and brought up in Srilanka) + a Thai family of three + 2 American girls + 1 Dutch girl (who is half Indonesian) + team leader Jim (originally Egyptian) + guide and driver Pete (the lone Aussie).

Pulkit and Kartik were determined to score as social beings this time. So they chatted up the others, right from the word go. Even Jai who chose to be quiet so far, joined in. SM’s intentions of chatting however were as usual not noble. And his PJs were unparalled today. I was the quietest one of us IITians. That was because, it was pretty evident that the others were not too interested in speaking to us. It was more like a Q & A session with the Indians asking all the questions. And the girls answered appropriately and in a friendly manner. But, I wonder if they even knew any of our names at the end of the day.

The target of the day was Pulkit. He is basically nice but for the fact that he whines a lot, and that 76.45% of his sentences end with ‘man’ – I want to do this maan; I will like to go there maan; shit maan; why maan; You should be more cool, maan; How come anyone like Nadal, maan! The last of the sentences was especially not taken in good spirits by Kartik and SM, and that gave them more reason to make fun of him, so that the next time Pulkit said “I like it cloudy rather than sunny, (man)” they prompted him that his next statement would be “Why does the sun even exist ? How come anyone like the sun?” Also the high hair cutting prices were already taking a toll on him. The hair falling on his ears caused interesting interference phenomenon, that made him hear “There is a power-cut” when I actually said “I went to a bar-be-que” and when Darcy said “I am half-Indonesian”, he heard, “I have never met an Asian”

Pete was a funny chap. He liked his job, and was very informative as well. He talked to us over the microphone. From him we learnt that Kangaroos are super muscular beings. If a car at 100 kmph, rams into one, more harm would be caused to the car than the roo.


This bird at one beach grabbed the attention of Kate, and since then we sort of wasted some 15 mins over it. It seemed hale and hearty but the fact that it didn't move even when we went very near it was a cause of immense concern for the girls. So much so that Jim had to call up the Wildlife Protection Team for support. Jai summed up the feelings of us Indians "Ek chiriya hi to hai. Kahe itna nautanki kar rha hai?"

Koalas sleep for 20 hours a day. The remaining 4 hours they eat.

These birds were out in the open. They flew down from the trees and ate seeds from the hands of the tourists. There were a few ducks too, who weren’t paid as much attention and were hence envious.


The walk in a coniferous rainforest where we found this fungus. This is a habitat of carnivorous snails as well although we weren’t lucky enough to see one. Pete said that once he had two British tourists and when he had informed them about these snails, one British asked the other “What’s a carnivorous snail?”. The other one replied in a whisper, “It’s a snail that eats humans!!!” The Aussies enjoy tremendously in making fun of the British.

The twelve apostles of which some have collapsed over time. All these rocks are formed by deposition of dead organisms.

We went on a short expedition to a cave at Lockard Gorge. Most people weren’t that artistic in jumping over the crags and gaps and rocks and water. But I, the agile and nimble footed being that I am, made to the cave with ease and grace. Nah! Just kidding. Me too was in a similar situation, full of spirit though, and even when the high tide waves made me wet upto the knees, I dragged myself on.

London Arc, which was once a bridge but once when a married couple came here some years ago, it collapsed and they were left stranded. The media reached the place before the rescue team. But it was seen that the lady and the man were hiding their faces. Everyone wondered why. Turned out that they were married, but not to each other !!!
(Pete gave us these details)

Poor fellow Jim had to take most of the group photos.

At the end of the day, Pete reminded us to take all our belongings from the bus. He continued “But if you forget something here, do not worry, you can always log on to -” everyone expected him to name some site like ‘www.rmit.something/something’ etc but no, he continued nonchalantly “- log on to http://www.ebay.com/ and you can see your belongings there” :D :D :D

Not our place

On Friday night, we found ourselves in a Touch party but we failed to lose ourselves there. As we have already seen with the Gentleman’s Club, names can be misleading. I’ll come to that later. At first, Pulkit’s aims were high, but he too blew a fuse once at Mojito (that’s the name of the nightclub where the party was on). There was just a lot of skin show, and people did just two things, drank and danced. A normal middle-aged middle-class Indian would have easily fainted here.

The four of us initially had no clue what to do. But once again, yours truly, rose to the occasion, taking the initiative and going ahead to meet a stranger with Pagla Dasu-like hair, completely ignorant of the customs (as if he cared) and perfectly open about his ignorance. The stranger had a partner and both, as I realized soon, were two Barneys. (If you are around my age and have access to TV and you don’t know who Barney is, then you’ll not get a better reason to drown yourself) They wanted me to hit on the girls. I asked them to show me the way first. And while one of them was doing so, I tried to slip away, but all of a sudden the other guy introduced me to a girl, by the “Have you met X?” method. It was difficult to talk anyway, with loud music blaring, and I kinda lip-read her that I should take a drink. I told her to suggest one. She did so but I couldn’t get the pronunciation correct. I asked her about the origin of the word ‘touch’ for today’s party (for the past few days, no one could answer it properly. Some people smiled crookedly probably at some improper interpretations of the word) Anyway, the real meaning was that the party was for people who play touch football at the university. She introduced me to some more people, and by then I had realized that all that the people were talking about was just introducing one person to another. So I too called upon my mates to introduce them to the girl and her friends but at this point of time after calling them I forgot her name. (How am I expected to remember a word that I heard only once and which is just like another variable_name?)

With the beer bottle in my hand I looked more occupied. (I read the name on it properly, Quilmes it was) The Barneys came around again to teach me a few dance steps. At this point, Kartik too tried to join in. Now, I don’t know, I may be pathetic at dancing, but Kartik was simply hopeless. It straightaway reminded me of NCC. …. I could not control myself from ordering him to stop marching.

After one hour, we had had enough of the place. So we quit.

The Asians

Being around with Azmir meant making a lot of Asian friends. Somehow this group didn’t quite merge well with the Aussies, but that doesn’t mean that there were any hard feelings. One day I went to a lecture hall. It was pretty much like at IITK, maybe the microphone was a bit more reliable here, and there were sliding boards, sort of expandable. Anyway, it was a class where people were giving business presentations. It was pretty boring, except for one of the groups, which had a Chinese who failed to pronounce his African teammate’s name, and each time came up with a different pronunciation of Nhiahl.

That day with Azmir’s friend Lawrence, I had a Malaysian standard lunch. It somewhat stressed a bit too much on the coconut, resembling South Indian food in certain aspects.

I also attended a barbeque for the Geomatics department. There was free food.

Beyond the Blue Barrier

No this is not related to Australia. This is my laptop, which crashed taking with it all data. Everytime I would press the start button, it would while booting throw upon you a blue screen of death stating “A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down …etc…” I tried hundereds of things since I needed to retrieve some of the data. Formatting won’t solve the problem. I found a computer repair shop on the net in Australia. But it charged no less than $99/hour for immediate recovery. Dell Australia weren’t of any help either and they only gave some lame suggestions before asking me to format it saying that my data cannot be retrieved. But I am the hero boy. I didn’t follow their advice and after fighting it out for almost 24 hours, I finally managed to save my day. Special thanks goes to the internet forums though.

Just another incident

So this is the way the Aussies addressed my writings on them. But no, although the Aussies were definitely at fault, I wonder if it was really a racial act of violence. Anyway, thanks to the Indian media, a small incident has taken monstrous and unforeseen proportions. The fact that Indians are the second largest foreign contingent in Australia and forms about 7% of the population means that in 7% of the crimes of Australia they should be victims as well. But now a single incident which I believe was a brawl resulting from the fact that both parties were dead drunk, is being portrayed as a racial discriminatory act. Thousands of such brawls take place in our country every single day, no one takes any notice.

P.S. While going out in the city on Sunday, I saw a police car parked sideways in the middle of Flinders’ street blocking it. I asked the nearest policeman what the matter was, and yes it was an ‘oborodh’ staged by the Indian people against the act. Do they not understand what is better for them? Do they not get the point that the more they protest putting up this issue, the deeper would be the rift between the Indians and Australians? We, the four of us are into nothing of all this and yet in the streets Aussies now look at us strangely probably thinking, “Here comes the Indians.” These protests will only result in more discrimination than before.

The other people

One day while waiting for Pulkit with Jai in front of Flinder Street Railway Station, a rough guy came and asked us for one fu(dg)ing dollar since he wanted to have dinner. He said he could smell money on us. I was wondering what stance should I take. If he was alone I could be pretty rough as well, but he had comrades around, and so I decided to straight ignore him and gradually move away. Pulkit came up at that moment, and as he too refused him any buck, he had to hear the parting words which strangely were in Hindi, “Ra***, ch*****” albeit in an Aussie tone.

There are beggars too, but they play real good music, many of them. In fact I should not be calling them beggars. They would sit with their guitars, or trumpet, or xylophone on bridges and stations and some streets and play music. They keep an open case (mostly of some instrument) where the public put in money. They would not ask for it. One innovative guy also set up loudspeakers for his music to attract passer-bys. And there was an old pianist who had a list of old songs divided into 2 categories, “before I was born” and “after I was born” and the junta could request him to play one of them. (pic below)

The people

Just consider this. We were in front of the parliament clicking each other’s pics, when a man came forward and asked us if we would want a group photograph. Quite amazed, I handed over the camera. He took the pic, returned the camera and walked away to where he was going. Fools like me and Sigmund Freud think of purpose, but well there couldn’t be any purpose in that act other than the fact that he just felt like doing it. Most of the people here are like this. They would literally go out of their way to help. Be it at shops or offices or streets. And having been used to the bureaucracy in India, here Thank you would come out of you automatically.

End of Weekend

Kartik returned from his aunt’s on Sunday. I like this guy pretty much. In the evening all of us met and decided we should try to know more about the country by making friends here. Pulkit announced the general problem that I too was facing which was that, everyone here seemed to be busy with their friend groups and if they were alone they would be doing something, so you wouldn’t like to disturb.

However today, during lunch at the Union Hall, I found a prospective target. I picked myself up and went up to her to say, “Would you mind company?”. Turned out that she was French and she had never spoken English before coming here (That was the same reason why she was alone). In broken English, she communicated that she was here for some Practical course of 5 months duration.

Meanwhile, my work has been chugging along. Turns out that Allison’s and Azmir’s knowledge about serial communication is not better than me. So I could not expect a lot of support from them on that count. But probably, we IITians, however fraud we might be, have the ability to grasp on to new things faster than the rest, and that sometimes gives us an edge.

I can

My first try at cooking was not so bad after all. Both tasted quite decent. Jai too ate part of it and he is not only alive, he found it ‘pretty good’. Although the shapes were quite artistic. The omlette looked like a spur while seeing the poach, the first thing that came to my mind was ‘a duck-billed platypus’. I had these with bread. The toaster toasted it, as ordered by me.

For dinner, I cooked Maggi. And Portuguese chicken along with it in an oven. Although I followed the instructions thoroughly, it seemed to look uncooked. So I poured in some more oil, increased the temperature of the oven and cooked for some more time (just see the confidence seeping through ;) ) It actually tasted nice. I never knew I had it in me.

An International Conference

Jason was from China, Professor Matt from UK, Allison from Trinidad, Allison’s husband Tim from Ireland (he was wearing a Chile t-shirt though), a postgrad student from Iran, Azmir from Malaysia, me representing India, and one Aussie, a neighbour of Allison I suppose. We all were there invited by Allison mostly aimed at introducing me to the small Geomatics group at the university. It is the custom here to call everyone directly by their first names, and Allison reminded that to me since I was calling her Ma’am. I had a problem with that as I am used to calling profs by their names only if I did not respect them much (Sutapa for instance). There were also a few children around the house, two of them were Allison’s kids. They did not especially enjoy being in the meet as much as their domesticated cat which went from chair to chair and rubbed itself cosily against everyone’s trousers, very playful indeed.

We talked about a lot of things over a self-served lunch. A topic would come up and it would go round with each one sharing his/her experiences or viewpoints. The topics ranged from Sudoku to scuba diving. At points, there were awkward silences, though. Strangely no one other than the host and Matt drank wine.

Now I suppose I should talk about the population here. A large percentage, at least 30 if not more would be Mongoloids, and in the university it would be about 50. (This pissed off Pulkit pretty badly) There were people from all the South East Asian countries. There would be about 3-5 % Indians, mostly Punjabis. The total population of Australia is 30 million. It’s mostly localized in the cities and the village culture is pretty poor. The mixed population probably helps Australia to be a better place for foreigners to live, as in racism here is much less compared to that in America and Europe.

Within

St. Patrick's cathedral

Fitzroy Gardens

Ultimately we landed up at the Crown, which houses posh restaurants, hotels, shops, and a Casino. Here Jai wanted to taste beer. I got ourselves one Crown Lager. Everyone had a sip at first and then we decided that whoever drinks a greater portion of it, will be refunded the cost in the same proportion, as in if I drink it whole, Jai would pay me back the whole cost.

Sometime later we had the taste of a real casino. Having been a roulette table conductor once, I knew many of the rules, even of Blackjack and Craps. Here it was so movie-like. With flashing lights everywhere. Security all around, - ‘homra-chomra’ people in black suits with Bluetooth earpieces. Poor Pulkit didn’t bring his passport and was refused entrance. Thankfully, a servant warned me when I was about to take out my camera saying I would definitely fall into trouble. I have taken lots of chances in India, but here I dared not. I had no intentions to land up in a hospital or prison in Melbourne. Jai and I had a bet outside the casino. I said that I could ask the guards at the entrance and get permission for clicking a pic from outside. Sadly I lost the bet.

No(u)..no..no.. no no no

SM stands for ‘super myara.’ SM is a 3rd year Electrical Engineering student at IITK, who is doing some business project at RMIT, which is close to the Melbourne University campus. I didn’t go too well with the guy right from the onset. He was too….too… I am not remembering the word, so let it be SM.
Now yesterday, we went out deciding to taste wine at a bar. I knew it won’t be good from my previous experiences, but I decided to give it another try, mostly to see what a bar is actually like. But this SM had some other plans. He wanted to take us to King’s Street, which is known for its Gentleman’s Clubs (it is not as gentle as it might sound and it is known by a much more common name but you’ll figure that out soon if you don’t know already).

I gave a blunt no at first since it was too early for me and although I am here for experiences, I brought my morals with me. Pulkit took SM’s side and persuaded me to go. In the end I agreed as it would be strange to part ways as early as this. So I said I would just sit around and do nothing in there. The first one at King’s street had a few meaty but suited-booted people welcoming people. They are called ‘bouncers’ I learnt and they doubled up as security as well. At the 3rd or 4th one we came across, one of them saw us and said “Guys just hop in, pu***es everywhere”. Ultimately Pulkit decided to enter one he had seen in an advertisement. We showed our IDs, and then we were asked for $18 for entry. I straight away went out. Pulkit and SM were adamant. Under no circumstances was I going to pay that much for such shit. So we parted ways, and this is where we went instead. Let the photo speak for itself:


When we met later, we came to know that they had a lap dance each for $20 but even then they were not allowed to touch the girls.

Demons and Angels

First at Hungry Jack’s when I was about to take out my Travel Card (which acts as a Credit Card here) to pay $6.90 for the Chicken Royale, I found it missing. Fearing the worst as I ate along disconcertedly, I remembered that I had last taken it out at the Optus Mobile Shop. I decided I should call home to block the card. I checked my trouser pocket to take out my mobile and Holy me, it was missing as well. And then in the agitated mood as I fished my pockets I realized that the nightmare had not ended yet. The room key was missing too.

Fifteen minutes from then, the movie started. It must have been a really good movie, because I liked it even though at the back of the brain I was calculating my maximum, minimum, mean and most probable loss. And I was somehow having the eerie feeling that I would lose something else as well soon. So from time to time, I was checking my pockets if everything was there (of what was left).

While coming down the escalator after the movie, the conical roof caught my eye. I looked straight up. It was majestic. I took out my camera and took a picture. Next I tried to angle properly to get a better pic. I took off my cap, since it was obstructing my view. Two minutes later as we walked along Elizabeth Street, I realized that my cap was gone. I asked the others. No one had a clue. We searched a lot. It was nowhere to be found. I seemed to be in one of those scary movies, where you are wary of impending danger but it occurs no matter what you do. I told my fellow men to keep an watch on me before I lose myself.

The night, I slept at Jai’s. Today morning, no alarm was required to wake me up as I went downstairs to meet my landlady. Got a duplicate key to open my room. Found my mobile and key there.(the apartment door can be locked from outside without the key) And then I rushed to the Optus shop at Union House and was relieved to get my card there.
But the cap was gone. It had cost me 300 rupees, but no,…. it is only 7 dollars. That’s not even as costly as a haircut. ;)

Variety

Today at Woolsworth, I shopped more than 15kg of foodstuff taking around a trolley (I am having many firsts since I came here). And I am really having a go at the non-veg things available here- Kangaroo, Beef, Lamb, Turkey, Duck, and some sea fish as well. Octupuses and squids are available as well, but well I think I should take things a bit slow. (Some people might be interested in the costs of the stuff I bought. So I am posting the bill alongside.)

The smiling guy (the twist in the smile might be my imagination as well) at the counter put the stuff in 5 packets and realization dawned upon me that it was not going to be easy at all to walk back 2.5 kilometers. It was a competition between my fingers and the packets – which would give way earlier. When I started resting every 10 metres or so, I had no way but to take a cab. Very cosy and all, but $5.60 for 1.5 kms is too much. (For those trying to figure out how much that is in rupees, the conversion factor is roundabout 40) We decided not to think in terms of INR as it would be uneasy to spend anywhere then. By the way, I saw a cheap hair cutting salon was charging $9.95. Now don’t try converting that, or you might think I’m bluffing.

Hiccups

Today my day didn’t go well at all. Allison gave us to run some IMU sensors on the comps at Azmir and my stations, but we failed. The fault wasn’t ours. The serial key of one was lost. The CD of one was damaged. In another one, the RS232-USB converter couldn’t be configured. We tried 3-4 drivers - none worked. But when Allison came in during the afternoon (that too when I was not around for attending a stupid Health and Safety Induction Session.) She heard the details, and then somehow she worked around for some 15 minutes, Azmir informed me later and got everything running on my desk. She’s of course used to running those devices for ages and probably she knew exactly how to counter the probs. Anyway, amar nak–ta to kata gelo.

And that Health and Safety thing bored me to death. But it was mandatory to attend. They spent an hour speaking crap, and people had a hell lot of doubts in that too.

Before returning, I thought that I must be well prepared for the next day. I needed to learn Visual Basic pretty well, and wanted to grasp the whole thing tonight itself. So I decided to buy a modem for $49 although it would be useless once I leave Australia. And now as I try to run the net, it just refuses to switch on even though I comprehensively followed the instructions (which seems to be a feature of every Australian product. I won’t be surprised if even stuff like combs come with a user’s manual). I wanted to try out with Pulkit’s one to figure out the problem, but none of the others are back yet. Must have gone to buy some stuff. Can’t even contact them or speak to home. I too needed to buy food items. Neither am I in the mood of ‘peace mar-ing’ as Jai would say. Overall, I can’t do anything at the moment (something I am not used to) and am pretty frust.

Hope tomorrow is better.

First Look

Azmir Rabian is a masters student under Allison and he showed me around within the University. He is a nice guy, of Malaysian origin, friendly, and was patient with my questions ( I generally have too many, probably to the dismay of most people). We went to a cafe within the campus and there he ordered Cappuchino while I, unsure of which flavour to try, did the mistake of ordering something I didn’t know of (Machiato if I remember correctly). It came in a small glass and it simply tasted horrible.

Met Allison at 11.00 after her lecture was over. She seemed to think pretty high of me and was expecting me to be knowing everything. I was supposed to work with Azmir and she spoke in a way as if I would show him the way to do things rather than the other way round. I cleared the misconception to Azmir later though. She invited the two of us to lunch. I was pretty much confused what to take among the options. But this time the choices made were better.

After a few futile attempts to connect to the internet using my id, I made a complaint while Azmir allowed me access the internet using his account. Azmir smokes pretty frequently – about 10 a day. He has a girlfriend, and asked me if I had one. I told him of the sorry figures of the IITs.

I required three things pretty urgently: an adapter-converter for my lappy and mobiles; a mobile connection; and an internet connection. I got the first one, but the effort that I had to put in, drained me of my energy completely. Azmir told me of two supermarkets. Got there alone, but after searching for an hour or so came to the conclusion that they didn’t have the Indian type. Surely they could do with more staff to help customers out. Finding a thing can be pretty difficult at least for new people. After some more futile attempts, I targeted Indians to ask about where I would get the stuff. One directed me to a shop called Dick something, a kilometer further down the street and the person at Dick something directed me to Maya (when I reached there I realized it was Myer) where I ultimately got it in a obscure corner.

I had to talk to a lot of people today. Mostly I understood at first attempt, but not always. I was pretty much anxious and sort of over-attentive during any conversation which kept me from being casual. However by now, I was pronouncing ‘could’ as ‘cudge’. On my way back to my apartment, I tried to take a shortcut using some guessworks; it turned out to be a longcut. But it was nice when at the end of the day an old lady asked me the way to Swanston Street and got the right directions from me. I was not even one day old in Melbourne.

Bowled out

The journey from Dubai to Tullamarine was a tiring one. Legs were cramping up. Back aches. I was feeling sleepy but could not sleep properly. Watched two movies – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Day the Earth Stood Still. The difference here with the previous flight is that the movies could be paused, rewinded etc here by the viewer.

During lunch, there was a dish which had a lobster and another piece of meat, which I think was pork. I had a nibble or two and didn’t quite feel like eating more of it.(Hope dida won’t be getting to know this)

We went against the sun, making the day shorter, so that after traveling for 14 hours or so, it was 10.30 in the night at Melbourne. Just before landing, a lot of announcements were made regarding declaring food and medicine items and we had to fill some forms. There was a quarantine team check or something after landing. The appropriate word to describe the action would be ‘dhong’. The baggage check didn’t turn out to be rigorous at all. By what they were announcing ever since I applied for my Visa, I expected them to open out all our bags to check for stuff, but nothing of the sort occurred.

It was at the airport exit that Jai Anand gathered up courage to come up and ask me if I was Arnab. We had seen each other at Dubai, but we were unsure if the other was the right person. He said that at Dubai he had come to the conclusion that I was not Indian since my watch showed Dubai time. I was more impressed by his eyesight since I was seated quite at a distance. He seems to be a jolly good guy. He seemed to enjoy calling himself a regular fraud IITian, but I did not like him professing the idea that all IITians are fraud.

A woman from Togoto took us in a large van to our residence. The drive was a smooth one as expected. The air was pretty cool. The city was quite empty although it was yet to be twelve. However it was well lit up. Looked nice, although an Indian might feel bad thinking of the millions without light back home. At one crossing I counted the no. of red/green signals for one direction to be equal to 9. Everytime you reach a crossing, it is almost like a screen of green or red facing you.

At 113 Flemington Road, we followed Dillan’s instructions, and got into our apartment. It is simply awesome. One couldn’t have asked for more. A living room with kitchen, a bedroom and an attached bath. Everything was so well furnished. The cooking area was the awesomest of all. A normal electric oven and a microwave one, a fridge, some food in it, lots of cutlery, hot and cold water everywhere, a television (and it aired IPL), an excellent bed, carpeted floors, ac, heater, electric iron, electric blankets (am yet to discover how it works), lamps. Everything was as best as it could be, well almost, - except for a certain feature in the toilet, - there weren’t any buckets or mugs in here.

In Dawood's city

Dubai airport looks somewhat like an alien ship. And here for the first time I was at a place where I was surrounded by thousands of people out of which there were very few Indians. The population was mixed,- Europeans, Asians, Africans, -a meeting place for world cultures.

The flight from Kolkata was cool. There was a screen in front of every seat, where one could watch TV or play or listen to music. There were two cameras fitted on the plane giving direct video in two of the channels – the front view, and the downward view. It was great seeing the takeoff from the pilot’s viewpoint. I switched to the downward view for sometime, before switching on to the movie channels (one was airing a Bengali movie – Bondhoo). There was also a channel giving the plane’s location on an Asia map, and also the flight parameters. An interesting data at a point of time was that the outside temperature was minus 50 degree Celsius!

The food was interestingly Bengali food. At least the menu tried to suggest that. Three languages were used – English, Bengali and Arabic. Fish curry was written as ‘Machhi Masala’ (machhi means house-fly in Bengali). And the effort in describing the Rasmalai was laudable – poached cottage cheese dumpling, soaked in saffron flavoured milk, garnished with pistachio nuts.

My next flight is at 2.40am Dubai time.

Follow the instructions

Dillan mailed me yesterday about some details that (she thought) I would require. That included parts which made me feel I am a double O.
An extract:

The key safe is located to right of the entrance to the building. Enter “112B” into key pad, turn dial to right and open key safe door. There will be an envelope inside with your name, which will contain your room number and key (this key unlocks the front door entrance to the building also).
-----
You will be met by Azmir Rabian on Monday morning at 9.00am – at the ground floor lobby to the apartments.

I appreciate the attention to the details. But then it went on to say more…

Now people had so far given varied advice. Ma said not to go out alone. Dida said not to go out at all. (She was in plain disbelief that I would be able to go all the way alone). Baba spoke of the monetary matters and documents. I got advice on cooking. Apparently I’ll have to cook my own meal there and I am not exactly looking forward to that. Sanjay-da (of SINP) suggested that I should take sufficient ‘muri’. What the Customs would allow, what they won’t. Then there is Aritra. He asked me to put my morality to rest, and if in doubt, just to ping him and he would do the rest. Let’s see if I require you. ;-) There has been recommendations about how I should dress and stuff. Some people had asked me to take lots of photographs, and some of them (read Diptarka) were pretty specific about the preferred subject of the photos. Even T2 (the Telegraph additional) chimed in with some what to do-s and where to go-s today.

But, the instruction set that I got, spoke of certain things some of which were important, some were not so important and some were unimportant. Another extract (with my comments in nonitalicized font):

Please keep the following in mind:
· If an Australian is invited to a meal, he or she may take a small gift, chocolates or a bottle of wine, to the host. If Australians tell you to “bring your own plate”, they mean bring a plate with some food to share;
That is interesting. Imagine a sitution where I take the saying literally…

· Do not push ahead of others who are waiting in a queue;
I didn’t know that. Thank God, they told me.

· It is not polite to ask a person about his or her income, marital status or religion;
· Australians generally stand about an arm’s length from each other when in conversation. In general people will feel uncomfortable if you invade this personal space;
I assure you I’ll try my best. But the important question here is: Whose arm is the author talking of?

· You are not normally expected to tip for services. If the service has been particularly good, especially in expensive restaurants, you may wish to do so
I will definitely allow her to wish for me if she wishes to.

· Remember to say “thank you” to shop assistants, ticket sellers, and waiters when you are served;
· Goods in retail shops are sold at a fixed price, mild bargaining is commonly used in the open-air markets;
· It is normal for Australians to use either a tissue or handkerchief when blowing their nose. Clearing your throat noisily, blowing your nose in front of others, and not using a handkerchief or a tissue paper are all frowned upon.

Someone should tell the author of this instruction set that it is the norm in any civilized nation and India is one of them.

Appropriate and Inappropriate Behaviour
Unacceptable behaviour – in many places there are laws against unacceptable behaviour including spitting in public, swearing, talking indecently, or urinating in public;
I think this is the Slumdog effect.

Alcohol – alcohol can be legally served to any person over the age of 18. It is also a common part of Australian students’ parties. Do not feel pressure or be shy to refuse if you do not want to.
Not all Indians are Rajesh Koothrappali please.

Humour – Australians value a person’s ability to laugh at him or herself. Comments that might seem disrespectful or inappropriate are usually intended to be humorous icebreakers. These are signs that the person feels comfortable with you, rather than intended to hurt you.
Interesting….


Armed with all these details I set out in half-an-hour. Let’s find out what’s in store...