First real post about the office life.
A quick intro. I am around a trading desk these days. Not much work and have been listening to things. Traders being the only revenue generators of this side of the finance industry expects to be treated like kings(desrevedly so). Traders, sales trader are in the king category and tech guy, booker etc are in the serving category.
Things I hear.
Trader to Tech guy and his assistant - "I am his worst nightmare and now I will be yours too...Muhahahahaha!!!"
Sales trader to agency trader- I want 20% of the volume. You have 30 seconds, work the trade with everything you have got, go Go GOOOO!!
5 seconds later - My mistake. cancel that order.
Sales trader to agency trader - Man... what are you doing go on with that order.
Agency trader - Oh..uh....yeah....a few seconds later.....You failed to shout at me this once ...he he he!!.
Sales trader - I NEVER SHOUT AT YOU.
Trader to booker - We have baught 1000 of these. Do you get it. So remember to book as buy 1000 not sell 1000. Thats BUY 1000 and not SELL 1000. Got it.
Booker - Yeah Yeah.
Trader - Brilliant!! So that will be Buy...right?
A few lessons learnt.1) Never feel bad when somebody, in fact everybody, totally ignores you and only acknowledge that you exist when they need coffee, this could happen once or twice a day. The desk secretary can also come and ask you to get muffins for the desk. Its all in good spirit. After all you are getting free coffee and muffins. Just don't forget that you are in fact a B.Tech and going to be an MBA soon. And yeah also that you cleared CAT. Damn it!! This test was the thing responsible for all of this. Ban it :) (Actually this doesn't happen with me but with a colleague. :) )
2) Traders are nice people and generally don't swear and shout until someone comes in their way of making money. It can be the poor tech guy or the trade booking assistant. You being an intern, by default, interfere with their work but are not shouted at out of kindness(or the fraternity thing). Although a few warms up to the interns right from day one.
A Peek inThis friday somebody braught a star-wars sword and half the floor is enjoying the swoosh and the flicker of the tube. We are all kids at heart.
On the surface traders look like spoiled brats shouting at everyone. But are nice guys who don't take bullshit from the people around. They want to know who is working and who is taking the credit.
Some time well spent
We generally plan our weekend by looking at this Friday magazine that lists up the things going on in the city over the weekend. Now there was this beer festival at Yebisu park. Obviously we went to have a look and a sip. We landed at the Yebisu metro station and passed thorugh what seemed like a Barber market. Every second shop was a barber's. The barbers here have this funda of a 10 minute session for Y1000. I think this gives every other guy in Tokyo, a partially-done-hair-cut look. It must have gone like this "Dude, your 10 minutes are up so come next week, go take an appointment from my secretary." By next week guy decides what the heck this looks good. Unfortunately a lot of guys felt like that and it became a fashion. People like me are the odd-man-out.
About that beer festival, it was at Yebisu garden place which itself was worth a visit. There were people showing off their dogs, kids playing and some kid-contest etc going on. We could not find the beer festival but found a pub in the park. So, had what we came for. Talking about dogs, Japs have these very little, cute looking rat sized dogs, a few have bigger. I mean upto the size of a cat. Thats the limit. They like to carry them in bags, buckets etc. And the dogs look like as if they are stepping out of a hair stylist/beauty clinic. There were quite a few on show at the park. From there we went to Ikebukoro which is famous as biggest shopping area in Tokyo. It was too costly for us but still one of us baught a blue(!!) coloured leather shoes. The city was having its effects I guess. On sunday we went to Omote sando(O-mote-sand-o). There is this open area where girls come dressed up as different characters. Its a good spot for tourists etc. Clicked a few pics. There was one particularly dangerous looking character dressed up as what I think was dracula. It was good fun.
Sanity of Indian Movies
I remember how I despised the storyline and plot of Hindi movies. How we used to laugh at emotional scenes and cry in the "humorous" ones. I remember the first movie I had to leave halfway through in a hall. It was "Yeh Dillagi" casting if-but-jutt and Mahima aunty I guess. Another one was the creative copy of Run-Lola-Run, ek din chaubees ghante. It was such a pathetic copy that there is nothing more I can think about it.
Anyway so after office hours I have nothing to do here. And I have no energy left to roam around or explore this city. So I picked up two of these 3-in-1 DVDs of Hindi superhits from one and only talked about store here, where I can get Indian stuff. They have another of my saviours ......the MTR food packets. God bless MTR's soul. Yeah the movies .....Ahhhh!! they are such a relief in this alien land that I totally understand why overseas market have become such an important market for Ghais, Chopras et. al. You identify with something other than yourself away from everybody you know. One DVD is MunnaBhai MBBS, Khoobsurat, Daud combo. Other combo is Hum-Tum, Main hun na and Kal ho na ho. Most watched is obviuosly MunnaBhai MBBS. Its such a great movie and Sanju baba has given such a fantabulous performance that I keep it running when ever I am in my room. The other characters , Circuit, and other side kicks, Zaheer Bhai, Munna's mom, all are just too much in this movie. Totally natural and totally flawless. Some of my favourites dialouge. "Poor people-hungry people" Goes perfectly with my current condition with no salary and a loan of 77000 yen. :). Another is "To lagta hai kya mast life hai" Sometime....no everytime I feel that way on Friday evenings coming out of my office. Over that it is set in Mumbai. The city where I spent the golden years of my life. I was going to call these most productive years but I know no-one will agree. Yeah so the taxi chase scene, carrom scenes all take me back to mumbai. Its good to be reminded that there is a place where you are not uncomfortable on the road. You know that no-one will check your I-card. Though this will be done most politely here but still why ? Here the foreign visitor I-card is called Alien Card, how apt. Its a totally alien world. People here say that its worst for asian in west though I always thought otherwise. So I guess parting comment should be East or West, India is the best. India rocks man!!
Pre Golden Weekend
Tokyo to Nagoya in Shinkansen - The Bullet Train. I felt nothing different from a normal train except that I got a wonderfully refreshing sleep given that I cant usually sleep in trains. The interiors were like an airplane. The legspace was unlike the economy seats. The engine looked like it was made for flying and yeah there was ear trouble for few of us. I also felt it whenever the train entered a tunnel. So not much different from our Rajdhanis. Except that the train is amazingly fast and reaches at least 80-90kmph even before it has left the platform. Top speed limit is supposed to be 270kmph but it is not adhered to and train touches 300 sometimes. They leave every 5 minutes from Tokyo to various destinations. So they are at only 10 minutes distance from each other on the same track !!!. Also they are stopped in case of an emergencies like earthquake. I seriously pray that India never try to start something similar.
World Expo - Only few things worth mentioning. Impatient people should not go to expos. I was amazed by the patience of Japanese people to queue up under blazing sun to view some special show by Hitachi. Never found out what it was. Japanese are a patient lot. They will form long queues outside restaurants waiting. I just don't understand it. One interesting psychological game goes on in the queues here. As the queue gets longer and longer, longer the maze like barricades get, thourgh which one needs to walks to reach the end of the queue. I guess it makes you feel that you are not waiting and the whole thing looks to be moving fast. We had crappy Indian food at bollywood masala stall. Crappy as they were here to make a quick buck giving no thought to projecting a good image for India. Rice was under cooked and dishes were dirty. A Jap. girl was going to do kathak at the Indian center, skipped it. Had a ride in gindoloa(??)/cable car. And finally had chilled beer with wonderfully prepared combo of fries and chicken. Man it was heaven in the heat!!
We went to Kyoto next day which is supposed to be a must visit for tourists in Japan. It has shit loads of temples/shrines. On a map, what I thought was bus stands of the city were actually the temples in the city. Now you get the picture I guess. We visited a temple, the Hein shrine and the famous golden pavalion. The places were amazingly well maintained. But it has started to rain and sort of spoiled the fun. Also we reached late for a visit to the castle in the city.
Back to Tokyo in Shinkansen. I think Shinkansens would have killed the domestic airline industry of Japan. You don't have to reach early and get through the hassle of check-in and all. I will check this up. Also for tourist the tickets are a bit cheaper than for locals. This in a city where there are absolutely no bulk discounts. As we found out when we bought our Nikon 5900s from bangladeshi salesman. Same old "Bhaiya do lene hain thik rate lagao". He took his time multiplying the cost by 2. And we thought he was discounting. May be he has been too long in Japan. Or may be bangladeshi people don't have this very indian knack of bargaining, which I seriously doubt.
Third Weekend
Almost the same as the last time. Drank a lot, slept a lot. We went to Shibuya which is supposed to be a place for the wierd creatures of the night. Man were they wierd!!! Even by the Japanese standards they were wierdos. The place was bustling with peoples and a lot of foreigners. We heard that there were a few elite clubs here. We came for the novelty of these. But a few were members only and a few were I guess too hidden from the public view. The bars we explored were empty !!! But all the people around had a purpose in their walk. It looked like they knew where to go. So again we headed to Roppongi. As usual it was absolutely rocking. Last weekend we went to MoTown, this time we went to MoTown 2!!. We met this dude from Mumbai, India who was hell bent to convince us that we should take more risk in life, quit jobs and start our own businesses. "Dont you want to earn millions." No sir !! I dont. I will be happy in a well paid job. He took the risk of starting his own business, knowing a crorepati baap is anyways there to bail him out. bah!!. Saw a few typical Indian uncles with bulging bellys dancing with jap. girls. We also met a bunch of despo pakistanis who were sorry that Pakistan beat the shit out of India in tests as well as One-days. They were nice guys and were actually embarassed by the loud swearing of the mumbai dude. Other than the fun had to do a lot of washing and ironing to be presentable in the office.
Next : Pre Golden weekend trip to Kyoto on a bullet train.
First and Second Weekends
I came here on a friday so only a day of office and weekend cometh. Saturday we went to this electric town Akihabara. The place for everything electronic. Huge shops to get the cheapest rates in Tokyo and I guess in Japan. But I didn't get my camera there. Sunday morning, we went to this much hyped Indian food festival at the Indian embassy. The kind of - "reach there before 11AM or food will be over" - stuff!!. We got there around 12 but food was a big letdown. Prolly people staying here for longer periods have lost the taste of Indian food. Everything was kind of sweet. Imagine eating a sweet "spicy chicken curry" with sticky chinese variety of rice for Y700!!. Yeah Nan were over before we got there. The Indian Nan is quite popular among all in Tokyo.
The cherry blossom festival was in full glory on that weekend. The pathway outside embassy was lined up with these beautiful pink flower laden trees.We met the other IIM-C interns there, so there were a few more heads to plan the touring of Tokyo. We roamed around a bit under the canopy of pink trees. It looked like half of Tokyo was there, it was like a carnival. From there we went to Imperial Palace of the royal family. The place was amazingly beautiful(from the outside, nobody is allowed inside). A moat all around the palace with trees on the slope.A bridge across the moat perfectly placed for a good pic. The royal family appears on it once a year or something like that.
The second weekend we headed to Roppongi, the night life capital of Tokyo. We went there a bit late and still the place was abuzz like anything. We explored a few bars and had a couple of drinks. In all bars there were girls for the taking. But we were there just for the drinks and the music. We headed home at around 5am. There were these minivans lined up on the curb offering snacks. I had a Turkish Kebab. It is kind of a wheat roti as a bag with beef fillings in it. And yeah the amazing thing, the place was so crowded that there was a partial traffic jam at 5am at the crossing!!. The weekend was well spent in binging and sleeping.A long week ahead :(.
Next : Third weekend...absolutely nothing worth mentioning in office days.
Emotions and Passions.
Sometimes when you are tossing in your bed counting sheeps, you start thinking about life work life and such mundane stuff. Why was I doing what I was doing ? How people get so passionate about things. What are these emotions people feel so strongly about. adi ityadi. Mind you these things happen after you have read the discussions about "Quality" and such stuff in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence". And specially when you have slept throughout the day and again went to bed early to wake up in time for office. But alas only sheeps and clouds.
I remember one time during our initial days at the institute. There was one guy talking very enthusiastically about hostel publicity, raids and stuff and trying to get me involved. I looked at his face and in his eyes and felt sort of detached and thought man how can anyone get enthusiasm for such a thing. For that matter for anything in life so as to try to convince others. I thought myself as a person with lack of passions and emotions. Hmmm now I recall that I have felt these often not burning passion for anything but emotions at least. I didn't knew that I hated the Bangalore auto guys so much that I fought with a poor auto guy for 5 bucks!! For that matter a parking guy for Re. 1. Its kind of embarassing when you think about it. But may be at that time I felt something very strong. Well whatever I think this is the point where I went to sleep. :) The thoughts at that time were creative, plenty and perfect to pen down. But I dont have access to my comp at home otherwise I would have surely typed it down. And after the essentials of the day you have nothing left inside your head to write down which is happening now. I think I will get a laptop for these lonely and creative nights.
BTW I just read
Varun's post and
Himanshu's post AFTER I have written this. (I write at office late in the day and put it on blog from a friend's palce.) Now of course what a coincidence that all of us were tossing over the same thing. Read "The Celestine Prophecy". I am a firm believer of the first prophecy about coincidences. It is a very well written book given what we(at least I) feel about today's world.
Tokyo Arrival
We came out of the airport in arrival lobby and ahhh it almost looked like the Delhi airport lobby. There were people all around and chaos was ruling. This was a welcome change from the too clean, too sparse airports of Bangkok and HongKong. There were bus counters, metro rail counters for tourists minus the bargain doling agents lurking around.
We were advised to catch limousine bus service to Tokyo. But we opted for a cheaper way i.e. through the complicated rail network of Tokyo. After a long hour on a train we came a bit closer to central Tokyo. We had to change the rail line from here. Man it was a nightmare with our luggage. To change you need to sometime walk like more than a km in underground tunnels and esclators. And these stations are like underground cities with multiple levels of platforms and all. Atlast we came out of the station to the surface of the earth. The weather was good and a cool breeze helped us recuperate. We were told that our hotel is 5 minute walk from the station. So we asked around for our hotel and though people were helpful noone knew where the place was. There was this one guy who started running all over the place with our address in his hand, pointing to various buildings. In the end we gave up and got on a taxi whose old driver gave us a indulging smile to us and took us to this building barely 100m away from the place. It costed us 660Yen though. We got to our place and dumped our luggage. The reception guy was extra courteous. He explained in detail how to use an access card-key by inserting it in the slot in the door, then a green light will come on, then one should pull the door by your hand(!!!) and now the door was open(pheww!!) and all this in faltering english, took around 10 minutes. Dinner was at the familiar McD as did not want to take chances on the first meal. McD is amazing in consistency of flavor, anywhere you go in the world.
One peculiarity which I noticed was that everything was very efficiently used. Advertisements posters in trains were covered till there edges with slogans and smiling faces. Platforms were not very large. In all nooks and corners there were either vending machines or a small shop selling trinkets. Everything looked a bit cluttered. Though this effect has worned off now but it was surely there. This should have something to do with the scarcity of natural resources in Japan.
Next - First Weekend in Tokyo
Three days in Hong Kong
I landed in Hong Kong around 12:15pm. I had to reach the office by 2:30pm to at least catch the afternoon session of the training. There was some delay at the immigration. He prolly didn't like my face or something. But I finally got through without trouble. I found out the fastest way to get to the city was the Airport Express. Cost me a cool HK$100. Though I reached the city in 45 mnts flat. Actually earlier I was thinking of making to it to the lunch at 1:00pm or may be the later part of it. But finding out the hotel and checking-in etc. took a lot of time. In fact I was late by 5 minutes for the afternoon session. The morning session was plain chit chat and afternoon was also just intro to the support functions of the company. So the most important stuff I missed was the lunch, which people told me was not that good. So all the bad luck I had since the start of my trip seems to be wearing off.
HK has all mode of transports imaginable. Buses, Metro, Tram, Express trains, ferries and of course taxis. And yeah one more The Peak Tram. This thing has been around for some 100 years and like all things in HK extremely well maintained. It takes you to one of the numerous peaks around HK. It goes up on a steep slope, which sometimes is upto 45 degrees. You get beautiful panorama view of the city while going up. On the top of course you can see the whole city. The top is like a small city with numerous restaurants and shops. Interestingly almost all the shops had these last day stock clearing sale notice on them. The notices sure looked old. We were a little short on cash as we had to still get our first salries/reimbursements. But when you see a Hagan Das you got to have some.So we shared like 2 scoops among us seven. There was this old man selling battery operated crawling soldiers for 70$ which right after were offered for 50. Anyway they were kind of interesting. We sort of got lost finding the tram station. It was right in fornt of that Hagan Das. We climbed up and down the whole place and threatened to bump the guy, who was kind of leading us, off.
We also went to this place, Kowloon, which is supposed to be a place to get cheap things. The cheapest way to go there is this star ferry. You cut across the sea on the ferry and on the way get a terrific view of HK in HK$1.7. I bought a good fake Tomy Hilfiger watch for an equivalent of 120 rupees. A few had to desperately get phone cards to call there "dear ones". Rest decided to gain from these peoples calling charges experience. So next day we came back to Kowloon for the rest and for those who already exhausted their cards. We came in an open top double decker bus this time. The one in that DDLJ song. It felt great in that good weather and specially after the long day at office. Yeah there was office going too from 9AM to 5ish. I think lets give it a miss. We explored the whole place for an Indian Diner and though found a few but couldn't make our selves spend the dough for the goodies. Darn the habit of converting $ to Rs. And later almost has to do without a dinner as everything was almost closed. The food stalls there take last order till 930pm. I had to catch the morning flight for Tokyo and others had to go to the office early so we headed for the hotel quite early.
Next- Tokyo Landing
Delhi to Bangkok
After the fiasco in the morning I came back to the airport in the evening to catch the 00:30 flight of indian airlines. I came in too early obviously taking no risks and the counter was not open yet. This time my parents refused to leave till I got the boarding pass. So a long wait, for them across the glass barrier. The "uncleji"(no nice-girls) at the IA counter didn't understand why I was going through Bangkok when there were direct flights for Hong Kong. He consulted someone and used whatever brain he had or cared to spare to understand the complicated case and finally gave me the boarding pass. So parents were happy and even willing to wave off my plane. But rationality prevailed.
I chatted with a girl for NIIT software Development(not teaching) going to Bangkok for an onsite project. Man! she was flying international for the first time and knew what all to do. Even that one should avoid the last immigration counter as it is resereved for MPs or something. Though I got my stamp there only. Turned out that the company gives guiedlines for their smooth travel.
The flight was boring, had to be with a bunch of aged, rude and witchy looking air-hostesses. I mean it is alright if a pretty one is being rude but an old witch doing that is too much. Yeah so I reached Bangkok early morning and had to catch the connecting flight when I was told that IA has not checked in my luggage till hong kong but only till bangkok. I had very little time on me. But thanks to the efficient and rude lady on the counter I got my luggage checked in for HongKong without much delay. The Indian girl from Vancouver and punjabi old lady was also on the same flight and they were there too. I dont know how the old lady would have managed the transit if the girl had not been with her. The girl was visiting her relatives in Amritsar. So prolly the punjabi motherland was the link between them. Anyway we were again on the same flight and this time we got our boarding passes. But this terminal was like 5 miles away and we reached there just in the nick of time to board the flight. This was a Cathay Pacific flight, had inflight movie and all, unlike IA flight. The food was inedible ...oh no that was on Bangkok-Tokyo flight. Here it was alright I had something or the other.
Next - Three days in HongKong.
