Southern Hospitality Part II

Mysore is sort of place where you sleep in. A city of 800,000 people, the region was semi-autonomous during British rule and there does seem to be a difference in the culture, architecture, and flow of the place.

S and I eat Idlis for breakfast, after which I spend a much-needed half-hour in an "internet cafe." The browser is chrome, the speed is lightning-fast, and facebook/google prompt me to use something called Orkut. The internet goes out four times, prompting the maitre de to reset the router. No one seems particularly bothered, and the bill comes to 10 rupees, roughly twenty-cents.

We hit an art museum that mostly depicts and glorifies the maharaja (ousted by the congress party post-independance). The most striking portraits depict him with his key courtiers and a coterie of redcoated british officers, who look stiff an mildly miserable. I suspect the British didn't have much fun as colonialists.

We eat lunch at the Royal Orchid Metropole, the most thoroughly colonial space in which I've set foot since arriving. The indian buffet is mild and I meet a disagreeable woman from Cleveland who interrogates me near the pasta and describes her trip with commercial disinterest. I mutter absently about how she sounds like a fan of india, but draws close and informs me that it is fine and all but she is in no desire to come back anytime soon- there are too many places in the world to see.

Are there many indias, even for tourists?

The supposed highlight of Mysore is the palace. It's impressive, well decorated, and full of schoolchildren. It's only/less than a century old and designed by a British architect. One of the halls reminds me of the Haggia Sophia. The kids are well behaved and I wonder if they bored by the experience.

We drive to a hilltop on a windy mulholland drive and view the city from on high. S gets me a young coconut and we look out at the demographic glitter.

Then we meet some folks for drinks at a place called "The Roost."

Southern Hospitality Part 3

Left Bangalore on the 18:20 Air India flight to Cochin. Marvelous airport, incredibly well-designed. Possibly my favorite in the world. Stepping onto an Air India flight, one feels the 1980's. Seats are similar to Emirates, individual TVs. Seated next to two teenagers from Mangalore (Karnakata state, western coast). They are on holiday to Munnar, the elevated and cool hill station in Kerala state. Their father works in customs at an airport, in either mangalore or bangalore. The twenty-year-old studies civil engineering and says he will soon start a job. Apparently, there are too many computer science graduates these days.

The sixteen-year-old has a mature sense of humor, which he tells me his teachers don't appreciate. He plans to study medicine and business (both?) and is informs me that the Indian education system is excellent at teaching math and science.

Speaking to him, I wonder if Thomas Friedman hasn't been writing his books for an Indian audience, as many of the folks I speak with are steeped in flat world thinking and discourse. What becomes clear in conversation with my seatmate is that the humanities and non-quant/science education is weak and will be an impediment to this fellow if he wants to study in a top American university. Where does creativity come from? What sort of education produces entrepreneurs?

The Cochin airport is a small and steamy porcelain bowl. Waiting for my bag, I wander out to the hotels desk and spot a chess set at the Taj counter.

The only way to get a taxi is by waiting on line for a prepaid ticket, with the driver's name, license plate, destination, and some indecipherable information. Set prices, "Communist" state. I meet an elegantly suited young businessman while standing on line. The best suit I've seen in months, he's an mba from IIM, which he tells me is the top management (set of) school(s) in country. He manages universities, enjoys working in education, gives off a sense of affluent balance.

Driving through Cochin, I get the feeling I'm on the gulf coast, in Pensacola or Mississippi. Then I check into the hotel, and am passed by a white-robed-red-kerchiefed man, with a small entourage in tow.
Ben Magarik
917.371.8266
magarik@gmail.com

Southern Hospitality

Kingfisher Airlines is kinda like the Indian version of Virgin. My check-in process is handled by roughly five friendly people in red uniforms. Security is thorough and intense, though without a liquid portion.

The flight leaves an hour late, which appears to be standard. We are served lemon drink boxes before takeoff, a complimentary meal (not bad, not great), and plenty of water. There is live TV. I am impressed.

I am seated next to two Americans, both of Indian origin. Both are friendly, chatty, and interested in talking business. Cards are exchanged and plans are made. I wonder if Kingfisher does this on purpose.

The airport and weather are gorgeous and I feel like I've landed in California. I re-ncounter one of my seatmates at the baggage pick-up and he offers to have his driver take me to my friend S's house. I immediately like Bangalore (five million people), which feels clean and manageable after 36 hours in Mumbai.

Two hours later, we find the house. My friend's family are incredibly warm and friendly, greeting me with hands-touching-Namaste. They serve tea, question me intently (in multiple rounds), and teach me about Hindu mythology while feeding me delicious vegetarian food.

Then we're off to Mysore (population 800,000), a three hour drive on a mostly inhabited road. We stop at a trendy/modern coffee spot and I inhale something delicious with whip-cream and chocolate.

I wakeup at my friend's grandfather's house, a well-designed stone building with a large wraparound garden.

S and I go out for a lovely dinner with his friends from Infosys, an enormous Indian tech company for which he worked after college. The restaurant is outside on neatly shaved grass. The food is spicy, cheap, and plentiful.

Southern India reminds me of Cambodia, only busier and more developed.

Mumbai, Mumbai

Trauma: the 2008 terrorist attack is still on people's minds (26/11). The military is deployed to key landmarks and hotels and people are watching/waiting. I am told not to take pictures at Victoria Terminus (the train station). I end up visiting/passing many of the site of the attack. 

Intensely Urban: the pace is intensely urban. People are constantly moving, and there aren't many places of calm/quiet. 

Highly Noticeable class distinctions: that's my intuitive sense, anyway. I get the feeling that people dress their parts. I notice middle-class professionals, working class people, extremely poor people, and folks who are rich/western. Distinction in dress/speech are highly pronounced. 

Everyone is eating all the time: I envy this since i'm not eating street food on this trip. The food looks great. 

Highlights:

-Jahangir Art Gallery. Terrific contemporary work by young artists. Lots of machine/body, multitude, endless urban landscape themes. Some wonderful bright colored pieces playing with tourism, sexuality, and self. 

-Mutton Omelet at Jahingir Art gallery. Ridiculously Tasty. 

-Lesson on Hindu Gods and imagery from antique shop owner. Lord Ganesha rides around on a giant rat, apparently. 

-Seeing the house where Ghandi formulated Satyagraha (truth-seeking non-violence). My big takeaway from Ghandi's life is that humility is powerful.

-Being told that the Jasmine flowers on my wrist (proffered "for free" by a young woman outside the Taj, resulting in a deal over the acceptable donation) smelled terrific.  Hard to stop and smell the roses in a city of tens of millions. 

Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles

In the beginning there was the smell. Getting off the plane in the Mumbai airport, it is balmy and almost fetid.

Lufthansa has almost totally destroyed my checked bag, but we cut a deal and they pay in cash- a first!

I use the pre-paid taxi option and the driver takes me close to the hotel, before deciding that he has no idea where he's going. I'm staying in a neighborhood called Parel, of which I know nothing.

The security in front of the hotel at 4am is serious, they scan the car with some sort of device, and then nod at me. I notice that when I stay still and then nod/smile, people mimic me.

The lobby is adorned with christmas elves. What is it about  non-christian developing countries and christmas? Weird post-colonial relic.

The room is terrific and the bed is amazingly comfortable.

I wake at 7:30 and run 5k on a treadmill, before meeting a woman from Philadelphia who is here with here with family to relocate to Mumbai. She has three kids, is very friendly, and seems hesitant about the move.

There is bottled water everywhere and the staff at the hotel treats me like i'm a visting emissary from abroad.

Frankfurt

A man is bicycling through the airport.  White snow, dark concrete, grey people. I'm in the Frankfurt airport after an easy leg on Lufthansa from IAD-FRA.  Thanks to the generosity of a former boss, I used a paper systemwide upgrade (SWU in flyertalk parlance) and was upgraded to Business class. It's only the second time i've flown business on an international flight, and it is a superb experience. My review of the product:

 -understated, effective experience. The Lufthansa lounge at Dulles is modest, small, and nothing special. However, being able to wander around Dulles without a bag before my flight is a plus, as is boarding the plane from a separate entrance (this explains why the same flight has two gates assigned to it).

-I sit in 4k, window-seat in the back of the nozzle section. It is like sitting on the front of a ship in a large cushioned lawn chair. I have this feeling of being in the cabin of a Hindenberg-like blimp in the 1920/30's.

-the woman sitting next to me is young and casually attired. She turns out to be a German Au Pair (town of 900 people) who lives in DC and takes care of two children, whose parents are a healthcare lawyer-lobbyist duo. She is polite and undazzled bz the experience. We get along nicely, but there isn't much to talk about. I tell her to visit San Francisco and Cape Cod, and she thinks i'll enjoy Japan.

-Getting a six page illustrated menu with a letter from the executive chef is amazing. International airlines should make this a standard practice, even for economy.  My appetizer is pleasant, my main course is so-so, and my desert is basic. The linen is lovely, the glasses are modern and elegantly logoed with the lufthansa bird, and the attendant brings me the best cognac i've ever tasted. If only I weren't fighting a cold... The bread selection is marvelous, and includes some sort of German pretzel rolls.

-The seat is extremely complex and allows for multiple configurations. It reminds me of doing yoga minus the doing. the blanket is cotton-quilt style. After watching Salt (bizarre cold-war thriller, entirely without context), I get a few hours of sleep.  There is a bar mid-cabin with water and snacks throughout the night, with glitter on the linen. There are holiday wreaths at the front of the plane.

-I wake to a pleasant breakfast with a delicious croissant, some sort of pastramized meat, and cheeses. Fresh squeezed orange juice, too.

-the bathrooms are large, eternally unoccuppied, and have mouthwash and hand lotion. I am tempted to take the Lufthansa paper cups but resist the urge.

-I charge my blackberry using a plug supplied by the flight attendant. When I try to return it, she wishes me a merry christmas and says it is mine to keep.

the whole experience is very solid and pleasant. distinctly german.

Beginnings

Visit from N on Christmas eve, an architect and urban planner from new york. We went to see Tron: Legacy in Georgetown: light, self-involved,  distracting. Ethiopian food afterwards in Adams Morgan: light, filling,  delicious.

Christmas eve sleep is consistently better, even for Jews. I wake, wander around the apartment,  discover lightly falling snow.

N helps me pack saturday morning. I somehow fill two bags, eat my chinese leftovers, drop off the trash, give my door woman a bottle of wine, and am off to Dulles with O (a co-worker).

I'm off. First stop, Frankfurt.

Scenes from Real Life

I wake to David Byrne / the taxi flies over the frozen river.

Espresso from a silver machine. Water and honey. Typing.

Conversation. Typing. Facebook/Gmail. Typing. Youtube in the background. Water. Typing.

Lunch.

Repeat x3

Phone Call. I get a ride home with someone.

Home is where Delta Airlines Takes you

Minneapolis is colder today. After a day of meetings, it's time to get back to DC.

First Leg of flight is Delta MSP-MCO, middle seat, exit row. I sit next to a traveling salesman from Nestle who has once visited Switzerland. We talk about the good old days of air travel and he tells a story of having led an emergency exit. Then he gets going on golf courses. There is free internet on the flight and I learn that my connecting flight to DC has been delayed.

I leave the plane for the Orlando airport and learn that the flight to DC has been canceled.

Forty-five minutes later i'm flying to La Guardia Airport, sitting back in the exit row next to a cosmetics designer from Long Island.

It is nearly impossible to get a taxi at La Guardia. I spend the night on the UWS and take the delta shuttle back to DC in the morning, and go straight to work.

A few hours later I am on a flight to Atlanta, connecting to Las Vegas. Middle seat, because I agreed to trade with a couple. I sit next to a nuclear-submarine-physicist-turned-IT consultant and talk about software-as-a-service before napping.

I get an antipasti salad in the Atlanta Airport, which is busy and orderly.

The flight to vegas is long but I have an exit row seat. We watch Eat, Pray, Love- slightly more enjoyable than reading the Delta magazine.

We land early and spend twenty minutes waiting for a gate.

Mid-Western Wonderland

Moving through security at Reagan-National, I hear my name on the loudspeaker for final call.  Toiletries and laptop in hand, I jog to the gate. Desserted, no crew member at the boarding-pass-scanning-station. Yet, the door is open...


We are flying over over an endless field of snow clouds. Thick, fluffy, and packed, a blanket of snow hanging in the sky. The Delta flight attendants are attentive and feed us rounds of coffee and snacks. 


The Minneapolis Airport is enormous. Everyone is wearing dark colors. Americana accents into cellular phones. I go underground to get to get to a taxi, a white minivan. Organized, efficient, polite. 


The woman at the front desk chattily checks me in, agrees to my request to put my Amtrak Guest Rewards number on the reservation,  and asks me if often take "the Amtrak." She tells me likes London and Venice (the latter in late Spring). She is exquisitely friendly. 


The hotel reminds me of the airport, though it is entirely deserted. 


We go the University of Minnesota Basketball game. The stadium/arena is warm, cozy, and full of tall college students in bright yellow and maroon. The home team wins.  We're off to "Top Ten," a local bar and get Molson and subs. our hosts talk about MN politics and tells stories of Paul Wellstone. I get the feeling that I am in an enchanted kingdom. 


My first five hours with Minnesotans are wonderful. They are chatty, charming, laid-back, honest, polite, warm, and bright. 


There's foot of snow on the ground. 

Familiar Monday

Nyquil sleep, unplugged phone. Dead morning battery. Toasted bagel at work, philadelphia cream cheese. Warm energy in the office, december cold brewing. Lunchtime on the building, crab-artichoke dip and swedish meatballs. Apparently there was a terrorist attack in Sweden this weekend...

Listening to the cab driver speaking in a foreign tongue, I recognize phrases and the rhythm. He's Cambodian-born in Battambang. BADDAMBANG.

I come home to a roommate and his girlfriend drinking red wine. We eat goat cheese, kalamata olives, lobster ravioli from trader joe's, and talk about the banking system in the ukraine.
Then my brother calls from israel and we talk about Robert Altman films.

No nyquil tonight.

Reviews

Recent experiences:

1. 2Amy's:  magnificent DC Pizza. Located next to the National Cathedral.  Insert joke about heavenly experience/many routes to heaven/Gluttony. Went with V, ran into a classmate from Brooklyn + Wesleyan- not a coincidence.

2. The new West End Cinema: lovely. An oasis of the avant garde, a hipster in East Midtown. Art house movie theater in downtown DC? Evidence that the city's tastes are improving? Can it survive the 2010-2012 congress?

3. Josephine and Lima: The former is acceptably typical, the latter is moderately elegant- Mies Van Der Rohe couches, lots of glass, club 2.0. 

4. Unstoppable with Denzel Washington and that guy from Star Trek (Chris Pine): Unstoppable. Like being on the Acela: alternatively exciting, exhausting, entertaining, disengaging, and reasonably quick/palatable.  

5. Bayou Bakery in Arlington, Virgina: fattening, pleasant, and extremely out of place. Good espresso. Will be more fun in the summer. Met the owner/chef: exudes entrepreneurial focus, professionalism, and understated confidence.  I predict enormous success. 

6. The Player with Tim Robbins and by Robert Altman.  Arguably the best thing I've seen all year on the little screen. 

7. Setting up a Delta Mileage run out of DC:  Nearly impossible. If the service on the shuttle wasn't so good, I'd move fully to the Star Alliance.