Learning German

I am just back from a good dinner - chinese. This trip I had only three meals - twice chinese and one spanish. At Fulda its good the restaurants have good veg food which makes my meal comfortable. Today I had a great company of Stefanie and her colleaue Nicole.  I had a free morning as my meeting was in the afternoon. The meeting was good with good future prospects for LNM. My host company had arranged for a dinner in the evening with two beautiful hosts. Frank, the Operations Manager jokingly mentioned that he is sending me for dinner with two beautiful girls and gonna take pictures which he will send to Minoo if I dont give him a better price. With this wonderful dinner I would be tempted to give them good price but I always give good price to my customers as I believe I am in business as long as my customers survive.

The weather was better today. My fortune cookie after the dinner said that I will inspire others and I am sure if not my accumen as manager but my luck with good hosts will always inspire people to work hard.  Nicole is working as an apprenticeship. After her schools she goes to college once in a week and works for four days. Her work is part of her studies. She would be completing her apprenticeship this November. Its such a betterway as she is able to complete her studies working for herself. She would learn more this way than she would in college studying. All the freshers that we hire in India are so immature about work culture because they have no practical knowledge when they join.  Here in India everyone is working so hard towards going to the best college and only a few are able to go to the government funded places and rest end up paying so much of money for there higher education which is a burden on the parents. This way atleast she is able to take care of her own expenses and learning. This November after she clears her exams she will be ready to take up permanent position in the company. Srves good for everybody. Also one more thing I liked about the culture here is the outdoor activities they do with sports and travel. Both Stefanie and Nicole are widely travelled across the globe. I was seing some pics of Stefanies last holidays with her fiance to US and was nice to see that they experimented on lot of things which we Indians usually dont try to do to save money. They would prefer to stay in cheaper hotels but try things which you get an opportunity to do rarely. Like at the grandcanyon they took the one hour journey on the Cessna plane or at Hawai they took the helicopter ride. They try there hands at so many adventure sports. I learnt couple of words in German like Thank you is said as Dankeschon and sorry is said " Es tut mir leid" pronounced "S toot meer lide". Very difficult to pronounce. Sorry is always difficult to say and specially Germans dont easily say sorry.

Sorry - Samvatsari

I reached Fulda from Rottweil in a four hour train journey. The journey on ICE is wonderful. Travelling at more than 200 kms hour in wonderful comfort. Indian Railways has lot to learn. But then its pretty cheap travelling in Indian Railways as compared to the 80 Euros I paid for this trip. The countryside train journey is beautiful with big farms all around and cattle and horses gazing.

I was going through all my mails of last week on the train and came across a mail from Ritu mentioning Samvatsari on 9th. I was curious about this and was really amazed about this annual Jain community 'Sorry Telling Day'.Samvatsari is considered as the most pious day of a year and Jain people do prayer on this day to ask for the forgiveness for anything they did to hurt someone by means of thoughts, words, acts or deeds. They would ask for pardon from all the living being - human, plants, animals etc. Any word , action that might have hurt anyone. It really takes guts to say sorry and that too for no reason (thats what everyone thinks). Just imagine what state this world would be without this single word and another word close to this could be Thanks. I have seen lot of misunderstandings, my sudden wrong actions - intentional or unintentional just getting sorted out when I said sorry. We copy so much from other culture like Thanksgiving day, Valentines day, mothers day ...... archies has created a day every day but I see no effort from these marketing companies to promote this great day. I think we should try more to look into our culture which is tried and tasted over the centuries. Lets take the first step to say sorry to atleast those we know we have hurt intentionally , forget about unintentional or to other living things. And lets also remember to say Thanks.

As I watch the news in my hotel room - the world economy looks in a mess. Lehman Bros has gone bankrupt, Merrill Lynch is being taken over by Bank of America, AIG is being funded. Share markets world wide has taken a beating. Currency fluctuations is mind boggling. Dollar from 45 to 39 to 46 , Euro from 55 to 70 to 64 against the rupee in a span of one year. I dont know how do we manage this at LNM as every time I tried to hedge I am loosing.

I had a wonderful dinner at a spanish lounge here. First time I had spanish food. It tasted awsome but had lot of cheese. Well I had reason to celebrate - I won a good order for my company today.