Day 3 & 4

Its been tiring with the amount of driving that we are doing so was unable to write the last two nights. We usually reach hotel late and just go bang - to bed. And then we have early morning meetings so it keeps on going.

Well today is the last day of our business trip. I am in Canada. The QEW expressway which runs along the Lake in Canada is superb - 16 lanes both side. Its a great sight.I believe QEW would be Queen Elizabeth Way. It was a long drive yesterday. I believe around 600 + miles staring from Indiana and then Kentucky, Ohio, PA,NY and then into Cananda. We started at around 12 o Clock in the noon and reached our hotel at around 9.30 pm which I believe was descent. Duane - I am sure must be tired driving all the way. I need to now start driving here. May be practise a bit and that I have an international driving license - so should not be a problem. The sun has been bright and sunny through out the day. We see so much back home in TV's or read about US recession. I dont see a damn here. There are as many people in the Malls or restaurants as there used to be. I mean there is absolutely no difference may be its increasing more - the spending habits. But yes one thing that I noticed changing is size of cars. Cars are getting smaller - its difficult to maintain the gallon gulping SUV's and trucks that people drove with oil at 4 USd per gallon here. Most of todays drive was flat - I mean there are no hills and its not a scenic drive till you enter into Canada. But the day before when we drove from Virginia at Kenucky - that was beautiful. We went across four states. Kentucky - we know in India for KFC, Kentucky is famour for its horses. Kentucky Derby is world renowned.SO you see miles and miles of farms with horses grazing around. Horses may be expensive here than people. Another thing for which Kentucky is famous is whiskey. Duane told that they make the best whickeys but surprisingly most of the state is dry like we have in Gujarat. I was not aware that US has dry states but there are a few. Its a religious state also with most people go for Bible reading on wednesdays. By the way we had dinner at Olive Gardens here - one of my best dining places.

In couple of hours we will leave this hotel for our meeting in Canada. And after that Duane drops me into Buffalo airport and I fly back to NY over the weekend - need to get myself some clothes. I am having some backache for last two days and I hope it gets over or will kill the weekend. Duane drives back home to be withhis family and its a long weekend with Memorial day holiday on Monday. Its a five hour drive for him. I would be ungrateful if I dont mention Duane's help to me personally and LNM in business. He is such a good sport and I believe we have built up such a great understanding amongst each other which makes the business smooth. Thanks Duane for everything and you made this trip very comfortable.

Catch you guys later - may be from India.

Day 2- I am gonna work till I retire

I had a good meeting in the morning with my customers. It has been raining since morning and before setting out of Bedford Duane and me had a luncheon meeting with our former buyer of this company in Bedford. He had retired since I came last time and we thought it will be good to catch up with him. Speaking to him during lunch I enquired about how he spends his day - and he said he walks till 1 pm every day and at times 19 miles. I found this crazy way to spend your time. I have been always talking that I am going to retire pretty early in my career but seeing him I felt this might be a bad decision. I now understand how important it is to keep on working - may be not always at work but things which will keep me creatively busy. So I am now decided that I am not gonna stop working early as I had planned out and am sure I would keep working at LNM for much longer than I thought I will do. Its pretty important to keep yourself busy and I know I will be the last one to keep walking.

Well, I am at my hotel room in Bristol. It has been a long day with this more than 6 hrs of driving. We crossed 4 states - Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and then Virginia. This trip is going to take me into nine US states and then Canada. As I had mentioned earlier it was lousy weather when I started the day- raining and raining but as we reached into Virginia - it became bright and sunny. Duane had a surprise visit for me in Bristol. I went to see the stadium where they have the NASCAR races. A huge stadium which accommodates 1,00,000 people and it was great to be in there after having seen all this on TV. Duane and me had the whole stadium to us and I could hear the echo of 100000 people roaring in my ears. It was a great experience to be there and I thank Duane for this. I have taken some good pictures there but some body has made a mess of the card reader in my laptop and I am unable to upload this now. But I will share this as soon as I get a replacement. One of the best things for some one in a marketing job is that it allows you to see great places and meet exciting people. The last one month has really rekindled the spark within and I am enjoying it. But travelling on US roads is so monotonous with no holes or bad roads. Miles and Miles of great expressways and its great that Duane keeps on driving wonderfully on these roads - I would have gone to sleep as there's no excitement like we have back home - no rickshaws or cows coming , no human gay walking in the middle. Add to that I have Duane on my side for five long days. Hope I had Keera driving me around :-) Catch you tomorrow as we travel from here to Kentucky.

DAY 1 - I made my Mark

I have reached Hotel Hamilton Inn at Bedford some time back at 8.30 Pm after the shortest drive of this trip in four hours from Towanda. I last stayed in this hotel in September 2004. This is the place from where I made one of the most expensive calls on my cell phone, negotiating a land deal for the plot where LNM is located today. I am sure this hotel is lucky for me and this place is going to bring me luck in my all important meeting tomorrow. I started my long business trip within US today. I reached RLD's home yesterday night from New Jersey. It was raining badly yesterday afternoon. My drive with RLD to his home was in rains. The whole drive within PA state is beautiful but unfortunately as it was raining couldnt enjoy the beauty. This place is nothing less than you think about switzerland. I have seen this place in all seasons and its beautiful wether theres snow or in autumn when its all colorful. I enjoyed a full Indian meal at RLD's home which was quiet refreshing eating at home after some days. After a good morning meeting at Towanda I went out for lunch with Duane and Dave at Weighbridge cafe in Towanda. Weighbridge cafe is a railway station converted to a cafe in Towanda. Towanda is a small town in PA with around a population of 3000 people. Searching Google on Towanda an interesting fact I found out was it has more female population than male - they can export few of them to India - with sharp decline of female population in India. The weighbridge cafe has a wall where there are signatures of people from different parts of the world. Surprisingly there was no one from India signed on at this place. I thought let me make my mark - I took a ladder from the hostess and put in my name, town and country details with todays date stamped on it. Any one coming here sometime can see "i was here" on the wall from me. The drive from Towanda to Bedford is very scenic but unfortunately my camera was in my bag and I missed out on some good views. But Duane told me that we will cross similar good scenic views more and I am gonna keep my camera with me tomorrow as I drive from here to Bristol - almost 6 hrs. Good about driving with Duane is he lets me take my small naps inbetween where as Teppo in Finland would give the car a big jerk to wake me up - Its fun travelling with these guys.

Welcome to USA

Its bright and sunny as I get up this morning rather afternoon. I am at New Jersey at my cousin Pankajs place. It was raining badly when I landed in NY yesterday night. The community where Pankaj leaves is beautiful and peaceful. Its all green at this time with new leaves on the trees. Very peaceful.Leaving at his place reminded me of my bachelor days except that its pretty neat and clean.

The flight to NY was as usual tiring. My flight from Delhi was delayed by more than 45 minutes. I had done my online check in and as I always prefer had taken an aisle seat on a two seater row. And then you pray that you have a good company on the long flight. So I waited on my seat expecting that I get a good company to take care of the long 81/2 hrs flight to London. But no one turns up and its a good news that its vacant and I have enough space for myself to sleep through for my flight to London. I had choice of watching 4 hindi movies. I had seen three of them and the fourth was Saanwariya. But still I couldn't get enough courage to see the Sanjay leela Bhansali movie. So i prefer to watch Jab we met again and JUNO - for which I had read lot of good reviews in some news article. There was not enough time in London so I rush to my gate which takes me 40 odd minutes in London for my connecting flight.
I board my flight from London for new York and again wait looking for a lucky company on the window seat next to me. There comes this 50- 55 year old fatty type Indian guy next to me with a hello smile. Dreams shattered. Bust as you know I have been very lucky in my life through out. This guy is on a wrong seat, his seat is in the front row and comes in a beautiful British blonde - Keera. We exchange usual Hellos. She is going on a holidays to Bahamas for 10 days to do YOGA. Thats power of Ramdevbaba. So it was a good company and you are fresh when you get down at NY. And as i said earlier I have always been lucky in my life - Keera is flying in the same flight on my return journey - 26th to London back.
RLD picks me up today for my trip ahead. I will be travelling almost 2000 miles in the next 5 days and Duane will be my company. I hope we have a good time ahead.

Names may be deceptive

During my travel I came into contact with various people whom I met for the first time. I had been talking with these guys over phone or emails. And through this period I built up a image of the person I had been talking to. But it all turned out to be so different from what I had thought how they are going to look. Say Richard Stock. The name sounds so heavy. His voice is also very heavy. I used to think that this guy must be some old heavy man. So meeting him was a pleasant shock when I find Mr Stock is a smart young fellow all dynamic. There's a typical problem in Punjabi names where it becomes very difficult to know whether the person is Male or female as the names are same for both genders. Jaswinder can be a male and female both. All those people with the name of Rajesh have been inspired by India's first super star of Bollywood Rajesh Khanna. I believe that generation was more into movies as there are not many people with the name of Amitabh or Shahrukh as there are Rajesh's. I believe the name also says a lot about your parents though - what they think , whom they were influenced by. William Shakespeare once said " Whats in a Name? But I think a name is an identity which tells a lot about a thing. Rose always will mean good smell and sugar always means sweet but when it comes to people I believe it does not give you a right picture about the person though it might highlight what the parents think or are influenced by. For those who are not famous or known - a unique or ghetto name brings lot of stigma - you would prefer to meet some one with a name like Rita or Sangeet then Chandramukhi. So name does give you an image but never go by that. I have 16 Rajeshs in my phone book and mostly belong to the Rajesh Khanna era but they are not all similar. I have encountered a "Chotu" who is not that small and a "Gudiya" who is all fat.

HOW TO BE UNHAPPY

I believe we in India have an expertise on not to be Happy. How we create unnecessary stress on ourselves. I have been wondering during my trip to Europe last week as how people look so content and satisfied despite having to do so much themselves. We in India have a huge social security with friends, relatives and well wishers. And for those who can afford some luxuries like helps and drivers - we always should have lot of creative time to think positive and proactive. But i found and saw that we were always trying to create situations to be unhappy. Well one of the major reasons for more stress and unhappiness is external factors which are beyond our control. To quote an example we get almost 50% power supplies in the factory at Faridabad so we have no choice to run the plant on self generation. Our generator runs on diesel. As our plant is a continuous process with a furnace we can not shut down when the power goes and have to run on generators. Usually we purchase 800 litres of diesel everyday. This evening while I was leaving my office for home - I came to know that the gas stations here have gone on some strike and no diesel was going to be available and God knows till how long. If this continues till tomorrow then we will have no choice but to shut down the plant which we can ill afford to do. But this is something that is beyond our control. But there are others which we create for ourselves. We tend to be unhappy on others happiness, on our teenager sons long hairs, late nights, you name anything and we can scoop up a situation to be unhappy. I am trying a lot to change my thought process and always think positive and try to be happy. Enjoy

Summing up the trip

Today is my last night in Europe. I am at Stuttgart and fly to Frankfurt tomorrow morning for further connection home. This has been a great trip as I got an opportunity to go to places which you usually dont travel. In my last trips to Europe I had visited only the metros but this time I got an opportunity to go inside small towns, villages - places like Bad Salzungen, Leimbach, Fulda,Burghaun, Rottweil, Aichhalden in Germany - Graz, Zeltweg in Austria, Turku, Tampere, Lahti in Finland. I travelled on planes, cars, trains and buses. This gave me a great perspective about the continent. I went into mines 800 meters into the ground and 110 meters up on the tower. I went into the Eastern part of Germany , the historic border which at one time was making so much of tension in the world. How removing the borders has bought peace and triumph. Is it not so unfortunate that how much trouble we create with these man made borders. The trip in the mine was so enthralling. How difficult it is for some people who work there in the dark. Such a hard job some part of the society is doing to make our life comfortable. Touched World war 2 history there. Theres a cave in the mine where Hitler had hidden tons of Gold, Billions of Dollars and best paintings of Berlin Museum but unfortunately US noticed it and after the war dug out every thing. Its said they carried every thing and till recently have been returning to the different countries there Gold and money. I saw a Crystal mine there with sparkling crystals and they do a light and sound show there. So dazzling.

I got an opportunity to try different food. Things I don't eat at home. It was difficult to get lot of choices in vegetarian food but never slept hungry and unsatisfied. Drove motorboat in Baltic sea and Dakota bike - so much like our bullet. Was so close to nature. Air never breathed so fresh. By the way I had mentioned name of a place above Bad Salzungen. Bad does not mean BAD but Bath. At all places in Germany where they use Bad before the name of the place means there is a natural water source which cures diseases. The walk around one of these source - gives you such a wonderful feel. It really feels something has touched you in.

but the biggest gain has been the people with whom I interacted. They were so nice and homely. The hospitality was so great that we don't even do anything like this in India though we call ourselves good hosts. How happy these guys live - not creating unhappiness by there own doing. They accept the situation as it is not trying to worry about things not in there control. I am really bowled over by the touch. Another lesson I learn was punctuality. How I was able to plan every thing nicely as every thing moved in time. A train, a bus, an appointment, a taxi call. If we can do this back home how much more we can deliver. I have a whole day journey tomorrow and it will be tiring. I hope I carry on this writing once back to the daily chores at work and home. I also look forward to my trip to US which starts in a fortnight.